Depthless Hunger

Chapter 77: Trade and Monstrous Training

As per usual, Kai met Razz at a new point outside of Rayakan. The secrecy of their meetings meant that he needed to spend more time waiting, which would have been annoying if he didn't have the option of cultivating. Even though Zae Zin Nim said that it required concentration, at his earliest stage he had no trouble cultivating along a major road.

So far, he'd been able to draw off a little of the strength found within the Krysali crystals, but only a little. It required a different technique than trying to soak up the barely existent mist of qi in the atmosphere. Still, the first stage was always supposed to take a long time, so he didn't mind.

Just when he was beginning to think the meeting wouldn't work, a hunched old merchant in a broad hat sat beside him.

"Hey!" Razz grinned from underneath the hat. "How do you like my disguise?"

"Do you really need disguises?" Kai asked.

"Probably not, but it's too much fun. Actually, on that note, there's been no retaliation or even acknowledgment from the Corinin clan at all. I have a hard time believing that they didn't notice the theft, but there's no sign that they're taking aim at anyone."

"Because you haven't tried anything with the information yet?"

"Yeah, that could be part of it." Razz leaned back beside him, abandoning the hunched posture. "Now that I've had another few days to look over the finances, it's all there. We can clear the problems and get our permits back. But since my family has survived this long, I think we should wait, so the timing doesn't seem so suspicious."

"Well, that's your business. So long as we took the right book."

"Oh, you definitely did. There's actually even more in there. All kinds of impropriety that, while the Corinins can definitely get away with it, might be used to undermine them. Can you believe they've been ripping off Irunians? That's a potential weakness no matter how you look at it."

"I'm glad it worked so well for you." Kai started to get up, only for Razz to grab the back of his tunic and pull him back down.

"Hey, don't leave just yet. Are the two of you really going to spend so much time out in the wilderness? I know you're training, but you both made a splash at the Corinin party. There could be real opportunities for you if you build on that influence."

Kai had expected something like that, but he still had to think about it a while before answering. "Right now there's something important we need to work on. I don't know if the Guild can detect what mana was used for an awakening, but better if we have a mature Class instead of an obviously new one."

"Alright, I can't argue with that."

"But keep your eyes open, alright?" Kai clasped Razz's arm and gave him an honest smile. "You came through for us before, so we're open to other chances. Any monster hunts, tournaments, or even parties if they could be beneficial enough."

"Those are more northern customs, but I'll do what I can."

"Razz... what do you think is the ultimate purpose of all this mercantile work? Is it just to make money for yourself? To restore the Lantrian clan in Rayakan?"

"You want me to say it's to support the north, right?" Razz stared back at him, for once deadly serious. "I don't know why you even ask. I could just tell you what you want to hear, and given the short length of our relationship, you wouldn't have any way to confirm it."

Kai hadn't been thinking any of that, he'd expected Razz to give him an honest response. He felt like that was probably naive of him, and he was annoyed by the whole thing even if the younger man was right. "Why say all that? How do you benefit from reminding me that you could be deceptive if you wanted?"

"Well, it would be more deceptive to pretend to be honest and straightforward."

Kai stared at Razz for a moment, then just grinned. He could hardly believe it, but he actually liked the Lantrian merchant. Compared to the others he didn't seem inclined to excesses, and his goal of restoring his clan was at least understandable. Even though they'd grown up in radically different worlds, Kai felt closer to him than to the "hunters" who spent most of their time at parties.

"If we're going with honesty, the truth is that no one really takes the north very seriously here." Razz stood up along with him and they began to walk away from the road. "But I was looking through some records, and in the past more of what we produced went to the Frontier. Most view that as progress, but I noticed something else: we used to have more of your hunters coming down here. I think the two halves of Goralia have grown apart over the past generation."

"Gunjin said something just like that." Kai thought back to that conversation and realized that he'd been a bit naive as well. "I was being implicitly scornful of the south and he pointed out how important your trade is. The key thing is that we need both sides."

"Maybe so. But anyway, we'll meet again in three days, next location southeast. I'll have some new potions for you and maybe some new information you can take advantage of."

That was all he could hope for. Kai smiled at Razz again and then loped back toward the farmlands surrounding Rayakan.

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With Zae Zin Nim's help, he had been making progress, just not as quickly as he had hoped. One of the biggest problems was that he needed to train entirely new instincts. Whatever the power inside him was, it didn't work like mana or qi. He could only access it by instinct, and that had proved a major hangup.

He had seen it before, with other young hunters in training. They believed that they had access to some new power no one else understood, a pure rage or magical ability that couldn't be measured by spiritual senses. And they were always wrong. It was just a trick of the mind, like a drunk convincing himself that he was more charming than he really was. When Kai had awakened his spiritual sight, he had understood just how clear power could be.

Except now he really was dealing with a power that operated on instinct. He had proof that it existed via his sense for monsters, but accessing it still felt like a mistake. No matter how much he believed it existed, many of his instincts clung to his human strength.

Kai hadn't thought of any grand solution by the time he finished running back to their camp. Zae Zin Nim had been cultivating, but her eyes snapped open when he arrived.

"I have a new idea for a test." She rose to her feet smoothly and he noted how much less weak she seemed. Still unnaturally thin, but she never coughed her lungs out while sparring anymore. "This is a palm strength test. It's not really appropriate for mana, but I hope it will show something."

"And you're not going to tell me what?"

"You'll either grasp it yourself, or my idea is bad."

She braced her feet and extended a palm in front of her, gesturing for him to do the same. Kai awkwardly got into position and put his palm against hers. It was a bit strange to be touching that way and he was surprised just how small her hand felt. Usually he never thought about the difference in size, since they were so focused on work.

Then she began pushing and he needed to concentrate to avoid being knocked over. There was no wrestling or movement from side to side, just comparing strength along a single line. Physically, he was stronger than her, so he began to push her back... and then she started to use her qi.

Immediately he was struggling, his arm aching as it was forced back inch by inch. He could tell that she wasn't using the full 100 Power of her cultivation, just calmly ratcheting up her strength each moment. They'd done tests like this before. A growl emerged from somewhere deep within him and Kai felt a new strength join his own.

Zae Zin Nim staggered back a step, struggling to restrain his palm. But instead of pushing back, she locked eyes with him. "Now set aside that new strength."

"What?" He gasped out the word as if his mind needed a moment to catch up. It ran against his instincts, but he tried to let go of the monstrous power within him even though it meant that she began winning again.

She pushed him back a step, then nodded. Beginning to understand, Kai reached for his monstrous power again. Not to win, but to feel the difference. They pushed back and forth, the contest becoming an exercise. The Direboar's Strength within him wasn't a formless power that came and went, it was something he could learn to tap more precisely.

By the time they finished, Kai was covered in sweat even though they had just pushed palms back and forth like some sort of child's game. He sat down, staring at his hand and trying to keep hold of that exact feeling.

"You seem to have grasped it." Zae Zin Nim sat down opposite him and nodded in satisfaction. "Earlier, I told you that there was a difference between a characteristic like Direboar's Strength and a technique you needed to access like Rockspider's Claw. It occurred to me that this cannot be entirely true, since you do not always perfectly use your new strength."

"That distinction was useful to me, though."

"Useful but incomplete. This exercise proved that you can grasp and release the monstrous strength within you, and I hope that it gave you a much stronger understanding."

"Yeah, definitely." Kai formed a fist and smiled. It had actually been consciously letting go of the power that had been the breakthrough, instead of always trying to reach for it. "I don't think there's any way to do a similar test for the claw technique, but a similar principle applies."

"There is a scale of how easily accessible different aspects of your monstrous soul are." Zae Zin Nim peered over him again. "You can hardly help but use 'Aquagorgon's Health' when your life is in danger, and the strength comes naturally. But the claw will require work to access, because it involves projecting force in an unnatural way. I think the bite will be even more difficult, so we should set it aside until you master the claw."

"That works for me. But what about the Monstrous Hunger?"

She was silent for some time, then simply shook her head. "I don't know. It might be something more difficult to grasp than the techniques, or it could be even more fundamental than strength. Again, there are no manuals or guides for your path."

Part of Kai was convinced that fate would screw him again and his highly-ranked Monstrous Hunger would just make him really hungry all the time. It definitely hadn't done him any good that he could tell so far. But the revelation about his techniques put Kai in too good a mood to care, so he dedicated himself to training.

They retreated to the rockiest region they had been able to find amidst all the farmland. Some local farmers had actually come out to bother them, but when Kai had suggested they would eventually clear off the rocky land with their attacks, the farmers had been amenable. They'd offered a single Goralian Eagle for the work, which Kai had graciously accepted. Once there, Zae Zin Nim worked on exploring her new Class abilities and Kai attempted to claw rocks with his bare hands.

It was always difficult to feel the power when he wasn't in actual danger and he'd torn a couple of fingernails ramming them into boulders. He pushed through the pain and kept trying. Now that he had a more intuitive sense for his strength, he could feel the potential within him. The difficulty was accessing it with such consistency that he could rely on it in combat.

During their experiments they had tried to test the limits of his strength, since of course it wasn't limitless. Kai's best guess was that if he perceived Direboar's Strength as being gamma-ranked, that meant he had the strength of a gamma-ranked Direboar. If it wasn't that simple, something was seriously wrong with his spiritual sight. Equating that to human strength, a gamma-level monster would be a threat to most hunters with power of around 50.

That on its own made sense, except his human strength was involved as well. Based on experimentation with Zae Zin Nim, she was convinced that when he managed to project a claw at full strength, it had a combination of both. If so, he would be able to punch above his weight.

Kai stared at the boulder in front of him and took a deep breath. He didn't try anything fancy this time, didn't recall his sword training, didn't try to feel angry. Instead he carefully tensed his fingers into a claw, then swiped it through the air in front of him.

Three lines of force tore through the boulder, breaking it into four pieces he could see clearly before they all tumbled away from him.

Finally. Kai grinned and picked another boulder to try again.