Rise of the Omnimage

The three fell back on the ground breathing heavy. As Sorin sat there, arms draped over his knees he watched as the blood from the gash in his face dripped blood in front of him.

"Well...that was...laborious." Cain said looking slowly over to Sorin at the head of the dead monster in front of them. Sorin let out a snort of laughter as his face began to itch from his regeneration skill beginning to kick in. "You good over there Linx? Took quite the shot earlier." He said glancing over at the fox beast man who was opening up a healing drought. "No....but this will help." he replied throwing it back like a shot of whiskey.

They sat there for a while not doing anything but collecting their thoughts and going over again and again in their head how they had all made it with minimal injuries. For Sorin he examined his robes and saw they were shredded in the front, but thankfully the beast could not get passed the armorweave suit. For Linx, his body ached all over form the shot and fire blast he took singing his robes, face, and arms. He was looking at where fur used to be, now it was a bald patch. Cain on the other hand was the most fortunate being just dirty with slightly torn trousers where they got caught on rocks.

Sorin pulled up the blue notification that was burning him up with curiosity.

Congratulations

You have learned skill:

Infernal bindings(a) - Create a burning cords or chains that be used the same as any binding. With the added burning effect. If used to bind a creature it will use more or less aether per second depending on the body stat of the target compared to your spirit stat. Periods of struggle will always consume more aether to maintain.

Sorin got to his feet. "You guys think that big ole bitch was B rank?" he asked. Linx was the first to respond. "No. It was a rift champion. See how there were all the small non-dangerous ones and then there was this great big thing with different features? That is what is known as an S-rank champion. They are so random, and we are beyond lucky. You might want to go try your hand in all the games of chance you can find after this." Linx went forward and cut into the beast, reaching his arm far in and tugged at something.

Sorin walked around as he pulled his arm back with a fist sized red orange beast core. "The way I see it, this is yours." Linx said tossing the core to Sorin. "We would have died if not for you man."

"Probably, but without you guys running distraction, I would have also died. So, I can take all the credit." Sorin replied walking to the rear of the cinderpaw.

"So.....any of you guys want to volunteer to fish out my sword?" He looked up seeing his two teammates walking away throwing him the one finger salute. "We will see you back at camp." Cain said.

- A little later -

Sorin was in the creek washing the feces off of his swords and himself as with the rest of the blood and dirt. The other's had washed off earlier and were now sitting and eating. Walking back to camp drying off his sword with the rag that was formerly his robe top. "We are what? 20-25 kilometers south-ish from the pickup point?" Linx grabbed the map from Sorin's pack and looked it over for a minute. "It looks that way. We shouldn't head that way for a little while, but we definitely want to move camp again now they we are cleaned off. We essentially made a pretty obvious mark in this area."

"When do you guys want to move out?"

"Probably in a few minutes would be best." Cain responded. "I can smell blood all over this area and there is about to be a power vacuum now that we have killed a champion. From the research I've done back home before coming here, the reserves track the rift champions in this place and will definitely investigate the death of one."

They packed up and set off moving closer to the pick-up point by 7 kilometers next to a bend on the same water way they rested at earlier.

As they walked and used their senses of their surroundings, Sorin asked the other questions on his mind since the fight.

"You guys have some savage skills I haven't seen before."

"Well yeah, when were we supposed to use these during training? I couldn't just explode other conscripts by filling them with flames."

"Yeah, somehow I don't see our trainers looking too well upon me igniting my opponent's blood and watching them burn to death from the inside as well." Cain added.

"Yeah....fair point." Sorin replied. "Not going to lie though man, I'm glad you're on our team. Nobody I know from my clan would have been able to survive and barrage you launched at that beast." Linx said side eyeing Sorin. "In fact, it was outright scary seeing that coming back up hazy as I was."

"I have to agree. Only our tier 4 or 5 knights would have been able to defend against that. It would take probably our few tier 6 throne guards to shake it off in my opinion." Cain said.

Sorin took in their words. "I have to become as strong as possible as fast as possible in order to get home guys. I have a wife and son to get back to in a world that I'm sure is ripping itself apart in a war, but I'm on your side." Sorin said flashing an eyes closed smile without teeth.

They continued to talk as they hiked and eventually reached their destination. They quickly set up camp. Sorin used the water's elbow as a border to their camp. Nobody should be able to sneak passed the water and not be heard let alone seen so he began setting up his spike traps in the opening. He came back as the sun hit its red zone and casting long shadows. His team used some brush to camouflage their camp somewhat, so it was actually hard to see at a distance until he was right up on it.

"I'll take first shift this time and covered the shifts while my lazy ass hasn't taken a single shift this whole time." Sorin said.

Linx and Cain furrowed their brows then they laughed. "You're right!" Cain exclaimed with a laugh. "You almost killed yourself that first night then slept the other two nights, followed by a four night where you just watched the camp and meditated while we went out to play, so I'm not counting that as a shift." He added.

Sorin got up and went to a nice, camouflaged stump and sat down watching everything in front of him while extending his range out as far as he could until he met the base level of aether regen with his absorption skill. He had gotten good enough that he could sense nearly 300 feet in every direction. Each of the traps still glowed as he settled in.

- approximately 3 hours later -

Sorin saw one of the guys get up and move to his position. He could see it was Linx by his ears and tail. "Anything crazy going on?" Linx low whispered.

Nah it's been still. Saw some smaller D ranks further out, but that was it. Sorin responded. "I was thinking I would develop my spirit a bit tonight to push closer to tier 3. Do you think we could stay an extra day in this place?"

"I don't see why not. I think Cain was working on his base stats too." Linx said.

"Good. I haven't slept for a while and will be tired after this so a break would be good after."

"I hear you. I've got the watch. Do what you need to." Sorin got up only to have Linx grab his arm. "And no explosions this time." Linx said with a smirk. "Yeah, yeah..." Sorin said rolling his arm forcing Linx's grip to fall away.

Sorin went back to the camp and pulled the large core from his bag and went to the side of the camp away from Cain and sat down. He opened his sense and looked at the core which lit up like a beacon. He had never used a core before, so he reached into his pocket and pulled a small core. He felt around for the aether that was supposed to be inside. After around five or so minutes he found what he needed to do. It was like his orbs of fire, he reached in and tugged with his will.

To Sorin's surprise, not only did the aether come easily, but it forced its way into his channels and went straight to his core without the resistance. It went even faster with his absorption activated pulling even more aether with it. The aether from the little core seemed to just keep on coming until he could feel the usual strain on his core as it slowly began to push out. After around ten minutes the aether ran out of the core and it crumbled to dust and his core had expanded more in those ten minutes than in both of his struggle sessions.

He definitely did not want to use the champion's core. He had no idea how much energy was in that much larger core, but did not want to waste it. He got back up, went to his back and pulled the 13 cores he had earned earlier dropping off the large one.

He sat back down and began to pull in one core after another. His core just kept expanding. He noticed the walls of his core were slowly growing thinner and thinner until they reached a point where he felt the same as he did when he first got his initial infusion of spirit. The aether was then directed outward from the core and began to push on the walls of his channels widening them out.

As he began pulling harder with his absorption ability seeing he was down to 4 cores left and the speed intensified. Slowly but surely his channels were twice as wide as they once were before he couldn't take in any more aether. He had one core remaining when he opened his eyes.

Pulled open his HUD looking for the expected tier up.

Body: 50/50

Mind: 50/50

Spirit: 50/50

This didn't make any sense. His core and channels were twice as big as before, yet he was still at 50/50. Logically it was not adding up. Frustrated he got up tossing the last core into his pack. He needed more information as he was missing something.