Olimpia

The others tried to get my attention, but I ignored them. Kanieta and Franklin might want to know what I was doing, but someone within the legion squad should be able to give a rough explanation of it. Even if they didn't, I doubted anyone would physically stop me. They should have enough trust in my abilities to at least give me some time.

But more to the point, I needed to get this over with before I convinced myself not to do it.

I knew I could release an Earth Pulse. I had done it before, and the mental energy was a non-issue now. But all of my castings were no longer reliable in consistency. Most of them extended far beyond what my intentions were.

Whenever I cast an Earth Pulse in the past, I had to dance along the border of consciousness and unconsciousness. Occasionally, I went over that line as I failed to contain the flood of information penetrating my mind. If the flood of information was the same, and the casting went beyond my expectations, there was a distinct possibility of my mind breaking under the strain.

But I had no option other than to perform the casting. Like many people who had no doubt lived in the past and far more who will live in the future, out of all the choices I could possibly make, there was only one I could live with.

I was still trying to figure out my emotions about the Legion and Olimpia, but I had family and friends. People who will be put in danger if the Letairry are left to run rampant.

Even the scout trainees popped into my mind. Kathren, Sathera, Joxin, and the others were still my students, if only for a few days, and I had a certain obligation to them. Not to mention how Sathera and all those on the raft saved my life.

I might not want to be a tool for others to use as they please, but I would not stand by and watch others die when I could save their lives by doing my job. I was raised better than that.

So, I would find the encampment and suffer the consequences.

It didn't take that long to gather my mental energy. Only a matter of seconds.

My energy floated before my chest, waiting for my command. I was hardly putting any will into controlling it, and the ambient energy was impacting and dimpling its surface.

I couldn't see it with my eyes, but I could feel the sphere sloshing like a pool of spherical water. With that sense, I could sit bat and watch the battle of rippling waves constantly colliding and rebounding across its surface in a bid for dominance.

It was captivating.

I was already changing. Before, I would have formed my tendril down my spine to my backside and directly into the ground so as to have the smallest possible sections exposed to the air. I had so little that any waist was unacceptable.

And now, I didn't care. More than that, I didn't need to care.

Exposing my mental energy to the air resulted in a loss so slight that I had to focus on the casting to notice it at all. Not that any loss ultimately mattered, as my regeneration was several times greater than it.

What would I become after years of such a mindset? It was… A distraction so I could push off performing the casting a moment longer.

Filling my lungs with one long breath, I released it, quickly forming the mental energy into a spike before stabbing it into the ground.

Stopping a few feet down, I collected the energy again. I extended my mind down the tendril and felt the world's energy suffusing the earth.

It was so easy. With a slight twitch of my energy, I shifted its frequency to nearly match the earth's. It was a slow, implacable beat. Never still, but move so slow that it would take tens of thousands of lifetimes to see it move an inch. But at the same time, there was a barely restrained pressure that could explode into catastrophic destruction at any instant.

It was a feat that would take me tens of minutes at best before. Now, I could hardly see why it was so hard. It was like the shutters covering my eyes were suddenly removed, and I could finally see.

Knowing the pulse was ready, I released my mental energy and immediately knew I fucked up.

To ensure that I covered over a hundred miles around us and find the camp, I used half of the mental energy I used in the past. I knew the casting would go farther and faster than before, but I made a mistake.

More accurately, I forgot. Even in the past, the energy filling the earth was never hostile like that of the air. It just didn't really help.

For a fraction of a moment, as my Earth Pulse rippled out, I thought that case would remain the same.

I was wrong. Oh, so wrong.

It was like when you dropped a large stone into a pond. The water reacted by filling the gap with such force that some water was thrown into the air before rippling out.

The analogy was close, but it wasn't exactly how it worked.

As my Earth Pulse exploded outward, the energy filling the ground got out of the way. Instead of eventually building up pressure and pressing back on my pulse to slow it down to a stop, I felt a swelling of power below me. The ambient energy was circling around in a massive cycle to fill the gap left by my pulse, then pressing into the back of it, forcing it to move faster.

A pulse was fast. Several times faster than the speed of sound, in fact. But the time between when the outer edge of a pulse washed over something and when the information enters your mind was proven to be nearly instantaneous. However, the time the caster's mind takes to assimilate the knowledge can be far longer than that.

When releasing an Earth Pulse, in my experience, the pulse moved slower than sound by quite a margin.

The first second of my Earth Pulse, that pattern remained the same. Then, the pressure from the back started pushing it forward faster.

For whatever reason, instead of the increased speed causing the pulse to jump forward and impacting the retreating energy and slowing it down from resistance — which was what should have happened if the world wanted to make sense again — the potentially blocking energy moved out of the way faster. Not just moved out of the way, it moved in such a way that more of the energy in the ground started pushing up from the potential energy geyser building under my ass, creating a greater force propelling my pulse.

The only bright side was that the information flowed through my mind effortlessly. There was hardly any resistance or struggle from it like there used to be. In the past, it would be like trying to force a wild bucking horse to be still with my bare hands.

Not that I had ever ridden a horse, let alone broken one, so it may not be exactly accurate. But as a teenager, I was able to snatch up the meanest cat in the village and keep hold of it long enough to jump into a pond while it scratched me… You know, in hindsight, I think I came out on the losing end of that one.

Anyway, processing the information was like that. A struggle that you were one second away from losing control of it and paying the consequences.

All information from pulses forced itself into your head. But the information of an Earth Pulse seemed to carry more weight to me. Like there was a will behind it, and its struggle was a test to see if I was worthy of knowing its secrets

Right now, however, the information was lining up and quickly passing through my mind like an organized legion. Except, the amount of knowledge waiting for assimilation never stopped building up and was only increasing.

Within the first few seconds, it was like I had seen every tree, rock, blade of grass, stream, animal, and everything in between for half a day's journey in every direction.

I knew of some small warbands moving around and finding camps of humans hiding in forests. I could turn and point to a half dozen burned-out husks of fortresses and small castles scattered around us.

In the next few moments, the northern side of my pulse was passing over the outer edge of the line of forts and all of their inhabitants. And then I found them, a camp containing over ten thousand of Kin, ninety miles southwest of here.

I tried to pull back on the pulse, to will it to stop, but it kept on going regardless of my efforts. Like my wishes no longer mattered, and I was only here for the ride. In a panic, I tried to cut myself off from the information by building a wall around my mind, but my efforts were meaningless.

The information built up around the wall, continually pressing in on it until the wall crumbled, then shattered, allowing the information to swamp my thoughts with an onslaught. It was almost like it was lashing out at me for making it wait those few moments.

For an instant, I feared that the energy would continue ravaging my mind and destroy me, but as soon as the initial rush broke, it settled down back into a gentle stream rather than the raging river it just was.

Not that there wasn't a change to the casting now, though. I could still sense that it was technically mine, but I knew I was no longer in control.

I mean, I wasn't in control before, but now I couldn't even delude myself.

The casting was deforming, with one section shooting off in one direction and all the other sides coming to a near comparative crawl. Any thought of controlling the casting was thrown into the trash and buried for all the good it would do.

The change in the casting didn't matter much, as it was still expanding at the same speed as before. Every moment, the sheer number of trees it was "discovering" was putting pressure on my mind. And for every tree, there were dozens of smaller plants.

It's too much! It's too much! It's too much! Some part of me was frantically repeating within my mind, or maybe I wasn't. My thoughts were too clouded for anything to be clear. And then I felt a side of my Earth Pulse pass under something, filling my mind with surprise. What? Why would the be— Augh!!

I could not contain the information filling my mind, and my body and soul were rejecting it. I felt the black bliss of unconsciousness start to creep over my thoughts, but a flare of knowledge from my casting forced my mind to remain awake. To pay attention to it.

The torrent was eating away at the edges of my being, and I gathered what will I had as I desperately held onto the information I had just learned. Fighting against the river, trying to tear it away from my grasp.

This pain wasn't like when my soul was ripped out of my body. No, this was like I was being crushed under a boulder. A completely different type of pain that would still result in my death.

But until the moment when my soul was extinguished and my existence ceased, I would fight. Pulling on the last of my will, I dove deep within myself, unknowing if I was awake or dead, and created a shield around my core. A place that even the burrowing knowledge could not fully reach. In that place of thought, I held on to what I needed and let the rest of myself be ravaged by the storm of unwanted knowledge.

I knew if I should open up to the information, I would be able to know everything about the land. I would know exactly how many stones were within any section of soil, like how I knew the back of my hand or my age. I would know the world in all its majesty.

And then I would be smashed into nothing. My body would be left as a living husk without a soul to pilot it.

Strong as my will might be, it began to crack. It was like pieces of myself were chipping away as my shield of willpower was ground into nothing and then began to fracture.

A moment before my will and soul was shattered, everything stopped. It was like a faucet was turned off, and the flood stopped from one instant to the next.

I didn't trust the supposed safety, but I could no longer hold my shield, and the last remnants of it fell away… and I felt nothing.

No, it wasn't that. All the knowledge of the world was there. And while I knew it would destroy me, a part of me wanted it. But between me and the knowledge was a vale of power I could never hope to match.

The smallest tendril broke off from the shield, reaching out to me. While the tendril was small compared to the shield, it was like a giant to me. Like I was a spark and floating next to the sun.

Right before it touched, the massive tendril halted. And I could feel that I would have to cover the last of the distance myself.

Like releasing a muscle clenched for hours, I unfurled myself from the tight ball I had formed and slowly reached out, connecting with the mental tendril.

The moment I touched it, I felt an unending consciousness press down on me and almost consume my soul with its presence alone. Even if I was at my best, I would be too weak to resist if it wanted me. With how weak I was, I could not stand even this level of degree of dissociation.

But the presence didn't want to consume me. No, it wanted— needed to talk to me. I could feel them, almost like they were my own emotions. Though touch was slight, fleeting almost, it meant harming me, much to its regret.

As tenuous as this connection was, I could feel myself burning up. Her presence caused pieces of myself to flake away. But even as she caused me harm, I felt her soothing and healed my wounds.

"I am sorry, child," resounded the motherly voice of the world tree. "This was the only way we could speak. The Mantle must be taken up soon. Come to me, and save your people…" By the end, the words were little more than a whisper as the connection finally snapped, but the unimaginable power they contained caused the words to be engraved into my soul.

As everything went dark, the words still echoed around me.