Chapter 120

  “To reach Silver, you need Qi in your aura. You can’t not have it, although you can obtain it in many different ways,” Michael expined as Old Dave nodded along. “If you can’t do it with your own strength, you can use an item, external help, a moment of enlightenment, whatever. The important thing is that in order to take the step, you need Qi to yer onto your aura. Will an improper procedure stunt your development? Who knows?”

  “But that’s not what you want me to do,” Old Dave observed.

  “Of course not. You can probably reach a very high degree of power even with a False Silver foundation, as we have seen with our early tests. Any magic tier can replicate a higher tier, provided you pay the price. Well, any magic except aura control. And from what I’ve seen, aura control is the hardest yet the most powerful sort of magic—able to shape reality itself.”

  David hummed. “Can a False Silver reach Gold?” he inquired.

  “I think so. To reach Gold, logic says you need Intent. But that’s where it gets tricky, and not just because we have no sample data. I think there are at least three paths to Gold: False Silver into some sort of unstable, degraded Gold, True Silver into False Gold, and finally True Silver into True Gold. Plus, there may be a way to stabilize a degraded or False Gold much like I am pretty sure you can turn a False Silver into a True Silver with enough effort. Which, by the way, is like ten times the effort you’d need to go from normal Copper to True Silver in one go, so it’s not like it’s easy.”

  “Let’s worry about Silver for now, then,” David suggested.

  Michael nodded. “Good call. That’s why I brought you here. Although, I must confess that we are sailing in uncharted territory,” he admitted.

  Old Dave chuckled. “Am I your guinea pig, then?” he quipped.

  “Sort of. Nothing too bad,” Michael reassured him. “To reach True Silver, I think the base requirement is to have mastered at least one element, which you have, and to integrate it with your aura as you rank up. But I have a hunch that I want to prove. I think no two True Silver users are ever the same. Say, for instance, you rank up with coins, or with my help. Say instead, you rank up deep in the Qi tunnel below the gcier, with nothing but your own ability to command the energies in the world to obey your commands.”

  Old Dave nodded solemnly. “I am very honored that you think I can do it,” he stated, then asked with a chuckle, “Would that make me more powerful than you?”

  Michael shrugged. “Perhaps more powerful than I was after I ranked up, sure. Your foundation will be more solid. But don’t get carried away. I haven’t been idle all this time, and a magic foundation can always be deepened.”

  “Says the guy who hasn’t found his dantian yet,” the old man quipped.

  “Yeah, let’s see if you can do it when you reach Silver,” Michael retorted. “How did you know anyway?” he asked.

  The two bantered a bit more as they made their way deeper down the tunnel below the gcier. Soon enough, however, their chatter died down as they were forced to focus more on their surroundings. The tunnel, much like the process Michael wanted Old Dave to undergo, was uncharted territory.

  He had never been to its depths, despite often saying he wanted to. There were just too many things to do all the time, and exploring the mysteries of the dungeon was just another item on a list of tasks too long to ever hope to complete.

  The Qi tunnel, he soon learned, was rather treacherous. There were no monsters in its shallow depths, but strong currents of wild energies buffeted him and Old Dave like a powerful gale. Instead of trying to uproot them, the gale targeted their auras, deforming them under its assault. Michael was about to take a step in front of Dave, to protect him with his wider, denser, and stronger aura, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  Turning around, he saw David give him a nod and step in front of him, bearing the full force of the magical onsught. Elemental Ice, together with Frost, Cold, Snow, and a slew of other cold-wet aligned elements, was the first obstacle. Even here, however, traces of Qi mingled with the magic and made it more powerful, more insidious, and more corrosive to David’s weak Copper aura.

  The man held strong, taking step after step towards the depths of the tunnel. With each step, the force of the hostile elements increased, yet Michael felt that Dave’s ability to counter them also grew to match the challenge. He barely had to cloak himself in his own aura to deal with whatever energy slipped past Dave’s smaller protection.

  Then the elements were joined by powerful currents of mana. The two slowed down, David grunting with each powerful step he took, but he did not stop.

  Then Qi became the prevalent energy. When it did, Dave was pushed back a few steps, but every time he picked himself up and simply pushed on. Step after painful step, it took him several hours to reach a small room they could see after a bend in the tunnel, barely a hundred yards away.

  “This is it?” Dave rasped. His aura was reduced to a thin film around his body, struggling to keep its shape under the assault of the foreign energies. His breathing was bored, and his face was covered in sweat. His massive frame was bent by the effort as he panted to catch his breath whenever he could, making him look like a defted balloon. Yet, as he gazed at the room at the end of the tunnel, he stood up as tall as he could, ready.

  “This is it,” Michael confirmed.

  The room was rge, but barren. Its walls were dark chunks of solid ice, with cyan veins pulsing deep beneath the surface yer of frost and providing light to the room. The air was sharp and dry, animated by magic so that the room was like a terrible miniature blizzard in a ball.

  David gave one st look at Michael and snorted. The younger man was standing tall, untouched by the wind, looking completely at ease. Not only did the hostile, wild magic fail to penetrate his defenses, but his mastery of Aura and Ice made the whole pce no more hostile than a nice sunny beach in the tropics.

  “Now what?” David asked.

  “I’d say, you go sit in the middle and meditate,” Michael instructed. “You gained insights while defending yourself from the magic on the way here, and you will gain even more still. Once you feel you are ready, seize the Qi from the environment and the Stone Element you harvested at the mountain and push your aura to the next level. Don’t worry about the how. I don’t think my way of doing it would work for you.”

  “I see,” Old Dave replied. “Thank you, Michael, for bringing me here. I’ll show you—and myself—that I still got it.”

  Michael watched David walk to the center of the room with careful, bored steps. David then fixed his clothes, smoothed out the ground, and raised a ptform of stone to sit upon above the ice. As he sat, the vortex of wind and magic only intensified, trying to kick him out of the room, but David only smiled. Then he closed his eyes and started to ponder over the energies around him.

  Pondering over magic was not like meditation. It was not a state that was broken easily by the slightest distraction. Understanding magic was the opposite. The more chaos, the better, and in the room there was chaos aplenty.

  Chaos enough that, after a few minutes during which nothing happened, Michael decided to take advantage of the prime location to try and glean some insights into the nature of Qi himself. Despite Dave’s joke earlier, the fact that Michael still hadn’t found the source of his own Qi—his dantian—never failed to sour his mood.

  However, just as he was about to enter a focus state himself, a deep rumble shook the cavern. Of course, it can’t be this easy, can it?

  A monster emerged from the depths of the ice, shattering the far wall of the cavern and rushing straight at the meditating form of Dave. He was in the middle of a vortex of magic, unaware of what was happening around him, unable to react.

  Michael’s pupils dited. His breath quickened. He suddenly became a blur, pushing his stats to the limit, rushing to Dave’s defense. He intercepted the monster’s wild strike with his own body, breaking several bones that immediately healed, and readied his own magic to push the monster back.

  The magic in the cave exploded.

  Michael turned around, quickly dismissing the [Distortion Field] he was about to use to behead the creature. As he did so, the magic in the room quieted down, returning to its previous dangerous yet stable chaotic state. David didn’t seem to have suffered any consequences, although Michael wouldn’t know what his interference had done to his tier-up process until he was done.

  The monster roared, and a sinister blue light gathered in its maw. Michael felt a buildup of magic, and like before, the magic in the room started to go utterly wild.

  “Nope, no magic,” he muttered, before pushing his stats to the maximum. He jumped, aiming to punch the monster that was twice his size in the face.

  It was like hitting granite. But he succeeded in his task: the monster’s magic died down, and the room’s magic returned to normal. It also succeeded in another task: he now had the monster’s attention, and the thing was pissed.