Frostbound

Chapter 259 - Sharing is Caring

"You don't have to manhandle it, it's a part of you, not some tool you have to wield, treat it like it is."

"You're being too forceful again."

"Gentler! Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?"

Frustration was building up inside me but I pushed it down and focused once more on the task at hand. The first day had gone remarkably easy. The River denizens were mainly avoiding us but there were a few that had tried their luck.

I had to jump in the river a few times but it wasn't all that bad. [Frost Armor] kept me from getting soaked and I had more than enough upper body strength to pull myself back aboard.

Marcus could just lazily swing his glaive and the water would spilt apart like it was meant to be. The two sides would come crashing together and a pool of blood would be the only indication that something died.

Austin by far had the most fun out of it. He would giggle to himself while launching ray after ray of light. He did it so often that I was positive he was killing things that didn't need to be. Playing a hand at spearfishing.

Mainly, the trip was boring. I couldn't train on the boat as it would rock too much and I had to pay too much attention to threats to do any deep thought. Even though I doubted I'd accomplish it, I still spent time thinking about my Laws.

Tier 3 was a large jump, one that felt insurmountable as I was right now. Having a lead in [Frozen Rift] helped, but even that didn't help. Gaining a Tier 1 law took a concept. Gaining Tier 2 took expanding that concept further.

Their 3 was so much more than that. It wasn't just gaining new concepts. Well, it was, but one wasn't going to cut it.

The end goal of Laws was to continue until you encompassed everything there was about a Law. My Ice Law wouldn't be 'complete' until I mastered everything there was to be about Ice. Every concept, every aspect, everything.

That being the case, if all it took to take another Step was to realize another concept, a Tier 6 Law, a Master Law of Ice, would only hold a paltry few concepts. Which was far from the truth.

And even further from reality. Tier 3 was already out of reach, let alone Tier 6.

I knew I was rushing, but I couldn't help but try. It wasn't like I had anything better to do.

Laws were supposed to take years of meditation to gain enlightenment. Tier 1 usually came easily enough to people with an affinity for a certain one, but beyond that was supposed to be a trial.

Something extensive time and effort was dedicated toward.

Like how it took years for my Wind Law to reach Tier 2. Well, just under two years but it was still a long time compared to my Ice Law. That had reached Tier 2 in three months.

Tier 3 would take much longer. I'd explored various lines of thought trying to push the envelope, and I knew my Law had grown, but it was still far away from the next threshold.

Seeing the mountain I had to climb and knowing I wouldn't be reaching the summit anytime soon, I usually focused on something else that was more pressing towards my evolution.

But now that the to-do list was empty, I was back trying to puzzle out how to push things along.

If the rough timeline I'd come up with held true, I'd be ready to evolve to D-rank in a few months. Whatever this obelisk thing turned out to be would undoubtedly have fighting involved.

Heavy fighting.

Which, if becoming a Baron was any indication, would net me a few levels closing further in on capping out. It'd take a while to get back home, but I'd spend the next few months crafting like a madman, and bam.

I'd be ready.

Well, except for the needed parts.

Parts were becoming an increasing worry. A worry that extended beyond only me.

Austin was capped already, Abigail was close, and I knew Marcus had to be from how powerful he felt. If so many people in my immediate vicinity were close to the threshold, many more across the planet had to be.

Austin was holding out for a reward from the test.

He thought that, like the tutorial, participating in the test would net us something in return. His argument was based on the fact not everyone was participating.

In his words, "It'd be utter bullshit if we all go down there, fight an army of whatever gets thrown at us, and then get nothing. Some might even die, yet we receive the same as people who stayed home and did nothing. Not only would that be bullshit, but I'll be pissed!"

While he was a touch rough with his words, I felt his reasoning was sound. It would be 'bullshit' to get nothing. It would also make incentivizing people to fight future tests difficult.

If they didn't care about keeping our planet protected, they had no reason to fight.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I was trying not to get my hopes up, but if it turned out that there wasn't going to be a reward, we had to figure out a way to evolve from other avenues. It was a path that everyone needed, so at least there was common interest driving the effort forward.

Similar to if any found a better way to communicate, if someone had ties to get evolution parts, that would be something worth fighting over.

It would also make the Faction, or Factions, responsible public enemy number one. If only they could evolve, everyone else would be pissed, me included.

If all else fell through, we'd have to find a way. If it was something everyone was bottlenecked by, waiting wouldn't be all that bad.

It would give me a chance to explore other things. Crafting for one. Most of my time was spent on combat or ways to increase my personal strength.

Enchanting was sooo... intriguing. It could do so many things, create such bizarre and wonderous things, yet I hadn't even scratched the surface yet.

Exploring how dungeons worked would also be fun.

Taking another trip North.

There were so many things I'd put off doing.

My aura that was spread in front of the ships encountered a monster coming our way and quickly, cutting off that train of thought.

I sighed and reached for my hammer.

"I got it!" Austin called out and his spear began to light up. The light gathering didn't last long and soon discharged into the water. Its speed was instantaneous to my eye, but the sound of evaporating water and the hole left in the river was clear to see.

"Abigail, grab that! It looks tasty!" Austin called over the sizzling water not even a second after launching his attack.

An orb of water separated from the River pulling up an odd-looking fish that Austin deemed tasty. It looked like a monstrous bass or trout. Or bluefin?

I wasn't the most well-versed in fish.

"Try not to burn it this time," I mocked Austin secretly. Being able to whisper to someone discreetly was more fun than I thought. The best part was no one else knew I said anything.

This wasn't the first time Austin deemed something worthy of eating and instead of leaving it to someone with a Cooking Profession, or better yet, cooking experience, he tried using his skills with fire to do it.

Which ended up burning most things due to lack of control.

Austin's excuse was because things were too delicate and it wasn't his fault that it burned at such low heat.

Leaving the man to experiment, I turned back to my aura.

Training my aura had shaped up to increase what I could do with it. Before exploring what it could do, I could at most pull it in, let it out, and press down on people.

Now, I could talk through it and use it as detection.

The... clarity of what I felt through it was still being worked on, but I could now feel when something strong came into range. It was like a radar scanner but it could only pick up things big enough to cause it to react.

Low-level fish and people didn't give off enough response in order to feel that they were there.

On the other side, I also got a lot better at keeping it contained. Knowing that it was possible to get a response through aura sensing, Gabriel and I tried to conceal ourselves against one another.

Gabriel normally won and it was one hundred percent rigged against me, but it was still good practice. I was never one for stealth, but it felt like a handy skill to practice.

I mainly trained to sense things rather than hide from things, though. It was a much more needed skill than the other.

I could punch, hammer, freeze, and all around make things have a bad day in various ways, but any sort of perception of my surroundings was severely lacking.

Most of my fights were in the Dungeon or through the Waves thrown at us, pylon upgrades included.

All of those had one thing in common. The monsters came to me.

My trip North made it clear that I was missing a few fundamental skills in my repertoire.

Sensing things being one of them.

Using Gabriel's analogy further, if my aura was a part of my body, then the area it covered should be something I could sense. It was using that imagery that I expanded that part of what it could do.

The area it covered wasn't too large, big enough to encompass a radius of a few hundred feet, but that could be changed. Just like I spread it out over The Fort, I did the same now.

Doing so decreased what I could sense, but greatly enlarged the area covered.

Gabriel ranted about, "If you compress it into a wall you can then rotate it around you like a radar. Then, you don't have to compromise between lower clarity and larger area."

All of my attempts to 'compress it into a wall' were met with failure. The best I could do was turn the sphere into an oblong tear-drop-looking thing.

It didn't help that so many other auras were competing in the same space.

Through trial and error, I found training in a spot without someone else's aura was much easier to accomplish than in one already 'occupied'.

I wasn't sure if occupied was the right word to describe it, but it was like fighting for the same space. Our auras naturally collided and fought one another or anything else that wasn't the same, which increased the difficulty of trying to do anything.

Funnily enough, that could be stopped.

I noticed that Austin's aura fought mine a lot less than Marcus's did.

Whether that was because Austin and I knew each other better and we fought together often, or if it was because we had a higher level of trust, I wasn't sure.

Gabriel didn't know either. He claimed, "I'm not an expert. I mostly play around with this in my workshop between attempts at enchanting. Not many people are around so it's not something I have to worry about."

Auras... were... weird, I'd found.

There was a lot more about them than I first realized and having my brother put me on the right track was only the start. Deep down, I could feel like we were only scratching the surface of what they could do.

It was times like this that I hated not being able to go to a pylon and buy a book.

So much information I just knew was out there, yet we couldn't access it. We had to play around in the dark reinventing the wheel. While that may be fun for some people, it was extremely upsetting to others.

It was a growing frustration I was having.

It also made me look at this future gathering differently.

When I first heard of the obelisk and thought of how everyone would end up in the same spot, my initial feeling was one of dread.

Everyone who was strong enough, owned a pylon, or led a Faction would most likely be there. It would be a massive contest to be the best. Either to stand out, arrogance, or just the need to portray their strength, it would turn into something I didn't care for.

I knew I'd do the same. The way I went about things was bound to rub people the wrong way, but that was something I knew would happen. Something that was accounted for.

I wasn't going to change it either. It was better to be myself and have the cards land how they may, than bend over backwards to accommodate other people.

And if the way I thought was common, which I expected it would be in people used to being at the top of their local food chain, then this 'gathering' was bound to be intense.

But, now that I got passed those thoughts and moved on to what could be accomplished, it painted the entire thing in an entirely new light.

If, and it was a big if, people came together and shared things, we could move forward in so many ways.

While it would be nice, I'd settle for only a few things. A way to communicate. The way forward to evolve.

Maybe even Portals??

Teleporting was infinitely better than spending months on the road.

Hell, we were only going from one point of the continent to another, on the same continent.

There was still so much of the world to see.