Savage Awakening 581. Boot Camp (II)

Zane didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but he liked this Concept quite a bit already.

It sounded clear and straightforward, and it neatly explained the effects he’d seen on the Kaijuu. The Sage hitting much bigger than his fist should’ve allowed, and all that.

Seeing the Sage detonate all over that thing had been a great advertisement for it.

“Not the most complex-sounding Concept, you might think,” the Sage admitted. “But it’s got some subtleties to it. Anyone can see sheer size, ‘course. But those truly massive things, they’ve all got something extra to them, backing that size up. Making everything they do that much more massive, something that sets them above the pack! That’s the Concept we’re looking for.”

“I get what you mean,” said Zane. He felt he got the general gist, at least. Sometimes when he got up close with a giant interstellar object, really took it in, he’d feel this instinctual sense of vastness—this awe-inspiring heft to it.

“The thing about that Concept is,” said the Sage, nodding. “And this’ll surprise you, but it’s a subtle one. It’s not very flashy at all, at least when it’s found in nature. It’s just there in the background. That’s what can make grasping it tough. Seeing the size, that’s one thing. But the Concept that gives you that impression, that’s different. You’d pretty much only really feel it if you go looking, or if you get hit by it straight-up.”

Zane’s brow furrowed. The Sage was kind of losing him a little.

“Take a Black Hole, for instance,” said the Sage hastily. “That thing’s got Pure Size for sure. But you know what else it’s got? Gravity, and a hell of a lot of other Laws! Those Laws, they’re working hard all the time. But Pure Size doesn’t do anything normally. It’s baked in already, it doesn’t activate or deactivate. Pretty much just is! You don’t see it out and about.”

“Right,” said Zane. The Sage was getting him back now. “It’s just not active, like Gravity or a Starfire explosion.”

“Exactly!” said the Sage. “What we want to do is to take that baked-in, passive Concept, and make it something we can wield like a damned weapon.”

“And I’ll do that by loading it into my body with the Foundation Stone,” said Zane. “Then I can make a planet-sized impact without being planet-sized.”

“You’ve got it down,” said the Sage, nodding approvingly. “My metric for it is, if you think you can pretty comfortably punch a Category 1 Kaijuu, you’re well on your way to mastering it.”

That sounded like quite a reasonable metric to Zane.

“Now, ‘cause it is more subtle, at least most of the time," said the Sage. “This thing actually takes the longest of any Tier 6 Steel-path Concept. That’s for most folks, anyway. And it should take even longer if you’ve got to load it into your physique…”

The Sage gave him a friendly bump. “But I get the feeling you’ll take to it just fine, you damned brat!”

Zane agreed. “It does feel like my wheelhouse.”

He honestly couldn’t think of a Concept that suited him more. Though he hadn’t gotten a proper look at it yet, so it was hard to say for sure. He didn’t want to presume too much.

But something about being plain massive pleased a very deep-down part of his soul.

They had to wait for a giant cart full of axes to pass before they could make use of the teleporter they’d gone to. The one that’d deposit them at another teleporter hub, this outpost at the edge of Steelheart. From there it wouldn’t be long at all until they got to Boot Camp, the Sage promised him.

They just chatted a bit, catching each other up on what’d gone down in the past decade-plus or so. The Sage got a kick out of what’d happened to Hreinn.

“I’d find it more satisfying to whip that rat myself,” said the Sage, scratching his chin. “But can’t argue with the results, I s’pose.” 

The Sage had spent most of the past two decades or so clearing and setting up Boot Camp.

“Besides that,” said the Sage easily, “I’ve been looking to get back into training myself.”

Zane perked up. “How far’ve you gotten?”

“Eh. I’m still warming my way into it.” The Sage grinned wistfully. “Going through those Ruins was so much damned fun… Then fighting that ol’ lich at the end, and getting to stretch my legs for the first time in ages—I might’ve convinced myself I’m not as done with this Galaxy as I thought! Might be I’ve got a few more fighting years left in me after all.”

“I think you’ve still got it.” Zane had always believed in the old fellow. From everything he could tell, the Sage had liked fighting just as much as he had, especially when he was younger. It was hard for Zane to imagine that’d ever go away, even after an era’s worth of rust. It was just too deeply ingrained in the old fellow, just like it was for Zane. He saw signs of it in the Sage quite often—that fire whenever the Sage got hyped watching Zane’s own fights.

The old fellow definitely still had more to give.

“… You damned brat!” The Sage gave him a head ruffle. “We’ll see. Might be this training camp’ll be good for the both of us. You’ve got to get that last Concept, get on the verge of True God, and I’ll see what I can do about shaking off a bit of rust.”

The Sage looked at the skies. “Steelheart held up just fine last war, for the most part. Never got in a real scrap back then… Well, I hadn’t gotten warmed up yet anyway. But it’s about time I got going again.”

He chuckled. “All this young blood on the Hegemon Ranking... Folks that rose up well after my prime. Even that Lyxandor brat, thinking he could take me down, easy as that! Too much time’s gone by, I s’pose. They must’ve forgotten.”

The Sage cracked his back. “Well! Might be it’s time folks got a reminder.”

He still had on his easy grin, but there was a fierce light in his eyes. And Zane got the feeling that was the exact same look a young Barbarian Sage had as he took down Dragonspire’s finest, one by one.

There was a nice simplicity to solitude and training alone. But just being in the Steelheart Conclave for all of a half hour and talking to the Sage like this was enough to get Zane as hyped as he’d been in ages to slam some heavy weights.

***

The cart finally cleared and the two of them made their way through the teleporter. It deposited them near the northern edge of the Conclave. Another handful of teleports later, they landed at an outpost—one pretty far from civilization, by the looks of it. Near the heart of the Galaxy, Zane would feel these subtle lines of essence stretching all over the place in the Astral Plane. Lines connecting teleportation stations, or scrying lines, or arrays—just evidence of man-made activity. In a Great Faction, or even its surrounding territories, the sky would be a latticework of those essence-lines. 

Right now, though, the only line he saw was the one going back through the teleporter, stretching into the far distance.

Then he saw Fluffy leashed to a post of rune stone, sunk straight into reality itself. Fluffy gave a shriek, did an excited barrel roll, and then pasted Zane with a big serrated-tongued lick. 

Zane was pleased to see her too; he couldn’t help but grin. He gave her some scratches behind one of her ears.

“Down, girl!” said the Sage, ruffling her too. “Fluffy’ll take us the rest of the way.”

He gave the Sage a look. “When’d she hit Empyrean?”

“She’s been working hard the last few decades, just like anyone else. She’s actually a ton of the reason we could get Boot Camp done in the first place! You can bet when that snake’s minions come knocking, she’ll be ready to give ’em a good ol’ hiding.”

Fluffy gave a shriek of defiance. “Thanks for helping out, girl,” he told her.

She did another barrel roll. 

“Alright, let’s get you saddled up,” said the Sage. He tossed Fluffy a 10,000-year Sacred Bone, which she happily shredded.

Then they got onboard, Fluffy gave one last shriek, and they burst into motion.

One Fluffy head-butt opened up the void, just like when when they’d taken their trip to the Ruins. They barreled straight through.

This time the journey lasted just a day and a half. It was pretty simple fending off the few Monsters they encountered in the void, which were a handful of True God Bone Mammoths and Serpents—much fewer than he’d seen last time. These void-Monsters just weren’t a challenge anymore. There just wasn’t much in all of Dragonspire that could challenge him right now, honestly.

Which was why he was headed where he was headed.

He had high hopes for boot camp.

***

After the first day, he started noticing some heavy scarring in the void. Heavy high-tier Laws flowed through those scars, and through them you could see bright snapshots of reality.

The Sage grunted. “We’re entering some pretty treacherous stretches of space…Stay sharp, lad. The closer you get to the edge of the galaxy, the more shattered things tend to get. Those scars you see in the void, they’re scars reflected in the fabric of reality itself. Corruption scars.”

Zane’s brow furrowed. “They were there around the Ruins too, weren’t they?” 

“That’s right,” said the Sage. “Though the Ruins were more on the southern edge of the galaxy, if you look at it like a flat map. Where we’re going’s closer to the northern edge.”

Zane blinked. Something had just occurred to him. “Where’s the ‘Edge’ edge, by the way?” He wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it. “The place where you can hunt down Empyrean-tier Monsters for Credits.”

The place where that one straw-hat disciple of Noughtfire cut his teeth and where Haxorax seemed to be going. He’d been curious about it for a while, though he hadn’t been able to find much information on it.

“That thing’s far northwest,” said the Sage. “That one’s a pretty new zone, actually. Just about three hundred thousand years old. I never set eyes on it myself, mind you, so this is all just hearsay. Wasn’t around when I was in my prime. Damned shame, that…”

He grinned wistfully. “Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun… hells, what I wouldn’t have given! Well, anyway. That zone’s only a thing because it’s getting late in the Chaos Cycle. Corruption’s getting pretty damned strong. Monsters all over the galaxy are getting fed plenty, I tell you. Even some of those Kaijuu have grown a good size or two since I last saw ’em. But that’s just better training, eh?”

Zane nodded. “Right.” 

He’d long ago made a mental note to check out that Edge place too. It sounded quite promising… though he wasn’t in dire need of shards right now, which seemed the main reason to go—nabbing those bounties and all. Other than fighting some tough Empyrean bosses, of course.

Something told him Haxorax would tear it up out there.

He had a bit of a smile on his face just thinking about it. He was looking forward to seeing meeting the fellow again in just a few short decades… he supposed he’d have made some pretty big strides himself by then. He’d likely be a True God. 

Before long, Fluffy gave a shriek.

She headbutted her way back into reality proper and skidded to a halt, scales sparking… and Zane saw it. 

“There she is!” said the Sage leaping to his feet. 

On the far left lay a vast sinkhole of gravity, centered around a perfect sphere of pure black, a sphere laden thick with sheer force. A stark line marked out its event horizon.

Another sphere, almost identical, lay all the way out to the right. And between them, lay one massive core of dark steel, anchored by four giant chains. That chunk was forged of a material Zane could tell was of incredible density, just by looking at it. It had knuckle-craters all over it, the product of what had to be thousands on thousands of punches. 

Then, scattered around, lay the stations. 

He saw a field full of runed-up stones, each as big as a planet; he saw a platform laden with machines, these shiny pipes and pistons and presses, puffing tufts of steam. There were a half-dozen more stations—a giant monster skull lying there for some reason, what looked to be a giant ice bath set on a moon, a glistening white slab the size of several planets, laden with scars that seethed Grand Circle Tier 7 Laws… everywhere he looked, he saw something new, something that only fascinated him more. 

“Right!” said the Sage, hopping off. He cracked his knuckles. “What do you say we get this ball rolling?”