Legacy of the M'Zee Chapter 17

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

So I'm not super happy with how this one turned out. Especially the very end. Let me know what you think!

So I'm trying to set a schedule for myself to write. Currently, Mondays are break days (destress from work). Tuesday and Wednesday I'm working on Legacy, Thursday is Stormy Mountain, and then Friday through Sunday is Essence Wave 2. Hopefully this will let me finish Essence Wave by the end of May, with Legacy finishing in June or July. We'll see though. 

Stormy Mountain chapter coming on Wednesday!

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

The next morning wasn’t bad. Jamila had gone around and healed any hangover effects that we had. I caught her hand and gave it a kiss when she tried to pull it away from my forehead. “Thanks,” I said.

She just shook her head at me with a fond smile. I laughed, then shot upward to give  her a kiss. She grinned, then smacked my head. “Come on, help get packed up.”

“As you wish,” I said, smiling broadly.

We quickly packed up, with several profuse thanks to the Bonds for watching out for us. We joined our teams together, splitting every find that we made on the trip to find another history relic place for Jamila’s team. It took us a day to find it. There was a horde of fuzhu there as well, but we only scared them away, our bags full of higher level meat and Cores.

Jamila and Lea went down together, after Vaya and I coached them on supporting each other’s gathering, just in case. Fluffy joined them, giving a bit of backup just in case. That didn’t stop me from pacing the entire time, giving up the chance to gather because I couldn’t focus.

Two hours later, they came back up, visibly tired but smiling broadly. Ming and Xiao dove into the water behind them. “How was it?” I asked.

“Painful,” Lea said.

“Did the people really summon the Chaos Beasts?” Jamila asked.

“It looks like it, along with the defeated Lamia and the Harpies,” I said. “We know the Lamia still exist, at least a little bit. I don’t know about the Harpies, but they could easily be somewhere. We have no idea what might be on the other side of the Illyrians.”

“The Weltreich has a massive border with a wilderness ruled by a dozen Primordials,” Vaya said. “As far as I know, no one knows what’s beyond that either.”

“This world is huge,” I said. “And we only know what is in a tiny fraction of it. Come on, let’s get strong enough that we can explore the whole thing!”

Calmed by Jamila’s success, I moved to the side and started to move through the Eight-by-Eight. Sia landed on my shoulder, and we instinctively joined our meridians, gathering together. “When we return to Craesti, we need to take a trip to the Fire Monarch’s mountain,” Sia told me.

“Sounds like a plan,” I replied. “I look forward to meeting your mom. She’s going to be proud of you, you know. The first Elemental Zarorzel in who knows how long.”

He batted my head with a wing, and we focussed on gathering. With the new level, gathering to advance had changed again. Now, I filled my center, then gently squeezed extra into my meridians. The goal wasn’t an explosive wave of Aether, like when we advanced, but rather to slowly push Aether into your body. Over time, the Aether would soak into and enhance every single bit of myself.

I had a significant advantage in this stage, my meridian system already covering a significant percentage of my body. This let me get nearly everything almost immediately, greatly increasing the speed I’d move through the stage. Of course, I could also take the normal amount of time and forcibly increase the density of power infused.

My center filled rapidly, Sia’s mental guidance speeding it up. Once full, I increased the pressure a small amount. It hurt, but along the lines of a deep stretch rather than the feeling I would explode like when I advanced. The extra Aether I was pulling in from my technique ended up feeding Sia. His Core felt empty, even though it currently held more Aether than I could.

A wall seemed to materialize, and I couldn’t push any more Aether to Sia. “Hold on,” Sia said. The pressure behind the Aether increased, and I held on. My center drained, Aether flowing into my meridians as it seeped into my body and into the connection I had with Sia.

Ten minutes of straining later, the wall in Sia’s Core popped, and suddenly a flood of Aether shot into him. He cried out in ecstasy and agony, growing three times his current size before regaining control and returning to his smallest size. Immediately, the flow into me increased by nearly twenty percent. Sia’s Core had drained to only tiny drops, so I directed almost all of the Aether flowing into me to him. It slowed my progress a bit, but we needed him combat capable more than we needed me a tiny bit closer to advancing.

Ming and Xiao breached the surface thirty minutes after Sia advanced, and I immediately dropped out of my meditation trance. They both looked exhausted, but Xiao was all smiles. Ming had his typical neutral face on, but I could tell he was excited by the twinkle in his eyes. “It went well?” Lea asked, moving to help Ming out of the water. Jamila helped Xiao, a long suffering look on her face.

“It did. I asked the Spirit what started the initial war. It refused to answer directly, but pointed out one part of the image of the peace before it. I think they had a conflict about how far people were allowed to advance, fearing that the number of high-level gatherers would be imbalanced,” Ming said. “When the humanoid being was near advancing past the stage after Perfect Core, the snake and bird people attacked to stop him.”

“Do you worry we’ll find out how to advance towards that level, and trigger another war?” Jon asked, more serious than he normally is.

“It is possible,” Vaya said, and Ming nodded.

“If King Craesti and Librarian Narwan start moving towards more power, the Topraki are very likely to attack us, just to reduce the amount of resources available to them to advance. Even in a war with the Illyrians,” Ming added.

“Unless we share the method to advance with all of our allies,” I said. “It goes against the grain of this world to share secrets, but the Illyrians are only a stepping stone towards the true threat. I’m becoming more and more certain that Chaos is coming here, and we have to be ready to fight it.”

“I have no idea how powerful we will have to be to even mildly irritate an actual god,” Lea said.

“Me either,” I laughed. “So, nothing to it but to keep going, right?”

“So, we need to find Princess Aleksandra and tell her about the Tower of Trials,” I said. “And we should tell Prince Gunther and any Ashkhas we come across too.”

“If we are going to share any information we get,” Ming said, “we should spread the information about the Tower to everyone.”

“We should get some resources from the people we tell as payment,” Bridget said.

A chorus of nods followed that, “That works,” I said. “So, Ming, Xiao, how long do you need to recover?”

“Twenty minutes should be plenty,” Ming said. Xiao looked uncomfortable, but nodded anyway.

“Thirty then, and we’ll travel together,” I said. “Our bags are too full already anyway!”

“Hey, I’ve never heard of anyone eating level three meat for every meal,” Jon laughed, “and every bit we eat means more we can harvest from higher level Beasts.”

“Um, I don’t know about you,” I said, “But I only have two more servings of the Fuzhu meat, and everything else is from the Manticore.”

“No one eats level six meat for every meal,” Vaya laughed, throwing her arm around my shoulder, “but we will for a while. No reason not to share our gains.”

“Especially since we are safer together,” Jamila said.

Thirty minutes passed as we chatted together, letting Ming and Xiao recover. Once they were ready to go, all thirteen of us headed out. Four hours later, we found a grove of fruit trees with a weird, bright blue fruit that looked like it was covered in thick hair. Upon splitting, a fist-sized pulp of flesh was delicious. Each bite also seemed to strengthen my meridians the tiniest amount. We gorged on the fruit, packed another dozen each by creating a sack out of Fuzhu hide for each of us.

“You know, after the next two weeks, we’re going to be covered in bags,” Bridget laughed. “How much wealth can we haul out of here?”

“As much as we can,” I said. “Every resource we can harvest and use is another step closer to being strong enough to save the world.”

“Is that why you stuffed seven of those fruits into your mouth?” Vaya asked.

“That is my story, and I’m sticking to it,” I said.

“Yeah, not that they were very sweet with just a hint of sourness to cut it?” She responded.

“Yup, my story, sticking,” I said with a grin.

Two hours later, I got everyone’s permission, then shot a beam of Plasma into the sky. I tried to get it to spell out ‘Meet’ but couldn’t effect it high enough in the air. My range had increased several meters with my advancement, but I was still limited to affecting Aether at most seven meters away. My Affinity with Lightning gave it the highest range, while Water was the lowest.

“With all of my rewards, I am going to buy some Affinity pills,” Jon said, grumbling at me. “I will make my Ice Affinity equal to your Lightning.”

“So you’re saying I should increase my Lightning Affinity,” I winked at him. He glared at me, and I just laughed.

We camped in the fruit grove, glad there wasn’t a guardian similar to the Manticore. A level five badger had been discovered in the center, but thirteen people at the same strength quickly removed it. The Beast was an Earth Wood combination, and we took the time to gather with its Core after eating all the fruit we could stomach. The massive amount of Aether had the hour we gathered equal six without it, pushing us ever forward.

I’m always surprised that no one has killed every single Beast they could and used the Cores to gather, I thought. With a level five Beast helping us by speeding gathering by six times, why isn’t every single level five Beast killed? I shook my head, probably because most people, even with a team of five, would have died to the Beast, while we barely acknowledged its presence before eliminating it. We also got lucky that it was alone. Most Beasts have family’s, making each fight be against a dozen of them instead of one. It’s weird, this trip into the Divine Territory feels more curated than nature. Which makes sense, considering that this is supposed to be a training facility.

Another day passed, with the occasional neat find and Beast fight. With thirteen of us, including the Bonds, even a level six Beast would have fallen quickly, but we didn’t run into one. Every find we discovered was something that fed into a high-level pill or alloy, nothing useful to immediately ingest. I still wasn’t practiced enough with producing pills to risk trying to use the few extremely rare ingredients we discovered.

“One of these will sell for dozens of gold,” Vaya said while harvesting a Seven-petal Swirling Flower. “We have made so much money that even my parents would be jealous.”

“That just goes to show how much the Ashkhas value their people,” Jon said. “Since normally they take a fifty percent tax on findings and now we are getting everything free.”

“So we should be putting the highest value items in your packs?” Lea asked.

“We’ll reorganize items once we’re ready to leave,” I said. “For now, just pack away whatever we can. You all will get more resources than we do if they are limited.”

“Why?” Ming asked.

“Because of our Cores,” I said. “We are already going to improve faster than you can, just because of them.” I paused, shaking my head. “War is upon us. You are my friends and I want you to survive. So I’ll hold my own advancement back to let you equal me, and give us all a better chance of surviving.”

“Our Cores mean that every Beast we defeat gives us a tiny increase in our gathering level. Giving up an Aether Plant to you that was guarded by a Beast only equalizes our level,” Vaya said. “Though the Dungeon outside of (city name) will give out the equivalent of what we got, but only if you manage to fight through all of their levels.”

“Don’t try,” I said. “You’ll die, and that is worthless. Only if you are alive can we help you advance.”

“We know,” Jamila said.

“Even if some of us would rather push our own advancement forward,” Xiao grumbled.

“Sorry, but I would rather you be alive and annoyed than dead,” I laughed Xiao.

He looked upset, but couldn’t hold it too long before bursting into laughter himself.

The next day, we ran into the number two Topraki team. “Hale and well met,” the leader said. “Have you had as much amazing harvests as we have?”

“Most likely,” I said when everyone looked at me to respond. “We found a berry that improves your tempering with a specific Affinity and a fruit that slightly strengthens your meridians.”

The Topraki nodded sharply, their leonine features grinning, “We discovered a tuber that, when cooked, increases your Aether density by a small but noticeable amount.”

I looked over at Ming, and he nodded, “We are more than happy to trade an equal number of fruits for the tubers, or …” I paused. They looked interested. “Or I could tell you of something that is coming to vastly improve your gains, if you give us enough of the tubers for half of us. We’ll trade enough berry’s for all of you to be tempered against a single Element for the rest of the tubers.”

They discussed for a few minutes, but then decided to accept our offer. I got a direct stare from the leader of their team, “We have decided to trade for your information,” she said, glaring at me. “If it is not worth it, you will have earned our eternal enmity.”

“Sure thing,” I said, then described what little I knew about the Tower of Trials.

She blinked, and paused. A dozen seconds later, she nodded jerkily, “That is worth it. We would never have headed towards the center without that information. Thank you.”

“We are allies,” Vaya said. “Though we have often struggled against each other, we have never sought to totally destroy the other. We will fight against the Illyrians together, and as a whole defeat them and make the world more stable.”

“Our nations are not the closest,” the leader said. “But the Illyrians are worse than you could ever be. May peace blossom between our peoples.”

“May peace blossom,” I said, bowing deeply to her.

“Our people do not bow,” she said. “Instead we show appreciation by exposing our throats like this.” She pushed her head backwards and sideways, making it so it would be easy to bite her throat.

I looked at the others, then gestured in the same way. “May our nations be at peace for our lifetimes,” I said. After they gave us the tubers, I explained every bit of information given to us by the spirits at both the start and the history lecture, then told them to find the nearest history carving set.

“That is worth it,” the leader of the Topraki said. She grinned at me, her canine face grinning at me. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said with a grin. “We’ll see you at the Tower.”

We continued on, journeying widdershins across Divine Territory in the hope we’d find Princess Aleksandra and her team. We ran across two more groups of people, the third Ashkhas group and the second Weltreich. No one we knew, and they only had Cores to trade for our knowledge. Every evening we spent gathering with a level four or five Core, almost exclusively due to the trades we’d done. Beasts ran from us, and we didn’t chase after them. It wasn’t worth the effort if they weren’t level five, at least.

It took us a week, a full eight days, to find Princess Aleksandra and her team.

A scream rang out while we were pushing our way through a strand of trees, and the sounds of battle sprang upon us once we were through. “ALEKS!” Vaya and I yelled at the same time.

We ran into a clearing where the four young women were fighting against a massive crocodile that sent whips of Water Aether at the girls. Milenna and Lilianna were shrieking in rage, blasts of Aether from various techniques trying to get the Beast to open its mouth. Aleks was caught, smashing her sword into its snout. Blood flowed from where her left leg was caught.

My vision turned red, and I managed to activate both my Gusting Northern Wind and my Dancing Northern Wind techniques at the same time. It took me three steps and one second to cross the sixty meters from the edge of the clearing to the crocodile. I stepped in the air without thinking about it, my techniques advancing with the necessity of getting to her now!

Just before I slammed into the side of the snout, icicles and air blades crashing into it around me, I switched techniques. Every drop of Earth and Metal Aether in my core smashed together. In an instant, I’d changed it all into Strength Aether, and pushed every bit I could into the General Strengthening Technique. What the Technique couldn’t handle, I simply flooded into my meridians.

My feet hit its lower jaw only a meter from its mouth, two meters off the ground. My hands gripped onto its upper jaw and with a bellow of effort, I pushed down and pulled up.

The crocodile, an early level six Beast, tried to keep its mouth closed. This was a mistake. Only a second after I heaved, a snap sounded as its lower jaw shattered where I was pushing on it. The Beast’s muscles, attempting to hold the bones together, shredded themselves. Its mouth opened and it screamed in anger and pain.

“I got her!” Hanna yelled, scooping Aleks from where she’d fallen from the now open Beast’s mouth, just as the Water Whips evolved into Mud Whips. Lilianna took a blow for the retreating pair, stepping into it to partially reduce the impact. She was still sent flying.

Two Whips rushed up at me. Using the last bit of Strength Aether, I leapt from the Beast’s snout. As I flew upward, I spiraled my arms in front of myself, looking like an anime character. Fortify, Aether, Gather, Focus, Enhance, Strengthen, Air, Fire, Lightning, I thought as I created runes, then sent the largest Wrath of the Plasma Herald I’d ever done down at the Beast. The beam of Plasma Aether was as tall as I was. Blood exploded out of my hands as my meridians were overwhelmed in an instant.

My attack speared through the Crocodile’s skull, and it convulsed in agony as its brain was cooked. More attacks from the others slammed into it, and its lifeblood drained into the swamp the girls had been running from.

I landed, then stumbled to my knees. That’s what you get for hurting my friends, I thought, glaring at the dead Beast and panting. I could barely move, but I wasn’t unconscious, so good on me. I immediately started to channel Aether into repairing what I could. My hands hurt, but they were functional. I could tell, though, that I wouldn’t be using any techniques through them for a bit. Ow, worth it, man that was an epic finisher, but ow.

Aleks darted over to me, her leg only partially healed. Hanna ran after her, but Aleks outpaced the healer. She dropped to her knees in front of me, her cuts reopening a bit, but she didn’t care. Her arms wrapped around my shoulder, and she pulled herself tightly against my body. “Thank you, thank you, you saved us,” she chanted into my shoulder. I looked at her, and she pulled me into a deep kiss. “Thank you, I love you.” She said, leaving me speechless.