On Astral Tides: From Humble Freelancer To Astral Emperor

Twenty-Seven

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the blinking of the message light on my mobile phone. Flipping it open I noticed the time was eight thirty in the morning, a bit later than I normally got up, but more than enough time to do what I needed to. The second thing I noticed was the expected email from Hayato-san. That was quicker than I thought.

"Hey man. I was shocked to get your completed work. I’ve had a quick look through and it seems okay, but until the bigwigs finish their checks your payment will have to wait. I know you won’t have done a bad job but… you finished over a month ahead of schedule. You must have pulled a series of brutal all-nighters, and even then…"

As I continued to read I felt a little guilty. It had felt awesome using my new abilities to smash through several weeks’ worth of work in just days, but I had forgotten how that would make people who weren’t aware of my changed powers feel…

"I hope you’re all right, man. If you have money worries you can let me know and I can probably scrape a loan together for you. I’m sure the others would come in on that as well. Please let me know, I can’t let a good friend like you suffer in silence. In any case, why not take it easy and wait for the paycheck? If the work is good, which I have no doubt, seeing as it's you, you’ll have earned a tidy bundle of yen.

Take care and hit me back soon, your old friend, Hayato."

I couldn’t help but smile. Hayato-san was a good friend. I shouldn’t have made him worry. It was a good lesson. I made the same mistake when I ran too fast where people could see me. Having inhuman powers was great and all, but if I was careless about how I used them and the wrong people found out… I’ll be more careful from now on.

Firing off a reply to Hayato-san apologising and saying that I just had inspiration while working on it, and while I did indeed cram a few all-nighters to grind it out, it was only because I had an awesome flow going on, I hoped he would accept it. Logically there was no way I could have done that work so quickly under my own steam, but it wasn’t something Hayato-san would likely give much thought. He was the kind of guy who would just believe what he was told, unless it was wildly implausible. He's a man who will always give you the benefit of the doubt and be supportive...

Finishing by thanking him for the offer of a loan but declining, I asked if he had any work going that no-one else needed at that point and promised I’d deliver it to him quickly. With that done it was time for my normal morning routine. The gathering of aether through my Chakras flowed smoothly, the discomfort less than before. I then moved on to my exercise routine, and after that finished another job, but this time I kept it to merely fast, without being abnormally good. See, I can learn lessons.

As I dried myself off after a hot bath to ease my aching muscles I saw I had another email from Hayato-san. It was enquiring whether I was really all right, but that if I was serious there was a couple of weeks’ worth of redraws and re-renders of some background art that had been rejected by the dev team, which he could send my way if I was serious. I guess I really worried him if he is digging so hard. I sent back more assurances that I was all right, and got back a near-immediate response, along with the work to do. Settling down into my chair with a cold bottle of iced tea, I started to work on it, my hands flying across mouse and keyboard at extreme speed. This time though I’ll sit on the work for a few days, so it doesn’t seem as if I finished it so incredibly early… That would decrease my potential earnings, but I would not upset my friends, which was important too.

********

The next day I carried on with my training, but as I was feeling full of aether due to my developing Chakra network I decided to add in a further experiment, based on using aether in the Material. After several hours I had discovered the following findings. Using it within my body, like when I exceeded my limits on my run a couple of days ago, still used a lot more aether than it would in the Boundary, orders of magnitude more in fact. Despite that, I could use aether to help me lift weights far heavier than I could unaided, or even crush a spoon within my grasp. Doing so caused spikes of pain to flare in my lunar Chakra and the surrounding body, but it was bearable.

If I was using it externally it was a further order of magnitude more difficult than internal use, I could flip a coin off my hand, but anything harder than that used an unfeasibly large amount of aether. Still, if I was to grow more powerful and have a greater aether reserve, the possibilities were endless. I was just starting to get an inkling of an idea how I would solve my great need for money. There was a lot more to do and issues to solve, but if all went well… In any case, that's for later.

For the rest of the day things proceeded as usual, I did a good chunk of the work I had to do (nearly a third, in fact) and continued spear and muscle training. Compared to the form of the trainers on the videos I was streaming, I was a bit rough, but I had certainly come a long way in just a few short days. Maybe the best thing I had gained wasn’t greater strength or speed, but increased capacity to learn and improve.

As the darkness of the evening set in my aether-raising exercises filled up what I had used in my experiments and continued to pull in more and more, until I had enough to enter the Boundary. In my Territory I was quickly greeted by Shaeula, who was looking rather happy.

“Greetings, Akio.” Shaeula said brightly. “You have-have returned quicker than I expected.” Her eyes glowed amber and she nodded, satisfied. “Your network continues to stabilise. There are still-still issues, but with work you can surely-surely overcome them. In any case…” she paused, cocking her head in an adorable manner. Damn, I am not a furry, this doesn’t appeal to me, it doesn’t.

“… Would it be possible to-to upgrade the Barracks, I would like to call more of my kin back-back to life.” She finished, eyes pleading.

Checking my ether supply it was sitting just under ten thousand. At least she had listened to my instructions to wait until we had enough to upgrade before recruiting back her weaselkin. Yet, to gain seven and a half thousand ether or more while I was away for only two Material days, even with two upgraded Ether Spires, was quite a surprising amount.

“We have-have been working hard.” Shaeula said proudly, interpreting my gaze correctly. “We managed to lure-lure some of the spider and scorpion monsters to our Territory and dispose of them here-here, however after we had killed around twenty of them they started to learn-learn, and some stronger ones appeared. We had to retreat then-then, or we would have gathered more.”

Nothing like motivation to make a workforce excel, eh? Looking around I could see my Silo was surrounded by shimmering orbs of ether that it couldn’t hold. I would need to upgrade that too at some point.

“Well, first we need to upgrade our Territory Anchor to Rank two, which will take ten Astral days.” I said to her. “But while that is happening we won’t be able to do much, so if we gather ether ready we can do the Barracks upgrade as soon as the Territory itself finishes upgrading. Does that sound fair?”

“It does-does indeed.” she said, excited. I could sometimes catch faint glimpses of the glowing balls of light around her, drifting between the sometimes visible swirls of green wind energy that she gave off, but if I wasn’t mistaken there did appear to be fewer of them. “We will gather-gather as much as we can! But in the meantime if you wish to learn how to wield the wind-wind, you need more training!”

When I began the Territory Upgrade to Rank 2 I was greeted by a rather dangerous message. During a Territory Anchor upgrade the Territory will enter a dormant state. No Building can be repaired or built, the Territory Barrier and Ether absorption will function at significantly reduced effectiveness, and Defensive Emplacements will not function. Only passive Buildings such as Silos and Ether Spires will remain active, but Ether Spires and other similar Buildings will function at reduced effectiveness based on the Rank of the upgrade being performed.

Damn, that’s... pretty shitty. There would be massive vulnerabilities while one was upgrading, with any attack being lethal and likely to lead to the loss of the entire Territory. Still, one couldn’t simply put off upgrading and make do with lower-Rank Buildings either… Fortunately, at least Shaeula and her kin are here to defend us. We should manage this time… I hope… but if the next upgrade is a hundred days like I suspect… shaking my head to clear the doubts I mentioned this blow to Shaeula, who agreed to lead the defence while we upgraded.

After that conversation I began to practice strengthening my Chakra network with the usual incisive help from Shaeula, her amber mystic eyes seeing the flow within me and allowing her to correct my problem areas. As I worked the molten warmth within me spread, until I was feeling a near uniform sensation of heat. The only island of lesser aether within me was my lunar Chakra and the surrounds, which occasionally pulsed stabbing needles of frosty pain through my back and upper body. Sadly, I was well used to this now so it barely slowed me down.

This continued for hours under her tutelage, until something seemed to snap suddenly into place. It was as if my body pushed through some sort of barrier, the heat it felt all moving to my lower body, where my White Cord connected me to my Material form. I gasped in a combination of sensations, a mixture of pain and strange pleasure running through me.

Your Class, Fae-Bonded, has increased from Level Three to Level Four.

Your White Cord has evolved into a Silver Cord. This has strengthened both your Astral and Material forms. Aether can be utilised more efficiently with less waste.

“Oh, this-this is interesting.” Shaeula said, as my White Cord began to change, fragments drifting away into the air as if it was ash from a fire, leaving smooth shining silver beneath. Once this was done my body shuddered once, power flowing through it. The world seemed to be just a step slower around me, my mind working faster. Aether was flowing through me swiftly, with barely any resistance, and this was energising me. I felt like I had powered up, like going Super Saiyan. I’m over 9000!

“Your Chakras have all-all changed dramatically. The energy they hold is now-now swirling like a whirlpool… all except the lunar node, and even that is larger and looks-looks more stable. You have made a breakthrough!” she observed. “With these Chakras you should be able to take your first-first steps to harnessing the wind, but do not-not expect it to be easy, it should be far-far more difficult than reaching this stage!”

I looked down at my Silver Cord, which was fading from view now that it had evolved. It was now more in line with all the literature on Chakras and Astral projection I had read, which had all talked about similar Silver Cords.

“So what my father said was true-true.” Shaeula said beside me. “The Scotsman had a Silver Cord connecting his body to our world, and it shone like a silver-silver sun. I had wondered if the Scotsman was just special, or if you were not-not sufficiently strong enough. Now I know-know.”

I’m guessing this ability to evolve and strengthen my Chakras and my Silver Cord is why Exposition-san didn’t force open my Chakra nodes before. Most likely I would have been at the same sort of strength level as I am now, but I might not have had room to grow… still, meeting Shaeula was a great stroke of luck, as without her mystic eyes giving her the ability to guide me, I would no doubt have not come anywhere near as far, I might have been struggling for weeks, months or even years to get to this point on my own, if I didn’t ruin myself first with my fumblings…

“It’s pretty much all thanks to you, Shaeula.” I praised her, causing her to fidget in embarrassment. “Without your guidance it would have taken me a lot longer to reach this stage, if I even could with my pathways not using the main route through my body.”

“It is only-only natural for me to help my master.” she said, puffing out her chest proudly, showing her dere side once more. “I did not-not do it because I particularly wanted to.” And there’s the classic tsun. Man, she is textbook at times.

With a wry smile I asked her how I could begin my training in wind elemental energy…