Divine Apostasy Book 7 - Chapter 52

Chapter 52

While Rung One looked through the Quartermaster’s Relics, Ruwen and Sift took the rest of the Adepts closer to the surf. The bamboo forest stretched into the water, making for an odd sight. They remained close enough to the Phased Bamboo Shoot that the forest remained thin. It allowed Ruwen and Sift to spend a few hours training the other Adepts. Rung One eventually joined them except for Echo.

The Adepts, all with over a decade of training, made significant progress under Ruwen’s and Sift’s guidance. Rung Four especially made gains, absorbing the knowledge like water on a dry sponge. Rung Four spent fifteen minutes at the conclusion of the training telling Ruwen and Sift more of their precious memories.

Prythus spoke of his murdered family and the niece and nephew he still fought to protect. Nymthus described her husband, a general in their last remaining army, and her daughter, who loved yellow flowers and wanted to be a warrior like her mother. The other members of Rung Four offered similar memories. They valued family and peace, and the demons had destroyed both.

The bamboo forest had disappeared hours ago, and Ruwen watched the Adepts walk back to the village, laughing and joking with each other. Rung Four’s openness with their memories had led to quick friendships among the other Rungs, as many of them had things in common.

Ruwen considered the power of what Rung Four did with their memories. By sharing a part of themselves so openly, it accelerated the relationship building and trust with everyone else. It was an incredibly powerful technique for team building, and he wondered if the leaders on Rung Four’s planet had planned it that way.

Sift had joined the Adepts, eager to see if the food hall remained open and he could grab more dessert. Ruwen stood alone on the beach, feeling homesick after hearing all the memories of Rung Four. He hoped those he loved and cared for remained safe. His time here was almost over, and he would see them in person soon.

Ruwen stripped off the Black Pyramid clothes and placed them, along with the orange belt fragment, into his Void Band. Pulling on his new Bamboo Viper Clan uniform, he tied the green belt around his waist.

The magical effects on the jacket and pants made it easy for Ruwen to guess at least one trial took place in the water, and one somewhere high. He still hated heights, especially now, without Spirit spells or easy access to the Gravity Shell to keep him safe from a fall. So, he decided to focus on the water trial first.

The three hidden patterns in the Steps were force, time, and breathing. With nothing else to decide, Ruwen strode into the water.

The heavy cotton of the uniform absorbed the ocean water, and coupled with his muscle dense frame, easily kept him in contact with the ocean floor. The additional one hundred points in Swimming from the Riptide effect on the Viper Pants of Floating made moving through the water effortless.

Just a few feet underwater, the moonlight mostly disappeared, and Ruwen turned on Glow. The light revealed the ocean floor, which contained occasional clusters of coral that leaked bubbles from their straw like shapes.

Fifty feet from shore, Ruwen stood fifteen feet under the surface. He turned and strode parallel to the beach for a thousand feet. Moving another twenty feet farther from the beach, he marched back the way he’d come, moving a thousand feet in the other direction from where he’d started. He stepped twenty feet closer to shore and walked back the thousand feet to his starting location.

In this pattern, Ruwen moved back and forth, searching for clues to one of the hidden patterns. Two hundred feet from shore and nearly straight across from the village, the ocean floor changed.

The coral had become more frequent but hadn’t turned into a reef, which made the structure in front of Ruwen even more unusual. Glow’s soft light didn’t illuminate far and he couldn’t judge its size, so he retrieved his Worker’s Class Symbol of Radiance. Big D had given him the gift after the terium mine tour during the camping trip. He still had Sift’s Fighter one but figured one symbol would be enough.

Ruwen used five Mana to attach the small, clasped hands symbol to the top of his forehead, and channeled twenty-three Energy to it, which consumed exactly ten percent of his Energy Regen per second.

The symbol blazed with light, revealing the entire area for a hundred feet in whatever direction Ruwen looked.

Three things occurred to Ruwen at the same time.

The oddly shaped coral continued in each direction, forming a hundred-foot circle.

The water over that circle contained a massive number of slowly rising bubbles.

And Ruwen wasn’t alone.

Two creatures stood at the edge of Ruwen’s light. They had the eyes and hooded head of a snake, but the mouth, jaws, and teeth of a shark. Their narrow bodies had the black slimy look of eels, and three arms floated on each side. Two more tendrils floated below them like legs. It reminded him of some nightmare combination of an octopus and snake.

Sift had said this place seemed familiar, but the location he’d seen using Shelly’s memories had something he’d called octoshakes. Taking into consideration Sift’s habit of smashing words together, an octopus-shark-snake is probably what he’d seen. Which meant Shelly had been here before.

The creatures’ disposition aura appeared white, and Ruwen guessed that meant they probably wouldn’t attack. He remained still, watching the two octoshakes, and they mirrored him. His Perception triggered and provided more information.

Name: Coral Viper

Deity: Unknown

Class Type: Cultivator - Gold

Level: 38

Health: 886

Mana: 0

Energy: 0

Spirit: 900,000

Armor Class: 490

The distance of Ruwen’s light barely reached the Coral Vipers, and out of the darkness behind them emerged another pair of Coral Vipers. The first set turned, and in a blink, the four Coral Vipers battled each other.

Ruwen watched the fight with interest. Neither pair seemed frenzied or angry. It honestly appeared like a friendly fight. Ten seconds later, he detected something familiar about the attacks. His brain itched, and he studied the fighting intently. It took another ten seconds for a suspicion to form, and only another twenty seconds to confirm it.

The Coral Vipers knew Viper Step techniques. Had they learned it from watching the Adepts, Masters, and Grandmasters in the village? If so, that seemed like an amazing accomplishment for water creatures, unless maybe they could breathe air. Even so, it would take a high level of intelligence to survive outside the water and watch the Bamboo Viper Step Clan practice.

Another simpler solution occurred to Ruwen. The Clan had observed the Coral Vipers and had adapted their efficient strikes into forms. These creatures hadn’t learned their fighting techniques from the Clan. The Clan had learned it from the Vipers. Or at least based their style on the creatures’ battling methods.

Ruwen moved onto the large circular coral. As his light reached farther into the darkness, more of the Coral Vipers revealed themselves. They occasionally glanced at him, but mostly watched the fighting pair. Not a single Viper had moved closer than the edge of the coral disk.

The one hundred skill points in Swimming, added to Ruwen’s own twelve, made movement in the water little different from the surface. He certainly felt the resistance of the water, but it felt more like wearing weighted gloves than a true hindrance.

Many of the Viper strikes Ruwen had learned kept the hand flat, like a spear, for most of the attack, only forming a fist in the instant before striking. Attacking like this made the strike faster as it encountered less air resistance, but the difference only became noticeable near the peak of his training.

But knowing now that the forms had come from an underwater creature, the technique made much more sense. Water would offer far more resistance, and a flat hand, traveling like a spear, would be far faster than an open palm or fist.

As Ruwen crossed the coral disk, he located the origin of the bubbles. Small holes covered the coral disk, and the openings released streams of gas seemingly at random.

When Ruwen drew close to the four fighting Coral Vipers, they stopped and faced him. They floated peacefully, like they hadn’t been assaulting each other moments before. All of them still had the white Disposition Aura, and it gave him all the encouragement he needed.

From the edge of the coral disk, Ruwen bowed to the four Coral Vipers and then turned slightly and gestured toward the disk, inviting them to cross whatever boundary kept them on the other side of the disk.

Hey You hadn’t worked with animals, to Ruwen’s great disappointment, but if the Coral Vipers had basic intelligence, they likely had a language that he could communicate in. There was only one way to find out.

“Greetings, noble fighters,” Ruwen said. “I would like to spar.”

Ruwen’s light had revealed at least fifty more Coral Vipers, and all of them reacted the same. Black clouds erupted from the tips of their tendrils, and in a blink all the Coral Vipers but the four in front of him had become lost in the blackness.

“Where you learn talk?” the largest of the Coral Vipers asked.

Ruwen smiled at his success but hurriedly hid his teeth as the Coral Vipers’ disposition auras took on a pink overtone. Showing your teeth obviously didn’t mean anything friendly. He couldn’t think of a good name for the speaker, so he decided to call him Shark Boss. Maybe naming things well was harder than he’d thought.

“Pleasure, I have,” Ruwen said with a small bow to Shark Boss. “To learn many talks.”

Shark Boss pointed one of his eight tendril arms at Ruwen, and he noticed the sharp barbs at the end of their appendages, like fingers. “You deformed air swimmer. No match.”

Ruwen guessed his deformity related to only having four appendages, not eight. “Not number important. How used.”

The black cloud had thinned, and the mass of Coral Vipers swam closer. The water vibrated with clicks that Ruwen registered as laughter.

Shark Boss seemed to think Ruwen had made fun of him as his disposition aura briefly took on a red tinge again. He held up a tendril over his eyes and Ruwen realized his Worker Symbol of Radiance shone directly into their eyes.

“Apology,” Ruwen said, and lowered the Energy from twenty-three per second to five.

The area dimmed considerably and Ruwen quickly came up with an idea that would allow him to see while not blinding the Coral Vipers. They were used to the sun, so he would mimic that.

Ruwen channeled twenty Energy per second in the level twelve Commander spell Move On and shaped the mobile bridge into a flat one hundred twenty-five-foot length four feet wide. He created a Shed on each side of the coral disk and used Mend Tool to attach the narrow bridge to the edge of the nearest Shed. Using his one hundred and twelve Swimming skill, he moved like a fish through the water to the other end. He pushed the bridge backward, and it buckled upward, creating an arch.

Ruwen attached the mobile bridge to this Shed as well using Mend Tool. He swam to the middle of the arch above the disk’s center and attached the Worker’s Symbol of Radiance to the bridge with five Mana. Then he channeled forty Energy to the item, and it blazed brightly, shining down on the coral disk like a small sun.

The Coral Vipers had watched Ruwen, their interest in his spell casting obvious. When he returned to the four Coral Vipers, Shark Boss immediately asked Ruwen a question, his voice betraying nervousness.

“You sky predator?”

Ruwen took a moment and decided Shark Boss wanted to know if he was a god. “No.”

“You air dancer?” Shark Boss asked.

That probably meant the Bamboo Viper Clan. “Yes. I here test.”

Shark Boss waved all his tendrils at once. They flicked forward at Ruwen and then back in a wave. “Forbidden fight air dancers.”

Ruwen smiled again, but kept his teeth hidden. “Our secret.”

Ruwen moved to the center of the disk, and after a moment of hesitation, Shark Boss moved onto the coral as well. Once done though, the Coral Viper lost all his reluctance, and surged toward Ruwen.

Shark Boss attacked Ruwen relentlessly, the Coral Viper’s strikes coming from all eight limbs. To Ruwen, it felt like sparing four highly coordinated opponents, and while this would overwhelm a normal fighter, it didn’t scratch the surface of his abilities. Within a minute, he’d seen the foundations for dozens of Viper forms.

Ruwen encouraged the other three to join Shark Boss, and the eight limbs turned into thirty-two. It required more concentration, but at the speeds the Coral Vipers attacked, he was in no danger.

In fact, Ruwen noticed something, that in all his training, he’d overlooked. The difference between water and air to his Peak Diamond body was insignificant, but he quickly realized moving too fast in the water created massive water vortexes behind his actions. He knew the same happened in air, but he’d never studied them before, but the water made seeing them easy.

Ruwen had intended to find the locations of all three trials that night, but sparring the Coral Vipers was fun, and he used the time to study how the vortexes his movements caused affected his body and limbs. To his surprise, they slowed the movement of his body, slightly pulling back whenever he moved away from the disturbance.

Ruwen experimented with slight variations to his attacks. The changes to how he moved through the Steps were incredibly tiny, and something nearly impossible to teach. But the modifications in the shape of his arm or hand mattered as it moved, and some shapes resisted the pull of the vortexes better than others. It made him a fraction of a fraction faster, and it made him incredibly happy.

And personal improvement wasn’t the only benefit because it only took Ruwen being on the coral disk a few minutes to figure out its purpose and how it related to the trials. He hadn’t found all three trial locations, but he’d found one, and he’d bring the Adepts here tomorrow to demonstrate.

With that thought, Ruwen stopped thinking about the Adepts, the trials, or his bigger problems, and sparred the Coral Vipers long into the night.