Misbegotten Memories

Lunch was mass-produced Jinn slop: delicious, nutritious, and of questionable provenance. Hector had long since passed the point where he worried about such things, so he chowed down without complaint. Ajax and Nestor had introduced Hector to the other Titans in their bay and they treated him with a degree of respect. He didn't see Esther or Mick during his trip to the dining facility. Then it was back to the bunker.

While the Titans slept, Hector settled down to cultivate. He started with his mind, planning to drain the mental band of chaos quickly before moving on. That proved naive on his part. The chaos was thick in the air and gave no signs that it could ever be depleted. Also, there was no miasma mixed in with it. That let him cultivate at a rapid pace. Even if nothing else went right, Stronghold Gamma was a goldmine for his advancement.

Hector finally had to stop when his mental aperture became too sore from the repeated use. He switched to using his domain. The exercise began slow as he struggled to map his insight onto the new aperture. An externality aperture floated upon primordial chaos, so it was a natural fit for practicing chaotic emergence. A mental aperture operated on thought, which made everything easy. A domain, on the other hand, tested his coordination.

He'd had some success with it in the dungeon, so Hector worked through the initial awkwardness over the next couple of hours. In that time, he discovered a side-effect that he should have anticipated based on his fight with One-Shot Jerry on Tian: breaking down chaos into cosmic energy in the space around him caused a certain degree of luminosity. It wasn't more than dim flickering at the moment given his fumbling, but Hector could anticipate his neighbors in the sleeping bay would not be happy with the undesired nightlight once he got his rhythm down.

Finally, he switched to using his aura. It was just as awkward as using his domain. More so, actually, given that he had to fight his reflex to pull in cosmic energy. The ratio of chaos to cosmic energy was pretty even, so it wasn't immediately obvious if there was any benefit to cultivating chaos that way. Hector kept at it in spite of his doubts. It was a shiny new skill that had caught his attention.

His cultivation experiments ended when the call out happened for their entire bunker. Everyone from all four bays emerged to stand in formation before Lieutenant Ringo, who counted their numbers and then led them to the nearest section of the wall. They climbed up the ladders along its length and moved along a catwalk along the inner region to position themselves at regular intervals. The people they were relieving happily abandoned their posts.

Then… nothing.

The sun continued to slide beneath the horizon, turning twilight to night. The sickly brush outside the perimeter disappeared into the dark. Everything was quiet, other than the occasional shout from others on the wall.

"Looking like a snooze tonight!"

"Don't jinx us, you idiot!"

"I take it back, then."

Bulbs slowly came on behind the wall, providing minimal light for those on guard. Hector couldn't see past the wall, but he did notice a shimmer to the air. When he engaged his mental sense, he discovered that there was a dome of illusory energy rising from the wall. Runes engraved on concrete twinkled with strange power. And beyond that defensive shield, miasma floated on the air.

Hector shrugged for his own benefit. He'd come here to fight for humanity, but it looked like there would be no battle his first night. That just meant he could focus on his cultivation. Given that his most recent survey results had shown his domain to be lagging behind his other apertures at just three point six, Hector focused his efforts there.

The night passed peacefully for the most part. A turret a few hundred meters away from him erupted into a laser show a couple of times, frying monsters that Hector couldn't even see in the night. That startled him every time, both from the light and the shriek of atmospheric ionization.

In between those unpleasant surprises, Hector put in a lot of work figuring out the coordination for his domain. He knew from working with the other Xian at Tian Tower that his dexterity with his domain was exceptional. The deft manipulations he was attempting to do now, however… they were next level stuff.

He could do a rough approximation of what he wanted to do and transform about ten percent of the chaos he grasped. That was easy enough. Also not good enough. Especially not when he lost most of the cosmic energy he'd liberated. The chaos it intermingled with did what chaos did – random movement. That spread scattered most of his gains before he could absorb them. It hadn't been a problem when he shoved part of his domain into a rift because the pressure had forced the energy towards him. In ordinary reality like this, he couldn't catch the energy before it dispersed.

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What he did was good enough to disrupt a chaos bolt. It just wasn't very effective as a means of cultivation. Fortunately, it proved better as a training method. Hector had to stop altogether less than halfway through the eight hour shift on the wall. His domain ached like it never had before. The exercise from the bunker combined with what he did on guard duty took him out of commission. If anything attacked that night, he didn't think he would be able to form a cable to save his life.

Should the analogy to muscles hold, he'd just given his domain the most intense workout ever. He hadn't depleted his energy reserves either. It was overall a big win even if he didn't get the desired result. A net energy-neutral strengthening method for his domain would catapult him ahead in his combat proficiency.

Hector spent some time cultivating chaos with his aura, but stopped when he began to feel an ache begin. He did not intend to ever let his aura become too sore to block. So it was back to mental cultivation for the rest of the shift.

Everyone filed off the wall when their relief shift arrived and went directly to the dining facility for breakfast. Hector found Esther, whose smile carried a hint of misery in it. "Regretting your decision to join the Reconquest yet? Don't worry. It's never fun, but the money spends good."

He grunted in what he hoped passed for agreement. Though tired, he felt unbridled excitement for the training paradise he'd discovered this place to be. He just needed to improve the fine control of his domain to handle the new task.

That new task couldn't start for several days.

He'd overdone it with his domain far worse than he ever imagined possible. Back in the gym, Hector had often seen guys around his age show up out of nowhere, in terrible shape, and attempt to resume workout routines they'd done in their youth. They'd always bitten off more than they could chew. When they showed up again, they took things a little easier. Hector never had to go through any of that drama – he never stopped exercising, so he never had to restart at an older age.

Yet now he understood the plight of those poor fellows. The domain aperture of his soul ached constantly, making it impossible for him to train it again. He didn't by any means waste his time, though. Hector used mental cultivation for about half of his free time. Another twenty percent he directed towards working with his aura. The remaining time mostly was spent with the traditional method of chaos cultivation using his externality – which he could do while bullshitting with the guys.

And bullshitting happened. It seemed like that was the majority of the day for the Titans. They complained about the small portions served at meals and the weak water pressure in the shower and the scarcity of women in the Stronghold and anything else they could think about. They also spread gossip better than a clutch of old church ladies. Often they brainstormed petty vengeance against Lieutenant Ringo, whose constant harassment earned him plenty of hate.

It was all very comfortable. Hector had a social circle to make him feel connected to other people, a fascinating problem to work through, and constant progress in his efforts to grow stronger. The nightly wall duty didn't bother him either. When an attack finally happened, he realized there wasn't much for him to do.

There was a separation of duties for guards based on type. Jinn shot the guns that provided ranged offense. Arahants empowered the runes anchoring the protective shield around the Stronghold. Titans and Xian hung out in case something survived the guns and beat the shield. They were a layer of defense that leadership hoped was never necessary.

"I'm really not sure what they are paying us for," Hector said to Ajax at one point.

"Nightly guard duty is nothing. The weekly patrol is where you're going to earn your keep."

"That's in two days, right?"

"Yeah," Ajax said, "our bunker deploys on patrol in two days. You should go ask for some of the Xian resources."

"I don't really need them."

"Ask for them anyway. The leaders hand them out before patrols."

"Ask Ringo?"

Ajax guffawed. "What? You think Ringo the Dingo will do you any favors? Ask the staff on duty at the supply depot."

He mentioned the idea to Esther during a meal and she agreed it was worth a try even if they weren't very low on their energy reserves. The two of them walked over with Mitch and the staff of the supply depot only briefly verified their identities before handing over a prepackaged kit to each of them. Hector quickly unboxed his kit to see what he'd received.

There was a bottle of wine, a baggie of sugar crystals, a plastic packet of vinegar, and a couple of spirit pills. A paper printout explained the recommended process for using the 'restoration kit'. Hector read through their write-up with a frown. They suggested mixing the vinegar and sugar into the wine, drinking it down, then taking the antacid pill after.

"A spirit pill is just an antacid?" He didn't know how to deal with that knowledge.

"The wine must be terrible if they want us to mix it all up," Mick observed.

Esther agreed. "The Xian aren't known for donating their good stuff to outsiders."

Hector popped the cork, dumped in the sugar and vinegar, and went to work emptying the bottle into his stomach. He made quick work of the chore and then swallowed the spirit pills one at a time. He was ready and maximized his absorption to the extent that he could. He then returned to the bunker and helped the energy from the alcohol and sugar move from his body into his soul.