Authors Note: Yayy, longer chapters! This one is my longest yet, and is probably pretty close to the average here on RRL.

I decided not to include tables in this chapter, but I will have them occasionally going forward as a lot of people seemed to really like them. :D

PS. Yes, for those of you who noticed, this chapter is posted early. First day of classes so we finished early today. I will probably often not be able to get home and write until MUCH later in the evening.

I had been told that my rooms would be ready in a few hours, so after I went offline I decided to go over what went wrong (and what went right) over the last few days.

While the match against Alder was not technically my first fight, it was the first time I had ever been in a direct physical confrontation with someone who was actually trying to cause me that kind of serious lasting injury. If I had known he was going to be such an asshole about the whole thing I just would have zapped him before I even got into the ring… Ok, that’s not true. But I would have been more prepared, at least. I was just grateful I had the foresight to have my shield up.

I checked my stats again, noting that everything seemed normal. Then I went online (Wolfram had logged off already) and tried to figure out what had happened to my shield. I already knew that it took a lot of effort to charge up my Ion Shield to get everything in place, but just maintaining it was a lot easier on me, so I could keep the shield in place for a long time as long as it wasn’t continually taking damage. What I found out was that once the Ion Shield took damage it once again required a significant amount of effort to restore the shield back to its optimal condition.

I somewhat regretted setting up my powers as an Alternate Ability: I had thought that I was going to get one or two Cultivation Points a year, meaning I had to be as thrifty as possible with them. And nothing is as thrifty as an Alternate Ability build. But… it now appeared that I was going to get upwards of thirty CP a year, meaning I had a lot more room to play with.

I really liked the Lightning Bolt ability I had come up with, but my favorite was definitely the Ion Shield – I saw a lot of possibilities with it, many of which I had already started exploring. The main downside was that I was using molecules from the air in my shield, and they didn’t respond well to being magnetized; in fact, they were constantly losing their charge, having to be re-ionized as they reached equilibrium with the air around me. I had been playing with the idea of using powdered iron dust instead – not only would iron dust remain magnetized for far longer, there were other things I would be able to do with it as well.

The only problem is that I would have to change how my Ion Shield operated, and I wasn’t sure if that was possible or not. I really needed to learn more about this cultivation stuff, so I sent a brief message to Wolfram.

Heller:

After that I decided to check a few things in The System again. I have had a lot of different ideas over the years, but I hadn’t been able to test how effective they would be in reality due to having to save my CP. I ended up discarding ninety nine percent of them, but there were a few things that I wanted to try once I was able.

But now I suddenly felt a lot more focused, as if having experienced combat first hand really brought things to life for me. I smiled, excited, as I started going over my new plan. If I could get the iron dust to integrate with my Ion Shield I would be able to manipulate magnetic fields with much greater control – and with much more power.

My small size was a huge weakness. I had considered raising my stats directly in the past, but it turned out that was quite expensive. It would take me 10 points to raise my strength by one point, meaning I’d have to spend 50 CP to get my strength up to the same as an average adult… and not only was that more points that I had right now, it seemed like a terrible way to use them right now. Having a power like lightning was far more effective than a simple stat raise, point for point, and my stats would raise naturally as I aged anyway.

So what I needed was both a way to exert more force, and to absorb more momentum. I can’t afford to be thrown across the battlefield like I was by Alder, and having greater control over magnetic fields would have allowed me to anchor myself to metal (such as Alder’s armor) or anything else I was able to generate a magnetic field in. In fact, if I was able to charge my enemies weapons and then create a powerful magnetic field around myself… they wouldn’t even be able to approach me at all!

I had a pouch of iron filings from the Smithy back in my room, but nothing with me at the moment… so I looked around the room. I found plenty of gold trim, but I was fairly certain gold didn’t make a good magnet. Most of the furniture was wooden, the bed was feathers (I think) and cloth, and the tapestries along the wall didn’t suit my purpose. Wait… tapestries… I checked up above me, and there did indeed appear to be steel or iron used in the mounting brackets. In fact, the entire room was lit up using oil lamps (which were rare and expensive in the village) on long metal stands that appeared to be made at least partly out of steel or iron!

I debated for a moment, wondering how mad Lord Runax would get when he discovered that I had destroyed some of the furniture in his room… but then I realized I didn’t really care. He obviously wanted something from me, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to push him a little to see how he reacts. I made my way to one of the lamps and tested to see how heavy it was… and I couldn’t even lift it… crap!

I stood back for a moment, wondering how to proceed. I could just go search around the castle, but what if Frogface had another round in the Arena planned for me? Best to be prepared. The room was predominantly stone, so as long as I moved as much of the flammable material away from the lamp as I could… hmm, actually this wasn’t a very good idea… But it would make a great story to tell Wolfram! So I got to work, rolling up the rugs and pushing what furniture I could away from my chosen target. I took a deep breath, lowered the power to my Ion Shield, and started charging up for a lightning bolt… and realized how stupid I was being. The whole damn room would probably catch fire!

So I went into the hallway and melted a few of the iron sconces that were holding up torches along the wall. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that first…

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Several hours later I was lying exhausted on the floor, a pleased expression on my face. It turned out that I WAS able to modify my Ion Shield to utilize the iron dust and small pieces of melted splatter from hitting the sconces with repeated lightning bolts (it made quite a mess). I slowly stood up, feeling the iron move with me… and thought that maybe I should rename it Iron Shield now? Nah, that was way too misleading.

I reviewed the two new abilities I had just purchased, along with the modified shield, a final time before trying it out. What I had bought was the ability to manipulate and create magnetic fields using my Ion Shield, and the ability to extend my Ion Shield from my body a short distance to impart a strong magnetic field to another object (preferably metal, of course). These powers required the Ion Shield in order to function, which greatly reduced their cost (0.25 CP per MSL).

The only downside was that they used the same energy source as the Lightning Bolt… and the iron dust and particles in the Ion Shield further interfered with the use of the lightning, causing the voltage to ground out (literally drain away into the ground) before I could charge it high enough fire. It wasn’t the end of the world, as I could pretty quickly eject the iron from the shield and go back to what I had before, but it did mean that I’d have to choose between two power sets…

Iron Ion Shield plus control over magnetism, or regular Ion Shield plus lightning. I was ok with it, figuring that I would be able to use the lightning for ranged combat, and the magnetic powers in close quarters.

Now, time to test if this crap actually worked…