Chapter 2 - Chapter 2: Blazing Drill – Your Music, Burning Through My Memories

# Chapter 2: Blazing Drill – Your Music, Burning Through My Memories Dawn at the Radiant forward camp hung thick with the simulated scent of dew and the lingering acrid tang of burnt earth from the night before. Lin Ge—or rather, the vessel of Rigwarl Stonehoof—leaned against his makeshift quarters, his rough fingers tracing the treble clef-like carving on the totem pole over and over. He had not slept a wink, his mind replaying the E-flat minor of the monitor's alarm, Kunkka's off-key singing, and the silent gaze of the system. Resolve burned in his chest, but the faint, lingering throb at his temples and the phantom visions of the ICU ward coiled around him like cold chains, a reminder of the cost of this power. "Hey, rookie!" A clear, fiery female voice cut through the morning mist. Lina strode over, her scarlet hair a restless flame in the dim light. Her scarlet-gold light armor was polished to a shine, yet she tossed and caught a ball of orange fire casually in one hand, impatience practically oozing from her eyes. *Thud!* A set of heavy leather armor crashed to the ground at Lin Ge's feet, kicking up a cloud of dust. "Put it on," Lina ordered, jerking her chin toward the training ground. "You're lucky you didn't get hacked to pieces by the Dire last night, but luck and… those cheap tricks," she flicked a glance at the totem pole, "won't save you in the next skirmish." The training ground lay at the edge of the camp, a stretch of charred earth roughly flattened by a magical force field. A few tattered wooden stake dummies stood there, their surfaces crisscrossed with burn marks and gashes. In the distance, the Radiant relic pillar glowed steadily with warm golden light, a strange contrast to the rough, utilitarian air of the training ground. Fine, fluorescent motes of residual magic drifted in the air. Lin Ge slipped into the armor in silence. The leather was coarse, reeking of the previous owner's sweat and wear, binding his massive frame—yet it oddly brought a flicker of reality. He was a soldier here, not a wandering spirit. "Watch closely." Lina stepped onto a clear patch of ground, lifted one hand, and without so much as a chant, a searing Dragon Slave fire shockwave tore through the air. It struck a wooden stake fifty paces away with pinpoint precision, blasting it into burning splinters. "Standard, fast, lethal. Your Fissure," she turned to Lin Ge, "is for blocking, repelling, controlling—not conjuring those fancy waves to amuse the enemy! Now, cast it repeatedly at the markers on that clearing over there. I want straight lines, uniform depth, control! Understand?" Lin Ge took a deep breath and stepped into the designated spot. The heavy weight of the totem pole pressed against his palm. He recalled the feel of a standard ability cast from Shard B: gather power, lock on direction, strike down. First attempt. The totem pole crashed to the ground with a roar. A fissure erupted, but its edges were crooked, and it fizzled out early at the end. "Scattered power!" Lina criticized without mercy. "Focus! You're Earthshaker, not a gopher scratching at the dirt!" Lin Ge closed his eyes. Focus… He tried to banish all distractions, fixating only on *straight* and *solid*. But as he lifted the totem pole, an instinct from his body—or rather, the instinct forged by years of musical training deep in his soul—stirred quietly. His father's stern voice echoed in his memories: **"Rhythm is the backbone, Xiao Ge. A melody without a backbone is just mud!"** Unconsciously, he let out a low, steady, **rhythmic hum from the depths of his throat (boom-thud, boom-thud-thud)**, like a timpani's beat. The totem pole crashed down again. **Something changed.** This time, the fissure was no longer crooked. It stretched straight ahead, the earth and stone at its edges compacted by an invisible force, glinting with a cold, metal-like hardness. Its depth was uniform, and it even carried a neat, heart-stirring sense of rhythm. Lina's eyebrows shot up. She stepped closer, prodding the edge of the fissure with the tip of her boot. The hard texture made her eyes flicker. "…What did you hum just now?" she asked, her irritation fading slightly, replaced by curiosity. "Rhythm," Lin Ge answered honestly. "It just… helps me focus." Lina stared at him for several seconds, her gaze seeming to pierce the minotaur's thick skin and armor, straight to the soul within. "Interesting," she said finally, a smirk tugging at her lips that was barely a smile. "So you're not just lucky. Alright, combat drill." She stepped thirty paces across from Lin Ge, palms upturned, and two balls of restless fire began to spin and coalesce in her hands. "I'll simulate an attack with Dragon Slave at minimum intensity. Your job isn't to tank it, but to intercept its path with Fissure the second the fire leaves my hand. Got it? This trains your reflexes and prediction." Lin Ge nodded, every muscle tensing. His eyes locked onto Lina's hands, but his ears instinctively began to "dissect" the energy frequency of the fire in her palms—chaotic, restless, its base pitch hovering around A, laced with the fiery overtones unique to crimson. First try: the fire shot out too fast, the fissure rose too slow. The flames streaked past the edge, and the searing heat singed Lin Ge's cheeks. Second try: he predicted too early, raising the fissure in empty air. The fire curved around it easily. Lina's patience frayed in an instant. "What are you waiting for? A birthday invitation?!" Third try. Lin Ge gritted his teeth. He no longer relied solely on visual prediction. In the split second when Lina's shoulder muscles tensed and the fire was about to leave her hand, he took a risk and plunged his attention fully into his hearing. He "heard" the sharp, rising note of the fire's energy coalescing the moment before it erupted. Almost by reflex, he hummed a **harmonious third interval (A-C#)**, his tone steady, trying to "soothe" or "guide" that fiery frequency. The fire in Lina's hands shot forward. **Something miraculous happened.** A meter after leaving Lina's palm, the crimson fire shockwave veered—ever so slightly, defying all physical sense! As if drawn by the interval Lin Ge had hummed, it barreled straight for the fissure he had just struck, a fissure that was not perfectly positioned. *Sizzle!* Fire and stone collided, but there was no explosion—only a harmonious hum, like energy neutralizing itself. Both vanished into scattered motes of light and dust. Silence fell over the training ground. Lina stared blankly at her empty palms, then at the fissure across from her, which was slowly fading, and at the panting minotaur behind it. Her usual fire and sarcasm were gone, replaced by a mix of shock, confusion, and a flicker of unmistakeable bewilderment. "…Just now," she whispered, her voice so soft it was almost lost to the wind, "the fire *listened* to you." She lifted her head, her golden eyes boring into Lin Ge. "My fire… it sometimes moves on its own. Especially… when I hear certain sounds." She paused, her brow furrowing as if disgusted by her own confession. "I hate that feeling. It's like someone's squeezing my heart." Lin Ge's heart raced. Resonance! It wasn't just his own abilities he could influence—he could affect others' too? The discovery filled him with equal parts excitement and unease. "I wasn't trying to control it," he hastened to explain. "I just… felt its 'sound,' and tried to… harmonize with it?" "Harmonize?" Lina repeated the word, her expression odd. But in the next second, she seemed to shake off the emotion, regaining a hint of her sharpness. "Cut the fancy talk. Keep going. This time, I want you to intercept it *and* curve the fissure slightly to the left, simulating a battlefield split!" The training resumed. The successful resonance gave Lin Ge confidence. He began to experiment bolder, no longer content with simple intervals. He reached out to sense the finer components of Lina's fire— and then he caught it: that ever-present, faint yet sharp **high-frequency overtone of sorrow**, like a crack in a perfect crimson canvas. That frequency tugged at a melody in his memories unbidden: a **slow, gentle passage in D-flat major** his father had hummed by his bedside when he'd had nightmares as a child. A melody of comfort, safety, of chasing away grief. Almost on instinct, driven by kindness, he wanted to banish that "dissonance" from Lina's fire. He hummed the D-flat major passage softly. **Disaster struck in an instant.** *Gasp!* Lina let out a short, strangled whimper of pain. The fire coalescing in her hands **faded from crimson in the blink of an eye, as if doused in frigid ink, transforming into an icy, deathly blue flame that seemed to freeze the very soul!** A bone-chilling cold washed over Lin Ge—not a physical chill, but a cold that seeped straight into his psyche. The training ground twisted and wavered before his eyes, and a pain like ice picks driving into his temples exploded through his head! At the same time, the persistent visions became unbearably clear, impossible to shake: the harsh glow of the ICU lights, the erratic spikes on the monitor, and the faint, anxious shouts of medical staff in the real world, fragmentary yet urgent: "Blood pressure dropping to 90/60!" "Neural signals are erratic! Call the chief now!" And Lina, standing frozen in place, shrouded in icy blue flame. Her golden eyes, always ablaze with anger or sarcasm, were now hollow and unfocused, staring into the void. Her lips trembled, forming broken words: "Leonard… the rain… it's so cold… don't leave me alone…" At the edge of the training ground, several data crystals maintaining environmental stability let out a shrill, blaring alarm, their lights flashing red. "Stop! Lina! Snap out of it!" Lin Ge's blood ran cold. He fought through the pain that threatened to tear his consciousness apart and the unrelenting visions of the ward. The comforting melody had backfired catastrophically! He desperately reached for the melodies his father had used to rouse and inspire— a **rousing, brisk passage from a march**. He threw back his head and sang the march at the top of his lungs, his voice the deep, rumbling baritone of a minotaur, almost a roar. The icy blue flame trembled violently, flickering as if in resistance. Agony contorted Lina's face. Finally, after a series of unsteady flashes, the blue faded, and crimson flared back to life—faint, weak, like a candle in the wind. *Cough… cough!* Lina stumbled back several steps, bracing one hand on the ground as she coughed violently, her face as pale as paper. She lifted her head, her gaze locking onto Lin Ge, cold and sharp, holding the lingering hollow of her earlier daze and a fire of anger—and fear—more searing than any she had shown before. "You…" her voice was hoarse, "what did you… see just now? What did you do to me?!" Invisible enhanced scan beams swept over the entire training ground like a cold tide, their intent clear: to probe, to investigate. And in that taut, breaking moment— "Wow! Sister Lina, your fire turned blue just now! It's so rare and pretty!" A light, curious, excited voice piped up from the side. A green figure landed between them like a falling leaf. Windranger slung her signature longbow over her shoulder, her emerald eyes wide as she looked from the pale Lina to Lin Ge, who was covered in cold sweat and still reeling from the shock. "And you, big guy," she turned to Lin Ge, tilting her head, her ears twitching as if listening intently. "The song you hummed just now… it was so beautiful, but so sad, and then it got so powerful. The arrows in my quiver were trembling along with it!" Her arrival was like a stone dropped into tar on the verge of hardening, shattering the suffocating standoff. Lina took several deep breaths, forcing down the roiling emotions and the weakness in her body, and straightened—though her gaze remained icy on Lin Ge. Windranger seemed completely oblivious to the tension, or perhaps she simply didn't care. She leaned in close to Lin Ge, lowering her voice conspiratorially: "You know, I can hear a lot of weird sounds all the time! Deep in the jungle, there's a 'gurgling' sound like something's really hungry, and sometimes the relics let out a 'sigh'… but your song was one of the 'least noisy' sounds I've ever heard! Though it got a little too 'bright' just now, it tickled my ears!" Her words made Lin Ge's heart skip a beat. "You can hear the 'sounds'? What do they sound like, exactly?" "Hmm… hard to put into words!" Windranger scratched her head. "It's just a feeling! But," she suddenly remembered something, pointing to the forest northeast of the camp, "over there, about half a day's walk away, there's a place where the sounds are really 'clean'—like stones washed by spring water—but also really 'sad.' Wanna go check it out? I think it might have something to do with your 'singing'!" A lead! Lin Ge's spirits lifted. This could be the "empty place" Kunkka had hinted at, or more importantly, a location tied to his father's sheet music! "Windranger," Lina's cold voice cut in. She had regained her surface calm, but the chill in her tone was sharper than the blue flame had been. "Mind your own business." Then she turned to Lin Ge, enunciating each word clearly. "And you, Earthshaker. Keep your 'music'… away from my fire. No second chances." With that, she spared no one another glance and strode away, her steps slightly unsteady, but her back ramrod straight. Windranger stuck out her tongue, making a face at Lin Ge that said *she's always this grumpy*, then waved. "I'm off to patrol! Big guy, if you wanna go see that 'clean and sad' place, you'd better take someone who knows the wilds with you—there are some really mean big wolves over there sometimes!" Before her voice even faded, she had leaped away in a series of light bounds, disappearing between the camp's shanties. Silence settled over the training ground once more, leaving only Lin Ge, the lingering chill, the fading hum of the alarm crystals, and the heavy thud of his own heart, his headache still lingering. By evening, Lin Ge sat in his corner, trying to piece together the events of the day. The possibility of resonance, the dangerous edge of his abilities, Lina's hidden trauma, the tempting lead from Windranger… his thoughts were a jumble. Then, a completely different sense of being watched descended upon him. This was not the vague scan of the system. This perception was **cold, methodical, sharp with scrutiny and judgment**, sliding over his skin like a scalpel. Lin Ge's head snapped up. The command post was a rough yet sturdy two-story stone-and-wood structure. Behind a narrow window on the second floor, a figure stood. Silver-gray hair, a cold, chiseled profile, and heavy silver-white armor that glinted faintly even in the twilight. He held a glowing data pad in his hand, his gaze fixed on the training ground—or rather, on Lin Ge. **Sven.** Though they had never formally met, Lin Ge knew his identity in an instant. That gaze, like a hawk locking onto its prey, or a stern judge eyeing a suspect, held no warmth—only rules and measurement. The gaze felt like a physical weight, cold and heavy, raising goosebumps on Lin Ge's exposed skin. He felt his "anomaly" laid bare under an operating light, with nowhere to hide. At the same time, the faint gray system text at the edge of his vision flickered violently, then updated: `Anomaly Level: 0.015% → 0.042%` `Surveillance Status: Routine Scan → Targeted Observation (Disciplinarian: Sven)` Pressure crashed down on him like a mountain. How much had Sven seen? The out-of-control blue flame? The abnormal ability resonance? Was the data pad in his hand recording it all? Just as Sven seemed about to lower the data pad, to make a decision or issue an order— "Sven! Hey, Sven!" Kunkka the Captain's drunken, drawling shout echoed from below, shattering the evening stillness. "The casualty report from yesterday! Where'd you put it? Command's breathing down my neck for it! Hurry up and find it!" Sven's movements froze behind the window, his brow furrowing almost imperceptibly. He glanced at Lin Ge once more, his scrutiny sharpening, as if etching his image into his memory. Then he turned and vanished from the window. A moment later, Kunkka stumbled into view at the edge of the training ground, the brass wine flask still in his hand. He seemed not to see Lin Ge, or perhaps not to care, muttering to himself: "Kids these days, leaving their stuff everywhere… tch, gotta find it myself…" But as he passed Lin Ge, his steps faltered for a split second. He didn't turn his head, but his voice dropped to a whisper, lost among his burps: "Hard at work, eh, kid… but some 'drills' are better done where no one's watching. The old forest to the east, the abandoned mines to the north—better than this bare patch of dirt. Quiet." He took a swig from his "wine," his Adam's apple bobbing, then added in an even softer voice, barely more than a breath, jabbing the bottom of the wine flask toward his own ear in a quick, hidden gesture: **"Especially… don't let too many 'ears' hear the 'tunes' they're not supposed to."** With that, as if it had all been the ramblings of a drunkard, he shook his head and hummed his perpetually off-key *Bella Ciao*, stumbling away in the opposite direction of the command post. Lin Ge stood alone on the training ground as dusk deepened. In his palm, the carving on the totem pole no longer burned warm—only the cold of stone remained. In his mind, Lina's icy blue flame and hollow eyes, Sven's cold, scrutinizing gaze, Windranger's innocent hint, and Kunkka's drunken warning flickered one after another. The old forest to the east, the abandoned mines to the north… quiet. Half a day's walk northeast, the "clean and sad" place Windranger had spoken of. And on the system status screen, the Anomaly Level that had jumped to **0.042%**, marked with the cold words "Targeted Observation." The road ahead was shrouded in mist, and danger lurked at every step. But a faint, risky sense of direction had finally pierced the chaos. He tightened his grip on the totem pole. Music could change the world, and it could burn through memories. And he, it seemed, had only just touched the first scalding note. **(Invisibly, a new encrypted entry appeared on Disciplinarian Sven's data pad:** **"Unit: Rigwarl Stonehoof. Anomaly Log: Conducted ability interaction test with Unit 'Lina' at training ground, triggering unknown energy resonance (high-frequency sorrow spectrum / high-intensity neural interference waveform), resulting in environmental stabilizer alarm. Correlation Assessment: Medium. Recommendation: Add to observation list for next combat meeting and continue data collection."**