Path of the Berserker

TRUE TO MY word, I was up early the next morning and out into the wild scouting as soon as the Bloodmoon set. It didn’t take me long to track down another giant boar which I quickly killed and slaughtered for the community to enjoy.

By daybreak I had returned to the bunker to find Jim already assembled with the soldiers, ready to assist with building the wall. I handed the boar over to the civilians to prepare while I met with Harris to discuss the plan.

“So what exactly do you have in mind?” he asked, folding his arms and looking at me somewhat skeptically.

I then went on to describe roughly the idea of using logs to make the wall itself and his eyes suddenly lit up with recognition.

“Ah, a palisade,” he said.

“Is that what it’s called?”

He grinned. “You’re going to put my skills to the test, but yeah, that can work. So long as we have enough trees. A circular defense wall half a mile wide?” He let out a whistle. “That’s going to take a lot of damn trees.”

Harris then went on to explain exactly how the wall or palisade would be constructed; from the length of the logs, how deep they should be buried and how they should be lashed together and braced. He even went on to detail how they could erect steps and a parapet behind the wall once it was erected.

“That all sounds great,” I said. “I’ll get to chopping trees while you guys dig the trench.”

The next few hours went by in a flurry of activity. I got them started on digging the first couple hundred feet of trench for the foundation and after handing over the cultivation book to Kelsey for her to study from, I took my axe into the forest to chop down trees.

It was a nice change to use my axe for something other than killing. It reminded me of my first days of cultivating at Master Edrik’s place, using the labor as a means to progress my Body Refinement. I did the same here, but instead of chopping mere logs, I was chopping down entire groves of trees, three and four at a time.

I hauled them all back to camp and placed them in the waiting trench while Harris and his men lashed them together. While back there, I gave them another push digging the trench itself, using my axe to send tons of rich earth shooting into the air as I dug down ten feet or more.

I took advantage of the free lemonade as the soldiers all stopped to watch me work, cultivating it to advance my Muscle Strengthening. One of them clapped me on the shoulder and called me an excavator on nitrous. I wasn’t completely sure what that meant, but Kelsey assured me it meant I was kicking serious ass in their eyes.

We broke for lunch after having completed about 500 feet of wall and I joined the rest of the community for a feast of wild hog and rice. Jim reintroduced me to the community and let them all know what I was providing in terms of security and everyone rewarded me with another dose of free lemonade to cultivate.

Oddly enough, Jim didn’t mention Richards and his demise.

But no one seemed to care much either.

We got back at it after lunch and completed another 500 feet of wall before calling it quits for the day. Most people retreated into the bunker to sleep, but I stayed up to check in with Kelsey and her studies before turning to the sword to conduct studies of my own.

There were still hundreds of Shuras I had yet to read, much less memorize and digest, so even though I was dog tired, I got in a couple of hours of reading before drifting off to sleep under the stars.

* * *

The next couple of days went by much the same, only the more we got the hang of the process, the faster it became. A thousand feet a day became twelve hundred and then fifteen hundred, steadily increasing. Harris proved himself a capable construction manager the entire time and gave me direction on just how many logs to bring back and when; all to optimize the process and reduce down time. By day three we were just past halfway completed, but the production slowed a bit as I had to travel further and further away for fresh stock of trees each run.

The landscape was slowly transforming before my eyes. Where dense forest once stood, now there were acres of stumps. I supposed I’d have to get to removing them at some point, but I could already envision the areas I had cleared becoming even more space for expansion or even farmlands if I could expand the barrier further.

That got me itching to get on to my experiment and by day five I made an announcement.

“You’re all going to need to take a quick break this morning,” I said to Harris. “I need to chop down something besides trees today.”

Harris looked at me funny. “What do you mean?”

I grabbed Threja’s sword and then whistled for Kelsey who was reading from the cultivation manual as usual. She’d been studying each day, the same as I was each night and now it was time to put both our sets of new book knowledge to the test.

Kelsey hobbled over to me, her cast already removed from the day before. She wasn’t walking perfectly yet but she was walking.

“What’s up, Max?” she said, looking up at me.

“Time for your next big lesson,” I said with a smile. “We’re heading back into the wild today. And be sure to bring your monkey wrench.”

* * *

Kelsey and I made our way into what was left of the forest and after about an hour were far enough away for me to begin to pick up traces of larger spirit beasts. True to my expectations, all the forest clearing had driven most of them deeper into the surrounding wilds, which was a good sign to me.

It meant I could trust the wall was already doing its job of keeping the community safe. But I was paying a price for it though. Not a day went by when I didn’t hear Jian Yi’s voice nagging in the back of my mind, demanding to know where the hell I was.

I was already three days behind schedule for my return and had likely another two days yet to go.

Hopefully Gui Zu and Zu Tien were managing, but I couldn’t stay any longer than that. With the forest cleared and the wall nearly finished, perhaps I could even leave the rest up to Jim and his men to complete.

That was fine for the wall, but this part I needed to make sure of before I left them to return home.

I had to know if I could make this sword stronger.

As I walked with Kelsey, I quizzed her on her cultivation knowledge and was surprised to find she had a good understanding of the various meridian points and locations already. But a bigger question still remained.

“Have you been able to actually feel any of them yet?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you feel energy flowing through them? Like a hot and cold sensation.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I’m visualizing them in my head like you said but it’s hard to tell if I’m really feeling anything or just fooling myself.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Frenzy works a bit different than Qi. We’ll do something this morning to really see if it’s working or not.”

“What’s that?”

I grinned at her. “We’re going hunting for bait.”

* * *

We arrived at just the kind of spot I was looking for––an open area of tall grass just like the one I took a rest in on my way in from the city. After scouting through the grass for a while I spotted my quarry. Using my axe to clear the grass, I exposed a hole in the ground that was about a foot across.

“What the heck is down there?” Kelsey asked, staring into it warily.

I grinned at her. “Not sure. Just be ready to kill whatever comes out of it.”

“What?!”

My words did exactly what I thought they would, sending Kelsey’s heart racing with uncertainty and fear, but her Flame activated to produce only Frenzy.

“Visualize the Eighth, Fifth, and Second prime meridians in that order,” I said. “Over and over again. Visualize a stream running through them. A stream stemming from the heart of your inner Flame.”

“Okay,” she said, not letting her eyes off the mystery hole.

From years of being in the field, I knew exactly what type of creature the burrow belonged to. Nothing strong enough to kill her, but enough to give her a damn good fight I hoped.

“Get ready,” I said.

Kelsey nodded, choking up on the grip of her wrench.

Collecting a fistful of dry grass, I ignited it with a tiny zap of lightning and threw it down the hole. Thick smoke billowed outwards, followed by an agitated growl and snarl. A second later a creature the size of a large dog dashed out of the hole and charged straight for Kelsey.

It looked like something crossed between a badger and a porcupine, a thick hide of quills bristling as it charged at Kelsey with jaws snapping and snarling.

“What the hell is that?!” Kelsey screamed, her voice shrill with fear.

“A Quill Rat!” I said. “Kill it before it kills you!”

For a second I thought she might run, but as her fear hit the candle of her Flame, her Berserker side kicked in and her cry of fear became a scream of rage.

She charged right at the creature, wrench held high.

It snarled back at her and shot a handful of toothpick-sized quills from its hide.

I winced as they struck Kelsey dead on, impaling themselves across her body.

“Ahhh!!” she cried. “Son of a bitch!”

I sensed her pain and to her credit, she dug down and used it to fuel her rage. Kelsey swung at the Quill Rat, digging up earth as it deftly avoided her untrained strikes. The frustration of not being able to hit it caused Kelsey to scream again.

“Focus your rage,” I said. “Concentrate on the meridians I said. It will help you to hit it.”

I could see her mind splitting focus as she tried to concentrate on doing mental math while simultaneously dancing about to avoid the Quill Rat’s snapping jaws. She slipped up and the thing caught her on the back of her calf, chewing through her jeans.

She screamed again as the material of her jeans turned dark with her blood. I resisted the urge to jump in and help her, my Flame filling with a fear of a different kind. But something like [Bloodlust] must have kicked in as her Frenzy surged and Kelsey swapped the wrench to her off hand to hit the Quill Rat with a backwards chop.

The creature went flying like it had been punted for a field goal, the result surprising even Kelsey herself. She didn’t let up as it hit the ground some thirty feet away and capitalized on its stunned state to finish the job with a final slam to its head.

Whack!

Kelsey stood there breathing heavily as she looked down at the bloodied creature, her soul a mixture of fear, rage, and pain.

All of it producing decent amounts of Frenzy.

“First, Fourth, Second,” I said as I came to stand by her, giving her the meridian sequence for [Pain Soothes the Frenzied Flame]. “Focus on where it bit you. Feel your Frenzy soothing the wound.”

Kelsey nodded, still breathing heavily as she closed her eyes to concentrate.

I studied her as she tried to manipulate her Frenzy. She was probably still far away from even detecting Frenzy much less channeling it, but I could sense her Frenzy shifting within her, even if she couldn’t sense it herself.

“You’re doing good,” I said. “Do you feel anything?”

She let out a sigh, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

“It’ll take time,” I said, looking down at the dead Quill Rat. “Nice job though. You hit that thing like a truck.”

“Yeah,” she said, picking out quills from her forearm. “Must be the Frenzy working. That thing hurt like hell though. My mom’s going to be pissed when she sees my leg messed up again.”

I chuckled. “Let’s get you cleaned up. We’re going to need a lot more of these.”

I bandaged Kelsey’s calf with some of the healing salve and gave her some more to apply to her skin to deal with the small puncture wounds left by the quills. Luckily a Quill Rat ranked as only an F-class monster, something even a mortal human could survive. Albeit not without injury given the circumstances.

After a quick rest, Kelsey said she was feeling better and I could tell the salve as well as the diffuse Frenzy in her body was already doing its work.

We hit up three more holes, flushing out Quill Rats for Kelsey to kill.

She got more proficient with each one, both physically and in focusing her Frenzy. Watching her had me eager to give her access to the orb so she could keep practicing all this on her own like I did, but she needed martial training as well.

That I could definitely fill in as a teacher for her.

The Path of the Frenzied Flame was a solitary one, but when it came to actual fighting skills the Flame was agnostic. I myself had to self-learn my axe techniques from a book, but I could teach Kelsey the same directly. The wrench would do as a close approximation for now, but later I would have to bring her back a proper axe from Master Edrik.

We flushed out a couple more rats with me giving Kelsey the very basics of the Axe Techniques in between. I had to admit, it was a new yet familiar sort of fulfilment I was getting from instructing Kelsey. It reminded me of my time with Ren, Rho, and Yi Fu when I was teaching them their handler trade out in the wild. I got so engrossed with Kelsey being so keen, that we spent a good hour going over basic forms long after we killed our last rat.

“Okay time to put these to use,” I said after checking on the time. It was getting just past noon and we still had a while to travel before sundown. We headed back in the direction of the bunker, but I made a detour towards some more heavily forested terrain.

I found a clearing that was surrounded by sufficiently high trees and set the bludgeoned Quill Rats in the center while we scaled a tree to wait.

“What exactly are we waiting for?” Kelsey asked once we were both safely perched on a thick bough some thirty feet off the ground.

“Something big enough to matter, I hope,” I said as I ran my hand along the edge of Threja’s blade. “Small game like those Quill Rats don’t normally find their way this deep into big predator territory. Once they smell that blood it should be like ringing a dinner bell.”

I could sense a bit of fear rise up in Kelsey, but it was immediately suppressed by her Flame.

“You did good today, Kelsey,” I said. “Your mom’s probably gonna have my ass again for getting you beat up, but I think it was worth it.”

Kelsey laughed. “I hope so. Those damn quills itch like crazy.”

“Trust me, it will be,” I said. “Just keep focusing on those meridians I told you and your Frenzy will heal your body back stronger, skin thicker too.”

That reminded me of my own cultivation training that I still had yet to get to.

The building of the wall had definitely aided my Muscle Strengthening, but I still had to hone my Reflexes and Body Hardening with real combat. Killing whatever would come for the Quill Rats would certainly help with that. But I had new techniques to master as well.

I found two new advanced forms of [Iron Skin] and [Iron Core] to master. One unsurprisingly called [Steel Skin] which required me to be Stage Ten in Body Hardening and [Diamond Skin] which didn’t have much information under it at all, save for needing vast amounts of Frenzy to maintain for even a second and even then in only one small location at a time.

I also found a section that perhaps hinted at the hidden strength inside Threja’s sword. Although it had more to do with what her sword was made of rather than the weapon itself.

On Corrupted Steel

Only Corrupted Steel may resonate with one’s strength, for it alone can withstand the full might of the Frenzied Flame. Be it through an inscription of shuras or a killing blow, the Steel will retain the resonance of thy Frenzy and in time may even manifest its own.

That had to be what happened with Threja’s sword—decades or even centuries of her channeling her Frenzy through it and killing things. But could I strengthen it further? I wouldn’t know until I killed whatever came looking for the rat meat below.

“Hey, is that how you learned how to fight?” Kelsey suddenly asked, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Killing small animals with a monkey wrench?”

It was my turn to laugh now. “Not exactly. But close. When I get back from the city, I’ll bring you back a proper weapon to train with.”

“When are you taking me?” she said.

“Huh?”

“To the city. Don’t forget you promised me.”

I smiled at her. “When you get good enough to speak some passable Yee maybe.”

“Hey, stop moving the goal post.” She gave me an over-the-top grimace. “That wasn’t part of the deal and besides you haven’t taught me any Yee yet.”

That was indeed an obstacle we’d have to overcome at some point. The language barrier between the two tribes of Terrans was going to be massive. And I supposed I’d have to have more translators than just me to overcome it.

“I guess we got some time to kill,” I said. “Repeat after me.”

I began speaking in Yee, giving Kelsey the most basic of phrases to memorize.

‘Hello’, ‘Yes’, ‘no’, ‘I don’t understand’.

Just like with everything else, Kelsey absorbed the new knowledge like a sponge, her mind eager for more. After a while she shifted gears on me again.

“Tell me what it’s like there,” she said after a while.

“Again?”

“Please.”

I’d already described the place to her a dozen times already, but I guessed leaving the bunker was still an unrealized sort of dream for her. Her version of freeing the Earth maybe. To be free of the demons. I indulged her once more, describing not just the city but my friends and family back home.

I was just about to tell her how Gui Zu lost all his teeth when a faint snapping of twigs drew my attention. I cut the story short and motioned for Kelsey to stay quiet by pressing a finger to my lips before pointing in the direction of the disturbance.

Slow seconds went by before the sleek black coat of a giant panther emerged from the underbrush. It had to be the size of a horse, with eyes that sparkled emerald-green in the shade of the thick forest canopy.

Nice, I thought. Just what I was looking for.

The panther was clearly a spirit beast, although perhaps not as powerful as I was hoping. A low C-Class at best, but still hopefully strong enough to test my theory. Slowly, I stood on the tree branch as the giant panther began tearing into the Quill Rat carcasses below, its large fangs making short work of the creatures as their quills attacked its face posthumously.

I readied Threja’s sword, wielding it in both hands.

“What should I do?” Kelsey whispered.

“Just hang back and watch the show,” I said. “This shouldn’t take long.”

I was just about to drop down to dispatch the panther, when a flash of movement caught my eye. Something the size of a bus came tearing through the forest like a freight train, whole tree trunks snapping in its wake with the sound of thunder.

It took me half a second to even comprehend what I was seeing, but when I finally did my mind came undone. There, locked to the hindquarters of the panther, were the massive jaws of the largest snake I’d ever seen.

It was alabaster white—an albino with piercing red eyes, its body thicker than the trees surrounding it. It unhinged its jaw to swallow the panther whole, taking more of the giant cat into its maw with a second forceful bite. The panther roared in defiance, whipping about to claw at the snake’s giant head, but the thing could get no leverage on it.

The snake thrashed about, its three-foot-wide body slamming into more trees and breaking them as it slammed the panther into the ground. After two or three slams the panther finally grew still.

It all happened in barely a few seconds, the stark violence of it all igniting my Flame with Frenzy.

I cultivated it immediately, preparing my body for what would come next.

This had to be another B-Class spirit beast at least, perhaps even an A-Class by the intelligence hiding behind its demon-like eyes. Kelsey hadn’t said a word, but the jackhammering of her heart said it all.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “Plan stays the same.”

I was killing this thing no matter what.

I readied Threja’s sword, raising it high above my head for a devastating [Three Log Chop]. I leapt off the tree branch with a mighty cry, pulling the sword back further to strike.

Then suddenly I was jerked backwards, like something had grabbed me out of the air.

The world spun as I rotated with the momentum of my backswing and a second later I faceplanted hard into the underbrush below.

Wham!

I roused, seeing stars, still trying to figure out what had just happened.

“What the hell…?”

I flipped onto my knees, disorientated, looking about for where the sword had gone. I reached for my axe but couldn’t find it either, both weapons hidden in the deep underbrush somewhere.

Before I could even get to my feet, the ground shook beneath me as the huge body of the snake began to unfurl. The giant anaconda rose up, towering two stories into the air as the length of its body stretched behind it some hundred feet or more.

It fixed on me with its demonic eyes, its forked tongue flickering.

Frenzy filled my soul as the challenge of fighting this thing rose up inside me, my hands balling into fists. Finally, after all these weeks, I was able to truly cultivate, finding a monster worthy of my Flame.

I let out a gleeful laugh and the monster reared back with a hiss.

“Bring it on!” I shouted as I sized up the towering pillar of scales, muscle, and fangs. “Sword or no sword. You’re about to die.”

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