Chapter 21

  Training with the Pillars had been forbidden. Confined to bed rest for the rest of the day, Danny had nothing to do but cultivate and ruminate on that last fight. He wanted to get back into the dream world and throw himself into sparring, but Aspen watched the tent like a hawk. Pretty much any time Danny got up to move around and stretch he was under surveillance. The fact that every part of his body was fatigued only added to the growing sense of stagnation. He knew it wasn’t logical; one day of rest wasn’t going to completely erase all of the progress he made. Still, wanting to train and not being allowed to was beginning to chafe him. Instead of getting stronger, he was forced to sit in the same tent as Indy. He couldn’t even look at the fox, the guilt wouldn’t allow it.

  That restless day came and went. Slowly, for Danny, but it passed all the same. When his compulsory hiatus ended, Danny nearly sprinted to the stone platform where the Pillars stood. Now, an ornate carving stood atop each pillar. One with a fairy wielding a sword, indicating Body. The middle pillar depicted a fairy sitting cross-legged in a meditative pose, that one must be symbolizing Qi. The final carving was a fairy holding his hand out in an exaggerated martial arts pose with roiling energy rising around him, Soul. The two newly-recovered Pillars had a translucent quality to them like they were made of polished gemstones. By contrast, the Body pillar looked cloudy as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper instead of varnish and cloth.

  When Danny stepped onto the platform, three phantasmal fairy figures appeared. Sassa, the only familiar one, was noticeably fainter than the others. The Training Spirit arising from the Qi pillar was a chubby male fairy with joyful eyes and a rotund midsection. His hair was so short that you could see the peachy skin of his scalp. The fairy wore a solid tan robe with a rope tied around as a belt that had several knots in it. Over that, he wore an ornate burgundy vest with faded gold embellishments. The plump spirit raised an eyebrow when he saw Danny, then both when he saw the figure of Aspen watching nearby. “Ah, Alei-Tacht. I am honored. Is this human to be my student?” Aspen nodded. “Very well,” he said, dawning a jovial grin, “My name is Maypa, pleased to be at your service.” Maypa bowed his head slightly. Danny found himself instinctively returning the gesture.

  The other new Training Spirit was not as cordial. He was thinner than the other fairies, almost scrawny. Instead of a smooth, youthful face, his was wrinkled and wizened. His hair was a silver-gray with a sparse mustache growing over his upper lip. It seemed to Danny that fairies struggled to grow facial hair even into their twilight years. The thing reminded him of something a boy just hitting puberty might wear. Danny never could grow a beard, so he guessed he didn’t have much room to talk. The older fairy wore form-fitting clothes in a nondescript gray. Based on the fact that he was the Training Spirit of the Soul pillar, Danny was certain that there would be more to him than what meets the eye.

  “Hm. A native. Using the Pillars?” He spoke with a creaky voice whose cadence reminded him of Aspen. “Damn shame. Are you really allowing this, Alei-Tacht?”

  “Yes. The native has proven worthy.”

  “I suppose it’s settled then.” Clearly, that wasn’t the answer he had been hoping for. “I’m Oke. Master Oke to you, native. I won’t tolerate any disrespect, even from one of his pupils.”

  “Understood, Master Oke.” Danny figured it would be best to go along with the crotchety fairy.

  “Hm. At least it has manners.” Danny took in his tutors. With less than three weeks until the end of the Tutorial, he would set a breakneck pace to open his Divine Gate and raise his base stats as much as humanly possible. Then, Danny would be prepared for whatever came next. He was determined to ensure that what had happened with the Dreadwolves would be the first and last time Danny would fail to protect the ones he cared about.

  The flower garden of the Qi pillar spread its floral fragrance into Danny’s nose. Waves rolled across the sea of blue, yellow, and pink with an imperceptible, ghostly breeze. He sat cross-legged in a patch of small white flowers. It was warm despite the lack of any visible sun or other heat source. Maypa sat next to him and guided the cultivation session. “Breathe deeply now, from the stomach. More, more, until you can barely hold it in.” His cadence was calming. “Hold. Just a little longer… Out.” As they exhaled, Danny marveled at how exhausting the breathing exercises were. Already, after less than ten minutes, he was beginning to feel a dull ache in his chest.

  “How’s that? Is your core full yet?”

  “Yeah.” Danny felt like he was about to pop. “I can’t take in any more.”

  “Good. Now push that energy down and compact it like you are packing a duck with stuffing.” Danny pushed his Qi down in his core. It was a familiar sensation to him, so it gave him little issue.

  “Okay. Now what?”

  “Now you take in more. Breathe in.” Danny tried, but the moment he stopped pressing down on his Qi he felt like he was going to be sick. Seeing this, Maypa interjected, “Careful now, keep the pressure up.” Danny shoved his Qi back down, along with a bit of bile that had climbed up into his mouth, and drew in more Qi. “Just like that,” Maypa encouraged. Again, Danny filled his core, and again he was instructed to compress his Qi. Once he had finished the third set of breathing exercises, Maypa told him to slowly let the Qi in his core expand. It felt like Danny was being inflated like a balloon. He steadily eased his grip on his energy, Maypa insisted that he be very careful as this was the most dangerous part. Then, when he was filled to bursting, Maypa had him release the Qi he had stored up back into the world. And repeat. Danny would much rather be batted around by Sassa all day than endure any more Qi training.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  After finishing his exercises with Maypa, Danny moved over to the Soul pillar. Master Oke’s Dream World consisted of a flat dirt yard with a couple of training dummies offering the only decoration. The only thing more no-nonsense than the scenery was Oke himself. “What are you gawking at native? Blast them.”

  A jet stream of Qi punched a hole through one of the dummy’s heads. The dummy head shimmered and was made whole. Originally, the self-repairing practice target had been a marvel, after the fifth time, however, Danny felt like it was taunting him. “Again.” Oke barked. As he was preparing to fire another blast, the Soul Training Spirit interrupted, “Stop, stop. What are you doing?”

  “Blasting the dummy again, like you said.”

  “You squash your Qi into a ball first. Every time. Why?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just what works for me.”

  “It’s wasteful.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hm.” Master Oke rolled his eyes. “Watch.” The crotchety old fairy lifted his hand. Danny was curious about what the old spirit could do. There was no loud yelling, no channeling, no powering up. Without any warning, a small beam of Qi shot from the fairy’s palm. It was thin, but impossibly dense, like a stream of syrup that moved at the speed of light. With a flick of his wrist, Oke decapitated both training dummies and cut off the beam. “Command the Qi. It’s yours, isn’t it? Act like it.” Oke said. The dummy heads disappeared and then reappeared atop the targets, once again reattached. “Again. This time no inane charge-up.” Mumbling under his breath he said, “might as well shout what you’re going to do next. Natives.”

  Envisioning his Qi like water and his blast technique as a pressure washer had been Danny’s go-to for as long as he had control of his powers. It felt weird to think that was all a mistake, but Danny couldn’t deny that while the fairy might lack manners, personality, and a general likeability, the one thing he did have over him was experience. He pictured that beam in his mind. Instead of building up pressure or concentrating Qi in his hand, Danny just willed it to copy what Master Oke had done. A beam shot out of Danny’s hand. The responsiveness of it caught him off guard. Waving his arm in a wide arc, Danny attempted the same clinical execution of the immortal training dummies. The result was not as clean. Danny struggled to move his arm in a straight line. He cut one of the dummies in half but completely missed the other. Cutting off the Qi, he inspected his hand as if it were an alien device. “Woah,” he said, “that was so much cooler.” He couldn’t help but smile.

  “Far from adequate, native,” Oke said. “Wipe that grin off your face. Danny schooled his expression. The prickly fairy was harsh, but he was right. Lacking control was what had led to Indy’s disastrous injury. He wouldn’t go into another fight like that again.

  “Yes, Master. Should I go again?”

  “You— yes. Yes, again.” Oke said. Over and over, Danny tore apart the dummies with a beam of energy. Master Oke made more and more appear until Danny was massacring a veritable army of straw-stuffed soldiers. With each pass, the creases in the old fairy’s face became a little fainter. His eyes softened. When the native turned to relay that he had run out of Qi, Master Oke quickly lowered his brow and pulled his face into a scowl. “Well. We’ll have to work on endurance, and the other aspects of your Soul are lacking, but the progress is acceptable.”

  Danny nodded. “That reminds me, what exactly is the Soul stat?”

  “What has your guide told you so far?”

  “Um…” Danny tried to think of anything. “Just that mine is kind of high.”

  “I see.” The fairy smoothed his nearly nonexistent mustache. “I assume that means you know nothing?”

  “Yeah.” Danny hung his head slightly.

  Oke muttered what Danny figured were fairy curse words under his breath. “The three stats are all interconnected. Your Qi stat represents how much energy you can hold in your Core and how fast you can refill it. Body is your speed and strength. More specifically, and you will understand this better as you progress, it is how your Qi reinforces your body.” The fairy was really getting into it now. Danny had discovered one of his passions, besides being a grump. “Soul, on the other hand, is the external to Body’s internal. That stat indicates the extent and how effectively you can alter the world around you using your Qi. It’s a little more complicated than that and each of the three main stats have sub stats that you can access once you pass Level 50, or in your case the first Stage, and— are you following native?”

  “Oh, yeah. Qi is how much you got. Body is, well, body. Soul is laser beams.”

  “Hm.” Master Oke snorted. “Close enough. That’s the basics of it anyway. Not much we can do when you are out of Qi. That will be all for now.”

  Danny nodded and then bowed slightly. He figured that any goodwill he could build would be invaluable, and he was willing to be a little shameless in his sucking-up if it made him stronger in the long run. “Thank you, Master.”

  “Dismissed.”

  After that was the part Danny was most looking forward to. Sparring with Sassa. There was so much that he wanted to practice. Getting better at using his auxiliary equipment was his priority at the moment. But Sassa wasn’t making that simple. Danny fell into the pond with a splash, thrown off-balance by a shoulder check from one of Sassa’s clones. “Why did you fail that time?” She asked. The Training Spirit had begun to analyze each of their fights once Danny either fell or took what would have been a lethal injury. Having all your mistakes was disheartening, but Danny took pride in the fact that he rarely made the same one twice. Danny pulled himself out of the water. Strangely, he wasn’t wet at all.

  “I used the Bubble Ring too early. There was no way to stop the clone on the flank afterward.” It felt a little unfair to him that Sassa could create a seemingly unending number of clones, but she kept it limited to three in their spars. He knew that limitation was only for his sake though.

  “Too early wasn’t the problem. Being decisive can be a strength. However, the attack you mitigated was one that I could easily bail out of. Save your trump card for a highly committal attack to make the best use of something with such a long cooldown between uses. Sometimes that might be the first move of the fight, but it rarely is.” Sassa said. “I can tell you have made a lot of progress, and that ring of yours is very annoying to deal with.”

  “Thanks. Let’s go again. I think I got you this time.”

  “You’ve said that three times already.”

  “Yeah…but this time I’m sure.”

  “Alright, get ready.”