Too Stubborn to Die Chapter 12

Thanks to his gains from fighting the orcs, Aaron had just the idea for what trial he wanted to attempt as he approached the dial. His goal of leaving here empowered felt more real than ever.

Entering the trial, the shadow of Yendal the Empty-Handed appeared beside Aaron, looking as smug as ever as the Trial of Travels began.

Immediately, he activated [ Relentless Scourge ], lowering into a sprinter's pose. “We’ll see how smug you look when I win this thing.”

The trial started, and Aaron kicked off, funneling aether into his legs as he charged down the corridor. He propelled himself forward at remarkable speed, well, remarkable relative to his level. But it quickly became clear that he was nothing, not when compared to the true powers found in this new multiverse. The moment the race started, Yendal the Empty-Handed glided across the ground effortlessly, defying gravity and immediately overtaking him.

Aaron was a little annoyed, but not particularly surprised. The shadow was no doubt stronger than he, and probably had a reason for its smug body language. Not that it deterred him. Every time he saw the shadow, his desire to figure out why it looked at him the way it did grew stronger.

Still, unlike his first attempt at the Trial of Travels, Aaron didn’t die immediately to the stabbing spikes trailing behind him. Gathering aether in his legs, he was able to burst forward and stay ahead of the spikes. For a short while, at least. And then, they caught up, stabbing him through the back.

He had gotten a lot better, but he would need finer control to keep himself ahead of the chasing spikes.

However, even though he was attempting to reduce the amount of aether he was expelling, he was only capable of a few infused steps. He kept his empowered steps to a minimum, attempting to outrun the spikes as best he could, and only infusing aether once they caught up to him.

But it was a losing battle. The spikes were much slower than his empowered steps, but they just kept coming, and his supply of aether was limited.

Returned to the hallway after his gristly death, Aaron pondered the problem.

Faux Core was useful, no doubt about that. Thanks to it, [ Relentless Scourge ] could remain active indefinitely, the regen it provided outpacing the mana cost of the Skill. But it didn’t restore his aether. In fact, it converted his aether into other energies, which led him to believe that the raw energy was best used in its converted form. But that was only a theory. So far, he had made aether work as a tool that gave him the ability to push himself above his level. He had no such means of employing anything else in the same way, even if a tickling sensation told him that was exactly what he needed to do.

He didn’t want to give up on his use of aether, because he felt he had touched on something important, but at the same time, he was beginning to get the impression that he had gone out of order. Faux Core took in aether and converted it into the other energies, and his Skills and the weighted gi also used these other energies. He was probably supposed to have learned how to use those energies first before messing with aether, and it was only his ignorance and the tunnel vision provided by the Focus Stone that allowed him to use aether first.

In other words, he needed another answer. Aether was too inefficient. Based on how his energy pools drained when he used Relentless Scourge, it looked like Stamina would be the one he needed, but he had no way to control it. Yet. But the Focus Stone was only a couple of hours from being ready again, so he dove headfirst into the trial again, trying to get aether to work as a last-ditch attempt.

This time wasn’t a complete waste. He felt how energy rushed through his body as he raced against the spikes, focusing on the enhanced attributes he had gained since the world had ended. The concept forming in his head was vague, but he could feel a difference. The aether was raw and untamed, and also unrefined. The energy he felt powering his steps when he relied on his base stats and [ Relentless Scourge ] was different. It was purpose-built. It wasn’t designed to heal his body or be expelled in powerful bursts. No, this energy was closer to fuel. It kept him going, powering his body and giving it extra strength.

He couldn’t be certain for how much longer the trial would go on, but by now, he was absolutely convinced that raw aether was not the answer.

Another trial ended in death, but with it, the seconds remaining on his focus stone cooldown ticked away, and a smile crept across his face.

Lowering himself and crossing his legs, Aaron entered meditation with the help of the stone. There was a second revelation he had in that moment. Meditating with a clear goal in mind greatly improved his ability to concentrate. Having already felt the energy in his legs throughout his trail attempts, and focusing on that energy, he brought his inner eye directly to it as he entered meditation.

His suspicions had been correct. This was absolutely a different energy. If aether was unrefined, then this was the polished end product. Or at least, one of them. The energy had purpose, and couldn’t be manipulated and molded into something it wasn’t, as the aether could be. But there was a benefit to this. It had far greater efficiency and potency. It was the difference between some kind of dodgy multi-tool sold on daytime TV and a tried and tested specialized tool used by professionals. And despite his still-lacking understanding of how exactly it worked, Aaron knew that he was on the right path.

But as he worked the energy, he realized that there was a similarity he had missed. Just like the aether, this energy could be harnessed. And not just via the stats and skills that already drew on it. If he learned how, he could directly harness this power.

The hour flashed by in an instant, and Aaron came to, gasping for air. Annoyingly, he realized that there was much he had failed to grasp. However, his trip inward hadn’t been without reward. He had discovered what the energy was and how he could utilize it.

The fuel he felt was raw Stamina, or SP.

He needed to meditate on this revelation further to fully understand it. But nonetheless, he had made a considerable breakthrough. He could now circulate and control his Stamina.

His aether was drastically limited and was difficult to regenerate, but it had allowed him to move fast enough to outrun the spikes. Now, he had a new energy at his fingertips. And not only was this energy more suited to the task at hand, but he had more of it, and he could recuperate it easier.

Which was exactly what he needed to outrun the spikes.

Restarting the trial, he took flight, circulating his stamina into his legs as he ran. The results were undeniable. SP ticked away at a rate far slower than his aether was drained, and Faux Core did a pretty damn good job regenerating.

The spikes chased, hot on his heels, but now that the energy he was relying on didn’t blow its load within seconds, he kept ahead of it.

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Expelling raw stamina to empower his steps was far more efficient than the aether, and he realized that this was likely what the orcs had been doing back in the previous trial.

The difference was profound. SP wanted to be used in this way, and every point he funneled into his legs was converted into power that allowed him to run faster, keeping him well ahead of the spikes.

Heh, that wasn’t so hard!

Dashing through the course, Aaron weaved through bends and turns, outpacing the spikes and even taking the chance to wave at Yendal, who moonwalked ahead of him.

That’ll teach them! He thought.

The celebratory mood quickly vanished when he encountered the next real obstacle. An obstacle hated by all, especially those trying to run fast: stairs. And even worse, the stairs got steeper and steeper with every step because whoever designed the trial was a sadistic bastard, apparently.

Draining SP to fuel himself was far more efficient than aether, but the steep incline quickly changed all that. As he went further and further up, his SP drained faster and faster.

And then the spikes caught up.

Huffing to himself on the tiles, Aaron shook his head. He should have expected as much, but he was just so damn proud that he’d figured out the stamina thing so quickly.

This ain’t gonna be easy, is it? He exhaled and pulled himself to his feet.

However, he had known he was missing something. He just had to figure out what it was. But delving inward was no easy task without the Focus Stone.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make progress without meditation. Aaron had just learned how to utilize stamina, and he was sure that with focus, he could improve his control over it, and with that, a steep incline, even if it was near vertical, wouldn’t stand in the way.

Several deaths followed as he challenged himself against the course. Once he was utilizing stamina, it was easy enough for him to reach the incline. But the staircase kept taking him out.

He got a bit further every time, but every step made the stairs steeper and steeper until he was nearly scaling a vertical cliff face, and the energy drain was immense. Sheer determination was not going to be enough alone. If climbing the thing was even possible, it was going to require him to elevate his stamina.

Of course, Yendal was no help at all. The shadow just effortlessly climbed the stairs like a mountain goat and stared down at him from above. It only took a couple failures for Aaron to conclude that imitating Yendal wouldn’t be possible for this obstacle. Not its technique, at least.

He actually wasn’t bad at standing on the increasingly thin steps, but in the end, his stats simply weren’t high enough to jump as high as he needed to. He either needed more levels or he needed to figure out how to use Stamina better to get that extra boost. He went for the second option, of course, spending every life focusing on his use of Stamina, trying to make it as efficient and effective as possible.

Hissing to himself after another death, Aaron was growing a little frustrated. He had spent ten deaths not getting any further. Perhaps body control might help, but there was only so much that could be done when climbing something so steep. After all, he couldn’t reduce his weight, and he couldn’t increase his stamina unless he went and tried leveling in another trial, which he contemplated.

The problem was that he had felt as if he was on the verge of grasping something bigger when he had meditated on his stamina. And he believed this was the best challenge to figure out what that was.

“Dammit!” Aaron shook his head and defiantly reentered the trial.

He was going to figure out how to climb those stairs one way or another. He just had to concentrate a little harder and figure out what it was his body was trying to tell him.

He pushed Stamina into his legs, but as he did it, he also noticed that there was still some in his arms and upper body. No matter how much he tried pushing it into his legs, some remained up there, and if he tried to move that Stamina downward, other Stamina from his legs would just flow right back up to replace it.

At first, he thought it was just that his legs were reaching saturation on Stamina, but after a few attempts, he decided that wasn’t the case. Or at least, that didn’t feel like the case. He felt as if his legs were reaching Stamina saturation; they would be in pain or strained, and while they definitely felt worked, it didn’t feel any more intense than a sprint.

He observed more through his next few runs, and on the tenth, he finally had an epiphany. He was thinking about it all wrong. Stamina wasn’t like aether, where it was a nebulous energy that just existed in his body, waiting for him to command it. It flowed through his entire body and lived within his veins. When his heart pumped, his Stamina moved. That was why he could never move it fully out of his arms. Whenever he did, it would just get pumped right back in.

He also realized that trying to get it completely out of his arms and upper body was not a good idea. Stamina fueled him, and if he didn’t have any fuel in his upper body, his mobility as a whole would suffer. His whole thought process about how to use the stamina was wrong. While concentrating on it in his legs did help, he couldn’t just force it down like he could with aether. He needed to use the energy’s natural tendencies and use that Stamina flow to get it where he wanted it to go.

His failed efforts hadn’t been entirely useless, though. It had helped a bit, and he knew that the flow wasn’t the only thing Stamina could do. After all, Thick Skinned concentrated it in his skin, so he knew there were other ways to use it. However, this flow was the foundation of it all, and it was the flow that he had been ignoring.

This is it. Stamina opens the arteries, connecting everything together. It is energy, but it is also a vehicle through which everything else drives.

The epiphany hadn’t endowed him with a sudden surge of power, but it had awoken him to something important. He now knew how stamina was supposed to be used, albeit in a very vague sense.

His first attempt after this epiphany was significantly better than the previous one. He didn’t stay quite as far ahead of the spikes in the early sections since he was using less Stamina, but he moved much more efficiently, and when he reached the stairs, he was able to command his Stamina to flow faster and made it further than he ever had.

He spent the next few attempts getting accustomed to this new method of use, figuring out how to control the flow more finely, until the twenty-second attempt, when everything came together. He didn’t feel like he was moving that much better than before, but his use of Stamina had finally gotten in sync with the smooth movement he had practiced in the Trial of Survival, allowing him to push just a little bit past where he was before.

By the end, he was rock climbing the near-vertical wall, but the spikes weren’t quite catching up. They nipped at his heels, but he always managed to stay just ahead until he reached the top and flung himself over the edge. He found himself on a downward slope that was smooth and steep enough he could just slide down, granting him a brief moment’s respite. At the bottom, he found Yendal’s shadow standing over him with crossed arms.

“Made it,” he said to the shadow.

The shadow simply turned around and kept running ahead before stopping at the next obstacle: a series of spiky pits.

The spikes behind were catching up, so Aaron wasted no time and immediately surged forward. To his surprise, he actually managed to jump over the spike pit with ease. The second as well. They became a bit more complicated after that, with platforms and thin rails and things like that, and he died a few times on those, but none of them truly stopped him. He kept making steady progress through the spike pit section, not spending more than two deaths on any single obstacle.

Then, he reached the BFP (the Big Fucking Pit). He tried to jump, and he absolutely failed miserably, falling down to his spiky death as Yendal’s shadow watched with apparent boredom.

But as he reappeared in the hallway, a grin formed. He had been missing something this entire time, anyway, and his focus stone cooldown had finally expired.

Oh, screw you, Yendal! I’m gonna do this thing. Just you wait and see, you smug shadow!

Lowering himself to sit, he entered meditation once more. His goal was fastened at the center of his mind.

It was all good to be able to use stamina efficiently, but to jump the pit, he’d also need to figure out a way to call forth explosive energy from it, and the Focus Stone would lead him to that path.