CH46

Day 45

Spring 66, 11M 495Y

Rasputin Territory

Walker Farm

In a dug-out pit nearly an acre in diameter and 50 feet deep, I sparred with Veronica. Craters littered the ground from various battles fought out in the pit. Cameras lined the walls, and monitors showed off our fight frame by frame on one screen and how it appeared to the audience on another. The sun had reached high overhead, and the concession stand was in full swing. Westons were moving through our growing economy inspiring industry and causing small businesses to rise up. I implemented a sales tax on all goods sold in my territory, and that was the only tax I needed. Until something happened that needed my attention, like complaints, I let them sell what they wanted. In this case, someone opened a concessions stand.

A wall of fireballs sailed overhead while a thick battle chicken strutted her stuff and rained down fireballs. I practiced deflection with PK it was harder than I thought because fireballs would explode if I touched them too roughly. Veronica waved her hand, and streams of fire erupted from her avatar. Mana became fire quickly before a rain of fire bolts mixed in, targeting me and the fireballs still falling in my direction. The number of variables kept increasing, reminding me of a problem I had with the skill I was designing for Meng Bao.

Veronica wanted to show off her skills, and fighting me was the best practice she could expect. I crossed my arms as an explosion went off and the sudden light, sound, and heat erased my fell barrier but stopped on my psychic one. Types were important no matter what I wanted to think. Fell energy didn't do well with explosions. It was something I was working on.

Mixing fell and psychic energy to make constructs felt like the next level in my training. I couldn't increase my attributes, and cultivation was a slow process. To speed it up without damaging my foundation I needed either to greatly level Sky Fiend Apotheosis or drain rank 3 or higher blood.

While I planned to take on one of the rank 3 monsters in the nearby woods, winning wasn't guaranteed. I formed a shield, something I had been working on for days, and used it to deflect incoming fire bolts.

Veronica moved in and stuck out with a flaming kick. Her red feathers fluttered under the speed of her kick. Unlike me, she specialized in Strength and Agility. Those two attributes made her kicks brutal things. I dodged out of the way before her blow could shatter my barrier and deal a heavy injury. Flamed licked over a purple barrier finding the thin screen of fell energy and dissipating it.

Fire and light would forever be the enemies of fell. Given enough practice Veronica would make short work of the first floor. I flicked my finger, and a rock hit her kneecap, turning her kick to the side and dragging her off balance.

I grabbed her thigh mid-kick, yanked her off her feet, and when her head appeared between my knees, I delivered a pile driver. The ground cracked as her head was buried up to her shoulders.

"With the ground so soft, I doubt you felt it," I said.

Her legs spread, and flames appeared on her taloned feet, and her tiny spurs glowed white from the heat alone. Veronica's legs twisted as I gathered psychic energy in my arms and blocked her twisting kicks as she spun herself out of the hole.

"It was a good move. I was going to let you have it as an end to our spar."

"You have over 400 physical attributes and two fire skills that boost your Vitality and Constitution. But you're right. That was an awesome move. I like your spread-leg whirlwind. What are you going to call it, flame tornado?" I asked.

I blocked her strikes one after the other as she increased the force behind them. Every exchange and match-up against my skills rapidly grew her own skills. Since I was overwhelmingly more powerful than her it resulted in rapid skill growth. My own Lumanaria High Evolutionary was only level 3 after 4 hours of sparing.

It was incredible. After 5 days of beating my head against a wall, my mind felt like it was clearing, and my relationship with Veronica was improving. Battle chicken seemed to mean more than just a 6ft and taller chicken that likes to fight. Veronica, though with a past closer to my time technology-wise, was still bound to her instincts. Sparing like we were doing was something only couples, family members, and parents did.

Each dodge taught me more about how Veronica fought compared to her kind. She fed and devoted her gains mostly to mental attributes but still managed to get 400 in physical. In the age of monster clans, she would be a prodigy. What would those monsters of the early M7s have thought of her?

"I'm boosting my speed with a skill. How are you still so fast?" Veronica asked.

Throughout our spar, I slowly increased my effort to match or show greater power than her. While it's true she had 90 or more in Strength and Agility, my skills made up the difference. Cosmic Slayer didn't help me predict her moves, but it was close it only helped me make my moves at the right time.

I built the rank 5 skill and didn't understand it. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts, and it remained my greatest creation. A type of energy flowed through my body from the skill completely unknown to me. The only thing I could derive from it was greatly increased strength based on my Willpower attribute.

We clashed several more times as I ramped up the pressure forcing her to learn how to use her skills in ways she hadn't had to before. Steam rose from Veronica as her blood practically boiled in her veins. It was a miracle she had the stamina to keep going.

"Are you feeling better?" Veronica asked.

Others were in line to use the fighting pit and we had overstayed by 15 minutes already.

None of my skills gained a level because I wasn't pushing myself. That was something I understood. Without a driving force, most didn't improve. Spars would be great for that if I wasn't already the strongest. In my specializations, I was stronger than my rank implied.

…

My desk was a mess of stacked papers covered in varying designs for Meng Bai's skill. Shattered white boards lay in a corner from more than one embarrassing tantrum. The big problem was Meng Bai didn't have meridians because they were shattered. I knew that replacing them was my end goal but I was designing an artificial heart with code and fairy dust. Worse, I didn't quite know how meridians worked. I knew they were a spiritual circulatory system in the lower realms of cultivation. Still, the knowledge Far Ming was able to get was rank 3 and below. I found some scraps about Nascent transformations and spirit arts for that rank, but nothing concrete. The meridian information about that realm was nonexistent. I didn't want to reoptimize Meng Bao's skill at every stage from rank 4 onward.

I was stuck in a rut for days, thinking, doing, and scraping my ideas. Fighting Veronica gave me some ideas, but I didn't really know how I wanted to implement them. Clearing my mind for a fight helped but it also had me thinking about Meng Bao and what he liked. Leading and training armies seemed to be his passion.

That gave me a crazy idea, and I had no idea if it would work. I spent a few hours watching Meng Bao drill our growing mounted calvary and watched him move from problem to problem like a man possessed. When he wasn't chewing out his chain of command, Meng Bao was smiling.

When I saw that smile it reminded me of myself messing with skills. After returning to my tent and sitting in my work chair, I had something I didn't before, an idea of how I wanted the skill to function.

From that moment, designs started falling into place, skills were ordered under Scout's profile, and two of my first ripened attribute fruits were sold to pay for them. While I wasn't in the dungeon or under time dilation I tore the skills apart and took from them the parts I wanted. I blew the skill up wide on numerous tablet programs, dry-erase boards, and pieces of paper. I mixed in some Easton symbology into the variables and watched them flow with the others. While it wasn't a true Easton cultivation technique, it was close.

I watched my latest skill teeter on the edge of a demonic technique and a somewhat righteous one. The skill could easily become the worst kind of evil, turning monsters into living meridians for the user. Instead, with a few more tweaks, Meng Bao's cultivation would improve them at a smaller rate.

When it wasn't enough to merely add Easton symbology, I dipped into the Southern theological symbols, adding an energy type called faith. It was decidedly less reliable, so I watered it down and added some permanence skills to the mega skill I was creating.

Days flew by before I had something that could be considered workable. Nana made a power point presentation for me using the summary of my research's cliff notes. I practiced putting the skill together repeatedly. Unlike within a dungeon, there wasn't much mana concentrated in the air on my farm, so the skill was translucent. Our enchanters had stopped what they were doing to focus on creating a clean room filled with mana for skill bestowal.

I had to pay Westons for it for the first time since starting my society, and I was still in the black. After my freak out from seeing Nana use 1,000,000 in a single purchase, I freaked out. Only I gained tax revenue with every purchase made in my society. For the price of doing business, everyone paid a 10% tax, which was often forwarded to the customer.

Sometimes, I sat down at my desk and watched my numbers go up. Some warriors hunted, some battle chickens baked, and every monster needed to buy something for their profession. Westons flowed, we owned stock in different companies, and Attribute fruit continued to ripen before being plucked and sold. A number had seeds in them, which we used to grow more. It would have been unsustainable without monsters literally craping mana back into the ground.

There was a team of gators called the plumbers who disposed of collected waste in our sewage treatment machine before it was telekinetically mixed with dirt and scattered around the farm. Constant infusions of mana from the natural spring and the little that trickles from the dungeon had given life to the land. There were enough living things producing mana to cause a cascading effect that was beginning to snowball. A few chicks would hatch soon, further increasing the population. More mana meant more crops, which meant more money, and I needed to finish buying the valley and possibly the mountains.

Nana had already expanded our holdings to 30 miles. Isobel, many chimera rabbits, and myself spent an hour every day plowing with PK and seeding the ground. New springs were tapped, and irrigation systems were placed. Only the forests containing rank 3 and worse rank 4 monsters were left alone even as we purchased the land from them. The monsters there were like holes in a bucket to our mana supply. They drained the mana around them, locking it in their bodies and the surroundings they favored. Areas just around them were practically dead in comparison.

I left my tent armed in the direction of a forest with only a single rank 3 monster. After so much rest, it was time to get back in the spirit of killing. My chainswords roared to life as I entered one of the forests.

…

The forest on my land was around 20 acres of vampiric trees with black bark and various monsters impaled on their limbs. Blood seeped down onto branches falling into open mouths, lapping away at the crimson nectar. A few soft-skinned worms climbed the branches and fed on the bodies, careful not to be eaten by the trees protecting them. Some were caught by birds with metal feathers as limbs twisted but failed to pierce metal wings. Large toads on the trees dropped out of camouflage and extended their massive sticky tongues. The metal birds squawked as they were dragged into the maws of massive toads. Mouth's like falling boulders crushed their prey before swallowing them, broken but whole. The toads, while rank 2, were not the king of the forest. A large snake with glittering amethyst scales bigger around than Kate with a cobra's hood lashed out and caught one of the toads. Hands reached out of the snake's mouth and dragged the venom-filled prey within.

I stepped out from around a tree, and one of the monster's great yellow eyes spotted me.

Rank 3 Amethyst Giant Cobra

Estimated Attributes:

Physical: 1,500

Mental: 1,000

Cultivation led me to the 3rd stage of qi condensation. Roughly that added up to 30 attributes in physical and mental added onto my own attributes. They were averaged out without a spirit art to specialize in certain attributes. While eventually, cultivation would allow me to double my attributes at every rank, it wasn't a game changer.

Fighting something three times my attributes was never going to be easy. But its blood could raise Sky Fiend Apotheosis's skill level a great deal. Also, I wanted to see just how powerful I was when I went all out.

"Go home, little farmer. There is nothing here for you." I flicked a finger and a tree limb broke off and shot toward one of the snake's eyes. The monster shifted slightly and the limb shattered on its scales. "I see you have grown arrogant. What do you want from me?"

"I want to fight you with everything I have. No holding back." I said.

"And if I refuse," the snake asked.

I tested its mind and found that although I could touch it damaging it was impossible. Rank sure was a wall. From my own supply, I pulled a lance made of blood and froze it into a rigid, sharp weapon. Links of blood fell from my other hand into a sharp whip made with razor-like bloody ice crystals. Electricity arced between the lengths as it appeared and dispersed through my skills.

The snake moved with incredible speed, zigzagging around trees as I shot in the air on a floating branch. It launched itself in my direction, fangs barred with twin teen girls' arms outstretched instead of tongues. My whip shot out, slashing the snake's gums and electrocuting it before I tossed my lance, stabbing a shallow cut on the inside of its mouth. A branch shot over to me and looped under my arm, taking me to safety before the snake ejected venom from its glans.

I dodged only to run into its tail. The blow shattered half the bones in my body, cracked my skull, and bit halfway through my tongue. My body shot through the forest, ripping through trees as I healed, even as branches impaled me before snapping off. Telekinesis finally stopped me from impaling myself on a much larger, sturdier tree. A swipe of my hand cut it down with a full slash, and I lifted it with PK. The snake shot in from the shadows of the forest and I smashed the tree into its side. Eyes on its sides closed for impenetrable scales. The shadow of its tail loomed overhead as I lifted my hand, revealing a forest floor full of blood impalement spikes.

The tail smashed down heedless of the barbs. Even raising my shield construct didn't fill me with confidence. I swapped to my backup plan and used telekinesis to dig underground just as the blow struck. Numerous roots and the soft forest ground took most of the hit. It dug quickly to find me before opening its maw. The girls grinned evilly at me, their naked bodies on full display as their arms reached out and venom dripped from the fangs above.

Red light surrounded my hand as I tossed a red ball that quickly turned into a red sea urchin the size of a calf. Spikes impaled the inside of the snake's mouth, and the girls shrieked.

"You're a meanie," they yelled as the snake shook its head as they cut themselves, trying to dislodge the sea urchin. Blood from the snake entered me as it poured out of the rank 3 monsters.

Sky Fiend Apotheosis (O) lvl10

I felt bad, which was something I hadn't experienced since stepping down my path. Empathy wasn't something I was used to until I decreased the number of my skills and stopped feeling crazy. 

Rank 3 monsters were the only way to really level my skill. No matter how I used my skill, it wouldn't increase in level. Taking in more blood from the snake didn't do me any good. I could tell it was all about quality and variety. So, I dissipated the sea urchin and ran like my life depended on it.

I thought back on the battle and came to realize that the snake had held back during the fight. Even when it was digging for me, it wasn't going all out. Most likely, I thought I couldn't damage it, so why not have some fun.

Yeah, I should be more careful about fighting rank 3 monsters. If it had taken me seriously, it could have simply shattered the trees to get to me and slammed its tail on me until I died. The monster was clearly specialized for its habitat. While it wasn't slow, speed wasn't its forte. A human-sized monster would be far more dangerous with the same attributes. They would need less energy to move their massive bodies, and they might use skills that increase their speed. I should be careful on our cattle drive.

I rolled my arm the tendons were still torn and taking a long time to heal. My bones were taking priority, leaving nonessential parts of my body to heal slowly.

When I arrived, Veronica pulled me into our tent alone. "I want to watch something with you alone. I have snacks." Veronica said.