Fifty-One

"I've never really watched this before," Diur said as she sat on her heels, only inches away from Kon as he gathered up the stack of bloody F-Grade stones around himself. He offered her a quick grin as the small hill of stones tried to topple over.

"It's pretty boring most of the time. I just sit here and absorb energy. Nothing to see," Kon said.

"Still, the amount of power there is formidable. This planet is so rich with energy that its mind boggling. You have a day labourers wages for a year right next to you. The work of ten bloody minutes," Diur said, voice trailing off as she looked around them. Kon instantly went alert, his own heightened senses straining to notice what had disturbed the Ulmna woman.

"Hmmm…I will guard you while you do this," Diur said. All expression of ease erased as she gripped the pommel of her sword. With a burst of strength she flew up to a tree branch, the limb hardly swaying as she landed lightly. Kon watched her for a few minutes suddenly feeling very much like bait.

He gripped that first F-Grade stone and it dissolved to dust in his hand in a blink of an eye, the energy pulled forth like a vacuum only to be consumed by his hungry body. Kon closed his eyes and visualized his body as rift energy started to saturate him, core after core consumed in heartbeats. A pang of worry went through him as his body ate it all, drinking the power dry and not allowing it to build up.

His mental image of himself was beginning to glow, a white-silver light that contrasted with the pulsing, bloody runes inside of himself. Brighter and brighter his image grew until tears slid down his clenched tight eyes in the physical world. The next core's energy entered his glowing body and sat there, at the base of his spine. It was a black-red color, ugly to look at. More and more cores were turned to dust as the well of power at the base of his spine deepened.

The white-silver light of his body attacked the deep, dark, energy, slowly lightening it as Kon ingested more and more power. Far away, in the physical world, his fingers were scrambling over bared dirt while searching for the next core to consume. It wasn't enough, it sat there like a mostly-finished pool, needing just one more drop to finalize.

Panic bubbled, threatening to derail his mental imagery of both himself and the purpose of the node. "Reinforce Bone". It was a mantra he repeated to himself, over and over as he tried to focus on turning the slowly lightening pool of energy into his fourth rune node.

Cold metal touched his grasping hand, a smooth, dense, stone placed in it. Kon was too deep inside of his own mind to notice the detail consciously, placing the detail to the side to be examined at a later date.

Emerald green energy raced inside of him in a torrent as he began to drag down the stone into his every hungry depths. It was much more powerful than that of a single F-Grade stone. Kon drank deeply and kept drinking without cease. The emerald light poured into the base of his spine, swirling with the dark pool, lightening it for a moment, then his internal silver-white light began to cleanse it.

The powerful image of the reinforce rune came to mind, bubbling to the surface of the pond. Kon had never been this deep before, to see his entire body, the tracing lines of power, the bloody runes, how his newest fragment formed.

It started out as a ripple in the power, a shaking of the liquid-like structure until the outlines were there, all in their powerful glory. Then, the power flowed inwards, slopping into the rune like it was wet concrete pouring into a trench. Kon smiled inwardly as the stone beneath his fingers finally broke apart into dust, scattering to the ground.

More and more of the deep pool poured into the rune, a glowing red starting to pulsate from it as his entire body seemed to vibrate with contained energy. Sweat beaded down his face, back, and chest, streams of it that failed to cool him. All of it was felt, but distant, as if it was happening to someone else.

The rune stopped absorbing energy. A ripple of power radiated out of it, flowing down his spine and then flowing over every one of his bones. It was agony. It was ecstasy. Kon screamed, but he couldn't be sure if it was in his mind or truly out loud.

There was still a pool of power in his body and it began to agitate, energy seeking release. His body was full, there was nothing left that could be absorbed. Kon stared at all of it and then grabbed the pool of energy in his iron will.

Alice had said he was the most talented energy controller she'd ever seen and he had a near bottomless ability to absorb power. He put it all on the line, his body vibrating with excess as he guided it deeper, into his muscles directly, then the bone. It was how the next level of body cultivation was supposed to be done.

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Under supervision, with a practiced cultivator and a method. Kon didn't have that and he was in real risk of blowing up. Or having a stroke. He watched how his nodes slowly filtered energy into bones and muscle, how the silver-white light of his body sat atop of the metaphysical representation of himself. It was like a coating of power, just the thinnest layer of it.

Kon guided the energy to his heart and prepared to risk it all. It felt right, he was sure he could do it. He wove that dark pool of energy through the white-silver light, past the protection and strength it offered, and burrowed it into his heart.

He screamed for real this time.

Pain roared through him as he threaded the smallest, thinnest, needle of power into the muscle. It hammered like a pneumatic press, desperate and powerful as Kon gently fed it a steady stream of energy.

Thud-thud-thud-thudthudthudthud THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.

The pounding rattled his body as the second most important muscle in his body railed as Kon stabbed himself over and over, tattooing power into the desperate organ. In the real world, he coughed and blood flew out of his mouth, spraying across a metal figure.

There could be no room for error, for random thought, for doubt to cloud his mind. With every needle blow, he left just a drop of energy behind, over and over he pierced and left energy behind. It sat there, foreign emerald energy in his overworked heart. Kon picked up speed, drenching his internal organ with the remnants of power until the pool was gone.

The baking heat had died away as he consumed the power, the pressure against his skin faded. His sweating stopped but he couldn't control the rapid breathing or the constant, crushing pain in his chest. With a final punch, the needle of energy he'd been using dissolved into his heart and Kon took the metaphysical step back to look over his heart.

It was still sheathed in the white-silver energy, but there was a decidedly green hue to it. The discoloration seemed wrong, Kon moved instinctively, grabbing the organ in his hands, feeling the power of the sheath under his fingers. The organ's frantic beat, the heat of the power sitting inside of it, not melding.

Kon squeezed.

Blood poured out of him, his pores opening, black blood spattered out between his lips, merging into streams from his nose to fall in crimson waterfall across his chest. The pain redoubled, crushing him under a mountain.

The memory of Alice standing there, grim and happy with blood drenching her as she stared down the peak D-Grade cultivator. Indomitable.

Diur dancing along the side of a canyon, her blade a shimmering mirage of death as she ran horizontally. Free.

Kon's heart stopped. Sudden silence after the pounding beat was just as loud as the crashing crescendo had been.

"No. No. No." Kon didn't plead, he denied it. He squeezed the heart, pumping blood manually as he drew on the rest of his body. White-silver light filled his hands as the rest of the avatar dimmed to nearly nothing, faded starlight with the red runes standing sentinel against the darkness.

Green energy was smothered, bathed in light, breaking apart and melding with the muscle. It began to lighten, changing from emerald to forest to the color of wilted grass in moments. Then it broke apart even further as it melded with his body, a glow taking up the center of his chest, a star igniting.

THUD-THUD-THUD-Thud-thud-thud

His heart began to beat in a steady rhythm. With every pulse, thin ribbons of white light flowed out of his heart and began to flow across his now dark avatar. Kon watched as the pain faded away as his avatar came alight with energy again, slowly circulating around his body with every pulse of his newly reforged heart.

The mental imagery faded away as Kon pulled himself back to reality and his conscious body. If he had thought he'd left the pain behind, he was sorely mistaken. It was like he'd been stomped on by a giant. His entire chest ached in a way that seemed like it should be antithetical to life.

He tried to open his eyes, but it was like someone had glued them shut. He reached up and realized his hands were loosely bound in front of him. Something wet and cold washed down his face, a piece of cloth scraping at his face as he spluttered from the sudden shock of it all. There was no other sound as he blinked his eyes blearily about himself.

First thing he looked at was his bound hands, a pair of metal cuffs wrapped around his wrists, but the actual cuffs were loose as not to chafe his skin. Kon blinked stupidly at that.

"Where'd Diur get handcuffs?" Kon's groggy mind took a few seconds to jumpstart but when it did, it sent a jolt of energy through him as he blinked rapidly and looked around the camp.

Diur sat with her legs crossed, a pair of much more sturdy cuffs on her. They were closer to metal sleeves that rose up to her elbows and locked her arms in front of her. Irritation and annoyance filled her features, but there was no fear. A rectangular black, metal, mask had been strapped to her mouth and kept her from speaking.

Kon looked past her to the figures standing around their small camp. They were fully armored in basic tech-armor. The stealth setting blurred their figures as they mirrored their surroundings, leaving nothing more than eight mirages that slowly walked around the perimeter of the camp.

He didn't pay attention to them for long as he looked over at the main attraction of the camp. A mountain of burnished steel, the glow of the armor bright to his eyes. Now that he could see and feel rift energy better, it was like looking directly at a star.

Knight Evelyn Bosch sat on her heels staring at him. Her helmet in one hand as she stared at him with the patience of a stone.

"Cadet Kon, reporting for duty!" Kon tried to get his best into the shout, but his lungs weren't cooperating with him.

The older Knight leaned forward, her amber eyes coming within inches of him as she stared down at him.

"What was that?"

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