Implode ~ 17!

“I think—mind you I don't know for sure, but I think,” Major Cleave reassured them as they reached the third rest area on the path, “that we can stop here for some rest and recuperation.”

“Finally!” Jaxon dove into the roughly one hundred by one hundred foot space, pulling out a bedroll in midair and pushing his face into it. By the time he hit the ground, he was fully ensconced in the sleeping bag and resting comfortably. “One of the drawbacks to having Living Weapons as a large part of my combat utility is that I accumulate their fatigue! Wake me up if you need something to die, otherwise be warned that you most likely shouldn't rouse me until I get up on my own.”

Joe had never seen this side of his friend before, but then again, he was generally only around Jaxon during travel or combat. “We should have a board game night or something soon, just to sit back, relax, get to know each other better?”

There was no answer from the already-snoring Chiropractor, but Joe knew he would be excited to play a game. Each of the others set up their own area in rapid succession; the Dwarf pulled a chair out of nowhere and sat on it while sharpening her weapon, Daniella set up a tent and disappeared inside for some privacy, while Joe simply sat in a far corner and began tinkering with his rituals and skills.

“The bubble travel was good, but I think I underestimated how dangerous straight-line travel would actually turn out to be.” The ritual clearly needed to allow for some form of control, even if it was simply object avoidance, or the ability to bring them to a safe landing after going the maximum distance that they could have traveled. He played with it for a while, as the dark night that his friends were sleeping through slowly passed. Unfortunately, he could not find a solution to the problem that he was having due to his Student rank in rituals.

Normally that wouldn’t have been an issue: he was an Expert in the field, after all, and quickly closing in on true Mastery. However, his current class quest dictated that he could only produce Student rituals, and it would be a waste for him to put together something so much higher without the secondary benefit. Yes, safe landings would be nice, but rewards… that was where his passion lay. “I could always try to make it a linked ritual, and also use a few different circles to help control the main circle, but something tells me that is going to be more difficult than I think it is. Abyss, I blew myself up just trying to set multiple rituals to discharge at the same time. Having them actually interact? Forget about that for now.”

As any engineer, scientist, or research and development team would confirm, just because a person has an idea for something does not mean that it will always come to fruition. Knowing that he needed to get some sleep to maintain his health and mental acuity, Joe made sure someone else was on watch and passed out.

“Everybody up!” Major Cleave’s commanding tone shook everyone out of whatever stage of REM sleep they had been in. Luckily, Joe had managed to get a few good hours of sleep—all he needed with his current bodily capabilities. “We slept here without issue, but if we stay here, by the time daylight touches this site, all of us will be booted off the mountain.”

“Taking a rest is fine, so long as you get back to walking the path immediately, I assume is the lesson here?” Daniella cheerfully tossed the question at their guide, who nodded with a pleased expression.

“I'm glad to see that the lessons which our ancient masters have tried to impart to their own people are more universal than I had hoped for.” Breaking camp was an easy process when everything could be swooped up into a storage device. There was no need to break down tents, as they could be stored fully erected. That meant that within moments of waking up, they were on their way once more. “We are halfway up; that means the path is going to be growing wider to accommodate more people, as well as the enemies that we will find in our way.”

“Hold on, I thought you said that the monsters and creatures that we would see around here were accidentally loosed experiments. Are you now telling me that anything we fight against is something that was specifically put in our way?” Joe didn't mind the fact that he would be needing to fight stuff, he just wanted to make sure he was absorbing all the information he could glean from this strange journey to the high city.

“If you want to understand why, put it in perspective of your own path to mastery.” Major Cleave slowed down slightly in order to walk side-by-side with Joe, which the path now easily allowed for. “Tell me, why do you think this change has happened?”

The Reductionist ran along silently for a while, trying to spot the trick that she was trying to catch him in. Eventually, he just decided to hazard a guess, “The enemies make more sense. I think it is a common idea that when you are going the right way, you are going to run into enemies. That’s certainly video game logic, but I can see how it applies to real-world events as well. Either people will see that we are doing well, and be afraid that we will replace them as the best or most profitable… or we will have detractors telling us that there is no way that we possibly could be as good as those who walked the path before us. Something like that?”

“Certainly something to take into consideration.” Major Cleave deflected easily, truly enjoying her opportunity to teach people. That made sense, as that was her end goal with her military career. “Would anyone else like to expand on that, or why the path has opened up?”

“I would think that the path started narrow, because anyone starting their own journey begins as a Novice and needs to take the time to collect the skills they need, learn what they need to do, and understand that it is unlikely that the people who are the best at that craft are unlikely to offer advice.” Daniella slowly offered her own insights. “Most likely because those same Masters have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of Novices over the years who are looking for an easy path. But how many of those Novices are going to step off that same path, or fall prey to the easy comforts that they could have? My guess is… most of them?”

“You’re not wrong.” Cleave then gestured at Jaxon. “You always have a fairly unique perspective, and it is almost always an attempt at seeing the side of humanity that other people do not. The good side, the positive side, things that most people will avoid even hoping for. So can you answer… why do you think the path widens?”

“You had mentioned that we are halfway up the mountain,” Jaxon began without hesitation, clearly having been waiting to explain his own line of thinking. “If we are looking at the halfway point between Novice and Master, right now, we would be a Student of the craft. At this point, it is expected that a person has some serious dedication to the craft. They will find peers—other people to walk the path with them, and likely stay with them all the way, or as close to the peak of Mastery as possible. So, walking beside them at this point makes sense, and I am betting that it will widen again as we move into the Journeymen area, then narrow when we get to Expert, and shrink even further when we are near the peak, or the correlating Master status in terms of this life lesson?”

“Correct-” Major Cleave began, only to get cut off as Jaxon got back into it.

“But that lesson is wrong!” The Chiropractor shook his head and gestured at the mountain ahead of them. “It doesn't need to be a competition! The path through life doesn't have to be something that we walk alone. We can keep those friends with us, prop them up when they fail, knowing that they will do the same for us when the time comes. If we do what we can, motivating each other and offering our skills and advice, it doesn't have to be a narrow path to becoming a Master. We can all get there. We can travel together.”

To Jaxon’s surprise, the Dwarf didn’t immediately try to shut him down. “Perhaps. Maybe you can find a group of people you can trust implicitly, someone you can share your hard-earned resources, skills, and secrets with. If so, I wish you all the best. Something to keep in mind… there is a point where there is no room for anyone else. Only one person can stand at the very highest peak of the mountain. In this analogy, that would be the Sage. There can only be one Sage of a particular class or skill. You could become a Sage of Chiropractic services, while someone else only became a Sage of Acupuncture. Yet, if you are the Sage of Chiropractic services, they could not attain that same level.”

“But they could get close, and I could help them make that final step!” Jaxon attempted to refute her logic.

“No. You can't.” Major Cleave decided not to keep him waiting any longer. “To become a Sage, you must have your skill—or all of your class skills if you are attempting to become a Class Sage—at the very peak of Grandmaster status. Then, you need a Mythical core in order to bind yourself and those skills together with the ideal that you are attempting to become a Sage of. There are twenty-one total Mythical cores available at any given time.”

“How do you know that is the truth?” Jaxon pressed, his eyes full of suspicion.

“I could even tell you where seven of those could be found right now.” Major Cleave kept her cool. “It's simple. In order to earn a Mythical core, you need to defeat a World Boss. There are seven known Bosses, one per plane of existence, that you can defeat in order to gain the right to become a Sage. The other fourteen come from hidden World Bosses, who travel the various Planes at their leisure, in no pattern that anyone has ever been able to determine.”

“Does that mean there can only ever be twenty-one Sages?” Joe felt his heart sink at that information, though it lifted back up as soon as he heard the answer.

“No. As soon as a core is used for that purpose, the World Boss it had been taken from is respawned. However, it becomes impossible for anyone else to become a Sage in either the class or the skill that was bound. What makes it even harder is the fact that several of these cores have been found and now sit in a vault—waiting for the moment when their owner can step forward and become a Sage themselves.”

“I can see why it is difficult to become a Sage…” Daniella muttered under her breath, but not quietly enough.

“In a literal way, it’s worth killing entire civilizations for.” Cleave shook her head ruefully. “Why do you think the Dwarves and the Elves have been going back and forth for so long? Both of them are holding a Mythic core in their most hidden locations.”

“Why doesn't one of them just use it to become a Sage, then go beat the other civilization until they give theirs up?” Jaxon scoffed at the idea. “Abyss, why don't they just use it and then go defeat the World Boss again?”

“As soon as one of them would use it for personal gain,” Cleave’s eyes came to rest on Joe, “the other side would use their core to unleash a Sage-rank superweapon. For centuries, it has been a question of who would use it to empower one person, versus who would use it to destroy the other race entirely.”

“All of that would be solved if one group simply had both of them, wouldn't it?” It was a sad revelation for Joe. Once again, thousands were dying because the leaders on opposing sides wanted the resources their enemy had. “I guess we should at least be happy that they didn't decide to just go ahead and sacrifice all of their citizens.”

“Yeah, that would have been bad.” Jaxon agreed as they raced up the incline.