Chapter 25: Elements

  Everything went smoother than Alex had expected. Despite Garret's joking demeanor, he was actually a pretty good teacher. He thought that Garret wasn't picking up Celeste's lessons very well at the time, but now Alex could see that he had figured out everything just as easily as himself. Alex began to suspect that Garret was much smarter than what Alex thought him to be. He'd have to talk to him about that later.

  Once everyone understood how stats worked and what to expect during the refinement process, Garret had them start thinking about how they'd spend any experience that had been saving up.

  This was when another surprise came up. Everyone had more experience than Alex had thought, and he quickly discovered why.

  Everyone except Lance and Holly got the quest completion. Seemed that his teammates were given the same quest even though they were tied up and didn't do anything during the fight. Regardless, it was a welcome experience boost and Alex wasn't one to complain about such things. Alex was the only one to get an item reward this time though, even Garret didn't get one.

  Lance and Holly were not behind in total experience despite this. Turned out that Kate's mad push for power had their team hunting animals in the forest the entire time Alex and Garret had been gone. They hadn't run into any of the Kobolds during their hunts, but they had come across a few of the badgers that Alex still had an active quest for. That was another thing Alex had to get taken care of, before they were all overrun with the large dog-sized rodents.

  Alex brought up his status screen and after only a couple of seconds of thought, he dumped all the points into willpower to bring the base stat up to four. He had to try increasing his aether-gathering rate as much as he could, and he still thought willpower was his best option.

  He looked over his progress.

  He hadn't gotten any experience for the fight itself. It was probably because he only knocked out Kate and her team, not killed them. It looks like the system only gives experience for kills. Kinda fucked up actually. Wonder what that is about.

  His physical stats did go up a bit from the fight. His strength and agility had a small bump. His vitality went up by one and a half percent though, that was a much bigger gain than the other two stats. Alex wasn’t certain about the reason behind the disparity.

  Is it because of the injuries I sustained? Vitality is linked to health and constitution after all, maybe taking damage and surviving improves it more quickly? It was a possibility.

  So then could he rapidly increase his vitality by being injured and healing from the wounds? Alex didn't have time to experiment with self-mutilation right now, so he filed it away in his ever-growing to-do list.

  Next he had to accept the item reward from the system.

  A long and thin metal object appeared in his hand. It almost looked like a railroad spike from Alex's home world, a cap on top and tapered down to a point, but it was thinner and rounded instead of boxy. Alex didn't know what it did, but he assumed it had something to do with the gathering technique which Celeste sold them, given the similar names.

  Still, he already decided not to try using it that moment and focus on getting everyone else situated first. They had months to try to get their cores upgraded, so what was a few more hours. He stashed the item in his bracelet.

  Out of sight and out of mind.

  He turned his attention back to the elemental attunement circle scroll and focused on learning its contents instead. Much like the book, Alex noticed his learning speed was enhanced in some way as he studied the scroll.

  It was an immense amount of writing and diagrams packed onto the parchment. The thing itself was three feet long once fully unraveled.

  Despite this, Alex picked up the content quickly and learned the material after about two hours. Once he was sure he understood everything Alex was surprised that the scroll in his hands flashed brightly and began to crumble away into dust.

  He was taken aback by the event. This hadn't happened when he read the book on the aether-gathering technique. Is this the difference between scrolls and tomes? Scrolls are a one-time thing? Alex pondered this as he watched the dust swirl away on the wind. Celeste hadn't mentioned this to him when he talked with her and purchased the items.

  A warning would have been nice. Caution: Scroll goes Mission Impossible on you after reading. Thanks Celeste.

  Then again, she might have forgotten to tell him since she assumed it was such basic knowledge. Or she was being cranky, who really knew the truth.

  The second one, it was the second one.

  Alex’s thoughts were interrupted by a notification.

  Well, that's interesting. I learned a skill by studying the scroll, but I didn't get a notification when I studied the tome. How are these different, besides the self-destruct after use thing? Alex really needed to get back to Celeste and start asking her the right questions because he still felt like he was fumbling in the dark. His to-do list was growing by the second, but there were other more pressing things to occupy his time, like making sure his team got up to speed. Helping his friends took priority.

  Drawing out the elemental sigils for everyone was a strange experience for Alex. Much like the Deja vu he had earlier, he felt like he had drawn the glyphs before, and was familiar with them even when creating the circle for the first time. By the third attempt, that feeling had come and gone. Once he drew all six, a sigil-circle for each of them, Alex simply felt like he was practicing his computer coding from back home.

  It wasn't as fast or as clean as Celeste's work when he saw her draw them, but it was functional and that was all Alex could ask for.

  Alex had everyone sit down at the center of a glyph and told them the process. They were all in meditation to find their connected element within minutes. Meanwhile, Alex sat down on the log by the fire and looked at his newest skill notification once again.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Progress, progress all around. Yet Alex still felt he was getting so much further away. Every time he learned something new, or progressed somewhere, he had yet a growing list of questions. It was a feeling of defeat that Alex was trying to ignore. How long can we make it at this rate? How far do we have to push to have a chance?

  Alex threw those thoughts into the back corner of his mind and focused on the [Condensing Spiral] technique instead.

  He started practicing the technique while everyone worked on finding their elements. It didn't take long for him to get the spiral of aether formed and connected to his body gate. Once he started the filtering process, he found the ratios of elements around him were now different than the first day he attempted this.

  The most obvious change was the dark aspect element was stronger at night and the light element stronger during the day. The second finding was that the amount of fire energy had increased by almost a third.

  It's mostly coming from in front of me. Alex realized as he prodded the feeling of attuned aether with the strange sense he was learning to utilize. Feeling aether was another weird aspect of this world that Alex didn't understand that well. It was like feeling the wind and hearing a buzz at the same time. Each element was at a different frequency of sort. Even that isn't right. It's like a different electric hertz. A vibration.

  He left trying to understand the feeling aside and began to focus on his breathing and rhythm of gathering the aether into his mage core.

  Alex also decided to try out the new item he received from the quest rewards. He had the time now that everyone was attempting their meditations for discovering their elements.

  He removed the small spoke-object from his bracelet and looked it over. It really did seem like a rail-road spike, except it appeared to made of a white marble and covered in black runes. Alex held it tightly in his hand and activated the [Condensing Spiral] technique to start gathering aether.

  The effect was immediate, as Alex felt the item in his hand suddenly thrum with power. He opened his eyes to see the item’s runic markings now glowing. In Alex strange new sixth sense he could feel the concentration of aether surrounding him begin to steadily increase. Whatever the item was, it seemed to pull and and attract ambient aether energy while active.

  This is amazing. It must be doubling, maybe even tripling, the concentration of aether around me. If that’s the case, this thing could drastically cut out cultivation times. Alex closed his eyes and smiled. He continued the [Condensing Spiral] technique once again. He expected to make some serious progress on his core’s attunement from here on out.

  As always expectations always let Alex down. Once he started gathering aether, time passed far too quickly. Alex felt like he only meditated for a few seconds when he was again awoken by Garret shaking his shoulder.

  He glanced around to find that Holly was now standing up from her glyph. It looked like she was the first one to finish the process. Alex went to get a look at the sigil she stood in to see where the glow was concentrated. The result was pretty clear even from a glance.

  "You're attuned to the air element," Alex said.

  "That makes sense. What's the next step?" She asked.

  "Now you read this," Alex held out the book for the aether-gathering technique. "It will teach you how to gather aether and begin attuning your mage core. It will be slow though, I used it for hours and only just got the first hundreth of a percent complete."

  "Um.. actually," Holly folded her hands behind her back and rocked on the heels of her feet anxiously. "I have my mage core to about zero point eight percent right now."

  "What?!" Alex couldn't help shouting. How was she already further along than him?

  "I've been doing my daily meditations and breathing since we have been here. I got a notification about the progress on the second day." She glanced away again. She seemed to be nervous about looking him in the eye still. "It was after Peter got his first kill on a bird, so we knew about the system notifications and stuff by then. I decided to keep my discovery to myself though."

  "Well, given Kate's leadership style, I don't blame you." Alex went to sit by the fire and waved her over to join him.

  "Yeah, I didn't want to have her anger focused on me." She sat down opposite Alex.

  "Okay, so you started gathering aether into your core through this mediation. You learned this back home then?"

  "Yes," She nodded. "I learned it from my grandfather back home. It's a traditional meditation he learned from his father and so on, all the way back to China. He said it was about connecting to the world around you and cultivating your inner chi. I thought it was more metaphorical than literal. I guess here, it actually means something."

  "Damn," Alex said. "It's like you had a cheat code and didn't know it."

  "Maybe?"

  "Well, also maybe not." As Alex began thinking more about this situation he had a nagging worry he needed to sort out. Everyone else was still trying to find their element, so he had time to throw questions at Holly.

  Firstly, Alex learned that whatever technique Holly was using, was possibly more effective than the [Condensing Spiral] that Celeste had sold them. She said she only used it for about an hour each day and still had made so much progress.

  But there was also the fact that she was not filtering the elements. Holly was simply absorbing all the aether regardless of her attunement. It was something Alex had learned about from Celeste that could work to increase your core's tier, but it diluted the potency and power. Spells were less powerful, and a mage overall would be weaker than one of the same tier.

  Each of their mage cores seemed to be able to hold a similar amount of aether energy. With some questions Alex asked to both Holly and Garret, and feeling out his own core internally, it looked like the total amount of energy or aether that a person could hold in their core was based on their wisdom stat.

  The percentage of progress the status screen displayed for each person’s mage core did seem to have at least some effect on the amount of aether one could hold, but it was secondary to the wisdom state itself.

  The percentage progression wasn’t the amount of their core that was filled with aether, it was how much of their total mage core was attuned to a particular element. Alex’s core was only marginally attuned to fire at 0.01%. But it was only attuned to fire, as he had filtered out all the rest of the elements first when absorbing aether. That’s what the [Condensing Spiral] technique taught him to do.

  If he didn’t filter out the other aether, his core attunement would be much higher, but it would not be a fire mage core, it would be attuned to other elements in varying amounts. This seemed to be what Holly was inadvertently doing with her gathering technique and it would explain why she had made so much progress in such a short time.

  Alex explained this to her, offering her the book on the [Condensing Spiral] technique as another option.

  "If what you say is true, I'd be a fool to keep using my family's meditation. I'll try this book's technique and see what happens." She took the tome into her hands and opened it carefully. "Maybe I can eventually learn to merge the two?"

  "Maybe. If you figure out a way to do it, let me know."

  Alex left Holly to her task and went to check on everyone else. By that point, Eric and Henry had finished. Garret was already there, looking over their sigils to figure out their elements. For once, Henry looked somewhat excited.

  "Nice Henry, you're the water guy," Garret said. He threw Henry a thumbs up, which was reciprocated with a nod.

  Alex suddenly wished he had bought some spell-training scrolls from Celeste despite her only having water ones. Having at least one person with spells would have been a boon for the team. Too late now though, unless Alex wanted to make another trek up there.

  "Oh, another air mage," Garret said to Eric once he look at the man's results. "You'll be our O.G. air bender though, since Holly is a newcomer on the team." Garret pointed over towards the campfire where Holly was already engrossed in the cultivation manual.

  "Once she's done reading, you guys will be up next. Hopefully everyone can learn the manual by the end of the night." Alex said.

  "We should start practicing with this technique and our new weapons each day," Eric said. "Once we start breaking into the refinement stages of our bodies and approaching this new mage tier, we can start figuring out our next plan."

  "Refinement of stats and gaining experience won't be too hard. I have a quest I need to figure out how to share," Alex sucked in a slow breath before he continued. "About the mage core tier though. That's going to be a bit longer than you think."

  Alex had to explain the progress of the aether gathering that Garret and he had made so far, and how long it will possibly take to reach Adept tier -the next mage core stage. Even with better gathering techniques, items and environmental hot-spots the prognosis wasn’t good.

  "I see... it is what it is," Eric's response was stoic but solemn. The guy was thinking the same thing as Alex then. It was a tough realization to come to, but the question still hung unspoken on Alex’s tongue.

  Would they have enough time to progress into the fourth tier by the time their trial quest timer was up?

  Optimal conditions pointed at making it into Adept Tier to take three months. Again, this was best case. Alex assumed going from Adept to Magus Tier, the third tier, would be longer than that. Six months, maybe a year. Then the time it would take getting to the fourth tier, Sage, Alex didn’t know.

  He had to guess that since the power curve was exponential, that the amount of time and effort to traverse the tiers would also not be linear. Getting into tier four of the mage core could take decades.

  Trying to learn magic and then using it as a means to teleport or portal back to earth before the system trial quest ends just might not be feasible. Alex had to admit this to himself. As he looked at Eric, Alex could see the same facts lining up inside the man’s mind as well.

  Alex checked his system screen for the timer’s countdown.

  [Time Remaining; 711 Days, 14 Hours, 8 Minutes…]

  “We will have to potentially figure out another plan,” Eric finally said, breaking the tense silence.

  “Yes, we might have to give up the idea of avoiding the quest, and instead focus on completing it.” Alex pinched the bridge of his nose. “What ideas do you have?”

  New schedules and plans began to be formed as Eric, Henry and Alex talked. Allie, Devon, and Lance all began joining in as they finished discovering their elements and shared their ideas about the situation.

  Lance and Devon both turned out to be attuned to earth. Devon was also attuned with the light element, so he was a dual attunement like Garret was. Allie was the most surprising of all. She was also a dual attuned, but with the Light and Dark elements. This shocked Alex since those should have been opposing elements, such as fire and water.

  The implications of such a revelation would have to wait though, as the squad had more pressing things to worry about. Learning the aether-gathering technique for one. Weapons practice for another. Food and water were covered for now. The brainstorming ideas for passing the system trial and gaining strength went on through most of the evening and into the night as everyone slowly peeled away to sleep one by one.

  Alex stayed awake sitting by the campfire once again. He would be taking the first watch and was about to start getting some more spear practice in when he heard someone from behind.

  "Hey Alex, can we talk?" Garret said.

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