Jake's Story, ch 12

The next chapter is going to be really, really fun.

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About an hour or two later, Jake was eyeing the bullet wound on his arm when he felt the train slowing down.  He stuck his head out of the boxcar to figure out where he was, but he wasn’t familiar with the area.  It’d been lucky that he’d recognized Valdosta before.  After Purple Rain in his first life, he had been to Valdosta a few times.  This place didn’t seem familiar at all, though.

Logically, since the train had been heading north, it was probably moving toward Atlanta, and likely near or through Macon.  Jake wasn’t an expert on train tracks or train lines but he was pretty sure about this.

But while the train had been moving at a good clip after leaving Valdosta, it was definitely slowing down now.  At first, Jake thought it could be stopping, but that didn’t seem to be the case.  After hitting about thirty miles an hour or so, it didn’t slow down anymore.

Then Jake remembered how the train had slowed through Valdosta.  Maybe the upcoming town or city was large enough to justify slowing down while passing through, even during the apocalypse.  It could also be a habit for the conductor, like they were still doing their job, following the rules..  Jake had read somewhere that trains traveled through towns around thirty or forty miles an hour--a speed limit of sorts.

Now that nobody was shooting at him, and he didn’t see any people, this was all just a mild curiosity other than Jake being glad the train wasn’t stopping completely.  All of that changed when he suddenly felt something odd.  The sensation was echoing through his dantian, and if he hadn’t felt it once before in his life, he would have had no idea what it meant.  Since he knew what it was, it meant he had to get the hell off this train soon, though.  

He waited until he felt the wave through his dantian the strongest.  The moment the sensation began to fade, he knew he was the closest he was going to get on the train.  Jake clamped down his teeth to avoid losing his jaw if he fell wrong, wrapped his arms around his head, tucked his elbows in, and jumped off sideways as best he could.

In his first life, one of the adventurer’s he’d known, an x-Army guy, had shown him how soldiers were supposed to land after jumping out of airplanes back in the day.  The move, a “PLF,” had looked weird to Jake back then, but it had actually worked.  He’d even used it while taking high falls a few times as an adventurer.

Jake tried it now as a zombie, and it was sort of a partial success.  He didn’t break any limbs, but he was pretty sure he broke a tailbone, and if his blood had still been moving normally, he would have been bleeding from several places.  A few little rocks got lodged into the bullet hole in his arm.

If he could feel properly, he’d be in horrendous pain. As it was, he was only distantly aware of the damage.  Since he could still walk okay, Jake chalked it up to a win.

He felt a pang of sadness as he watched the train go by.  It likely would have taken him directly to Macon, but then what?  As a zombie with no weapons, he wasn’t much use to anyone.  No, what he felt now in his dantian, the signal coming from this place would be sure to help if it didn’t kill him.

Jake was sure that he’d felt an Assessment Room, or as they would be known more commonly, a challenge portal.

A few wandering zombies turned to study Jake for a moment, but went back to shuffling.  He didn’t register as human to them.  Jake was sure he could attract them if he really wanted to, but he didn’t have any desire to do so.  If he got boxed in by too many and they sensed his soul, or whatever it was that made monsters attack if they got too close, he’d be fucked.

So Jake moved forward and looked around cautiously.  It looked like he’d fallen out of the boxcar near a junkyard.  Back the way he’d come, he saw an overpass, but that didn’t tell him much.  So he just mentallly shrugged and began moving toward the sensation pulsing through his dantian, the pool of energy he’d created in his stomach area.  Maybe one day it’d be like a sea, or even the ocean, but right now it was more like a dirty mud puddle.

There was a fence to Jake’s right and it looked like there was one on the other side of the passing train, too.  Maybe this was an industrial area.  To both sides of the railroad tracks, there were large buildings and silos or something.  This area had not fared well after Purple Rain, at least based on the number of zombies that Jake saw.  He also saw signs of struggles and attempted exodus, too.  It was pretty common after Purple Rain for people to try escaping their location, after they’d seen the first person or two be murdered.  Of course, there was no escaping.  The entire world had been changed.

Jake needed to get through the fence, and climbing it as he was just wasn’t going to happen.  He ambled forward until he came to a hole in the barrier where it looked like someone had driven right through it with a car.  Bags of random household goods and trash were lying around near the hole.

After Jake caught a glimpse of an envelope in the trash, he bent and examined it.  Tifton, GA, huh? He thought.  Now he knew where he was, but it still didn’t mean much to him.  He’d heard the name before, but didn’t have any memories of spending time in Tifton, maybe because like this time around, there hadn’t really been much left.

He walked through the hole in the fence and wandered into a fairly open area, with large buildings and parking lots.  Jake really wanted a better idea of where he was, so he picked up a large rock from the ground and moved toward a couple parked cars.  He needed to be quick.  His appearance wouldn’t attack fellow zombies, but loud noises would.

Before he’d cultivated monster energy, Jake would have had a hard time breaking out a car’s window with a rock.  Zombies were strong, not fast.  He still barely managed.  The hole wasn’t impressive, but was enough to clear enough glass to reach his arm through and unlock the Volkswagen.

Jake dug through the glove compartment and looked in the back seat.  Then he popped the trunk.  Nothing.  He moved onto the next car, and like the last car, he tried the door handle first.  Yes! He thought.  The car door had been unlocked.  He found a backpack inside, and then figured out where he was.

Georgia Department of Agriculture, huh?  He was glad he’d solved the mystery, but didn’t feel great that whoever this car had belonged to was probably dead or turned into a monster by now.

Mystery solved, he began moving toward the where his dantian was pulling him again.  He was close now.  Challenge portals could only be felt by someone with magical, enhanced, or supernatural abilities.  In Jake’s first life, a few people who’d been augmented cybernetically had been able to find them, too.  But cyborgs that strong were rare.  Challenge portals had been even more rare, and the rules for how long they stayed open always seemed arbitrary and random.

Some stayed open for a set amount of time, usually a day to a week.  Some only admitted a certain number of people, usually anywhere from one to seven.  Others seemed to show up and then close at random.

There were a few constants, though.  The Faceted, the beings that ran the challenge portals, were not benevolent.  After a few years of visiting challenge portals, adventurers had figured out the rules.  Almost no time passed in the real world for as long as someone was in a c-portal.  There were always three options of challenges that someone could choose.  Each challenge would have a number of tests, from one to ten.  The better a person performed with the tests, the better reward they would get.  And while challenge portals couldn’t technically kill you, they could kick you back into the real world, half dead, or close to dying.

Most adventurers wouldn’t attempt a challenge portal without a team on standby, just in case.  But Jake didn’t have the luxury, and the rewards and treasures that could be found in challenge portals were just too good to pass up this opportunity.

He finally found the portal at the far end of the parking lot, near an open gate to a road.  Jake realized the road was connected to a highway or something, and kept that in mind along with the location of the junkyard he’d seen.

He could see the challenge portal now.  It looked like a shimmering silver doorway.  Jake screwed up his courage and stepped forward.

There was no flash, no sense of transition.  He immediately found himself in what looked like a polished silver room.  The scene was a little nostalgic.  Jake had been in two challenge portals in his first life, both of them before he’d really understood the rules or all the variations.  He’d failed one, and barely succeeded the second, which had resulted in contact information that had eventually led to meeting his cultivation teacher.

When Jake appeared, he immediately turned around.  He knew the Faceted would be behind him, ready to startle him, probably because they were all assholes.  The creature looked like a man made of asymmetrical glass.  When Faceted had first appeared in Jake’s past, they’d let people believe they were angels, but Jake knew they were nothing of the sort.

The creature seemed startled, if a humanoid with no face could be startled, and stepped back.  It spoke directly into Jake’s mind.  “Do not be afraid.  You have been chosen, warrior, and have discovered an Assessment Room!  Would you--”  The Faceted stopped in mid sentence and said, “How are you here, unclean thing?  Begone!”

“Fuck that, and fuck you,” said Jake.  As usual, his words came out as groans and grunts, but he was confident the alien would be able to understand him.  Morrigan had been able to talk to him just fine.  Also, Jake remembered a report that one of these assholes had understood an adventurer whose throat was torn out when he’d forfeited a test.  “I have a soul, and I am a warrior.”

The inscrutable Faceted studied him for a while before saying, “It seems you truly do have a soul...vile, rotting thing that you are.  You are also born of this world.  Since you meet the requirements, so be it.”

The Faceted continued, “This is an Assessment Room, where if you choose, you will be challenged on one aspect of mettle and can receive a reward based on how you are ranked.  Ranking will take place in a way your species understands, from F to A, with S and even SS being possible for the most mighty or most talented.  At rank S or SS, a second reward may be chosen from the highest tier rewards possible, and more rewards will be available to choose from than at lower rankings.  Do you understand my words so far, warrior?”

“Yes,” said Jake.

“Good.  Now, do you choose to be assessed with the challenge of combat?”

“No.”

“Then you are choosing to return back to your world without being challenged?  If you do, you may not return, for every soul may only visit each unique Assessment Room a single time.”

Jake grimaced the best smile he could.  “No, I want you to quit fucking around and tell me all my options for the challenges I can choose.”

The Faceted was visibly taken aback, and again, this was conveyed despite the fact it didn’t have a face.  However, now two blue, glowing eyes had appeared in its cut-glass orb of a head.  “Do you choose the challenge of combat?”

“Did I stutter?  No, I do not choose the challenge of combat.  Now tell me what other challenges I can pick.”  Jake wasn’t backing down, and wouldn’t be intimidated.  The Faceted were all dickheads and until adventurers had caught on that they could ask for more challenges, the strange aliens had always made it sound like the only text a person could take was the least favorable one for them.  Who knew how many hopefuls these things had killed or maimed in Jake’s first life.

“How did you know there were more than one challenge available?”

“That’s not relevant, is it?  I am a warrior from this world.  What challenges are available to take here?”

If the Faceted had teeth, it would have been grinding them.  Jake felt a bit of satisfaction, but he still wasn’t dumb enough to show off more of his knowledge.  For instance, he wasn’t calling the Faceted by its species’ name, or letting this one know he actually knew its name.  Quite a few faceted had been investigated and divined by wizards over the years, and Jake had eaten up the information whenever he could find it.  This one ran a very distinctive silver room, so Jake knew he was probably dealing with Gtata.

These things really were assholes.

Probably-Gtata said, “You may choose between a challenge of combat, a challenge of purity, and a challenge of endurance.”

Jake smiled as best he could.  He’d had a suspicion this Faceted  was Gtata, but now he knew.  Because of this, he chose the obvious challenge.  “I want the challenge of endurance.”

“So be it.  For your first test, you must survive as long as you can without drowning.”

Without warning, Jake was transported in the air above a vast ocean.  He fell, smashing into the water below.  If he’d been alive, this might have been concerning.  It definitely would have been surprising if Jake hadn’t been expecting it.  But he’d read and memorized the accounts of every test that any adventurer had encountered in all the various challenge portals.

This lake trial was to test how long a person could survive without drowning.  The end of the test would actually be when the examinee drowned--there was no way to win.  Floating would work for a while, but not forever.  The sky itself lowered during the entire test, eventually leaving no air above the water.  It was all rigged.  Of course, some people could still survive for days under water if they had to.  They would likely get high marks in a test like this.

As soon as Jake hit the water, he just let himself sink.  He was confident in the fact that each challenge was pretty straightforward.  Challenges of combat wouldn’t combine challenges of morality, and challenges of endurance wouldn’t likely include combat.  Of course, there were always ways to cheat in the various tests using other abilities, but this one would be easy for Jake.

Either way, he wasn’t worried about being attacked by a sea monster or something.

Jake was careful not to take in any water as he sank.  He actually never reached a bottom, just slowed until he’d achieved neutral buoyancy.  If he were still alive, it’d probably be freezing cold.  With nothing else to do but wait, Jake achieved a lotus position as best he could, touched his thumbs and fingers together, and began to meditate.

While he meditated, Jake circulated his energy, taking the opportunity to refine his  recent gains.  He didn’t have much to work with, but he could use what he had to widen his meridians, too.  While he meditated and practiced his qi circulation, Jake stayed peripherally aware of what was going on in the world around him.  Also, as a cultivator, he could keep perfect track of time, at least as his body experienced it.  When he felt the sky solidly press down into the ocean, it had been three days.

Since this was basically free training time, Jake just mentally shrugged and went back to refining his energy and control.  Since he wasn’t doing anything else, he occasionally took a break to review the information that he’d gotten from Morrigan, trying to decide on a potential evolution path.

Some of what he learned was odd, even disappointing. For instance, certain monster forms were only available if he were to evolve under certain circumstances, or even on certain worlds.  There were limitless monster variations in his head now, so he began to narrow down the routes he could take that would actually be possible on Earth, and with the resources that he had.  For instance, one transformation would require triggering en evolution after he had just the right amount of energy, and had also somehow been covered in diamonds.  Taking this route would be incredibly unlikely.

Then Jake started looking into the potential benefits and weaknesses of other forms he could evolve into.  One thing he was placing a lot of importance on was the ability to communicate.  He was getting really tired of being shot at without at least being able to yell, “I’m on your side, idiots!”

If people kept shooting after he could talk to them, Jake would feel a lot less bad if he had to kill them.

Finally, Jake found a truly god-rank evolution path, but it was going to be difficult.  What was important was that it would allow him to attain a fast form relatively quickly to reach Macon and save his family.  This path had evolution prerequisites he would actually be able to meet, and also had a lot of potential at the upper ends.  After he evolved once or twice, it would take a lot of time and energy to reach any new forms, but that was a tradeoff that Jake was willing to take.

Jake checked the time again and was mildly surprised to see that over two weeks had passed.  He was actually tempted to just stay under the water and train, but decided that even with how cold the water was, and his natural zombie protection against decay, staying longer might be pushing it.  It wouldn’t have been a problem if his qi levels were higher.  If he were at a more advanced level of cultivation, he might have been able to preserve his flesh or even cover it with a protective field, but he wasn’t strong enough yet.  Oh well.

At least he’d had some time to analyze the knowledge he’d gained and earn some insights.  Since his mind was made up, Jake deliberately opened his mouth and sucked water into his lungs, thereby “drowning.”

He was immediately transitioned back to the room he’d started in, and facial features or not, the Faceted seemed annoyed.  Jake took raised a hand with one finger, contracted his lungs, and forced most of the water out.

Above him, the Faceted said, “Congratulations on passing your first test.  I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to leave.  After two months of not breathing, I could have just declared you dead and ejected you from the challenge.”

“Thank you for your patience,” was all Jake said in reply.

“Your next test is the poison and venom climb.  You may give up at any time by saying out loud, ‘I forfeit.’ Good luck.”

Just like last time, there was no warning before Jake found himself in a large, sloping stone hallway.  There was a blank wall behind him, and stairs leading upward.  Magical torches that cast harsh white light lined the walls in intervals.

Jake had an idea of what to expect, so he started up right away.  True to his predictions, after about ten minutes of climbing the stairs, he found himself in a large room.  As soon as he stepped foot into the larger space, there was a whoosh of air and gas rushed in from the walls. 

The room was at least two hundred yards long.  Jake marveled at how nasty the design was.  Someone would have to climb the steps, and would probably be winded, then the room was too long for most living fighters to hold their breath, especially with an elevated heart rate.  Of course, Jake didn’t breathe, so he just kept a steady pace forward.

Other than an exceptional constitution or being immune to poisons, he wondered how other adventurers might deal with this challenge.  Maybe gusts of air, or an energy field?  The entire time he walked, the gas grew thicker, eventually becoming a dense blue haze.  But when he left the room and began climbing stairs again, the blue gas actually stayed below him in a pool.  It seemed it had enough weight that it wouldn’t rise.

Jake realized why a moment later.  This was probably so if someone triggered the trap and went back down the first set of stairs, the gas would follow them.  Nasty.

The next room was a lot like the first, but with a longer room, and likely more potent gas.  Something dripped from the ceiling, too.  None of it affected Jake.

Each room Jake came to was slightly different.  In one, tentacles erupted from the walls, stinging him all over.  This time, he grew somewhat concerned because the venom from the tentacles would burn him to a pile of goo if left to its own devices.   As he walked, Jake circulated his qi, protecting his body for a short time.

When he’d left the room, Jake took a break to sit down and meditate.  It took him a few hours, but he was eventually able to push almost all the venom out of his body.  In fact, he was surprised to discover that his body was full of various poisons and venoms at this point.

This gave him an idea, and he settled more deeply, diving into his dantian, then moving his consciousness outward, actually attacking the poisons and venoms, trying to break them down and absorb them.  Maybe he could cultivate them the same way he had cultivated demonic energy and monster cores.

As it turned out, his efforts were only partially successful.  In fact, he didn’t get any new power from the poison, but he was able to use it to purify his energy, using it as a sort of filter that he used to carry impurities from his qi out of his body.  He let one hand dangle, and rejected poison hissed and sizzled as it fell from his fingertip to the ground.  The deadly liquid was stained black with its own deadly energy and the impurities he’d cleaned from his own energy.

When he was finally done, two days had passed.  The time didn’t matter.  Jake didn’t need to eat or drink, didn’t have a time limit, and time in the outside world passed much more slowly.  He wasn’t worried.

Jake continued this way through at least ten more rooms.  After more than a week had passed, he found himself at a room that descended below the level of the floor.  About an inch below the level Jake was standing, the room beyond was full of a sludge that he could feel evil, acidic energy from.  He was sure the vile mixture would dissolve his body if he fell in or tried to wade, much less swim in it.  The room’s ceiling came down to only two feet above the surface of the liquid about ten feet in front of him, which was obviously there to force whoever was being tested to move through the pool of death.

Jake sat for a while and considered.  This room wasn’t too long, only about thirty to forty feet. He was tempted to just forfeit, but was also pretty sure he was almost to the end of the challenge.  Maybe there was something he could do.  Even though he didn’t have much energy in his dantian, what he had was fairly refined now.

In his past life, he’d reached the seventh Copper rank of Body Refinement.  Right now he judged himself to be at the first rank of Copper Body Refinement, not much past establishing his meridians and gathering his dantian, the basics of becoming a Dao Initiate, not much past a Trainee.

However, Jake had a lot of experience with flash step.  Instead of giving up, he moved back down the steps he’d taken, and focused, gathering his qi.  Despite having so little to work with, the purity of his energy barely allowed him to form the required array in his mind to activate the ability.  

Jake flash stepped down the hallway.

He turned around, mentally measured how far he’d come, and decided he could barely make it across the acid if he timed the maneuver just right.  If he’d been a new cultivator, he would have had no hope, but Jake had years of experience where he’d relied on flash step for dozens of dangerous missions.  After all, flash step had been one of the only techniques his teacher had ever taught him before disappearing.

Jake turned around and moved to the top of the stairs again, eyeballing the pool of goo.  He’d have one shot at this, and if he failed, he needed to immediately shout that he forfeited.  Mental preparations ready, Jake pretended he was taking a deep breath and began gathering energy.  When he was holding all that he possibly could, he let himself fall forward,  The moment his face was only about a foot above the acidic lake of death he triggered a flash step.

A split second later, he fell onto a stony floor.  The air he had in his lungs wheezed out like a popped bicycle tire.  His flash step had almost carried ten feet past the edge of the pool, almost putting him face-first into the next set of stairs.  Jake looked back at the obstacle he’d just cleared, and suddenly felt very stupid.  That stunt really probably hadn’t been worth the risk.

But what was done was done, so Jake started walking up the steps again.  It turned out that he had just passed the last room and the last challenge.  At the very top of the long hallway of stairs was a set of double doors carved from granite.

Jake knew it was the end of the test, maybe even the end of the challenge, so he sat down again to meditate.  A full day later, he felt like he’d rejected every atom of corruption from his body, and cleaned his energy as best that he could.  He got up, dusted himself off, and opened the door.