Bonded Summoner

Book 6. Chapter 23: Berri and Fhesiah - Advanced Training

Berri looked over at Zhang-Zhang, the man almost looking like some kind of… Giant Asian Warrior Santa, with his big beard and red warrior robes with armor underneath. He was tall and broad, his size much similar to Jake’s but even larger. Actually, his form was close to their height, minus their tail.

[For the love of Echidna, do not call the demi-god Zhang-Zhang or ‘Asian Santa.’]

Berri ignored her sister. Her intuition could tell Zhang-Zhang would be totally cool about it. “You said something about gifts for the little ones?” Berri asked.

Zhang Fei laughed. “I did! I’ve got some perfect food for that weapon of yours, and for you and your young ones. We have some fun toys that are perfect for encouraging young ones to be more active.”

He pulled out a ball, and palming it, he showed them several glyphs. Touching one that said ‘chase’, he dropped it on the ground, and it began bouncing around in different directions with every bounce. The warrior walked toward it, and it started avoiding him. Gesturing with mana, he pulled it back into his pouch.

There were various other modes for the ball to behave, and Bloodberri was excited to see their clan-daughters playing with it later. The four, soon to be five or six, girls, were all very playful and full of energy. This was why they left them with a few dozen flame sprites and the spriggons to help keep them company, and tucker them out.

“There’s a lot like this for them! As they grow, we have more physical ones, perfect for developing young warriors! Now. As for the other gifts… If you manage to reach the second level of your Technique before I leave, I just might have something extra special for you.”

Blood narrowed her eyes. “In just a few weeks? We’re told most can expect to take months to years to improve out of combat. We’ve made some progress on it, but we have mostly consolidated what the Framework taught us when the skill evolved.”

“Of course, we were preggers, so we didn’t try our hardest. Still, we spent quite a bit of time on it!”

“My gifts are nice, but the reward for success is better. You’ll have to work hard to get something special–another advantage of being your mentor. Come at me with everything you have–don’t hold back.”

Armor covered Bloodberri’s body, and they withdrew their chimeral axe. It roared as it was filled with twilight mana, the axe salivating at the idea of a special meal. Swinging the axe at Zhang Fei, they put all of their heavy body’s immense momentum behind their blow.

And the man almost casually deflected it with a strong swing of his glaive as he stepped to the side, the blow slamming into the ground. While the man didn’t move overly quickly, his strength was more than enough to match the power behind their attack.

But the axe swing was just a part of their attack. Their snake body twisted and twirled toward him, the spikes on their armor looking like the edge of a spinning saw blade for how fast it was moving.

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The red warrior filled himself with the familiar white light–Valor. With a roar, he swung his glaive and stopped their body cold in its tracks, and then blocked the incoming axe attack which followed the transfer of momentum easily with his haft.

Zhang Fei’s voice was booming. “Not bad! But for you to learn anything, we’ll need to go a bit further. I will keep my skill levels limited to the second Tier and do the same for my strength, but be prepared to take some wounds. Get ready!”

Before, their mentor’s white aura covered him in a lazy haze. It began to condense as he shouted, his body brightening–before it began to grow. The man had easily deflected their blows without having much of his own mass, but he nearly doubled in height, tripling his overall mass and volume more than likely. His blows would be substantially more powerful now.

Berri’s eyes sparkled with excitement, but she aided Blood in activating one ability after another. Twilight Monarch sent a wave of holy dark and light mana out from them, and twilight energy filled them as they began to sway their body, sending out a similar haze.

They could feel their holy-powered spells wash over the warrior. He was affected as they drained some strength into themselves, but the twin–souled could feel it: his valorous shell combined with the difference in strength, reduced the effectiveness of their debuffs.

The two cycled their twilight mana, and then Berri pushed their auril energy through their long snake body in pulses. Their body surged toward Zhang-Zhang in a complicated weave of blades of their tail, their axe swinging toward his chest.

His laugh filled with excitement was booming as his glaive blurred and swung in counter, blocking their numerous queued attacks blow for blow. Their Technique was pushed to the utter limit as they continued their assault, the two sisters looking for an edge. They took blows to their snake body, their bones creaking as he struck their plate-covered armor and sent their body reeling.

Despite the pain and damage taken, their assault never slowed. The two cycled the auril and holy light mana through their body, continuously restoring it. Blood even worked her telekinesis to accelerate their blows, as slowing the valor-covered warrior was wasteful.

“Not bad at all, descendants of Echidna! Let’s see if we can get practice with all your tools. More blood spilled in training will protect your life in war.”

Blood and Berri were both thrilled to face such a powerful and skilled foe. In all, the other Champions they faced were just annoying. Now, they would get to push themselves to their limits and become stronger. They would gain the skills they need to face any foe, allowing them to crush their enemies and get back to what they loved the most–making babies.

***

“So, how do you like my gift, Lady Hart? Or, I heard you might prefer Senior Hart?”

Fhesiah looked over the odd flags once again, as they shifted the energies within the chamber. The mysterious Attunement Array Flags allowed her to paint it with nearly any known energy, and create formations virtually on-the-fly. You could even cast a spell on it, and as long as it was fed the appropriate mana, it would continue to transform the mana in the surrounding area accordingly.

They were fascinating, and Fhesiah knew that Jake would quite enjoy playing with them. Unfortunately, they were strictly a research tool that could not leave their Refuge. They used a higher Tier material in their construction, and could both create powerful formations, but also do it made out of nearly any energy type except for Divine Energy. Perhaps, Jake could make a version of his own that might not be as versatile.

The Hearth of the Refuge fed various energies into the room, which resembled a massive version of the strategy table Jake was using. There was a holographic landscape portrayed, and it would shift as the flags altered the energies in the room.

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Brother Zhuge was focusing on elemental mana for the time being, helping her master the properties of it for when they visited Tier 2 worlds.

Placing his flags in his corner of the large grid, it began drawing in the manas of water and wind, and directing it toward her section of the room.

Her section had earth and fire mana, and so the water and wind were actually eroding her section of the room. They were playing a strange game, where they were fighting for control over a middle section.

“It’d be a little strange for you to call me Senior, being my mentor–you may call me Faye. I take it you heard about my Battleground foray? Just how much did you hear?”

She formed the demonic runes mixed with Nordic ones, placing them on the flag to create a blast of magma. The spell coalesced on the flag as she placed it on a tile closer to his side. A volcanic mountain began to form, and the wind and water mana stopped eroding her place on the map. Instead, the water and wind mana scattered, and if anything, began empowering her mountain’s growth.

He chuckled as he looked over the grid and her change, fanning himself with his fan of crane-feathers. “I heard a bit, but not many details. Those that you helped in the early stages are especially tight-lipped. Thane Grimm and his forces were thankful, but for their Guild, it was just another Battleground. His guild comes from the Second Tier. Would you care to enlighten me on the…earlier happenings?”

Brother Zhuge filled another flag with wind mana, the runes and glyphs on it if anything reminding her of demonic runes. He placed it to the side, drawing and enhancing much of the wind energy into a cyclone. It was like a giant hurricane, and the energy just built and built.

Fhesiah told her story of the Battleground, leaving only unimportant details out. They continued to trade placing the strange array flags on the field, transforming the battlefield with every alteration. More elemental manas joined the original four, and the hurricane of before had been transformed into a tempest when she attacked with her magma.

Her mentor had utilized her heat energy to empower his storm, destabilizing the energy on the field heavily in his assault. She learned a lot with every flag, and she saw how important it was for them to learn all the properties of mana to manipulate them effectively.

Eventually, she managed to create a powerful formation of her own, one that both enhanced her energies and restricted his. But then, he flipped the whole table with a single flag, and it was like her formation simply fed into his own, the energy from his formation overwhelming hers. Several of her flags got torn out, her side of the battlefield crumbling.

She frowned as she did her best to learn what was done–

“Not bad! Your formation was interesting, your mastery over mana with runic magic is already quite good.”

Fhesiah was utilizing a bit of what she learned from her husband, combined with following the Framework’s Expert Energy Control. Aside from directing it with her will, she now had a few formations that guided and transformed the energy learned from the formation master.

Brother Zhuge’s flags would be more comparable to the natural formations, much like the underground lava sect where she found Sati. But then he combined them masterfully to overwhelm and transform what she had made, using her efforts for his own purpose.

He gave a good-natured laugh. “Your adventure was something else! You have learned a lot about formations from this master. That you found even more passion with your alchemy is truly special as well, and then you found such tremendous rewards.” Brother Zhuge pointed with his fan. “I think if we were using elemental Qi, it would have been too challenging to beat your formation so early. Mana is much easier to transform, you must keep this property of it in mind. The penalty when converting it to another element, or joining it with plain mana is far less than with Qi or most others.”

He continued with a smile, “That said, it sounds like Bastet must be mighty proud of her choice in making you her Champion. You did not receive any Divine Sparks for this challenge, but I wager the lingering Intent of that dragon will aid you similarly. Then, the perfected core ascension puts you far ahead of your cultivator peers. Having triumphed over forming your difficult core, the path to Nascent Soul shall be simple.”

Fhesiah nodded. “It appears so. At this time, I’m more worried about our family. We lack an auril heart to connect to the Heart of the World, and it has stopped our progression with this. Then, our family members lack Divine Sense. I noticed that they might be able to achieve this with the pseudo Dantian. We can only add one special organ or tool like this through the Framework, so that makes this feel like a weak choice.”

Brother Zhuge chuckled, fanning himself once more. “Is the Hearthian Core not enough? Already you have such massive advantages, and you seek more? It’s a miracle to have access to any one of these energies–even a small amount. As your cores grow, how much you can accomplish with your diverse energies shall increase.”

Fhesiah frowned in thought. Of course, her mentor was right. Part of her just wanted her family to have her amazing sensory, Divine Sense. To cultivate without it was like wearing a blindfold while attempting to seek the truth, a foolish and nearly impossible task. It was why she was so amazed that Jake had found his truth, his Dao of Family.

Rather than waste the pseudo dantian on some mild Qi energy storage and Divine Sense, forming an auril heart for energy storage was much more appealing. Connecting to the song of the world in truth would allow them to become auril heroes as well. They had hoped that forming the Hearth Bond with Ava would accomplish something similar, but so far, it didn’t seem like anything changed.

Zhuge Liang interrupted her thoughts, “That said, I would like to know where you have been exploring your options. The CP Store? I wonder, do you have special possibilities available to you as Champions? What you could trade Divine Sparks for may have changed when you reached the second Tier, shouldn’t it? Then, there’s a special option that becomes available to you on Tier 2 worlds, is there not?”

Fhesiah’s eyes widened. On Tier 2 Worlds, true connections to Tartarus, the greater labyrinth, could be maintained. The rewards for freeing or conquering consumed worlds, defeating difficult challenges much like they experienced in the Greater Rifts, and winning difficult boss battles were immense and varied. It wasn’t just equipment, but perhaps it would grant them opportunities to advance themselves.

He gave her a smile. “Do not be in a hurry to make your choice or worry about where you might be lacking. Hestia has made preparations, I am sure. For now, I think there are already enough secrets and skills to unlock in that mysterious core of yours. If you master each one individually, that will increase your powers as an individual and as a family by leaps and bounds.”

He continued, “If you do that, maybe some of your worries will be answered on their own. Now, how about we start over?”

The energy on the field stirred as it was dispelled, the flags lifting into the air and returning to their holders in front of them.

“Which energy would you like to work on now?”

She tweaked the hearth in the room, and auril energy started pouring out of it. If there was any energy she needed more effort to learn more about and to master, it was this one.

The field shifted its representation to a different location at Brother Zhuge’s changes. Rather than simple tiles, a varied landscape with several environments from jungles to swamps, mountains, lakes, and rivers appeared.

Zhuge Liang smiled, and his aura stirred. His eyes lit white as he flourished his fan, sending the auril energy into the flag with his immense will. It rose from the holder with several of his natural glyphs on it, and then stabbed into his side of the field, transforming a mountain and redirecting a river.

Fhesiah couldn’t help but return the smile, using everything to sense what he accomplished and how.

Their whole family was spending time practicing their skills with their mentors, preparing themselves for what was to come in the future. When the War Trial began, it would be filled with constant struggle. Only by having an excellent foundation will they be able to continue their march to the finish, without becoming stuck.

They had nearly two weeks before they arrived on Earth, where they hoped it wouldn’t be all that different from their trips on Ankhmar and Ganestra. Early recruitment of people from Earth would be a significant advantage, and they would do their best to make use of it.

From the sounds of things, there shouldn’t be any true danger, and this was just a job for them as Champions. This was an opportunity to gain thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Tier 0 recruits that would work their way up the ranks.

In the short run, this was not that helpful. But it could be that over the course of the War Trial, that these recruits could make all the difference.