Chapter 13: Chapter 13: Enough is Hu-nough

Chapter 13: Enough is Hu-nough

 

Since Nara had decided to become an adventurer, the crafting compound set into action to teach her the fundamentals of adventuring.

In the mornings, Nara would train with Laius to do parkour. To “move like an adventurer”, according to Laius. She had new peak-human reflexes, durability, speed, and strength, and had to be taught to take advantage of her enhanced attributes. At iron rank, Nara had been elevated to the height of what humanity could accomplish. Her physique and mind were all magically maintained at their optimal performances. At bronze rank, she would become superhuman. It was silver rank however, that essence users became demonstrably ‘monstrous’. Each subsequent rank up had increasingly large jumps in power, a concept commonly known in Erras as “the tyranny of rank.”

The obstacles in the background became increasingly complex and massive as time went on, and she learned to integrate her Cosmic Path ability to execute incredible leaps, shoot horizontally through tubes, and weave through obstacles.

As she did, Laius and Chrome would launch small rocks at her, and she practiced either Phase Shifting through the projectile, or deflecting it with Nirvana in its sword or staff form. More often than not, she’d trip up, and a small rock would whack into her face, or she’d plummet from the obstacle she had currently been balancing atop.

The path of adventurer advancement consisted of three core principles – a cycle of training, combat, and meditation. Combat was needed to put into practice and refine ability use from training, and meditation was important to consolidate the gains of combat experience.

While Laius focused on training her reflexes and speed, Chelsea’s duty was to train her mind. She prepared a variety of mental exercises, not unlike those of Earth. Solving puzzles, playing memory games, completing logic puzzles, and other activities had been taught to Nara. As she repeated these activities over the course of weeks, she could feel her memory and awareness sharpen.

With her enhanced attributes, Nara felt that she was learning noticeably faster. Although she initially lacked coordination, and reflexes, they improved far quicker than her paltry attempts on Earth to improve her FPS twitch reactions.

Needless to say, she had settled for cooperative shooters then. Rock and Stone!

Laius also served as her coach in aura control. From him, she learned to project her aura out, increasing its strength and domain. Retract and regulate it, making it harder to detect and read. Those of a higher rank than her could read her emotions from her aura, as Sen had mentioned himself. Nara had no doubt that the members of the crafting compound were aware of the emotions of anxiety and fear she thought she kept hidden away.

Additionally, she learned to consciously control her ability to ‘mist’ her aura, allowing her to spread her awareness over a wide area without others knowing she had done so. Nara would make a trip into Sanshi, and she could take in the action of a city, tune her awareness to specific conversations a great distance away, and individually track targets in the periphery of her mind. While doing so however, her body was left vulnerable, as her attention would be too diluted to react to quick threats.

Laius would also lightly suppress her aura, and she learned to push back and reduce the effect.

“Not uncomfortable?” Laius had asked her after doing so.

“No?”

“Usually, aura suppression leaves you feeling very vulnerable.” Chrome was far more experienced than Nara in the field of aura control, and could easily explain what Laius meant. “The aura is a projection of the soul, and feeling it unwillingly suppressed is highly uncomfortable.”

Well, Nara thought, she had been far more uncomfortable when her soul was snatched and attacked. Laius’ own suppression had been refined and intentionally delicate.

With Laius’ aura control lessons, Nara had made progress on her directed soul speak. By weaving her aura into ‘channels’, she could communicate her thoughts with just her soul to another person. Using that channel, others could respond to her communication. If they wanted, they could also reject that connection. She could not force her thoughts directly into another’s soul.

Chrome was proficient at the technique and could easily communicate back and forth with Nara without voicing a word of sound. As she was, Nara could only maintain one channel of soul-speak at any given time. Chrome explained to her that as she ranked up, she would be able to multitask more effectively, and would be able to expand her aura capabilities. The rank up would similarly benefit her Aura Mist technique, and her body would not be so vulnerable.

Nara demonstrated her nascent soul-speak technique to Redell. Learning by experience was often the most effective teaching method, and Redell managed to pick up the technique himself. He subsequently tried to integrate music into his soul-speak, but only managed to do so with singing, humming, or channeling the memory of a song. For now, active performance and music transmission was out of reach.

Amara, Laius, and Chrome were her combat teachers and sparring partners. Despite Amara and Laius being vastly more powerful than her, they had perfect control over their own strength and speed and never injured her significantly. Just scrapes and bruises from being tossed, flicked, or flipped over.

They practiced with magic wooden swords that reduced damage done to zero and inflicted a stun effect instead. She focused on her swordplay. At first, her techniques ripped from the skill book were disjointed and awkward. Nara would attempt to transition from one to another, and would fall into tangled positions and topple to the ground. As her practice continued, her style consolidated into a straightforward aggressive approach. Since she could Phase Shift, make her sword incorporeal, teleport, or deflect attacks, Nara could push forward and rapidly strike. She utilized crafty position mix ups with her teleportation, and could phase shift through enemies and their own weapons to attack from unexpected positions. Her variety of combat responses kept her opponent guessing her next move, and she had no inherent need to overcomplicate her style, instead focusing on raw power and speed to maximize damage and affliction escalation.

Should her sparring partner be anyone than Laius and Amara, of course. They were always able to react to her attacks, but would point out which tactics would fare well against more evenly matched opponents. Chrome was at her rank, but even he was an expert with his dual-sword style, having trained for over a well beyond a millennia. Regardless, she continued to spar with them, and would receive a bonk on the head, stunning her, when she made mistakes.

While she focused mainly on her sword technique, Nara worked on her technique with Nirvana’s bow form. She focused on strafing and hitting targets, as well as using nodes to warp her arrows around a field. At range, she could not benefit from Astral return unless she phased through an attack. Teleportation would not activate the benefits of phase shift, as she would not have taken damage on account of not existing at that position. Nevertheless, her bow would have a place over the course of the battle, should the frontline become too chaotic, or the pressure on her too intense.

Her staff’s use was more niche. Often, she would use it in parkour training when the rocks launched at her were too much for her sword to deflect alone. She would spin the staff in her hand, knocking away the rocks they sent flying in her direction.

Finally, there was meditation training. Laius would lead her in stationary meditation, emptying her mind and consolidating the improvements she made in training. Amara demonstrated an active meditation technique, name River Sword Dance. She handed her a recording crystal. As the recorded on it played back, she followed Amara in a meditative sword form. It reminded Nara of Tai Chi from Earth, but it was preformed much faster and more akin to a dance. Gradually, she would enter a trance-like state, and Nara and Amara looked as if they were performing a sword routine together.

 

While all of this training was new and useful to Nara, she needed to fight monsters to make significant progress. She formulated and plan of action, and after receiving approval from the group, set out with Chrome into the city to enact it. As long as Chrome was subsumed with her, she could take him along in her Astral Jump.

“The plan is thus: offer my services of looting to students at the Sanshi Adventurer’s Academy in exchange for real life coaching against iron rank monsters.”

The crafting complex had set up a meeting later that day with Nara with a relevant school official. It was not uncommon for other students with loot abilities to offer similar services. Sometimes, it strictly in exchange for spirit coins, which was often the case for auxiliary adventurers. But others organized arrangements like Nara’s own.

In addition to the Prep Academy, the other preeminent training institution in Sanshi was the Adventurer’s academy, for those who had already received their essences and were instead training to pass their Adventurer’s Academy certification. Students often stayed at the Academy even after they had done so, since the Academy provided various useful resources such as party matching, mirage chambers, sparring meets, awakening stone exchange, portal services, and classes on aura control, monster combat, and ritual magic. The Adventurer’s Guide was closely entwined with the services of the Academy, and the local branch extremely close to campus for those that had passed the certification and could accept contracts.

The close cooperative relationship between government and Adventurer’s Guild was a unique feature of Sanshi. In other parts of the world, the Adventurer’s Guild was strictly a monster hunting organization, dedicated to the protection of lives regardless of the political standing of the country.

The Adventure Society would not abandon people just because they lived in a dictatorship or infamous criminal country. It was this political neutrality that guaranteed their ubiquitous presence around the globe. The Adventurer Society charter could be negotiated by each individual city or country, to determine their scope and influence.

Generally, however, all cities wanted an Adventurer Society branch. The Adventurer Society’s expertise in fending off decennial monster waves, invasions, and other instances of crisis was a service that few countries were willing to forego.

Save perhaps, Nekroz. The land of the far north, the territory of vampires, and the realm of the Church of Undead and the Gods of Discord.

 

 

Lee Hu was standing outside the entrance to the Sanshi Adventurer’s Academy. He was a bronze rank staff member in charge of talent scouting and organizing specific contracts for hopefuls with unusual circumstances. Early that morning, he had been told of an outsider hoping for on-hands monster hunting experience in exchange for access to her looting abilities – something that was not unusual for those lucky enough to gain such an ability.

He saw a young woman approaching the entrance to the school. The first thing he noticed was her unusually indistinct aura, as well as a refined aura control unusual for a new essence user. He had been told that the woman had only become iron rank three weeks ago.

Lee’s perception was then drawn to a black teardrop earring on her right ear. It possessed a presence of its own, almost more so than the woman herself. It floated freely beneath her ear, entirely detached from the natural forces of the world, never swaying from the wind, and only influenced by the woman’s own movement.

The woman’s face had a natural refinement to it. It was calm and harmonic with her surroundings, as if her surroundings shaped themselves to compliment her. Her human beauty and appeal were mostly subtle compared to the more outstanding hair and eye colors of other races such as celestines and runics. Her brown hair was cut short in a pixie cut that served to accentuate her ethereal presence, and he felt a loss as to disturb her. With another rank up into bronze, he felt that those attracted to her may simply be too afraid to approach, and send her otherworldly ephemerality back to nature, with nary a shadow left behind. At iron, however, she was still an unpolished gem.

She wore well-tailored, simple but high-quality clothes in a modest Sanshi style. Her robe transitioned from a soft green to a dark blue, with silver embroidery depicting a moon reflected in a lake beneath a bamboo forest.

Belatedly, he read from her aura that she wasn’t a human, but rather an outworlder. Lee Hu specialized in aura detection. Race was not a trait that bronze rankers could ordinarily detect, but he had learned to do so. Despite his rank advantage, he could not detect any emotions from her. He surmised that her outworlder situation was the crux of her unusual circumstances.

Gathering his thoughts, he walked forward to meet her in her path.

 

 

While Chrome was subsumed within Nara, she found out that she could use still soul speak to communicate with him.

<That’s him, right?>  Nara scanned forward and saw a formally dressed man with a Sanshi Academy Badge pinned to his chest. He had handsome academic features, and slender phoenix eyes. He held himself with an aura of confidence and subtle nobility.

<Who else?> Chrome responded, and she sensed him roll his eyes. <There’s no one else it could be.>

<Here goes nothing.>

“Mr. Lee Hu?” Nara said to the man as they met in their paths.

“And Miss Edea?” He responded.

“Nara is fine.”

“In turn, Lee is fine as well.”

As he turned back towards the academy and led them towards one of the Academy’s office buildings, he asked her a few questions.

“I have been told you would like to receive hands-on monster hunting experience in exchange for access to your looting abilities. Is this correct?”

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“Yes.”

He handed a carved jade token to her. “This is an Academy access token. With it, you will be able to access Academy services. Feel free to join open lectures or sign up for specific classes and services.”

“That’s very generous.”

“Our Academy prides itself on access to a wide range of services. Looting abilities, when possible, are included.”

“What do Hu- ahem, you all gain from this?”

“Students who undertake contracts while enrolled pay a percentage of their proceeds back to the academy. Similarly, utilizing looting services earns us a small percentage of the loot. Students can similarly sell unneeded essences, equipment, materials, and awakening stones back to the academy. We usually offer satisfactory prices for these items. While students may be able to earn more spirit coins from an auction, we provide preferential services in turn for their generosity.”

“Such as looting services.”

“Just so, among other perks. Would you like to move to a more private location to discuss specific terms?”

“It’s nice outside. I’d like to keep walking if possible.” Nara greatly appreciated the tailored campus and stylized buildings of the academy.

“Very well.” Lee Hu tapped his fingers to small silver pin on his chest, “I’ve activated a privacy screen, so feel free to speak freely.”

Nara felt magic envelop the two of them in a bubble. She presumed that the device was commonly used to maintain privacy in public settings, but she wasn’t afraid of a lack of privacy for this particular meeting.

“I have here a preliminary contract.” Lee Hu pulled a paper from a satchel he carried and handed it to her. He began to explain the details of the contract.

“Your looting services will be offered to those with preferential priority first.”

Nara nodded, having understood this stipulation from earlier in the conversation.

“You are welcome to undertake as many or as few looting contracts as you please. You are not required to pay a percentage of your loot to the academy, although we will offer similar preferential treatment for other services should you choose to sell valued items to us. You additionally receive contribution points proportional to the length of each expedition you participate in. Unwanted loot can be traded for additional contribution points if you so choose. You won’t always need training against monsters after all, and we want to provide incentives for continued services. You cannot trade these points for essences as you have your full set but can purchase a litany of other goods.”

After seeing her nod in understanding, Lee continued. “After the priority queue, you are welcome to select from any group expedition posted in the Expedition Hall.” He gestured to a grand building with a clearing out front, where armed student groups mingled. “Expedition groups have their own timeframe, so please allow for at least 8 hours in advance for notification.”

“Should any groups have any untoward conduct, you are welcome to abandon the group whenever and report them to the academy. We will have the instance investigated, and the group blacklisted.”

“The whole group?”

“The system keeps party members accountable for the actions of their team members. If you feel uncomfortable, we will send an official to join you on expeditions. Mostly there will not be any incidents, but new essence users can be prone to feeling powerful and prideful.”

“That’s reassuring and generous.”

“The official will also receive loot. It’s actually preferred.”

They walked onwards across a crystal bridge over a slow-moving stream.

“Are these terms acceptable?”

“They are.”

“Very well. Please look over and sign the document when you are ready. You are welcome to withdraw from the academy at any time, and rescind your looting services, should you choose to do so.”

Nara created an upright desk from her astral domain and signed the document on it with the writing implement provided. She channeled magic through the pen and drew a signature of blue magic. She handed the pen and document back to Lee.

“The contract is complete. Here are materials related to the academy’s services.” Lee handed Nara a booklet and a simple map.

[Map: Sanshi Adventurer’s Academy added to the Archive.]

[Guide: Sanshi Adventurer’s Academy Classes and Services 6223 added to the Archive.]

From the Guide, she presumed 6223 to be the year in Erras.

“The Classes and Services Registration Building is just ahead. Recurring courses you only need to register for once. Open classes do not require registration. Specialty classes must be registered for each time, and you may only register for up to four at a time. At the end of the year, return to this building to receive a new guide.”

“Please insert some of your aura into your token. It will register your aura signature. You can use the token to use services for valuables safekeeping, should you not have an inventory. However, it appears that this particular service is not needed.” He glanced at where the upright desk had once been, now vanished. “Additionally, you may use the token to access on campus accommodations, should you require them.”

As he mentioned, Nara did so, and guided some of her aura to imprint onto the token.

He pointed out a building on the map Nara had received. “This is the Accommodations Office. You may organize for temporary or long-term accommodations. Should you need long-term accommodations, the academy will charge spirit coins. For a temporary stay of less than three days, the accommodations are free of charge. Room stays while out on a looting contract are additionally free of charge. The Accommodations Office can also recommend off campus alternatives, if that is your preference.”

He pointed to a final location on the map. “This is the Communications Office. Should you wish to send messages to specific individuals, you may organize it here. On campus communication or communication to students and staff are free of charge. If you have any additional questions or concerns, feel free to contact me at this location.”

“If it is convenient for you, please meet me in two days at the at the Expedition Hall at 8 am. We will proceed with a student group for ability verification.”

“That works for me.”

“Then, our business is concluded here.” Lee offered Nara the customary Sanshi greeting, then tapped off his privacy screen.

Nara returned his gesture, “In two days.”

 

After he had left, Chrome manifested beside Nara.

“You really restrained yourself admirably, didn’t you. You may as well get it out of your system now.”

Feigning tears, Nara responded, “I’ve been such a strong girl for stopping myself from making Hu puns.”

“About Hu?” Chrome said, playing along.

“Just now, Hu. I’ll Lee-d the way.”

Gritting his teeth in apparent pain, Chrome responded, “Surely there’s no need to Hu-ad for such an action.”

“Hu’s too far. Might as well let bygones Lee bygones.”

“It is about time to Lee-t him go. You sure Hu-eld onto him.” Chrome sighed. “Enough?”

“Yeah. Hu-nough.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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