Luke
People usually get a sinking feeling when they feel like something is off but they can not quite place what would be wrong or out of order. That results in people waking up in the morning with their energy off-kilter and that usually displaces the good day vibes and replaces them with the abomination people have come to know as 'waking up on the wrong side of the bed.' That's what happens to a normal person with low to no levels of intuition whatsoever, in the case of an individual whose intuition is on a whole other level approaching the sixth sense it's safe to say the effect would be quite pronounced.
This explains why Leo failed to rise at 5 am (the normal hour that he usually woke for his daily training) which was already odd however when he didn't rise until 12 noon, Luke began to worry so he kicked the door to Leo's room open with all the bravado of a man who had a bone to chew with him. The rant he was preparing to shout out at the kid died on his lips when he noticed him prone in his bed with his blankets at his waist and his torso and face fully drenched in sweat. He was mumbling in his sleep incoherently, and Luke couldn't make sense of it at all.
Luke went over and shook his shoulder, but this didn't wake him up. He then went and got some water after shouting his name repeatedly with no results. The kid didn't show signs of being aware at all, which was odd because over the six months that he had been training him, whenever he passed out due to their excessively violent training bouts, a simple tap would wake him up, and such shouting had never been necessary. He brought a bucket and emptied it out on him, but there was no result, regardless which truly began to worry him.
Luke then lifted his right hand and channeled his chi into his index finger for the last resort technique that was used by his clan to seal or forcefully activate an individual's chi and make it flow. He jabbed the finger over Leo's right breast where the Chi heart was located and triggered a jolt of chi, which was like an adrenaline shot to Leo, and he gasped awake and held his chest as he gazed with glazed eyes at Luke. His unfocused eyes slowly gained clarity and he was surprised and confused, wondering what was going on.
"Bro, what is going on and what time is it, what did you do to me and what's going on?" he asked Luke, clearly unaware of his previous predicament or what had caused it. Luke could clearly see that he was unsettled as he was very particular about keeping everything within his control. He put his hand on his shoulder and pushed him onto his back and gathered chi into his palm as he rubbed energy where he had jabbed to prevent any damage to the nerve endings.
" it is around midday, kid, I got worried and came to wake you up and give you a piece of my mind for slacking off but then I found you completely out of it and nothing I did could wake you up. I was forced to give you the equivalent of Chi heart CPR, hence your abrupt awakening and chest pain," he explained to Leo while watching the kid carefully for any sign of injury or anything that might have caused his condition.
" What happened to you, do you have some condition or epileptic ailment, or did some deviation happen in your cultivation?" he asked, pondering what could have caused Leo to become that way. " You were completely non-responsive, man."
Leo frowned and seemed confused and totally unaware of what had been going on. He then proceeded to tell Luke about waking up in the middle night feeling an extremely powerful sense of danger. He described the events of the previous night and how he went back to sleep, convinced it was just nerves and nothing more. Luke thought deeply about what Leo said. The two had never spoken about the choices they both made when the bounties of the System were offered to them, and it was quite a profound taboo to talk about what kind of basic skills one had. However, Luke had his own ideas about what Leo had. He thought he had picked an extremely powerful wisdom skill to explain how fast he learned and absorbed knowledge. It had to be a mid-tier wisdom skill coupled with a low to mid-tier body enhancement skill.
That was the conclusion he came to after observing how easily he learned martial arts as well as how his body changed to meet the requirements of his newly learned techniques, slowly but surely. However, he was beginning to wonder if he had a technique that enhanced his sense of danger as well. Like a spider-sense. This then made Luke take his anxious feelings very seriously.
He began considering the things that could quite possibly be a threat to them at that particular moment. He considered Gegwe but dismissed the idea because he was not a real threat to Luke or the rest of his team, and he could dismantle any attack they mounted with just his training and clan abilities, with no need for his skill. This could only mean one thing: the threat would come from without. They were finally making a move. There was something going on, and it was not just going to affect him, but the danger would somehow affect his little brother, too. Luke began to feel his temper flaring again. He was a demon, and very few people were aware of the implications of what he was or what he could do if he released his self-imposed limiters. This was the second time in less than 48 hours that he had felt the urge to kill and cause destruction. He circled his chi and calmed his heart and mind slowly.
He then looked at Leo, who seemed like he could feel everything he had been feeling, which was not the first time the kid had made him think that and probably would not be the last. "Okay, kid, I think you might have been onto something. The world is a lot more dangerous than most people realize, even within the safe zones. I will go do some digging and see if my worst fears are true, but in the meantime don't worry."
Leo simply nodded his head, showing he completely understood and did not blame Luke for being so vague and secretive. The kid truly was one of a kind and special. He helped him up and then they decided to go about their day, and Luke delegated his men to be on the lookout for whatever might be out of the ordinary both inside and outside Willowborough. He also had all those who were friendly to him be watchful of things as well. Hopefully, they would be able to handle anything that sprouted up and protect what they cherished, the life they had made and the friends and loved ones they had gained.
(A room in a place hidden away, four months before Gegwe arrived in Willowborough)
The silence was like an unwelcome stranger who had barged into their meeting after the news arrived. Each of the six powerful men in that room was lost in his own thoughts, if not consumed by shock and fear. All of their plans had simply been thrown into the gutter.
The room was very tense as word had just come in that the safe zones they had been targeting had already come under government control. A tough looking and heavily scarred mountain of a man slammed his fist on the table, "those fucking bastards, they really wanna take everything in their grasp!'
This had greatly reduced their morale as what was considered their master plan had been de-fanged with minimal effort. They were each stewing in silence when one of them received a phone call suddenly. The voice on the other end was someone he was growing wary of hearing from, and this set the scene for Leo's future problems.
Leo
It had been four days since his weird sleep terror, and there had not occurred another such incident. There still was a feeling of anxiety in the pit of his stomach, although it had become significantly less uncomfortable since his talk with Jacobs. This gave him some solace and allowed him to be less tense and ready to lash out.
In the meantime, Jacobs had been helping him in trying to cultivate his Chi heart in order for him to unlock the chi pathway that went to his brain to boost his already significant memory and brainpower. He wondered how that would affect his abilities as they were connected deeply to his perception and brain, as well as his subconscious. He was quite eager.
Normally,, an individual with a 60-pulse chi heart would be able to fill his own heart with chi in around a day unaided. They would then create chi elements from the accumulated chi and then try to trail-blaze a path to the different points across their body until a clear cycle path was created to and from the heart and each point. That was how the cultivation was supposed to occur normally; however, this could be aided by a master who could immediately aid the speed of accumulating chi by injecting his or her own. This sped up the process by twice the speed. This would make it easier for the individual to attempt to create a path twice a day.
This was for a normal person with low-level genius potential. For demon-level geniuses with around a 100 pulse, they would need 5 hours max to refill their chi hearts. For Luke, it was even more terrifying as he needed an hour and a half to fill it. Thus, for a broken individual like Leo, 30 minutes was understandable. Then add in the help from Luke, and it dropped to 15 minutes. Thus, in an hour, he could attempt to open his pathways four times with Luke's help. This accounted for his almost full opening of the pathway to the brain. He was beyond broken as he did the work that took other people months in four days. But then he was an extremely hard worker and very determined, as it was a very painful process to forcefully create pathways that never existed in his body before.
It was now up to him to use his own meditation and cycling to fully connect the chi pathways to his brain. In a moment of deep meditation, he felt the pathway click into place, and he felt a new energy hit his brain that was unlike any other. It was like he was operating on coffee and a focus drug. He wondered if this is what NZT felt like in the movie Limitless. The feeling lasted only a few minutes and then dulled down as the chi he possessed could not allow him to always be in that state. He rose giddy and ready to tell Luke all about it, but on his way back to their home, he felt a nagging feeling reminiscent of the night of fitful sleep. It was only a passing feeling that left as fast as it came, but the anxiety was there to stay.