Hardcore: Qi Worlds Chapter 16: Recovery

It was early morning the day after the troll battle.

 'Did wood elves always make such a fuss?' Benzhi thought to himself. They had managed to bring him back to the glade, fortunately, he remembered little of the journey, he was out of it for most of the time. After arriving back, there had been nothing but fuss. The fuss over his wounds, that much was welcome, there was a gatherer, Orym, who specialised in herbs and a healer Soora. Between those two much of Benzhi's pain subsided. Although there was little they could do about a suspected punctured lung and scarring from acid burns. Not to mention Benzhi looked like a large chew doll with the array of teeth marks which were the remnants of wounds which he had qi stitched.

 The endless discussions around the attack, ongoing dangers. Benzhi supposed it would be disconcerting for colonists to arrive and have a troll attack their new forest the very first day, especially if that was supposed to be an extremely rare occurrence where they had come from. His main problem was they wanted him to be involved in the discussions. Even if just to answer a question now and then. 'Do these people need sleep?' Benzhi questioned himself.

 Benzhi waved his hand, "enough," he got their attention. "I am going to try and heal some of these internal wounds. You can continue worrying and talking without me." Mother looked apologetically at Benzhi and the rest of the group, of what seemed the elders of the new arrivals, quietened for a moment. With that Benzhi got up, Sakaala assisted him and walked from the willow over to the pool. She had not left his side since he had returned to the glade on the litter.

 Benzhi had formulated an idea while trying to ignore the fuss-makers. "Sakaala, I need a pea sized amount of Core from the pool. Can you do that? Gisael has done it a couple of times. If you cannot go fetch Gisael please." Benzhi sat down next to the Core pool. Sakaala immediately ran off and arrived back with Gisael in tow.

 "What stupid thing are you doing now?" Gisael accused.

 "I am going to attempt to heal myself," Benzhi answered frankly. "Healing takes massive amounts of qi and my earlier efforts have depleted mine, I cannot continue without a plentiful core and I would prefer not to wait for a couple of days to replenish it naturally."

 Gisael stared at Benzhi, stern as always. Benzhi wondered if she even cared that he almost died. She probably would have been glad to be rid of him, he'd been a chore for her from the first day.

 After an uncomfortable silence with Gisael's piercing gaze and Benzhi laying back unperturbed by it, he survived being eaten by a troll, Gisael was a cakewalk, she finally spoke, "very well. We spent a lot of effort getting you back here and wasted a lot of rare herbs treating you. We cannot have all that wasted. You can attempt this healing, but be warned, if you kill yourself I will not forgive you."

 "I'm moved by your heartfelt concern," Benzhi answered sarcastically. He loved the look of terror on Gisael's face, she never did get his sarcasm and the results were always fantastic.

 After consuming a pea sized amount of Core from the gemstone at the bottom of the pool Benzhi felt his core fill to the brim with condensed qi. It wasn't just about volume, like filling a glass or bucket, this qi was concentrated. His Qi skills had come a long way, quickly, after he was able to sense it and learn to manipulate it. Every day he refined his manipulation either through training or event. The skill that he acquired to tree-run also assisted his manipulation with the qi blade. It was the fine tuning of patterns, directing the flow. This all held him in good stead, however, nothing came close to the precision needed for the healing patterns. Before attempting healing, for the second time, he would review his stats, to see how much he had progressed with Qi Manipulation.

 'Wait, what?' Benzhi thought some of his body stats had decreased. 'Was that because he was injured?' Not surprising that Toughness was through the roof, he thought it was his lowest stat a couple of weeks ago. 'Har, I'm a tough bastard now' he thought. His Qi Core and Qi Manipulation had risen quite nicely. It was as if the stats were a measure of his capability, not like a typical game where you placed points in or they rose with use. This simulation was hardcore, not only did the stats go down if you were lazy or injured, but everything was so real. The pain, the people, Benzhi had a hard time believing this was a simulation and not real.

 He recalled the words he had heard, while blacked out in the troll grove, something about number eleven, do your best and not lost. This was probably back in the real world, he had probably gone back for a few minutes while blacked out either that or it was a hallucination. 'Hang on, I couldn't hallucinate people speaking Chinese so well, plus there were still no sexy nurses. If I was going to hallucinate there would definitely be a sexy nurse or two.' Benzhi deduced. Benzhi knew there were ten other testers, so number eleven was probably him, it made sense he was an outsider. Not lost, well that probably meant he almost died, but didn't, whatever they did brought him back to this world. He could not deduce what they were referring to with the words "do your best". It didn't matter, he would, whether that was for him or someone else.

 "Is it working?" Gisael asked.

 "I haven't started yet," Benzhi replied. "You're not going to hover over me, are you? Give me some time and space, wake me after noon if I haven't moved." Benzhi ordered. With a harrumph, Gisael left. Sakaala went to leave as well, taking hesitant steps, unsure of what Benzhi wanted.

 "Go get some rest if you want, if all goes to plan you would just be watching a statue for a few hours," Benzhi informed Sakaala. Sakaala nodded, and lay down on the grass and closed her eyes a few meters from Benzhi. He shook his head and rolled his eyes, he hadn't said she couldn't rest here.

  Benzhi was able to focus, with the familiar environment, the qi boost and the fact he was in a lot less pain than earlier enabled a much sharper focus than he achieved on his previous attempt on the litter. Although, at that time it had felt like a matter of life and death. His raspy breath and lack of breath, not to mention painful, was a dead give away that something was wrong with his lungs, or logically his right lung. It was also the opinion of the healer that his lung was damaged, she had provided a sip of a potion that would assist, it certainly helped with the pain while breathing. Benzhi explored the area with qi.

 He could sense a disruption to the normal flow in the area. It was like a stream had disconnected. He could see the two ends which needed to be connected. Benzhi had an inspiration to try and connect the stream using bubbles. He had not had much success with the tiny bubbles so far. He thought the reason the bubbles were not working was that he either had missed something with the pattern or nature of the bubbles or he was using them incorrectly. Similar to drawing a dotted line between the two ends Benzhi attempted to reforge the qi stream.

 His first attempt failed, but he didn't give up, he tried a few different approaches to the same main idea. On his twentieth attempt, there was progress, he managed to join the ends with tiny bubbles spaced apart evenly, then in between the tiny bubbles, he used even tinier bubbles which touched the larger ones and formed one continuous stream of tiny and tinier bubbles. After completing the connection he sent a stitch up the centre. On his twenty-second try, Benzhi was successful in joining the two ends and reconnecting the stream. He didn't feel any different. There was a reason for the lack of progress with the successful connection, Benzhi could see more than ten similar streams that needed reconnecting and sometimes it wasn't certain which end belonged to the other. He did not want to even consider what would happen if he connected the wrong streams together. Benzhi proceeded to connect only the streams that he was certain were correct and connected another four. This left eight more disconnected streams with uncertain points of connection.

 Benzhi spent a lot of qi searching for ways to identify the streams and in the end was unsuccessful. He decided to move on to what he could achieve before using all his precious concentrated qi on failed experiments. He still had over half his core of concentrated qi, it did go along way. Benzhi began to stitch and sprout any areas he could find that needed attention. Then drifted off to sleep when he was done.

  He woke the next morning, with Gisael shaking him awake, somewhat gently.

 "You have slept long enough, how do you feel?" Gisael enquired

 Benzhi took stock of his surroundings and them himself. Behind Gisael were all the forest guardians and Sakaala sitting meekly to his left. Most of them suddenly stopped staring at him when he looked in their direction. Taking stock of his condition Benzhi felt good, if anything a little cramped, he felt like running off some cobwebs and start moving around.

 Benzhi took a deep breath. "Good!" he exclaimed excitedly. The intake of breath did not hurt at all. He knew he wasn't at one hundred percent, but no pain breathing was a one thousand times improvement over painful breathing.

 Benzhi stood and stretched. He actually felt hungry for the first time ever in the simulation. He took a sip of water from the pool, with everyone still watching his every move. After taking the sip of water his hunger abated, but he could still go for a snack.

 "Got anything to eat?" Benzhi asked Gisael.

 She looked surprised, rightly so, he had never asked her for something to eat before. She collected herself and answered.

 "Here take this," she handed him some dried mushrooms and berries in a pouch. "If you are going to be eating you need to see Ruven, he is the artisan cook, I am not your keeper," she added belatedly.

 "Sure you're not," Ailen wisecracked from the crowd of guardians and was rewarded with a premium Gisael glare. He then play acted crumpling to the ground and said, "I'm melting...". The Guardians were not so disciplined that they could not chuckle at the interchange.

 Benzhi somewhat ignored them, too interested in the exotic food. The dried shroom texture was crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, it was spiced or its natural flavour was spicy. It was different yet enjoyable. The berries were similar to sultanas soft and a little juicy despite being dried. He did not require much food and was full with just a palmful of the fare. He went to hand back the pouch to Gisael.

 "Keep it," she said, "you will need one now."

"Benzhi," she began in all seriousness, "you have shown how great a qi blade can be against a troll. This is the first and only troll to invade our forest, so far, there could be more. I would like to train in qi blade and the techniques you used against the troll. I would like to spar with you each morning." 

It was really very enjoyable to have Gisael ask for his assistance like this Benzhi thought. "Of course," he replied. The forms had only gotten him so far, his skill was still rudimentary. Against the ferals and the troll crude tactics using brute strength and speed worked. This would not always be the case. If he were to fight someone skilled like Gisael he would lose miserably. He had only prevailed against the troll by butchering it with qi blade in what was effectively a fly-by attack. Getting in and out of range extremely quickly. As soon as he stood at range he got into trouble immediately. Sparring would assist both of them.

Ailen clapped. "This is going to be good," he said excitedly. He received excited nods from all the guardians and his second premium glare of the morning.

The group move over to a large area of the glade, not under the willow where Benzhi usually practised but closer to the edge of the forest, near the Hyperion.

 Gisael now had a wooden sword as well. The rest of the group watched eagerly standing at the treeline.

 "If you think you are going to stand there all morning and watch you are wrong!" Gisael informed them tersely.

Benzhi enjoyed watching Gisael order the guardians about. For a change, it wasn't him, and although her demeanour was that of a master sergeant her high pitched voice and lithe frame were incongruous with the stereotypical scene. Making it somewhat comical. 

 "Talila, you are charged with their training. Scout out to the eastern tree-line, train with your bows until we arrive at the troll grove after noon." With moans from Ailen and Sakaala, they left with their tails between their legs.

 "Let us begin," announced Benzhi, stretching out his palm and beckoning her Neo style.

Chapter end