Godslayer Lysette: Chapter 223

Chapter 223: Boot Camp

Chapter 223: Boot Camp

It took another hour for Lysette to finish filling out the medical paperwork with Doc Ivies, and a quiet night soon followed in a cell no larger than those being used by the captive Tereans back in Ciricu.  Lysette lay on the stone bed, which only had the tiniest bit of padding insulating her from the hard surface, closed her eyes, and waited.

An inability to sleep left her with no choice but to lie still and reflect throughout the night.  Worry ate at her, not about the training, but that the vice commandant or someone else at the fortress was still privy to her plotting.  As a result, she elected not to devote the entirety of her avatar to Cultivation as she’d originally planned.  She was still able to Cultivate to some small extent during the dead of night, but only with extreme caution and difficulty.  And only then by awkwardly borrowing a strand of her primary body’s consciousnesses to keep watch of her surroundings while she did.

Just as the first twinkle of the false dawn shone through the tiny window, a series of loud knocks echoed through Lysette’s small quarantine chamber, and Ari’s shrill shouting through the door soon followed.

“Cadet Tronete, this is your three minute warning!  Report to the garrison commons immediately to begin morning training!”

Lysette calmly got up and stretched for a minute, taking a deep breath as she readied herself for every eventuality she could conceive with the training session.  She took a moment to survey the seeds in her pocket— a couple of giant redwoods, one Suicide Nettle, a couple of apple, some grain, and some Icevine and Rockvine.  That, plus the grasses and trees in the surrounding area, would have to suffice.

She made her way down the hallway at a focused but not hurried pace, waving hello to a half-asleep Doc Ivies before making her way outside and out to where Ari was waiting on her.

“You’re late!” she said.

“It’s–”

“I’m sure you’re used to three minutes meaning three minutes, but here, I expect you to hustle at all times!  Because when you’re out in the field and your fellow soldiers need you to cover for them, every second you futz around could mean one or more of them dies!  And around here, while you’re training under me, you are going to put in maximum effort at all times.  Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Lieutenant, Ma’am!” Lysette lied.

“Now then, we’re going to start with a reconnaissance assignment this morning.  You and I are going to run the length of the border between Domaria and Elithria and scout for any enemy activity.  I expect you to keep pace with me all morning.  We’ll return for lunch and then we’ll do combat drills all afternoon.  Ready?”

“Yes, Lieutenant, Ma’am!” Lysette said, this time honestly.

Ari ran off toward the southern wall of the fortress, slipping through more barracks and weaving around soldiers heading north toward the mess hall for the morning meal.  Lysette followed her at a light jog, matching her pace step for step as the two leapt onto one of the rooftops.  Then, with a gust of air at her back, Ari crouched slightly and powered her way over the battlements in a single bound.  Lysette followed suit with pure physical might, following the young lieutenant as the two slipped into the surrounding groves.

Ari accelerated slightly as the two touched down, conjuring more wind at her back.  She also used a technique to form a cushion of springy air upon the soles of each of her shoes.  Unlike the breeze inside the garrison last night, this one was purely refreshing, carrying with it the smell of cool dew and freshly-chewed grass each warmed slightly by the dawn’s early light.

Lysette stayed just close enough to Ari to keep her within the range of her aurasight as they traveled.  And as the two continued their patrol, Lysette used her aura to scan the area for any signs of plants or herbs that might serve to her benefit.  

Despite Ari picking up the pace yet further after about ten minutes, the two were only about half of Lysette’s top speed.  Lysette wasn’t yet breaking a sweat, though she conjured a handful of small ice crystals and rubbed them on her arms and forehead to simulate the same.

After about twenty minutes of following along, she found something unexpected.  A single coalescence of Essence just underneath the surface, not unlike another instance of the same she’d stumbled upon months earlier.  With a single flick of her wrist and a mental command, the Black Essence truffle buried underneath a nearby oak had found its way into her hand and then her pocket, with Ari seemingly none the wiser for her little stunt.

“You’re doing pretty well, Cadet,” Ari said.  “But you’re going to let your teammates down if that’s the fastest you can go.  We’ll take a ten mile sprint now, followed by a few minutes to catch our breath.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Lysette said.

She was more than a little curious about just how fast Ari could move when she went all-out.  But as soon as she took off, something caught Lysette’s attention.  The shoes Ari was wearing continued to exude a powerful gale.  And upon closer inspection, each of them had a small pair of wings upon the side, only visible through her aurasight.

One thing was clear from this revelation: this was designed as a way to measure Lysette’s true capabilities without relying on an Essence coefficient measuring device.  And she still couldn’t rule out the possibility that she was being lured into a trap.  And so she merely maintained her pace, falling slightly behind Ari as the lieutenant blitzed in and around the trees.

“Can’t keep up?” she asked.  “You’ve got no shot in the military if you can’t even handle a bit of a sprint.”

Lysette feigned exhaustion.  “Too fast,” she panted.  She pulled out a small phial of water and downed it.

“Then you should give up and go back home, because I don’t need soldiers who aren’t going to give everything they have to make sure their fellow soldiers come back home alive.  Cadet, I promised the commandant himself that I was going to train you, that I was going to push you to your limits and then push you past them.  And damn me if that’s not what I am going to do.

So it’s time for you to accept that yes, it’s going to hurt a little bit.  Yes, you’re going to be sore, and no, it’s not going to be fair that I have these boots of swiftness and you don’t.  Because today I’m going to be pushing your body to your limits and, even more importantly, pushing you through mental limitations.  Because you’re going to have to work through the pain so you can fully utilize all of that power that you’ve been Cultivating over the past ten or fifteen or however many years.

Lysette resisted every urge to spit her rage at Ari, to tell her off and introduce her to even a fraction of the pain she’d experienced.  Those demonic impulses followed, bubbling up to the surface for half a second before Lysette forced that side of her back down.  Instead, she merely nodded, silently acknowledging the intended wisdom in Ari’s words, and continued her run, pushing just a bit harder than before.

The pace was still comfortable, even though the alleged ten miles turned to fifteen and then twenty.  At mile twenty-four, the two slowed down a bit as they passed into the foothills just to the north of her once hometown.  But unlike her trip months prior with Mirae, the Aestori sanctum beneath the surface was completely silent.

And that worried Lysette.  She’d not been called to visit with them in recent months, and her mind wandered, wondering if she had lost their favor.  If she was continuing to live and act in accordance with their wills and hopes for a future for Aimarion that didn’t involve yet another meaningless cycle of destruction and recreation.  One which would, if not shifted from its present course, be ruled by a mad god bent on so-called peace through unassailable strength

As she and Ari continued toward the southern border and the austral ocean, Lysette conjured more false sweat on her body and clothing to assist in her efforts to deceive the lieutenant as to her true strength.  That, coupled with some bouts of slowing down for a few seconds before attempting to ‘power through’ her faux-fatigue, did seem to be significantly more convincing.

“So, this is about your limit, Cadet?” Ari said, a smug look on her face.  “Not bad, not bad.  A fair bit better than I’d expected from you when you showed up yesterday acting all high and mighty.  But I still think you can push yourself a bit harder.  And it’s my privilege to coax that strength out of you.  Now, Cadet Tronete, show me what you’re capable of!”

Ari twisted the air into a flurrying array of shards which surrounded her body like a suit of glass armor and dove toward Lysette at harrowing speed.  Although she was somewhat weaker on her own than Rayleigh, Ari more than made up the gap in raw power with her extensive outfitting of military-grade artifice.  In addition to Boots of Swiftness she’d already mentioned, her shortsword and ring were also enchanted with effects Lysette hadn’t yet determined.

Ari also had the advantage over Rayleigh in combat experience, and she demonstrated it by completely ignoring Lysette’s initial feint and countering with a laceration across the upper arm.  And she gave no quarter, following up with an array of discs of air that she flung from point-blank range.  Lysette tiptoed out of the way of the first three, then backflipped over the fourth as she pulled out a rockvine seed and sprouted it.

The plant grew quickly, feeding off the stamina Lysette forced into it.  True to its name, the rockvine’s stem formed a rocky carapace that barely withstood the remaining onslaught.  Though not without suffering structural damage in the process.

With a sequence of mental commands and overrides to the plant’s natural growth patterns, Lysette willed it to grow two large flowering bodies which she aimed toward Ari.  The rockvine sucked up more and more soil and particulate matter through its roots, storing them within its massive bulbs.

Meanwhile, Ari focused even more ambient Essence into her ring, no doubt for some sort of attack.  And sure enough, the attack came right as Lysette ordered her plant to unleash a barrage of stony bullets upon her.

An overwhelming cannon of pressurized air ravaged her and the surrounding area.  Lysette’s projectiles were repelled like a forcefield. Leaves and branches and grasses and shrubs were ripped from the trees and ground, and even the largest trees wobbled and bent under the force of her attack.  

Lysette barely managed to stop herself from flying backwards by ingraining the rockvine into the ground and gripping onto it with both arms.  Even then, she still needed to draw on every blade of grass around her, digging their roots as deep as she could force them and using them all to muffle and deflect the raging maelstrom.

She gritted her teeth and steeled herself as she wrapped the rockvine’s roots around her feet, twisting and turning the strands as they slithered up her legs, encasing them in a set of stony greaves that dug into the dirt.  But as soon as she began to power through the storm, the winds turned eerily calm, and Ari dispelled all her techniques and smiled.

“Well done, Cadet Tronete.  Well done indeed.”

“Not bad yourself, Lieutenant,” Lysette said.  “That was quite the impressive display of force you showed.”

“Unfortunately, as you saw, I can only maintain it for a minute or so before the ring runs out of charge.  After that, it drains me excessively quickly.”

Ari sat down.  “I was expecting to use this as a teaching opportunity, to let you know that your enemies will attack at any opportunity, without warning.  They will attack when you are fatigued, when you are injured, when you are caring for your injured comrades.  They might be better equipped than you, with techniques you aren’t prepared for.  But it seems that you’ve already learned that.”

She approached, drawing a tiny bit of liquid out of the amulet around her neck.  “Here, it’s a healing salve. It’ll–”

Lysette looked at her arm, which had since fully healed.  “I heal quickly.”

“I–  I see.  Well, let’s go ahead and get back now.  We’ve still got quite some ground to cover before lunch.”

“Wait,” Lysette said.  “I think we have company.”

Chapter 222: https://www.patreon.com/posts/112940082

Table of Contents: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101896170

Chapter 224: https://www.patreon.com/posts/113256865