FIVE

"Where are we?" Kon asked as Alice leaned over Benny's shoulder looking at the barren world below them. It was a brown, baked, ball half covered with swirling dust storms that could be seen from orbit. Flashes of dry lightning speared across the planet as Kon peered to look for any sign of life, even of rift beasts. Not a single sensor was showing anything that could be constituted as life.

"This is the rendezvous point. Security around the worldships are tight, they don't let anyone just show up to them without a quick screening at least. We'll have a visitor in a few hours and they'll give us our coordinates to jump to meet the Oasis," Benny explained as he let the Puca drift in high orbit.

"Nothing to do out here but wait," Alice complained as she slumped back into her seat. Kon cocked an eye at her as the remnants of their brutal spar was still felt in his bones. There was plenty to do if she wanted to put her mind to it, but it didn't appear like she cared to do any type of prep work.

"Help Kon with his rune work," Benny said, rising from his seat and ushering them out of the bridge with a wave of his hands. Alice grumbled but they all relocated back to the common room where Kon had left the D-Grade treasure in its sealed case.

"Ohhh, fancy," Alice mocked as he opened up the case of swirling metal. He glared at her but grabbed at the twisting metal and let it worm its way up his shoulder. Weight settled on him and for the first time it didn't feel like it was overwhelming, rather just a steady presence sitting on his shoulder.

"I can already see the effects of the body upgrade. Doesn't seem to be so hard to handle this anymore," Kon reported as he focused on the treasure.

"Maybe you'll have an easier time of manipulating it now," Alice said. She didn't seem to be in any hurry about teaching him as she propped her boots on the table and leaned back with an exaggerated yawn and closed her eyes. Benny stared at her a moment before he gave a slight shake of his head and moved away to his own quarters.

Silence fell and Kon concentrated on the mess of metal on his arm. It was silvery, liquid but controlled, it didn't splash around but rather was contained in a thousand swirling tendrils. Kon had asked Benny what would have happened if he'd just absorbed it like a regular treasure. Depending on how it was added to his body and his own cultivation of his body it could become a powerful addition to his own growing defensive nature.

Or something wild like metal blood that he could use his own body to form weapons out of. Benny had said the last part with a serious look on his face so Kon didn't think he was pulling his leg when he said that.

Instead he had to focus on trying to shape it with his mind. Which wasn't as hard as it sounded, especially when it was already perched on his body. The connection was strong and as he closed his eyes and began his breathing exercises he slipped into that state of being so similar to when he implanted his runes. Instead of seeing his body as a silver avatar, now there was a burning aurora of crackling energy in front of him, a thousand twisting tentacles that danced and refused to be stable.

Aside from the small piece near the center where he'd managed to carve the first part of the rune. A few lines of metal that thrummed unhappily as they were held tightly by his willpower. With newfound practiced ease he reached out and grasped the power, letting it roil against him as he started to push against it, forcing it into the shapes he wanted.

Everything he'd ever done with cultivation involved pain. From forcing energy into becoming runes, to training, to the body cultivation works he'd done, everything had hurt. It was the type of pain one had to force their way through, the pain of training and growth. It was that thought process that kept Kon from releasing the boiling energy that seared through his mind. At first it wasn't hard, an uncomfortable heat that could be ignored, yet with every new twist and line he added the pain ratcheted up higher and higher until his body trembled as he tried to finish.

Time lost all meaning as he focused on the hundreds of lines needed to complete the full rune. Tendrils had to be herded, woven together or split apart, but slowly it grew out, building to something more. In the end though his willpowers shuddered and broke, no longer able to withstand the burning heat of the treasure's monstrous energy levels.

His eyes blinked open as he looked around the room, trying to readjust as he came back to his own body. Sweat covered him in a thick blanket of perspiration, drenching his clothes and making them uncomfortably sticky. The coppery taste of blood was in his mouth as he turned to look at Alice staring at him with predatory intensity.

"Every time I forget what a freak you are, you go and do something like this," Alice said quietly. Kon blinked at her stupidly as his brain refused to get moving before he turned to look at the floating wad of energy disguised as a natural treasure. More blinking was required as he took in the treasure that was only attached to his wrist as it floated above him.

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It wasn't finished. That would have been brutally unrealistic, but the mass of energetic tendrils had stilled and nearly half of it was properly built toward what he needed already. Kon got up slowly, pushing past Alice and went to get a drink of water. Even lukewarm the water was refreshing enough that he sighed in pleasure as he leaned against the back counter and stared at it.

"About a third of the way done. Don't think I can do that again without some rest though." He sipped more water as his stomach began to bellow its anger at him, twisting inwards hard enough that Kon had to fight bending in half as he quickly served up some of the gelatinous mass of protein that Benny had introduced him to.

"Can't believe you eat that," Alice said with a scoff as Kon settled back down and started working on it. She left the table and went to a different counter and within moments there was the smell of cooking meat, heady and rich with rift energy. Saliva built in his mouth, but Kon focused on his blob that was filled with every vitamin and supplement he needed in one easy meal.

She'd taken one look at his normal meals and declared it was prisoner food and had taken to eating her way through their stores of flash frozen rift monsters. Her cleansing runes kept the monster taint from affecting her and she generally threw in a bunch of half charred vegetables that she insisted were cooked to perfection.

"How long did it take you to finish your first rune?" Kon asked as he finished off the blob and leaned back. His stomach was no longer complaining but his taste buds were. The delicious smells arising from the small cooking area that Alice was tinkering at weren't helping at all.

"Weeks of hard, consistent work. Then when I finally finished it I got told I was the fastest person to finish in nearly a decade. It can take up to a month for some to get it shaped, and even then it can be flawed. Have you started working your understanding into it?" Alice said as she turned away from the kitchen with a plate covered in barely cooked steak, leafy greens, and some tuber that had been pureed into a creamy substance.

She sat down across from him and began to eat like a savage. Blood and butter ran down her chin as she mopped up her green with a fork, taking deep quaffs from a pitcher of water as she went. Kon froze as he stared at her, transfixed by both the savagery she ate with and the complete abandonment of any sort of table manners.

"What? I'm not sharing," Alice said between bites, hardly looking up as she continued to demolish her plate of food.

"I got that. Just be careful you don't eat one of your fingers as you go," Kon said. Alice snorted but didn't slow as within moments the plate of food was gone and Alice leaned back to pat at her flat stomach, a satisfied look on her face.

"That was one of the most disturbing things I've seen," Kon said.

"Wait till you haven't eaten in a day or three and you only have a few minutes to eat something before the next patrol starts or the next wave of enemies come at you. Eat when you can, sleep when you can, and be ready at all times," Alice said.

"Have you fought in something like this?" Kon asked.

"No. With my runes I generally went out to do search and rescue. Knights lost in rifts, captured, stuff like that. But we all did our tours in rift suppression. Wait till you start doing the big rifts, the ones that can stretch out for hundreds of klicks and are packed with lesser monsters. Your shields only last so long before you run out of fuel or the projectors are slagged. Then its just you and the dark and the man besides you with everything around you hidden and wanting to eat you," Alice said quietly.

"I'm nervous. About this upcoming fight. Benny is calm, but he's always calm. Seen everything there is to see and not been impressed by any of it. But…it's been a lot Alice," Kon admitted.

"You've been going through it, no two ways about it. That's a hard way to start your career but Benny seems to have his head on his shoulders. Has to be to be as old as he is. I don't know what exact secrets he has, but I felt a trace of his power when he shielded that room and he's no pushover. Stick tight with him and we'll have a chance of coming out of this fine," Alice said.

She didn't know what Benny was or how far his power had once stretched out. And she wouldn't until Benny decided to tell her, it was his secret to reveal when and if he wanted to. Kon hadn't had to be told that the old man's privacy was valued as was Kon's discretion.

"I'm worried about Diur," Kon said after a moment. Alice snorted and shook her head and then paused wobbled her head back and forth as if she couldn't make heads or tails of her own thoughts.

"Daniur isn't one to let a fight pass her by and she'll drag Diur with her. But heavens help anyone who tries to hurt that girl by punching down. I worked with Daniur as she killed a moon Kon. A fucking moon that when we arrived had colonies, settlements, shielding units, and a small defensive fleet. She killed it all, cut through it and created an eternal storm in hours. She's not a pushover and she's fiercely protective of her kin," Alice said. It was one of the few times she'd spoken of her time with Daniur, being rather tight-lipped about it. Kon couldn't blame her as he'd been rather tight-lipped with his time with Benny.

"Kids! Stop gossiping, the security team is here," Benny's voice came in from the hidden speakers causing Alice to startle before she looked about.

"He's a bit of a jokester with stuff like that," Kon said with a rueful smile. Alice snorted but they got up and cleaned their mess before heading back toward the bridge to see who had just shown up.

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