Book 2: Chapter 37: Shipping Out

  [Time Remaining; 645 Days, 9 Hours, 31 Minutes.]

  The following twenty-four hours after the vote were filled with movement, training, and many breakthroughs. Some might have called the activity “moving with a purpose”, Alex called it “last minute cramming before being thrown into a battle field against arcane behemoths”. Everyone seemed to focus on solidifying their skills and spells before they were hauled off to some military camp.

  The first order of business was, of course, spending Experience Points. Which was excellent, because thanks to The System’s twisted sense of dramatic irony, they all had quite a few.

  Experience points were always a welcome addition as far as he was concerned. He just wished that The System would stop being such a dick about it every time he got a notification. Everyone else had received the same quest reward, but different flavor text. Kate’s had been snarky too, something about “burning bridges, preferably after you’ve crossed them.” Devon’s was encouraging. Holly’s had been downright poetic.

  Is there a complaint filing option somewhere? I’d love to tell this thing to go fuck itself.

  “I’d highly discourage pissing off the nigh-omnipotent Heavenly System. Besides, you have other things to deal with, like putting all those points into wisdom.”

  They are not going into wisdom. Sorry, not sorry. We have the Mistral Elixer still, that’ll be just fine. For now, I need to figure out how far into my liquid formation stage I can get , so to move further along in Adept Tier.

  His [Aether Attuned Body] didn’t let him store even a third of the aether that his companions could with their mage cores. His vitality helped with that, as well as the aether gems he socketed in his bracer, despite this but the gap was wide enough to fit a siege beast through sideways.

  Increasing the potency of his aether energy was his next best option. If he could manage to stay ahead of his opponents with sheer cultivation, that might let him stay alive long enough to figure out a more permanent solution.

  Everyone else dove into finishing off their Essence Fragments, many of them entering their bedroom in the Mortal Tier, and walking out as Adepts. He, instead, swallowed down the Essence Rotation pills he traded with the team before, as well as chasing it with the Mistral elixir, forming an aether rich cocktail in his stomach.

  The braids of condensed aether formed at his neck almost flawlessly as he went into his cultivation. The pills released a huge amount of energy in his body, and immediately felt like someone had jammed a hurricane into his stomach. As usual, his body was helping with this as it ate at the aether and packed it into his tissue and marrow.

  As was normal for him now, some of that energy was pulled into his soulspace, to be consumed by the heart which contained the focus of his constitution. Between the Wyrmheart, his own body, and the sheer demands of the Adept Tier, he was finished with the resources he had on hand within the first four hours.

  What else do we have?

  “You might be able to break down and absorb some of the items you have. But that would be horribly inefficient, and it would just be better to sell them and buy cultivation resources themselves.” He could feel Obby’s consciousness poking around in his storage bracelet, searching its contents for him.

  We don’t have the time to be doing that.

  “You have quite a bit of money from all that trading, and the items your team get from their own dungeon dive as well. So you could use that.”

  He looked around the common area, seeing everyone also lost in their thoughts, working on skills, or training with their weapons. At this point, everyone had made their breakthrough to Adept Tier, every one of them with a single exception.

  “Tom-Tom,” he called out, still sitting on the floor in a lotus pose.

  “Yes,” the kobold immediately skittered over the couch, helmet pot bouncing on his head. “You called for Tom-Tom?”

  Alex waved the little lizard closer and placed a hand on his shoulder. The kobold’s body almost thrummed under his touch, apparently excited at his attention. “As before, you are not tied up in all this. You are not a Worldstrider, so you don’t have to join the military with us.”

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  “Tom-Tom sticks with his friends.” He thumped his tail on the floor loudly.

  Alex simply sighed and shook his head. “Look, Tom-Tom, you want to help us, I get it. The best way to help us is by helping us get stronger. So... and I can’t believe I’m saying this… But you need to be our merchant.”

  The kobold tilted his head at him.

  This is so gonna backfire later isn’t it?

  “Oh definitely, but that makes me excited about it even more.”

  “I’m going to give you money, and a few items. We need you to sell the items, and buy resources for us. Pills and elixirs for cultivation. Natural treasures with highly condensed amounts of aether energy. We don’t need food, or mushrooms. Don’t buy mushrooms, even if they sparkle. Can you handle that?” He looked deep into the little kobold’s eyes as he said this. Everyone else looked on with worry written across their faces.

  “Tom-Tom can do this.” He stood a little straighter at this point, the pot falling even more askew.

  He handed Tom-Tom some items and the coin pouch. Once again, regretting the decision already. “Go to the Metalworker’s Guild first, they’ll know you are, tell them what I told you to do and see if they will help you. This may take awhile, maybe days, and we will be gone by them. You will be getting information on how to send items to us, so do that, okay.”

  He nodded.

  “And I’m certain that my letter to Celeste has arrived at Vrung’s Quarry already. I asked her to come down here too, if she arrives, you will have to stay next to her and let her help you, okay?” That part was also important.

  He had sent her a letter when they first were assigned the suite in the palace. He assumed, given magic, that she got the letter. He basically asked her to come help them out, as them passing the trial quest given by The System was still her best shot as repairing her own mage core. She would most likely show up, if he knew the woman at all.

  “Tom-Tom will do this.” he said.

  Alex patted his shoulder once more. “Good, go. I believe in you Tom-Tom.”

  The kobold was scurrying out of the suite within moments, pot clanging as he went. Everyone looked at Alex like he had given a sword to a toddler, and he only shrugged. “He’s our best chance. Simple as that.”

  He returned to his cultivation, braids of aether winding behind him, mind sharpening as Obby reconnected with his consciousness.

  “Glyphwork next?” Obby asked.

  Yep. I actually have some ideas for some enchantments I want to work on.

  Ideas burned through his mind, not just for enchantment upgrades, also new tattoos glyphs he’d been thinking about, various tools, buffs, and tricks. Solutions to problems he hadn’t even faced yet but knew might be coming his way.

  By the time their twenty four hour reprieve ended, he’d made quite a bit of progress, adjusted his tactics, and started no less than four new Glyph designs.

  The movement on his aether attuned body ability was slower than he’d like, but he simply didn’t have the time nor the resources to keep feeding it. He strategical placed his experience points as well, bring his physical stats up to their next base total before dumping all the rest he could into willpower. It was a move he hoped would keep his survive-ability up, while increasing his cultivation rate at the same time.

  He didn’t know what Terraxum’s military was like, but if he knew anything about kingdoms and armies back in his home world, there were always wars going on. He needed to be ready.

  “Okay everyone, how’s it l—“

  His sentence was cut short by the six Terraxum soldiers that entered the suite. They had officially run out of time.

  ***

  The Terraxum military grounds reeked of smoke, steel, and the broken promises of recruits everywhere. Training camps ringed the fortress like a great iron halo, rows upon rows of carved stone barracks and glyph-marked sparring fields. Sunlight filtered through dust clouds, catching on banners, bruises, and rising steam from arcane-beast stables.

  Every step crackled with the tension of bodies in motion, drills barked in six different tongues, elemental blasts streaking overhead, cavalry thundering past with war-masked beasts snarling beneath leather saddles.

  And in the middle of it all, Alex stood with his squad, wrapped in new Terraxum uniforms that itched like bureaucratic loyalty.

  “Well,” Garret muttered beside him, “at least it’s not boot camp again.”

  “Don’t tempt fate,” Allie replied. “I can already feel the spirit of every dead drill sergeant watching us.”

  The training overseer, a grizzled woman with an obsidian eye and a forearm covered in Tarraxum’s earth-touched tattoos, eyed the squad like they were rotting meat on her breakfast plate. “These are the Worldstriders?” she asked the attending officer. “They don’t look like much.”

  Alex didn’t rise to the insult. Neither did the others. They just lined up, Kate cool and unreadable, Lance tall and tense, Devon already mapping the glyphs carved into the training pillars with his eyes.

  "Your time here will be short," the overseer said flatly. "You’re being fast-tracked. Front line command wants to see if you're assets... or accidents."

  She turned, barking orders. Glyphs flared across the field as soldiers leapt into synchronized formations, conjuring barriers, displacing projectiles, forming cross-squad spell-weaves. Aetherios warfare wasn’t about brute force in single individual soldiers. They used their spells, techniques and fighting styles together. And they demanded efficiency.

  It was all formations and following orders. Things that everyone there had already been well versed in from earth. Their fast-track plan was going to be far faster than the Terraxum military machine thought it would be. They had a dozen well trained Adept mages now at their disposal.

  Alex looked out over the field, his [Aether Sight], and his sixth sense brushing along the auras of the fighters both lined up around him, and those already training in the fields. Only the overseer felt like she was an Adept mage, everyone else were still in the Mortal Tier

  Good, Alex thought. We can work with this.