Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 18: New Worries (Patreon)

Bao's breakthrough had been interesting, but from first thing that morning, my failed spar with Kate kept circling round my head.

Not the defeat itself. I'd had worse defeats before, more humiliating and far more painful ones. What kept circling was her comment that I was dragging my feet on a real attack. Well, strictly speaking, she'd only been talking about the discs, but my own analysis pointed to a lack of a decisive, aggressive opening.

Damn it, I used to charge into a fight head first. Literally.

Iron Head — three or four wide strides with building acceleration, then a headbutt with a detonation that shattered most breastplates.

Forum posts said it was a technique for people who didn't use their heads for their intended purpose, but despite that, it took opponents out in a single hit.

If it landed. Otherwise — a lag and recovery, like with all dash-type techniques.

It was a risky way to open a fight, because missing left you wide open to a counter-attack. But back then, I'd taken the risk. Against Okoro, I'd staked everything on a single hit, and won the bet.

Of course, our mutual inexperience and inability to read each other's techniques had played their part too. And I hadn't exactly flaunted that technique much before that anyway.

Later, I'd gradually drifted away from that style. I hadn't even so much as glanced at the fourth-stage version of Iron Head.

I didn't like the long recovery, a gift to any reasonably experienced cultivator, and as a last resort I could headbutt someone perfectly well without Iron Head anyway. The Monkey alone handled that beautifully, creating explosive cushions under any part of my body.

But why bother, when in close combat I could quite literally shove my hands straight through an opponent's armour.

Back at the Federation's research station, in the arena spars, I'd already abandoned Iron Head. I still fought fast and aggressive, but more deliberately and with less risk, managing to dictate the pace from the very first seconds.

I hadn't managed to dictate the pace with Kate.

To be fair, she'd also been Novak's student, and for longer than me, and he didn't raise weaklings. Kate was a skilled, experienced fighter, and had a head start in development besides.

But before, I'd always allowed myself room for error and improvisation. I struck when I saw an opening. Now I planned several moves ahead, prepared not just to strike, but to win outright. And while I was preparing, the situation shifted rapidly, the opening vanished, and Kate won.

Strange. On the Stage Three, that approach had worked fine.

It had worked in that semi-spar with Rene too.

So what was the reason? Had I become too cautious, misjudged my own strength and my opponent's, or was I simply using only half of my arsenal?

I had to shelve the reflection. Self-analysis ran well enough alongside routine work, especially if I kept Parallelisation at a minimum, splitting my attention across two streams without the boost from Thousand Sparks.

But not during an emergency.

One of the main portals in the portal room had gone down. Loudly, dramatically, and with an injured technician on duty. His right shoulder had literally turned inside out, bone and flesh exposed. The screaming could be heard from the other end of the school.

The head of the Hall of Technology had already given Jonson an earful, and now he was snarling at everyone in sight.

And when it turned out that this exact portal had been glitching the day before, and one of my toothies had come to test it… the boss allowed himself to let loose and start screeching.

"Idiots! Are you here for anything other than eating raw steaks?" he screeched at the three of us, though personally I preferred mine medium.

I let him blow off steam.

He didn't like that, throughout it all, I looked less guilty than simply indifferent.

"These are your subordinates!" he jabbed a finger at me. "This is your responsibility!"

"Technically," I said, "it's the responsibility of the senior technician running the shift. Our responsibility is testing once a fault's been flagged."

"Then why did the portal break?" Jonson screeched again, without a trace of his usual fake smile.

"Am I supposed to know that?" I asked him. "I haven't even seen the logs yet. I've been waiting for you to stop shouting so you'll let me look at them."

Jonson went red.

"You're overestimating yourself, boy," he hissed menacingly.

I shrugged.

He didn't scare me.

I understood that reaching the fourth stage took a great deal of effort and a certain degree of drive, but this particular specimen didn't scare me.

He just didn't. He was more of an irritant, like a boil on your arse.

"Can I get on with reviewing the logs now?"

"The cause is obvious even without the logs," Jonson said, and jabbed a finger in Daubo's face, forcing him to step back. "He was responsible for the inspection and carried it out irresponsibly!" Jonson followed his finger straight to the prax. "You're suspended, tooth-face. Time we finally put a human in this position."

"Stop-stop-stop," I said. "Is that your decision? Appoint a scapegoat without an actual investigation of the incident?"

"This incident is precisely what shows how risky it is to trust critical infrastructure to non-human specialists! There are people, and there's everyone else. Demons, praxi — doesn't matter."

So he wasn't just a jerk, he was a xeno-racist too?

I didn't trust the praxi much myself, but there still had to be a proper investigation.

"What about the Xeltars?" I asked, letting a copy of his own habitual smile spread across my face.

"Xeltars too," Jonson growled. "Only humans can be trusted."

"Like you trust me?" I asked him.

"I trust you," he said.

"Great, then I'll review the logs so I know exactly how my subordinate screwed up."

"Sullivan!" Jonson warned.

"What?" I asked. "Is there some reason I shouldn't do that? We need to establish the degree of my toothie's guilt, don't we? So he definitely can't weasel out of it!"

For a moment, Jonson's face turned into a stone mask of spite, before the old smile crept back over it.

"Fine," he said at last, with the air of making an enormous concession. "We'll conduct a full official inquiry. Objective. I'll appoint a specialist."

"I can do it myself," I said. "Especially since my qualifications are no worse than yours, boss. Aside from managerial experience, of course."

"But you're an interested party, Sullivan. He's your subordinate."

"What are you saying, boss! Surely you don't distrust me?"

Jonson didn't bother answering, turned, and walked off without giving a straight reply.

Daubo, who'd been standing silently beside me this whole time, glanced at me briefly.

"I ran the tests. They didn't turn up anything suspicious," he said. "The bastard just hates me."

"The bastard hates everyone a little," I corrected him. "Get back to work. I'll handle it."

The praxi didn't look particularly pleased, but I wasn't there to make them happy. I was fairly angry myself at that moment. Having sent the praxi off, I called Johansson.

"Do you have any information on the recent incident?" he asked straight away. "I have a deep feeling Jonson's going to do everything he can to dump the blame on my praxi."

"Are they not guilty?"

"Damned if I know," I admitted. "But if I were you, I'd make a separate copy of the logs right now, before they get changed, and post a guard on the portal."

"And then I suppose I'd also have to give you access to the logs and the portal…" Johansson guessed.

"That would be very wise of you," I said.

We both laughed.

Johansson did exactly that, and it turned out not to be wasted effort, since Jonson did try to temporarily restrict my access to the files, and the answer was right there in them, so obvious it was hard to miss.

Since the last diagnostic, the portal had flagged two more warnings about elevated Space Qi usage, which the senior technician on shift had ignored, since he'd seen it before, more than once. Every time, the portal got shut down, diagnosed, no fault found, the fuses replaced by the book, and the whole cycle started over.

Diagnostics fell to the praxi. Replacing the fuses fell to the technicians. It looked like the shift senior hadn't wanted the extra work and had been trying to coast through to the end of his shift as things stood.

That's what I told Johansson, dumping the rest of the work and responsibility on him.

My praxi were left hanging until tomorrow, and I headed straight from my shift to Marco's, to celebrate Bao's breakthrough.

At Marco's, the usual crowd had gathered: me, Bao, and Zola. For a change, she'd arrived early and claimed us a table by the window. She honoured me with nothing more than a nod, while Bao got her standard sharp welcome: "Hero of the day!"

"Yesterday," Bao corrected.

"No," Zola disagreed. "You're still the number one topic on the forum.

"Ehh…" Bao waved it off. "Tomorrow it'll be someone else."

"I don't think so," Zola disagreed again. "They talked about Jake for several days, and you burst onto the scene brighter, you greedy bastard! You were at the Federation too, and brought stuff back — what's stopping you selling it like Sullivan and compensating the poor souls?" she quoted from someone's post.

"The fact I've already sold out?"

"Keep that little detail to yourself, because if the forum finds out…" she warned.

"Enough of that," I said. "The aura. Was it something heavy paired with something that grows?"

"It's a purely physical shockwave that builds up. The floor cracked under me when I activated it."

"Whoa!" I said, impressed.

"Powerful!" Zola agreed. "More powerful than Jake's!"

"Hey!" I couldn't help protesting.

"And I think I can control the pressure, lift it off myself and direct it at different objects. Unfortunately, I ran out of strength before I could test that."

"I burned out fast too," I said, wondering whether I could control my own aura in any way beyond simply switching it on and off.

At that moment, Marco came over to our table herself and set down our usual drinks.

"On the house," she said. "Wave to the second-periods and make me some money," she said, nodding towards the girls a few tables over.

The girls hurriedly looked away.

"You won't get much out of second-periods," I said.

"She'll get plenty out of those twos," Bao corrected me, caught one girl's eye and actually waved. "Old families."

"Rich brats?" Zola clarified.

"Rich," Bao agreed. "With a decent reputation."

"Oh," Zola said to me. "You wave too, maybe they'll take pity on you."

To avoid giving Zola more ammunition, I did in fact wave. True, neither of them was looking at me at that moment, but that was purely so Zola would leave me alone.

My gaze drifted further round the room and caught on a table in the corner, where two guys were deep in discussion, jabbing their fingers at the air in front of them.

Something similar was happening at the table next to theirs, except the girl there had frozen in shock. Only her eyes moved, scanning some message over and over.

"Just don't let it go to your head," Zola said to me, not noticing that something odd was happening in the cafe.

Table by table, faces were turning to stone, gazes dimming with that characteristic haze people get when they're fully immersed in the interface.

"Something's wrong," I said aloud, stopping Zola with a gesture.

Bao lifted his head from his cup.

"What?"

I was already pulling up my own interface.

Almost immediately, I found the most popular thread, which had already overtaken Bao's thread in both views and comments — the numbers under the heading were climbing right in front of my eyes, refreshing by the hundreds faster than I could blink.

The heading was plain, no embellishments:

Wormhole Activated from the Demon-Space Side.