Savage Awakening 561. Leagues (I)

A full two years after Zane first arrived, meteors started filling the skies once more.

Construct wagons and carriages were coming in. And for the first time in what felt like ages, colorful tents showed up in the valley below, to his delight.

A second shard season was upon them.

He had decided that this season would be his ‘season of firepower.’ He was pretty sure he could achieve far more raw strength gains than speed gains when it came to his new Starfire Concept. Firepower just suited him far better, and Starfire was quite explosive to begin with. 

Every morning he started work on it. He tested his findings every afternoon, going down the slope with his hammers, smashing up piles of Astroliths at a time. 

By now he knew their habits so well he hardly got clipped anymore. The only reason morning starfield clearing still took half an hour was because he had to be careful not to accidentally crush any starfire crystals as he went through. 

In just the first few weeks of the season, he’d achieved over a 15% firepower boost out of his Starfire. He now thought just sixteen years would be enough to get all of Starfire done with. He felt optimistic. The starfield was proving far more helpful for Law Comprehension than even the Lost Library.

Most days Kain left the field just when the shards began to dim. Zane still wasn’t sure what the guy got up to. One night he asked about the slashes in reality in Kain’s front-yard, which Kain explained were simply ways to teleport—wormholes of a kind. 

“The Pure Yang Lands do not support true teleportation,” was the way Kain explained it to him. “Teleporters require permanent paths. Invisible to the eye, but present in the Astral Plane. Those paths cannot survive constant this land’s constant starfire blasts… so if one wishes to travel great distances very quickly, one must be creative.” 

Kain offered to talk him through the runes he’d drawn up for the task if he was truly interested. Zane politely declined. If prompted Kain could go for quite a while. The guy liked his lectures, which Zane would find fascinating about half the time. Kain could rant for hours about soil compositions. Reina had that habit too, but she always found a way to make her lectures engaging, no matter the subject. He wasn’t sure why, but he just liked listening to her more. 

“What are they for?” said Zane, curious. “Are you headed somewhere, or…” The Pure Yang was a pretty barren, as far as he was aware. In all his exploring he hadn’t found much more than a giant stardrake nest and a few interesting boulders. 

Maybe they could serve as escape routes.

But Kain just shrugged. “They’re simply experiments. They’re not for any purpose in particular.” 

“Then why make them?” 

“Knowledge is useful for its own sake. Seeing what works in this land, and what doesn’t, tells me more about its nature,” said Kain. “That, in turn, gives me power over it. One never knows when a little extra knowledge might come in handy. Think of it like a craftsman, collecting a very wide toolbox. One might never know when some obscure tool might come in handy. But when the use-case arises, one is always glad one prepared it.” 

Zane was more of a ‘pick a few tools and master them,’ kind of guy. He considered this news some more. He didn’t often wander to Kain’s side, but now that he thought about it... “Those starfire eruptions a few weeks back. That was you too, wasn’t it?”  

“Those were more experiments, yes,” Kain confirmed. “Not in transportation, though. I was simply attempting to see if I could harness the power of the Pure Yang, much like the Boss Astroliths do. It would certainly make clearing the starfield much simpler.” 

He blinked. “…Could you?” 

“No. But I did learn quite a bit about the nature of the mantle flows. Knowledge is never wasted.” 

“This is the kind of thing you get up to every night?” The guy was just out here experimenting with cosmic powers on the other side of the mountain? 

“I also read broadly, and practice calligraphy, and meditate,” said Kain, shrugging. “What else is one to do with one’s nights?” 

At this point, Zane tried to introduce him to the wonders of the Yang league. 

It was his name for the nightly duels that went on in the valley below. Various factions battling over territory, winning shards from each other, claiming prisoners-of-war and so forth—most with tents in their colors, donning armor with the same. So it was quite easy to tell who was on which side and how much territory they all had. 

“It’s really quite fun and easy to get into,” Zane assured him. “You just pick a team to root for, and go from there. And you don’t even feel bad, since no-one’s killing each other.”  

Kain didn’t look so convinced by his description. 

“You’ll have to see it for yourself,” said Zane. “I’m doing a bad job describing it.” 

“Perhaps,” said Kain dubiously, and that was that. 

By now Zane was pretty sure Kain was the guy Noughtfire wanted him to contact. Though he still wasn’t sure what for. He was doing pretty well on his own, Law-wise. 

Maybe things would grow clearer in the coming seasons. 

*** 

Zane’s Stone Axes were back that season, though they got pushed around quite a bit over the course of the season. That dragon princess he’d encountered had returned even stronger, by the looks of it. Judging by her attacks she seemed two or three shards stronger than when Zane had last seen her. He was pretty sure she’d collected far more than that, though. 

He wondered why she hadn’t used them all. 

He mentioned this in a letter to Reina, who wrote back telling him that it actually took quite a while for most folks to absorb Shards of Creation or Destruction. Reina herself was going through this; she was taking in her first shards of Creation in preparation for her final ritual—she needed to strengthen her physique with a little Creation to properly bear the World Tree’s powers. She was taking about two weeks at a time to absorb each shard, even with her advantages as the Mistress. 

Zane had never realized this. At most his Shards took him a day to absorb at most. At first he figured his soul size had something to do with it. But there was no way his soul was that much bigger than this Princess’s, or Reina’s, for that matter… he’d never really thought about others’ Shard absorption rates up until now. He supposed he was only now seeing others taking them in. 

Reina managed to come up with another possible explanation for the difference.

Since she was a vessel of the World Tree, she noticed her soul had gained some kind of Creation affinity. It wasn’t a formal buff, but it was just much easier for her to absorb shards than most others. She wondered if his soul was different in quality, too. She hypothesized if it had something to do with being struck by Destruction directly during his Ascendant Heavenly Tribulation all those years ago. She felt it might’ve changed his soul’s affinity for Destruction, just as it changed his Stormfire Law to Heavenly Stormfire. She didn’t seem very confident in the explanation, though. There was no record of such a thing ever happening. 

He wasn’t sure that was right either. He didn’t feel his soul had been any different before or after, but it was as good as any explanation he could come up with. 

Regardless, over the course of the first few weeks the Black Dragon princess gained an extra shard of strength, which seemed to confirm the idea that absorbing each shard took her—and most folk—a while. 

That extra shard only made her more dominant in the field. The first few weeks of Yang league, she pretty much just beat up on mankind’s best, and the rest of the season she frontran her way to massive territorial gains. It was an even more brutal beatdown than last shard season. 

He kept waiting for someone on the human side to step up to the gauntlet and challenge her, but despite three different princes and Young Masters trying their hands at it, none came close. At least one of them managed to draw blood on her this time—this space-mage archer who put up quite a good fight, peppering her with arrows and portal-jumping everywhere, before she finally got her claws on him. 

Just like last season, there was a part of Zane that kind of wanted to get down there himself and wade in. But he’d already committed to focusing on Law in his time here. Besides, he told himself, it woudn’t really accomplish anything, just make him feel a bit better about his guys. 

He also increasingly felt that the league was more pure as a spectator sport. He liked being on his mountain, watching things go down for a change, eating his steamed buns and drinking his spirit wines, rooting for his guys. 

It was just more fun when it wasn’t so one-sided. He hoped things got shaken up soon. 

Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months. He kept on steadily making progress—by the end of that shard season he felt he was finally getting a grasp on that fifth Slash. If he managed it it’d be a full mile long. He also chained his slashes much faster these days, now that he’d achieved all that Starfire speed-boosting. 

Every few weeks he’d feel another burst of aura fluctuation from the other side of the mountain which he now knew was just Kain experimenting. He watched his league, practiced his Law, ate his buns, wrote to his friends every few months. Life was good. 

***

Before long the end-of-season arrived once more. He and Kain once more agreed to a pact. That year’s end-of-season shower turned out a little lighter. The shards weren’t quite as plentiful as they were his first year there, but that still meant he earned a solid +10 shards of Destruction, along with +4 shards of Creation when the season was done. Which meant his total Destruction shard stockpile now numbered +24—good for a plate and a half. 

That amount of Destruction stockpiled, this fast, still felt rather insane… though wouldn’t feel the impact of it for quite a while. He just thought of it as a long-term investment, and kept up his work. 

With his new speed, firepower, and fourth Star-Crushing Slash, he didn’t even need friendly-fire in Boss battles anymore. He could solo Shard Bosses quite comfortably these days. Though most of the time he did still end up making use of the trick. It was just more efficient. Plus, he still enjoyed seeing dozens of pillars of starfire absolutely flatten a Boss. 

*** 

Then came another off-season, when Zane felt he could really hunker down and grind his Skills. It was quite convenient having the whole valley to himself to practice as he wished. He put a dent into that fifth Star-crushing slash. 

As for his friends—in the few years since, Evan had managed to expose the Scribbler as the shadowy hand behind all Floor 53’s newspapers, turn public opinion against the Scribbler, and claim some quest rewards. Then he moved onto the next few floors, which spanned a giant, impenetrably black cave-dungeon with lots of giant spiders and rats. There were just a few dozen towns per floor, in these little islands of light—he was busy forging his way through, getting lost quite a bit as he did. It was proving a real test of his rusty eagle-scout map navigating skills.

Reina was just about halfway down the list of all of the Skills she was trying to learn in time for the war. She was also hard at work on her physique, prepping for the final World Tree ritual. Avery had finally quit her gaming addiction—helped by getting banned on all galaxy-wide CS:GO servers for reasons she didn’t want to get into—and was now full steam ahead on her workout routine. 

Things seemed to be looking up for all of them.