The Forgotten Legacy

When Shaun woke up he had a splitting headache and his body felt like it was being eaten alive. When he finally opened his eyes and looked around he realised he was still in the dungeon which was good news, the bad news was that the feeling of being eaten was because the centipedes from the 2nd wave were currently attempting to eat him. When he sat up his body twitched uncontrollably, probably due to being hit by the explosion of lightning. I did it! Holy shit I actually made lightning!

Elation at what he had achieved poured into him, he had finally had some success in making lightning, sure the result was being rendered unconscious but still, it was a success. Moving to kill all but one of the monsters, their attacks on him doing nothing, his body made its protests known but he just pushed through it. He killed all of the monsters but one and tied the last back up. He then sat back down and started healing his body to the best of his ability.

He had succeeded in the first step of his plan, but rather than going straight back into it and repeating the same process he reviewed what went right and wrong. Using the unattuned mana as a base to mix the elements worked well, however when the two combined the power of the lightning was too much for the mote itself to be contained, meaning he would need to reinforce the mana itself, essentially trapping the lightning and stabilising the mana, but how?

Hi first thought was to coat the mote in his air and fire affinity, but that would either feed the lightning or cause its own explosion, neither of the elements were the most stable. Thinking about what he knew about electricity and lightning, maybe, just maybe, he could ground it and contain it using earth? Test number two coming up!

This time instead of just pulling out two of his affinity he pulled out earth as well, he repeated the process of trapping the mana with fire and air but before infusing them he also created a sphere of earth around the mote. He didn’t know how much earth he should infuse into it, but decided that more was the safer option so decided to fully reinforce the sphere until he was comfortable that if there was any blow back it would be contained, at least a little.

Shaun then started repeating the process of pushing the air element into the mote and then sending in the trickle of fire, everything followed the same pattern as last time. When the mote started to glow, reaching the point where it was about to explode last time, he applied as much pressure as he could with his earth affinity, entering into a war of power between him and the lightning. When it almost became too much and he felt his earth sphere start to crack he stopped infusing air and fire and fully focused on containing it with earth. The battle between earth and lightning raged in the dungeon, at times the lightning would slip through his sphere and cause the entire dungeon to become electrified, but he didn’t stop trying to contain it. He continued to apply pressure to the lightning, forcing it to condense down into a stable mana mote, he was mentally exhausted, his full concentration on the task at hand. He could feel the sweat dripping down his face and his mind stretching to it limits, but still he refused to give up. Eventually, something changed and clicked into place and the lightning stopped fighting against him, the relief on his mind was overwhelming and his entire body sagged in relief, it had finally stabilised.

He didn’t let go of his control of the lightning mana, not knowing what it would do if he just let it go into the dungeon, but he did know what he would need to do next, this he had done multiple times before, he would now need to bring it inside of him, forming another stream of elements, this time of lightning.

When he had done this with the basic elements it had been a painful process when he was in F grade but became a lot easier in E grade. The lightning mana though was an advanced element and the book warned that it shouldn’t be done until the very end of E grade at the earliest, which was about 80 levels higher than what he was currently at. So to say that this was going to hurt was an understatement, but the reward if he didn’t die was massive. He felt the power of lightning, how much stronger it was than his basic elements, it would make him so much more powerful, it would increase his fighting ability to completely new heights.

So he would test it with just this one mote of mana and then figure out if he could continue the process or if he would need to give up and wait until he was stronger. Bringing the mana closer to him, he could feel the electricity on his skin before he had even pushed it into his mana channels, but slowly he brought it closer until the only thing left to do was pass it into his body and put it into place. You got this! Come on, what a little bit of pain compared to everything you have been through.

Hyping himself up he passed it through his skin, but he was not prepared for what would occur. He was being completely electrocuted, his body completely tensed up, every nerve was on fire and he couldn’t move. He was wrong, this wasn’t a little bit of pain, this was death, plain and simple, it would kill him if he didn’t change something soon. Forcing his mind to stay on task he continued moving the mana into his channels, and once it was in he now didn’t know what to do with it, he felt his body starting to shut down, unable to take the electricity flowing through every inch of him, so in a last ditch effort he forced the lightning mana into one of the connecting threads of fire and air, and with that the feeling of being fried by the electricity stopped.

He fell back to the ground, his body steaming from the damage he had inflicted upon it, barely able to move his gauntlet to his chest he pumped himself full of healing energy until he felt like he could move again. The pain had been more than he had expected, easily 10 times the pain from any of the other bonding’s not to mention the amount of recovery he had to do after. If he didn’t have the ability to heal there was no way, not in a million years, that he would survive repeating the process a second time, let alone enough to fill his mana channels.

As it was if he was going to continue along this path he would be committing himself to day, if not weeks in the dungeon. The only reason why he could even consider doing it was due to the weird time differential, no matter what only 30 minutes would pass in the real world, so he had the time he needed. Turning to look inside of his channels he inspected the lightning mana he had placed there, it was solidly connected to the thread, almost looking like it was being fed by both the air and fire streams on each side, but it was stable. Doing a quick estimate of how many lightning motes he would need, he did some quick math and came to the conclusion it would be over 200 but less than 500. It was going to be utter torture, there was no mistaking that, but if he did it once he could do it again.

He felt days pass into weeks as he continued creating and placing lightning mana, he kept an eye on the tutorial countdown just in case, but it never showed it moving. He had hoped that the pain would lesson the more he brought the lightning into his body but it didn’t, if anything it was becoming worse, he had to spend time after every placement of the lightning motes healing himself, refilling his gauntlet and recovering mana, it was a long process and he hadn’t slept at all throughout it. He had stopped to eat and drink but nothing else.

He estimated that he had been in the dungeon for over 2 months by the time he placed the last of the mana he needed, and during that time he had needed to clear wave after wave in the dungeon and have monsters respawn so that there would be more unattuned mana in the area, but eventually he was done. When he placed the last mote and finished recovering he fully inspected the lightning inside of him, there was so much of it, glowing brighter than any of his other elements, its raw power eclipsing all of his affinity combined. He had been thinking on how to complete the last step, combining each of the motes into a stream and compressing it down, but because they were already connected to his air and fire affinity they were already moving along through his body, forming them up was the last thing he needed to do.

His expectation was that once he connected two of the motes together it would either form a power line between the two or it would cause a chain reaction to go off in his body, causing each of the lightning motes to interconnect at once. His preference was to do one at a time, but knowing his luck that would be the case and it would instead start the chain reaction that would do untold harm to his body and mana channels. It wasn’t like he got to choose though.

Shaun waited until he was as recovered as he was ever going to get without sleeping for a few days, which was out of the picture, he didn’t know what would happen if he didn’t finish the process and soon. So with a final push, he connected the first two motes, and just as expected an immediate chain reaction went off inside of him connecting each of the lightning motes together.

The feeling of being ripped to shred from the inside out overwhelmed all of his senses, he completely lost control of all of his affinity, his mind being filled with nothing but pain. He started convulsing on the ground but he couldn’t even bring his gauntlet to his body, let alone focus enough to heal himself. Instead, the only thing he could focus on was the pain. It didn’t stop, it just continued to rise in power until he swore he was about to die. He tried to stay conscious, he really did, but it was all too much.

Please make it stop, please. I take it back! Please, I don’t want this, I can’t survive like this! I give up, please just take it back!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

A flash of light went off in front of the F grade dungeon, causing everyone to look at who had come out. 30 minutes had passed since Shaun had gone into the dungeon, and now it was time to see if he had accomplished what he set out to do.

“Finally, that was the longest 30 minutes ever.” Vivenne said to her team. A crowd had gathered again around the dungeons, everyone wanting to see what wave Shaun had gotten to in a dungeon he was way to overpowered for.

When the light cleared rather than seeing Shaun standing in front of the dungeon they saw a man, covered in blood and gore, convulsing in the ground.

“Shaun!” Vivenne immediately got up form the ground and went straight up to him, but as soon as she came close she felt power unlike anything she had felt before radiating from his body, when it hit her she felt like she had been electrocuted. “What the fuck! No one get close to him!”

Most people listened to her, those that didn’t and got too close immediately paid the price and were battered with an overwhelming surge of electricity. What have you done?

“Someone get his friends! What are their names? Eric and Gabriel! Someone find them and quickly! They might know what he was done to himself!” Vivenne yelled at the crowd.

She saw someone she didn’t recognise run out of the room immediately, no one else made a move though.

“Why try and help him? With him gone you have a better chance of winning this thing. If he survives whatever he has done to himself, he will be stronger than ever, there will be no chance for anyone to beat him! You feel that power don’t you? Its not natural!” She didn’t know the person who had spoken, but when she checked his level he had to have been a middle of the pack guy, he was definitely not in the top tier of fighters.

Did she want to win, to come out in first place? Yeah, she really did. But there was more to this than just winning, they didn’t know what was going to happen back on Earth, what they did know was that power meant everything in the multiverse, and Shaun had power. They needed the strongest people they could get if they had a hope of keeping Earth protected from whatever was going to come at them. It was a dark thought, but she knew, just as well as Shaun did, that they were all being watched, assessed, and she didn’t like that feeling in the slightest.

It didn’t take longer than 5 minutes for the person that had run to fetch Shaun’s friends arrived, with only one of them with him though. “You're Gabriel, right? You're friends with Shaun? Do you know what he did? Any idea on how to help him?” Vivenne asked as she walked up to him. He tried to run past her and up to Shaun but she stopped him. “Don’t get close, whatever he has done has charged the air around him. You don’t want to get hit with that.”

“Damnit Shaun!” Gabriel yelled out at him, no longer pushing past her to get to him. He doesn’t know what Shaun has done. “How do we help him?”

“We wait, I guess. And once we can get close we get a healing potion down his throat as soon as possible.” Shaun looked a mess, he was covered in blood and what looked like pieces of flesh, it was a terrible sight, she had no idea how he was still alive at this point but she could tell he was, if barely.

They waited, 5 minutes turned to 10 and then 20. A man name Trevor came out of the low E ranked dungeon and laughed at the sight of Shaun on the ground, spouting some nonsense about him doing anything to get out of fighting him. She had to hold Gabriel back from attacking the man, clearly there was history there, but it wasn’t important at that moment.

It was nearly an hour before something changed, the power that they had all felt seemed to disappear in an instant. Some expected the worst, thinking that he had died, but she saw him breathing, if only slightly. Without hesitating she ran to his body, the strongest potion they had in hand, and poured it into his mouth, making sure that he swallowed every drop.

“Come on Shaun, wake up! Don’t you dare die on me!” Gabriel had run with her, both of them now kneeling beside his body. They waited until his breathing grew stronger and he seemed less pale, if only by a little. Vivenne watched Gabriel sigh in relief when Shaun got noticeably healthier. “We need to move him to my apartment, there are too many people here. Will you help me? Please?”

She agreed immediately, helping pull Shaun from the ground and hold one arm over her shoulder, the other side being held up by Gabriel, and they made their way to his apartment. They said nothing as they walked, both concentrating on not dropping Shaun, he was heavier than he looked, much heavier, and it was taking everything they had to just move him, half dragging him along the ground. A lot of people were following them, and when they passed others, they immediately caught sight of them and decided to follow, no one got close, but they didn’t want to miss the show.

When they finally got to Gabriel’s apartment he let her in, needing the help to get Shaun inside. “Help me get him in the shower, we need to see how hurt he is under all of the blood.” He wants me to help him clean Shaun? Strip him down and then what? Wash him? “Please? He is too heavy for me to do this alone.”

She agreed, barely, when they got Shaun into the shower they stripped him off of all of his equipment, outside of the gauntlet that neither of them could figure out how to get off. She tried not to look anywhere she shouldn’t but it was impossible not to admire than man, even unconscious and covered in blood. As they washed him off, what they saw so unexpected that they couldn’t help but stare. He isn’t hurt? There are no wounds? But how?

When they finally got him fully clean, they dried him off and managed to get him on the bed. Vivenne couldn’t help but feel relief at not having to move the man again, he had no right to weigh as much as he did.

“Why?” Gabriel asked her. “Why help him I mean?”

It was a valid question, so many people wouldn’t have, but she wasn’t like that. She knew there was more at stake than just winning a tutorial. “Because the world has changed. And I have a feeling that if we are going to survive what is going to come we will need people like him.” And with that she turned and left, giving one last look at Shaun unconscious body. “Find me if you need anything. I will help as much as I can.”