The Systemic Lands

Chapter XVI – Day 320 – Preparations

I began gathering up the arrivals that had appeared in the plaza. There was screaming and shouting, but they stood no chance against my hybrids and summons.

There had been nothing more from Champion Michael or Purgatory since his last attack. I kept thinking another one would come any day. I had left the city a couple of times to scout out new monster types and found something quite amazing.

“You sure are a handsome devil,” I had my summoned monster say.

“Yes, I am,” I replied. I carefully inspected every inch of it, from the clothing to its face. It had to be perfect. I reached out a hand and felt it. The monster was cold, or at least it wasn’t as warm as a human body should be.

I had been gathering up more summoner ants, when I had pushed to the Southeast and found these mimics that were pretending to be boulders. Thankfully their skill extended beyond that of the terrain. With a couple of tweaks, I had convincing body doubles.

I sat down on a chair and had the summon give me a head massage. The incessant screaming was annoying. People should just let their blood be drained for blood powder and then brought to the transformation building. They should appreciate my eco-friendly stance of using every part of a human and not wasting a single bit.

It was nice how the hybridization process erased injuries and other issues from the humans I drained beforehand. They still needed to be fed, which was annoying, but I could use hybrids as a meat source for each other and they didn’t need to last much long anyways. I had been cutting the tether when I had them consumed and this gave me an idea.

I knew exactly how I was going to use them with their mental feedback drawback. I would cut the tether once the city walls were breached and let them spread out within the city, causing issues and as my first wave of attacks.

I would assault from each direction to prevent any kind of escape as well. This would disguise my true location. Once the city was sieged, I would break through at each entrance with an initial attack through whatever defenses existed. Then I would pour in the hybrids, sending them to the plaza. Once there I would cut the tether and let them rampage.

After that I would move in my summoning monsters and mental attack monsters. I would kill may way towards the plaza. The real question was how Champion Michael would respond. He would probably launch a counterattack in a single direction and then try to locate me.

I would need to carefully position myself and my decoys so that if he ran across one, he would think it was me, while being unable to locate me. I had made another breakthrough on primed summonings and hybridizations.

They would be perfect for a trap to slow him down, or possibly even kill him. The trick to primed summonings was to charge the process, but think of locking it in place, instead of activation. Such a simple difference, but a profound one.

They wouldn’t last forever, about a day. But the summonings could be primed, left, and then activated remotely. Energy wasn’t just energy like it was named, it was far more than that.

It was a carrier of information. Crystals were the solidification of the ideas of monsters. This realization was an eye opener. The tethers were the transfer of information above all else. My energy was overwriting the Systemic Land’s energy when I was performing the summonings.

This implied each person had a unique energy signature. The skills used were created from an idea or concept. Saying the name of a skill and making a gesture was triggering something greater that would then insert the concept into the world using the concept as a medium.

Energy was the manifestation of ideas, a source of unlimited power. That was why the stat names were so weird. Body was the concept of body, that energy strengthened. The same with Mind. Regeneration was the clearest since it dealt directly with energy. Spirit, or the will of a person was what a person could draw upon.

Aura meant imposing one’s will on the energy around oneself. Endurance allowed energy to last longer. Absorption allowed the physical body to absorb energy. Everything was clicking into place.

Whatever force controlled the store clearly meant for people to become exposed to energy and its uses. That was where the idea of raw energy manipulation had latched itself onto my brain and wouldn’t leave. Why would a person need skills or stats when they could grab the energy out there?

Whatever was interfacing between people and energy was acting like training wheels. I didn’t need training wheels. I needed the ability to grasp the energy and manipulate myself. I had been continually trying new things.

Energy was psychoactive, which implied that one just had to think the correct way in order to use it. It wasn’t simple and I had made zero progress beyond the crystal powder and summoning. The primed summoning could be called an achievement, if it wasn’t just scratching the surface of what was possible.

The combination of people during the hybridization process showed that active energy was a source of change, it was in flux. The crystals were potential energy and I was using that potential energy up during the powder making process, summoning, and hybridization.

Crystal powder allowed energy to flow through it, in a way liquid or air did not. It created the boundary for the summon, to reflect the process back onto the crystal and fully trigger it. I tried different shapes beyond a circle, but a circle was the most efficient in terms of powder to successful summoning.

It also explained the temporary boost in stats. The energy in the powder was reacting with the energy inside of a person.

That brought up the question of why blood powder was needed compared to regular powder and the difference? The answer eventually came to me as I used other bodily fluids with varying degrees of success.

Cerebral spinal fluid had the same properties that blood did. It turned the powder red and allowed for the summoning of monsters from crystals. It was my will in the energy I was putting into the crystal to turn it into powder.

For the regular crystal powder, this energy was lost, and the world or system energy was used to reflect back on the crystal. But for blood powder, this blood inherited my energy and used my energy to reflect back on the crystal. This is what created the tether and control I had.

It also implied that whatever was controlling the other monsters used a similar method, only far more complex. Like a paper airplane to a 747. I had only touched on the most surface of uses for raw energy, but this insight had opened my mind to what could be possible.

It also showed what a genius I was for making all the intuitive leaps I had. I was just touching the surface and I had far more to uncover.

This breakthrough was why I had held off on an attack for so long. However, it was past time I responded to Champion Michael and cripple any response he might have. I would rip away his support base. If he wanted total war, then he would get total war.