Sixth Realm

by Michael Chatfield

  “I’ll get you some more romance books to read, you’re just sitting down there in the freezing cold reading books aren’t you?”

  “I move every so often.”

  “Flipping the page and opening the menus does not mean you are really moving.”

  “What do I need to move for? Not like I’m going to get back spasms from not moving or lose my figure. I’m about as slim as one can get!”

  “Talk to you later Egbert, have fun reading.”

  “Thank you!” A noise filled the air as Egbert disappeared.

  The Plateau cut into the hill.

  Erik reached a building that had been built into the side of the hill.

  “Sir!” The guards snapped to attention at the doorway.

  “At ease,” Erik said as he dismounted from Gilly. “You want to come in or do you want to go off and play?”

  Gilly looked to the fields and orchards that looked like forests.

  “I’ll let you know when I’m done,” Erik patted her side.

  She nudged him with her snout and then ran off in excitement to stretch her legs and terrify the local residents.

  Erik turned to the building and the guards.

  “When I was here last this was just a cave. Is the new body cultivation area set up?”

  “Body cultivation training areas were set up on each floor with the help of construction crews, people from the blueprint office and the formation masters, the most powerful and pure affinity energies are contained within each training facility. They just finished putting in the new testing and training equipment earlier today,” one of the guards said.

  “That came together quickly. Construction in Alva was always fast as hell!”

  “Now it’s spread to Vuzgal as well, that place has more buildings up every time I see it,” The other guard said and then fell quiet, nervous by his outburst.

  “Yeah, it just keeps on growing at an alarming rate. I heard that we will reach the old borders of the city in just a year and a half,” Erik shook his head. “Keep up the good work.”

  Erik headed to the main door.

  “Are we really going to have a war?” one of the guards asked.

  Erik paused and looked around, looking at the two men. The other guard looked like he wanted to hit his fellow over the head, but the guard asking while expecting to be yelled at, didn’t look 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 have heard what they did, to Colonel Domonos, the Adventurer 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 a fellow soldier that 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 acknowledgement.

  “Carry on,” Erik turned and headed into the facility.

  He passed through the defenses. A man holding a clip board 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 a few tests to check your affinity and resistance with the Earth element.”

  “Okay, what afterwards?”

  “Afterwards we will be conducting 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 for and how long,” the man said.

  “Alright, well let's get to it,” Erik said.

  He took a look at his stats quickly.

  ==========

  Name: Erik West

  ==========

  Level: 59

  ==========

  Race: Human

  ==========

  Titles:

  From the Grave II

  Blessed By Mana

  Dungeon Master III

  Reverse Alchemist

  Poison Body

  Fire Body

  City Lord

  Earth Soul

  Mana Reborn

  ==========

  Strength: (Base 54) +41

  ==========

  950

  ==========

  Agility: (Base 47) +72

  ==========

  654

  ==========

  Stamina: (Base 57) +25

  ==========

  1230

  ==========

  Mana: (Base 27) +79

  ==========

  1166

  ==========

  Mana Regeneration (Base 30) +61

  73.80/s

  ==========

  Stamina Regeneration: (Base 67) +59

  26.20/s

  ==========

  ***

  Doctor Melissa Bouchard was drinking her tea as she marched into the training facility. Medic Larsson passed her the reports and notes he had compiled already with the rest of the research team.

  He looked pale and his confident smile was wavering.

  “How is he doing?” Melissa asked, looking 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 a number of surprises but she was determined to quantify them all and pull back the mystery surrounding them.

  “We started with the element tests. He was able to cast spells of the Fifth level, with three quarters the required power. He then went into the Earth training room, we increased the earth affinity up to seventy percent and then he asked if he could start lifting. He went through a workout while enduring the Earth Element infiltrating his body. We increased all the way to ninety percent before we had to dial it back. People with Body’s of Iron would have been crushed under the power, he accidentally activated the power of his cells! He ignited the power within them, he was filled with vitality, veins that looked like lava tore through his body and steam rose from his body.”

  “We stopped the test right away and ran tests on him, but the changes disappeared and he had no acknowledgement of it happening. We thought we were all hallucinating, there were no changes in his body,” another researcher said.

  “Nothing, but his body changed on a physical level? What did he say?” Melissa asked.

  “He just said he was digging deep,” Larsson shivered and looked 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 afterwards?”

  “He was doing so 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.

  “With his stats we can confirm the triple stat theory,” Larsson said. “At ten of any stat then the body reaches the limits of what was seen on Earth. At thirty stat points in any given attribute, then 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. The Agility is based upon reaction times. At ten stat points then people have an average reaction time of two hundred miliseconds, at thirty they have a reaction
speed of one hundred and seventy five miliseconds. It decreases by twenty five miliseconds 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 stimulus.”

  “Do we think that is because of his body stats or because of 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 let out a dry laugh and rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Never assert anything on just hunches, verification first?”

  “Precisely, though it is a good theory, you will need more data in order to back it up. Have you taken samples?” Melissa asked.

  “Yes, though we needed to use the formation-enhanced needles and blades. You have to use an enchanted blade just to break his skin!”

  Looking 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 left the limits of humans from Earth long ago. We have only just tested his physical abilities.

  “Has he activated any of his spells or mana abilities throughout?”

  “No, the readings from when he altered his body he was drawing in mana and the elements in massive quantities, and when he finished then it dissipated from his body slowly,” the researcher said.

  Erik finished with his curls and dropped the bar, it landed on the ground, creating craters in the ground.

  He went to the squat rack he grunted as he pushed into the bar it was made from Earth grade metal but it was still bending with the two hundred and fifty kilos on each side.

  “Putain! That’s four fully grown people.” Bouchard shook her head.

  “With the high mana, that is closer to twelve people.”

  ***

  Erik felt refreshed after completing all of the tests,. It had been a long time since he felt the pains of working out, it felt good to move again. The weeks seemed to be evaporating as he worked in Alva.

  “Something wrong?” he asked Melissa who was looking at him strangely.

  “No, just you’re a genetic freak you know that?”

  “Well you were the one that 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 have 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 you make are. If you were to have stopped at merely tempering 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 need to overload the cells you have 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, then 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 of the parts of your cell evolves rapidly as we’ve talked about. Now 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 test 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 then it will be harder to progress. If you have this needle inserted and powered up, doing a metal damage over time, then while 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 very high. What I mean by super-temper is; when 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 the 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 that even if you relax, then 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, to allow you to go higher to create a greater impact,” Melissa said.

  “So, when can I start?” Erik asked.

  “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 have been used as a test dummy.”

  “That is one thing that 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 about the presentation to make themselves look better, more than the overall effect. Of their art or technique. There is little actual research carried out. It is why that 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 same for the alchemist. They focus on making just a few pills or concoctions to increase their overall skill level instead of perfecting or making their concoctions stronger, or cost less resources. Our general healing and stamina recovery pill is a peak Journeyman level pill, but in materials it costs as much as a low Journeyman level pill and we can mass produce them in a factory because dozens of healers, alchemists and more 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 makes me want to see just how fast I am now. Erik looked up with fighting spirit in his eyes as his muscles all contracted and then released.

  He took off at a sprint, shooting across the plateau. He reached the edge of the hill and started to run down it, keeping up his pace and increasing it as he leveled off, the clear path through the floor to the teleportation array lay ahead him as he dug deep and pushed on. His hair was thrown back as he breathed in twice b
efore exhaling violently. He pumped his legs and arms, feeling the blood thrumming in his head as his heart beat increased. His body was humming with excitement.

  Faster!

  Erik threw all of his strength behind his legs hurling himself forward, his Agility allowed him to react to and compensate for his footfalls as 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, threw himself forward more. He raised his own dust along the road as he sprinted.

  Gilly let out an excited shrill as Erik could see 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 in his legs that his muscles were 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.

  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 his two short breaths as 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 vaccuum he had created, he hit the ground. Waving his arms to catch himself, he slammed into the ground, creating a divot as he bounced up again. Flames appeared around Erik as he adjusted his position breaking out forcefully as the same wind spell appeared in front of him again, wind shot out to either side of the road as Erik let out a yell, 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 he didn’t need to wave his hands 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 with a wide smile on his face as his chest was rising and falling rapidly.