Savage Awakening 596. The Final Training Montage (VII)

The Scryer’s Guild had come through for him, leaving three letters behind—one from the Delver King’s Tower, one from the Thousand Seas Tribe, and the last from the World Tree. That last letter had Reina’s neat script on it, and it was sealed with rune-stamped wax. He could feel it was bound to his soul signature. It was a precaution she liked to use with sensitive information, which instantly made him a bit curious.

As much as he was enjoying his months of heads-down grinding, he was still pleased to hear from his friends again. He knew Reina would give him some world updates, so there was that to look forward to. The isolation worked well for his training, but it was still good to get some tidbits here and there. He also wanted to know what was going on with her—it had to be crunch time for her. He knew she could handle it, but still... he felt it’d be good to see her. 

He settled down in the Skull, next to a lively bonfire. The Sage had gone off to do his evening ice baths, so it was just him and Fluffy, who was snoring outside, not too far off.

He started with Evan’s letter.

“Evan update 1!” cried Evan. He beamed and gave Zane a wave.

Evan had gone back to numbering his updates. He told Zane he’d restart the numbering every time they met up, which seemed like a solid system.

He was standing on what appeared to be the front decks of a giant cruise ship. “We’re almost there! At least, the captain said we’re just a few days from touching down at the Goto Region.”

Evan gave him a quick boat tour. It turned out this cruise was full of beast tamers, just like him—although Evan technically wasn’t a beast tamer, just a beast friend-haver. There were lots of exhibition bouts going on onboard. You could also find perfectly good, high-quality lemonade by foraging in the trash cans—these treasures that’d restore HP. Evan wasn’t sure what that was about, but he was happy to take them.

Evan mostly seemed quite excited about all the new friends he’d meet; some he’d already met on the cruise. He was also excited about the rivals he’d maybe have, and all the new beasts he and Chomper would get to train against.

“Besides that, we’re also gonna go take on ‘Team Universe’ and bring them to justice!” said Evan, nodding firmly.

Team Universe was this nefarious team of beast thieves. Evan told Zane they were bent on unleashing and harnessing the legendary beasts of time and space in order to take control of the Tower. He and Chomper were going to do their very best to stop them.

They did run into a bit of an issue, though, at least at the start.

Evan explained that Chomper was quite nervous on cruises because he was scared of water. They’d made some progress on this front back when he and Chomper were romping around the Whale Kingdom, but Chomper was still skittish. Evan did manage to coax Chomper onboard eventually.

“Sometimes Chomper gets so nervous he tries to chomp the ocean,” said Evan worriedly. “It’s not good for him at all…”

It happened once in the Whale Kingdom—Chomper had gotten so stressed he’d simply dashed up to the shore and started chomping. Evan had to frantically put a stop to it before any boats got swallowed or Chomper got sick from all the saltwater.

“I think it’s gonna be okay!” said Evan hopefully. “It’s just that there’s a few big lakes in the Goto region... if there’s any trainers there, they’ll want to battle, and I just don’t know if Chomper’s ready for it yet.”

Chomper was a bit skittish even just battling on a cruise.

“I’m gonna try to get him through it,” said Evan. “I think maybe he just needs a little push!”

Evan had written to Reina, who’d identified a few other potential issues. The Goto region was apparently full of giant stones blocking the paths and deep, dark caves that needed illuminating. Evan would also have to get across those lakes, and it’d be tough finding boats for all of them, so he might need beasts that could swim.

Chomper could just chomp the stones, so that was fine. But the others could be trouble. Because of the floor’s rules, Evan wasn’t allowed to help directly—all challenges, just like all fights, had to be tackled by beasts only.

In theory, Chomper could actually learn swim skills and illumination skills—there was this skill that’d fill a cave with light. Evan wasn’t sure why Chomper could learn that, but the machine said Chomper was compatible.

Still, it was quite hard to get Chomper to do anything other than chomp.

Evan seemed at a bit of a loss.

Zane thought about what advice to give. His usual go-tos mostly had to do with staying true to yourself and doing what you liked, and to be fair, it seemed like it’d worked out for Evan and Chomper so far. At least when it came to the battling side of things.

In general he was a fan of hammering the one thing you were good at.

At the same time, there was also something to be said for shoring up weaknesses so they wouldn’t get in the way of your strengths. He liked to do this with his explosiveness and speed training, for instance—it wasn’t that he was giving up on smashing. It’d let him close in on bird-like things faster and smash them even better. In that same way, learning how to work in new terrain would help Chomper chomp even harder, and in new places.

Zane nodded, satisfied. He quite liked this framing of it, supporting your strengths. He jotted down some helpful notes.

Evan did have another idea. “I was thinking maybe I could try getting a beast taming license too,” he said. “Then maybe I could try taming some other beasts that could help! But it didn’t work out too well…”

Evan explained how he’d studied hard for a few weeks, then gone to get his license—it didn’t seem to take too much work. But on the day of the license exam, Chomper tried playfully chomping one of the examiners, which happened semi-often with Chomper. It got the two of them blacklisted from the Tamer’s Guild for a decade, something Evan still felt really bad about, even though the examiner had turned out just fine. It was the first time Evan had ever been disciplined like this.

Evan had been pretty down at first, but in the end he knew Chomper hadn’t meant it. He explained that Chomper was just trying his best.

“We’ve got some work cut out for us,” Evan said sheepishly. “…I really think we’ll figure it out, though!”

It sounded like the makings of a pretty typical Evan and Chomper adventure. Zane was rooting for them.

Next up was Avery’s letter, which was a bit shorter.

“I would like to declare that things are going pretty awesome,” was how she opened it. “I’m back on track!”

“Nice,” said Zane.

“Though I’m not gonna lie,” she said. “When I first got back, things were looking kinda rough. It definitely looked like the haters were gonna be proven right.”

He was pretty sure Avery didn’t have any haters. 

In any case—her very first workout back, which followed her 100 push-up, 100 squat, 100-meter run routine, had left her totally winded. She quickly discovered that attaining the rank of Legendary Eagle in Counterstrike, and all the years she’d spent grinding for it, had almost reset her gains back to square one.

“The dream of one-shotting Malzareth was looking pretty dire…Not gonna lie, big fella, I was kinda salty. But then I changed my mindset and locked all the way in!”

Part of her problem was that getting unbanned from various games had totally destroyed her ability to get anything done. So she spent a few days trying to fix this.

“It’s nuts how hard it is to get permabanned on some of these servers,” she told Zane. “I had to do some stuff I’m not proud of—really pull out the big guns, y’know? But in the end, I got the job done.”

He wasn’t sure how he felt about this information.

There was a pause.

“…It wasn’t anything too bad!” Avery hastily clarified. “I just told a bunch of young masters too !(#%)# my (!#()$# and %(!#()$# %!()$# goats, that kind of thing.”

Zane wasn’t sure who or what had done the bleeping, but that was how the letter was.

“…Goats?” he muttered.

“I also had to teabag the population of a small state,” Avery continued, nodding. “There may have been some stuff about their mothers thrown in there too. Anyway, the point is—I’m on the grind, and now nothing can stop me anymore. I’m gonna get it done, so just you wait!”

She grinned, gave him a salute, and was gone.

He figured since it was Avery, she’d be fine. She had a way of pulling things out.

And since she and Evan would mostly be doing rescue team work next War—not really front-line stuff—the stakes were a bit lower. He wasn’t too worried about them.

He folded the letters and placed them in a ring he kept just as a mailbag for his friends’ letters.

Then came Reina’s letter.

He opened it, and a vision of her began to play.

“Zane, I’m sending this a little over a month after you left,” she said. “Hopefully not too much has changed since then, but I’ll update you if anything important comes up.”

He nodded to himself.

Right now she seemed high-spirited and determined, just from her body language and demeanor, which was pretty classic for her. He’d felt it in her a few months back, too—she just seemed on the ball. She’d always been one to rise to the challenge, in his opinion, but there’d been a while there, after a few Malzareth confrontations, he’d seen her visibly shaken. Even if she’d tried not to show it at the time.

He didn’t see any of that in her these days, though, which he was pleased to see.

“I know you’re probably deep in training right now,” she said. “I don’t want to distract you too much…”

Then, with a cheeky smile—“I hope this time it doesn’t involve anything spine-shattering.”

She paused, as if suddenly realizing this was Zane and the Barbarian Sage she was talking about.

“If it does,” she said quickly. “I… you don’t need to give me all the details.”

That was fair.

She gave him a few quick-hitter updates on what she’d been up to. She’d been working with her Grand Alchemists to make a few elixirs to prep her for her Rites of Dawn, the ritual that’d help her break through to True God. It was important for her to have as few physique impurities as possible going into it, so she could be as ideal a candidate as she could be.

He trusted she knew what she was doing. She also didn’t go into too much detail—Reina wasn’t a shy person, but she did get a little embarrassed talking about ‘preparing her physique’ too much; she felt it sounded a bit weird, at least when talking about herself. Zane didn’t mind talking about preparing his own physique at all; he felt like it was quite normal. But he got her.

She also told him she’d been talking with the Phoenixes lately and had built up some great relationships there. And by the sounds of it, all her World Tree reforms were pretty much complete—the World Tree as a whole was now by far the most meritocratic Great Faction in the Galaxy.

“That’s enough about me. I’ve also just come back from another war council,” she said. “I thought I should update you on the state of play between Dragonspire and the Superdungeon.”