Chapter 9 - Reincarnated Souls Are Your Best Friends (Part 3)
This orb is solid enough to pass from hand to hand. It exhales a cold, ghostlike breeze, prickling my skin with goosebumps like a canister of compressed air. It's unmistakable: this isn't normal Ki. I channel my energy into my other hand and form another sphere of equal size. This one's compact, just as stable, but it radiates warmth.
I dispel my normal Ki orb. Now the moment of truth comes. I let this Soul Ki orb sink into my palms, guiding it through my meridians to my chest. A creeping cold slithers through me, but I ignore it. I press it deeper into the place where I feel my soul is.
A thundering boom in my ears. Heat washing over my face. The cries of grieving children. The hot plunge of a blade to skin. Phantom pains wash over me, stirring me in an abyss of despair.
These memory fragments, ones from each soul whose Ki I took, flash in my mind for a brief moment before my soul gets to absorb them as I intended. Great resistance swells within me, purging the Ki off my body. It seems as though forcing the Ki deep into my soul is a great sin.
I will the expelled energy to coalesce into an orb on my palm. My shoulders slump in exhaustion, my body drenched in sweat and lungs heaving.
This has been draining beyond belief. But what wears me down more than the physical toll is the sinking realization of the futility of this all. Yes, I can control Soul Ki, but I can't even absorb it! Even if I could, in retrospect, judging from the way my organs screamed during the attempt, it'd just be another flavor of self-inflicted agony.
So my body would probably just implode from the pressure anyway even if I could. That's real useful. The very idea is so wonderfully reassuring, I feel like tossing this orb straight back into Hell below. Maybe it'll knock one of those working ogres right in the face. At least someone would get something out of it.
Then an image of Bulma's gravity chamber crosses my mind. And Yamcha, of all people, being an absolute idiot, cranking it up to 300 times Earth's gravity out of pure jealousy. All because Bulma was (or will be) giving Vegeta more attention. When I watched that scene for the first time in my original life, I gagged, thinking how he's just going to die again when the gravity would just crush him and his organs from the tremendous pressure...
That's it!
If Soul Ki gives me this much pressure, maybe I should coat the energy around me and sink it into the hypodermis. Deep enough to weigh on me like gravity, but not enough to crush my organs. Like a weighted suit made of energy. That way, I'm not trying to digest a bomb. I'm wearing one. Maybe I can train under it instead of against it.
Manipulating the ball of Soul Ki, I draw some wisps of it, stretch them until their particles disperse evenly, and sink them just beneath the surface of my chest. Feel it right where I think my hypodermis is. Just deep enough at the layer of my skin where it doesn't compress my heart, lungs, and stomach too much. But still enough to stimulate my meridians. Pressure now fills that area. Not overwhelming, but noticeable. So I repeat the process, layering more of the energy into the same area until the weight feels right: intense, but not dangerous.
Then I do the same on all parts until every inch of my body feels the same strain. I hop, punch, and kick a few times. My limbs now move with the sluggishness of an average human. If my mental calculations were right, this should be twice Earth's gravity. The thin energy coating emits a faint blue haze, casting a subtle filter over everything I see.
I run at 75% of my current maximum speed I can muster. It's slow, indeed, just like that farmer with a shotgun, I reckon. Average. I can barely last ten minutes before I'm bent over, gasping like it's my first day on legs. Still, I can't help but be a little impressed. Average humans can't even manage this on their first go, so that's something, I guess.
Then I meditate, steadying my breath and trying to tap into some hidden reserves buried deep within my meridians. While I'm at it, I smooth out any uneven patches of Soul Ki distribution on my body.
One thing nags at me though—how is the Soul Ki not dispersing even without my conscious effort to maintain them?
After thirty minutes of meditating, I run again, just content I don't have to go through the trouble of gathering Soul Ki again.
I repeat this process—run, meditate, and run again—as I slog my way through Snake Way. I sleep too, of course. Gotta keep the body in top condition, right? Because running with a self-imposed gravity field warping my meridian system is exactly what optimal looks like. Really, the more I meditated under this gravity, the more I grow sensitive to some parts of my meridian system.
It certainly feels like my energy pathways are somewhat clogged, the pressure slowing down my energy flow. I mean, that should've been common sense in hindsight. But hey, it's nice to finally confirm it by feeling it rather than just guessing.
Boredom. Hunger pangs. Swearing internally. Fantasies. A lot of things cross my mind as I let my body run on autopilot. Though I'm still conscious enough to avoid leaping through some of the winding paths of Snake Way. I stick to running along them instead just to be safe.
After thirty days, under the same gravity, my speed finally catches up at the level before I wrapped myself in this gravity cocoon.
Not only that, but my ability to draw out more of my hidden Ki reserves has substantially increased over this time period as well. I can tap the energy from the acupoints at the base of my lower spine and somewhere deeper at my solar plexus.
At my last run, I run some mental calculations. Come to think of it, my brain has gotten sharper.
4,200 kilometers!
Well, more or less. Not too bad.
I fall asleep, feeling lighter than ever now that I've dispelled the Soul Ki on my body. Waking up, I bend down, one of my knees and both of my fingers firmly on the path like a runner in the Olympics.
Time for the test run. Literally.
I burst forward. Air slams into my face with a supersonic rush, the pressure thrilling me so much I almost do not notice another bend on the path just right ahead appearing in my field of vision. I slam to a halt, not quite enough to stop the momentum from carrying me over the edge.
Good thing I catch one of the triangular spikes on the edge just on time. Feeling it crack, I hoist myself up just before it snaps.
I do some short sprints back and forth, perform some skips, punches, and kicks. Anything to make me get used to my new speed, really.
After a few hours, I ready myself again and sprint.
It takes me an hour and a half before I go breathless, and only ten minutes to feel ready for another sprint again. I do this for three days straight—five runs a day without neglecting sleep.
22,800 kilometers!
Knowing King Kai's planet has ten times gravity, I decide to prepare myself by creating a gravity field with a pressure four times that of Earth's. It takes me hours to gather enough Soul Ki two times the size I gathered before. Distributing them all around my body takes even longer. Around half a day.
I notice some patterns now. The same way my speed initially dipped by a third of my original speed under 2 times gravity, now that I've gotten used to that, my speed has dipped to a third of my new speed under 4 times gravity as well. At least I don't run like an average person anymore.
It takes two months before I reach my supersonic speed level again. My conscious ability to draw out my hidden reserves barely progressed.
Still, In these two months, I covered around 281,000 kilometers!
Careful not to make the same mistake again, I prepare myself by doing some drills to get used to my new speed. After that, I run ten times, each taking four and a half hours. Three days pass just like that.
139,400 kilometers!
At this point, I've covered a total of around 406,000 kilometers!
Two days pass, and I've been looking for more Soul Ki within a range of ten kilometers. Still, I can only create a ball as large as the one I used to simulate four times Earth's gravity. The energy just isn't out there anymore. Odd. So much for this training progression hack.
Making do with what I have, I just use enough to create a gravity field simulating pressure 2 times that of Earth's. It saves more time while also training my body. Kill two birds with one stone, really.
Besides, my anxiety about not having enough time has long been gone. I can totally reach King Kai within two more months.
Around the seventh day of running, right before I can finish my last run and call it a day, a pagoda-like structure comes to view in the distance.
Although I have no plans to engage the so-called Goddess of Snake Way, I still take the time to marvel at its facade.
Two stories arranged in tiers stand with a pompous air under a striking, red tiled roof, at least when you get golden clouds floating by its perimeter. That's just cheating. Other East Asian palaces would look nicer if they had these golden clouds as decoration. What's even more self-important are the gilded snake designs plastered on its arched door-less entrance and walls.
Like, we get it. You're the Goddess of Snake Way. Enough with the snake motif.
Already done appreciating the palace's facade, I get ready to run the next 500,000-kilometer stretch.
But the clanging of wind chimes stops me.
For months, the only sounds I've heard are my ragged breaths, pounding footsteps, and breathy curses. So hearing something with a different pitch snaps my head toward the archway.
Footsteps echo. My heart beats in sync. A figure emerges from the shadows.
The Goddess of Snake Way now stands before me, gaze feral—like someone who's just found prey.
Oh, crap.
Power Level:
Carson (pre-gravity) - 16
Carson (post-2G) - 300
Carson (post-4G) - 918
Princess Snake - 900