Chapter 44: Chapter 44: What Hugrs May Come

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

What Hugrs May Come

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“Wake up!” Divah yelled into my ear.

“I-I’m up!” I lied.

The meditation practice was so freaking boring that I dozed off while in the lotus position. To be fair, it was also a sunny afternoon with a light breeze passing through the open windows and the sounds of nearby cicadas for background music—these were the perfect conditions for an afternoon nap.

“Um”—I rubbed the sleep from my eyes—“is all this meditating really going to help me learn magic?”

Sitting next to me, Divah frowned. “Have I ever lied to you before?”

“Loads of times,” I answered.

I ducked to avoid the palm swing meant to smack me in the back of the head.

“Oho.” One of her eyebrows twitched upward. “Did you finally master Danger Sense?”

“Nope. This is just muscle memory.” I shrugged. “Anyone can dodge that if you keep hitting me enough times.”

“Cheeky little brat…” My master looked more pleased than annoyed though. Probably why she ruffled my hair next. “Come on. Try again.”

“Okay, okay…” I sighed.

I couldn’t dodge that second slap to the back of my head. Luckily, it was a pretty mild one.

“You’re only eleven. That’s too young to sound like a delinquent,” Divah snapped.

I let out another heavy sigh before proceeding to shut my eyes once more. My master wanted me to feel for that spark of magic she claimed existed deep inside of me. But the thing is, we’d been at this for nearly an hour and I still couldn’t find the damn thing.

A minute of failing later, I asked, “Master… what if I don’t have magic in me?”

Divah replied with a question of her own. “How many times have you regressed so far?”

“Does the first-time count?”

“Duh.”

“Three times then… That last one was your fault by the way.”

“S-stop griping about what’s past…”

It was nice to know that even the dragoness got flustered sometimes.

“You’ve come back to life three times, and you think there’s no magic inside of you?”

My master had a point. I wouldn’t have inherited Extra Life if I was just a normal person with zero potential for the arcane arts.

“Now shush, and focus. You can do this, kiddo.”

In an attempt to help grasp the idea of this so-called spark, I felt Divah’s hand grasp my shoulder. A moment later, a jolt similar to the static people sometimes felt from accidental skin contact surged into my arm.

“Do you feel that?”

“Yes…”

Surprisingly, the sensation of Divah pouring a trickle of magic into me hadn’t stung. It was more like that feeling of having a eucalyptus ointment rubbed over my skin. And, as I became familiar with the sensation on my shoulder, I began to notice that similar feeling in some other part of my body.

“Master…” Finally, I sensed a soothing vibration in the spot just underneath my heart right where the solar plexus would be. “I think I found something.”

This cluster of vibrations at the base of my chest seemed more intangible rather than those solid-looking glowing magical orbs I read about in those comic books Divah sometimes shared with me. In my mind’s eye, I imagined wisps of vapor knotted together like a ball of flimsy yarn.

“You’ve found your middle magic field, the cauldron or core that refines inner vitality into magical energy.” Divah sounded pleased. “Familiarize yourself with its rhythm and you’ll quickly discover the other two sources of magic within you too.”

Understanding that ‘pulse’ I felt in the base of my chest did make it easier to find a similar pulsing in a spot directly above the place Divah called my perineum.

“Also called the golden stove, the lower magic field is where external energy that enters a person’s body is absorbed into one’s essence and then refined into inner vitality, which is the root of magical power,” she explained. “Two down. One to go.”

Finding that final pulsing in the spot between my eyebrows was easy enough once I’d gotten used to the rhythm of the other two. Divah called this the upper magic field. Its purpose, according to my master, was to harmonize the magical energy a person stored and refined within themselves, allowing practitioners to use this power as fuel for spellcraft, martial arts, and other similar arcane practices.

“What other practices are we talking about here?” I asked.

“Stuff eleven-year-old kids aren’t allowed to know yet.” Divah ruffled my hair. “Now that you’ve found all three magical cores existing within you, it’s time for you to activate them.”

Divah explained that the first step to ‘magical me’ was visualization. To imagine the magical pathways within me like the roots and branches of a great tree running from the top of my head through my body and down to the bottom of my feet. It took me a while, but I eventually saw this very shape within my mind’s eye.

“Place your hands over your lower magical field, which is about two fingers below your belly button,” she instructed.

As my master taught me, I plucked at the magical vibrations within my lower magic field while imagining myself strumming a guitar. Sure enough, something like a note sprung forth from that core like a wispy string unknotting itself.

“Now, as you attempt to attach these strands of energy to your middle magic field, thereby creating the magical circuitry that will weave throughout the body like blood veins, don’t forget to inhale and draw the breath into your lower magic field.”

I continued to pluck at those magical vibrations as if I’d begun to play a tune within my body. And, as this rhythm grew, my lower magic field also expanded. Like a fire coming to life below my belly and rising upward, sending those wispy strings of energy to climb up to my innards. They spread out to my organs and my bones, wrapping around them like the roots of the great tree I envisioned.

“Ugh…” I gasped.

Pain, unlike anything I’d ever felt before, exploded into my chest. My breathing turned ragged while these wispy strings of energy began to entangle themselves into the knot of vibrations at the base of my chest.

“Keep breathing, kiddo!” Divah urged. “And don’t fight it. Let these two energies weave together as they were meant to.”

Despite the pain in my chest, my middle magic field also began to expand. Its strings of vibrations began to unknot themselves too as if dancing to the tune I’d been playing deep inside of me. These wispy vapors wrapped around my heart and lungs, and then surged into my veins to spread to the tips of my fingers and toes and then up to my brain where the upper magic field was waiting.

“Argh!”

I coughed out blood while feeling like I was burning from the inside out—but Divah told me not to give up.

‘You lose consciousness now and you will die again!”

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“I can’t…” I could feel the blood dripping down my nose. “I… ugh!”

“Control it. Don’t let it control you!” she urged in such a confident tone that I couldn’t help wanting to prove her right.

I sent that rhythm surging into my upper magic field and pushed the magical energy into the space between my brows, which seemed to my mind’s eye like an empty container waiting to be filled—and that’s literally when the magic happened.

“Ya~~ah!” I screamed.

With all three magical cores activated, I felt the magic, the power, crackling through my veins and traveling into every cell of my body like a shock—and it felt amazing! Painful, sure, but amazing too. As if my body were reshaping itself to accommodate this newfound power that I’d just awoken inside of me.

“By the dragon mother’s breath”—Divah sounded very excited—“you didn’t just awaken your magic, kiddo, you’ve also achieved the first stage of body transformation too!”

Even opening my eyes was painful as I could feel something thick and sticky oozing out from the corner of my eyes. Still, despite my blurry vision, I could see the pride filling Divah’s face.

“Body…what?” I asked groggily.

“You’ve achieved the first stage of body transformation, which is the act of cleansing one’s body of all impurities, opening its potential for further growth while ensuring a healthy constitution.”

Then Divah pinched her nose with her palm and forefinger.

“It’s also why you stink like a wereboar that’s been rolling in a pile of unicorn shit.”

I glanced down and noticed my shirt was soaked in icky dark goo, and there was a stink wafting out of me. “Eugh.”

I attempted to get up—because I seriously needed a bath—but I stumbled in the process and fell to my knees.

“I-I don’t feel so good… My head hurts. Badly.”

“Well, of course, you don’t feel good. You’ve just awakened your inner magic, undergone first-stage body transformation, and had your head recalibrated by the Grendel’s fist,” Divah enumerated.

“Yeah, that does seem like…” My gaze drifted over to my master’s face which had suddenly become blurrier. “…What did you just say about… Grendel?”

The vision of Divah that was beginning to disappear smiled at me. “Time to wake up, Will. Or you might die again.”

My master rarely called me Will. Usually only on my birthdays.

“What are you—”

“Wake up!” Divah yelled.

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The pain in my head subsided just long enough for me to remember what had happened to me.

I’d had a vision about a white wolf and Liara Lockwood, which I assumed had been a visit from a fylgja. Although the purpose of this spiritual guide’s visit eluded me. Immediately after that weird-ass vision, I was attacked by something that shouldn’t have appeared outside the dungeon’s innermost depths—the monster at the heart of Grendel’s Grotto.

As I crawled to my knees on the craggy ground, I recalled how the Grendel had slammed me into the wall and cracked the back of my head against the rock.

“Ugh…” I groaned. “Bastard hit me so hard I got swept up in a hugr…”

Hugr was the term we used for an out-of-body experience like astral projection or memory walking, which is what I assumed I just experienced because I had no other explanation for that extremely vivid and very painful dream. Hugrs didn't follow the flow of regular time either as I'd heard that some hugr events could last for days in the mind but be no more than a blink of an eye in real time. As for why my hugr sent me back to that specific day of enlightenment, well, I assumed it had something to do with the thing breathing heavily somewhere to the right of me.

I glanced sideways and grimaced. “Gods… you’re a real monster, aren’t you?”

A creature resembling a man was standing a few feet away from where I lay. Well, calling him a man might have been a stretch as this failure of humanity was even bigger than Master Doomsday. It was maybe ten feet tall with muscles bulging on top of more muscles and dark scales covering most of its body.

The Grendel bared sharp fangs at me.

“So, if I’d failed to awaken my magic properly, I would look like you?”

Not that I could tell what it looked like as most of the monster’s face apart from its wide mouth and yellow reptilian eyes were veiled in shadow.

“I mean, I assume you’d taken body transformation to the extreme to turn—”

I half-hoped this cautionary tale would respond to my attempts at banter and give me a moment or two to catch my breath, but the Grendel wasn’t the talkative type. It pounced on me—its fist smashing the ground my body was in just a second ago. Luckily, I had rolled away to avoid that hit that would have done more than temporarily smack my soul out of my body for a second time.

The Grendel let loose an angry roar, and anyone else might have lost their nerve and stopped moving, but I was made of sterner stuff. I leaped away from the monster chasing after me and plucked the two halves of my glaive from the ground.

“Sonofa…” I remembered how the Grendel had snapped my glaive in two when I’d moved to attack it that first time. “This birthday gift only lasted a week?!”

Brute strength enough to break a wooden handle that’s been reinforced by blood steel meant this human-turned-monster was much higher leveled than the crappy dungeon the masters kept it locked in. Seriously, not even the blue-eyed emissary’s human form had been this strong, and I couldn’t solo him either.

While I ran around the cavern to avoid the Grendel’s reach, I willed my magic into the tips of my fingers. A cool, bluish light flared out of my palm and reordered itself into that circular arcane array that blazed to life in the space between the two halves of my glaive.

“Come on, Reversion… fix my birthday present for me.”

The repair wasn’t perfect as my magic still wasn’t strong enough for this bit of chronomancy, but I did manage to make my glaive whole again, and at just the right moment too. Claws the size of kitchen knives streaked toward my side, and I just barely managed to parry them with my glaive’s blade. Unfortunately, the weapon now had lowered durability, and I was afraid a few more hard hits like the previous one would destroy it for good.

Still, I wasn’t about to let the Grendel just kill me. I’d had enough of dying this weekend, thanks.

“Spirits of flame, lend me your will of fire…” I brandished my glaive forward to keep the monster at bay. “Breathe life into my blade so my foes can taste my all-consuming ire!”

Flames licked to life at the edge of my glaive’s blade, turning it into a white-hot tool of death.

“Time to end this!” I roared.

Yep, it was a pretty cool catchphrase but it was also the situational kind of slogan that made one look silly for not ending the fight with that next move. All my Elemental Weapon could do was cut two of the claws of the hand that came swiping at my face. More importantly, I’d committed to the attack, which is why I couldn’t completely dodge the haymaker the Grendel sent into my right side.

Thankfully, I’d prepared my defenses beforehand. A soft blue glow spread out of my body to wrap around my gear like ghostly armor that shattered to pieces as Grendel’s fist smashed against it, sending me hurtling backward to bounce off the ground like a freaking basketball.

Now, my tier-one spell ‘Mage Armor’ may not be as flashy as Liara’s ACB, but it protected me well enough that I only broke a rib or two in that last exchange.

“I seriously need to learn a healing spell…” I groaned.

A glint of blue caught my eye, and despite the pain streaking up and down my side, I couldn’t help but grin.

By some stroke of luck, the Grendel’s haymaker had sent me barreling closer to the entrance of the tunnel where I’d first entered this godsforsaken cavern. It was also near the spot I’d dropped my backpack in my haste to save that vision of Liara from the white wolf.

I picked up the object that had slipped out of my bag and glanced down at the blue gem in my hand. “Luck be a lady tonight…”

The Grendel stalked toward me, but I was far too focused on absorbing the energy within the hamingem to pay it any mind. Luckily, the monster slowed its pace—no doubt an attempt to instill terror into its prey—giving me enough time to fully absorb the hamingem’s power.

I heard a ping from the status bar in my pocket, and I was just brazen enough to check its screen during the battle.

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