Chapter 13: Chapter 13: Stunned

Mila

Had Mila not been wearing her magical underwear, which had reacted automatically to create a shield, she would have at least lost teeth, if not outright had her jaw broken. In fact, given his superhuman strength, and her lack of reaction, she could have possibly even died.

Mila had thought he might get angry. Despite what they’d gone through in the last couple hours, things were not back to how they were before she’d run away and he’d found out their entire relationship had been built on a lie. But Aalam’s anger in her memories usually consisted of quiet grumbling, at worst occasionally screaming in impotent rage when lives were on the line and politicians were being politicians.

He’d never hit her before, or anyone for that matter.

Then, to her further shock, after almost killing her, Aalam’s reaction wasn’t to say sorry, or to yell at her, or to even acknowledge what he’d done in any way. He just walked over to the alchemy section of the room and started to work while Mila stood there, mind blank.

 

Law Egg gained - Obfuscation

 

Congratulations!

You are the fourth to gain a Law Egg of anyone from Earth.

All stats +3

 

Your soul is affected by your understanding of Law.

Agility + 2, Perception + 2, Magic +4, Spirit +2, Soul +2

 

It took a full minute for Mila to come back to herself and, not knowing what to do, she went to the teleportation room and teleported to the amphitheater. Then she asked one of the puppets there for directions and went to find one of the combined training rooms with the Dao finding enhancement.

She didn’t understand how the enhancement worked, but something about Aalam’s crafting room had helped her gain her first Law Egg.

She didn’t really care, though. Mainly, she just wanted to hit something.

* * *

The room was large, an underground rectangle about the size of a football field, and she’d needed to use an elevator to get down to it, so she wasn’t exactly sure how deep it was, but, given she was apparently a soul and the city obviously wasn’t on a planet and instead either in some kind of pocket dimension or a virtual space, it didn’t really matter.

 

Welcome to Training Room 0003.

This room costs 48 Trial Points per hour.

Cost waved as you are the owner.

 

This training room has two modes:

Self Service - No extra charge

Puppet Assistance:  An Amphitheater puppet will guide you in how to use the room - 2 Trial Points per hour (Recommended for first time users)

Spirit Assistance: One of 48 spirits of fallen warriors will instruct you personally - 12 Trial Points per hour

Costs waved as you are the owner

You are reading story Shadow of the Soul King at novel35.com

 

Mila was about to select Puppet Assistance, as she didn’t know how to use the room but also didn’t want to talk to someone sentient, but then she realized she wasn’t alone.

She wasn’t sure how long the woman had been there, as she was really off her game at the moment, but she wasn’t stupid enough to not guess who the woman was.

Standing by the far wall of the room, right in Mila’s line of sight since entering, the Yin Yang Sage looked like a 90-plus-year-old caucasian grandmother, tiny and wearing a simple attire of beige sweater, black pants, and forest green vest—though oddly no shoes. She was  also holding a wooden cane in both hands, seemingly using it to keep herself steady.

“Instead of choosing a fallen D rank warrior as an instructor, would I do instead, child?”

Mila’s training immediately kicked in and she bowed slightly. “I would be honored, benefactor.”

“Ah.” The sage sighed. “I’d wanted to talk to you when you were off balance from the boy hitting you, but it seems I underestimated your level of brainwashing.”

“Brainwashing?”

“You were trained to be a spy, child. It’s not like that training was so you could hide your own secrets. Of course that would be considered brainwashing, just not of the magical kind.”

So, there was magical brainwashing. Mila didn’t like the sound of that. Also, it was pretty obvious the sage wanted to be perceived as someone honest, which was interesting. Being viewed as someone manipulative was already a foregone conclusion, given her actions so far, but the woman was playing into that role way more than she would if she was just trying to gain information.

“So, should we start the lesson?” Mila decided it would be better not to drive the conversation herself and the sage smiled at her.

“Ah, that type of tactic. Ok.” The woman tapped the floor of the room with her cane. “Have you seen the movie Star Wars?”

Five floating orb-shaped robots, looking like the one Obi-Wan used to train Luke in Episode IV, appeared and floated over to Mila.

“Don’t get hit.” The sage smiled at her as all five robots started shooting red bursts of energy her way, getting faster and faster as she dodged.

“This is actually one of the best types of training, especially for you.” The sage’s voice was calm and somehow carried throughout the room, despite the noise of the robots’ shooting. “Agility boosts your movement and Spirit your thinking speed and thus your reaction time, while Perception, Soul, and Aura all boost your spatial awareness.

“For someone with your skillset, I’d recommend Agility and Perception as your primary stats, with Endurance and Spirit as close secondaries. You won’t want to skirt on the Magic stat as well, but sustainable burst and faster thinking speed will do you better than more powerful spells if you are going to be relying on empowering artifacts.

“You’ll of course want to raise Aura, Attunement, and Luck as high as possible, but for the other stats you can just keep the ratios you found when you were first assigning your stats at the start of the tutorial.”

Mila got hit by one of the beams in the shoulder, causing her muscles to spasm and allowing four more beams to hit her, forcing her to fall to the ground as if she was having an epileptic fit.

“You probably don’t know this yet, but almost no classes will give you the Aura, Attunement, or Luck stats and, other than the first assignment for soulforms, no free stats can be given to the Luck stat unless all the other stats are at their maximum.” The sage raised her hand and the hovering robots, which had all still been shooting at Mila while she was down, backed off, allowing the effects of the blasts to wear off.

“Now let’s go again, but this time I want you to focus on how your energy flows in your body. You’ve been naturally using qi and psyforce your entire life, so only mana is new, and, as a soulform without an actual body, the movement of these three energy types should be easier for you to sense than normal.

“You’re trying to be an artifact specialist, yet, when the going got tough just now, you unconsciously stopped the flow of energy to the very artifacts which could have protected you. One of those blasts should barely have gotten through your dress, let alone the shield of your pendant, and you even have an Epic artifact there which can transform into anything you want.”

The hovering robots started up again and Mila decided to ignore how focusing on the training would almost certainly distract her from whatever the sage wanted to find out. Instead, she focused inward, and, as the sage had indicated, she could feel energy flowing through her body as she dodged.

There were three independent flows. One was centered around just below her navel, the location of her lower dantian, and the energy flowed along her blood vessels throughout her body. The second was focused about two cm behind her glabella, the part of her forehead just above and between her eyebrows, the location of her upper dantian, the energy flowing through her brain and then throughout her body following the path of her nervous system. Then, finally, the third was focused around the center of her upper chest between her lungs, and it was a mess, moving around and trying to connect with the artifacts she was wearing, but not flowing smoothly and not following an efficient path through the energy channels she could slightly sense within her body.

There seemed to be more energy channels designed for qi than she was using, but only by about 30%, and her flow was quite efficient. She seemed to be using a bit more than 60% of her psyforce energy channels, and this flow seemed like it had more room for improvement. But for the energy channels which seemed to be designed for mana, she was only using about 20%, and the flow was horrendous.

Honestly, she was surprised just how much detail she could get, as usually that type of thing was a lot harder in novels.

As was typical in novels, however, her surprise at her new discovery caused her to become slightly distracted and, not having managed to reactivate her artifacts yet, she got hit again, this time on her left thigh, and she was then quickly hit multiple times, almost everywhere but her face.

“So,” the Yin Yang Sage asked conversationally as Mila twitched on the floor. “Are you in love with your boyfriend?”

---

---