The Third Step: Chapter Thirteen

I spun my mind through all my options. Foxstep was the most obvious pick, but it also barely counted as a non-combat spell. Sure, it was arguably a utility spell, but I used it so much in battle that it felt like trying to select it would be lying to myself, or trying to hoodwink Fortune. That same line of logic instantly removed my plant spells, as well as most of my time spells – even if Enhance Plant Life or Lesser Image Recall were arguably utility, they were used in combat enough that they fell into a similar category to Foxstep. 

A purely utility spell, then. Gemstone Loupe would be useful, as it helped me restore my mana. Improved Sleep was adding decades to my lifespan, but it also didn’t synergize with everything else I did. 

Everything…

Quality Lifespan worked by pushing my body’s free energy where it needed to go, and helping lock it there as vital energy. It made my entire body more robust – not more powerful, it wasn’t a spell to let me punch better. But it was a spell to allow my joints to not take damage from punching, and to stop me from winding up with repetitive stress injuries. 

Considering how much I got battered around, the fact its ingrained effect made it so a touch of my energy was constantly being locked into my vital energy, my soul mana running through my body from the beast core, my ogranshield crystal, and how much I’d invested into improving my physique, it might be the perfect utility spell for me. I sent a surge of rainbow light into the spell, and the world seemed to change as it spun around me. 

My strange, almost ghostly state shifted, and I became incredibly aware of my body. It was even more intense than when I’d taken the treasure from the Beastbody Guildmaster in order to learn how to sense my biological arrays. I could feel all of them, the delicate work that I’d managed to do running through me. They pulled my spirit into my body, and at the same time, they sunk into my spirit. 

But I could also feel my organs. Even if I couldn’t name every one of them, I could feel them. I could sense where the bands of the organshield crystal reinforced them, making everything more robust. I could feel the energy flowing through them, making up the particles of my body. I could feel the soul mana trickling out of my beast core, as well as into it, where it rushed through those particles themselves. 

And most of all, I could feel the constant churning work of Quality Lifespan. I could sense it moving creation, telluric, and physical energy to the areas in my bones that I’d broken many times. It couldn’t get rid of the desolation buildup, but it could help work to neutralize the effects. I could feel it sending life energy into my muscles, locking the energy into them so that the strain I put them under wouldn’t wreck my body ten years from now. 

I could feel everything.

Which meant I felt it very clearly when Quality Lifespan shifted. The spell didn’t bother with the spell arrays within me. It was made for a human body, after all, and while the spell arrays were a part of the body, they weren’t major for the functions that Quality Lifespan cared about. 

Spinning thread of constellations connected the spell to those arrays, and I felt Quality Lifespan start to do what it always did: lock energy into things. 

The Depths of Starry Night technique helped to compress mana into my techniques, helping the spells grow. Larger spells locked more of the spirit’s free mana, but in turn increased the power of the spell and its ingrained effect. The Depths of Starry Night was also a human technique, one that focused purely on mana. 

I was a gestalt of spirit and flesh, though. That was what had allowed me to transition, and what had given me certain oddities like a resolve-root marked fox tail or fortune marked eyes. 

My mana wasn’t purley mana, though. Like a beast’s, it had energy blended into it. 

And now, Quality Lifepsan had grabbed some of the soul mana and free energy, and begun compressing them into my biological arrays, which were both spirit and flesh. Depths of Starry Night compressed mana into the mana-garden representation. One in body, one in spirit, linked together, to become more than one. A gestalt, just like me. 

The overwhelming sense of myself vanished, and I let out a slow breath, back in my own body. Then I extended my hand and conjured a ball of Foxfyre. 

The effect was small right now. After all, the compressing of energy into my spellcraft was a new thing, so it wasn’t going to provide much extra power. But it was still there. Just a little bit, but still noticeably there. The purple flames flickered slightly brighter than they had before, as the spell’s magical growth and physical growth combined. 

I dismissed the flickering flame and glanced around, then sent out a mental tug to my familiars, trying to see if they were busy, or if they were willing to help me give my newest powers a spin. After a few moments, they drifted in, and together we entered the Elysian Mastery Tournament trial orb. 

With their help, I was able to blitz through all of the third gate trials. Early fourth gate was simple enough, and we were able to push through mid-fourth gate at a much faster pace than I’d managed to do on my own. Part of it was that I was already prepared for the challenges, of course, but another large part of it was that I no longer needed to do it on my own. 

When it came time to battle against the ape that was able to lock down movement techniques, the fighting grew more intense. Even with three of us, our mana was growing low by that point, even with Dawn’s third gate meta spell allowing her to fire her harvesting crystals into others and gather energy from them, then convert it into mana for us. Those helped, and I wasn't tapped out on soul mana, but we were all still drained. 

If that wasn’t enough, the ape had an advancement advantage over all of us, save for Dusk .It was still a bit strange to think that the tiny spirit was the most advanced out of all of us, but her fourth gate magic was one of the keys to us actually managing to win the fight. I’d drawn its attention, battling it in close quarters combat and forcing it to use its spatial locking ability to prevent me from escaping, while Dawn and Dusk blasted it with Sandstorm Lance and Tyrant’s Breath from behind. 

It had taken a while, and I’d been thoroughly battered by the end. If not for my full gate spells, the ape would have absolutely killed me before I could put it down, and if I hadn’t had both my soul mana and organshield crystal, I’d have wound up severely internally injured, and forced to pull out. 

As was, I was sore and aching. If this had been a real fight, in the real world, I’d have wound up severely bruised and probably would have needed Kene’s help healing me. But for a training simulation? I could push on a bit further. Besides, we were learning the ape’s tactics. We’d do better next time. 

Together, we stepped through the door and into the first of the peak fourth gate challenges. 

My nose was almost immediately assaulted by the scent of rot and decay. As a fungal mage, I was a bit more used to that smell than most, but there was a distinctly more carnivorous scent to this than the usual woodsy smell I was used to.

A hand slammed into the back of my head, and I toppled over. I spun to see a zombie, its flesh half rotted off, reaching down for my head. 

A small, academic part of my mind was actually rather curious. I’d heard about how zombies were the most powerful and self-spreading type of undead, as they were able to draw power from the very process of breaking down – right up until they fell apart and all the power was lost, at least. But while I’d fought several kinds of naturally occurring undead before, one of them had been of a semi-fungal nature, and others had been pretty much only bone. Orykson preferred bone as well, with its increased stability at the cost of less general power. 

This absolutely matched what I was feeling. This zombie looked to be in horrible shape, like it had been left in a warm lake for a week, but its power had commensurately grown. This single, dead corpse could match the physical might of the ape. Sure, it was also a bit more advanced. 

Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – that small part of my mind doing those mental calculations was rather more distracted by trying to get out of the way. Dusk shouted her battle cry and blasted at it with shockwaves, while Dawn dove into its chest. The move was similar to what she did in order to enter someone’s mana-garden. 

Undead didn’t have mana-gardens, but they did have cores of power that sustained and power them, and Dusk had been able to enter that strange meteor before. Could Dusk enter a zombie? If so, that was amazing, but also a power that I absolutely needed to keep under wraps for now. 

Sparks of golden light started to flicker out from the zombie’s chest, and it staggered in place, but my attention was pulled away by another source of burning death staggering toward me. 

That was the other advantage of zombies coming into play, then. They were hoard creatures. One of them could spawn another from its kill, as long as it had enough death mana to form a core within the corpse. 

I kipped up to my feet and teleported away, dodging out of the way of a pair of blurring, putrid hands that were going for my throat. Dusk floated up into the air, tinkling out her distaste for the undead. 

Then a bird slammed into her. It was a massive condor, and it had seemingly appeared from nowhere at all. She lashed out with punches enhanced by shockwaves, but it had gotten the drop on her. 

The zombie that Dawn had entered lurched forward, hand lashing out at impossible speed, and I tensed. But the hand didn’t reach for me. Instead, it slammed into another zombie, and Dawn floated out, radiating a sense of smug self-satisfaction. I only had a moment to consider the fact that she had subborned the will of an undead before teeth slammed into my shoulder. 

Teeth I hadn’t felt coming. 

I teleported away, but the veiled undead that had bitten me clung on. More were closing in, so I shifted my strategy. Instead of trying to win, I blasted out my senses and looked around, even as zombies hammered into me.

There! I could sense a hospital building in the distance, surrounded by a pack of more zombies. The door had to be in there. Then my world went dark, and I re-appeared in my room.