The next day I followed the usual routine. Went to class. Today we had Etiquette and Court protocol. It was the kind of thing that my entire philosophy just disagreed with. Etiquette is just a form of showing respect, a standardized form of doing things. It was a lie. Something built to please those too insecure about themselves.

  There was no need for etiquette to show respect to normal people. Simple gestures and attention were enough most of the time. Same among warriors. The rest? A waste of time enforced upon anyone that joined the circle…

  Despite all this I still paid attention. I still needed to know those things. I lived in a world that valued this sort of knowledge and behavior. In the end, as long as one lived in a society, he’d have to fit inside that society, no matter how. And there were benefits to living in a society.

  The professor was an old lady, very pompously clothed, however her posture was the definition of perfection. Despite the old age, despite the clothes, her posture was admirable. She carried herself with elegance, and each of her steps was measured.

  These were the other components of etiquette, discipline and stringency. She stopped before me and Magnar.

  “Both of you look like you just picked your clothes out of trash. How can such carelessness be tolerated. Were you even taught how to keep your clothes?” She paused a little looking at us. “This lump of meat is still in a tolerable state, but you…”

  “No offense, but I live all alone away from the student dorms. So, I have no one to ask since, as you can see my friend over here is not doing all that great either. I’m a commoner from the Whisperwood forest, I’m used to wearing Leather clothing. Those don’t get wrinkles. It’s not my fault the uniforms are made out of trashy materials…”

  “…” Silence fell over the class. The professor was trembling uncontrollably. Her mouth was opening and closing like that of a goldfish. I could see her veins pop out on her forehead.

  In the end she took a deep breath and turned around. The rest of the class passed undisturbed. Perhaps I made a good point, perhaps I annoyed her so much she did not want to have anything to do with me. Or she might just not want to cause a scene. Anyway, from just this first class it was clear I was going to have a really hard time with her…

  Next class was Aether theory. An useless class. They were covering basic aether sensing. By the end of the year the students were expected to approach the aether condensing stage. To me, who was already there and even moving beyond it was not of any interest. So instead I closed my eyes and ordered my thoughts and knowledge.

  I was preparing for the first lesson that I had to give Magnar and Cassia. What was usually taught in the Academy was at a very superficial level, merely preparing the kids to be soldiers and artisans. True knowledge was probably kept as inheritance and wouldn’t be parted easily…

  From what I knew, they did not know of anything related to subtle or hormonal side of the body. They only forcefully pushed their own aether, interacting with the aether flowing outside of their control. Warrior types had less potential to do this, but their bodies grew stronger, while casters could experience this in full swing.

  This made casters capable of utilizing and harnessing more energy in their attacks compared to warriors, however it made their attacks less solid. A caster and warrior of the same level can’t decide a winner. Just based on this. None had a major advantage. Sure a warrior would take more damage, but they naturally had higher resilience.

  Next came geography and political science. This one… it was interesting. Mostly it was how to negotiate. I was very blunt in all my approaches so this would either help me or make me struggle… Luckily these two hours were the last, meaning I got to go back to the tower right after.

  The two of us, I and Magnar, reached the tower first and I did not hesitate. I lit the forge and started working on the second dagger. No matter what, I needed the money. Midway through the process Cassia arrived too. She watched me and Magnar work. I was hammering Magnar maintaining the temperature with the bellow.

  After I quenched the blade, I stopped however. It was now time to start teaching, not to perfect the dagger to sell it…

  “That was loud… And my eyes hurt… Is this normal?” Asked Cassia concerned. I face palmed.

  “I should’ve told you to reinforce your eyes… You see the light from white hot metal is too intense and it can damage the eye when you look at it for too long. I’ll teach you how to do that too, It will help against luminous distraction or visual impairment attacks. Increases survivability…”

  “Alright!” Cassia almost skipped. Her steps were energetic, each one done with a small tiptoe raise. I shook my head at her cheerfulness, only I know how torturous this will be…

  “So first of all. I will explain to you the structure of what you will start dealing with. This is not what you will necessarily observe or find through your own individual training so bear with it.”

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  Both of them kept their eyes on me, unmoving. I could feel the aether gather under their focus, prickling my skin as the rate of absorption increased slightly. I stopped to process this piece of information. In the future, holding public speeches might turn out to be very fruitful…

  “Ahem!” I coughed a little returning from my considerations to reality. “So… The body has three main energetic reservoirs.”

  “Isn’t it just one?” Asked Cassia promptly.

  “Don’t interrupt me. I’m going to get there…” I took a deep breath, choosing my words carefully. “You see, when I talk about energy in this case, I don’t mean aether. Aether does not belong to us. It belongs to the universe and once we die it returns to the world.”

  “What I’m telling you about is far more fundamental and subtle. And it represents the fundamentals behind my certain growth technique. So, these three reservoirs are connected to each other. The lowest one contains basically physical essence, it is food and primordial force of life received from the parents.”

  “Then the middle one represents daily consumed energy, volatile and everchanging, the energy used everyday by the body, obtained from converting the energy from the lower reservoir. Similar for the upper one, only it contains our awareness or mental power. It determines how hard and long we can focus. This one as well gets its power from the reservoir below itself, from the middle reservoir. Clear until now?”

  Cassia nodded her head while Magnar waited a bit, thinking before giving the go ahead without asking anything.

  “So, aether is controlled through?”

  “Focus.” Both of them answered.

  “The method I have pursues heightening the mental power and focus. That is its entire purpose.”

  “But I have such a method already…”

  “But does it allow you to learn how to conserve mental power and hasten its generation and recovery?”

  “No…” She stopped commenting.

  “Now then. First order of things is to focus. Posture is important too. You need to stay upright, your back needs to be straight, as if you were hung from a string by your head. Right now, this is not mandatory, but later it will become a possible crucial thing to do, the difference in posture can determine whether one succeeds or not.”

  “Why is posture so important?” Magnar asked.

  “Because we’ll be dealing with channels in the body. Physical channels or energetic, intangible channels that rely on the alignment of the tissues in order to stay open. Besides this exercise has as one of the results, relaxation. If your posture is bad, you will fall over and hit yourself while in meditation. You don’t want that. Understood?”

  They both nodded.

  “Alright. Next. These three reservoirs are all interconnected. You have to understand that this entire mechanism works entirely by itself without any problem and it’s because of it that we keep being alive. I can’t impart to you the entire method, since it can be harmful to use during the young years, but through this you can start exploring it and accelerating its development and rate of conversion. You will hopefully learn how to keep and save your mental power. This will lead to its cumulation and strengthening.”

  “So… to begin with I want the two of you to close your eyes and focus in the middle of your heads. It will be easier if you focus your eyes so that they’d look to the point between your brows, where I touched you yesterday.” I pointed towards my own third eye area.

  The two followed my instructions. I waited a bit to see how they react to this, after all it’s not a normal eye position or idea. They followed through and waited further instructions.

  “While keeping the eyes in that position, concentrate on the point at the center of your head. Keep your focus there. For as long as you can. And don’t let it wander.”

  I waited until Cassia opened her eyes.

  “This does nothing!” She said. Her tone contained accusation and anger.

  “It gathers aether in the head, aether tends to nourish these bodily ‘energies’ After you can hold your attention on the spot, add deeper, longer, slower breaths. Ideally you want your breath to get so slow that you can barely feel it in your nostrils.”

  “After this, you should start relaxing the muscles between your legs… You need to breathe so deeply, that those muscles descend at each inhale, then ascend again at each expiration. Then, try thinking or trying to feel that point or a place near where you were keeping your focus swell on each breath.”

  “The best approach is if you feel it. It means you identified the center of the upper reservoir, and you should move your focus on the center of the swelling and keep it on that spot from then on. The more you do it, the easier it will be. At some point you will start feeling that gathering of energy continuously.”

  Cassia looked at me, one of her brows raised questioningly, but I was focused on Magnar. He did not stop throughout my explanation and was now slowing his breathing. His abdomen was inflating and retreating, yet judged from the way it did, Magnar would still have a way to go before doing the complete abdominal breathing, but this worked for now.

  Soon, his furrowed brows relaxed and his lips turned into a smile. He kept staying like that for ten minutes then opened his eyes looking at me happily.

  “I sensed the swelling!” He was beaming with happiness, while I was amazed. It took me three months to start matching focus and breath only, yet Magnar did it all in what? Twenty minutes? ‘It’s best not to compare to others, or the heart will be filled with sadness…’

  “Very well. Keep meditating like this. In a few months I will help you move on to sensing the rest. You, Magnar might actually not need my help…” I said, my voice low.

  “Cassia, you should try more and harder. We will talk next time more, after you get some experience.”

  We have sunk into silence for a bit, then Magnar spoke up. “Cassia, did you find out anything about the price? You know, for that array…”

  “Yes, it can go up to 10 gold coins depending on the one installing it and the location. I haven’t found someone capable of doing it yet, so I can’t say for sure.”

  “How many toilet stalls are in the dorms only?”

  “Around five per floor… six floors.”

  “That means three hundred gold on toilets alone. Do you really think they paid that much?”

  “No.” Cassia admitted.

  “I’ll take care of finding someone once I have some golds saved up. No need for you to worry about it. For now, just focus on this meditation. And try not to break through to Core formation. The method you have is flawed, I’ll explain next time why.”

  Back to the forge, to making daggers, that array and those materials to fix and build won’t buy themselves, nor will they fall from the sky. Or will they?

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  ?? Author's Question:

  Cato admits he views relationships as "anchors" that will only bring pain when he eventually transcends. Is this wisdom, or just fear from his past life disguising itself as logic?