Chương 192: Standing Stones

"Your task is to destroy a standing stone with your bare hands," Lieutenant Owl said, pacing in front of our training group. The morning sun bore down on us, and sweat glistened on our brows, pouring out faster than the wind could whisk it away.

"Your Vitality and Strength should have reached a standard, now, where this is possible." We stood on a hill. It was a morning's run away from Castle Urcia. At the hilltop, a ring of standing stones, like Stonehenge, circled a patch of gravel. The wind blasted over the fields, as usual, making every movement more difficult, and moss only grew on the downwind side of the rocks.

"Lieutenant?" I asked.

"Is it a good idea to…destroy something like this? An ancient stone circle? I assume it's ancient?"

"It is from before the old empire's time," Sage whispered to me.

"This is Keeper's Henge," Owl said.

"It is the earliest known use of Labyrinth Keepers. They rebuild it if you destroy it. They are the only reason it has survived the high winds of these plains. Do not fret about destroying history here." He paused.

"You may begin." We each picked a stone in the circle, walked up to it, and began. They were each about three times my height. Instead of Labyrinth marble, they were simple gray stone. Their edges were rough, and they hadn't been carved with as much precision as the old empire would have managed. Still, it was impressive nonetheless. Would I be able to lift a stone that large yet, carry it, then drop it down in a circle? There was no reason not to try.

I circled around the side of the stone, wrapped my arms around it, then heaved it up with as much force as I could muster. I tried not to put my back into it. There wasn't really an angle, though, where I could lift only with my knees. The rest of my squad looked at me skeptically. I gave them a grin and grunted, "Sorry. Just trying something." I pressed my hands tight against the stone's sides and lifted. It shifted, rising an inch out of the ground before I let it go.

It fell down with a thud, sending vibrations through the ground and nearly knocking me off my feet. It wobbled, but the dirt around its base held it up. An inch off the ground. That was pretty good.

"Levi," Owl began, walking up behind me.

"You won't destroy it by dropping it. You know what to do."

"Sorry, lieutenant. I was curious—that's all." If I had a better angle on it, maybe I'd be able to lift it higher. But that was a good benchmark. Now, for the actual test. I took my place behind the stone, widened my stance, then settled into a hand-to-hand position. Every inch of my body screamed at me, telling me not to punch a rock. It would hurt. I knew it would shatter my knuckles. Others in the training group looked at their rocks the same way.

"Hurry," Owl said, speaking to us all.

"We only have this week. Other training groups will need to take the stones over other weeks, and you can't hold them back. If you fail to destroy your stones by the end of the week, it will be considered a failure.

"I know it seems daunting. You can't break stone, can you? I need you to overcome the barriers in your mind. Your Vitality is higher than ever before. So is your strength. Your arms are dragons, your fists are chisels. If you can't break this mental barrier, you will never face higher-tier opponents effectively. The Black Captains will intimidate you. They will demotivate you. They will seem like mountains." Brawl threw the first punch.

His fist rippled through the edge and impacted the stone directly in the center. Cracks spread from the impact point, and dust plumed away from his hand. A boom rolled across the fields, and the ground beneath my feet shuddered. I leaned into the wind. It rushed around me, making my tunic flutter, but it also resisted me. Nevermind that I had forced myself to run through the fields, pushing into the wind for a few hours before this. Still, I threw a fist.

It cracked into the stone slightly harder than Brawl's had, but my hands weren't nearly as big. It had about the same impact. Vibrations recoiled through my bones, and my knuckles stung. But they didn't break. I clenched my teeth together and threw another punch, then another. The skin on my knuckles grew raw. Like my knuckles, it didn't break. Yet. It was closer to breaking. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

If I wanted my Vitality to keep increasing, though, this was the way. I punched ten more times, striking the stone as quickly and as powerfully as I could. Each time, the cracks spread. They reached the outer edge of the rock. It didn't shatter. My lungs heaved, and my knuckles stung. But the bone was intact. The skin had rubbed away, leaving streaks of blood on the surface of my hands. It was just surface-level damage, though. Lines of Labyrinth Keepers surged up from the dirt.

They crawled along the stone, barely visible in the daylight. Maybe they wouldn't have been visible if not for my high Perception. As they scaled the stone, they began mending the cracks. At this rate, they'd take days to do it. It gave us time to actually finish breaking the stones, even if we'd lose a little progress over night. As I took a break, letting my hands throb, I placed a finger in front of the Labyrinth Keepers. In the daylight, they were translucent ants.

Instead of crawling over my finger, they wove around it.

"Sage, how much do you know about the Labyrinth Keepers?" I asked. She was multitasking. Although she didn't punch the rock with brute-force, Morph sank his roots into the ground nearby and helped destabilize her rock. At the same time, she wobbled on her artificial legs and healed Anchor's hands. His had taken the greatest beating, and they needed his fingers to stay functional. How could he be their archer without functional fingers? Still, she looked up from her task and said, "Not much.

They don't repair organic matter."

"They don't even want to touch it." They were still navigating around my finger, making a bubble around its tip. They had managed to repair the poison darts in the first Labyrinth I'd gone into, though. Had the poison not been organic? Maybe not. It could have been some kind of inorganic chemical.

"How long do they live?" I asked.

"Have you tried killing one?" I pressed my finger down on one, like I was squishing an ant. It squished under my finger, as expected, but when I let it go, the Keeper popped back into place.

"Huh," I said.

"They eventually wither away from age, but not after multiplying," Sage said.

"Stress makes them multiply. Say, if they have too many linked objects to repair."

"How do you control them, then?" I asked.

"How do you link them to an object?"

"I have no idea."

"They could repair metal, right?"

"I don't know, Levi—""We don't have all week, Levi," Owl scolded.

"Get back to work."

"Yes, lieutenant." I stepped back, then continued punching the rock. ~ ~ ~ That evening, my knuckles had no skin left. Yeah, my increased Vitality would probably mend it overnight, but it still stung—especially when I cleaned up in the baths. Sage was out of Presence, and couldn't heal it. It made me crave more Vitality. I wanted to punch a rock without shredding my skin. For that, I needed more attributes.

We'd spoken to Abacus about our plan with the armour, and he said he'd manage the sale of the armour as long as the castle got a slight percentage. To have an experienced purser selling it, though, was worth the price. But it would still be a few days before we got our extra stipend of infused food. Besides, I was pretty sure I could do better. Path-walkers were supposed to be able to reforge their enhanced bodies later in life, even after completing their main reforging.

I had no idea how, but after our bath, I visited Sage and asked, "How do you continue enhancing your body?"

"I haven't started yet," she replied.

"But you know how?"

"We are only supposed to try after we've reached Silver," she said.

"In the Titanium tier, Path-walkers focus on enhancing our senses and our Arts. We aren't supposed to think of anything else, and the druid guides who were training us didn't elaborate on how to enhance our bodies."

"Alright, then," I said.

'Not right now' wasn't an acceptable answer. Especially since I was a Silver, and should be doing it right now.

"To the library it is. Do you want to come?"

"I suppose…"

"You don't have to. But it won't hurt to keep enhancing yourself while you have a chance. You know, considering you already disobeyed orders when you initially reforged your body…" Sage snorted, then said, "Yes, yes. Let's go. Research." We headed to the library, lit a candle, then searched through the books. I found the book I'd read in the spring, the one about different Slumberer blessings.

It should have had information on the ingredients you could use to keep enhancing your body, along with its mentions of what enhancements it aided. I flipped through the book until I found the section with Aelfwine's Birch.

"Sap…" I said with a sigh.

"It says that the main continuing advancement resource for a body enhanced with this blessing is sap…well, from any arcane tree, but the birch specifically."

"Good luck getting any of that easily," Sage replied.

"You would need to take an expedition back to the tree and harvest some sap from it yourself. Otherwise, I have no idea where else you could get it. This isn't the heart of an ancient elven forest, and even if it was, they would skewer you with arrows for trying to steal their sap." I hung my head.

"What about you, then? How do you enhance your body?" She held up a book with detailed descriptions of druid bodily enhancements.

"Marrow, it seems. From anything, but I should be able to make it work with marrow from the bones of the skeletons we kill in the lower levels."

"I'll keep looking…" I muttered.

"There has to be something in the Labyrinth I can use. Something close to sap." In theory, if I continued enhancing my body in this manner, I could work parallel to the System-based advancement of regular Dupes. It would compound with the infused food. I didn't have to pick one or another. But that was only if I could find the right resources I needed.