Chapter 39 - Bring Out The Big Guns

Jiran awoke to the sounds of rhythmic thumping, grunts, and an occasional scream of outrage. He recognized the screams as Niya’s, and shot to his feet.

His foot tangled in his bedroll, nearly bringing him to his knees. With several awkward, hopping steps, he righted his balance and dashed out of his tent.

It only took him a few seconds to track down the duo and before he even arrived, his brain woke up enough to realize they were only sparring. Much to his relief, nothing nefarious was happening to his precious cousin other than Samris beating the snot out of her as she charged at him repeatedly.

Jiran shook the last of the cobwebs from his mind as he sat down to think.

62:20:13

I lost an entire day?! The last thing I remember is picking the Adaptive Elemental Aegis evolution.

I think I might have blacked out when I upgraded my molding too. I remember being in Samris’s study then waking up in my bed.

That sucks. I better be more careful with my timing on those. I’ve still got over two days, I should be fine.

A subtle tingle up Jiran’s spine was his only warning as Lenton appeared beside him without fanfare. His hand covered his mouth in a gentle cough that caused a ripple of force to travel through the air that was impossible to ignore.

Samris and Niya immediately stopped their sparring and trotted over to see what Lenton wanted.

“A hive of shrelks has been ousted from their territory by a mutated beast. The shrelks took to the shores and are now traveling east along the coast. Two villages have already been decimated,” Niya gasped at the implications while Samris bared his teeth in a silent snarl.

“That’s terrible,” Niya whispered

“What tier are they?” Jiran wondered aloud as excitement fueled his heartbeat.

Niya squinted her eyes at him with a frown on her face. Jiran ignored her, hopeful that Lenton would have good news for him.

“Two and three,” He responded slowly.

It was Jiran’s turn to frown as disappointment snatched the excitement from his chest. He clicked his tongue, suddenly uninterested in the conversation.

Lenton and Samris narrowed their eyes in unison, both piercing him with the same disappointed glare.

The tingling warning in his spine came back with a vengeance. Jiran’s world suddenly flipped in a familiar feeling of teleportation.

Rushing wind and disorientation overwhelmed his senses for a brief moment before he was swept up in a feeling of floating on a cushion of air. The wind continued to roar in his ears as Jiran spun his body to reorient himself.

His wild movements flipped his body much further than he intended and he saw a brief view of the ground far below before his momentum spun him back toward the clouds above.

I'm falling! He seriously teleported me into the middle of the sky?!

Suddenly Jiran was wide awake, his focus sharpened as instincts screamed at him to fight. Adrenaline flooded his body and his muscles leaped to respond to the danger.

Instead of panicking and continuing to flail wildly, Jiran used Forcing to gently spin himself around. He was falling fast toward a beach, the ocean spreading out endlessly to one side and rocky hills to the other.

Sixty seconds until I hit the ground. What should I do?

He was distracted by movement directly below him. It looked like a mass of ants crawling across the ground in a long line. The tingling in his spine returned as he realized what he was looking at.

Shrelks. Hundreds of them.

They waddled along the ground with short legs like a komodo dragon. Long tails smacked the ground as they passed, leaving unique trails in the sand. The dull-green scales and spiky protrusions that covered their bodies absorbed the early morning light in a way that showed off their predatory nature.

Despite being pack hunters, they hissed and snapped their jaws at each other in a constant competition for dominance.

https://imgur.com/2NyPudn

Seeing the throng of bloodthirsty beasts beneath him, Jiran’s excitement returned in a flash. Adrenaline coursed through him, the wind blasted his hair, and the weightless feeling of freedom brought him to an emotional high that was only second to the feeling of absorbing red density.

A laugh bubbled up his throat and escaped into the howling wind that was so loud he couldn’t hear his own voice, which only made him laugh harder.

The ground was close enough now that he could make out individual rocks and bushes.

Jiran stood straight up and bent his knees to prepare for the impact. A moment before he landed amidst the beasts, Jiran blasted wind from his feet. The air rushing from beneath him was so strong that it flung every beast within a distance of twenty meters into the air.

As they crashed into sand and rock, Jiran landed with a crash. His feet tore into the ground until he was buried to his waist. Not hesitating for a moment, he yanked himself from the ground with another activation of Forcing.

The shrelks charged, their sinuous forms racing across the shifting ground. Jiran pointed a finger at the nearest group of beasts. A thin layer of Coating shimmering like a rainbow, leaked from his skin, almost instantly covering his extended hand.

“True Origin of Lightning!”

A crackling arc of blue energy leaped from his finger and sailed across the distance to the nearest beast. Its body didn’t have a chance to convulse as five percent of Jiran’s mana exploded two of its limbs before the lightning arced to the next beast, and the next.

When the bolt ran out of the mana that fueled it, six beasts fell to the ground simultaneously as if they were no more than puppets whose strings had been cut.

A wicked smile spread across Jiran’s face as he charged to the next group. More lightning flashed as the rabid beasts died by the dozen. Not a single one got close to him as he tore into their numbers. More died every second with exploded limbs that failed to contain his power as it arced through their disgusting bodies.

After a few minutes of wanton slaughter, Jiran stood amidst piles of gore. His excitement waned as nothing nearby moved. Further down the beach, he saw more approaching.

Why aren’t there any stronger ones?! This is a waste of my time. How am I supposed to get more density with nothing but these weaklings to fight?

Jiran growled deep in his throat. It was a feral sound and even though it was a noise he had never heard himself make before, it felt right and true in a way that talking never did.

He took a step toward the distant shrelks with a tingle caressing his spine.

He was ready to charge into their midsts in hopes of finding a challenge when movement out of the corner of his eye caused him to turn his head.

A long piece of meat had fallen out of the mouth of a dead shrelk. Now that he was looking directly at the blackened and bloody thing, he recognized it for what it was. A human arm, a small arm. Smaller than his own, smaller than even Niya’s, a child's arm.

The beast had been chewing on it idly as they walked down the beach toward their next destination; another village full of imperials.

What… What the fuck am I doing right now? This whole time I’ve only been thinking about getting more red density like some kind of drug addict.

Jiran’s hands sank into the sand as his knees lost the strength to hold him upright. His stomach churned like the sea before wave after wave of bile demanded release.

When he was finally empty, Jiran took his time examining each of the beasts he had killed. He found the remains of several more people, his people, torn apart and scattered amongst them.

What the hell is wrong with me? It must be the red density. It did something to me, changed the way I think in an effort to push me into fighting.

Challenger density. Suddenly the name makes even more sense.

I bet my mental state is even worse because I gained so much of that density in just a few days. Absorbing that stuff is like taking a hit of a crazy strong psychedelic. There were bound to be consequences.

If I go slower and pay attention to my mental state, I should be able to avoid this happening again.

It’s not like I’m still feeling that bloodlust. It only got so bad because it caught me off guard.

I’m going to keep pushing forward. There are too many things I want to do. Things I need to do.

I want to explore Madra and her magic. Protect the people I care about. Pass on what I know to people I can trust.

I want to stop shit like this from happening to more villages.

I want to fight back against the graymin hordes so the empire can be at peace.

I can't do any of that without a lot more power.

I won’t allow myself to get lost like that again. Niya noticed it first, I’ll tell her what happened and ask her to keep an eye on me.

I’ve only got a third of my mana left and I’m not even halfway through with these murdering bastards.

Jiran glanced at the clouds, hoping to see one that was near to bursting but there were only wispy white puffs.

Still too early in the morning. Shoot. I can either run and hide to regenerate, eat one of these things, or try to figure out something more efficient than lightning within the next two minutes.

Looking at the corpses around him, Jiran found himself highly unsettled by the thought of eating something that had so recently eaten a human. A shudder of revulsion crept up his spine before he shook his head.

Jiran closed his eyes and scanned his status.

Efficiency, huh? Probably a combination would be best, but which ones? Water and lightning? No, not with all this sand.

Wind and fire? Maybe, but that might only be slightly more efficient. I need something way better than that.

One minute left.

Acid, light, gas, ice, metal, and revelation. Which one?

A wicked smile spread across his lips once more. Though this time his grin was not from a desire to crush his enemies beneath him. Rather, it was the chance to try something new, something he had done once before in a panic. Something that had been so powerful he instinctively ignored it.

Until now.

Jiran rapidly scanned Brandon’s memories and listed off the reactions inside the human body which would be the most effective. With only a few seconds left before the next wave of beasts was upon him, he chose one he knew would be good, even if it wasn't the best.

He formed two Shapings simultaneously.

One was incredibly simple to imagine; an atom consisting of a single proton and a single electron.

The second shaping was a gentle gust of oxygen-rich wind that blew trillions of the first Shaping's atoms over a wide area between himself and the fifty oncoming beasts.

Once he was satisfied and the area was saturated, Jiran lay down on the ground and covered himself with the thickest Coating he could summon.

Whatever god looks down on this world, please don’t let this kill me!

A third Shaping caused a tiny speck of fire to appear between his thumb and index finger. He wrapped it with a coating that would keep it contained for a few seconds.

With a flick, he released the flame that slowly arced through the air until it reached the mass of hydrogen gas he had saturated the beach with.

A blue shimmer rippled through the air like a curtain of light being revealed before a massive explosion picked him up and threw him end over end through the air.

A deafening boom and a wave of sand kicked into the air by the spreading blastwave instantly blocked out his senses.

An implosion of hot pressure pulled him in one direction and then the other with such fierce strength he was completely powerless to resist it.

Jiran couldn't hear his own scream over the thunderous ignition of hydrogen and oxygen.

https://imgur.com/2bgHToz 

He felt himself bounce several times across sand before water entered his lungs. His legs were under him in an instant as he hacked and coughed to get the salty sea foam out of his mouth and throat.

A small wave crashed against his waist and sent him tumbling to the sand where more water entered his eyes and mouth.

Sputtering on all fours, he looked through bleary eyes at the devastation his hasty, hydrogen detonation had caused.

Sand blackened into glass within a thirty-meter-wide crater. Bits and pieces of the shrelks rained from the air in a macabre shower of gore.

A few of the beasts still lived. They were scattered about the beach, twitching, burning, and dismembered.

If I spread that around myself like I did with the methane, I would be the one with missing limbs. Or just dead.

A hollow, nervous laughter rang out in the still air.