Sixth Realm

by Michael Chatfield

  “Potential? What do you mean?”

  “The potential of the cells is much greater than they were in the past. Individually they are much stronger than before, their smaller inner systems are greatly refined. The cell walls are tougher, but they accept a greater amount of the elements inside. The nucleus changes, instead of being a sympathetic system it is active!”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Sympathetic systems just do their own thing, we have no real control over them. On Earth, if you had a cut, you just had to wait and let it heal itself, right?” Melissa held out her hand to Erik.

  “Right.”

  Melissa chuckled.

  “Well now, on a level you have control over your cells. In the cleansing process the nucleus is linked to your mind. When you want to cultivate your body, you can consciously open the gates of the cell, accepting the powerful elements into your body. We have only just discovered this, and we have no idea what it would even mean!”

  “So the cells are under my control?”

  “Possibly? It is like a person that is blind from birth, if you give them sight when they are young then their brain will develop and allow them to see. If you are older and your brain never made those connections then your brain will not adapt. Even if you are healed on a physical level, because those connections weren’t made, you will remain blind.”

  “So because I have developed my body cultivation while I am an adult then I will not be able to control all of my cells?” Erik asked.

  A weird smile appeared on Melissa’s face as she pointed to a piece of paper hung up behind her desk. It was the mantra of body cultivators.

  “The Foundation Tempered, the soul grounded, the mind forged,” she drew out the last three words. “Based on the texts we have been reading, the mind is altered with tempering of the metal element. Not only that, but one will undergo a Body Rebirth. A rebirth! Isn’t it right there?! Maybe that is the stage where you will gain conscious control over your cells. You could prioritize what your body heals, you could alter the structure of your cells, maybe even alter yourself. Cells make up your entire body, what changes can you create?”

  Melissa’s eyes burned into Erik’s as he felt his heart thumping like a war drum as he felt his blood racing through his veins.

  “Though that is all just my theories and hypothesis! There is nothing to prove it yet!” Melissa laughed and Erik felt the heat in his limbs cool, regaining more of his control.

  “The last discovery we have made also has to do with the cells. They create new lysosomes, these don’t break down chemicals but they purify mana, drawing out the elements and releasing purified mana. Specialized vacuoles store the elements and supply them to the cells. Once the body is tempered with the correlating element, these two cell structures will form. The greater one’s tempering the more of the element can be processed and stored by a given cell.”

  “Can someone temper themselves with all the elements?”

  “They can, but there is a reason for the body cultivation mantra, it seems that our bodies will naturally follow this path of incorporating different elements.”

  “You said something about constitutions being mutations?” Erik asked.

  “A family that occupies one area for multiple generations, has the same training aides and such over a long period of time, their later generations’ bodies will be more efficient absorbing the element that they can find heavily in their area. All constitutions are related to the body, not one’s mana system. If I have a water element constitution, then my body will find it easier to pull in mana with the water element as it can temper my cells faster; it gives me a greater resistance and control over the element. As a side benefit, I refine out that water element in aman faster, using purer mana in my mana cultivation.”

  “Then your mana cultivation would soar because you have purer mana than everyone else to condense!” Erik slapped his leg.

  His head was spinning from all the information.

  “I was thinking on a surface level, just thinking about what the Ten Realms could give me and the benefits. Of course if there are changes, they have to come from somewhere. The Ten Realms just reports the changes. I didn’t think that I was changing my actual cells,” Erik snorted.

  “No one did, there is simply too much to study in the Ten Realms. It is why I go to the academy. I can’t do it all by myself. Researching and studying just what is happening will allow us to crack the Ten Realms. This brings me to my main point. None of this would have been possible without information. Without data I couldn’t prove any of this.”

  “Are you asking for more funding?” Erik asked.

  “No, I’m asking for more subjects and to be approved for testing facilities.”

  “What do you mean by testing facilities? Laboratories, microscopes?”

  “Maybe, but a big part of it is other than what the Ten Realms tells us, we don’t know what the effect is on the people who have tempered their bodies. I want to build a gym.”

  “A gym? Like with weights and such?”

  “Yes, weights and such,” Melissa’s face bloomed in a smile. “All I have talked about are the basic breakthroughs we have made in the area of body tempering. I have not talked about our discoveries, come with me.”

  She led Erik out of the office and down the corridor. They passed through a few secure doors to a hall that had medics talking to one another and watching what was happening in the other rooms through windows.

  Seeing Melissa and Erik they moved to the side.

  Melissa and Erik smiled and nodded to them as Melissa waved her hand at the window, presenting a room where there was a man lying on the ground, there was a complex formation below him at the same time there was an IV into the man’s arm and metal shackles dug into his skin.

  “Don’t worry this was voluntary, we used a numbing agent where the spikes were inserted,” Melissa assured him. “This was actually an idea that came from the military. What ways could we create to artificially temper a soldier’s body as fast as possible without any side-effects?

  “The formation on the ground is a healing formation that will heal the patient. The IV bag contains an alchemical formula to numb the soldier and boost their cognitive function.”

  “The spikes?” Erik asked in a deep voice.

  “Weapons created by the smiths, they are hollow, and inject poison into the patient’s body.”

  Erik looked at the patient that was lying there with their eyes closed, there were several medics circulating their mana right next to the formation, another was ready next to a control panel to change the effects of the formations above and below the man.

  Impurities dripped out of the man’s pores, staining his clothing as a steam rose from his body.

  If it was me then I would accept the same thing, it actually seems more comfortable than the temperings that I have needed to do.

  “With this system, we have things under greater control. In a few hours to a day, one can cleanse their body, ready to push forward along the body tempering path,” Melissa said.

  “What about Elemental tempering?” Erik asked.

  “Take a look,” Melissa took him down the corridor and they looked through another window. There was a woman standing on a formation that was releasing waves of heat, she was wearing old-fashioned armor covered in fire based attack runes.

  In each of her shoulders and IO had been driven in.

  An Intraosseous infusion was injected right into the marrow of the bone. It meant that even if the veins collapsed then the IO would keep functioning.

  The woman dropped to the ground into a pushup position and then stood up and jumped. She reached some ten meters in the air before she crashed back down and repeated the burpee.

  “Squats!” A training instructor was there with medics, overseeing everything.

  The woman got under the squat bar and started to squat the massive weight she let out a yell with every explosive movement upward.

  Sh
e completed five sets of ten her body was steaming, as water vaporized from her skin.

  “Pull ups!” The Instructor yelled.

  The woman groaned and grabbed the bar, she stared right ahead as she pulled herself up, lowered herself and did it again. Her face was pulled into a snarl. Erik mentally nodded to her, there was a state of mind one could reach when they were fighting against their body and against other’s thoughts. An inner dialogue where you would curse yourself out to get that little bit more. You got twenty? That was cute, come on, you have five more to show how strong you are. Got that five. Come on, that pain is a gain! Five more!

  “We found that combining tempering with working out actually increased the speed that one could temper their body. When working out, your body is at a peak state, your cells sympathetically activate at this time. You can absorb more power and repair faster as you go. Utilization of the elements increases after training in high element areas with physical exercise. She is being pumped up with healing concoctions, the formation is pumping out the fire element and the armor is actually a weapon, there are spikes inserted into the patient forcing more fire element into the depths of their body. It is barbaric and cruel, but with the numbing agents then the patients don’t feel the pain and the healing concoctions push them on.”

  “So you want a gym for people to work out when tempering with?” Erik asked, looking to her.

  “No, I want a gym to test the changes that people undergo. I need to gather data. We have titles for the different stages of tempering, Body like Stone, like Iron and so on. Is that really true? Even if it is true, how much stronger, and faster are people? What is the actual impact of one point of increase strength or stamina, or agility? Is there a way we can increase that more through tempering? Is it on a cellular level? What are the best cell mutations? Can we replicate those in different people?”

  “This is all way above my pay grade,” Erik shook his head.

  “It is a whole new world and system. It isn’t surprising to be overwhelmed. Right now we’re grasping at everything trying to find out anything and everything. There is so much to learn out there. Also there is something that you might find useful,” Melissa pulled out some papers from her storage ring and passed it to Erik.

  “These detail the information we have been able to find out on tempering one’s body with the metal element. First, unlike the previous temperings it needs to be completed over time. Working out and doing explosive exercise does assist, but if you reach a meditative state then it speeds up. If you are sleeping, it slows down though. It seems key that one needs to be awake but in a relaxed state. Also,” she pulled out a pouch and put them on top of the paper’s in Erik’s hands. She opened it, revealing several spikes.

  “Each of these are formation-enhanced spikes that will inject the metal element into your body. They increase in power to temper your body.”

  Erik put it all into one of his storage rings.

  “Thank you, but, I have a question for you.”

  “Please,” Melissa smiled.

  “Why?” Erik left the word hanging there for a second as Melissa frowned, multiple thoughts rising to the surface. “Why did you join Alva, why did you put in the time to research all of this, What are you looking to get from all of this? Why are you okay with everything?”

  “A few simple questions,” Melissa drawled, getting the time to think.

  “While it is not a democratic society here in Alva, it is not a bad one. Ability beats all in the Ten Realms, if you can show results then you will be able to get higher, look at you and Rugrat. You could be warlords and try to control everything, instead you got people to represent the people. You listen to others, you have your own goals and you go out an complete them. Is it a perfect system? No of course not, but it works, we are safe here and we are with people that understand us. People have opportunities here that they would simply not have in the rest of the realms. There is a roof over our heads, clean water, food, safety. I accepted those things freely when I was in Paris. I didn’t think that the military stood for anything but to cost more taxes and to parade around with their weapons. I thought that they were a backward system.” Melissa turned and leaned against the window, thoughts, memories in her eyes as she sighed.

  “When I entered the Ten Realms it was so different I nearly died in the first two days. Luckily, there were a lot of other humans from Earth in the area. Kanoa and the military members grouped together first, then they pulled together the civilians. There were a number that we didn’t get to in time. We thought that we found a place with King Ikku but she was going to use us as slaves and she had a contract binding us that would have done so. We escaped and we ran. I talked to Miller one time about it all, why were they doing it, why were the military members putting their lives on the line for us civilians, wouldn’t they be better without us?”

  Melissa’s eyes trembled as they became wet.

  “You know what he said? He said people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. He had dedicated his life to the survival of others. If he died, then he would do so gladly to protect the lives of those behind him. To protect his beliefs and those that believed as he did.”

  Erik nodded his head, agreeing with it all.

  “When I was angry with the military, I saw them as a throw back to times of old. The reality is that with them as a foundation I was able to reach higher. If not for those men and women standing ready to protect, then we would never progress, we would never advance the sciences, gain education. We would fall into those times of old instead of reaching for higher pursuits.”

  “Why do I do this? I do this to support those men and women that protect me. I do this because I am good at it. It is a whole new field of discovery; my team and I are pioneers. Who doesn’t want to create a new field of study? Each day we are learning something new.”

  She was just a lady living and working in France before all of this. Then she had to come face to face with the ugly reality of the Ten Realms.

  “Well you’ve certainly given me a lot to think about, Egbert?”

  “Boss man?” Egbert’s voice appeared from mid-air.

  “Work with the body cultivation department to build out new training facilities on the different floors. Get with the smiths to create gym equipment. Rugrat can draw it up for you. He spent enough time there.”

  “Right on it, boss!” There was a popping noise to inform people he was gone, though Erik knew that the skeleton could listen to nearly everything in the dungeon.

  “Thank you,” Melissa said, getting herself back under control.

  “No problem, there is a coming fight with a powerful enemy, we’ll need our soldiers to be the strongest they can be. Increasing one’s cultivation with these new methods will be faster than increasing a person’s overall level,” Erik said.

  “There is one other thing I should tell you about body cultivation. Activation. When we were doing our testing with the cells we found that an increase in pure mana, then the cell would be ‘ignited’ in this state it’s abilities were much greater than before.”

  “Okay, so again the relationship with the mana and body cultivation, the higher the mana cultivation the greater potential we can ignite in our cells?” Erik asked.

  “Exactly, though there is a secondary way to activate them. Being in a highly dense mana area. We have only completed some simple tests but it is looking promising,” Melissa said.

  “All of this is promising, you’ve certainly been busy over the last couple of weeks,” Erik said.

  Chapter: Tactics transformed through technology

  There was a knock at Glosil’s door as he was reviewing the latest reports on the recruits across the Alva Army.

  “Come in,” he said, putting the report to the side.

  Newly-minted Captain Kanoa opened the door and saluted Glosil who returned the gesture.

  “Captain, good to see you, please take a seat, is ev
erything going well?” Glosil asked

  “Everything is good, thank you sir,” Kanoa sat down.

  Glosil smiled, Kanoa like the rest of the military members from Earth had arrived nearly two months ago. Last month most of them had joined the military with the stipulation that they could challenge the various tests. After a week of familiarization they spent the next week challenging every test, they were qualified as medics, sharpshooters, artillery gunners and engineers. Most of them had been very active in their service, reaching the peak of their professions. Those that had retired remained sharp even afterward. With healing they were as healthy as twenty year olds with the knowledge of hardened warriors. Glosil had taken complete advantage, tapping into that knowledge pool to augment and enhance the Alva Army’s ability.

  “I sense a ‘but’,” Glosil said.

  “But, air assault and waterborne assaults. Alvans haven’t trained for either.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “As you know sir, there are multiple ways to get to the battlefield, tactics have been developed to use ground transport to reach the enemy, dismount, engage them, complete the mission and then mount back up and exfiltrate the area. Leading assaults with an air or water component hasn’t been looked into yet. I believe that this is part of the secretive nature of Alva’s Army. We head in close to the ground and under cover to strike the enemy. If we were to use air vehicles then we would stick out and blow our cover. Also few of Alva’s opponents have been located close to a shoreline.”

  “Though there is no way to say for sure if this will remain the same in the future,” Glosil finished for Kanoa, intrigued. “I’m guessing you have a plan?”

  “Stepping up two new units, trained in the same way as the others, but their focus will be on air and water assaults. Ground, air, water, we cover them all and all of the units have training in the others so that they can support one another. Say there is a ground assault going on, we have the water assault company moving in to the rear of the enemy and the air assault comes in and flanks them. The enemy fights the force on the ground, only to have their side torn apart by the other two forces.”