New System, Who Dis?

Tutorial Day 35

The concept of the plumbed system in my body led me down a spiral. It already existed and I just needed to reinforce them? It?

The next few times I went to 'fetch' Claude a beer, I paid very close attention to what my Qi did. As soon as it exited the organ I'd discovered last time with Claude, it began to diffuse throughout my body. However, there was one hint, or should I say two.

The Qi exited the Dantian inferiorly or superiorly if I went by anatomical terms I vaguely remembered. Essentially, it exited up, or down. From there, it began to fan out and spread evenly through bones, muscles, and fascia—essentially flooding the body, which was why with one point I never would have been able to reach my arm.

After some Milk Porridge and another thirty minutes to digest it, I was ready to try for another beer—but chose to instead stay seated. As the Qi began to exit my Dantian I doubled down my focus, even going as far as to activate my single Soul trick.

I'm not sure if holding onto my Soul tightly helped, but I did notice that as the Qi exited my Dantian it held together for just a moment. Like there was a pipe. Something hit my head.

"Ow! What the hell?" I asked as my eyes shot open.

"My beer is getting warm," Claude answered robotically with an ill timed gesture over to the corner. My eyes narrowed. If it was anyone else I'd likely return to my pursuit of the Qi distribution method. However, Claude wasn't just anyone.

He was my master—and I felt like I was starting to understand his methods. For some reason, he wanted me to continue as I had been. Frowning, I stood up and began consuming the Qi flooding my body to move the stupidly heavy armor. When I arrived back at my same spot with the beer in hand, I had two drops of Qi with the third just diffusing into my body.

Should I sit back down so I could feed myself or keep going? What did Claude want?

Not to mention that with three drops of Qi, I could probably hand him the beer. That decided it. Finish this task, before trying to improve my Qi distribution. That must be what Claude wanted.

Perhaps I grew a bit overconfident. Or perhaps I overestimated what I could do with three drops of Qi, because I leaped forward and held out my hand toward Claude. Only to have my Qi dry up throughout my entire body—one step from the seated man.

Half a step even, since my leg was already raised for that final step. My sabbaton crashed back to the ground unceremoniously, even as my forward momentum sent me into a forward lean. Before I could react, my chest, head and arm were well out over my leading knee.

I was going to squash Claude!

Then Claude and the beer in my hand were gone. What felt like lightning or perhaps static electricity played over my hand, where the beer had been. Then I felt the same static shock on my back, but with a sustained electrical-like charge.

Through my Soul sensation, the static was extremely familiar. I recognized the energy.

With ease, Claude yanked me back and sat me on my behind. I craned my neck, and found the man already sipping on his open beer. In the time it took me to fall from ninety to maybe forty-five degrees, he'd somehow taken the beer from me, opened it, and caught me?

"What the hell was that?" I asked incredulously. Claude walked around me back to his chair, as if he hadn't just done anything spectacular.

If he could move with that kind of speed—how had I ever hit him?

"That was me catching you, and saving my beer," Claude answered robotically as he sat down. I looked at my hand which I could no longer lift, and then closed my eyes to recall the longer lasting sensation on my back.

It was Qi, but it also wasn't. That's why it was familiar. One thing I could definitely tell was that it had nothing in common with Soul. So, the energy was Qi—but not Qi.

"Do you have a different type of energy, instead of Qi? Like Stamina, or Force?" I asked, recalling what Smegma had called the Demon races Pools.

Claude raised an eyebrow, but after no further conversation slowly shook his head. Claude scratched at his forehead, before robotically asking, "Where did you hear those names?"

"Some people on my planet said they had special Pools of energy," I lied, seeing something in the man's gestures that I didn't like. My suspicions were somewhat confirmed when he looked back up, and I could see his pupils intensely focused. Like his last question went beyond interest.

He studied me for a time but then shook his head sadly. "Those people are damned," Claude said in his accented English. "The System did them no favors by granting them relics that will not function with them."

"What do you mean?" I asked. It was my turn to be intensely interested, and if I wasn't in armor that would over balance me, I would have leaned forward.

"Did you not wonder why you need a Skill for Mana, but none for Qi or Soul?" Claude asked, blinking at me.

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All I could do was blink back. Sure, I'd considered it—and even remembered that horrible Martial Trainer telling me it was an inherent energy. But what was he getting at?

"Someone claimed that my Qi was inherent and that meditation and practice would let me access it…" I answered.

"They're not wrong, but do you know what that means?" Claude asked, taking out another familiar bowl of Milk Porridge.

"It means that I've got Qi inside of an organ in my body, and not inside of a Skill?" I asked, then took the first proffered spoonful.

"Okay," Claude said robotically. "While that isn't wrong, what implications does that hold?"

After the last teacher had been terrible, I never gave his words another thought. I remember thinking that they were somewhat profound, and interesting as he said them—however, the longer that session went the more I believed he was just trying to fleece me for Tutorial Points.

Now, I considered those words, and paired them with both my suspicions of Claude, and his words about relics. "Qi and Soul are inherent to humans?" I began, thinking out loud. "So, having different energy pools would be challenging to control?"

"Yes," Claude said, his voice not robotic. He spun his hand, indicating that I should continue.

"Then humans have an inborn ability to touch on these powers—while other races—"

Claude pulled back the spoon and raised both of his eyebrows while smirking. The spoon still full of Milk Porridge was pointed at me as he said, "So, you are aware of other races."

His voice had lost the accent, and his English was perfect. I shivered as a physical sensation of cold water splashed over me. Goosebumps rose in its wake. Claude's face was changing. I would never have called his skin… blemished before.

Rough, and poorly cleaned, maybe—but not blemished. However, now the oily black skin morphed, smoothing out. His patchy beard and densely coiled hair changed before my eyes. The beard, which had never really been more than stubble, smoothed out—vanishing. His coils grew longer, going from afro-textured to curls. Then even changing from black to a deep brown.

His eyes were next. While they had always carried a wonderful earthen quality to the brown—they now gained green, and hints of yellow. They reminded me of a forest floor in autumn. One other change prompted my next question, "Are you a Dark Elf?"

That change was of course his ears, which had elongated and tipped to rounded points that intermingled with his new brown curls.

"Racism follows us everywhere it seems," Claude answered, with a sad shake of his head.

"What? Racism?" I asked, dumbly, not having expected the words from what was clearly not a human.

"Dark Elves don't exist. There are only Elves. The terms Dark, Wood, Blood, High and all the others were just created by people of our race to justify their wars. Their genocide…"

"Wow," I answered, honestly floored by that revelation. "Was this before the System?"

My question stemmed from our human history. While racism likely still existed in our current world, it was certainly less prevalently talked about. That, or the claims of my high school teachers about unification against a common foreign enemy were true.

Since I was caucasian, I probably wasn't the best person to speak on that issue.

"It existed before the System—but only became worse after," Claude said. I'd thought his accent had disappeared earlier because it was far less pronounced, but I could still hear the slightly French sounding enunciation. "The problem was that we already lived entirely segregated. My 'race' of Elves for example, operated on a different cycle than most others. We worked under the moon and slept the days away in blacked out buildings, underground—or in rare occasions, the deep woods.

"So, when a group like the High Elves wanted something, they simply stirred up a war, and slaughtered their way to their prizes. The Wood Elves for example were too simple to make use of their resources—only they knew what was best for the entire race. The Blood Elves were turning feral—the Dark Elves, evil…

"I can see in your eyes that you understand," Claude finished, and realized he'd stopped feeding me Milk Porridge. He looked at the bowl and then me, before moving the spoon forward again.

"We had similar distinctions. Similar genocides and wars in our history. We haven't had anything since the System—" I cut off as I considered the war currently raging in the Middle East between the guilds. "—that's not true, I guess. We still have war and prosecution of groups over resources. It just has less to do with race…"

Claude nodded. "I've had a lot of time to think on it—" he gestured around himself, indicating the dojo but more than that as well. "—in this place. Only now, can I see more of the picture. As I said, it didn't help that we lived separately already. However, the System only exacerbated the divide that existed between our people. Mana was the one commonality between all of us Elves. Yet, each group seemed to have varying levels of aptitudes with our intrinsic energies. In many cases, the groups had vastly different energies. For example, the High Elves used the terms Force and Stamina. The Dark Elves had Martial Power and Shimmer."

I heard the spoon get dropped and clatter in the clearly empty bowl. Claude ran his hands through his brown curls and took a deep inhalation through his nose. "I'll admit that it's nice to talk to someone who is already aware of other races. While, to me, if I look in one of your mirrors—I always look like this. When I interact with my own body—it isn't the same."

He touched his pointed, elongated ears to make his point. I smiled, remembering Smegma checking himself out—multiple times, as he changed and grew. "Yeah, the Demon I know—"

"The what!" Claude shouted, as he leaped to his feet. A Spear was in his hands, and the point glowed ominously purple as he pointed it at my chest.

Swallowing deeply, I desperately felt within myself. My Qi was still incredibly low, so I had no way to defend—

Suddenly, Claude was dragged to his knees, as indigo fog coalesced and then 'manhandled' him to a kneeling position. His Spear clattered to the ground between us, and his arms were wrenched behind his back. I could tell by the flexed muscles and bulging veins that he was fighting desperately against the strange energy—but he looked like a kitten in the jaws of its mother.

"He brings the Demonspawn here!" Claude shouted, spittle flying from his mouth, as his eyes glared toward the ceiling. Those eyes that had been like a calm autumn walk in the forest a moment before now looked like a dry tinder ready to ignite.

A screen popped up in front of me.