PreCursive

  “Excuse me?” I asked in disbelief.

  And in growing annoyance.

  “I forbid you or any of the others,” Venix tio the fusion of said others. “From traveling to Goryuen.”

  A frown grew on my lips to match his own, and I stepped closer to the Antium man. I looked up a his eyes, ung about the height difference. “Expin.”

  “The isle is beyond you,” He said shortly. “To vehere is to court death. There is a reason I have yet to visit those shores since my return to the rivernds. I am uain if it is not beyond me.”

  I took a deep breath to try and tamp down on my temper before I blew up on him. “That and the fact you need a writ of permission to visit the isle,” I said, some of my heat leaking into my voice despite my best efforts. “Which I have.”

  “Insequential,” Venix said unflingly, unblinkingly. “I could obtain such a writ if I wished. That is not the point.”

  Even through my own frustration, I was surprised to hear his own audible in his voice. It was rare for Venix to express his emotions in his speech like that.

  That didn’t stop my frown from transf into a scowl. I raised one hand and poi him. “Then what is your point? You were there when I discovered that bunker,” I said in frustration. “You know how important they are. How much they could tell me. I’m not going to let this opportunity pass me by. I’m not afraid of a little danger.”

  Venix narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off.

  “If the gentlemen do not mind,” I heard a firm, feminine voice say. “They are disturbing the uests.”

  Knocked out of my annoyance, I blinked and turo face the owner.

  It was the proprietress of the inn, her arms crossed over her chest and an iron frown on her painted face. I almost ged at the annoyance obvious in her eyes. Looking around, I found she was correct. Most of the uests had paused in their own dio watch the frontatioween Venix and I. Some of their gazes were ied in the ient show, while others just looked irritated.

  “Don’t bother me none, Lady Saeko!” One rowdy patron called out drunkenly. “Ain’t every day you get to see two barbarians fight it out!”

  “Silence, Yorinobu,” Saeko Umihara said unflingly, not even b to look at the heckler. “Else I call in your tab immediately.”

  The man hastily sat down, properly chastised.

  Meanwhile, Lady Saeko met first my eyes, and then Venix’s. “Sir Hart. Sir Venix. I ask that you take your disagreemeher to a private room, or to the yard.”

  I bowed my head to her in apology. “Of course, Lady Saeko. My apologies. Venix and I take this to a ba, if one is avaible?” She me, but this time she was the one who was interrupted before she could speak.

  “No.”

  Her eyebrows shot up, and the entire room, me included, turo look at Venix.

  Said Antium’s arms were still crossed, and a stony look had overtaken his face. “There is nothing more to be said,” He said with finality. “You are not ready foryuen. I shall prove it to you. If you wish to veo that accursed pce, there is only one way I will let you.”

  “You must best me in a duel.”

  The dining room fell silent at that. Even Lady Saeko looked taken aback by that decration, much less the gobsmacked looks on my panion's faces.

  This was extremely out of character for the normally stoian.

  “Venix, what…?” I asked in fusion. “You’re more than three times my level! That’s impossible!”

  In the months since we’d reached Kawamara, I’d finally asked Venix what his level was. He’d barely blinked before answering me, ung about taboos involved in sharing one’s level.

  At the time, I’d been one hundred and twenty-four.

  He’d been four hundred and fifty-seven.

  That was at least two months ago. He had to have grown some sihen, sidering the amount of hunting he’d done.

  I had little to no ce against someohat strong. Not unless I really wao kill them.

  “My decision is final,” Venix said firmly. “Either defeat me, or I will do all in my power to prevent you from reag the isle. If you wish to face me, I will await you in the yard at sunrise.” At that, the Antium man ignored any further words from anyone else, turned on his heel, and marched out of the dining room.

  Azarus stood up to join me, as everyone else in the inn watched him walk up the stairs. “The hells has gotten into him?” He asked, baffled. “Ain’t ever seen the guy act like that.”

  “Me her,” I whispered, brow furrowing.

  Renauld and Liora joined as well. “Are you going to do it, he male Gnoll asked me, worry obvious in his tone. “I don’t think the big guy will mess you up too bad, but, uh. I’ll patch you up if he does.”

  I snorted, uncrossing my arms. “Gee, thanks man,” I said sarcastically, before pausing for a moment. I eventually nodded. “But yes. I…think I’m going to try. This just means too mue. I’ll…try and make Venix see sense in what is apparently the only way he uands. A duel.”

  The same heckler from earlier called out across the dining room. “Nice! Guess we still get ta see the barbarians tear each other apart!” He cackled. “Good luck, little man!”

  I felt my eyebrow twitch at the taunting, and then again when Liora fixed me with a deadpan look. “What he said,” She said dryly. “You’ll certainly .”

  “Don’t I know it,” I said under my breath. I shook my head and turo face Lady Saeko. “I apologize once more for the interruption, my dy. I’m afraid that we’ll require the usage of your practice yard on the morrow.”

  To my surprise, the impeccably dressed woman rolled her eyes at me. “Apparently so. You’re lucky I’m so used to the banalities of men, Sir Hart. I only thought Sir Venix was above such things. Apparently, even ioid men must peaco such a manner. Off with you,” She said, waving a hand. “I must go and discipline another er.” At that, she turned around to gre at the heckler with narrowed eyes.

  He gulped.

  …………………………………………..

  I didn’t bother sleeping that night. It’s not like I anymore.

  Aher did I spend the entire nighttime fretting in ay about the duel that I had o no winning. Instead, I spent that time iation.

  While I didn’t have a pri meditatiohod locked for my use, I still had my old reliable in the form of Aetherial Melding. I drifted in a sea of unseeher, sitting still as the veritable heartbeat of Vereden pulsed all arouhis might not be useful for me, but it was still calming. f, even.

  This had only grown more curious, once I had Asded into a full-on Magi.

  Now, I pulsed back.

  Not with Aether, though. With my Mana.

  Iwined waves of my own radiated from my being, visible only to me in this odd state of being. Twinned crimson and azure crashed into the pulses of emerald that suffused Vereden, unseen, only to be washed away. It was both beautiful and humbling.

  It reminded me that, although I had finally bee a pre, I was still nothing but an ant in the face of aire p.

  A thought had occurred to me, during one of these sessions. Ever since I had met Anima in the cord, that strange Spirit realm that seemed to exist out of phase with that of the material, I had wondered. Was it her that was the in point of these pulses? Did she have a physical existence here in the real world, somewhere deep beh my feet? Did Anima live within the core of Vereden in some way? Because that’s always the dire I had assumed these pulses to e from. They radiated up from the ground, always inatih my feet.

  I couldn’t know, and Elder Jinshin hadher when I asked him. Even as familiar as he was with Anima, he knew nothing about it. Maybe Grey would, but I couldn’t ask him that now.

  I suppose it was just as likely that Vereden itself was the in.

  While my outer ring was occupied with my somewhat useless driftiational thoughts, my surviving c was involved with something a bit more practical.

  Key word was a bit.

  It was examining my Status.

  See, it had shifted in the months since my Assion. Grey and everyone else hadn’t been kidding, when they said the first Breakpoint was whehing ged.

  For o no loracked my Stamina at all. This was somewhat expected, as from what I uood, Stamina had just been a byproduy soul that was now being used in the produ of Mana. Instead, it tracked my Mana now. Just…not in the way I had expected.

  Name: Nathaniel Eugene Hart

  Titles: Unbound Liberator, Camity Syer

  Level: 131

  Age: 25 Sol

  Race: Human (Precursor)

  Affinity: Terrestrial (Celestial)

  Csses: Thornbde Acolyte (Unon)

  Professions: Aetherial Melding

  Health: 1330/1330

  Mana: 98%

  Vitality: 173

  Strength: 100

  Spirit: 60

  Dexterity: 282

  Perception: 173

  Intelligence: 396

  Wisdom: 396

  Free Points: 0

  Options: [Talent Page], [Skill Page], [Profession Page]

  Damn thing tracked it as a pertage. The System was able to track my ‘Health’ as precisely as singur digits, but it couldn’t track my Mana that way? It was a bit frustrating, I had to admit. But it was a good remihat the System kind of filed about, when it came to supp actual Magic. That’s the expnation I’d received in the first lecture I’d ever gotten from Grey, st year.

  The System was broken, in a way. And it had never gotten the ce to be whole.

  However, that’s not all that had ged, of course. Even beyond the addition of parenthesized Celetial to my affinity. I’d obviously grown in strength since I’d left Elderwyck. Before my Assion Ritual, I’d been locked at level one hundred. And oddly enough, I had yet to gain my level one hundred css ability at the time. That had certainly ged, when I’d checked my Status after the entire affair had been over and doh. I’d immediately shot up to level one hundred and twenty-two, as those levels had been locked to me until I successfully became a Magi.

  Rhazal had been worth quite a bit of level Aether.

  I’d been bombarded with so many level-ups and Status indicators I hadn’t even been able to see at first.

  A good problem to have.

  Probably the most exg ohough, had been my gift from the System for properly reag level one hundred.

  A Skill evolution.

  Before I’d left, I’d asked Grey about it. Acc to him, every Awakened was guaranteed one of these by crashing through the Breakpoints that existed at the hundred intervals. With them, you could individually ‘asd’ a particur Skill or Talent, evolving them into a more powerful form.

  I had almost immediately wao use it ed Mind. My hope had been that with an evolution, maybe whatever had been broken ialent would be fixed.

  Grey had shot that idea down.

  “I emphatically advise against that, Nathan,” My mentor had told me, ba the dock that we were preparing to depart Elderwyck from. “At your current level, your Status is likely struggling to support your mental Talent already. In fact, it’s my belief that is the reason it fractured in the way it did, when you saved my Sylvia. Your Intelligence is simply too low to support more than an additional branch of thought, and your middle ‘ring’ broke uhe strain. If you evolved it further, the resulting evolved Talent might well break once more, without the Virtue bag to support it. Please, wait until you’ve at least broken through the sed Breakpoint to sider evolving your mental Talent.”

  I had, relutly, taken his advice.

  Instead of evolving Ringed Mind, I had opted for my seost used ability. A Skill, this time.

  Sylvan Vigor.

  The entire process, which I had initiated on the ride to Kawamara, had been a bit underwhelming. I had simply selected the Skill from the drop-dowhat had beeed to me on my Status for the evolution, clicked Yes on the pop-up, and bam!

  One new evolved Skill.

  Sylvan Vigor had beight of the Wyrdwood. It had even gone up in rarity from Superior to Rare.

  But while the process of upgrading it had been underwhelming, the actual Skill was not.

  I’d beey gd I had goh that, in the end.

  As for my ains by gaining so many levels, they’d beey underwhelming. To my disappoi, I discovered that, after level one hundred, you no lained an alternating Skill and Talent every ten levels.

  Instead, you got something every twenty. And since I was a Mage, the System had fgged me as such, and now I was going to be getting less Skills. At least that was what Elder Jinshin had kindly told me, during one of my lessons with the monk.

  As such, I’d only gotten a siher ability after Asding. That being a frustratingly out-of-reach Talent by the name of Arboreal eling. eling Talents were supposedly very on, and were meant to help you, well, el your Mana. The System gave them out like dy, apparently, to newly Asded cssers. Both Cultivaors and Magi received simir abilities.

  But I couldn’t take advantage of mi, because I didn’t have a proper meditatiohod for eling my Mana.

  Deeply frustrating.

  Even though I had grown a whole nine levels during my time in Kawamara, to level one-hundred and thirty-one, I hadn’t gotten anything else in that time.

  What I had…was going to have to be good enough for my duel.

  I…

  Well.

  I suppose there was something else I could use. But I was relut to use it except in life-or-death situations.

  But I guess I’d see how things went.

  A subtle ge iher that suffused the air told me that it was nearly dawn. Nighttime had passed in the blink of an eye, as deep in my meditation as I’d been. I opened my eyes and got ready for the duel. I thought about putting on the armor I’d made for myself, but a headstrong part of me rebelled against the idea. I knew Venix wasn’t going to be wearing any, and I didn’t want to be shown up by the Antium man.

  Any more than I robably already going to be.

  Damnit, I had my pride.

  Instead, I just secured Terractus at my belt and my daggers at the small of my bad exited my room, a determined cast to my face.

  I would not be denied my ore answers.

  Time to do this.