Savage Awakening 590. The Final Training Montage (I)

That one he’d seen coming, honestly. He’d done a ton of legwork there fighting all that gravity… he must’ve gotten down nearly a thousand Red Giant steps in total. His quads were still burning. He had a feeling they would be for a little while.

Still, he tested out a Red Giant step and saw that level granted him a little more than a 10% distance boost per step. Nice.

Then he moved on to the Law gains.

That final Kaijuu attack ended up not being a Pure Size attack, at least not primarily, which was a bit disappointing. There was some Pure Size in there, but most of it just involved throwing him around and battering him. He’d kind of just signed up to take a beating there.

It didn’t really matter in the end. He’d gotten all he could want out of that fight, Pure Size-wise.

Inertia was the big one. He wanted to start loading that into his body right away if he was ready. But he couldn’t discount all the times he’d gotten whacked by Pure Size straight-up; he’d gleaned all kinds of details there. All those tail-bashes had been quite the learning experience.

Not to mention that last blow he’d taken, the one that’d crushed him into the deadlifting platform. He got a hefty dose of Pure Size exposure there. That bit really hammered the point home.

Part of it was pure comprehension gains, like with inertia. But another part of it was just feeling how Size was used in action, which was also quite valuable.

All in all, a solid Law haul.

Now he just had to figure out how to load it into his physique. Something he still wasn’t quite clear on, actually.

He asked the Sage about it.

“That’s simple stuff,” said the Sage. “You ever smash a snake into a peat bog?”

Zane just blinked at him.

The Sage hastily backtracked.

The gist of the Sage’s explanation was that the stone was a blank slate. You just had to fill it with all your newly gained insights—‘record’ it into the stone, as it were. And since the stone was now part of your physique, it carved those Laws into your body too.

In this case, that meant taking the impression he’d gotten from all that Pure Size and ‘inscribing’ it into the stone. He got the sense it was like stamping a mold into clay over and over. Which wasn’t unlike what the crusher had done to him.

He still wasn’t sure what that had to do with the snakes thing, but there it was.

“It’ll take a bit of time, granted!” said the Sage, scratching his chin. “And it’s mostly just sitting there meditating, which can be a bit of a grind. But it’s well worth it, lad. You’ll see the difference right away.”

He got another notification too.

Skill up!

Asura Titan’s Body, Fourth Form I -> II

It was the first proper body level he’d gotten in ages, ever since the end of his time in the Ruins.

It wasn’t even the fight that did it. The fight might’ve helped digest all that steel he’d munched and contributed a little physically. But he felt quite clearly that it was the steel that’d given his body the resources to grow, and the lifting he’d done earlier that’d been the fuel for it.

He was only seeing the rewards now. 

These days just fighting—even strenuous fights—wasn’t enough to make substantial physique progress. He’d known that for a little while now, with how slow his body levels grew these days if he didn’t lift. But this fight just confirmed it.

His physique had just gotten too advanced. Which he supposed he couldn’t complain too much about.

Though the Sage had said something about Kaijuu fighting being good physical training… Zane asked him about it. Maybe he was just punching Kaijuus wrong.

“It won’t get you more body levels, that’s true. At least, not by itself—but don’t you underestimate Kaijuu punching, lad! It’s still damned great physical training. It tempers what you’ve already got. Might not add new material, but it’ll go a long way to making you stronger. Whenever you add new strength—whether it’s essence or muscle—you’ve got to put that stuff to work. New muscle’s good stuff, but you’ve still got to teach your body how to use it.”

Which actually did clarify things. Zane supposed he’d been fighting almost constantly, so he never usually thought about deliberately going out of his way to ‘temper’ his gains. But it sounded to him a lot like muscular recruitment, back in pre-System lifting. It was one thing to gain the raw muscle, but it was quite another to make sure you were squeezing all the strength you could out of it.

“That’s today’s tour done, then.” The Sage put his hands on his hips.

The Sage took a moment to look out over all of Boot Camp.

“Lad… this is it,” he sighed. “The road’s laid out before you now. All these stations, they’re all the tools you’ll need to get a godsdamned top-tier physique. Now you’ve just got to go through that long winter of training, walk that road to the end. But it’s all there.”

He gave Zane a fierce grin. “You can see the ending, can’t you?”

Zane nodded, a tad unsure. He felt he got what the Sage meant.

The Sage looked wistful. “I was a Minor God when I first thought about taking down an Empyrean, lad. Made that my goal. Granted, these were the days before we had Minor God brats actually doing it!”

He gave Zane an affectionate head-ruffle. “Anyway… even back then—centuries, could be millennia out from actually laying my hands on an Empyrean—there was this beast I wanted to hunt. The hegemon terrorizing my local sector back then. They called it ‘Storm's Fury.' This legendary Monster, you should've seen the myths they wrote about this thing. It was one of the first of that little snake’s Endbringers. Not even one of its Primes, mind you—but back then it sure as hells seemed like the strongest, baddest thing there was… Still, though. I could see it so godsdamned clearly in my mind’s eye. I could see me taking that beast down with my bare hands.”

“I get what you mean now,” said Zane, nodding again.

“That’s what it takes! Now—that’s not all it takes…but for a man to make it to the top, he’s got to have that vision. All the will in the world’s no good if you don’t have the vision to back it up. But if you do, you’ve got a shot. A precious godsdamned shot to make it real. And if you’re the right kind of man, one shot’s all you’ll ever need.”

Zane had never thought about it like that, particularly, but he supposed it was true.

He didn’t just believe he’d take down Malzareth one day. At some level, deep down, he could see it. He just knew he had what it took.

Afterward, the two of them headed to what would be their Boot Camp home base. The giant Monster skull they’d passed earlier, the Monster skull stuffed with more Z-Platinum and Spirit Water.

Fluffy greeted them as they came over with a happy screech. She did a few barrel rolls too.

“Good girl!” laughed the Sage. He tossed her a Sacred Bone, which she gobbled up.

There, the two of them chowed down on their evening meal of steel, fueling up for the next day’s work.

With its mouth wide open like this, the skull reminded Zane of a cavern—it felt like the two of them were camping out in some ancient bone-white cave. You could imagine the teeth there were stalagmites, and the eye holes just holes in some vast roof, admitting twinkling views of distant stars.

“This was my home base for ages out here… hells, it’s good to be back.” By the grin on his face, the Sage still seemed to have quite fond feelings for it. 

There were also thousands of chalk marks tallied up, which the Sage told him were one for each year. He wiped them away. “I used to start fresh every new training cycle. We’ll do weeks while you’re here. There you go—week one.”

The Sage made a single chalk line and admired it. “It’s just motivating as all hells to see that wall fill up. Trust me on this one, lad.”

Every so often, lightning would jump between the skull’s teeth.

Zane blinked at it, then at the shape of the skull. Then at the Sage. “Is this thing…?”

“That’s right!” said the Sage cheerfully. “First Empyrean I ever killed, and an Endbringer too. It’s that one Monster I was telling you about. Spent millennia chasing this thing. Now these days, I’d think it’s nothing, strength-wise. It’s just here as a reminder. Did I ever tell you what my title stands for?”

“Don’t think so,” said Zane through a mouthful of steel.

“It means to be unreasonable as all hell. That’s the spirit of it… when you’re told over and over again the foe’s just too strong. Or it’s just not possible—the odds are stacked so far against you, or that it’s all damned over! But a Barbarian doesn’t give a damn about any of that. And that means you’ll take down foes they never thought you could. Foes it’s beyond all goddamn reason you’d be able to take down. That’s what my title does. Makes things that ought to be impossible just a little less impossible.”

He paused. “I never told you what really went down that time I went to fight that shitty little snake either, did I?”

“You said it sneak-attacked you, right?”

“That’s right. I went through two of its Primes in a row, and the rest went and ganged up on me. And the little shit still took the chance to stab me in the back!”

His eyes flashed. “Now, say it didn’t do that. Say I took down all of its Primes, one by one. Say I made it to Malzareth’s godsdamned cell. You know what would’ve happened? ‘Cause I do, lad. I know it in my damned heart.”

The Sage leaned back, hands behind his head, grinning at the stars. “I know damned well I would’ve finished it then and there. Now—you ask anyone in this Galaxy, and they wouldn’t believe me. Even in its cage, that thing still had well over a hundred, maybe two hundred more shards than I did, and who knew how many more Laws… but I knew it in my heart of hearts. I had that vision, clear as if it already happened. And you know what? I just know that little snake knew it too.”

He laughed. “I just know I had that bastard shaking in its scales!”

He gave Zane a friendly bump. “So you’d best get strong, lad, and fast. I’ll be working on my own stuff too. Might be if you take too long, I’ll have to go do the job myself! I’m telling you right now, I’ve got a spear with its godsdamned name on it.”