Chương 133: Sunshifter

East Rutherford, New Jersey Leo Chen stood outside the New York Giants training facility at seven in the morning, still adjusting to the fact that his professional Flying Aces career would unfold next to a FedEx distribution center and across the highway from a water treatment plant. The contrast with collegiate facilities was striking.

At Yale, the Flying Aces training center had been a showcase of modern spiritual architecture, full of soaring ceilings, gleaming spiritual steel, and trophy cases designed to impress recruits and their wealthy parents. The owner of the NY Giants had clearly decided that decorations didn't win championships and had forgone them entirely. The building used as little spiritual steel as possible, relying on cheaper reinforced concrete wherever it could get away with it.

Officially, his rookie contract wouldn't start till next year. Today, he was just showing up to pick up his new lifebound flying sword. He reached for the door handle and his hand closed two inches too early, fingers snapping shut on empty air. Leo grimaced. Lord Ross's protocol had left him feeling like someone had swapped his body for a slightly different model overnight. His muscles fired faster than his brain expected, and it was deeply unsettling. Worse yet, the body refining had only just begun.

The whole process would take years before it was complete. Lord Ross had left him with three tubs of spiritual medicine that smelled like burning copper and instructions to return to Seattle every three months for additional surgery. When he'd asked how much the full protocol would cost, she had simply shaken her head and told him it would probably be better if he didn't check his bank account for a few years.

The tubs of medicine sat in his luggage at the hotel, and every time he looked at them he felt his signing bonus evaporating. He grabbed the handle on the second attempt and stepped inside the lobby.

"Hey! Hey, you! Rookie! Over here!" Leo turned, overcorrected, turned back, and found himself facing a squat, barrel-chested man in a training polo unbuttoned one button too far. He had slicked-back hair that gleamed under the fluorescent lights and was wearing aviator sunglasses indoors for reasons Leo couldn't begin to understand.

"Vince Deluca, starting Center, twenty-two years in this league, six Pro Bowls, and your personal guide to everything you need to know about being a Giant." A pinky ring caught the light as he gestured expansively. Leo nodded. He'd looked up his teammates before arriving, and Vince Deluca's profile had stood out. Center was the most demanding position on the field, responsible for reading the entire defensive formation and leading every transition from defense to offense. Leo opened his mouth to introduce himself.

"Leo Chen, I know, I know, everybody knows, you were on the cover of the Post twice, very impressive, shame what happened to that Yuna girl." Vince clapped him on the shoulder and steered him deeper into the facility.

"Come on, pal, let me show you around before the rest of the meatheads get here." The tour was comprehensive in the sense that Vince talked about everything they passed and several things they didn't. The formation arrays embedded in the training floor were his work, he explained, modified Six Polarities containment grids. Leo tried to take mental notes while simultaneously fighting his own body.

"Hey, pal." Vince stopped walking.

"You just advance? Because you're moving like my cousin Frankie after his third DUI. Real herky-jerky, you know what I mean?" Leo sighed.

"Yeah. Foundation Establishment, plus a body refining procedure. Everything feels off."

"Yeah, Coach mentioned you're doing some fancy new protocol thing. Military stuff, very cutting edge, very hush-hush." Vince was already moving toward a rack of training equipment along the wall.

"Best way to shake it off is to just move." He grabbed two rubber batons from the rack and tossed one to Leo. Leo's hand closed on empty air again, and the baton bounced off his palm before he managed to trap it against his chest.

"See? Exactly what I'm talking about." Vince twirled his own baton.

"Come on. Let's go a few rounds. Nothing serious, just enough to get your body talking to your brain again." They squared off in one of the training circles, and Vince came in with a lazy swing that Leo should have parried easily. Instead, his arm moved too fast, arrived too early, and his baton whistled through empty air before Vince's attack had even arrived. Leo overcorrected, pulled back, and Vince's baton tapped him on the shoulder.

"You're anticipating," Vince said.

"Stop thinking about where the strike's gonna be. Just react to where it is." They reset. Vince swung again, and this time Leo's parry connected, but the impact traveled up his arm wrong, like the bones weren't quite where he expected them to be.

"Better. Now you're leading with your shoulder instead of your hip. Rotate from the core." After twenty minutes, Leo was beginning to feel like his old self. The sparring was doing exactly what Vince had promised. Each exchange recalibrated his body until the new speed started to feel less like a curse and more like an upgrade. Then he noticed something. Vince was barely trying. The stocky Center moved with a technical precision that had no business belonging to a guy who looked like he ran a pawn shop on the side.

His guard was efficient in a way that made Leo's attacks feel wasteful by comparison, and he was reading Leo's movements with ease. Leo pushed harder. Vince adjusted without strain. At first Leo thought the gap between them wasn't dramatic, but the more he pushed, the more he realized he was barely scratching the surface. This was what twenty-two years of NFL experience looked like. Fine, Leo thought. Time to shift the paradigm. He activated omnidirectional awareness.

Fifty thousand Si flooded outward, locking onto Vince with the full weight of Leo's divine sense. Leo smirked. Vince whistled.

"Whoa, whoa." Vince lowered his baton and held up a hand.

"Hold on, pal. Let me get a feel for this." He stood there for a moment, head tilted. His expression shifted to genuine appreciation.

"Your Si is already at fifty thousand? As a rookie?" Vince nodded slowly.

"That's impressive, kid. No kidding. You've got real horsepower under the hood." Leo grinned. This was the reaction he'd wanted. Acknowledgment that he was special, that he belonged at this level because he had something the others didn't.

"But you've still got a ways to go before you catch mine." Vince smirked.

"Last I measured, I was sitting around seventy thousand. And that's not even top of the roster." He expanded his own divine sense. Leo felt it wash over him like a wave he hadn't seen coming. It was stronger. This was what seventy thousand Si felt like. And at the center of that wave, Leo sensed the same ability he thought was his trump card. Vince had omnidirectional awareness too. Of course he did.

Because this was the NFL, and everyone at this level had been cultivating since before Leo's grandparents were born, and the skill that made Leo special in the CFL was just run of the mill here. His grin was gone. Leo stood there holding the baton and felt the particular smallness of a kid who'd walked into his first day of school thinking his shoes were cool.

"Don't look so down, pal." Vince let his divine sense settle back.

"Fifty thousand as a rookie is genuinely impressive. You keep growing at this rate, you'll pass me in a few years. I'm just saying, right now, you're middle of the pack on this roster. Which is fine! You just gotta know where you stand so you know how far you need to climb." The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Leo let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The CFL had been a kiddie pool.

His fifty thousand SI, the thing that made everyone around him nervous, put him somewhere in the middle of a professional roster. At least he wasn't at the bottom.

"Alright." Vince raised his baton again.

"Now that you've got that big divine sense bubble going, stop watching the baton. Use your awareness to read my body. Muscle tension, Qi flow, weight shifts. Figure out what I'm doing before the baton moves." They went again. Leo kept his omnidirectional awareness active and tried to shift his focus past the obvious motion of Vince's weapon and into the body behind it. His divine sense could inspect everything, but he'd spent years training himself to read techniques rather than players.

The adjustment felt backwards, like trying to watch someone's hands while they spoke instead of their mouth. Then something clicked. Vince's Qi flowed through his meridians in patterns that preceded his movements by a fraction of a second. The energy gathered before the muscles fired. Leo didn't need to predict the technique if he could read the Qi flow that powered it.

"Better," Vince said, blocking a strike that actually made him adjust his stance.

"See? You're getting it. Read the body, not the weapon." By the end of the session, Leo was breathing hard and covered in sweat. Vince was not. Leo had genuine respect for the man now, not just as an athlete but as someone who knew how to teach without making you feel small. His body still didn't feel like his own, but it felt closer than it had an hour ago.

"Good work, pal." Vince tossed his baton back onto the rack.

"You keep putting in sessions like that, you'll have the new body dialed in before camp starts."

"Thanks." Leo meant it.

"That actually helped a lot."

"Course it did. I've been doing this twenty-two years." Vince was already talking again as they walked toward the locker room.

"You know what else helps? Film study. I got years of game tape showing you exactly how the best flyers in the league move, their tendencies, their movements, the stuff you can't learn from practice reps because you need to see it at game speed." Leo leaned forward.

"Yeah, absolutely. I've been doing a lot of analysis work on my own, but having access to material from someone who actually knows what to look for would be huge."

"That's what I like to hear. A rookie who takes preparation seriously." Vince grinned.

"I've got a whole collection. Every major flyer in the league going back thirty years, plus some classic stuff from the eighties and nineties when the game was played different."

"That sounds perfect." Leo was already thinking about how to find time to watch it.

"What format are they in? VR immersion recordings? Holographic captures? I can probably check them out once I get my VR pod delivered, or stream them to my phone if the files aren't too big." Vince stopped walking.

"I already told you, pal." Vince's voice was careful, like he was explaining something obvious.

"Tapes." Leo blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Tapes. Video tapes. Recorded off broadcasts, organized by player and year, labeled on the spine so you can find what you need." Vince mimed the shape of a rectangular object.

"You put them in the VCR, you hit play, you watch the game. What do you think I've been talking about?"

"What's a VCR?" Vince stared at him.

"The thing under your TV. You put the tape in, you hit play."

"I don't have a TV."

"You don't have a TV." Vince said it like Leo had just admitted to not having lungs.

"Then how do you watch anything?"

"Can you just send me the files? I'll watch them on my phone."

"Your phone?" Vince reached into his pocket and pulled out a Nokia so old it probably remembered the Clinton administration. The LCD screen was maybe an inch and a half across, the pixels visible from three feet away.

"You can't watch anything on this. The screen's the size of a postage stamp." Leo looked at the Nokia. He looked at Vince. He decided this was not a battle worth fighting.

"You know what, forget about it. Maybe I'll hit you up if I ever buy a TV."

"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard." Vince shook his head slowly.

"No wonder kids today can't read defenses. You're trying to analyze elite-level combat on a screen the size of a playing card. You need a real TV, pal. Thirty-two inches minimum. Forty if you're serious." Leo opened his mouth to point out that even back in the CFL he had access to holographic tapes he could play in his VR pod, but he sensed it wouldn't help.

"Hey, where's the equipment locker?" Leo asked, eager to change the subject.

"I've got a flying sword waiting for me. I want to start lifebonding."

"Down the hall, third door on your left. Can't miss it." Vince reached into his other pocket and produced a postcard. An actual postcard, the kind with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on one side and lines for an address on the other.

"Here. When you're ready to order those tapes, just write down what years you want and mail it to me. Address is on the back." Leo stared at the postcard.

"I'm going to be honest with you. I don't really know how to use this thing."

Later that day, Leo sat cross-legged in his newly rented studio apartment in East Rutherford. The place was empty except for a mattress in the corner and the two packages from the equipment locker. He had opened them and spread the two spiritual treasures out on the floor in front of him. The first was a slab of unattributed spiritual steel, about three feet long. It was blank, uninscribed, and calibrated to require exactly fifty thousand Si to begin lifebonding.

In its current state it could become anything: a lightsaber for Striker or Wing, a spiritual coordination nexus for Center, a tower shield for Fullback. The equipment manager had explained that this was standard practice for rookies. Once he began practicing with the team and the coaching staff determined which role suited him best, they would hire a formations master to transform the blank steel into whatever Leo needed. He set the hunk of metal aside. Leo could only lifebond to one spiritual treasure at a time.

And there was a far more important treasure waiting for him. He turned his attention to the second package. This was what he had been waiting for. The case was matte black and unadorned except for a small Giants logo embossed in silver near the clasp. Leo ran his fingers along the edge, savoring the anticipation, then popped the latches and lifted the lid. Sunshifter lay nested in foam padding that had been custom-cut to its exact dimensions, and Leo's breath caught. The blade was Ferrari red.

Enzo Ferrari himself had granted permission for the signature color. Leo lifted Sunshifter from its case with both hands. The blade was a T3 construction inscribed with T5 forbidden formations, which meant it delivered peak T4 power despite its relatively modest wielder. The formation work was exquisite, dense arrays of micro-inscriptions covered every inch of the blade in patterns so fine they appeared as a subtle shimmer rather than visible lines. He understood what this meant.

This was going to be his last easy powerup. T5 forbidden formations represented the absolute peak of Earth's formation technology, because Earth did not have access to T6 spirit veins. Moving up from peak T4 power would be very difficult in the future, even if he advanced to Gold Core. Leo activated his omnidirectional awareness and let his divine sense sink into the blade's formation structure.

The primary offensive arrays were based on the Denver Broncos' proprietary G-force bleeding formations, which the Giants had licensed specifically for this sword. Not only would it allow Leo to bleed G-forces, it would allow him to dump momentum into gravity bombs whenever he changed directions. The gravity bombs were only about T3 power, but it gave him a useful ranged option. But the offensive arrays weren't what made Leo's pulse quicken. The defensive formation made him want to laugh out loud.

Umbral Displacement. The documentation described it as a passive defensive mechanism that activated automatically when the wielder received a strike within a certain range. Instead of absorbing the hit, the formation would teleport Leo a short distance away, effectively causing the attack to miss retroactively. The ability only worked once per recharge cycle, and refilling it cost forty thousand dollars a pop. Leo winced at that part.

The equipment manager had added a handwritten note explaining that this particular formation was courtesy of the United States military. The note also mentioned that users reported the experience of being teleported mid-combat as "deeply disturbing" due to the sudden spatial discontinuity. Leo wasn't bothered. He would get used to it. What interested him far more was the final line of the documentation, which stated that Umbral Displacement remained active even when the sword was stored in his dantian.

This meant that even if someone ambushed Leo while his sword was tucked away, even if someone attacked him in his sleep or caught him walking down the street with his hands in his pockets, the defensive formation would still activate. He could not be assassinated. Leo set Sunshifter down on the floor in front of him and stared at it for a long time without moving. A weapon that hit harder than its tier suggested. A weapon that could passively dodge attacks from Deity Transformation cultivators.

A weapon in Ferrari red with the blessing of Enzo Ferrari himself. He started laughing. He couldn't help it. This was ridiculous. This was excessive. This was exactly what cheating in a video game felt like. Then he remembered the equipment manager's explanation for why the military had chosen Umbral Displacement out of all the defensive formations in their archives.

"They wanted to make sure you could pay back your debt," the man had said, his tone utterly matter-of-fact.

"The government isn't going to let a surprise assassination get in the way of debt repayment." Leo's laughter trailed off into something more complicated. Strangely, the thought didn't bother him as much as he expected it to. He had known the terms when he signed up for the Synaptic Acceleration Protocol. The military wasn't operating a charity. The fact that their self-interest aligned with his survival was, in its own way, reassuring. They would keep him alive because dead rookies don't pay back their debts.

Leo settled back onto the floor and considered the months ahead. He would need to schedule his time carefully again. Eight hours of sleep. Four hours of cultivation, thanks to his upgraded spiritual roots. One hour of body refining exercises, because the protocol wasn't just pills and surgeries. There was a corresponding regimen of movements and stretches designed to help his nervous system integrate the changes Lord Ross had made. That left eleven hours per day for lifebonding.

Based on lifebonding calculators he'd found online, Leo could expect the process to take a little less than five months. He knew he would have interruptions, though, since he had to enter the Azure Profound Continent for divine sense pressure training every three days, as well as fly to Seattle for touch-up surgeries every three months. Accounting for all of that, Leo estimated he would finish lifebonding sometime in October. Shen Tianyi's Karma formations would have to wait till then.

Leo's mind drifted to the Azure Profound Continent and the conversations he'd had with Shen Tianyi about the War of Western Unification. The Central Provinces would launch their massive campaign against the Lanternmarches in August or September, fighting over the harvest of the Thousandsteppes. Whoever controlled the autumn grain controlled the war. He could test his new sword against real opponents. See how far he had actually come.

Find out whether he could handle Nascent Souls alone without the Scorpion Weapons Platform. Leo grinned and began lifebonding.