Past Life Hero, ch 46

Yay!

We're caught up now.  Taking a week off really threw me off my game!

***

Max was thankful for his martial arts teaching experience on Earth.  Beginning a class with new students in the Quartet felt very comfortable for him. It sort of felt like putting on an old shoe. He planned to meet everybody in the forest behind the Summoner Academy, somewhat near where he liked to train mana, but not quite the same place. It was away from prying eyes, and still had plenty of sticks and trees to turn into impromptu practice weapons.

Max's teammates from Basic Group Combat showed up first. There was Tessa Alvarez, who always regarded him coolly, but seemed eager to learn. One of the first things she did upon arriving in the forest was make herself a practice spear from a sapling.

Momo blinked after arriving, studying her surroundings with her sharp red eyes. She was the person on his team that Max probably knew the least about.  After she arrived, she made crude throwing knife trainers out of sticks and she already had a training version of her odd, weighted whip. It turned out she carried the real weapon with her as well as the trainer everywhere she went.

She'd actually made her whip weapon out of things she'd found around Summoner Academy. As best Max could tell, the whip itself was made out of woven sheets and robes with some sort of bolt in the handle for weight. The eccentric, pale woman could use the weapon as a whip or as a flexible bludgeon.

Benjamin G. Northside showed up after Momo.  The man was as friendly but taciturn as always.   He took direction well and smiled a lot. Benjamin seemed to have transitioned to a large axe as his weapon of choice. He made small talk but still offered no insight into what his life was like before coming to the quartet.

Max was a bit surprised that Gantry's full team didn't show up. Instead of four people arriving including Gantry, there were only two.

"I thought you were bringing your team," said Max.

Gantry shrugged.  "Two of them aren't coming. It turns out one is scared for a few different reasons and I couldn't talk him into it. The other is or was dating a Replicator Academy student that she met in the central area and she's pretty angry at you. You are not her favorite person."  He laughed.

Max blinked and turned to look at the short, long-haired man standing next to Gantry. He had a well-groomed, short beard, and his lively eyes had a mischievous twinkle. Gantry grinned and gestured at the stranger.. "I think you'll like Eolus here. Eolus Manor.”

“Nice to meet you," said Max.

"Likewise," said Eolus, and actually sketched a bow.

Max was taken aback, and as the first lesson progressed, his interest in Eolus grew. It turned out the man's chosen weapon was a sword similar to a spadroon on earth, a quick, light weapon. But he also liked having a couple of dueling pistols that could be loaded with multiple propulsions and ammunition types to make them effective in almost any environment. Most Challengers ignored firearms because they could have such spotty performance or not even work in some environments. But Eolus had his two single shot pistols with strange concoctions shoved down each barrel. The way Max knew about this is because the man mentioned it about a hundred times during training. Max began to think of him as the summoner pirate.

On top of his other eccentricities, Eolus actually had some mana ability from his original world. The way Max discovered this was after the first half hour of just introducing his five new students to some forms, Eolus exclaimed, "Wow, this is a mana channeling martial art, isn't it?"

Max simply replied, "Yes."

Eolus smiled and shook his head.  "I never would have imagined I'd get the opportunity to learn something like this. This is the kind of combat style that only elites on my world ever get to learn. Every martial style that can utilize mana like this is kept as a closely guarded secret among rich families and sects," Aeolus explained.

Gantry Pliss's eyebrows raised. "It's really that special?" Aeolus nodded firmly. "Yes, it's really that special."

The lesson lasted about three hours. Not once over the course of three hours had anyone remarked on the fact that Max was the only first year in the group. By this point, it seemed all the others had just accepted that Max was a strange and unique existence within the Quartet.

By the end, Max was pleased and pleasantly surprised. Working with a group of people who were already in great physical condition and already had a strong background in combatives made the teaching process exponentially faster than it had been on Earth. Instead of teaching them how to fight, Max was teaching them a different way to fight, which was vastly different. Of course, later on it might actually become harder to teach advanced students like this, students that already had a different background.  But for the initial few sessions, improvement would be lightning fast.

Once the lesson was complete, Max dismissed everyone and asked them not to return to the academy in groups. He didn't think it was possible to hide what he was doing from others who may be watching, and he didn't feel it was entirely necessary since it wasn't against the rules. But he still didn't feel a need to advertise what was going on out in the woods, either.

***

The next day, Max began a new intensive training routine. He planned to do so every day forward, to practice, get his edge back, and refine his mana body. He began burning through his mana units, breaking them to release mana. The resulting energy was like a mana addict.

For the first two days he did this, he worked on efficiency above all else. He didn't want to waste too much of the mana that he was releasing. But after the second day, he realized that it was taking too long with this method and decided it would be worth wasting some of the mana to speed up the overall process. Unfortunately, this meant he was going to have to start thinking about making more money sooner than he thought.

On Saturday, Max tried to contact a receptive spirit using Lavinia's unique summoner connection method again.

Max sat on the floor, the magic utility room dark, candles lit around the edge of his space. Sigils drawn on the floor helped focus and properly align his energies. Like the first time he'd attempted this, the entire process was an indescribable sensation and almost felt like trying to make eye contact and have a quick conversation with half-seen people through the window of a moving car. There were flashes, impressions of potential contacts that never manifested into anything more.

One unique aspect of this method was that it was optional for Max to actually open his third eye.  Lavinia had suggested that he keep it closed. The reason for this was it would be even more obvious when a compatible spirit might come along. Having his third eye open would have allowed him to see more, even at his low level of mastery, but it would also increase the number of distractions.

This attempt, something amazing happened. Within the experience of trying to have conversations through the window of his metaphorical car, Max actually managed to make contact with something. The resulting communication was unlike anything Max had experienced before.

Whenever he talked with Lavinia, they used language. The spirit he had just met didn't understand language at all. Not only was the spirit abstract, its communication and even the way it saw the world was as well. However, it seemed friendly, and Max took a liking to it.

As they struggled to communicate, and Max used his willpower to maintain the ritual that Lavinia had invented, he learned a few more things about the spirit. Its purview or nature had something to do with physical laws, bending them. Maybe movement.  It turned out the spirit was also receptive to making a contract.

Something about Max seemed to intrigue it.

The terms of the contract were relatively simple, which was a blessing because otherwise Max might not have been able to understand. He was struggling to talk to the spirit as-is, despite its friendly nature.  All the spirit seemed to want was for Max to find some way to allow them to fight together, as a team.  In return he'd get endless loyalty.

With the last shred of his concentration remaining, Max asked Lavinia, Is there any downside to forming contracts with more spirits? Is there a limit?

The ghost girl understood the strain he was under and mentally sent back, No, none that I know of.  And if a contract isn’t working out, the Summoner can terminate it.

The time he could spend searching for spirits was almost up anyway, and Max decided to take a chance on the odd but likable spirit he'd made contact with.

The process was similar to what he'd gone through with Lavinia, except this spirit didn't read his mind or didn’t want to. Instead, he got a question from the spirit itself, and suddenly, the system created a screen in front of him that read:

Your new contracted spirit desires a name.

Some of Max's focus could be spared to this new matter now that the contract was mostly formed. It was close enough for Max to drop his focus on the magical working. As soon as he did, he opened his third eye and looked at the new spirit he’d met.

He'd been expecting something far more confusing or ghastly looking. Instead, it sort of looked like a gingerbread man made of spikes of energy. Two glowing eyes in a head with no mouth regarded Max with obvious good humor. In that moment Max got an even better idea of what the spirit would be able to do. His eyes narrowed in concentration.

"It's not just physical laws, or movement," he said out loud. "You can..." his voice trailed off, "something with friction?" Max grinned and said, "No need to overthink it, I'm going to call you Slick."

The spirit did a little jump and seemed to shine brighter. Max turned off his third eye and was able to see Slick with his normal vision now.  To one side he could see Lavinia as well. Obviously observing Slick closely, she said, "You named them Slick, huh? What an interesting little spirit." She walked around where Slick was standing and said, "Far stronger than most other spirits I've seen. What an odd power signature."

"What do you mean?" asked Max.

"Well, as you know, a soldier-rank spirit does not have any subordinate spirits.  But no subordinates does not necessarily mean that they're weak. Like in the case of Slick here, a soldier spirit can actually be very strong, maybe even stronger than officer-rank."

Max considered this for a moment. "Cool." He looked at his new spirit where it was patiently standing on the ground and said, "I'm kind of excited about working with you already, Slick. Do you want to go out to the woods to see what we can do together?"

The spirit's eyes clearly conveyed happiness and it jumped into the air with glee. Max chuckled and said, "All right, let's go then."

Two hours later, in a field outside the forest he usually practiced at, Max glided across the ground. It was similar to riding a powered scooter, but facing forward.  The air shimmered between his feet and the ground. He stopped, canceling the power and hopping to the ground. Unlike dealing with Lavinia's spirits where she commanded them, working as their leader, Max's relationship with Slick was much simpler. The little spirit's abilities were now like a part of Max.

He requested Slick to appear before him and once the little spirit popped into existence standing on a long blade of grass, Max smiled at it. He said, "I'm really glad we were able to meet each other.  I think you have a really interesting power and I also think I can definitely use it in combat." Slick jumped down from the grass it had been standing on and began doing a gyrating dance all over the field, moving faster than any living creature would be able to.

Lavinia appeared.  She frowned.  "What exactly does Slick do? I can catch the edges of it, but I don't entirely understand."

Max willed his force feet back into place and instead of using them to glide forward, instead jumped up, compressed them underneath him as he went down and then jumped again using the power as a spring. He jumped incredibly high, then did a flip before he slowed himself using a combination of his force skates and his internal mana.

Max said, "Slick has more than one power.  All together, it's a little bit of force and maybe types of anti-grav."

"Anti-grav?" asked Lavinia. "Wait," she said. Her ghostly eyes grew distant for a moment and she said, "Okay, got it from your memories. So anti-grav, okay now I get it. So what else can Slick do?"

"I'm not a hundred percent sure yet," Max replied, and he turned to watch his new contracted spirit spaz-dance. "But, I have a feeling that with some more time, not only will I be able to figure out more ways to use Slick's power, but maybe even pair it with yours."

"What do you mean?"

Max focused for a few seconds and sent Lavinia a mental picture that he held in his mind. "A picture is worth a thousand words, right?" he said.

"Oh," said Lavinia. "Oh, my!”  A smile lit up her face. “You know what, that's so crazy it just might work."