Robert Vlaho
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[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 123 - Invitation
🕑 Added 2024-10-01 17:00:41 +0000 UTCFreddy extracted a small piece of paper from the envelope and unfurled it to take a look. Inside was a message from Thor, written in messy handwriting:
HEY THERE, PAL. BEEN A WHILE!
I HOPE YOU’VE RECOVERED FROM THOSE INJURIES!
ANYWAY, ABOUT THE REASON I’M CONTACTING YOU… SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN GOING MISSING LATELY, SO WE’VE TAKEN A CLOSER LOOK AND FOUND A SHADY ORGAN TRADE ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE CITY. WE’RE GONNA BUST IT TOMORROW. I WANT YOU TO JOIN US.
IT SHOULDN’T BE TOO DANGEROUS FROM WHAT WE CAN TELL. TO BE HONEST, THE ONLY REASON I’M INVITING YOU IS THAT I WANT TO SEE WHAT YOU’RE MADE OF.
YOU’LL FIND AN ADDRESS WRITTEN ON THE BACK OF THE ENVELOPE. MEET US THERE TOMORROW AT 6 P.M. DON’T FORGET TO BRING YOUR GEAR WITH YOU.
SIGNED, THOR.
The man had signed the letter with an essence-imbued ether signature, which felt exactly the same as the man’s aura, verifying the letter's legitimacy. As written in the message, there was an address on the back of the envelope. Freddy sighed and folded the paper before storing it in his ring.
The message said nothing about compensation. But given the fact that he had to be there at 6 p.m., they would likely have a meeting to prepare before setting off sometime during the night.
If he was being entirely honest, this was so cool. Come on, they were going to bust a criminal operation in the middle of the night? That was badass as fuck.
His more pragmatic side was a bit worried, however. He didn’t know what kind of people he’d be going up against and he had no idea what kind of role he was expected to play.
Not to mention that this would be it—once he joined them on this operation, that would be the point of no return. He’d officially become tied to Valhalla, and that could spell all sorts of trouble for him.
He spent the rest of the evening meditating and tempering.
Lucas returned a few hours later. He had a small smile on his face. Clearly, the date had gone well.
Before heading to sleep, Freddy wrote down his progress:
GATHERING:
Second star—199% essence capacity
2-star satellite
TALENT:
1% Lifesteal: Dynamic-quality healing
SOUL CONSTRUCT:
Scythe: Essence Extraction
TEMPERING TECHNIQUES:
Blood affinity:
Lake of Blood: Stage 2—1% Progress
Crimson Mercury: Stage 1—50% Progress
Crimson Spring: Stage 0—11% Progress
Water affinity:
Adaptive Water Body: Stage 1—Complete
Thousand Wet Hells: Stage 1—48% Progress
Abyssal Depths: Stage 1—92% Progress
ACTIVE ABILITIES:
Blood affinity:
Gore Knuckles: Stage 1—84% Progress
Blood Javelin: Stage 0—63% Progress
Blood Absorption: Stage 0—2% Progress
Accelerate Blood Projectile: Unfinished ether shell
Water affinity:
Flowing Strike: Stage 1—94% Progress
Hydraulic Flex: Stage 1—81% Progress
Create Water: Stage 1—53% Progress
Purify: Stage 1—0% Progress
Pressure Jet: Unfinished ether shell
Hydraulic Throw: Unfinished ether shell
Perished water affinity:
Perished Water: Stage 0—8% Progress
Ghosts of the Drowned: Stage 0—8% Progress
SPIRIT ABILITIES:
Blood Sacrifice
Leviathan’s Fury
UNIQUE CURSED ITEMS:
Blood Ring: -6% essence cost, +5% power for blood-affinity abilities. Can be used to release Bloodshed. Attacks inflict minor bleeding.
As he looked through and compared his progress to the last time he wrote it down, he couldn’t help but sigh a bit.
This was starting to become a little problematic. A few of his tempering abilities were starting to encounter bottlenecks, and the sheer number of abilities he had to keep up with was staggering.
While his rise to the peak of the second star had been meteoric, going up so quickly in gathering had left the rest of his progress lagging way behind. If it weren’t for his abnormal physical power and spirit abilities, he’d be far from being able to contend with anyone at his level.
This was a problem that needed to be fixed. The sooner, the better.
He was already getting into a groove with his delving habits, but he needed to cut out a stricter schedule for everything else.
He’d been sleeping in a bit too much lately, mostly because he was too lazy to get up earlier. This was inexcusable. While his talent couldn’t remove the need for sleep, it could allow him to get away with very little of it. He needed to know just how far he could push this.
He’d start with 6 hours to see if there were any adverse effects and then slowly cut it down until he noticed that he couldn’t go further.
Other than that, he had to continue physical training, he had to start buying training resources to help speed up his progress, he had to find a proper place to train using his abilities, he needed to find a way to learn how to fight better, he had to start trying to make money through means other than delving, he had to—
One thing after another rushed into his mind, nearly giving him a headache. He sighed and pushed these thoughts aside.
He didn’t even own an alarm, and he knew from experience that he needed a really aggressive one to force himself to wake up early.
This schedule stuff could wait one more day. For now, he’d get a good night of rest and mentally prepare himself for tomorrow evening.
To his surprise, he woke up rather early.
He went delving and wrapped up before noon, then spent the rest of the waiting time meditating to make sure he completely eliminated all the reflux essence in his body.
Before he even realized it, it was already 5 p.m.
It was time to get ready to go.
***
The day was slowly coming to an end. The skies were a gloomy grey and clouded over. A number of snowflakes twirled through the air on their path down into the forests below.
Suddenly, a flying carriage flew by, sending the snow into a chaotic storm as it whistled away into the horizon.
In the northeastern part of the American Empire, not too far from the border to the Northern Belt, five people sat inside the carriage that was heading straight towards the Northern Spine.
Mark sat in silence while tempering. Faint traces of numerous metals slowly seeped into the calcium structure of his bones, slowly morphing it into an alloy that was harder and tougher than steel.
Nahar sat across him, also tempering, while Basilisk lounged in the front, reading a newspaper and smiling to himself.
On the other end of the room sat two strange people.
One of them was a short, black-haired man. And the other was a tall woman with similarly dark hair. They sported faint scars across their skin, and they sat in quiet with their eyes closed.
Mark finally couldn’t bear the effects of the tempering technique and had to take a break. As he slowly breathed out, he opened his eyes.
They looked normal. He had nothing but an ordinary pair of round pupils. Well, that was what they looked like. In reality, he had undergone a very expensive surgery. Lenses covered his eyes, creating an illusion that nothing was wrong.
Slowly, he moved to take a look at the two people sitting in the back.
They immediately noticed that he was looking at him.
In complete synchrony, they opened their eyes to stare back at him. Their square pupils were a piercing reminder of their identity and Mark’s deal.
The two of them had also been subjected to the same surgery as Mark had. However, it simply didn’t work. The lenses refused to bind and stay in place, no matter what the doctors did.
While Mark’s pupils were allowed to be concealed, it seemed that the square shape had a unique significance to the two of them.
They gave him a questioning glance, but he simply shook his head slightly and looked away.
Back when he made the deal, he didn’t care about a single thing. He was at rock bottom.
But now, when things were slightly calmer, he couldn’t help but worry.
He had received something truly remarkable in return for rescuing them.
Either the being he had forged a deal with was so unfathomably powerful that it could give away such gifts without a problem, or these two were so important that it was forced to make a sacrifice.
Both possibilities were terrifying in their own unique ways.
Mark couldn’t stop himself from shooting a glance at Nahar as well. The young master had also been there with him when they visited that strange realm. The being most certainly had a connection to Nahar the same way it had a connection to Mark.
As for why it chose to make the deal with him instead of Nahar, he couldn’t tell. But the possibility that it was still planning to use the man wasn’t off the table.
He couldn’t help but chuckle at himself. There was no point in trying to see through that thing’s plans. He was already playing a pawn. The last thing he wanted to do was make the wrong move and get eaten up.
“Well boys,” Basilisk suddenly said as he slammed the newspaper shut and got up into a seated position. “We’re getting close.”
Mark squinted at the man. “Are you finally going to tell me what the plan is for the two of them?” he said with a head gesture towards the two in the back. “If you don’t tell me how you plan to get them across the border, I’ll be forced to take them over the Northern Spine myself.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Basilisk said, shaking his head and sighing. “That is simply suicide. Even the empress would have to risk her life to go over the peaks. But I guess I should come out and say it,” he said with a mischievous smile.
He dug into his pocket and took out a necklace. Then, he threw it at Mark.
“A storage necklace?” Mark asked with a confused frown.
Basilisk grinned. “Not just any storage necklace. Take a look inside.”
Mark took a peak. It was completely empty. The space inside wasn’t too impressive, but it was stretched a bit, almost like his own storage ring which he had to adjust to be able to fit his massive sword in there.
This space, however, was a little bit bigger than the one in his storage ring, but other than that, there was nothing special about it.
“This is empty,” Mark dryly said.
“An astute observation,” Basilisk said snarkily.
“I don’t see where you’re going with this. Are you suggesting I stuff them in this space or something?” Mark commented sarcastically, but—
“Yup.”
Mark blinked. “Huh?”
Living things could be put into storage rings, but the requirements for being able to do that were tricky. The living creature had to either fully consent to being placed inside or completely unconscious, and it couldn’t be bigger than a small dog. And even then, things couldn’t survive in there for long. Air was an obvious problem, but the bigger issue was that most living things produced heat, and the heat had nowhere to go inside the storage ring, resulting in the creature getting cooked alive.
“Indeed, that’s a special necklace made specifically to be able to carry people within,” Basilisk confirmed.
On second look, Mark noticed that the space inside was almost exactly big enough to store two humans inside. “Is this safe?” he asked.
“It’s pretty safe for the most part,” Basilisk said honestly. “Usually, the purpose of this treasure is to help someone with a highly specialized movement technique take others with them into spaces that couldn’t otherwise be accessed by multiple people. The better they prepare, the longer they’ll be able to last inside.”
Mark frowned at that but didn’t say anything. He had never heard of a treasure like this, but with advancements in etherology, new stuff was always popping up on the market. He made sure to check the necklace up and down to ensure there were no tricks of any kind. Once he was confident that it was safe, he simply nodded. “This will do.”
“Brilliant. We’re gonna be there soon. Get ready to load them up.”
The border crossing did not go without trouble.
With a trio of three-stars aiming to leave the empire, not to mention with one of them being a recently demoted Lord, they were thoroughly interrogated about their intentions and asked to report where exactly they would be residing a week from then at the latest.
Mark was a bit nervous seeing how thoroughly they were being ribbed, and he was starting to fear they might ask to search their belongings.
But it never went that far, thankfully.
Basilisk’s interviews lasted for quite a while, as was to be expected.
However, Mark was the one who they kept the longest. He had gone up to his current level of power at an insane speed. The only people who could compete with his rate of growth had achieved it through incredibly dangerous or costly means. Either that, or they had made a huge sacrifice.
On top of his freakish gathering speed, he was getting uncomfortably close to the peak of the third star—he was already at 287% gathering capacity.
He settled on the explanation Basilisk advised him to give—he had attained his growth through a method that cost him a massive portion of his future lifespan.
This was a lie, of course. But they had no way to prove whether he was telling the truth or not.
They kept trying to probe him for evidence or a more detailed elaboration, but he mostly kept his mouth shut.
While they might be allowed to keep him there for quite a while, they had no actual legal standing to refuse to let him through the border. He didn’t break any laws. They had no evidence of wrongdoing.
He didn’t have to worry about those two, either—they were safe in the storage necklace and had been equipped with a number of things that could keep them alive for days if not weeks.
Thus, he simply remained quiet and waited out the interrogation.
A whole two days later, they finally allowed them through.
Basilisk had been extremely stingy with the details of their trip. Mark suspected it was because the man also had zero clue where exactly they were headed. And while his guess wasn’t necessarily correct, it wasn’t far from the truth.
The first few days they spent there were mostly spent looking for details about the surrounding cities.
Basilisk was extremely proficient at locating reliable information vendors, and it didn’t take them long to build an extensive list of cities they could choose to settle in.
The area they were in was close to where a major city used to exist back on Old Earth—Montreal. Unfortunately for the many people who used to live there, the Northern Spine hadn’t been particularly considerate when it was forming.
Almost the entire city was caught in the formation of the mountain range, with the small part that wasn’t finding itself flooding due to the formation of a new lake.
But there was another major city that had managed to survive—Ottawa.
It was a city that had survived total annihilation, even if the vast majority of the former population had perished in the first few years of the Rift.
There were a few smaller but notable cities in the surroundings, including Repentawa, which seemed to be growing quite rapidly, making it an optimal location to start a business empire.
And thus, that ended up being the exact place they went.
Comments
Robert Blaise
You didn'thave to wait long it seems
ZaA
Ay.. Nerd-ass mfer is a fair description. I await your next chapter (; No rush though!
Robert Blaise
No, I appreciate it. :D This is a story written for nerd-ass mfers who'll turn their brain on and actually think about the implications of such healing, and discourse around it is something I really enjoy and appreciate. Although you're right in many ways, there are two things to consider: supreme-quality healing isn't omnipotent—it doesn't fix genetic defects, for example; and this still needs to be a story. I still need to ground the character in something, and dehumanizing him by removing relatable aspects of being a human is tricky and needs to be considered in more detail. That's the thing about stories, they have to be interesting. And even if that means cutting some things to fit the shape better, you still gotta do it, otherwise you'll create something that lacks the substance that makes stories what they are. Thank you for the brilliant conversation. You a smart fella. Cheers!
ZaA
Interesting. I do agree that having to eat, sleep, and shit are things that having a character have to do mean they're more relatable, so maybe thats a good thing for a character to still have to do, but with the way you've written his healing ability.. he really shouldn't need to do any of that. Healing requires energy. The reason you need to eat is because your body needs energy to.. do anything. If you didn't have energy then you'd cease brain function and all electrical impulses would cease. Your lack of blood circulation would cause no oxygen to be pumped to your cells, which would then remove a cells ability to break down food and/or use energy at all, which would lead to decay. The main thing to consider here, is that healing and replacing parts of the body, which includes cells, hormones, blood, etc, would, at a very basic level, be an exchange or transfusion of energy. This energy needs to come from somewhere, but with the way your talent is written, it likely.. steals it from the enemy. Not only should this mean that he could remove the need to eat AND sleep AND shit (while I don't believe his talent would replenish SPECIFICALLY H20, as it's moreso used as a lubricant and a way to flush the body, he'd definitely also need much less water, as it wouldn't be flushing anything.. BUT he'd still sweat, so he'd likely need to replenish THAT water), but it also means that when he hits someone he should be taking away some of their energy, which would mean his enemies would tire out faster as well. Probably wouldn't be something that's noticable until higher levels, as the damage would probably affect them before a loss of energy until they get to truly ridiculous levels, which sounds like maybe T4 in your story. Obviously, if he isn't lifestealing then he'd still need to replenish energy via eating and allow his body to heal and repair and regenerate by sleeping, but I do believe he should be able to lifesteal back to a state of basically just waking up from the best rest he's ever had. While we don't know as much about sleep as people might think, like you said, we do know the physics related to our existence, which is really just a complicated version of energy intake and excretion. Sleep isn't some magical thing.. it's a physical process. Our brains, as insanely complicated as they are, are just an organ. Memories are just.. well, they're specifically constructed synapses that are arranged in a way that when an electrical impulse travels through them, we automatically decode those synapses as certain thought-chains, smell-memories, etc. There's a reason that memory is subject to being corrupted by remembering, because when you're remembering you're able to store false or made-up info. That being said.. It's not some magical thing, it's just another organ. Albeit the most important one. We're just living computers. Actually, if your character needs sleep, then that'd mean that if he had any type of brain injury, that it'd just restore it to functioning, but not fix the memories. He'd either be losing/resetting parts of his brain after every brain injury if the healing isn't able to also repair specific synapse connections and basically do the things that sleeping does, no? So either brain injuries are his SUPER COUNTER and he's just as vulnerable to memory/knowledge loss as a normal T0 person OR he can heal those things, in which case, he wouldn't need sleep. All of that being said, that's all based in a world of no magic or tiers or vestiges and shit, so maybe his talent doesn't work off of logic, and it's a more abstract magical idea that MOSTLY borrows from their universes physics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I still love your story and think it's definitely one of my favorites. I was honestly more curious what your reasoning was, which are all pretty soundly reasoned out (: TY for your hard work, sir! Sorry for the short essay
Robert Blaise
Sleep is most definitely not just for repairing the body. Truthfully, we don't know as much about sleep as many might think. Sleep is complicated. It has ties to memory, attention, and, yes, brain recovery (although it seems to be more of a "flush" for byproducts of neural activity, at least during specific stages). As for whether Freddy needs sleep or not, this was a pretty major part of the premise when I was plotting the story, and I had to deliberate very carefully on whether or not he wouldn't need sleep. The main reason why I kept him needing sleep in the story is because the neural mechanisms that make people need sleep aren't exactly an injury or an unnatural externally-caused imbalance. I applied the same thing to stuff like hunger. Hunger feels bad, and the desire to eat in many ways hinders people in their day-to-day lives. But hunger is natural, and it's there to help people survive. Healing the feeling of hunger away doesn't make sense. In the same vein, healing the escalation of the feeling of hunger doesn't make sense either. If I apply the same principles to his brain, the mechanisms that make him sleepy and eventually force his brain to shut down don't feel like something that healing would apply to. That being said, as for how much sleep Freddy will ACTUALLY need, you're going to find out soon enough :D
ZaA
Even with a few flash sleeps throughout the day, would tier 2 + PERFECTLY healthy/constantly re-healing into perfect health + HEAVILY body focused IE: Blood & water, not completely negate any of that? Sleep is mostly just to repair the body.. he doesn't need that. Even his mind should be fine and sleep would technically just something to do out of boredom or because it's fun? With his talent, he technically shouldn't need sleep at all imo
Lyncher98
Tftc
Robert Blaise
1. Lying 2. Exaggerating 3. Have flash sleep randomly throughout the day 4. Take naps they don't count as "sleep" and most importantly, 5. THEY ARE NOT FUNCTIONING OKAY. People love pointing at "genetic freaks" and "exceptions" without realizing that no, this is actually something that applies pretty universally. Those who can get away with very little sleep can only do so at a cost they themselves might not be aware of.
Robert Blaise
People who sleep "4 hours a day" are either:
Immutably Empty
Keep in mind that Freddy doesn't know that Mark betrayed him. Mark and his group know, but Freddy does not, to my knowledge.
ZaA
Feels weird to say he needs to be more strict with sleep then says he's gonna start with 6 hours.. he's like.. superhuman. There are people who have had 4 hours of sleep per night plus a run in the morning before a 12 hour work day for the last 30 years irl. I think superhuman him with his insane diet plus talent means he could probably start at 4 even considering how much he works out. Mind shouldn't be any more fatigued and a lot of sleep is for the body. Hed probably end at like 3 hours of sleep for a double rem cycle for his mind. JUST read the 6 hour part so let's see where it goes (; ooh okay, little bit of info on their eventual collide. Curious to see how it's going to go. Seems like Freddy doesn't care about Mark anymore, but Marks definitely got trauma over Freddy. Doesn't he also think Freddy is possessed? Or was that Madams theory?
Robert Blaise
Lol
joshua milllett
Oh nooooo the horror!!!
BrandyLeeT
Yeah let's see if he kills him or just tries to ignor him.
Robert Blaise
Ironically enough this puts you on the bottom of the comment list 😭
joshua milllett
I have been waiting on pins and needles for the moment Freddy meets Mark again. Mark wont recognize him by any means but it will be interesting to see what Freddy does.
Beeees!
Oooooooh. Here we go, things are heating up!
joshua milllett
First to comment 🙌🙌🙌... now I can go back and read the chapter. I just had to write something as the first person hehe
