Augus went back home after his talk with Dominic.

  After the info dump he gave him, Augus needed at least a day of digesting it all. Mainly the seemingly unimportant last comment from the instructor, like it wasn’t even important.

  “Right, before you go. You should also know that I’m going to be one guiding you in cultivation matters.”

  “Why sir?”

  “Because I can, and there’s no one else available.”

  “What do you mean sir, from what I know there’s lots of high level cultivators.”

  “There’s quite a few, yes but not lots and there’s even less World Makers. They all have their hands full on something and therefore have no time or the desire to instruct new Nascent Soul World Makers.

  I’m not a World Maker either but I’m all you will have, any questions from tomorrow. Go rest for today, it’s been an eventful day for you.”

  So now Augus was restlessly walking through his bedroom, without a cultivation technique there wasn’t much he could do. The project wouldn’t start until the next day and for any new idea he needed to know what the recruits needed.

  As such Augus just paced around in his room thinking about what he could do, he could get together with a few friends to drink, his breakthrough was excuse enough.

  But no, his mind was too scattered to maintain a conversation, too much information to think about.

  He couldn’t even sleep as his body barely needed it by this stage, a few hours in meditation would see him even fresher than what an 8 hours of sleep could, the spiritual energy coursing through his body should revitalize.

  The idea of getting together with his friends did give him something to do. Informing his friends of the good news even without having a drink was a good idea.

  So Augus started sending messages to his contacts, a curated selection though. Not all of them were still close friends of him, his actual group were only about 7 people and they were the ones he sent the news to. The rest would know by these seven, Augus didn’t want to face their envy, because he knew they would be. They were envious when Augus reached top of the class, one of the main reasons why they weren’t close anymore.

  After parsing his contacts he came up with Jean’s, she wasn’t really a close friend og his, but she could be so she let her know.

  While the rest of his friends were too busy to answer Jean answered almost instantly with a call.

  “Hey Jean”

  “Hey Augus, congrats. Didn’t expect you to breakthrough so soon.”

  “Got a bit lucky.” He didn’t add anymore, commenting about one’s cultivation was only done between lovers and close family.

  “So, um, will you be celebrating?”

  “I don’t think so, I can’t really focus on having a conversation right now.”

  “Oh, why’s that?”

  “I got an info dump about how future cultivation will be like.”

  “The debrief, it’s a standard breakdown they do for the new Nascent Soul in the project from what I have heard.” So that meant Instructor Dominic is quite entangled with the project, which considering what happened in the headquarters is actually obvious.

  Jean’s question pulled Augus back from his stupor, maybe he should sleep. “Did you choose a cultivation technique already?”

  “No, I’m going to participate on an assignment and was told to choose one after I get the points from it.”

  “You accepted an assignment already???”

  “Technically I accepted it before it was an assignment. The instructor I chose from our assignment with the military proposed one to me.”

  “Weren’t we supposed to meet them next month?”

  “He approached early, he said it was to get to know each other better beforehand. Though I’m pretty sure it was to take care of annoying paperwork.”

  “Ha, I hope you get along well with… what’s his name?”

  “It’s Instructor Dominic, a formation’s Master.”

  “Mine’s a Master too, though I haven’t met her. I do know her name, Monica, no last name though.”

  The conversation started dying out from there, they didn’t know each other enough to keep talking without end. When Augus was about to say his goodbyes Jean asked him something.

  “Right, have you talked with your spirit yet?”

  “You can talk with them?”

  “Yeah, though at Nascent Soul they aren’t that smart so don’t expect much.”

  “Well, I will talk with them now.”

  “Oh, goodbye then.”

  “See you later.”

  Okay, maybe sleeping wasn’t a suggestion but a need, after hanging up Augus actually decided to rest instead of keep going, if he thought about it he had been going since the day before his breakthrough. Meaning his body wouldn’t reject him going to sleep, no cultivation induced insomnia at this point.

  So Augus went to sleep, didn’t even dream.

  Probably because he slept for barely four hours yet he woke up refreshed, which made the situation a frustrating mix of a well rested body and mind and the desire to sleep more, even if not needed.

  After releasing a frustrated sigh Augus got into position and dived into his Inner World to check upon his new Spirit assistant.

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  Who he found in the exact middle of his working area, in a meditation position, exactly the same Augus just made to focus and enter this space. Though a few seconds after Augus entered, the Spirit opened it’s eyes and stood up, he promptly approached Augus and greeted him.

  “Hello Master Augus.” The grin with which he said it let Augus know two things, first, the little bastard will be a pain to deal with as he seems to know his pressure points. And second, his Spirit is definitely smarter than usual, this one’s good, even if not for his mood for his projects.

  “Hello Assistant?”

  “You have to give me a name you ignoramus. Unless you want me to disappear, which judging by your look translates to me shutting up.”

  “You better. Look I’m not good with names so tell me which one you like. Alex?, Dipper?, Richard?, Chris?, Xiaofeng?, Chia-chia?-” “Fuck you are bad at this. Here’s a list, I made in my free time, choose one.”

  “You dare call me bad at names? Sunshine?, Rainbow? Strawberry? What are you, a movie’s hooker?”

  “Hey! They aren’t that bad!”

  “You named yourself things, Assistant, I don’t think it gets worse than that.”

  The spirit started sulking, though that passed quickly as something seemed to occur to him.

  “You suggested Dipper, right?”

  “… Right”

  With a shit-eating grin on his her face she said. “Then call me Maple.”

  It seemed Augus not thinking it was a bad name was all it took for his Inner World to accept it and recognize Maple as the newest resident Spirit. This triggered a change in the Spirit’s body, though it retained Augus’s face all the other details changed to look like a woman’s.

  She now looked like Augus’s twin sister, little sister, considering technically he created her and he wouldn’t stand being treated like the little brother, even if they weren’t related. After the transformation finished Augus looked at Maple again and just started laughing in her face. “Are you sure you are a woman? I’m pretty sure I have bigger boobs than yours, are you negative A in bra size?”

  “I would have actual boobs if I wanted them, they are just useless pieces of meat.”

  “And your ass is not?”

  “It’s our ass, I barely changed it.”

  “…”

  Now Maple was snickering, she knew that would mess with Augus, payback.

  “Fuck. Okay, clean slate, let’s start from the beginning. Hello I’m Augus, you are Maple, nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you Master.” Considering she probably would call him names if she could, calling Augus ‘Master’ seems to be enforced. Small wins.

  “So, what are you exactly? From what I have been told you are not supposed to be… this smart yet.”

  “The fuck I know, I was just born, how do you expect to know shit?”

  Despite her appearance her personality was her own, Augus isn’t that rude, which was actually relieving for Augus.

  If the Spirit was a copy of Augus it would be nightmare fuel for questions about the self or consciousness.

  “Hah, can you tell what you can do then? As a Spirit Assistant.”

  “Yeah, I can do your work and better.”

  “How do you know better?”

  “I know what you have build in here and it’s inefficient as fuck. How the fuck do you need spiritual energy to sustain dirt?”

  “But everything needs sustain in here!” From all the Worlds Augus had made during school and since he knew that everything one created in their Inner World needed spiritual energy to sustain itself, no exceptions (spiritual energy itself not counting of course).

  “Well, maybe not zero but if you weren’t so bad at it the energy cost would be really close.”

  Considering that Augus needed her help he reduced his snappiness ,“So, how can I become better at it?”

  Maple seemed to notice and also calmed down. “In simple terms, you have to understand better what you are trying to make. For example, dirt, with the way you are currently creating it the spiritual energy has to “fill the gaps” of the dirt you create. The less difference there is between the real thing and what you are trying to make, the less energy required to sustain it.”

  “So to create a stone plate for example, I have to study geology?”

  “No you dimwit, you grab a real slab of stone and a created slab of stone and you compare. The normal materials are the easiest to optimize, while anything that contains spiritual energy is harder, it doesn’t matter what it is, if it has spiritual energy it’s going to be hard to optimize.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because when creating it the spiritual energy of the material will become indistinguishable from the spiritual energy that’s filling the gaps in your creation.”

  “You said hard, not impossible.”

  “Trial and error, the adjustment closer to the real thing will consume less energy.”

  “Then let’s start with the basics, dirt, stone and wood. I just need to grab the real thing and try to imitate it?”

  “Kinda, what you want is to make the material logical, it may be better or it may be worse than the original, but the less logical it is the more spiritual energy it requires.”

  “Because harder dirt doesn’t mean better dirt, rather different dirt.”

  Maple looked insultingly (for Augus) surprised by his inference. “You basically got it right, though extremes do make a difference, if you make dirt too hard or too soft it stops being dirt, if it’s logical it still works but you won’t be able to grow even weeds on it, as it becomes more like stone or quicksand than dirt.”

  “So semantics. For my approaching project I would need to know the terrain to copy it so for now common dirt.”

  As he said it Augus left his Inner World and prepared for a new session of training.