Sixth Realm Part 2: A litRPG Fantasy series (The Ten Realms Book 7)
Page 26
Erik headed to the main door.
“Are we really going to have a war?” one of the guards asked.
Erik paused and contemplated the two men. The other guard looked as if he wanted to hit his fellow comrade over the head, but the guard asking, although expecting to be yelled at, didn’t turn away.
“Yes, we probably are. Though we’re not going to charge into it like idiots. We have been attacking and undermining our enemy for nearly a year now. It has been slow progress, but their foundations are weaker than ever, while ours”—Erik pointed his thumb at the door behind him and looked upward—“we have never been stronger.”
“I heard what they did to Colonel Domonos and the Adventurer’s Guild. Those could have been me and my buddies. We’ve all seen the reports on how they treat people. How they have killed and stolen Beast Mountain badges from people in the First Realm. They stand on our necks and take all the benefits.”
“Look after the men and women to your left and right; do your job to the best of your ability. It sounds simple, but it’ll get you through.” Erik wasn’t talking as a lord, but as a fellow soldier who had been in their shoes. “Trust in your training and your officers. You’ll be surprised with how fast those reactions can save your life.”
“Thank you, sir,” the guard said.
The two men came to attention. It was different from before—not just a greeting, but an acknowledgment.
“Carry on.” Erik turned and headed into the facility. He passed through the defenses. A man holding a clipboard was waiting for him.
“Medic Larsson, sir.” The man came to attention.
“Just call me Erik. Shall we get started?”
“Yes, sir. First, we are going to do some tests to check your Affinity and resistance with the Earth element.”
“Okay, what afterward?”
“Afterward, we conduct physical tests. Basically, we’ll see how much you can lift, how fast your reaction speed is, and how fast you can run or jog and for how long,” the man said.
“All right. Well, let’s get to it,” Erik said.
He checked his stats quickly.
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Name: Erik West
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Level: 60
Race: Human
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Titles:
From the Grave II
Blessed By Mana
Dungeon Master IV
Reverse Alchemist
Poison Body
Fire Body
City Lord
Earth Soul
Mana Reborn
Wandering Hero
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Strength: (Base 54) +51
1050
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Agility: (Base 47) +72
654
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Stamina: (Base 57) +25
1230
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Mana: (Base 27) +79
1166
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Mana Regeneration: (Base 30) +61
73.80/s
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Stamina Regeneration: (Base 72) +59
27.20/s
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Doctor Melissa Bouchard drank her tea as she marched into the training facility. Medic Larsson passed her the reports and notes he had compiled with the rest of the research team.
He looked pale, and his confident smile wavered.
“How is he doing?” Melissa peeked into the room where Erik was curling weights repeatedly.
“He’s a monster. I heard about it before, but this—it’s nothing like what I expected,” Larsson said.
The other researchers and medics all had haunted looks as well.
“What do you mean?” Melissa asked. The Ten Realms came with many surprises, but she was determined to quantify and pull back the mystery surrounding them.
“We started with the element tests. We increased the Earth Affinity up to seventy percent, and he asked if he could start lifting. Started working out while enduring the Earth element infiltrating his body. We increased it all the way to ninety percent before we had to dial it back. His skin transformed, taking on a stone-like appearance while his veins looked like magma.”
“It changed on a physical level? What did he say?” Melissa asked.
“He said he was digging deep.” Larsson shook his head glancing into the room again.
“He was lifting an average of five hundred kilos for all three major lifts. Bench, squats, and dead lift.”
“What about afterward?”
“He was in a high-gravity training room. Once he was in one of the element-neutral rooms, he crushed it. Lifts went up to over two thousand kilos of force. His reaction times were close to 0.075 seconds.
“So, we can confirm the triple-stat theory,” Larsson said. “At ten of any stat, the body reaches the limits of what was seen on Earth. At thirty stat points in any given attribute, that ability is doubled; at ninety, it doubles again. Other than Agility. Strength increases the weight one can lift. Stamina, the speed one can move and for how long. Agility is based upon reaction times. At ten stat points, people have an average reaction time of two hundred milliseconds; at thirty, they have a reaction speed of one hundred and seventy-five milliseconds. It decreases by twenty-five milliseconds each time. Though at ninety stat points, the reactions are not simply reflex-based; they are closer to cognitive decisions. Instead of simple movements, Erik is exhibiting a string of complex actions in response to outside stimuli.”
“Is that because of his body stats or his mana stats? People with a higher Mana Cultivation have reported faster problem-solving skills and a higher cognitive speed than others,” Melissa said.
Larsson laughed dryly and rubbed the back of his neck. “Never assert anything on hunches. Verification first?”
“Precisely. Though it is a good theory, you need more data to back it up. Have you taken samples?” Melissa asked.
“Yes, though we had to use the formation-enhanced needles and an enchanted blade just to break his skin!”
Staring at the numbers was one thing. But by the standards of people on Earth or people from the Ten Realms, Erik was a through-and-through monster.
He had left the limits of human physiology from Earth long ago. They had only just tested his physical abilities.
“Did he activate any of his spells or mana abilities?”
“No. The readings show he was drawing in mana and the elements in massive quantities, and when he had finished, they dissipated from his body slowly, reaching pre-exercise levels,” the researcher said.
Erik finished with his curls and dropped the bar. It landed, creating craters in the ground. He went to the squat rack and grunted as he pushed into the bar. It was made from Earth-grade metal, but it was still bending with the five hundred kilos on each side.
“Putain! That’s eight fully grown people.” Bouchard shook her head and snorted.
“With the high mana, it must feel closer to sixteen.”
Erik felt refreshed after completing the tests. It had been a long time since he had felt the pains of working out, and it felt good to move again. The weeks seemed to be evaporating as he worked in Alva.
“Something wrong?” he asked Melissa, who looked at him strangely.
“No. Just you’re a genetic freak, you know that?”
“Well, you were the one who told me about the cell changes.”
“Fine. Okay, so the next thing we need to talk about is tempering your body with the Metal element.”
Erik leaned forward on the table between them.
“We set up training facilities like this one across all of the floors, except the Water floor as it is unstable right now with construction. When tempering your body, it is best to temper everything in one go. Your cells were opened by the foundational cleansing. Now, when you introduce the elements, it is painful, but they enter a transformative state; the more you absorb, the greater the advances. If you had stopped at merely tem
pering your body to the first stage, getting the preliminary title instead of the advanced second title, it would have been harder to advance all the way to that second title as you’d need to overload the cells you had already tempered, in order to get to the deeper cells. The deeper the tempering and the more cells you reach, the better. If you get them all, you will get the second title.”
“Is that why each tempering is harder than the last?” Erik asked.
“Kind of. So, the elemental tempering focuses on different cells and parts of the body. Each part of your cell evolves rapidly, as we’ve talked about. They each become dominant within your cells, fighting one another. The elements are not at harmony either; each of them is competing—subsuming or being subsumed by one another. It is like magnets, but instead of a negative and positive charge, you have five different charges. The repulsion increases with each one until you reach the fifth, and then everything might snap together. Well, it did in some tests we did with element-heavy monster cores.”
“It took me a month to completely temper my body with the Earth element,” Erik said.
“And it could take you five months with the Metal element. Not to worry. We have a way around that.” Melissa took out a needle.
“One of those elemental spikes?”
“Yup! It’s simple, very simple, but effective. If you stop absorbing the Metal element, it will be harder to progress. If you have this needle inserted and powered up, doing a Metal damage over time, then although your tempering might not increase over time, it will not regress. You can temper in high Metal areas, increase your tempering, leave to do other things, and this will keep on going. Also, it might be a way to super-temper.”
“What is super-temper, and could it temper my body over time?”
“It could, but the pain would be extraordinary. What I mean by super-temper is when someone gains the title of Body Like Stone, they usually stop their tempering, but they have just reached the first stage. One needs to push further to reach the true Body Like Stone, gaining the Fire Body or Earth Soul. If you temper your body with the Metal element, you could unlock the Body Rebirth, but you won’t get the second stage of tempering, Metal Body or whatever it is called. This will keep tempering your body, so even if you relax, you will not automatically go through a Body Rebirth.”
“So, it’s like a bucket of water on a see-saw. You push the see-saw a certain amount, and the water will come tumbling down before reaching vertical. This needle is like a string. You push the see-saw so it is vertical and then release the string. Then the water will all pour out and smash on the ground with greater power than when it fell off before because it got too high?”
“Weird analogy, but yes. This is your string that allows you to go higher and create a greater impact,” Melissa said.
“So, when can I start?”
“You really are a monster,” Melissa said under her breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Just head to the Metal floor. There is a training facility there. If you allow it, we would be really interested to study your training methods and see what works and what we can improve on. The more data we have, the faster we can help others,” Melissa said.
“Okay.” Erik nodded. “Not the first time I’ve been used as a test dummy.”
“That is one thing the Ten Realms doesn’t have. People don’t share information here, even in the same group. They hide it under flowery texts and extrapolated details, caring more about the presentation to make themselves look better than the overall effect. Of their art or technique, there is little actual research carried out. It is why so many people still die on the battlefields in the Ten Realms, even with access to alchemists and healers.” Melissa sighed.
“The healers try to conserve their mana for the highest-paying customer, and it’s the same for the alchemist. Our general healing-and-Stamina recovery pill is a peak-Journeyman-level pill, but it costs as much as a low-Journeyman-level pill in materials, and we can mass-produce them in a factory because dozens of healers, alchemists, and others have worked together,” Erik said.
“Compared to the world outside, Alva really is a paradise.”
“The power of working together and caring about your fellow citizen,” Erik countered.
Erik exited the Earth element training facility. Dawn had come and gone, leading to midday.
Erik whistled into the forest as he lowered himself. Working out made him want to see just how fast he was now. Erik looked up with fighting spirit in his eyes as his muscles contracted and then released.
He took off at a sprint, shooting across the plateau. He reached the edge of the hill and ran down it, maintaining his pace and increasing it as he leveled off. The clear path through the floor to the teleportation array lay ahead of him; he dug deep and pushed on. His hair was thrown back as he breathed in twice before exhaling violently. He pumped his legs and arms, feeling the blood thrumming in his head as his heartbeat increased. His body hummed with excitement.
Faster!
Erik threw all his Strength behind his legs and hurled himself forward. His Agility allowed him to react to and compensate for his footfalls, and his massive Stamina pool supported his outburst of energy.
His speed increased again and again as he forced his mind past what was possible in his old life. He pushed harder and threw himself forward more. He raised his own dust along the road as he sprinted.
Gilly let out an excited shrill, and Erik saw her running through an orchard to his side.
Erik dug deeper. Mana flowed through his body. “I reached the limits of my body but not my mana.” Erik laughed. As his eyes shone, power flowed through his body. He used so much force his legs muscles ripped apart while tears formed in his tendons. His natural healing, born from his Earth body, fixed the damage before he touched the ground again.
Spell formations appeared behind Erik’s back, shooting him forward like a rocket in bursts. Different fires appeared around him, and the flames seemed to be made from dragons and tigers. These untamable beasts heeded his commands; they created a sea of fire around him, increasing his speed again.
Erik took in two short breaths, and a spell formation appeared in front of him. The air along the path exploded outward, making the crops and trees shake. Erik shot through the vacuum he had created, and he hit the ground. Waving his arms to catch himself, he slammed into the ground, creating a divot. He bounced up again. Flames appeared around Erik and he adjusted his position, breaking out forcefully. The same Wind spell appeared in front of him. Wind shot out to either side of the road and Erik yelled. The beast flames around him detonated and threw him forward. He windmilled again, but he didn’t fall this time. Erik tried it again and didn’t need to wave his hands around that much. With each attempt, Erik required less time to stabilize himself, increasing his speed multiple times.
Erik reached the automatons that had been working throughout the night. He slowed his speed, leaving grooves in the dirt. He smiled as his chest rose and fell rapidly.
Gilly came over to him, giving him a strange look.
“Got a little excited there.” Erik patted her as he opened his notifications that had been screaming at him for the past couple minutes.
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You have created a new Expert-level technique. What do you wish to call it?
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???
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Expert
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Rapidly increase your speed through utilization of Fire and Wind spells.
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Cast: 40 Mana/second
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“Let’s call it the Quick Step,” Erik said.
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The “Quick Step” has already been taken. Here are some suggestions.
Fiery Tornado Step
Wind Hell Sprint
Inferno Steps of the Heavens
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“Is this why there are s
o many damn crazy names for simple techniques? Because all the simple names were taken?”
Of course, the Ten Realms failed to answer him.
“What about Mana-Enhanced Sprint Version One?” Erik asked.
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Mana-Enhanced Sprint Version One is available.
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Mana-Enhanced Sprint Version One
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Expert
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Rapidly increase your speed through utilization of Fire and Wind spells.
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Cast: 40 Mana/second
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For teaching yourself an Expert-ranked spell, you gain: 5,000,000 EXP
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86,796,860/108,500,000 EXP till you reach Level 61
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Erik felt the flow of Experience enter his body.
Erik was pleased with his gains, albeit tired from the dead sprint across the floor.
He jumped onto Gilly’s back, and she headed for the teleportation array.
They crossed through to the Metal floor. Smithies and refineries could be seen everywhere as people refined the natural materials into items for the smithies on the living floors. Others were headed out across the floor, placing down plants that naturally refined the metals around them or turned into metals with enough exposure to the Metal element.
“We have to look to the future, not just now. If we take everything from the floors, there would be nothing left in a few years. Creating a balance will assure our ability to move forward without cutting off our lifeline.”
Erik and Gilly rode toward the center of the floor where the Metal mountain stood with its constant rain of lightning falling day after day.
Erik pulled out the needle Melissa had given him.
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Metal Tempering Needle
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Attack: 65
Weight: 0.4 kg
Health: 100/100
Charge: 100/100
Innate Effect:
Increase damage by 5%
Enchantment:
Metal Corruption—Inflict Metal damage on target. Varies on overall charge.