Newfound Power

A moment of weightlessness came over Kantan before gravity quickly reasserted itself on him. Quickly he recognized his surroundings, and caught himself in a roll to prevent himself from face planting on the hard rock. Once he righted himself he did a quick look around for danger, before he saw that he was back in the room at the end of the hall. The room where he had thought he was going to die.

Quickly he looked back to where he had come through, and saw that the portal was nowhere in sight. There was a small hole in the wall filled with black mist, verifying his location completely. A wave of fear washed over him as the memories of the encounter with the prowler ran through his mind. He couldn't prevent the shudder that followed, but before he could get lost in the memory Veri spoke up. "Sorry about sending the prowler after you. Normally I am not supposed to bring something so dangerous up here, but once I could see that I might be able to replace your core I got impatient."

Kantan couldn���t help but shake his head in response. There was a part of him that instinctively wanted to lash out in anger, the thought of her impatience dictating his life and death struck something deep inside of him. Years of practiced meditation came back to him, and he took a deep breath to calm the fire inside of him. "You sound like a royal snob when you say that, you know? If I were to do that to others, they would either try to kill me or at the very least hate my guts forever."

Veri seemed appalled at the thought and she quickly responded. "Who could ever hate me? I am awesome and amazing and powerful. I hope you know that not just every dungeon core is able to reach the emerald rank. They should be happy to die for my continued growth. I'll have you know that aside from you, everyone else has entered my dungeon of their own volition because of the things that I give them." He could feel the barrier of indignation preventing his rebuttal, and he thought she mostly had a point.

"Speaking of, how come I didn't -" Kantan was interrupted mid question by an ear piercing wail, one which his body and mind had grown to hate as of late. Quickly his mind oriented on the source of the sound, seeing a very angry erthi slinking its way to him. The creature seemed enraged at him, "Its acting like I insulted its mother or something.". With his new sensitivity to demonic essence, he could roughly tell how powerful the demon was.

The amount of power that the creature wielded surprised him, almost rivaling his own when it came to sheer quantity. Upon closer inspection the demon had the beginning of bits of dark gray stone forming at various parts of its body. The dark eyes of the slug were locked on him and saliva whipped around its head as it open and closed its maw rapidly. "Why is it so angry at me?"

Veri piped up in surprised interest, "Oh, thats because you killed its baby." Kantan couldn't help but roll his eyes in annoyance.

"See Kantan this is why we don't say these types of things." His habit of talking to himself got the better of him, and he quickly took a few steps away from the erthi. The creature was surprisingly fast though, being able to keep up with him without even activating its chi to enhance its speed. He hadn't yet to empower his body yet, knowing that he wouldn't have the best control of it. The thought of accidentally injuring himself and being left open to be killed by a slug did not interest him.

"Oh, it looks like it is near evolving, you should kill it quickly before it does." Her voice held no fear or nervousness, just a mock interest. Through their link he could feel she was more interested in what it would turn into than the danger they were in. Not wanting to face an angry version of whatever this turned into, Kantan switched from retreating through the room to offense.

Given he was most proficient with hand to hand combat, he didn't think it would be exceptionally difficult to slay the creature. Shifting his foot forward with a bent knee, he leveraged his back leg forward for a swift kick once the demon got in range. With his body awoken to chi, he senses were enhanced enough to give him better physical control of his passive state. He managed to time the strike to hit the creatures head, but to his surprise He missed his intended target. At the last second the creature pulsed its chi, rapidly bringing it forward a few inches. Kantan felt his foot collide with the body of the slug instead, which felt like kicking a rock.

His attack wasn't without effect, as the creature rolled over toward the wall due to the force. A dull pain lanced up his leg at the same time, causing him to jump around while holding his foot. It felt like he had kicked a wall and lost desperately. "Why is it so hard? Ouch, oh my lord that hurts." Realizing that his foe was a bit harder to deal with made his stomach sink a little, and he quickly put his foot down gingerly. A quick check let him know it wasn't broken, but the pain remained.

The creature was quick to recover too though, and it rotated before sprinting toward him again. This time it was using chi from the start, speeding it up considerably. Kantan recognized that he wouldn't be able to hurt the creature with his natural strength, and without chi enhancing his body for the attacks he'd only end up hurting himself. Erthi were slow to begin with as a consequence of their style of movement, so Kantan decided to back up into a defensive stance to get a feel for the creature's speed. At the same time he thought of a way to ensure it wouldn't change its reckless charge. "Your child was a weak turd that I beat with one hand!"

Demon's obviously couldn't speak, or understand language, but any creature could recognize provocation. He knew the content didn't matter, but he couldn't help but try and hit a nerve. The creature wailed in response, maintaining its chi empowered charge towards him. This time Kantan pulled on his chi to shift toward his arms and legs, a sense of power flooding his limbs. His cells screamed in delight at being filled with energy, and he couldn't help but laugh in glee at the sensation.

The creature leaped at him, aiming to use its dense body to knock him over. Kantan was prepared for it this time, and now that the creature was in the air it could not continue to dodge or speed up. He lined himself up before launching another kick towards the creature. His leg whipped up with preternatural speed and surprisingly he found himself kicking to fast. Eye's widened, Kantan stopped his foot in the path of the creature in order to salvage his attack and turn it into a block.

The demon collided with his heel, sending him stumbling back a few feet. The creature was unrelenting in its pursuit, and he could tell that it had half of its starting chi remaining. "Guess I'll just have to do things at my pace then." Kantan bent his knees slightly before he pushed against the ground in a dash toward the slightly stunned erthi. His perception struggled to keep up with his speed, and the world slightly blurred around him. This forced him to keep his eyes strictly focused on his target in order to maintain his spacial awareness, not unlike a dancer would while spinning.

He reached the creature with blistering speed, his fist shooting out toward the demon's head just as fast. As quick as the punch came, it landed. The impact almost felt disappointing at how little of it he felt against his knuckles. Erthi blood and flesh splattered away from the strike like an exploding watermelon, painting the nearby floor in its blood. It was only then that Kantan heard the echo of his shout, the exertion and the thrill of the fight coursing through his veins.

For a few moments he could only stand there, striking the pose of his final strike as the feeling of power settled in him. He noticed a clapping noise coming through his thoughts from Veri, followed by her trademark voice. "Very nice! You killed the most basic creature in the dungeon! With that kinda power, we could go take care of all those sapphire warriors that keep us from adventuring." The bubble tinted sarcasm completely ruined his mood, and the chi that was flowing through his channels began to recede back toward their core.

"If you're so strong, why don't you go ahead and punch something to death with your bare hands? Oh wait, thats right. You don't have hands. Or a body." Kantan couldn't help but nip back at her unnecessarily sarcastic comment. "For such a powerful emerald soul, you are at the complete mercy of someone you just called weak. If anything, that makes you weaker than I am."

Again, clapping came through the mental connection, "Touche, dear meat suit, touche. While my snark may have been heavy handed, my meaning remains. The power you wield makes you nowhere near as invincible as you felt. The hubris and confidence I felt rolling off of your tiny brain could have flooded my entire dungeon, and I won't let you get us killed because of it." He wanted to bite back at her words again, something in his bones hated being insulted, but he recognized her words had merit. He had indeed felt invincible when his chi was active, but sensing his core now showed that he had used a substantial amount of that power for a measly two attacks.

"How come we used so much chi? I thought with our core complexity that we would be more efficient with our attacks." Kantan tried to replay the two strikes in his minds eye, and noticed that a fair amount of chi flooded his limbs with each hit.

Veri responded with a flat voice, "Well, our complexity may lend itself to more efficient storage and usage, but your usage of it does not. You struck near as hard as you could both times, which will obviously use more chi."

Kantan recognized immediately that she was right. He had overlooked the simple fact of how much effort he had put into each attack. All throughout his combat training that focused on how he would utilize chi, he had been told that awoken needed to force their chi out to their limbs with significant effort. Human chi channels did a poor job of transporting chi, so he had pulled from the core until he felt resistance in his channels. In doing so, he had emptied almost half of his current chi supply.

"I was always taught it would be hard to manipulate chi in the first rank, so I pulled as hard as I could. No wonder I used so much. It also explains the result though." There had been enough force that any viscera that would have coated his hand had also been pushed away. "Well I guess the only thing we can do now is cultivate for a bit and recover a bit more before moving onto the next room."

Veri seemed a bit slower to respond, and her voice carried almost no tone to it."Yes, please do. I feel weak. I think that if you run out of chi, I will die." Her voice was short and to the point, as if each phrase took significant effort. This set Kantan's teeth on edge as he quickly tried to start the complex cultivation technique to work on restoring some of their energy. Not only was she an emerald tier existence, but if she died he may lose his core. The thought of that, and all its implications drove a nail of worry into him.