Savage Awakening 584. Boot Camp (V)

Zane was pleasantly surprised, actually. He was less wrecked than he thought he’d be. With what the Sage had said earlier, he’d been ready for the kitchen sink to be thrown at him. The Sage had a habit of being a bit optimistic as to what Zane could take on. Granted, Zane himself had that same attitude and it worked out most of the time. Though that also meant he got crushed or tore all his muscles a fair bit too. 

The Sage’s training plans did always get him pushing his limits, which was the important thing. So overall he really couldn’t complain. 

Right now, big swathes of his upper body were lit up with a pleasant burning, like smelting steel—a feeling he hadn’t felt in a while. His legs too, but it was mostly his back and arms that did most of the work; he had to stretch a little.

He’d definitely missed this feeling.

He suddenly felt quite hungry.

That was when the Sage produced a stack of clean, dense, aura-less steel the color of deep space.

Z-Platinum (Uncommon [O])

The steels they’d found at the end of their Ruins adventure. The ones the Sage had also said he couldn’t properly integrate until he hit the Fouth Titanform and started serious physical training again. Which was right about now. 

“I’ve been holding onto these for far too damned long… took the time to get ‘em smelted while you were gone—raised the rarity grade a bit, so we could make the most of ‘em.” The Sage tossed him a stack of plates, which, in his state, weren’t the easiest thing to catch. “Go on then, have at it!”

Zane got to munching. The Sage also supplied him with some freezing Divine Profound grade Spirit Spring water, which helped soothe the burn—and as he chewed through a plate, he felt it enter the furnace of his body, felt that spring water rush through too, helping with the tempering…

At this level Zane was quite aware of what was going on in his body, even at the tiniest of levels.

It’d been ages since he felt himself tempering properly like this. He just hadn’t had the tools or the steel to make a real difference.

It was true that in the Pure Yang, he’d exerted himself. He’d eaten plenty of steel too, though none of it quite this high-grade.

But something about doing it here, against these kinds of forces, just felt different—just made him respond so much better physically… it was like the Sage said. At the Fourth Titanform it just seemed to take that kind of high-end exertion. The Pure Yang wasn’t really built for that kind of intensive body training. He pretty much only got a chance to push his physical limits briefly, every once in a while. The most he’d done back then was against the King Astrolith.

He was quite pleased as he inspected his body. Boot Camp was already starting to do what it was built for. Though it was just a start, he reminded himself. He was still a decent ways off from that second Fourth Titanform level.

If he kept this up, with how fast he felt his body tempering even now, from that starter exercise…

He couldn’t believe it’d be very long before he reached an Origin-grade physique.

The Sage started munching on his own chunk of Z-Platinum. “So what d’you make of things so far?”

“I’m just glad to be back,” Zane told him. “I kind of forgot how good it felt to lift like that.”

“It’s an odd one,” the Sage agreed. “You stop it for a week, a few months—just a few years, and the habit starts to go. Then you pick it back up, and you wonder how the hells you’d ever left it.”

The Sage looked fondly at the deadlifting bar for a bit. Then—“Say, lad. You ever heard of sandbag training?”

“I think so.”

“There’s these folks who put on these bags full of hellish heavy sand and do all their training in it. Then the moment they take it off, they’re strong as hell-oxes!”

“I know what you’re talking about. Dropping the weights and all.” Zane had seen the clips.

“That’s good. Saves some explaining. Well, that same logic goes with all the physical training we’ll do in Boot Camp,” said the Sage. “It’s raw strength we’re putting to work here. No weapons, Skills, any of that. It’s a pure thing, training like that. When I first built this place, I brought that rule into Kaijuu-punching too.”

“You’d only fight them with your bare hands, you mean?”

“That’s exactly it! Makes it a pure physical effort—makes it much better physical training, too. And if you can take down grown Kaijuu with your bare hands… now, that’s making a statement right there.”

Zane nodded. He definitely saw the benefits of training his body in isolation like this. Even just the lifting back there, done in that kind of ‘raw’ way, just gave much better physical stimulus.

“Besides that, fighting Kaijuu bare-fisted’s got great Law benefits. Those things are all Pure Size. You get up close and personal with them, trade blows with them with your own two fists, and you’ll feel that Law that much better. And it’s just plain more fun punching a Kaijuu than stabbing or slicing it, or even blasting it. Trust me on this one, lad. Kaijuu-punching’s a real treat.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Zane through a mouthful of steel. He did enjoy smashing more than slicing, all things considered. There was just something about a crush that felt much more visceral.

“We’re trying to get the best Law and body-tempering out of it as you can,” the Sage concluded. “Bare hands, pure strength! I’m no philosopher, lad. But if Boot Camp’s got a philosophy, that’s it. Those Kaijuus are just more training.”

Zane almost felt kind of bad for the big Monsters, put that way.

When he mentioned it—“Don’t you feel too bad for ‘em—they’ve all been terrorizing mankind for ages before we came here, you can be sure of that!” chuckled the Sage. “The least they could do is help us get a little stronger to fight ‘em. The thing with Kaijuu is, they’re made for war. The things just love to fight and destroy, just like we do.”

By ‘we,’ Zane knew the Sage meant he and Zane in particular.

“You ever feel disturbances in the Black Hole, ripples on its surface—that’s just Kaijuu wrestling with each other. Not to kill, mind you. Just to spar and fight!” chuckled the Sage. “Now we’re just getting ‘em to do the same with us. They get to get their licks in too. They might be losing a whole bunch, granted… But in this case, you can go about your Kaijuu-punching with a clear conscience. If there’s one thing a Kaijuu doesn’t mind, it’s a good scrap.”

“That’s good to know.” Zane hadn’t been too concerned about it; it’d just been a thought at the back of his mind.

Getting concerned about the ethics of repeatedly beating up giant, civilization-destroying Monsters did feel a bit silly. But he was still glad he’d gotten it cleared up.

Now he found himself taking a closer look at the platform just a few hundred miles off—the one loaded with giant bombs. There had to be dozens of fat warheads arranged in neat rows, each nicely color-coded. A few were the size of a car, others the size of a train carriage. He’d seen one of those bigger bombs draw out the Kaijuu the Sage fought in the letter.

“We’ll get to them in a bit!” said the Sage hastily. “Don’t you worry about that. Before that, though, we really ought to check out where you’ll be doing the bulk of your Law work….You done with that steel chunk, lad?”

He nodded. “I’m good.”

The two of them headed off. 

***

The Law Station turned out to be a platform full of giant machines, the same ones Zane had seen earlier. They also looked like something you might find at the heart of a factory—a shining mass of pipes and engines and cogs. Most of them supported the machine at the very center, this giant gleaming press. It had a plate made of some of the shiniest, most reflective metal he’d ever seen.

“This big ol’ thing, you might’ve guessed, is something I didn’t have much of a hand in building, personally,” said the Sage. He gave it a hearty slap too. “But it’s a beast, alright. Got Grand Elder Thorin, and Summersteel, and a few more of Steelheart’s finest out here, just to work on it. If the deadlifting platform’s your workhorse, this thing’ll be what makes or breaks your Law.”

Zane had no clue how that was supposed to teach him Law, just looking at it. He couldn’t sense much Pure Size anywhere. He trusted the Sage, though.

“See that rune right there?” said the Sage. “The big one that looks like a lightning bolt?”

Zane nodded. It was blazing in the Astral Plane, like it was a window into a dimension of pure light. Heavy Tier 7 Laws floated around it.

“That’s one of the highest-grade runes you’ll ever see. Lady Ironfingers came out herself to draw that—had to call in a hell of a favor, but she did it. That’s what runs the whole damned machine.”

They inspected it for a moment.

“It’s supposed to try to crush me?” said Zane, blinking. “And that’ll teach me Pure Size.”

He still wasn’t sure how that’d work, exactly. Though he figured it probably had to do with that silvery press surface.

“That’s the idea!” said the Sage cheerfully. “It’s one of the few machines that can conduct a Law of that caliber through the steel. The idea is it’ll show you Pure Size like it’s never found in nature—just flood you with it and put you in close contact to boot, so you really feel the effects of it.”

There were a series of ‘T7 Reactor Cores’ hooked into the back of the machine, which the Sage said would be flooding the steel once the thing started running. Zane found the whole setup pretty fascinating.

“It’s the best way we’ve got to isolate ‘Pure Size’ as a Concept, and make it active,” said the Sage. “Pretty damned clever engineering went into it. Well—not from me. Summersteel tells me it took a hell of a lot to get running, and it’s damned sure paid off. Lad, why don’t you just get up there and give it a whirl? Should feel pretty clear after that.”

“Sure thing.”

Zane hadn’t been looking forward to this station as much as the Kaijuu or the deadlift. But he’d been quite curious about Pure Size as a Concept, ever since he’d first heard of it. It just felt like his thing. In theory it should be the Red Giant Concept that suited him most… he also kind of felt like he already understood a great deal of what it meant, at least at an intuitive level.

Though maybe his idea of Pure Size was a little different from what the Concept really meant. He supposed he’d see.

Zane just went up to it, got up on the pedestal, and settled in underneath the press. He set his feet and squared his shoulders in an Atlas-like posture.

“You all set there, lad?” shouted the Sage.

He gave the old fellow the go-ahead.

“Right—incoming!” The Sage cranked a lever on the machine.

There was a whirring, a great CLANK-CLANK of gears, a blast of steam.

And the crusher dropped several planets’ worth of weight directly on Zane’s back—CLANG!

But that much weight Zane could handle just fine. He grunted, but it didn’t stagger him, even as the machine CRANK-CRANK-CRANK-ed with the effort.

He was quite curious to see just how this Law conduction would feel. It felt pretty simple when it came.

Moments after the drop, the plate surged with Law.

It wasn’t like the Pure Size he’d felt in the black hole, which felt like a subtle, passive thing. This felt more like the Law surging through the Sage’s fist when he punched the Kaijuu.

Then he felt the crush get bigger in real-time.

Not the steel itself. Just the feeling of it.

In a heartbeat it felt like he’d gone from carrying a plate the size of a plate to a plate the size of a mountain range.

And now Zane was having to properly exert himself.

Then he heard a CLANK-CLANK, some gear change in the machine, and that mountain-feel expanded even more—and it felt like he was holding up a continent. The heft of it increased too.

The plate itself still showed no signs of change. Just its effects—that was the crux of the Law. The strain on his muscles was clear proof.

A part of him was reacting to the physical task, activating his whole body, fighting not to get crushed under the weight… Another part of him, though, was quite surprised.

It was by far the clearest he’d ever felt a Concept for the first time. And sure enough, it was active Law too. 

He was sure the Starfield was a better Law treasure than this crusher thing. But the moment he felt Pure Size up close… it just made sense, it felt right. It wasn’t that he comprehended the Concept totally in an instant; he was quite far from that. But it did feel like he got the ‘gist’ of it—just a general feel for it, almost as soon as he got under it.  

He wasn’t sure if he’d expected that. He knew he’d take to the Concept. But it was still a bit surprising—he’d never had this with a Concept this high-grade before.

It’d taken him days to scope out Starfire’s many aspects. But right now, straining up against it, feeling those Laws sinking down on his back, his shoulders, he felt he knew what Pure Size stood for. 

He felt the heft of it. And it didn’t feel to Zane like it was increasing the actual force shoving down on him, but like it was boosting the impact of that force. He felt the size aspect quite clearly, the way it felt like a continent lay on his shoulders.

And there was something else too—this feeling almost of awe, of admiration, that the Law inspired. Something Zane had always known, something a bit abstract. When you saw any truly giant thing, whether a big man or a mountain, you couldn’t help but be struck by it. It’d force anyone who gazed upon it to admit… it was big.

This bit, he had plenty of experience with.

“How’s it going?” said the Sage, shouting to be heard over the machine noise.

Zane gave him a thumbs-up and went back to trying to figure this thing out.