Chapter 220: 220: Obligatory Training Montage

From the records of Sigmund Velmont, Undead Hunter on the planet Korat.

The Maculat Mulieres is a horrifying creature that solely preys upon the weakest among us. Among the thinking undead, they are some of the most difficult to suss out, apart from simply poking everyone you meet with a beeswax rod.

They prefer densely populated urban areas where the disappearance of young women can go unnoticed for days, weeks, or sometimes indefinitely.

They are masters of corruption, seeking to bend their victim’s sense of right and wrong until their depravations seem normal.

When they feed, they must first agitate their victims into such a state of heightened emotions that they are incapable of rational thought. Usually this is accomplished with simple fear, but overwhelming joy, lust, and sorrow aren’t unheard of.

Until the victim is ‘broken’ in such a way, they cannot feed.

If you are ever taken by a Maculat, my love, stay as calm as you can, as long as you can. I will find you.

Once they’ve primed their prey, their lips peel back, jaw widening to a terrifying degree, revealing wickedly sharp fangs reminiscent of a dog’s and they begin to devour their victim’s flesh.

The Maculat eat the flesh, but the Death Energy of their prey is what sustains them, as evidenced by the piles of undigested bloody flesh they disgorge to rot in their dens after a meal.

Within a day of their last meal, the Maculat is already charming their way into the confidence of their next victim, driven by ceaseless hunger. They are vicious animals hiding behind a veneer of civility, and they deserve nothing less than extermination.

 

Extensive training has increased your attributes!

+11 Endurance. Endurance has reached the Body cap of 35.

+10 Strength. Strength has reached the cap Body of 35.

+11 Kinesthetics. Kinesthetics has reached the Body cap of 35.

+7 Intuition Intuition has reached the Mind cap of 45.

Meditation has reached level 45!

4 Abilities Available!

Stealth has reached Level 35!

5 Abilities Available!

Old Salt has reached level 35!

2 Abilities available!

Drafting has reached level 45!

6 Abilities available!

Chained Spirit has reached level 45!

3 Abilities available!

Abyssal Alchemy has reached level 45!

7 Abilities available

Trait Doctoring has reached level 45!

5 Abilities available!

Calvinian Summoning has reached level 45!

3 Abilities available!

Bent Manipulation Has reached level 45!

6 Abilities available!

Playboy has reached level 45!

2 Abilities available!

Beli Ma has reached level 45!

4 Abilities available!

Dupdomancy has reached level 45!

5 Abilities available!

Shifting has reached level 45!

6 Abilities available!

Sense Grafting has reached level 45!

5 Abilities available!

Genosian Language has reached level 45!

7 Abilities available!

Your Princess is in another Castle has reached level 45!

6 Abilities available!

12/34 Warp Remaining.

***Calvin****

Gods, I’m finally done, Calvin thought, sorting through the tidal wave of notifications.

Three months, Calvin had spent in the Siphon, doing nothing but working on using the Warp spewing out of it to maximize every Skill and Stat. And the entire time, there were not subjected to mutated horrors, pitched battles, or treacherous enemy states.

I thought you didn’t want to spend most of your life training, Elliot said.

I didn’t, but apparently there are creatures out there that can toy with Royals like children. We met one, remember?

Ooh, yeah.

Once Skills got above level thirty, it took over an hour to raise them by a level with Warp added to the equation. Above level forty it took a quarter of the day.

Normally they would take months or years of diligent practice, so in that sense, Calvin had a distinct advantage over his contemporaries.

Still, he was exhausted and ready to get back to people. He hadn’t even seen Learner around for weeks since she’d gotten her foundational skills to a level she was happy with.

She was a little jealous that Calvin was able to convert, store and use Warp whenever he wanted, rather than having to Break to gain it, but Calvin and Elliot had little sympathy for the immortal eldritch being that was slowly but steadily growing more powerful. Watching her pout was pretty funny, too.

He looked over all the Ability slots he’d earned over time and shook his head. That was far more Abilities than any man had a right to expect. Calvin figured that with the overabundance of Abilities, he’d be able to funnel two to four from most of them into trees that increased the effect of the Ability itself, while saving the remainders for a case-by-case basis.

For example, according to Elliot, if he took the Ability that raised Dupdomancy’s mass limit, another Ability would become available that would allow him to upgrade it to level cubed in pounds, rather than squared.

That applied to the duration, as well.

I’ll wait until I’ve got a pen and paper. I need to jot all this down and get organized.

First thing’s first: Getting back to civilization.

I could use a break. Calvin thought to himself as he headed for the exit, unsealing the rooms one at a time as he went.

He finally got past the lobby of the temple of awakening, and stepped out into the sunlight of day.

Calvin’s jaw dropped as he took in the sight.

Buildings rose above him, three stories at minimum, some tall enough to give his massive statue pause at thirty stories high. They were enormous undertakings that had to have taken years to complete without his help.

Not only their size, the state of disrepair they were in was astonishing. Some of them were crumbling, while others looked as though they’d been hollowed out by fires.

The road had been paved while he was gone, but trees already seemed to be poking out between the cobblestones as nature reclaimed his city. There wasn’t a single soul nearby, either.

What the Abyss is going on!?

Calvin spotted motion to his left, and instinctively slid a knife out of his palm.

A towering man with a ragged mane of grey hair dressed in rags lunged forward out of the ruins, grabbing Calvin by the shoulders. He didn’t seem to have any hostility, so Calvin didn’t gut him. Yet.

The man had a huge grey beard covering most of his face, but Calvin could see the hint of something he recognized behind there. Something strangely familiar.

“Calvin! It’s me, Baroke! Listen to me. You were down there for over a hundred years! you got so caught up in your training that you just forgot about everything else. There was no day or night down there, and you don’t need to eat or poop, so you lost track of time!”

He pulled Calvin into a hug.

“I’m so glad you’re still alive. We tried to get you out of there, but the Dymere Collective had taken control of the city in the late eight-sixties.” Baroke started openly weeping, patting Calvin on the back.

“Now hurry,” Baroke said, forcing Calvin to crouch low. “We’ve gotta get out of here before they send their war-birds after us.”

In the distance, Calvin heard a piercing cry as something rumbled, and a dark shape swooped over them causing the light from the sun to flicker.

“Oh, no!” Baroke said, scanning the sky with bloodshot eyes. “They’re already onto us!”

“Who is!?” Calvin demanded as they hid under an abandoned table.

The Dymere Collective! They’re a multinational merchant syndicate that took control of supply chains back in the eighty-forties. They would do anything to see you dead, because that would be the last nail in the coffin for our country. We would never be able to oppose them again!”

There was another screech, and Calvin saw a huge bird pass over, a man riding it like a guar, casting a steely gaze down at them.

Did I really stay down there a hundred years? It’s impossible. Kurawe would have told me if something was up…unless it was some kind of trickery by the Ilethans.

“Where’s Kala?”

“Kala’s in Gadvera with her husband and sixteen grandkids,” Baroke said before ducking out from behind the table and firing a swift shot at the rider.

“Take that you son of a bitch! You’ll never take us alive!” Baroke screamed defiance as his arrow perforated the rider, sending him toppling to the ground.

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“She did give me a message for you, though, if I ever saw you again.”

“Eh?”

“Dear Calvin I’ll never forget magical times that we shared, though my body is conquered by another man, sometimes multiple times a night, I’ll always keep you in my heart. Please, forget me and move on. If not for me, do it for yourself.”

Calvin’s eyes narrowed. Okay, this is pretty fucking fishy.

He switched his focus to his Tarak skin, feeling the air around him carefully.

There was an invisible person standing next to him and several more in the street…

And Baroke’s huge grey beard was showing just a tiny bit of glue where it transitioned to the rest of his face.

Without warning, Calvin reached up and seized Baroke’s beard, tearing it away from his face with one vicious yank.

“Ack!” Baroke shouted, falling to the ground and clutching his face, rolling on the ground in pain.

The enormous abandoned buildings around them shimmered away, replaced with the training yards and single story utility buildings that surrounded the temple.

The empty street lost its decrepit paving and gained hundreds of citizens, many of them watching their leader cower underneath a street vendor’s stall.

Calvin was currently hiding beneath a table full of furs, with the owner watching him curiously. Curious and a little concerned.

“I told you your message from Kala would break immersion,” A voice called from above, where he spotted Nadia floating above them, her wings fluttering lazily to keep herself blanaced.

“We could’ve had him for another five minutes, easy.”

“Screw you,” Baroke said, scratching the irritated skin on his chin as he stood up. “It was hilarious and absolutely necessary. The look on his face was priceless.”

I forgot. Illusions. Light-bending illusions weren’t something you could resist, because they didn’t actually effect you directly, simply altering the light that made it to your eyes.

Nadia must be very good at those, Calvin thought, eyeing the grinning she-devil. He remembered her ability to create curtains of invisibility, the first time they’d met.

So good in fact that she’d been able to prevent him from hearing the crowd and even muffle his Tarak senses, despite not even knowing about them.

Probably an Ability.

“You just reset the timer on that twenty years of good behavior,” Calvin said, meeting her gaze as Baroke groaned in pain, peeling off the stragglers glued to his face.

“Worth it.” Nadia said with a grin.

“I thought you hated Nadia,” Calvin asked, frowning.

“This and that are two different things. A man can put up with anything in the name of a good prank,” Baroke said.

“It wasn’t.”

“That’s debatable.”

Calvin glared at the two of them, then burst into speed-wasps and headed for his tower. He got there much faster than before, thanks to Atom Ant supercharging the wasp’s speed even further.

In a matter of minutes, he alighted on the balcony to his tower and tried to head inside, only to be tackled by Kala. The dusky princess nearly toppled him off the side of the balcony.

Calvin might be exceptionally strong, but that didn’t mean anything with nothing to grab onto. He took two steps back toward the edge before he was able to stop her momentum, his back pressed against the railing.

“You’re back!” Kala said, rubbing her cheek against him and melting.

“Have you been waiting in the tower for me the entire time?” Calvin asked, frowning. “Because that seems a little…”

“On the nose?” She asked, looking up at him.

“Wait.” She frowned. “Did you get taller?”

“Can undead even grow?” Calvin asked.

I’unna Elliot grunted with the equivalent of a shrug.

“No,” Kala said, pushing away from him and fixing her hair before clasping her hands together in front of her in the most princess-y manner possible. “Mostly I’ve been doing paperwork and dodging my father. He made me spend a month with every manner of Truth-Teller, Diviner and Soothsayer just to make sure I was really alive.”

“That sounds…stuffy.”

“I know!”

Calvin gave her his arm as they headed into the tower, ducking through the darkened portal and entering the second floor living quarters.

“Where’s Ella at?”

“She’s out hunting dinner. We are smack in the middle of the jungle, after all.”

“True,” Calvin said, nodding.

“So,” Kala said, bumping her hip against his. “We’ve got the tower all to ourselves for the next couple hours. Is there anything you’d like to do?”

Calvin eyed the princess greedily.

“I can probably think of something.”

***later***

“Sex. I was talking about sex.” Kala said, peering at him over the pile of paperwork.

Calvin blinked, glancing up from his written list of Dupdomancy Abilities.

“Oh. Why didn’t you say so?”

“I did.”

“She totally did,” Learner said from her side of the desk.

Yeah, she was 100% asking you to plow her. Elliot added.

How would you know!? I thought you were bad with people too!

I am. I was also in my forties before I was imprisoned.

“Ah, crap. I’m sorry.” Calvin made a mental note that if a woman asked you if there was anything you’d like to do, they were quite possibly discreetly offering themselves as one of the options. “I was just caught up in making sure all these Abilities get spent in an organized way.”

“I know.” Kala said, leaning on her palm. “I think it’s cute…sometimes.”

“Well, no reason we can’t planning my build more interesting.” Calvin said.

“Wait, what?”

Trait doctoring

Frequency

22/59 Bent remaining.

“So I’ve been –“ Calvin was interrupted by a yelp from Kala.

The dark-skinned princess was staring at him with wide eyes, while Learner was glancing back and forth between them, brows furrowed.

“Like I was saying –“ There was a crunching sound as Kala reflexively crushed a sheet of paper in her hand.

Calvin decided to ignore her and just keep speaking.

“I was thinking about taking Atom Ant From Calvinian Summoning and using it for Dupdomancy. I could also double drop Bulk Split and its next tier equivalent to make the Permanency ability a more viable option.”

“Atom Ant, two mass limit boosters and permanency would leave one Ability unspoken for.” Calvin read Kala the list.

Hypothetical Space Expansion: Warp the environment by an amount dictated by the skill’s mass load. Empty space is filled in with what would have been there if the space were that large.

Temperature control: Copied matter may be raised or lowered in temperature by an amount of degrees equal to Dupdomancy’s duration.

Permanent split: Duplicate objects permanently, Mass limit divided by 100. (2.25Lb) Bent-reactive materials exempt.

Atom Ant: Sacrifice Mass of summon for increase to physical attributes of summon. 1 to 1 ratio. 1 summon's worth of mass lost empowers 1 summon with double physical attributes. (Max multiplicative power equal to Dupdomancy Level)

*caution* While these objects are permanent, they are still Bent constructs and therefore not exempt from dispelling techniques, unlike normal objects. *Do Not Consume Duplicated Food, unless you want your body to be partially made of Bent Construct.*

Bulk Split: Mass Limit increased by (Int) %

Extended Split: Time limit is increased by (Sta)%

Mutations:

Pump You Up: 1 Bent, Muscle mass is subtly duplicated, increasing by (End) % for duration. Spare mass is converted to extra duration. Will increase user’s weight.

^Better than it sounds, a small muscle increase has large effects on strength and speed.

Always bring a backup: 1 Bent, repair or replace a damaged or missing organ for the duration. Spare mass is converted to extra duration. Given enough time to heal, the body will incorporate this replacement permanently.

Copy Kit: 1 Bent, Consume an object to permanently store it’s data in the System. The objects may then be the subject of Dupdomancy spells in whole or in part, as normal. Store 1 Item/5 levels of Dupdomancy

Shiva: Create semi-permanent extra body parts/limbs at will, decreasing maximum Stability by 3 for each one. This does not have a strict Bent cost, and can be used when Bent is 0. The cost is essentially applied to maximum Bent. The limbs are dismissible, and Stability will recover within 24 hours.

Kala was biting her lip, her fingers sinking into the wood of the desk.

“On the other hand,” Calvin said. “I could take Extended split and its next tier in order to make temperature control more effective.” Calvin said, scanning the list.

“What do you think?”

“I think,” Kala said, trembling. “Permanent Split…Is redundant…with…undifferentiated matter.”

“That’s a good, point,” Calvin said, causing Kala to flinch. He looked back at the list and erased the star next to Permanency, freeing up another slot.

“OOOH!” Learner said, eyebrows raising. “It’s the vibrations.”

Macronomicon

Oh, and welcome back to our regularly scheduled Tuesday chapter. Hopefully those two weeks of being totally off my game are behind me.

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