Brock flew unopposed into the midst of the Guinea Pig troop. Reid hoped to give two or three some decent wounds - maybe a kill. He wasn't exactly hurling grenades, after all.

His projectile smashed into the ground and shattered with a sound Reid would've mistaken with snapping tension cables if he hadn't been looking at the action. Pigs screamed as bits of sharded bone tore through their hides and savaged their bodies. Half a leg was thrown skyward, and red droplets flew off a piece of bone as it emerged from one victim, and then slammed into the next.

The ones that were uninjured - or at least mobile - scrambled to close ranks around the rumblestrut twins. The pair grunted in mild aggravation, but allowed the little ones to stay close.

The exodus of the uninjured made it easier to see his results. Three beasts were bleeding heavily, but still attempting to move. A fourth was alive, but slowed by the loss of the bottom half of a leg. The more mildly wounded were halfway through a slow trek to safety, and the rest lay dead on the ground.

You have defeated Snug Valley Troop Guinea Pig - lvl 35. Experience awarded. You have defeated Snug Valley Troop Guinea Pig - lvl 38. Experience awarded. You have defeated Snug Valley Troop Guinea Pig - lvl 33. Experience awarded. You have defeated Snug Valley Troop Guinea Pig - lvl 36. Experience awarded.

Experience: 1,640,001 -> 1,728,001 / 3,276,800

It was a damn good first showing for Brock - but it was also only the first test. He had more to try. And he had instructions from Nyx to keep recalling Brock after every throw.

Reid retreated back away from the now-on-guard troop and twins, until he felt that they wouldn't notice him flaring his magic to get his ball back. He sat with his back to a rocky slope, with a good amount of bush keeping him hidden.

He calmed himself, then went through the motions to actually recall brock. The process was incredibly similar to recalling Requiem, and some minutes later, he once again held a bone rock in his hand.

"Hey Nyx, instead of doing it like this where I have to retreat and recall it, shouldn't I just make... more Brocks?"

"You could... Why do you think I told you to do things this way?"

Reid watched leaves rustle in the breeze for a few moments before it clicked. "No storage ring."

"Right on track. Elaborate."

"I get into hard fights - and even with the turtle, I lost the tips of my fingers. If I had a bunch of things prepped and in my storage ring, and I lost it, I couldn't use that stuff. It's better, then, to practice recalling the item so I'm more used to it. Maybe with enough practice, I'd be able to do it in a smaller time window? If I can get it to work in under 30 seconds, I could even recall things quicker than it would be to take them out of storage."

"Good. I'll add a warning here - don't use Recall on something that's inside a storage ring. Doing that with more... standard item summoning traits either fails or can cause some serious side effects. Like collapsing the entire storage ring and destroying everything inside it. Or collapsing space locally around the ring and the summoned item. We don't know what would happen with your traits, but experimenting to find out would be... you get the point. Back on topic. As you've figured out, this is another lesson intended to give you tools for when things go wrong. Because eventually, they will. You're going to recall that projectile - then you're going to do it again, using more energy to do it faster. Then you're going to keep recalling it and throwing it and feeding the process more power until I'm happy with your speed. If you get it right, I'll try to help you do something even more fun - so long as I don't get restricted."

"That sounds extremely resource intensive."

"It is. That's why we spent time to raise your stats. Now get practicing."

#

Recalling Brock was resource-intensive, but manageable. Reid's best description would be that using Recall on the ball was similar to doing a few batches of regular weapons. When he'd lobbed another shrapnel brock at the troop, it was stopped and sent away by shimmering purple light. But that was fine - he was more interested on the practice now, anyway.

Subsequent summonings each went slightly faster than the first as Reid found small ways to pour in more power at the right place or the right time. Between each Recall, the guinea pigs were getting annoyingly good at intercepting his projectiles. Slugs had more momentum, so they fared better - but he'd only managed another two kills after ten throws.

The real issue, right now, was that Reid had hit something of a plateau. He was getting diminishing returns on his Recall speed, and he was still over a minute with the casting time. Frustrated, Reid pushed himself into the lab metaspace. If anything could help him solve the problem, it was perception.

As soon as he appeared in the space, the screens all took on different vistas of the trait he'd been experimenting with. He could see the way energy had to flow and feed through the structure, and the points where he'd guided extra energy to speed up the process were highlighted. He studied the images for a while, then turned and scanned the room. No Nyx - no pointers.

He sat down, and stared back at the images. There had to be something he was missing - something that was simple and obvious in hindsight that he and Nyx would both have a good chuckle that he'd missed it. But where was it? What was it? She had told him the solution - he needed to push more power through. He just had to find the way to make that happen. More power...

Reid shot up from the metaphysical chair when it hit him. Power - like surging energy through himself. He started a new Recall process - and surged energy through himself. The denser and more potent power that came with his explosive application of energy gathered and swirled around the metaphysical space where the Recall trait waited. Reid frowned. He could use that energy to power the skill, and it would be more potent, but that might carry issues. If normal energy was like gasoline, then the power-surged energy was racing fuel. Did that have the same kinds of implications that his analogy did?

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If you put racing fuel into a regular engine, it burned hotter and created more pressure. Enough to potentially blow or rupture the seals and gaskets that weren't designed for that kind of strain. Was the Recall trait really ready for that?

Reid dove into the thing, and decided a stepped approach was best. He wouldn't just fuel the whole process with straight power energy from the jump, but mix it in slowly - starting with an 80/20 concoction.

The trait greedily used the more potent mixture, and took a full second off the casting time. Even as the Brock fell into his physical hands, Reid was busy inspecting and cataloguing how the entire process had worked within him. There were a few small points inside the structure that seemed to flex or strain under the pressure. Nyx hadn't said anything about altering the trait's structure as part of this lesson - but Reid figured it wouldn't be a problem. If it was, she would stop him. He used his energy and metaphysical means to start to reinforce small pieces of the structure - just enough to help it get to the next mixture he had in mind. Thickening a piece here, adding a connection there. Small enough changes that he could go back and undo them if needed. Then he ran a 70/30 mixture through the trait.

#

Reid's experimentation continued, until he was staring at a much beefier version of the original trait. He gathered another batch of fully-powered energy in the area, and activated it. The whole thing seemed to whir as the dense and potent energies were sucked into the process. A blazingly-quick 30 seconds later, Reid held a fresh Brock in his hands. He pulled back and did it again. 30 seconds. Reid had been at the process so long, he didn't even have to fully concentrate on the trait. He could practically do it with his eyes open.

Another four hours of practice later, he could do it with his eyes open. On hour 5, he managed to walk in a circle while Recalling the Brock. Hour six saw him get it to work as he was running, almost full out. But still - once he was done and sat down to rest, Nyx was silent.

"Oh come on, how is that still not good enough? It's 30 seconds - just as fast as a storage ring! Do I need to juggle while summoning? What am I still missing?"

Wind whistled over the edge of the valley, and Reid could just hear the faint noise coming from the troop.

Power. Speed. He had both, but it still wasn't getting Nyx to say he was done. She was intentionally staying silent, which had to mean there was something he had the ability to figure out.

His stomach grumbled, and Reid took out a ration bar. He was saving the next steak for when he actually finished this lesson. At this point, the things were decent as snacks, but they had lost much of their effect when it came to actually restoring resources for him. He would really need to kill all of the guinea pigs in the valley - if for no other reason than to keep his food stores stocked. If he didn't have the storage ring... Reid shuddered at the thought. He would spend every day hungry.

What he really wanted was something even more powerful. Maybe the meat of an E-grade beast, where he'd only need a few bites to equal a full meal. It would be just like the replete rations Lycra had fed him back on the wheathop. Those things had been magical in their own right. The taste was absolutely sublime, and the amount of resources packed into that tiny space was simply wonderful. He never had found out how those things were made. Maybe it was a lab process where chemicals got mixed together with someone's crafting skill. Or maybe it was more traditional, like a factory line where all those nutrients were compressed down together with a press-like machine.

Reid's chewing slowed.

Compression. Density.

He'd swapped over to the power-imbued energy because it was a more potent, dense set of energies. But he hadn't compressed it - he hadn't even thought to.

Reid swallowed and took a breath. He knew what he wanted to do.

On a car, a turbo did something where exhaust powered a fan that then sucked in and compressed more air to force that dense and compressed air into the engine, and allow the whole thing to burn more fuel. That's what he needed for his energy. A way to compress things down further, and force it through the structure of the trait so the whole thing could have even more energy apply to it all at once.

Reid plunged inside himself. He'd first made wells for energy on the handle of Queen's Edge. The same design existed on other equipment, now, too.

So why not use it again?

The vortex formed just outside of the trait's location, and Reid set to work on the new structure's internals. He grafted tubes and tunnels that the energy could pass through, in order to both fuel the skill and create more suction that would increase the pull the turbo had on the surrounding energy.

Reid made the structure and demolished it entirely four times over before he was happy with the layout of it. With that done, he started to make smaller adjustments. A thicker wall here or there where he suspected things might break. An adjusted curve so he didn't end up breaking through the tubing. The inlet and outlet were adjusted more the longer he thought about them. The fan was reworked, repositioned, and then reformed. He even added a blow-off valve in case things got too energized and he needed a way to kill the process.

He wasn't sure how long he'd spent in contemplation and work, but when Reid finally finished, he heard clapping from beside him.

Reid spun, and found Nyx.

His teacher was sporting a solid set of shoulders and arms - all the way down to her hands. Everything on her torso, below a prominent collarbone, was still the same fuzzy and obscure blur - but both arms were real and functional.

Reid had guessed at whether she would have odd appendages - or even more tentacles. But Nyx had mostly-human arms. They were thinner than he would've expected, and ended in long hands that had eight slim fingers. Each finger was topped with a black and silver nail so sharp that they may as well have been claws.

The sight should have brought Reid joy - but it wasn't the only development.

The right side of Nyx's face was drooping, dull, and cracked. One of her hands was heavily burnt, and her eyes were strained. Reid panicked and worried and puzzled at what could've happened as words tumbled from his mouth.

"Nyx, what happened? Are you okay?"

She wiggle-waved a hand. "This is nothing. I'll recover."

Reid moved over to her, and grabbed her hand with his own. She jumped noticeably, and Reid's heart ached as he let go. He didn't want to cause her pain - or to cause her any more than he already had.

"I'm so sorry Nyx, if I'd known how bad I'd fucked up with power and constitution, I never would have pushed that far."

A smile tugged at the undamaged side of her face. "First off, I did Lycra's wave thing, which means you aren't allowed to be all sad and sorry. That's the rule. Second, it's cute that you think that little session was enough to cause this. It's the system's fault, not yours. Last and most importantly, I HAVE HANDS!"

She waved her fingers around excitedly. Reid was still frowning, but forced himself to smile. Nyx had injured herself trying to keep the system from outright killing him by giving his cancer a power boost. She'd succeeded, and this was the price. One she seemed quite happy to have paid.

"Back on the topic of your training - truly impressive work, Reid. And it's reassuring to know how far you can take yourself on minimal guidance from my end."

Reid nodded. Her words had implications that made his hair stand on end. The past few days' lessons were all about being prepared for when shit hit the fan. Which meant Nyx wanted to see if he was able to progress even if she was out of action - whatever form that took. Reid didn't want to think about those possibilities too hard.

"I'm proud of you for this, Reid. Really good work. Now, I promise we're almost done, just a bit more to go."

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