We parted ways with Ridley after we left the woods. After getting his fruit, he wasn’t interested in sticking around. I wasn’t too broken up about that either, preferring the company of my own people when possible. Still, I was excited about the fruit. This was easily the biggest windfall of my entire career as a Speaker, and I couldn’t wait to test it out.
While I was planning to attempt that crypt, I wanted to have as much power as possible before doing so. Obviously, that meant using the indigo fruit, along with a mushroom, to hammer out a day of hardcore mana body training.
“So,” I said to Ron as we made our way back to camp. “I’m planning to do some serious training today. Do you think you could put me through a workout beyond what you’ve been doing with the others? I’m talking serious body destruction. If I know anything about mana fruits, I’ll need to mince every muscle to get the most out of this thing.”
Combined with the upgrade to my physique when I hit the next rank, I’d need to work even harder than the others had been to really plumb the depths of my potential.
Ron’s answering grin was, admittedly, not comforting. “Of course I can,” he said enthusiastically. “In fact, I’ve been holding back a lot on you kids. I promise, I’ll make sure today is a training day you’ll never forget.”
The looks of pity from Cal, Sonia, and Denny did NOT make me feel better, but after the unexpected run in with the Shoggoth, I was mostly just hoping to take my physical abilities to the next level. I’d felt far too helpless during that whole mess, and I needed to take more control of my environment if I was going to make it here. The sooner I ranked up my mana body, the sooner I could start trying combinations of patterns for potential braids.
Once we got back to camp, I stashed my gun then met Ron in a nearby clearing, making sure to snag myself a mushroom, and stripped off my shirt and shoes as I got ready for the workout of my life.
Ron was waiting when I arrived, already prepared to take me through the exercises he had in mind, and I could see an almost palpable aura of energy radiating off him. Ron had already been in amazing shape, from both his military service and years of contracting, not to mention an active home life playing with his son and working on his house.
After he’d contracted with me, however, he’d taken it far beyond that level. The fruits had woken up something in my friend, or maybe it was the news of the apocalypse. He never let it interfere with our business, but I knew he put in a lot of time staying in shape.
“Alright,” he said, bouncing on his toes a bit as he shook out his limbs. “Are you ready? You said to push you, so I’m not going to hold back at all.”
“Please don’t,” I told him bluntly. “You know what the fruits are like. Even if ranking up decreased the load a bit, I can’t imagine this is going to be easy. I’ll be flooded with energy, and I’ll need to burn it off hard and fast to make the most of the surge. Do your worst.”
He laughed brightly, eyes almost manic in their intensity. “Good! I hope you don’t regret saying that. Now, go ahead and eat up. You’ll need your strength for what comes next.”
I popped the mushroom first, figuring it would be better to have my recovery in place before I flooded my body with an overwhelming amount of energy. Once it hit my stomach, I grabbed the indigo fruit and bit into it.
When my teeth sunk in easily, I was surprised. My first experience with mana fruit had shown that it was tough and hard to chew. I’d had to gnaw through the thick skin to get to the juice, and it was bitter and kind of sour. It wasn’t inedible, but it wasn’t particularly pleasant. I had remembered that experience vividly, and braced myself to have it again, but this time…it was different.
As soon as my teeth pressed down, the skin of the fruit snapped like a water balloon. It had felt plenty solid when I was holding it, firm and sturdy, but as soon as I bit down, a deluge of sweet juice poured down my throat, drowning my tongue in a heavenly surge of delicious flavor. I was so distracted by it that I almost couldn’t feel the pulp of the fruit as I chewed, it was so tender it was almost a pure liquid.
The juice, which was the same pitch black as the other fruit, splashed across my face and dripped down onto my chest, one of the reasons I’d decided to take off my shirt.
Of course, while the actual eating process was much easier (I suspected the fact that my old fruits were unripe was part of the reason for that), the DIGESTION process was much less peaceful.
The old fruits had flooded my stomach with warmth, pushing the sensation through my body and gradually building until it gently filled my muscles with a comforting warmth. This time, things started much different and maintained that level of stress. The juice hit my stomach like an air fuel explosive, igniting my stomach in an incendiary burst that sent the rest of my body up like someone had struck a match on dry kindling.
FIRE poured through me, filling my veins with what felt like molten metal and superheating my muscles like unpounded iron ready to be forged. Inside the muscles, I could feel the boiling energy of the mushroom, almost cool compared to the rest of my burning body, waiting to be struck into the coiled iron springs of my bunched up muscle fibers.
“Kid!” Ron said, snapping me out of my agony. “Focus. You’ve got this. Follow me.”
He dropped to the ground, beginning to hammer out pushups, hard and fast. I followed suit, trailing behind as I tore through the exercises like my life depended on it. Which, to be honest, they might. I was reasonably certain that my body wasn’t supposed to be able to handle this level of power input. I could feel my back burning, drawing off some of the excess mana to help me adjust, and even then I suspected I would have had a serious problem if not for the resonance I’d gained from my first mana body trait.
Pushups. Situps. Squats. Burpees, crunches, bicycle kicks, lunges, calf raises. Every muscle in my body was hit, rotating through exercises at dizzying speeds as I toned and pushed each part of me.
The more damaged one muscle became, the more energy it absorbed. But they would hit capacity after a bit, and I’d have to wait for the mushroom to repair them before I could hit them again, so I would just move onto another muscle group before circling back. Beyond that, the mushroom’s blood energy was being boosted by the hurricane of mana flooding my body, amplifying the regeneration effect to a dizzying degree.
My vision was mostly consumed with red, only enough visible around me to keep track of Ron. Eventually though, even he fell away. He kept calling out exercises and I kept doing them, I just didn’t see him following along. Whether that was because he fell behind or because I had just gotten too deep to see him working out, I couldn’t say, and honestly it didn’t matter.
Finally, the fire inside seemed to bank, and I collapsed to the ground, wheezing and panting. I lay there for a moment, unable to speak or breathe, until something cold splashed onto me and breath hit my lungs like a stick of dynamite into a still lake.
Panting, I sat up slowly, glaring at Ron. “Why?” I rasped, looking around blearily.
“Look where you’re sitting,” he said mildly. I did, and then grimaced as I noticed the fucking POOL of foul smelling muck surrounding me. Right. Impurities. Those happened a lot more the first time. He must have tried to wash me off.
Reaching for my ability, I quickly sold off the impurities, then the clothes, then replaced the latter instantly, recovering myself to a functional condition. “Sorry,” I groaned as I climbed to my feet. “I looked around, noticing that things looked mostly the same. Even the sun was in the same position. “I was kind of expecting that to last longer, truth be told.”
“So you were shooting for twenty FIVE hours then?” he said mildly. “Because honestly you got close.”
I blinked at that. “Wait…I was working out for TWENTY FOUR HOURS?” My head was spinning. I had absolutely no idea how that was even possible. Sure, time had slipped away from me, but not THAT much. My eyes snapped up, focusing on the corner of my vision to take in my stats.
Speaker - Tin Rank. Verbosity: 29/100
Skills:
Purchase- Level 9: Pay a commensurate amount of money for things of value.
Sell- Level 10: Exchange goods for currency.
Contract- Level 10: Form an agreement with another party, involving compensation for a specific task.
Perks:
Tier 1 Contract perk-Empathic read: Discern the basic emotions and intentions of the target of a negotiation.
Tier 1 Mana Body Perk-Mana touched: Double mana regeneration.
Tier 1 Sell Perk: Analysis: obtain basic information about potential purchase items once spotted
Unaffiliated Skills: Beginner Mana Body- Level 11: A body imbued with a wisp of mana, minorly increased strength, speed, and endurance. Natural mana generation.
Mana: 2.2/2.2
Funds: $44,150
I stared in disbelief. “Two?” I whispered faintly, the roar of blood in my ears almost drowning out my voice. “My mana DOUBLED?” Admittedly the math made sense. Indigos were supposed to be a full five times stronger, and with my doubled affinity I was raking in twice as much. That meant a full point of mana from one fruit was about what I should have expected….but still.
That was as much mana as I’d acquired in months of working with the unripened fruit, and I’d gotten it in just a day. At this rate, it would only take me another eight of the fruits to hit the next grade of mana body.
Of course, I couldn’t afford eight more fruits. I couldn’t afford ONE more fruit. But I did also have that point two to deal with. I hated the lopsided numbers, so I could use the time between indigo fruits to continue working with the unripened purple ones, at least until I got myself up to a round number.
“So,” Ron asked eagerly. “How did it work?”
“Pretty well,” I admitted. “But you can’t take those fruits yet. Even with my enhanced resonance, I barely managed to withstand it. Maybe if we find a MUCH bigger pattern it might work. I was able to siphon off some of the mana into mine before it overwhelmed me. Either way, I wouldn’t recommend trying one of these until you reach at least where I am now mana wise. I think the biggest threat was trying to take in more mana than my body already had.”
Which is what had happened. Even after draining some into my pattern, I’d still ended up with enough to push me up a full point. I was pretty sure I couldn’t actually process more than that anyway. One point of mana capacity was as much as I could stand to gain at the moment.
But I could work with that. Beyond that, my mana regen would be boosted now too, and that meant Barkskin was usable more often. All in all, that had been a fantastic boost, and I was hopeful it would pay dividends in the crypt. Speaking of which. “Oh, can you find Aurelia by the way?” I asked Ron. “I have questions about the crypt.” Apparently I’d just taken a fairly lengthy mental vacation. It was time to get to work.