Sell you a Bridge chapter 104

The Clock Tower October 3rd 2010 9:00 PM EDT

Killing  the Warlord was NOT easy, even after I pincushioned him with my whole  wall of swords trick. With him slowed down I was able to keep up with  him. Barely. But even between me and the others it took most of a half  hour to whittle him down. I committed every second to memory, and went  out of my way to test the limits of what he could do with his sword,  pushing him to show me new responses and moves and even to execute moves  I already knew so I could compare the way we moved and find weaknesses.

I wasn't some kind of combat  superstar so I wasn't growing appreciably, but I had an idea of what to  do here and how to use this to my advantage. I would be a moron to let  this kind of opponent go without learning from him, and I had seen an  email that would help with it. Once we got through the fight we called  it for tonight because none of us were in shape to test out floor  fourteen. We took the town portal back to the tower and Kit and Reggie  dipped out, with Kit heading back to her room and Reggie heading home  since it was getting late and he had a phone date with Bette.

Artemis  and Zee had, like me, leveled again, and I was up to thirty five after  getting a few in a row off the Warlord plus one or two from mobs as we  made our way through level thirteen. I dumped the twenty five stat  points into my point generation bringing me up to three hundred twenty  five per day. With that done I pulled out my phone and started flipping  through emails. As Del suggested I didn't want to boost my powers for a  while, though mt plans to save for the base were sort of falling through  since I kept using my points for combat and training. Hopefully this  purchase would help me fix that.

It  took me no time at all to find what I wanted, I had perfect recall and a  search function, so I pulled it up and looked it over eagerly. It was  an advertisement for a type of meditation called the Outer Body Training  Method. Basically it was a touted as a way to train your skills to  perfection inside your own mind without ever taking damage, which was  nonsense of course but made it perfect for my power. The skill let you  create an illusionary double inside your mind that could practice moves  and skills without draining your resources, including fighting opponents  you've battled before to polish your skills against them.

The  ability was only ninety points, which one the one hand was cheap for  something so useful, but on the other hand was absurdly expensive  considering the metrics my power used most of the time. This would have  almost no impact on the wider world except through me. The only reason I  could think of for the price was that it would let me practice my other  skills without burning through my points, which if nothing else was  pretty damn broken. Regardless this would solve all my problems with  combat and let me train against the Warlord until I became as good as he  was, though I imagined it would take literally years.

I  hit the order button without a second thought, seeing fifty dollars  deducted by the purchase as the talisman that would imprint the skill on  me was delivered to my door with the usual knock. I stood up and headed  over to open the door and picked up a very plain dark wood box with a  squared off design. The dark wood was laquered and held shut by a single  hammered bronze latch. I brought it into my room and set it down on the  table across from my bed, flipping open the latch and opening the lid  to reveal a weathered looking talisman on yellowing paper sitting on bed  of red silk. I slipped the thing out and walked over to sit down on the  bed slapped the paper over my heart.

The  email had covered the directions for use, so I crossed my legs into a  lotus position and closed my eyes, trying to feel the energy from the  talisman. The paper was supposed to act as a sort of guide to show me  how to achieve the state, a pre saved demonstration you could use to  learn the skill yourself. It would only work once, but it had a one  hundred percent chance to teach you because it until you actually  completed the skill once on your own the demonstration wasn't considered  complete. I reached out with my senses to feel near my heart, trying to  identify where the power was, and when my perception touched it I was  sucked into the talisman itself.

It  felt like someone sucked my mind into a black void of nothingness, and I  admit it was a bit unsettling. I looked around trying to find anything  here that would be useful and suddenly another person appeared.  Specifically a Talon. I frowned and walked towards the masked assassin  in the distance and when I got within range he attacked. Sadly the idiot  was so slow compared to me now I just crushed him in a few blows, and  then poof, I was back on the bed. I blinked. That seemed...easy. I  closed my eyes and did it again. Once again I was in the voice, this  time another enemy popped up, a Black Knight from the dungeon.

I  beat him and again got kicked back to the real world. Each time I went  in I improved a bit at using the void. I was able to change things. One  time I added more opponents, one time I made myself weaker, suppressing  my stats back to human levels so I could get the experience of training  against a stronger opponent. As I learned the ins and outs of the skill  finding the energy got easier and easier, I kept diving back into myself  through that same point until without noticing the point moved  slightly. Then again, until finally the point of entry was in my actual  heart.

At  that point I looked down and saw the talisman was gone. It had just  vanished, absorbed or dissolved or who knew what, but now it was gone  and I was able to enter the Outer Body Training Space freely and  manipulate it to my will. I grinned to myself as I went over my gains.  This was the perfect answer to my problems. From what I could tell it  didn't allow me to fold time or anything like that, I'd still have to  meditate for hours a day to do the training, but still, I had a way to  get stronger that didn't require me to blow all my points.

The  only downside was the technique worked on data. I'd have to actually  test certain abilities to give the training method a base to work on,  but that would still cut my point usage in training WAY down and  hopefully allow me to learn to sharpen my efficiency so I would use less  points in battle. I could afford to try riskier and more expensive  training methods and then use them to refine my technique. The only real  limit I could find in the state inside the void was that I could make  myself weaker but never stronger, so I was only able to use a maximum of  my current point total, which right now was like ten.

Giddy  with anticipation I closed my eyes and entered my meditative state  again, appearing back in the void. Now that I'd gotten the meditation  down I wanted to try out fighting the Warlord again. I summoned him in  all his glory, standing across from me again, and I set myself in a  combat stance, getting ready for battle. I'd done a few of these fights  when I was learning the trance technique for Outer Body, but contrary to  my expectations I didn't need to get used to my inner body movements or  stretch or ready myself with any warm ups. Inner me was in peak combat  condition at all times, and I had to admit it was nice.

It  made sense considering this was me training my peak ability level, but  it was nice anyway. I was also especially excited about one of the more  subtle features mention in the email, namely that muscle memory and  reflex actions could be trained in here at an increased rate. Combined  with my massively enhanced reflexes I would be getting much more out of  this than any normal person, assuming this was a real skill real people  could learn, which since I was currently using it, I knew it definitely  wasn't. So without further ado I began to advance towards the Warlord,  readying myself for another amazing fight.

I  died. Instantly. I wasn't shocked by it. The Warlord hadn't been  holding back exactly when I fought him, but he HAD been keeping track of  everyone in the room at the same time during every second of our  interaction. My enhanced reflexes made taking advantage of slight lags  in his attention much easier. When you were as good as he was, every  little extra bit of mental focus you brought to bare was a qualitative  shift. I reset, and then tried again. I was expecting the difference  this time so it took more than a second for me to die, but honestly not  much more. Two minutes later I had to reset again.

Rinse  and repeat. I got killed over and over again. I didn't use my shadow  porting or my Hole bloodline at all, just raw physical power and skill. I  wanted to learn to fight, and I would start integrating my powers into  it once I got to the level I wanted. So I fought. And fought. And fought  some more. I tried every conceivable variation of every move I knew,  but without my powers and my friends holding him back I couldn't fucking  scratch that monster in a fight. Despite the failure I kept going,  fighting him again and again.

I  didn't notice how long I was going until I felt the influx of points.  The fact that I spent three hours doing non stop combat training was  staggering to me. Most fights lasted a minute or two tops, and going for  that long at full tilt may not have cost me any energy in my trance but  it sure as hell wore on my brain. I opened my eyes and decided that was  enough for now. I needed to rest. Actually rest not meditate.

I  must have been deep in it because when I looked around I saw a tray  with a bowl of mac and cheese on it sitting next to me. I read the note  next to it and smiled at Zee's demand that I eat before bed and that I  tell her how my new power worked when she came over tomorrow. She had  put the box in my closet with my collection and told me she loved me and  wished me good night, saying she had to go, but she would see me soon. I  smiled at the feeling of being taken care of and wolfed down the pasta  before stripping out of my clothes and dropping my armor and gear on the  table.

I climbed into bed and  curled up under the covers with a smile. We were getting closer, level  fourteen was one of the last three. Two if you didn't count Diablo's  boss room which was literally just a single room. I closed my eyes and  thought about what the hell the end of this mess would look like, about  what we would do every day after we cleared the dungeon, and it was  pretty nice. As I drifted off my sleep I felt my whole body relax. Just a  few more weeks most likely. Once our mess was cleaned up the world  would be our oyster.