66 - Lyin' Eyes

<AUTHOR'S NOTE>

Sorry about the late chapter. I spent way too long agonizing about the timeline and order of events. I might reorder some of these sections whenever I do serious edits for Amazon to make it flow a bit better. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

<END AUTHOR'S NOTE>

Yuri marched through the desert, guided by one of his teammates. The other man had been a hunter before he entered the tower, and though the Russian tundra was very different from this desert, the fundamentals carried over, and he had no trouble retracing the steps that the other group had taken.

Alongside the hunter, Yuri also brought Ivan, the second-in-command of the team, Viktor, the explosives enthusiast, and Pyotr, who stood at well over two meters and was broad and strong enough to carry all their packs without being bothered. The rest of his team was left at the oasis to keep tabs on the other teams Yuri had recruited. He didn’t expect any issues, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

According to the limited map they had, they were heading straight toward an oasis, and the tracks they were following never deviated from that path. They were able to pick up their pace once they recognized this, though they kept their guards up in case the other group had prepared some kind of ambush. Yuri didn’t expect them to be that bold without the Phoenix at their side, but he also knew that their group was just as strong as his own, even without her, so he wasn’t going to take any risks.

No ambush awaited them, but something stranger did. When they reached the final hill before the oasis, they saw standing atop it the co-conspirator, waving down at them. 

“Prepare to retreat,” said Yuri.

They had walked into a trap. He only took half his teammates because even with that many, they would be fine as long was Yuri was there. The difference between a Middle 1 star and an Early 1 star was great enough that even outnumbered three to one, they could be victorious. But now, the playing field had been leveled. The co-conspiratory had broken through to Middle 1 star. This was a trap.

“It’s fine!” called down Jacob. “It’s not a trap.”

“Why should I believe you?” asked Yuri.

“I’m alone. The others are asleep. Here, look.”

He disappeared over the hill for a few seconds, then reappeared holding up the limp body of one of the others in his team. It was Vanessa, if Yuri had read the reports correctly.

“Here, I’ll show you another one.”

He disappeared again and returned holding another woman. June. Yuri watched carefully as he set her down. She didn’t react. Her chest moved up and down, showing she was still alive, but she was otherwise completely unresponsive. Vanessa was too. Of course, they could have been faking it, but Yuri wasn’t sure what to think anymore. 

“If that’s not enough, I’ll come down to you,” said Jacob. “Alone. No weapons. Or you can come up here and take a look. The others are all asleep too. I drugged them.”

“Why?” asked Yuri.

“I figured you’d be coming to see me, and I didn’t want them seeing or hearing me talk to you.”

Yuri narrowed his eyes, but he decided he would cautiously advance. He commanded his men to remain in formation as they moved, but despite his paranoia, there was no ambush, and at the top of the hill, he saw down to the oasis where the rest of Jacob’s group, slumped over and unconscious. That raised a new question in his mind: was Jacob stupid?

Even if he had gotten to Middle 1 star, if Yuri’s group tried to attack him, he was only one man, and they had a Middle 1 star of their own. There was no way he could survive a simultaneous attack from all four of them. 

Then, as if reading his mind, Jacob spoke.

“I would recommend against attacking me,” he said. “I gave my sponsor a note detailing exactly what I’ve done. If I die out here, he will give it to the Phoenix, and she will know it was you. By the way, I thought you said you wouldn’t be attacking her. Why is she missing? That wasn’t part of the deal.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” lied Yuri.

He knew Jacob wouldn’t believe him, but he also wasn’t stupid enough to explicitly incriminate himself.

“Right,” said Jacob. “Well, I’ve got something to tell you too. Hopefully we can do a bit of a trade. I’d love to know how you managed to keep her away for so long. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Well, I’d love to hear about what you didn’t do then,” said Jacob. “Can we talk in private?”

Jacob nodded his head backward, away from Yuri’s teammates. 

“I have no secrets from my team.”

“Oh, enough with that bullshit,” said Jacob. “Just come talk to me really quick. If you want to, you can tell them afterward. I have a feeling you’ll regret letting them hear it directly.”

Yuri hesitated a moment, then nodded.

“Alright. Let’s go.”

They walked a hundred meters or so away to the other side of the oasis, out of earshot of the other men in Yuri’s squad. 

“Y’know, most of what I told you back then was true,” said Jacob as they walked.

“What do you mean?”

Yuri’s felt extremely on-edge, but Jacob was walking very casually with his fingers locked behind his head. He had no visible weapons on him, and Yuri still had his sword drawn. If Jacob tried anything, he would be ready.

“I am a competitive son of a bitch,” said Jacob. “I want to be the very best, like no one ever was. Seeing that bitch so effortlessly outdo me in infuriating as hell, and the way she refuses to even consider helping anyone but her one friend makes me want to punch something.”

Jacob stopped walking, then turned to face Yuri and backed up a few steps. 

“However, I’m also a shameless son of a bitch. If she lets me stay near her, I’m going to stay close. I’ll ride the Phoenix train as far as it’ll go. I have no intention of betraying her.”

“Then you have betrayed me,” said Yuri, readying his sword. 

“Is it really betrayal if you never trusted me in the first place?” asked Jacob.

“Yes,” said Yuri. “What now. We fight? My men will be here in seconds once we start. You will die.”

“Oh, no, I also have no intention of fighting you,” said Jacob. “But there is one more thing I wanted to tell you. I’m a shameless son of a bitch, but I’m a competitive son of a bitch first, and while I can’t compete with her, I can compete with you.”

“Then this is a challenge?” asked Yuri. “You went along with all of this so you could issue a challenge to me?”

“Sort of,” said Jacob, finally lowering his hands. 

Yuri tensed, but Jacob just pointed at him, and Yuri couldn’t sense any strange oum movements.

“Though it’s not much of a challenge. You might be good with oum, but I’m just as good, and I’m better at everything else. You may have cultivated a bit faster than me, but that’s because you weren’t doing anything else. I was. I can’t beat that monster, but I sure as hell can be the most skilled and talented regular person from Earth.”

“Not while I’m alive,” said Yuri, taking a step forward, sword raised.

“Yup, which is why I’m sorry,” said Jacob. “Kind of.”

He made a finger gun and “shot” Yuri, and finally, Yuri felt a bit of oum. However, rather than an attack, it was just a small burst that Jacob shot into the sand. Before Yuri could even figure out what was happening, he felt small prick in his back, and his body became sluggish. 

“Wh-what-?” he started.

“As I said, already over,” said Jacob, shrugging. 

Yuri felt poison spreading through his system, and though he tried to circulate oum to stop it, it was too strong. His body started shutting down, and he collapsed to the sand. With the last of his strength, he turned around to see what had hit him. Just barely peeking out of the sand was a small metal barrel angled to shoot right into Yuri’s back. It had been a trap, and Yuri got caught, hook, line, and sinker.

He saw his men running around the oasis to help, but he knew it was too late. He wanted to tell them to run away, but he didn’t even have the strength to speak. A moment later, he saw two feet appear in front of his face, then felt his head being tilted up so that he could look Jacob right in his dark, almost-black eyes. When he did, Yuri wondered why he had ever trusted this man in the first place. He had been taken in by the commiseration about his competitive spirit, and somehow failed to notice the obvious. Jacob was nothing compared to the Phoenix, but he too had the eyes of a monster.

“It’s nothing personal, kid,” said Jacob. "I've always wanted to say that."

Then, Yuri's heart beat its last, and his vision went dark. 

***

Trinity’s voidspace is very small right now. It’s about the size of a walk-in closet, meaning that the corpse she keeps and I are very close. In the light of my oum fire, the details of exactly where she’s nibbled on him are very clear. I stare for a few seconds, then extinguish the fire, returning to complete darkness.

“Mraw!” says Trinity, rolling over in my lap so that her tummy is up.

I idly scratch her as I use my senses to examine the rest of the voidspace. There’s really not much here. It’s the corpse, a few random pieces of meat I guess she decided to save for later, and us. It’s about eight feet long, four feet across, and a little over six feet tall. Not comfortable or spacious by any means, but I expect that will gradually change when we get stronger. Neither of us are even 2 star yet, and Nadia said it expands with cultivation, so I expect that it will get bigger. For now, it’s not much better than a storage. 

Before I can even wonder how I get out of this space, I feel a something within my core. It’s like a tiny string of oum, and when I give it a tug, I appear back on my bed. The string is still there, so I tug it again, and reappear back in the voidspace. It’s very easy. Now, I wonder if I can put things in here without entering myself. Trinity does it all the time, so it should be possible for me too, right?

I grab one of the mushrooms, and after a bit of thinking, I decide to create an oum string from the mushroom to the string in my core. Sure enough, the mushroom vanishes, and when I re-enter the voidspace, it’s sitting there on the ground. Now, the real question is whether I can place things in specific spots without entering. It would be annoying to keep tossing things in, and just have them be in a big, messy pile right beneath where I also appear when I enter.

It takes another half hour of experimenting, and I kind of figure it out. It’s not very precise, but if I just follow the string back instead of tugging on it, I can vaguely sense what’s within the space. Through that, I can sort of select the location where I or whatever I’m placing appear, but, as I mentioned, it’s not precise. I can at least toss things generally in the corner though, instead of just making them appear in the center.

Once I figure this out, I take my backpack and toss it in the corner. 

“Don’t mess with this,” I tell Trinity.

She nods back, making me blink in surprise. I don’t think she understood the words, but I can feel our bond much more clearly now, so I think that my intent is being translated. That’s good. Hopefully I’ll be able to properly train her not to eat people now. I’ll definitely have to be careful to teach her not to kill people who don’t deserve it. Hopefully that will work out properly.

Anyway, time to get back to cultivating. The bond took a significant portion of the oum from that mushroom, so I still didn’t quite make it to High 1 star, but I’ll definitely make it with the next one. 

I pop the mushroom in my mouth and start cultivating. Trinity joins me again, but with the bond fully formed, she takes a lot less than before. I’m hopeful that this will be a permanent thing, but it’s also possible it’s only because her cultivation is currently higher than mine, so I’m getting more because I need to catch up. She’s right around Peak 1 star, at least based on the quantity of oum she has, so she doesn’t need much more to push her over the edge, while I still have quite a way to go.

The new mushroom pushes me through to Late 1 star within the first quarter hour, and it only takes me a minute or so to stabilize my cultivation before I continue to absorb the fiery oum in earnest. Now that I’m High 1 star, my oum pathways are a bit more developed, and with all this fiery oum rushing around within me, I’m getting a very good feel for how to use it. I mean, I already knew how to use it, but it’s not only a good refresher, it even provides some mild insight, now that I’m in the headspace of transmutation.

As I cultivate, I once again find myself considering the future of my cultivation. Now that I’m experiencing intense fire oum again, I remember why I like it so much. I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but it feels like it fits me. A lot of people consider fire to be powerful and explosive, almost, and calling someone “fiery” means they’re energetic and passionate. I have a slightly different view.

Fire is indeed powerful, and often explosive, but it’s also so much more than that. Fire is persistent, and can regenerate from even the smallest embers. It has potential, and given the right fuel, a small spark can cause massive destruction. It can destroy in an instant, but if you have patience, it can also be used to create and to cleanse. Fundamentally, it never changes, and the fire from thousands of years ago is the same as fire today, but no two flames are ever the same. 

It is one of few constants throughout my many lives. Civilizations rose and fell. Maps changed. Fire was always the same. There were lives when I never got to see the ocean or the mountains, or the forests, but there was never a life where I didn’t see fire. Water might be the foundation of life, but fire is the foundation of civilization and ingenuity.

I think I will specialize in fire again. I don’t know if I’ll ever have as deep a connection with any other type of transmutation. That’s not to say I’ll go so far as to cut off my other types of transmutation with a self-imposed restriction. Not any time soon, at least. I’ve only barely scratched the surface of this new way of thinking about oum use, and I’m not about to just get rid of my ability to explore it more. There is strength in specialization, but I don’t really need any more strength right now. Well, I kind of do in this particular situation, but I’m not going to make a life-altering decision when I’m only going to be here for another week or so.

As the fire continues coursing through my body, my cultivation rises. The oum in my core becomes denser, and my oum pathways become wider and smoother. As I finish with this mushroom, I can already feel a distinct difference in how it moves within me. I had forgotten how nice it felt to be able to use oum more freely, and with this powerful, I’m left craving more. 

How good will it feel once I reach the level of my greatest life? Or beyond? What must it feel like to be Organa? To have that much oum and such fine control over it. What about beyond? What does it feel like to go beyond mortality? To reach the level of a deity?

The strange and intense desire for strength fuels my growth as I enter a multi-day long trance. I was already somewhat close to High 1 star, which is why that advancement was so easy, but climbing from the beginning of High 1 star to Peak 1 star is not so simple. Even within the same star level, the breadth of each level gets wider with each advancement. To reach Peak 1 star, I need to condense and refine just as much oum within me as I did to make it from nothing to High 1 star. 

A full five days pass as I exist in this trance, only stopping to hydrate and scarf down a quick meal and occasionally sleep before returning right back to cultivating. Trinity does not enjoy this same trance, and neither does Timmy, so for much of this time, the two of them end up playing in the antechamber. Thankfully, while still mildly obsessed with the mushrooms, the novelty has faded for him, so he’s returned to a normal (for him) level of cognition and social skill. I’m sure he’s incredibly bored, but it’s a problem he’s going to have to bear with, at least for now. I told him to cultivate once when I went out for water, but I don’t know how much he’s actually been doing. 

At the end of the fifth day, I reach Peak 1 star, and after I spend some time warming up to get used to my advancement, I return to the antechamber. Trinity is enjoying belly rubs from Timmy, but she gets up as soon as she sees me, and stands beside me as I open the door to the challenge room. 

“Oh, I thought you had given up,” says the Phoenix’s construct as soon as I enter.

“Nope,” I say, igniting my hands. 

“Oho!” she says. “I see! Let’s get started then!”