Level One God

Lyria’s face was a picture of pure concentration. She sat cross-legged, chest heaving as she took deep breaths through her nose. Her eyes were closed.

Come on, come on. I watched her, silently rooting for her to succeed.

She had just equipped her Shield corestone a few minutes ago. There had been a strange, excited light in her eyes as soon as she did. When I asked her about it, all she had done was quietly ask me to stay silent for a minute.

That had been about three minutes ago.

I felt a faint rustle of wind in the tunnel. When I looked at the rows of torches, they were all fluttering.

My heartbeat quickened. Was that from Lyria?

I opened my perception, listening to the mana around us. As usual, it reminded me of the way wind behaved, with a few exceptions. Wind would pass around solid objects, just like mana, for example. But mana would also pass through solid objects, and I didn’t see any rhyme or reason to say why it sometimes did and sometimes didn’t.

Wind was sometimes described as being alive, but it was predictable in a way living things weren’t. Mana was alive. It didn’t always behave the same way, and I was gradually getting a grasp on how even learning the nature of nearby mana could improve my own abilities. The mana down here, for example, seemed more restless and skittish, while the mana in Riverwell had been calmer and easier to grasp.

I was lost in thought when I felt something tugging on the latent mana in the air, as if an invisible string was drawing it inward. Toward Lyria.

A small knot of mana formed in front of her chest. I squeezed my eyes shut, zeroing in my focus on the area to get a clearer picture.

One by one, threads of mana were weaving together. It was shaky at first, but the movements seemed more confident as each new layer fell into place.

Within seconds, a thin wall of interlocking mana appeared in front of Lyria. It gently curved, like a body-height shield that was suspended a few inches in front of her. When I opened my eyes, I could see the faint yellow color of magical wind rushing upward along the weave. When I switched to my mana sense, I thought I could see the mechanics of how it worked.

The weave itself wouldn’t stop any physical objects from passing through because it was purely made of mana. But the threads themselves were acting as an attracting force. I tried to dig deeper, hoping to learn something from it myself, but there was an element at play within the weave I couldn’t understand.

I gave up trying to unlock the secret of the ability and simply watched it and the excitement on Lyria’s face.

The wind faded in and out of view, snaking over her body in one smooth, upward current.

Lyria’s hair snapped and flowed upward and her clothes rippled beneath her armor.

I didn’t need to be a detective to figure out this ability she was using was her Wind Wall ability.

I extended a hand toward her shoulder armor, curious to see if the wind was strong enough to stop me. As soon as my hand came within an inch of her, it was immediately blown upward. It reminded me of the feeling when I would stick my hand out of a car window as a kid, but stronger.

If she increased her tier level in the skill, she would easily turn blades and punches with this. Eventually, I could even imagine arrows being blown completely off course.

“Holy shit!” I said, pumping my fist with excitement.

Lyria let the spell fall. Her hair was still wild, and her eyes were lit with happiness. Her lips twitched with a barely suppressed smile.

“Where the hell did that come from?” I laughed, giving her shoulder a soft thump with my knuckles. I was happy for her. Genuinely happy. Watching her struggle to master her Sword abilities had made me sad and determined to find a way to help her when we had time. Apparently, she didn’t need my help. She just needed a new class. “Have you secretly been a pro with your Shield stone this whole time or something?”

Lyria shook her head. Her smile was fading as her forehead creased. She looked confused.

“You said this normally takes people a long time, right?” I asked. “How did you do that so fast?”

“It normally does take a long time,” she said softly. “But there are stories…”

“What kind?” I asked.

Her eyes were distant as if she was walking through her thoughts before she was ready to voice them. “Well,” she said, blinking and finally looking my way, “I honestly thought it was a bunch of nonsense. Propaganda to boost up famous paved path prodigies and all that. But they say sometimes people attune to a corestone, and the connection is extraordinary. They call those people ‘Soulbound.’”

“And you think that’s happening with this new Shield class?” I asked.

She licked her lips. “I don’t know. Like I said, I thought the whole thing was bullshit. But I shouldn’t be able to make any of these abilities work. I trained with my Sword stone since I was a teenager. It took me years to learn to do what I could. Even then, I felt like I was wrestling a slippery eel each time I used the ability. This, though… It just felt… right?”

I grinned. “Soulbound, huh?”

“I don’t know if that's what this is,” she said defensively.

“I hope it is. That would be amazing.” Selfishly, I was relieved. If she really was Soulbound, it would make it easier to keep her in pace with me as I advanced. Maybe not easy, but easier. I knew my prestige path would keep propelling me forward at a pace normal Erosians couldn’t match. Maybe with my help, a Soulbound could try, though. “What else do you know about Soulbound people?”

She shook her head. “Just that they’re supposedly like prodigies with a given class. Honestly, if I didn’t know who you were, I would have assumed you were Soulbound after seeing how quickly you picked up your abilities. Then again, I think what you’re doing goes beyond even that.”

“We should have told the party in the Black Wood that I was Soulbound, then. It probably would have got Kass and the others off our case.”

She snorted. “Hardly. They would have laughed at us for claiming it at best. At worst, they would have actually believed it and tried to hitch themselves to your wagon to make some quick coin.”

“Why?” I asked. “Is it really that profitable to be Soulbound?”

“Like I said, it’s what a lot of famous Paved Path teachers claim about themselves. Most people assume it’s just posturing, but the idea is that kind of mastery could open powerful new schools of fighting styles. The military is always interested in new paved paths, too. Show it’s strong enough, and Ithariel himself will bring the teacher and their students into his fold, weaponizing it. If people find out, there will certainly be somebody waiting to sponsor you and try to fund your new paved path. They would want a cut of future profits, of course, but the money would come.”

The mention of Ithariel made me feel a kind of ice in my veins. “I see… So this isn’t something we should go around advertising about you.”

“I’m not even saying it to you right now,” she said carefully. “Maybe I just got lucky. Although…”

“There was a look in your eyes as soon as you equipped that stone,” I said. She may not be convinced, but I was.

The corner of her lips twitched upward. “It felt like I understood it as soon as I bound to it,” she said, eyes lighting up again. “Like… even if I hadn’t read the skills at the guild, I think I would know what they were. I’m pretty sure I can even sense…” Her forehead creased and her eyes fell. “I think I can sense potential abilities within the stone. Abilities waiting to evolve. Potential evolutions?”

“Wow. That would be incredible. Do you think you could influence which ones evolve?”

“I’m not sure… Maybe.”

“Now we just need to teach you how to meditate properly,” I said. “With all this mastery, you’ll probably need a lot more mana.”

She snorted and shook her head as if she still didn’t believe it. “Alright, let’s just calm down. You still need to learn to shoot that bow correctly. It’s your turn.”

I got up, eager to practice more.

I had always enjoyed learning new skills on Earth. I once spent a few years practicing my tennis serve almost nightly, not because I actually played tennis against people or had any aspirations to become a tennis player. I did it because I enjoyed the repetition and satisfaction of the perfect hit. Chasing that shot was both an addiction and therapy.

At points in my life, I had treated school or studying the same, turning it into a game where the goal was to get the highest test score possible. Sometimes, it was actual games. Other times, it was the challenge of trying to swim for an hour without taking a break or learning to cook chicken perfectly.

Whatever it was, I had a way of getting addicted to the process more than the result. I craved the rhythm of practice and the exercise of theorizing about how to improve by the next percentage point. The moment I realized I was bending a knee too late or shifting my weight too far to my back heel, for example, could be almost euphoric. It was another edge. Another step forward.

As I pulled the bowstring back and listened to the sound of the thread stretching, I realized archery would have sucked me in back on Earth, even if it wasn’t life-or-death.

Lyria, who had been trained in archery as a guard, was full of useful tips and tricks.

She helped me learn the proper stance with my feet shoulder-width apart and how to position my body relative to my intended target. She showed me how I was using my bicep and smaller arm muscles to pull the string instead of my shoulders and much larger back muscles like I should have been.

I learned how to grip the bow and the string properly and how to naturally pull my hand back to release the arrow instead of only opening my fingers, which tended to cause the bow to jolt and impact accuracy.

She even helped me decide on anchor points for where my hand would rest against my face. If I chose something soft and prone to moving, like the corner of my lip, I wouldn’t have the same sighting view every time I fired. Instead, I referenced my canine tooth and a hard bone on my face. With two fixed points, I could learn to sight the arrow from the exact same position every time I fired.

I was already making quick progress.

I fired the arrow, enjoying the sudden thwack of the string and the glassy tink of the arrow hitting stone and shattering.

“Not bad,” Lyria said. “You’re a fast learner. Shocker,” she added.

“Says Miss Soulbound,” I teased.

“Shut up,” Lyria said, but there was still a look in her eyes like she wanted to believe it was true, but was afraid to.

From what she had told me about herself, Lyria wasn’t somebody who had fortune go her way many times in life. If she really had discovered something like being Soulbound, I was thrilled for her. It would also turn her into a much more potent ally in a fight, which I definitely wouldn’t complain about.

With what she had shown me in less than an hour, I estimated I could already fire the bow an extra ten or twenty yards farther. I thought I was far less likely to completely miss, too, even though my instincts had kicked in and served me well against the nightmaw.

I wanted to practice more but was unsure if we had the time.

My bed had dropped from 41% to 32% hunger after feeding on the dark mana crystal. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like the growth of my bed’s hunger was fluctuating in unpredictable ways. Were some areas more dense with latent dark mana? Or did the bed get hungry faster to start and then slow down as it reached full awakening?

I wasn’t sure, but I was already itching for another fight. The first nightmaw battle had been a chaotic disaster. This time, I thought we could handle it with relative ease.

Maybe.

“We need to decide if we stay and train or go looking for a fight,” I said. I had already filled her in on my questions and assumptions about my bedroll’s hunger.

She touched her lips, face serious. “We could both be significantly better with our new classes if we gave ourselves more time. Assuming I can learn my other abilities as fast as Wind Wall, that is.”

I nodded. I had been able to form a small Mana Shield but suspected I could make it larger. I also still needed time to test if I could create it in areas away from my own body, like in front of Lyria’s. “One thing to consider is your mana. For now, you don’t really regenerate unless you sleep. If you burn through too much of your reserves training, we might not be ready if an enemy surprises us.”

“Can an enemy surprise us with your map?” she asked.

“Probably not,” I admitted. “But I don’t know if I want to place my life on the assumption that the map can’t be wrong or certain enemies can’t hide themselves from it.” I thought of the strange colored dots I’d seen moving around the map. For some reason, I hadn’t wanted to tell Lyria about them.

The purple dot I had watched approach a group of Irons hours ago left behind black “X”s when it reached them. Almost certainly hostile, then.

There was also the group of two Irons and the mixed-color dot. Their group seemed to be trying to perform some kind of speed clear of the Wood section of the dungeon. I was relieved to see they had passed a few Woods and no black “X” marks had appeared, though. If they had killed some adventurers, it meant they at least weren’t killing all of them. So maybe the group of three was only a threat to our experience and loot gains.

“Yeah,” Lyria said. “What about those Siphons you have?”

“I have one left. I used one when I… kind of blew us up back there. You didn’t have enough mana left for me to heal your wounds.”

“Then I think we should risk training a little longer. Just until I’ve made sure I can use all my abilities. I’ll try to meditate once I do.”

“There’s one last risk to consider,” I said. “If the next enemy we reach doesn’t have dark mana crystals we can harvest…”

“Oh, right,” Lyria said. She crossed her arms, then raised a hand to her face and gnawed on her thumbnail. “One hour. Just give me one hour to practice. I’ll try not to go below half mana.”

I grinned.

“What?” she asked, scowling.

“You’re just starting to sound like me. I think I may be rubbing off on you.”

“Is that why I keep thinking about how much I could use a bath? Has your godly obsession with cleanliness infected me, too?”

“Don’t remind me about baths,” I said, looking down at my tattered and disgusting clothing. I had purchased these before we left Riverwell. Without the ability to change, washing machines, and, of course, the whole exploding carapax bug saga, the clothes were beyond gross. “You know we had machines that washed clothes where I came from. Metal boxes. You just put your clothes in them, press a button, and come back later. And then you forget to dry them or leave them in the drying box for weeks because you were too lazy to fold them or hang them up.”

Lyria just stared. “I have no way to know if you’re just messing with me, crazy, or a little bit of both. You realize that, right?”

I grinned. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure I could make the distinction about myself anymore, either. “Shall we get started?” I asked, sinking my focus into the mana stream.

One hour. That was all I had to brush up on these new skills before we would go find out what that red dot ahead was. Something nasty, no doubt.