Chương 21: R&R Ch. 21 — Barrage of Preparation

Nicholas was beginning to hate their mentor. All he did was show up out of nowhere to ask him cryptic questions followed by leaving. And that he had no idea how the man did it, and Nicholas was irritated. Maybe the worst part was he couldn't figure out how Rend vanished. It had to be an ability, but what he couldn't say. And until he knew the ability, he couldn't come up with a counter. Not that a counter would work. Rend was at least two ranks above him. Maybe three, it depended on the man's veil.

Regardless the gap was likely enough he could brush aside Nicholas's workings without effort. That pissed him off more." Buckshot" Nicholas watched the working hand on his chin. It wasn't what he intended. He wanted a way to deal with enemies quickly in an area. That was just an area attack. Not what he was looking for. He could change that; today's practice wasn't with him building words to see what he could and couldn't do.

It was just running power through words that he thought could give him what he was looking for. If the baseline effect it had from how he viewed the word was close to his goals, then it would probably be easier to play with. Buckshot didn't seem to be on the list of things he was going to consider changing for this. Onto the next one."

Seek" Several stones shot from the ground and struck the dummies, a stone for each one, which didn't surprise Nicholas, but he was hesitant to use a word like seek to make his precision area attack. While he could make it an attack, it could be pushed in a lot of different ways. Nicholas took a moment to drink his water as he went through his options. Even if he found one he liked, it wasn't going to be used for their final show. Both he and Jasmine had their plans ready on how they would show off individually.

Part of him hoped he could crush her, just because it was a little exhausting to be second place and only her support. It was a role he loved, but the media pricking at him, wondering if he could actually keep up, was irritating." Volley" Several small motes of light appeared around Nicholas's outstretched hand before racing off to strike his artificial opponents. It was less wild than buckshot had been, and it had a lot more striking force than seek had. Nicholas moved it into the maybe pile. Nicholas paused.

There was something he could do. He had already proved that making the word close make an item into an explosive was a pretty easy transition for him. And there was a word that spoke to him about a targeted attack at multiple opponents that didn't miss. One that he had used for years, it was one of the best tools in a caster's toolkit. Image firmly in his mind, Nicholas raised his hand once again."

Barrage" Three almost glasslike bolts of force shot out of his hand, each one hitting a different dummy square in the head with as much force as volley had. Nicholas decided to make that his front runner. He didn't want to just decide a word on a whim and one successful test; barrage had a lot of meanings so he would need to figure out what he wanted to do with it. But something felt right about using it like that.

"That was a good one. Anything you don't have to aim is great, I always say," Rend said from behind Nicholas.

"What do you want?" Nicholas asked, not turning to his mentor as he turned to his next word." Shower" Nicholas had been hoping that would work like a meteor shower since that would have been a cool power word, but he was unsurprised when a slight spray of water shot out of his hand and splattered onto the floor.

"A master has to know the nature of the stone before he begins carving it, and Jasmine is in her pocket dimension," Rend said, holding out a bucket full of popcorn.

"So you just want to watch?" Nicholas asked, taking some of the popcorn. He was annoyed, but free food was still free food, and he wasn't going to ignore something like that.

"You and Jasmine have been doing admirably. I don't think you need my help yet," Rend mused.

"Besides, we walk very different roads even if we move for the same goal."

"You're terrible at the cryptic master thing." Nicholas said, rolling his eyes. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience." Jolt" A bolt of electricity crashed down on one dummy from the sky before the electricity went down the line, shocking each one. Nicholas appreciated the power of calling lightning down, but he had a few questions about it.

The first one being how dangerous was it, he didn't want to accidentally vaporize someone, and he had seen these dummies take Jasmine's bullets without problem. The second being what happened with the chain effect. Was it bouncing to his enemies, a limited number of pre-selected targets? Or just whoever was there. Nicholas also wasn't sure how to test it.

"It'll be good to have you two along; both of you could have a thousand tricks in your bag for any situation. An excellent trait to have in a hero." Rend continued unperturbed by the lightning.

"And what you have one skill you use in every situation?"

"It makes me a wonderful super." Nicholas mulled that distinction over as he continued to go through his list of potential precision area attacks. Rend chatted happily away and Nicholas listened, interjecting when he thought was particularly appropriate. By the end of the day barrage was still the one he felt to be most right, but it still pricked at him. It was a word he could see going in many ways, so there was good reason not to shift it towards one direction until he was sure.

Some of the words he had used seemed like they only had this option. The question was what did he valued from his ability. And his muse was language; if he wanted a word, he could find it eventually. Or warp the view of one till it was unrecognizable.

"Since you did the kindness of showing me your ability, would you like to see something I can do?" Rend asked as Nicholas prepared to go.

"You'll show me your ability?"

"No, I didn't say that. I said I would show you something I can do," Rend disagreed, making a gesture to something behind Nicholas.

"I'm not that dumb," Nicholas said, keeping his gaze locked on the eyes of his mentor. As much as he thought they could tell him to pound sand, he was an irritant, and that pushed Nicholas hard for no other reason than spite. Coupled that with the supposed goal to reach the end and it was a done deal, at least for now. Though he had still yet to find any sign of who Rend actually was as a hero. As it turned out, heroes with the name Rend in the moniker were a dime a dozen. Lots of ways to cut things.

Nicholas blinked and Rend was gone.

"And that, my young apprentice, is what I can do," Rend said, arm slung around Nicholas's shoulders.

"Please get off of me."

"But how else will I follow you back to the room with your secret method you've been cultivating to escape me?" Rend asked, smiling.

"It's only been successfully done twice."

"Great, you have a hundred percent success rate in your last two tries!" Rend cheered.

"You also don't need to hang off of me for it."

"It's about the emotional support I provide!" Nicholas gave up internally; at least today there was going to be no winning so he shouldn't even bother trying to manage it." Gate" A golden gate appeared, the doors swinging open to reveal his living room. Nicholas walked through, letting the power snap shut the moment he and Rend were through his power breathing a sigh of relief. It wasn't his most expensive working, things like Up, Impact, and Barrier could accept as much power as he could give them.

Gate just required more than the minimum of any other working. And scaled ludicrously with the distance. And required the utmost concentration if he didn't want to miss. But he was far from running on empty; rank two had truly done him wonders. The increased capacity from growing had certainly helped, but it was far from the primary force multiplier in his endurance. The condensing of his power to make it more potent was doing him wonders.

His capacity was still growing naturally from the exercise, but the increased potency let every scrap of power go a little bit farther, and then it came to testing out dozens of words in a day it let him actually gauge results. Previously that form of training had gotten him nowhere; the amount of power required to see any effect of an unstructured command too high to justify, even with the excuse and need to find potential candidates.

"Find any good ones?" Jasmine asked from the couch where she was pointedly not in her pocket dimension. Nicholas turned to glare at Rend. Only to find their mentor was gone. Nicholas shook his head and tried to suppress his irritation.

"It went alright. I have a frontrunner for it, but I'm not sure I want to use Barrage, which could have a ton of uses for the targeted strike." Jasmine hummed for a second.

"But the use you want and need right now is the targeted strike?" Nicholas stared at her, thinking. Was it really that simple? He supposed it was.

"Okay, I will turn barrage into our targeted strike. How about you? How's the armor going?" Jasmine sighed.

"I don't think I can put anything in it. Controlling the swords is rough, even if it's like exponentially easier than it had been last week. So it's just going to be regular armor for now. It'll still look like a cool cultivation outfit, but yeah." Nicholas nodded, joining his friend to hang out for a bit. Now that he knew what soul damage was like, even if his healing had been increased greatly from ranking up, he didn't want Jasmine to suffer alone. Not anymore.

But deep down he knew the real reason, both the actually real reason and the one he hid that behind. Nicholas was still suffering from his own soul damage, and hanging out with Jasmine was a balm on his spirit; he didn't want to give up. But more than that, at some point Nicholas had started seeing Jasmine as his friend, maybe even best friend, though he had never had a reason to use the word before.

What had started out as a friendship of convenience had blossomed, and he didn't want to be the reason that fell apart.

"So, you ready for Saturday?" Nicholas asked, spinning a pencil between his fingers. Tomorrow they would both be on mandatory rest to be as close to hundred percent that they could get. And Saturday would be the final show. This time they were going to go for the same trick they had the first week of scoring a hundred percent. Though they wouldn't be doing it by harming the other contestants this time, even if it had been on accident.

"I am. It'll be great to see their expressions, and I finished making all the fake swords for the kids to ride on after we're done." Jasmine said, rubbing her hands together. It almost gave off the image of a supervillain planning some dastardly scheme instead of his teammate who was planning on letting kids ride on flying swords as part of the meet and greet afterwards.

According to market research, Retort and Retribution were testing amazing with kids and teens, so they got to skip the handshakes and photos and be in charge of the playroom. There would still be handshakes and photos, but the ability to actually go do stuff was paramount to him. It felt a lot more like hero work to be playing with and inspiring children, reminding them that heroes were people to look up to and be protected by, not unreachable goals.