Chapter 22

  Danny shot toward Sassa, playing the aggressor this time. The Staff of the Sleeping Giant whistled through the air as it whipped towards her head. Sassa ducked under the strike, but Danny spun the miss into a flurry of body shots. With perfect footwork, Sassa retreated while parrying with her sword. Danny swept a low kick at her feet. She jumped over. But now, Sassa was in the air and unable to dodge his staff. Danny had to redirect his strike to block the incoming slash from a clone that Sassa had summoned. Another blow from his blind spot caused Danny to dodge and weave. Danny, Sassa, and her two clones disengaged.

  Wordlessly, they picked the fight back up. Danny met a sword with his staff and then shoved its wielder into an incoming clone. The remaining Sassa sliced the air where Danny’s arm had been a moment ago. Danny tried to retaliate, but the real Sassa caught the counter attack. While he was trying to wrench his weapon free, a clone spawned into existence and hacked at his arms. Danny was forced to disarm. His nails turned to claws and his teeth to fangs as he activated Lupine Ferocity. Now recovering, the other clones synchronized with Sassa, attacking in a way that would prevent Danny from blocking them all at once. With a sloshing sound, a thin film enveloped Danny and the three clones turned to smoke as their attacks were reflected. Only the real Sassa remained, her strike late enough that she managed to curb it before hitting the Bubble Ring’s barrier. Sassa lunged towards Danny, going for a fight-ending strike now that her advantage in numbers was gone. Danny thrusted his claws at her midsection.

  “That time you used your Bubble Ring well. Why did you fail?” She pulled the sword out of Danny’s stomach. Luckily, in the Dream World, such injuries were superficial. The wolf-like features faded from Danny’s face.

  “I shouldn’t have tried to trade blows. My claws don’t have the same reach.” Sassa nodded.

  “You also waited to use your transformation until you were disarmed. Had you led with it, you might have avoided getting into that situation entirely.”

  “Yeah. I don’t like how it makes me feel. It gets hard to think. The wolf form makes me so angry, the only thing going through my head is to kill.” Back in the fight with the Dreadwolves, Danny had been furious. Somehow, the wolf transformation heightened those feelings, along with his senses and physical capabilities. Danny didn’t like the way it clouded his mind.

  “The only way to improve your control is practice. You ready for round four?” Three clones appeared behind Sassa. They all spun their swords in a flourish.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Their sparring continued until Danny could barely lift his staff over his head. Still, he never got a clean win against Sassa. All he could manage was a tie— at best. A tie that would have resulted in his death and Sassa walking away with a nasty bruise, if it had been a real fight. He learned much from that sparring and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he could sneak a win out from under her. There were also the other Pillars to consider.

  From this first day alone, Danny had already raised his Soul and Qi stats by one each. He figured they must have been close to going up on their own, since he used them in nearly every fight nowadays, and this training had just pushed them over the edge. It was incredible progress. His Divine Gate was also nearly ready to open. He stopped in front of his tent, where Indy was resting. Danny pulled the tent flap open.

  Indy still hadn’t moved— couldn’t move. He was awake though. The amber eyes followed Danny as he came close. Danny began to pet Indy, careful to avoid the torn skin and matted fur. The fox pushed against his hand affectionately and let at a sound that was the mix between a purr and cooing. “I’m sorry, Indy.” Danny spoke softly. “I’ll never let anything like this happen again.” Hard as it was to leave, the Pillars were not the only parts of his training. After he practiced with each of the Training Spirits, he would go to Aspen to learn more about the System, his powers, and the Multiverse at large.

  The guide was staring at something unseen to Danny as he appeared to be taking inventory of the survival pack Danny had thrown together. “What are you doing?” Danny asked.

  “Cataloguing my contribution. You are only allowed so much help and I have to ensure I have not given you too much.”

  “Oh. What happens if you do?”

  The guide looked up at Danny. “Either I get banned from being a System guide indefinitely, or I get permanently reverted to Level 1, depending on how generous the System is feeling."

  "The System can take away Levels?" Danny asked.

  "Yes. What the System gives it can take away. Your power doesn't come from the System though, so nothing you need to worry about." Aspen said. "It's the only advantage to being a cultivator, if you could call it that. It also makes them ruthless and cutthroat because they do not fear retribution."

  Danny didn't feel like he was cutthroat, but then again, the things he had done in that last fight were pretty brutal. "I had a different question," he quickly changed the subject, "earlier I healed Indy, but I didn't get a skill for it. Why is that?"

  "If you bandage a wound, are you a doctor? Barely stabilizing someone in critical condition while at the peak of Stage 1 is not sufficient to earn a skill in healing."

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  "But all I did to get Qi Manipulation was activate a necklace. What's the difference?"

  "The farther you progress, the harder skills are to earn." The guide explained, "Think back to when you got that skill. You had activated an item without ever being taught how and without being able to so much as sense Qi outside of your body. If you activated an item now though, it would not warrant a skill. Even if you memorized and ran through the entirety of the Weeping Willow manual at this stage, you wouldn’t get a skill at your current level. That's why many in the Multiverse stick with the first four skills they learned; it's too hard to replace them once you get farther along on your path."

  Danny asked other questions about what would happen after the Tutorial, and what his cultivation would look like after opening his final gate. Aspen kept that information close to his chest though, only offering vague answers that danced around what Danny was really asking. He figured that what he had gleaned so far was better than nothing, so Danny dropped the conversation and let the guide get back to whatever inventory he had been taking.

  The days of training passed with grim determination. Even Ashe joined in. Apparently, Aspen had done a stint training a race that fought alongside animal companions as their primary battle strategy. Danny raised his Qi and Soul stats by another point. The impurities blocking his Divine Gate had slowly been eroded away, and now Danny was ready for the final push. He decided to take care of the generally messy and smelly business a few feet into the woods so he wouldn’t bother anyone. Bringing some water for washing, Danny found a suitable spot.

  A mossy log lay on the ground. Some time ago a tree had fallen here. The chirping of the birds made for a serene song that helped ease Danny into his meditation. Clearing his mind and taking command of his breathing, Danny began to open his senses to the well of energy all around him. The ambient Qi was especially eager this time. Ever since he had begun the process of Purifying monsters instead of outright killing them, Danny’s cultivation had exponentially accelerated. What would take him months would take him a week, and what would take him days he could accomplish in a single session. Add to that the progress on his base stats, and Danny was beginning to become quite the powerhouse.

  Danny tore through the blockage like it was nothing; truly, this was the easiest breakthrough he had managed yet. There wasn’t much change to note. Each of his previous Spirit Gates: the Gate of Breath, Gate of Sensation, and the Gate of Sight had led to substantial differences in the way he perceived and felt the world around him. The Divine Gate, however, just felt like more of the same. The real difference was in the way he controlled his energy.

  His Qi was much more responsive now. How it would bend and move according to his will reminded Danny of how it felt to walk. You just thought about doing it and it happened. There was no calculation of how high to raise your foot, no visualization of the optimal walking cycle, you just did it. That was how it felt to control his energy. Blasts, beams, waves, even picking up objects was smooth as butter. Danny wondered if it was like this for everyone. Well, I do have an abnormally high Soul stat, and a skill for using my Qi, so it probably isn’t this drastic for everyone. That thought felt good. He was special. Excellent, even. Danny had been one of the more able kids in his class, but he always struggled with paying attention to the subjects that he wasn’t interested in. Maybe he was “smart” in terms of how easily school came to him, but he was more than a little forgetful and disorganized. Daydreaming, a strength of his, was not the most conducive to classroom success.

  Collecting energy from the atmosphere like he was a magic vacuum cleaner on the other hand, that was a different story. Finally, Danny found something where he was both talented and actually enjoyed doing the thing in the first place. He hoped that, even as he progressed, there would still be that contentment that came with cultivating. Washing himself off, Danny thoughtlessly lived in the moment. The guilt and pain of the battle with the Dreadwolves seemed so far away. He was at peace. I wish it would always be like this. The pleasantness soon faded. The thought of Indy, still struggling to stand, and the dangers that were sure to come after the Tutorial began to weigh on him once again. Figures, he thought, nothing good lasts forever.

  After he made it back to camp, Danny was greeted by a limping orange fox. He thought about chastising the fox for forcing itself to move around, but instead he just scratched him behind the ears. He probably wouldn’t understand anyway. Besides, the extent to which he limped around was worrisome. Left hind leg raised, never touching the ground, the fox hobbled back to its resting place at the foot of the tent. Indy didn’t blame Danny, and that made it all the more heart-breaking. If anything, the fox seemed grateful to Danny when he brought it food or water. That only added to his guilt. And his determination.

  Before Danny knew it, there was only a week left before the Tutorial ended. In celebration of this, a countdown appeared in the upper right corner of his vision, [7d 23hr 59min 59sec], in red. He spent the bulk of his days in a crazed rush to fit in as many base stat boosts as he could. The Pillars began to lose their luster and, before long, they were completely inoperable. At night, Danny would cultivate using the newly unlocked second section of his Gentle Body, Heavenly Soul. It was… less than comfortable. Actually, it was akin to a simultaneous wringing out of every fiber of his being mixed with his insides being lit on fire. Danny felt like a sponge being squeezed in the depths of Hell. For the first time, Danny was dreading his cultivation sessions.

  The second stage was called Condensation; the stage involved reinforcing one’s body with Qi. The painful process ate up his Qi reserves like nothing he had seen before. Thankfully, that meant that the sessions were short. Ash had her own training regiment that she tended to out in the woods under the supervision of Aspen. He hoped she was doing alright. The direwolf was detached lately. Indy was still confined to rest, but he was still up to his usual shenanigans: sneaking up behind people, hiding in the trees, and begging for food every time Danny ate. Unfortunately, his hind leg never healed properly and the fox had a constant limp. Every time Danny saw him, the fox reminded Danny of the time when he was too weak and inexperienced to protect him.

  But the clock ticked down and down. Inventory was taken. Supplies were distributed and redistributed until Aspen was satisfied that it all met the System’s guidelines. Finally, with merely half an hour left on the countdown, Aspen found Danny at his log, his new favorite cultivation spot.

  “We need to talk.” He said.