Michael

We fight beast after beast as Esuas and Edward control their entrance into this part of the forest to one at a time. It took us close to 40 minutes to take down the first pseudo-bear weasel thing and the loot in the form of salvageable ingredients found nowhere else in the continent were ours to collect. The hide is worth a respectable amount at the Paradisum markets but worth much more if kept and sold directly in Sandaria or even further away from the only known source on the continent. The tiny marble-sized mana crystal that the thing’s body leaves behind as it disintegrates worth a whole lot more to the right buyers.

They don’t give us very long to enjoy our success at the front or wherever it may be they are keeping these creatures and pretty soon I have a spear and shield at hand again, drudgingly getting ready for another deathmatch, Max and John both tired but determined. Taking a stance and shouting advice at my friends I face the incoming giant of a creature as it runs on all fours at a speed that reminds me I actually need to urinate.

Thankfully I don’t have to take the brunt of the charge, just distract the thing with my taunting; lifting my shield and spear high I do just that with a shout of challenge to dispel my frustration and fear. The thing roars back with one of its debilitating skill things as it gets close enough but I’m immobile only an instance before it triggers our crude trap and a spear shoots out of the ground in its path impaling it cleanly through the neck.

The thing bellows in surprise and we are on it from everything direction with everything we have. Max attacking it’s left flank with his spear, stabbing into its neck area where there is softer skin. John attacking on the other side with a war cry and every ounce of strength he can master. I reach the thing last and as it rears onto its hind legs swathing at my friends I dive with shield first onto the back end of the spear bobbing from its neck wound.

I collide with the bear’s chest knocking it back a step. I panic slightly seeing how close I’ve gotten to the thing and I stab out hastily while on my toes before jumping back ready to duck under a swipe from the thing’s paw. It looks at me with dark almost glassy eyes and I roar again and stab with everything I have short of activating the exhausting wonderful state of Chakra Blossom again, to die here would be a waste.

The thing’s swipe is not the rib breaker I expected I realise in relief as I take it on my shield. I don't go flying but the strike rocks me, wobbling a bit after the impact but staying on my feet I keep stabbing at its torso.The beast suddenly groans, stumble to the side, then falls. Taking a step back I see that the spear that was previously protruding from its neck is now lying behind it. The entire length of the spear is bloody from having passed through the thing’s body from the neck and out its lower back.

Max finishes it with a solid strike to the eye and the thing lies there with its tongue sticking out looking up eyelessly and accusingly at us. ‘’Everyone okay,’’ a panting Max asks still looking at theanimal as though still in disbelief we didn’t get ourselves hurt this time.

‘’That was much better than the first few times we’ve faced these things,’’ John says panting himself. ’’Let’s collect the skin before Esuas lets another through-, what the-?’’

And before we’ve even had a chance to harvest the hide this time the thing starts disintegrating before our eyes. ‘’Maybe a bigger mana crystal?’’ I say at the anomaly as we step back. Yes, the bodies eventually breakdown and disappear but never at this rate. Then a warmth starts to bloom inside my stomach. I take a deep clean crisp breath, the purest most euphoric breathe I have ever taken and suddenly I feel like I have just woken from the best sleep of my life after the hardest workout of my life. Pleasantly exhausted yet completely refreshed in a paradox that finds perfect harmony within me, I sigh with a smile forming on my face from the sheer joy of life.

I hear Max sigh, joined quickly by John and my eyes open and I look at them; everything looks so clear, so perfect. The green blades of grass swaying in the slight breeze, the leaves of the trees dotted here and there around the area, the birds, the sun, the atmosphere at the perfect temperature, perfect pressure. To be alive is to feel, to feel is such a blessing, a feat of magic we all overlook sometimes in our haste to satisfy our appetites. I smile as I look at my two friends, their clothes are a mess. Dirty thorn clothes with patches of blood and other things i can't readily identify.

Then it slowly fades and we are left looking at each other trying to decide whether this, whatever this might be just happened and just disappeared with the passing breeze. ‘’I think that was ether,’’ John says with a whisper but still breaking the sanctity of the moment.

‘’I think we should lay another trap, these things aren’t that smart.’’ He adds and we all nod and quickly set another trap in the path a charging bear thing will likely take on its way to easy bait. It isn’t long before Esuas sends that another is incoming and from there it’s a grind as they come one after another and we ambush then lay into them with everything we have.

*

I’m not sure how much time passes but at some point we started having fun. It becomes easier to take down a bear-rodent even if it bypasses our initial ambush, though it takes longer to down in those instances. We tire ourselves out a number of times and have to take the stamina concoctions to be able to stay on our feet. When we’ve used up the three doses of the potion safe to take we resort to the fruit that the dungeon freely provided for rapid stamina recuperation.

It becomes a game of sorts, a deadly but defeatable challenge but almost visibly gets easier the more we do it at an unbelievable rate. ‘’You think they are getting weaker?’’ I had asked at some point, voicing what I’m sure they were both thinking but I got no response from them. Twice more we got that euphoric feeling of fullness and cleansing instead of tangible material and no one minds the loss of loot at all, even though we don't really understand this ether it keeps us motivated.

I put my grass, mud and blood encrusted booth on the latest one’s neck and remove my spear with a wet sound of blood gushing out of the wound. John stabs it again for good measure and we step back, already feeling like old hands at this as we’ve been at it at least seven or eight hours by now I’m sure. I smile and he smiles back, I turn to look at Max and he looks like some savage straight from a medieval story with his hair in a bun leaning on his spear and caked in mud and blood.

"You look like a mad man,'' I say with a smile.

''You are not one to talk at all.'' He says eying me and shaking his head.

''I wonder why they didn't give us better armour,'' John says adjusting the remains of his leather breastplate, the only pieces of armour any of us were given. ''I even entertained the thought we would just be out hunting on the ride here.''

''we three are the only ones wearing armour at all so don't complain.'' Max forstalls with a raised hand.

''I wasn't complaining, I'm actually having too much fun to complain. Is this what hunting in the twenty-first century felt like?'' He asks with almost childish enthusiasm and naked curiosity.

''This is nothing like what I know of hunting,'' I say in response-

A hard punch in the gut bends me over with both arms reflectively crossed over my abdomen for protection. I raise my head quickly looking around for the assailant even as I struggle to take a breath. Max is alert quickly with a spear and shield at the ready also looking around for attacker. There is no one around and its too early for it to be the next challenge. I take a breath and straighten slowly with tears falling from my eyes as i scan again for a target for the anger I'm suddenly feeling. I'm bowed over again with a groan, dry heaving thethering forward as though about to fall on my face.

I feel it like a hard punch in the gut at an internal level, I haven’t felt spirit energy yet unlike the people in this strange family speak of having but I imagine being able to feel your spirit being punched would be something like this. There is a pressure, a sort of pain that reaches just the edge of my tolerance for less than a micron of a second. It’s as though something came inside me and tested how far I could stretch before leaving, but for that instance I’m nearly bursting I know a panic as I’ve never known before.

...didn’t know had a limit, always thought as I/we were just a force that has no limits and a cleanser of the things in the universe, ever-changing yet constantly a storm, one of the Natures of the Universe. To suddenly be awaken so rudely with knowledge that I stretch to a limit, and some entity just invaded and ascertained how far that lim-

My head rings and aches in pulsing pressure like it’s about to explode with every pulse of my heart as it fills with blood. I lose orientation with red filling my vision and awareness of my surrounds fading quickly. I hear myself fall onto my knees, trying to hold my head in my palms so my brain doesn’t leak from my ears, dear god I pray this isn’t how I die; darkness fills my vision but I don’t even take conscious note of the blindness distracted by the trauma of just figuring out a monumental truth and the pain of my heavy head.

A wail rings out as though from a pig being slaughtered, god I hope I didn’t just make that sound. My breathing is laboured and I have to suck in every breath I’m trying to take against a vacuum force working against me. My diaphragm struggles to contract one moment, my ribs struggle to expand the next. The pressure of the world has suddenly changed on me, the laws of nature have betrayed me.

Then all of a sudden my entire body, my entire being, everything in a way I have never experienced before, everything just unclenches and I am free from the pain, I’m free from the body, I’m free from the mind, I’m free from thought, I’m free from spirit, I know everything and want nothing, I disappear. But then at the same time I never left, there is a part of me that’s gone onto whatever is ahead of me and I suddenly realise what’s happening.

I’m Awakening, the surety of that knowledge is unquestionable as I just know as I know the time. Paths are suddenly ‘shown’ to me from somewhere. I’m aware of paths that I could take into different directions of development, almost like I can see a future me ten years from now much stronger, more mature, much more capable me ready and displayed for me to choose one from.

I could take the route of Body Manipulations and the things I could eventually be able to do are scary and exciting to ‘see’, self healing, body morphing, regeneration, transformations, totipotency. All things I could be able to do in various degrees if I chose the route of Awakening to Body Manipulation. The body is a rich font of possibilities still, untapped potential that if properly harnessed could revel even the most ambitious imaginations of what a super human could be.

The things I could do if I took the route of Chakra Cultivation; with chakra subtly and obediently malleable in my hands, in the environment around me, inside me. The endless possibilities of what it can be used for and it’s Celestial Balance state, a possibility of reaching such balance with the Universe that the universe no longer whispers to you but speaks as though speaking to a friend. The insights i'd be able to glean are hinted at and then seep from my mind, forgotten. Leaving behind only the realisation that they were there and that they were awesome before fading away.

The path of mana is laid bare before me as the knowledge of the possible heights I could reach are revealed to me. The various types of paths available from Mana Body, Mana Manipulation, Energy Manipulation, Mage to Elemental Manipulation. The versatility of it, with the elements alone divded into many branches of specialisation. But most impressive is the potency of the power garnered from mana, the most efficient energy source in existence. I could take the route of being a Storm Mage, the synergy between my innate affinity with storms and weather making itself known somehow even here as the universe shows me the possibilities ahead of me.

My storm affinity can synergise in one degree or another with all the paths before me I suddenly realise, and it comes to me that all these possibilities are laid before me as I imagine them. With that realisation comes a whole slew of possibilities, things I’ve only vaguely heard about or possibilities of development I know strickly from fictional stories on Earth.

Invisibility, flight, super strength and speed, control of the weather as easily and efficiently as I control my own body. I could literary become anything I could ever imagine, I could end up being the next Clark Kent if I chose a particular and very narrow route of development. One I’d have to focus on every time I Awaken so as to increase the potency of my power each time instead of stretching out this precious limited Mana that is coursing through whatever I currently am right now.

I can’t feel it but I hope my body is still intact. With the thought I suddenly can feel my body, it’s hale. I blink my eyes open slowly as I feel everyone standing around me without having to look at them. I can feel the mana in the surroundings and through it I can feel everything in my surroundings.

‘’I think I’m Awakening,’’ I say out loud to no one in particular as my eyes lose focus again and I’m being pulled back into whatever kind of awareness I was in a moment ago.

‘’Well don’t be daft and do that in the middle of a dungeon, suck it up and hold it till we get back to the city!’’ Esuas’ rough voice brings me back to the present; we are still in danger here.

I’m almost immediately back to myself and trying to sit up, I’ve never been this full and heavy in my life.

‘’You okay, you can walk?’’ Max asks helping me up, I nod; I don’t think I have any words that can describe how painful that was, how good it later became and how bad I feel right now.

‘’W~~e..... b~e~t~t~e~r.... h~u~~r~~r~~y,’’ Edward sends , keeping back a herd of rodent bears that he has been kiting and fighting at Esuas’ behest. I can feel him and them, to think Max, John and I thought he had it easy with the scary dwarf but from what I feel in the mana around me I can only feel sorry for him.

‘’Can you run?’’ Esuas asks scepticism thick in his voice as I nod whilst attempting to stop the swaying of my body.

‘’Well the others are on their way back but we won’t wait, you better hold that in or I swear I’m gonna bash your head in. Let’s go,’’ with that he jogs back towards the way we came to get here. We follow, apparently I’m setting the pace and it’s initially not as fast as It could be.

I feel as I sometimes do when I have a pressing need to defecate but need to hold it in and rush somewhere. There is pressure, discomfort, but also a slight hint of pleasure from the naturality of it all. As though I’m about to give birth there is worry and anticipation as I jog behind the big short man with the double headed axe on his back. His strides seeming short but we cover a lot of ground quickly and eventually I discover myself keeping up much easier than I should be judging but how much Max and John are struggling.

I smile despite everything going one, I’m finally Awakening, thank you God for all you’ve done for me. I pray silently, something I’ve been doing less and less of late being the only Christian I know of in this strange world. My smile stays plastered on my face, i'm still giddy from the realisation of what Awakening actually is. A process of evolving myself from homosapien to whatever I so desire, i shiver at the endlessness of the possible paths i can take towards my Awakening. I look at Esuas' back with new wonder and realisation, I guess this means everyone I've come across that is an Awakened has been through this so I shouldn't blow my own horn and imagine myself as uber powerful.

But still, i know now that i'm currently a child playing at power and competence compared to what I will be when this process is done.