55. Spirit Steel (II)
The air warped around the Sage's hands, compressing, trembling. His fingers looked like an impressionist painting. Zane could feel the tension hidden between those palms, like there was a whole universe held there, invisible, infinitely compressed—and all Zane could sense was what it gave out. Those tidal-wave ripples of Law.
The Sage gave a shout and clapped his hands. There was a ringing, bright, clear, resonant, and instantly Zane's mind went blank. He felt like he'd been struck—not in the body, but the soul. For a second he stood there dazed. A pulse washed out from the Sage's hands and spread in an instant, flowing over everyone in the Great Hall—a shockwave of Steel Law. Zane felt viscerally in that moment the force, the resilience, the control.
The hall's steel walls hummed. The statues lining them, the ceilings, the floors all hummed in perfect resonance. So did the Sage's body. As though on some level beyond the physical, they were all one.
The Sage opened his hands. They gleamed slightly—they had a little metallic shine to them. His whole body did. Zane could see the Laws streaming off him, streaming through him. He breathed out, and a silvery mist left his mouth—even his breath was dense with Law. Law at a level Zane couldn't hope to understand.
The Sage formed a fist.
Then he punched. It went slowly, but it felt like everything collapsed to just that punch. Zane couldn't see anything else. That fist became his world. The heaviness of it, the density of it… It was just a simple punch. Yet Zane felt a profound truth hiding in that little motion.
And Zane glimpsed it. The surface of the world peeled back, cracked open—
The moment passed.
The Sage resumed his normal stance. The sheen vanished. And suddenly everyone in that hall drew in a gasp. Nobody could breathe until that moment.
The Sage bowed.
The scene dissolved.
Zane sat there, dumbly. He caught parts of that—little fragments. They felt muddy, unclear. This time everything just felt slower. His mind wasn't in that heightened state of focus—compared to when he last had Law vision… How much had he grasped? Maybe half as much, maybe less? And he could tell this was a better treasure too…
Frowning, he stood and checked outside. It was dark. A cool night air greeted him, and he looked up at a spray of stars. Somewhere, crickets were chirping.
…That was half a day?
Wow.
He could have sworn it was an hour at most. As usual, time meant nothing in Law trances.
He had the focus; he walked back in, sat down, gritted his teeth. He could do this—he just had to put himself in that familiar place… He'd done it so many times before…
He grasped the crystal and tried it again.
This time, he found his attention drawn to the way the Sage's body transformed as they clapped—the tiny changes on his skin, in his face—there was a heating, then a cooling, at a minute level. It was still his body, just harder, tighter, stronger. Zane paid as close attention as he possibly could in the instant of that shockwave. And he felt all these things too. The moment it passed him, he felt the resonance.
The way steel balanced hardness and flexibility… it imprinted itself in his mind.
𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!
𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕋𝕖𝕞𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘
He drifted back out.
An intense fatigue washed over him, dragging at him, and he yawned. It felt like something in his mind was shot.
He could tell he was done for the day. He opened his palm and let his new Law dance on his fingers. When he applied it, his skin took on a slight metallic look. This thing had stopped his Axe cold. Now it was his.
A day for a Minor Law wasn't bad. But Zane had learned faster in the past.
He supposed that was because he had to. He was realizing he had a way of rising to meet whatever challenge was thrown at him—especially if it threatened someone he cared about.
…Which was not something he wanted to rely on.
It didn't need to be that. Any very high-pressure scenario would do. He learned Laws in fights too. He just needed stakes. Some men were happy in peacetime—some men were comfortable. He felt restless. He needed the next fight.
Even for something as simple as Law.
The last time he was in this cavern, he'd taken 6 Law Fruits. That likely helped—but the more he studied Law, the more he realized it'd helped less than he'd thought. It might've stacked up to a 20-25% boost, or something—at the heart of it, he'd still been preparing for war. He'd still been locked in. He just… wasn't, anymore.
He sighed. For now, he'd try to grind his way through this. This issue wasn't one he could solve anytime soon. It went to the core of who he was.
He slept and came back the next day, and ground his way into the Law trance yet again. The Sage had said you could find every Law of Steel in that one strike, and Zane sensed he was right. There was so much, he didn't know where to look—he went for something cousin to the Law he just found, like two puzzle pieces that stuck together in an otherwise inscrutable puzzle.
He focused on the shockwave made by the Sage's clap, the way his body absorbed and distributed that huge force. He focused on the Sage's hands. They turned metallic before they connected. He saw the way the force ran up against them—and vanished. Once he looked, truly poured all of his attention on that little detail, he saw an opening there. A place he could look into the great beyond.
He saw, he felt the way the fingers diffused the stress—the way it took the force and withstood it, unyielding. There was something profound there… there was a Law at work.
He sat with it in stark concentration, brow furrowed. He felt it working in the vision… he felt it resonate within him.
The scene faded, but that crack stayed. He ruminated on it over and over, uncovering the full shape of it, like an archaeologist digging out some ancient long-forgotten fossil that had lain underfoot all along.
And at last—near the end of the second day…
𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!
𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕄𝕖𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕔 ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖
If tempering wove steel through his skin, this Law let him catch huge forces. Naturally, he tested it by punching himself in the face. Hard.
It still hurt. A lot. There was a metallic ringing in his ears as it passed. But he didn't feel rocked… he just felt slapped, stung. Was that a testament to his power, or to the Law? He probably should have tried punching himself before he'd gotten it.
Still, he had a feeling if someone else tried punching him—even someone as strong as one of Marcus's Generals had been—they'd break their hands before they marked his face.
He came back yet again the next day and tried to find the next piece in the scene. It was easier now he had two of them.
He focused on the way the Sage moved from clap to punch to rest—all the way through. That was no easy thing. The Sage's body endured an immense amount of stress—not the instantaneous force of the clap, but what came after. The sheer density of the metal he wove into himself, the burden he was forced to carry. But like metal, he did not bend. He bore that force with grace. There was the opening Zane was looking for.
At the end of day three—
𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!
𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕤 ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖
Just one more would complete the set. On the fifth day Zane found it. It was in the way the shockwave rippled out—the way he clapped, the way the force rebounded. And once the shockwave passed through Zane, he felt it too, deeply. And he knew.
Law comprehended!
Minor Law of Metallic Rebound
Every day, every viewing, was grueling. But he forced himself through it. The joy of each comprehension made up for it.
Still, though… he was seriously considering fixing a giant sword above his head. It'd drop if he didn't comprehend a Law before the timer was up. He needed something.
Putting it all together took two more days of nonstop pondering.
Then—
𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!
𝕄𝕒𝕛𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕌𝕟𝕪𝕚𝕖𝕝𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕄𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 (𝔼𝕝𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕝 𝕃𝕒𝕨𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕖𝕝)
He let out a relieved breath and stood. Time to call it quits. He had just a few plays of the crystal left; now was not the time to use them. At this rate, he wouldn't get a second Law out.
The solution to his problem was obvious.
He needed to go out there. He needed to find situations that created that for him. He needed to make his pressure.
Every day, his West Coast road trip grew more and more enticing…
***
After that, he swallowed the Steel Bead.
He sat there in The Cave, closed his eyes. He felt it drop deep into his gut and stay there, this bundle of power knotted with Steel Laws. He could start to unspool it with his own Steel Laws, and when he did, they started to saturate his body, starting from the organs in his midsection—his stomach, his liver, his gallbladder, his intestines—and moving outward, radiating to cover his thighs, his calves, his feet, his legs, his hands, crawling up through his neck to his head.
And he felt something cold, something incredibly heavy, weave its way through his whole body. Slowly but surely. And it stayed there.
The process took all day.
𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕖𝕕!
𝕊𝕡𝕚𝕣𝕚𝕥 𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕖𝕝 𝔹𝕠𝕕𝕪 (ℙ𝕒𝕤𝕤𝕚𝕧𝕖) [𝔼𝕡𝕚𝕔]
𝔾𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕓𝕠𝕕𝕪 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕕𝕦𝕣𝕒𝕓𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕕𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕠𝕗 𝕊𝕡𝕚𝕣𝕚𝕥 𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕖𝕝. 𝔼𝕩𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕝𝕪 𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕟𝕥 𝕥𝕠 𝕓𝕠𝕥𝕙 𝕤𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕔𝕦𝕤𝕤𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕘𝕖. 𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕖𝕝 𝕘𝕣𝕒𝕕𝕖 𝕤𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕖𝕤 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕝𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝.
By the end of it, his body felt immensely heavier. He hadn't felt the weight of his body in ages—after his strength sat past a certain number, he felt utterly weightless. Now it took a slight effort to move an arm, a leg. He walked outside and tried jumping. He went up a few yards.
Then he landed. And the ground bowed in. His feet sank in as though through freshly fallen snow.
"…"
Instantly he was eager to try this in battle. Against the monstrous boss of some great C-ranked dungeon, one-on-one, blood running hot, heart thumping wild, life and death hanging on a razor's edge—
He found himself panting. He had to remind himself there was just one C-ranked dungeon in the state, and the Iron Legion had cleared it. There were only a few straggler D-ranked dungeons left for the taking. A few pockets of F's and E's. And that was it.
That very night he started charting his trip.
The only reason he didn't set off then and there was because of Reina. He felt he should stay behind and show his support while she settled things. Once the transition was over, though…
***
He took Elias's lost treasure, the B-grade Essence Vial, and the Levels poured in. It took nearly a full day to absorb them all.
They stopped with one last notification—
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟟𝟜 -> 𝟟𝟝
Which was good for World Rank 42, according to the Essence Beacon. Not bad.
***
He took the rest of the month to train, teach Faction members, and pick off a few D-ranked dungeons left in this state. A few were in the Northern Cascades; one was far southeast. He could sense his time was coming. Yet again, that soul-sucking boredom was starting to descend, that wall of grayness. Soon.
It was a good time. By then, Reina's councils were well established and running smoothly. Her programs were set into motion. The new Luminous Faction settled into a rhythm. He wasn't sure precisely, but he figured it'd been about five months, maybe half a year, since the Change.
Reina still updated him every night with its goings-on, though half of it drifted in one ear and out the other. He sensed it was as much for her sake as it was for him—she seemed to like spending time with him. It relaxed her. She needed it, with how stressful her days were lately.
She seemed to like hugging his arms, or leaning her head on his chest—being close to him also seemed to relax her. As the nights went on, she drew closer and closer…
***
Early one morning, Zane heard a light knock at the door.
He ignored it and tried going back to sleep.
Another knock. Then another. He groaned. The knocker was starting to play "The Little Drummer Boy" on the door, and Zane had a suspicion who this was.
Groaning, he disentangled himself, pulled off the covers, stepped very gently on the ground so it didn't creak, pulled on his boxers, a shirt and trousers, and stumbled to the door. He pulled it open just a crack, not enough to reveal the whole room, and looked outside. The sun had scarcely risen; the ground was blanketed in mist.
And there was Avery, grinning at him. Her hoodie was black-and-white, like a panda. It had two panda ears on too.
"Morning!" said Avery.
"Please lower your voice," said Zane, wincing. "You'll wake the neighbors up."
Avery blinked. "Uh. Sure. Hey—have you seen Reina? I couldn't find her in her cabin."
"Reina's quite worn out," he said. "She had a long night. I'll pass your message to her when she wakes."
"Really? I thought she was taking the night off."
"…What is it?"
"Oh! Okay. It's just—"
Avery blinked.
She must've noticed the second white dot in Zane's cabin. A dot that had been very close to Zane's just a few seconds ago. "Wait."
He winced.
"…It's not what it looks like."