When Zane told Reina what had happened, she was shaken someone managed to get so close without tripping any of their alarms. But there was no time to worry about it now.
Just hours later, Reina asked the Harbourmasters in Vancouver, and they confirmed it. The Legion was pulling their galleons from up north, sailing them back to the Sound.
Elias was right.
Instantly Reina called an emergency meeting of the sub-faction heads, and started planning for war. They'd meet the galleons as they landed on the beaches. To catch them off guard instead of the other way around. A scent of jittery nervousness hung over the camp. Now the warriors were all out in the field, honing their maneuvers, coordinating their lines, making last-minute adjustments. The Rangers were out doing the same—stood in ragged lines, loosing volley after volley at empty patches of dirt. The Rogues dashed in after, picking at imaginary enemies. The Healers swooped in to support. War prep had reached its final stages.
It was that way for Zane, too. The best thing he could do now was to gather as many Laws and Levels as he could in the very little time he had left.
He could sense the fear, the hope with which everyone was looking at him. He saw Annie, the little girl he'd saved way back when, in a batch of elderly and young ones, the only non-fighters—all headed to barricade in Mount Saint Helens. They were all counting on him. The other fighters were all counting on him. Against forces that dwarfed their own, against a Signed with nearly ten Levels on him, and who knew what else…
He got to work.
First, Avery gave the elixir Elias had gifted her to him. She said Levels were less important than Laws for her. "Besides—you'll be the one taking lumps. We want you as big as you can get. You can pay me back after we beat up Marcus and take all his stuff." She winked.
Zane took the vial and inspected it.
Vial of Essence (C)
A vial of pure distilled high-grade essence. Sure to grant great boosts up until the Foundation stage bottleneck
That last bit meant little to Zane, but it didn't sound suspicious. This had all the markings of a real treasure. Had that Void Seer been telling the truth? Were these just gifts?
The Vial and the Whetstone were his only ways to make any meaningful progress before the battle started. There was a chance this Elias was working for the Soldier... it didn't make much sense. Elias was the higher-Leveled one. And from what Reina'd gathered, he ran his own Faction down in SF—it seemed odd he'd be playing errand-boy. And why would he leak the Soldier's real plans?
It wasn't as though the Soldier needed any help crushing Zane and his Faction. Avery figured Marcus was very confident already, maybe overconfident. It was one of the few things they had on him.
Zane weighed the odds. He talked it over with Reina. In the end he decided to use the treasures. In a way, Elias was right—he could use all the boosts he could get. He uncorked the vial and drank it all in three smooth gulps.
It tasted sweet in the mouth and went down easily, like a warm shake. He felt it tingling in his head, spreading down his arms and legs in a thick rush, until his whole body tingled with the warmth. It just kept pouring in, warming him, heating him until beads of sweat started forming on his temple. He started to redden—it was a lot, all at once—
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕌𝕡!
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟞𝟝 -> 𝟞𝟞
The sweating had spread down his body, too. He felt a little like a crab in a boiling pot. There was so much essence; he was cooking in it. When he opened his mouth, dewy streams of it leaked out.
He sat there, brows furrowed, letting his body draw it in... the minutes trickled by.
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕌𝕡!
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟞𝟞 -> 𝟞𝟟
Then the feverish feeling started to ebb. He wiped cold sweat from his brow and breathed out. Slowly, his body was cooling. Essence no longer ran rampant in him. The last of it still lingered, swirling around, but it was seeping in slowly but surely...
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕌𝕡!
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟞𝟟 -> 𝟞𝟠
He sat there a good half hour longer, just absorbing, but it wasn't nearly enough for another Level. Shaking his head, he stood. He poured all the stat points he had just gotten into Vitality.
When he checked, it looked like:
ℤ𝕒𝕟𝕖 𝕎𝕒𝕝𝕜𝕖𝕣
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟞𝟠
𝕊𝕚𝕘𝕟𝕒𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕋𝕚𝕥𝕝𝕖: 𝕊𝕒𝕧𝕒𝕘𝕖 𝕊𝕒𝕘𝕖
ℂ𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕤: 𝕀𝕟𝕗𝕖𝕣𝕟𝕒𝕝 𝕄𝕒𝕦𝕝𝕖𝕣
𝕍𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝟞𝟚.𝟠𝟛
ℝ𝕖𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟: 𝟚𝟙.𝟙
𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕘𝕥𝕙: 𝟟𝟛.𝟛𝟟
𝔻𝕖𝕩𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝟚𝟡.𝟜
𝕊𝕡𝕖𝕖𝕕: 𝟚𝟛.𝟠
This was likely what he'd be working with going into battle.
From how huge that essence influx was, he was surprised it wasn't more. He would've thought he'd hit 70 with how fast he gained at the start. But each Level truly was a higher mountain.
At this rate, it would take about as much essence to go from level 0 to 50 as it was from 99 to 100, Zane guessed.
***
Zane marched back to his Cavern of Insight. The best thing he could do now was grind his Laws. He took out Fuxi's Whetstone and sat down with it at the Cavern's center. He set that huge silver block down before him and studied it.
When he touched it, tried to connect with it, he could instantly tell this wasn't like the Heart of the Volcano. Nor was it like this Cavern of Insight. There was no 'Law vision' hiding in this thing—he felt no depths to it; it was exactly what it presented as. It was profound in a much more mundane way. A training dummy.
He set it down and slashed it with the Law of Razor's Edge.
It left a deep groove in the stone. Then the cut melted away, like the stone was healing itself, and it was whole again. He blinked at it.
In that cut, he felt his Law of Sharpness resonating against the Sharpness in the stone—like two musical notes in harmony. Only the Laws in the stone were richer, more complete.
He cut again, and he felt it more clearly. Yes. There was a void between what he knew and what the stone knew.
This was incredibly useful in a way that wasn't obvious until he tried it. It defined the shape of what he had to learn. He saw now his Law of Precision Slicing, and his Law of Razor's Edge, made up about half of what there was to know.
Without this he might've spent days groping around in the dark.
He breathed out. Two Laws to go, then. Two days to learn them, until they'd have to start marching.
He could sense the Major Law hovering there, just out of sight of his mind's eye... He had to get to it. He ran the odds.
If he and Avery took on the Soldier of God, that left Reina to fight the rest of Marcus's divisions. Even if she caught them off guard, even with the help of all their new Sub-Factions, she was outmatched. They were done.
If, on the other hand, Zane could hold a Soldier of God by himself… that freed Avery to wreak havoc on the rest of Marcus's army. If she and the rest of the Luminous Faction could deny them a clean landing, beat them back... They had a chance.
Zane was looking forward to dueling Marcus. The thought got his blood boiling, brought a smile to his face. Only...
The Level difference between he and the Soldier of God was still at least five or six. And the Soldier was also a Signed. Avery tried to act blasé whenever she spoke of him, but Zane could tell the man scared her, deep down. From what Zane gathered, he was a hell of a fighter.
When Zane asked Avery for her honest opinion on whether or not Zane was a match for him, she hesitated. And then said, even now... Zane would have a rough time.
Zane was good, sure. But Zane wasn't on the level of someone ranked Top 50 in the world. Yet.
The only way he could make this a good fight? He needed that second Major Law, probably… Time was ticking.
***
Again and again, Zane slashed at the Whetstone. He threw in a Razor's Edge, he threw in Precision Striking, and then both at once. He saw them heal like old wounds and slashed again. He could feel what he needed—something just next to it, but oddly out of reach…he wasn't thinking about it right. He slashed and he slashed. He just wasn't feeling it.
He wasn't sure how long he sat there, slashing, frowning. It was hard to tell time once he got deep in a Law trance.
What was he missing? He wasn't going to find it just sitting here. Sighing, a little frustrated, he stood and walked outside, and took a breath of the chill, crisp night air. … Was it night already? Damn.
He breathed out again and saw his breath frosting, drawing a misty veil over the twinkling stars…
If he didn't get this, it would spell the end for his faction; it would put Raina and Avery in danger. Failure was not acceptable.
After their duel, Ethan, grizzled leader of the Dawn Guard, had asked him if he didn't feel pressure. "You sure don't look like it," the man had said, chuckling. But Zane did feel pressure. He felt the weight of the audience on him in that fight—only somehow it made him calmer, more clear-thinking. It was an invigorating pressure. It focused him. He felt it now, and smiled a little.
Then he marched back into the Cavern and sat down, looking at the Whetstone with fresh eyes. He slashed, slashed again. The world faded to white lines, drawn over and over…
No.
Not a line, a dot. He saw it in the stone—he saw what he had to feel, what he had to do. All this time, he was trying to cut through. But he was looking at the wrong dimension.
He had to pierce through.
Just the thought felt like a firework going off in his mind, setting fire to his nerve endings. A tingling rush spread through him; he gathered his Laws on his finger and simply poked.
It parted before his touch. Depth, not breadth.
𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!
𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 ℙ𝕚𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕚𝕟𝕘
He grinned. Nice.
He stood, took a lap, walked outside, gave himself all of ten minutes to soak in the bliss of the achievement.
Then he sat back down and got to work.
There was one more Law to go, and again he could tell he wasn't going to get to it by thinking like he had about any of the others. It was different in kind.
He traced a few lines, a few pokes on the surface of the stone, but they all felt wrong. This Law… he had a feeling it wasn't so physical.
Now he had almost all the pieces of the puzzle; it was much easier to identify the shape of the last chunk.
It was a matter of essence. What had the description said?
…𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕦𝕤𝕖𝕣 𝕥𝕠 𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕔𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕄𝕒𝕛𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕡𝕟𝕖𝕤𝕤 𝕒𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕤𝕤 𝕡𝕙𝕪𝕤𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕝 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕗𝕒𝕔𝕖𝕤, 𝕤𝕡𝕖𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕘𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕝𝕪.
'Essence surfaces'—that was it. His Sharpness had to be able to cut essence just as it cut physical things—slice through spells, shields, and strikes alike.
He squinted at the Whetstone. Then he tried poking around it, experimenting with it. It turned out he just had to channel essence through it for about half a minute—then it started glowing.
A second, ethereal Whetstone rose above the first, formed of pure essence.
Zane drew a finger through it. Nothing. It felt like touching a wall. He bounced right off. Then another, and another, but his Laws had no effect.
He was looking at it wrong. He closed his eyes. This time, he saw the Whetstone in the space of his mind. And he saw the shape of the cut he had to make. This time, as he reached out, he did so with the soul and the finger in tandem. When he cut, he cut two spaces at once.
And he felt it tear pleasantly under his fingertips.
𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!
𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔼𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕝 𝕊𝕝𝕚𝕔𝕚𝕟𝕘
He let out a chuckle.
He had the full set. The Major Law of Sharpness was in his grasp.
When he went outside, he was shocked again at how much time had passed—it was well past midday of the next day. He barely felt he'd done anything.
Which meant he had just a handful of hours to snag that Major Law before he had to head back.
He threw himself at it with fervor.
For hours, he stared down at that Whetstone; for hours, he slashed and prodded, tried squeezing it altogether, juggling it every which way, pouring out the stuff of his soul until he was left gasping, lying there, soaked in his own sweat.
It wouldn't come.
Something about this major Law, the synthesis… it didn't feel like something he could grasp just sitting here.
The last time he grasped that Major Law, his mind had been like a crucible of emotion. A place of pure, intense hatred, in which all his Laws could fuse. He doubted he'd need something that strong this time. But still…
When he went outside once more, the sun was setting. Time had run out.
For this Law, he felt he needed another kind of whetstone.
He let out a long, shuddering breath. And smiled. He'd done his best.
It was time to for battle.