Chapter 131: End of Training
"Ugh!"
Alden hit the ground hard.
His body skidded across the training marble, hair flying in every direction, silver-golden Windsky uniform coated in a layer of dirt and grit that suggested several hours of losing in extremely educational ways. He lay there for a moment with his chest heaving and his vision doing something slightly tilted.
Ulvakor stood several meters away, looking precisely as fresh as he had at the start of the session. He lowered his hand and smiled warmly. "Much better this time, Alden. You almost made me move my feet."
Alden lifted his head from the ground. "’Almost’."
"Your Rai sense has improved significantly though," Ulvakor said. "The control over its flow through your body is much smoother than it was at the start of the week."
Alden pushed himself off the ground with a grunt, brushed grime from his cheek, and stood up. "It still feels like nothing if I can’t land a single hit on you."
Ulvakor burst into a short laugh. "Alden. I am an Ascendant."
"So?"
"So no one defeats me."
"Whatever, Lord Primordial." Alden sighed, dusting off his trousers.
Ulvakor glanced upward at the sky, doing a quick calculation. "Anyway. It has been a full week."
Alden’s eyes sharpened. "A week?"
"Yes. Which means the tournament is ready."
The word arrived in Alden’s chest like cold water. Tournament. He had been so consumed by the Rai training, so physically and mentally locked into the daily grind of getting knocked flat by Ulvakor and getting back up again, that the tournament had sat at the back of his mind like something he would deal with later.
Later was apparently now.
"Where is it being held?" he asked.
Ulvakor pointed toward the central court of the Skyland. "Here. Windsky."
Alden stared at him. Then he looked down at himself. The uniform was stained with ground-in dirt from multiple falls, his hair was a disaster, there were several bruises on his face that he could feel pressing against the inside of his skin, and he was fairly certain he smelled like a training ground.
"WHY didn’t you tell me earlier?" he demanded, gesturing at his entire body. "Look at me!"
Ulvakor blinked, examining him with fresh eyes. "Oh. You’re injured, aren’t you."
"You just noticed?!"
"It’s fine." Ulvakor snapped his fingers.
A soft green glow enveloped Alden immediately, thin spiraling trails of emerald energy flowing around his arms, legs, and chest before sinking into his skin. The bruises disappeared. The muscle soreness that had been living in his back for three days dissolved completely. The bone-deep exhaustion that he had been quietly carrying since Tuesday simply stopped existing.
He stood there feeling entirely functional for the first time in several days and flexed one arm experimentally.
’Ridiculous.’
Ulvakor looked at the stained uniform and his lip twitched slightly. "Your clothes are still in terrible shape though. Go shower. Clean up. Get yourself ready." He turned, coat sweeping behind him. "The tournament is being held here so I need to be present as well. Meet me there on time."
He pointed one stern finger back without turning around. "And don’t spend hours in the shower."
"I won’t."
"Good." He vanished, the way Alarion apparently did when he was done with a conversation.
Alden stood alone in the quiet training ground.
Slowly, a smile spread across his face. ’The tournament.’ He stretched his arms above his head, feeling the clean-healed muscles respond properly for the first time all week.
And underneath the tournament, quiet and warm:
’I’ll see Seris.’
Seven days since the Grand Selection chamber. Seven days of training that had consumed every waking hour.
Then a notification appeared in front of him.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[+4,000 EXP! Level Up!]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Level: 49]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NAME: ALDEN
Level: 49
EXP: 94,930 / 100,000
Power Combat: 397
Rank: B
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Alden froze.
He stared at the status window.
’Soul Rendering.’
The realization hit him like something dropped from a height. He had spent an entire week training Rai so completely that he had not once looked at his own primary ability. His SSS+ skill, the thing that had gotten him through everything since he got into this very novel world of his.
He navigated to his system logs.
Five highlighted notifications, all unread.
He opened the first one.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Wolf Blueprint: 100%]
[New Concept Unlocked: Fade]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
’It turned hundred? with Fade Concept?’ He held that for a second, wondering, then moved to the second.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Spider Blueprint: 100%]
[New Concept Unlocked: Camouflage]
[Supreme Concept]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
His breath caught.
’Spider hit hundred as well?! And more importantly a Supreme Concept?!’
Spider had hit one hundred percent.
He moved to the third.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Dragon Blueprint: 63%]
[New Concepts Unlocked:]
[Scale]
[Dragon Blood]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
’Scale and Dragon Blood!?’
He stared at that one for a long moment.
Fourth notification.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Thunder Ape Blueprint: 69%]
[New Concepts Unlocked:]
[Strength]
[Greed]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
’Greed?’ That was a strange name for a Concept. He made a note to find out what it did as soon as possible.
He opened the fifth and final notification.
His eyes widened ’THE FU—?! This unlocked while I wasn’t even paying attention?!’
This one was different from all the others. The previous four had been Blueprint updates, beast-specific progression he had been building over months. This one was tied to Soul Rendering itself.
Soul Rendering itself had hit fifty percent and at fifty percent a new sub-ability unlocked. Not a Beast Blueprint Concept and not an extraction improvement or a Forge upgrade, but something entirely new, a fourth pillar in the system he had been building from the start.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Soul Rendering [50%]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
◆ Soul Extraction
◆ Soul Library
◆ Soul Forge
◆ Soul Evolution [Unlocked] [New]
◆ ??? [Locked]
◆ ??? [Locked]
◆ ??? [Locked]
◆ ??? [Locked]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Alden looked at the fourth entry for a long moment without moving.
’Soul... Evolution?’
He stood in the empty training ground of the Windsky Skyland and felt the quiet enormity of what had quietly happened while he was busy being knocked over by Ulvakor.
He ran a hand through his messy hair.
’I need to try all of these.’