War God for Hire- Gladiator by David Burke (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

truth is that essence is everywhere, it just requires more skill to absorb it from low density areas,” Hilde said.

“So, what’s the plan then? Since my skill level in essence absorption is likely set at zero now,” Kyle asked.

Hilde laughed. “You are just gonna have to step up and prove that you are more than a man. The walls here are filled with Earth Essence. They were reinforced by a mage at some point in the past, so maybe you should try absorbing that first.”

“What, like put my hand on the wall and think earthy thoughts?” Kyle asked.

He could hear the mirth in her voice and he wasn’t above acting the fool at times to make a beautiful woman smile. Not all the time, but every now and then it helped to make sure they know you didn’t take yourself too seriously.

She replied, “Most mortals simply breathe it in. You will have to find your own technique that works for you. From what I have seen, once you find it, it will just click into place. If sitting on the ground and meditating doesn’t work for you, then find what it is that you do that allows you to create the greatest amount of focus in your mind.”

Kyle thought long and hard about what it was that he did to help him focus back on Earth. Batting was undoubtedly the most focused activity he had ever needed to perform. It required him to pick up on all those little details. The angle of the pitcher’s arm, the plane of the pitch, even picking up the release point all aided him in timing his swing.

When he was locked in breathing, swinging, stepping, it all became instinctual. It was a feeling that he had captured here a few times, when he let go and got out of his own way. The key was that such demanding focus could only be maintained for a very brief period of time, measured in seconds at the most.

The thing with hitting was that your brain gathered all that information, but it had to be able to use it without you parsing out the details. That ball would reach the plate in four tenths of a second, so it wasn’t like you could take the time to think through your strategy. It wasn’t about decision making. It was about reaction.

He thought back to the trouble that he had when he first hit the majors. Instead of hundred mile per hour fastballs being a great rarity, as they had been in college, they were suddenly everywhere. With pitches that fast, there was no way to do anything but react. The problem was when you were reacting, you were always playing catch up. That led to strike outs or lots of foul balls.

The breakthrough for him had been when one of his hitting coaches had told him to stop thinking about where the ball was and focus on where it was gonna be. It sounded so lame at the time, but Kyle was never one to try something halfway. Once he made the commitment to a training technique, he worked it into the ground and proved definitively whether it worked for him or not.

He couldn’t say exactly what it was about that technique, but it was certainly a turning point. He stopped trying to see the ball so clearly and instead let his brain, or instincts as he would call it, take over. His subconscious simply processed the data faster, and he tried to empty himself of focus to enable his body to follow whatever command his brain gave him in that moment.

That was it. That was what he needed to do. Supposedly all the divine mantle of Krig, what passed for his soul, was inside of Kyle. Kyle was his reincarnation; some blending of the two was supposed to occur. He was gonna be damned if he would let the soul of a dead god change who he was, actually quite literally. But that didn’t mean he was unwilling to benefit from the knowledge that hidden part of him possessed.

The key was undoubtedly to just relax and stop letting his rational thinking process get in the way. Hopefully if he emptied himself in a moment of precise concentration, he would be able to feel the essence and then absorb it.

Kyle stared at the wall. He adopted a loose batting stance and stared at the stone. Rather than feeling silly as nothing happened, he doubled down and pushed. He was proud of his commitment and wasn’t going to let it falter.

Without even trying, his breathing settled into a deep, slow pattern. His mind became empty. He wasn’t trying to absorb essence. He wasn’t even trying to detect it.

Miniscule details about the wall leapt into his mind. The way the space between two stones was slightly greater than that of the surrounding bricks. The tiny pitting in another stone, or a band of faint blue in the gray stone all took on a profound significance without any consideration from him.

And there it was. His conscious mind didn’t even have a chance to register it. Suddenly he was aware of where the essence was, but he didn’t focus on it. Its unique characteristics, or the way it felt like stone but wasn’t stone didn’t matter.

What he focused on was where he wanted that stone to be. He mentally reached out and made contact with it at the exact point he envisioned it to be, and suddenly one of the two fatter spokes of his inner wheel was filled with a fine, dark brown mist. It wasn’t much, but the space was no longer empty.

Then his focus faltered. That level of concentration could only be retained for an instant. Yet it had been enough. When he looked at his character sheet, he now had a single point of Earth Essence out of a potential twenty-five.

What was more, his raw essence had jumped up dramatically. He knew the amount he had stored swelled