"Cunning is the first, since you need to outwit your opponent most of the time…and hitting first…I think. If you hit someone first, you have the inherent advantage, since they would be fighting with a distraction, while you would not. The exception is...harder…" he sat forward and rubbed his chin.
"Sit up straight." a thin, short zap of electricity arced between them and shocked Gareth.
He jolted briefly, winced, and because of the jolt: sat up much straighter.
Continuing as if this were normal, because after more than 6 months of instruction, it was, Gareth cleared his throat, then continued, "As I was saying: I think it's best to be cunning, don't do what your enemy expects because then you give them the chance to counter-attack. The second was to just straight-up hit first; an opponent who is defending is vulnerable. They only needed to stumble once for me to land a hit, whereas I only needed to succeed once. The exception would be luck, I think. So many times someone got iced because CorpSec showed up due a random patrol, someone would slip when the guard walked around a corner, or just because we didn't see a fricken camera. The randomness of a chaotic fight would make the difference."
Guanji nodded proudly, "You were spot on with luck being the third factor, and I particularly enjoyed your reasoning. But cunning and hitting first are not the main factors of victory. Both of those could be outclassed by one simple ability…"
He leaned forward to emphasise, "A person's ability to take a hit, and take that hit from someone who knows where to hit, so that it would cripple. Yes, to some extent cunning plays a role, but cunning without the ability to enact that intelligence, without the willpower to be more aggressive than your opponent, will not get you far. It simply does not matter who hits first, if the other can take a hit better than your strongest attack."
Guanji absently picked up a scaldingly hot piece of iron from one of the nearby forges to prove his point. He waved it about for a second, "Grab onto this iron rod like this and you would lose your hand. I can absorb any ability you might throw out." He casually tossed the red-hot steel rod back into the forge and returned to where he was leaning against an anvil.
There were a total of sixteen coal forges, all lay abandoned. Each forge took up roughly 5 yards of space, including an impressively large, intricately designed metal anvil. Each forge was made of nearly pitch-black blocks of stone, with a hole in the bottom to feed it coal.
"In the lower tiers - mana runs out, stamina dries up, and people can only heal so fast. At the higher tiers it takes a lot to kill a cultivator - you will see after your ascension - and it is often the ability to outlast an opponent, that will be the deciding factor of a fight. This is why immortality and regeneration are such impressively powerful abilities.” Guanji clapped his hands together, “In light of this, we will be going over the various races and where their vitals lie. In the coming months I will be teaching you where to hit any Sethnari where it would cripple them, and I will be teaching you to outlast any opponent. Due to your past, and the training you have received from Oliver, I think you are already extremely advanced in endurance training, which is why we will be training that afterwards."
Gareth was very happy with not having to spend 15 grueling hours a day exercising, the past few months have been rough, "Does that mean we are done with weapon training?"
"No, it does not. You will be learning how to spot, exploit, and attack each weak point with every weapon you have trained with so far. Route training is one thing, execution is an entirely different matter. Liken it to how basic weapon training was learning the alphabet, and now we will be learning how to put it all together into words. And one day, when you are proficient in speaking…" a devilish smile creeped across his face, "I will teach you to sing."
"Yes, master." Gareth executed a slight bow while seated, his own excited smile spread across his face.
The past six months had passed relatively quietly. Gareth’s practise with Oliver involved a lot of basic katas with 6 variations of swords, various maces, axes, and bows, knives, daggers, shields, and using your armour effectively. It was all very Beginner, but interesting stuff that, if taken individually, was a better education than most Exec schools could give. After becoming proficient with a veritable arsenal of weapons, Gareth had an intimate understanding not only of their functions, but the functions of his own body and how it kinetics.
Of the weapons he trained, he found that he enjoyed the bow for its range; katana for its cutting power and fluidity of motion; the spear for its piercing and reach; wakizashi for its close-quarters fighting; and a war axe for its versatility as a weapon and tool. He had not chosen a specialty, though. He also liked the complexity of the rope dart, though saw that as a long term project.
It was frustrating because each time Gareth awakened a new bloodline, his fighting style had to adjust, which kept slowing down his progress towards mastery. He had, through literal blood sweat and tears, unlocked the Novice mastery in multiple fields of study that fully incorporated his new bloodline abilities.
He’d unlocked some seriously interesting bloodlines in the intervening months. He'd averaged one bloodline per month - with a two month break - and they had each presented their own unique challenges.
His blood had been easiest, as it practically guzzled the monster core essence. His skeleton had repelled the mana with its density and took nearly seven cycles of nearly continuous fricken effort to fully infuse. Bone may have been slow to absorb his mana, but was able to contain oh-so-much more essence than any of his other systems. Consuming nearly double the amount of monster cores than his other infusions.
Infusing his muscles had been hilariously difficult as well, considering each little infusion caused his fibres to tickle and jump, though the cramps had sucked balls. Finally, his skin had been the most unnervingly irritating, because it felt like something was crawling under his skin, while he broke out in hives, and itching patches of eczema. Infusing his skin was verging awfully close to the final system he would need to infuse as his tactile sensitivity very nearly drove him insane for weeks!
He called up his stat sheet to remind himself of how far he'd come.
Name: Gareth Elson
Race: Human
Cultivation:
- Body (9)
Mana to next level:
- 100 (Beast core)
Currency:
- 60 copper
- 17 silver
Talent: [Blessed by Life]
Bloodlines:
The first step on the path to immortality, you have chosen to walk the path of Body Cultivation. Trust in your body for if it is nurtured, strengthened, cultivated, then it will never fail you. Bone will never break, muscle will never tear, and in the forges of fate your power shall be tempered. May your bloodline be strong.
Stomach: Agni
- Purifying fire
Liver/kidneys: Quetzalcoatl
- Serpents might
Lungs: Vahagn
- Breath of the Vishap
- Breath of Victory
Heart: Moryana
- Glacial heart
- Volgan gale
Blood: Odin
- Knowledge is power
Bones: Baldr
- Bane of Mistletoe
- Emit light
Muscles and tendons: Atlas
- Exacting strength
- Plus Ultra
Skin: Morpheus
- Dreamscape
- Sleep touch
Traits (Passive):
Blessed by life: As an extra-dimensional traveler, the Elder gods have granted you the [Blessed by Life] trait. You are physically immortal and will regenerate from all physical injuries, age, and diseases if provided sufficient time and resources. Regeneration rate: +15%.
Demonic infusion: Your body has been slightly tempered by Demonic mana. You have gained resistance to demonic mana. (1/?)
Stormic infusion: Your Skin, Muscles, and Tendons have been tempered by Stormic mana. Your eyes have received a partial forging. You have gained resistance to stormic mana. Your body will passively absorb atmospheric storm mana. Directed attacks made, will now be infused with 5% Stormic mana.(3/?)
Purifying fire: The fires of Agni will purge most toxins directly affecting the digestive tract.
Essence digestion: The fires of Agni will increase the integration of beast core essence by 30%.
Serpents might: Poison resistance, 50% increased organ regeneration speed.
Breath of the Vishap: Water Breathing.
Breath of Victory: 45% increased endurance.
Glacial heart: Fire resistance, increased endurance.
Knowledge is power: When fighting an opponent - the longer your opponent is observed, the more apparent their weaknesses will become. Tasting a creature’s blood will allow you to relive one of their recent memories, consuming more blood may grant more memories.
Bane of Mistletoe: Massively increased durability.
Exacting strength: Increased muscle density and mass. Precise muscular control. Tendon tensile strength and elasticity increased.
Dreamscape: ???
Abilities (Active):
Breath of Vahagn: At will, Exhale a cloud of damaging mana in the form of water, fire, or steam. (3 uses: recovered over 3 hours).
Volgan Gale: The winds of Moryana may speed you on your way. At will, drastically increase your movement speed for one minute, at the cost of high stamina.
Emit light: At will, Emit a soft light from your whole/any part of your body.
Plus Ultra: Voluntarily exert enough strength to push past the point where damage would start accumulating.
Sleep touch: 60% chance to inflict [sleep] on creatures of your tier or lower. Percentage decreases with an upwards tier disparity.
Skills:
Meditation mastery: Apprentice 5
First principle - Awareness: Allows deeper insight into the Self.
Second Principle - Stillness: Brings calm, allows you to somewhat mute intense emotions.
Blade mastery: Novice 3
First principle - Let it glide: the lighter your blade glides across a surface, the more likely it is to cut deeply.
Shield mastery: Beginner 2
Polearm Mastery:
First principle - Pierce: You are now able to see and exploit the weakest point of any familiar material or substance. This does not necessarily equate to being able to damage said material.
Bludgeoning mastery: Beginner 7
Ranged mastery: Beginner 9
Armour mastery: Beginner 9
Improvised mastery: Novice 0
First principle - Anything is a weapon: By holding an object you are able to intuitively estimate its balance point, its hardest/sharpest edge/point, its tearing poundage, and durability.
Athleticism mastery: Beginner 8
Stealth mastery: Beginner 9
Feeling mentally prepared, Gareth nodded to the seated Guanji, who removed another beast core from his spatial ring and tossed it to Gareth.
Quite down with the process at this point, Gareth caught the white core and swallowed it. Already in the right mental state to delve inwards with his spiritual perception, as he'd learned it was called.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
He immediately felt the essence spread out through his stomach. He used his [purifying fire] trait to completely absorb and align the essence in the core to his own internal signature, thus minimising lost essence.
Apparently, cultivators without an internal stomach trait like he had, experienced mana bleeding when cultivating. This sometimes forced them to use multiple beast cores, just to get enough essence to level up. Like how some materials were resistant to electricity and couldn't perfectly conduct it, manipulating essence or mana caused bleed-off.
He guided the glowing string of golden mana as if it were molten glass. Leading it through his stomach lining - past his infused internal organs, bones, and muscles - and brushed it against the Vagus nerve.
The moment the heated essence brushed against the sensitive nerve, he cried out, his concentration broken like snapped glass, "Kgaaa! Shhhit!"
It felt like someone was freezing, burning, electrocuting, and cutting that spot on his spine, simultaneously. It hurt like a motherfucker, and it was hard to keep hold of his focus.
"I told you it would be difficult." Guanji said while smirking, "This is why the brain was left for last. If your body is not infused, and you lose control, the damage of uncontrolled mana rampaging through your body would be catastrophic. Now it will only cause minor damage.”
Nodding with a small shiver, Gareth swallowed heavily and once again focused inwards.
He grabbed a small strand of mana in his stomach and guided it through his veins, all the way to his pinkie finger. He chose there because he reasoned it would be less painful if he lost control than say…his whole fucki’n spine!
Lol! What was I thinking starting there?!
Again, it felt like someone was burning, freezing, and cutting his pinkie finger. But it was a pinky, so he could live with it. He infused from his finger upwards, into his palm, into the rest of his fingers, up his forearm and into his upper arm. That was where he had to take a break.
It wasn't necessary to infuse everything at the same time, he could take breaks, but the quicker he did it, the quicker the consistent burning, freezing, and cutting sensations would stop.
So, he waited for the extreme rush of sensations to calm down before he continued. Whereas his skin and bones had ached to infuse, and had caused tactile over-sensitivity over time, this shit just gave him a headache after little more than 20 minutes.
Guanji spoke up in that lul of recovery, "How are you faring?"
"I think it's going well. It's weird because all the previous body parts purposely excluded the nerves, so I couldn't really feel what was happening. The nerves are like putting your hand in a pot of boiling water…which is full of swirling razors and connected to an electrical socket. Then it just breaks my concentration.”
"I see. I wish I could say it gets easier as you progress, but it only becomes harder. Your enhanced nerves will keep overstimulating your brain's ability to process the sensations, until you finally enhance your brain. This is why the nerves and the brain are kept for last."
"Then I better get on with it." Gareth joked and focused inwards once again.
He took another 'thread' of mana and started doing the same thing he had done, except on his left arm.
It took 3 agonizing cycles of careful, and horrifically painful effort, before he finished with his entire body, and at that point he was really feeling it.
Every caress of wind across his skin, every brush of cloth, and every flush of temperature felt like that sensation - taken to the extreme. He was being buffeted by gales, experiencing rapid shifts between hypothermia and heatstroke. It was hellish, and he hadn't even started with his primary senses yet.
When he fully infused his entire body, besides his eyes, nose, tongue, and brain, Master Guanji asked Gareth to pause so that he could thoroughly explain the next phase.
Guanji scooted closer, talking in a low voice, "Now, I will help you guide the essence through your brain. It would be catastrophic if mana raged through your head, hence why I will be taking direct control of the essence. It will feel strange, like someone else is moving your limbs for you, but do not fight it. It is incredibly hard to manipulate mana inside of someone else's body. And if you fight, you will be able to break even my considerable control." He smiled gently. He really had that grandfather coded energy.
"Okay, let's do this then."
"Very good. Before we start, though, absorb this beast core." He said and held out another beast core.
"But I still have enough mana to infuse my head?"
"You do. But due to the sensitivity of your eyes, nose, mouth and ears, the stimulation will consistently overwhelm your mind's ability to process. Meaning I will have to control the most difficult part myself. Meaning there will be a lot of mana lost in the process due to inefficiencies in technique."
"Ah, so the infusion is likely going to be intense?" He asked, keeping his body as still as possible, but the spike in anxiety made his pulse thunder through his body, like standing next to a speaker at a Leviathan concert.
"Of course. I am telling you this not with the intention of scaring you, but because I wish you to prepare yourself mentally to overcome it. It will feel like you are being blinded, deafened, and the amount of input you will be receiving from your nose and mouth will nauseate you. This is why I will be guiding you through most of the process. No matter how strong your concentration, it is impossible to focus through such a large amount of stimulation. This is normally the duty of parents, mentors, and guardians."
He looked off into space, his eyes becoming shaded by a subtle grief, "To help their children take the first step into a very dangerous world - voluntarily putting them into danger as preparation. Because you know to do otherwise, is to doom them..."
He focussed back on Gareth, his eyes solemn, "One day you will have a child, a pupil, or a ward. It will be your responsibility to safely guide them, as I have guided you, through this sacred rite of passage. Once you walk out of this temple, you will have officially stepped into the realm of cultivation, the Jianghu. It is a dangerous society where strength, power, and willpower are valued above all else. You must proudly represent whatever family, master, city, sect, or empire of which you bear the crest. Face and reputation are more valuable than currency, because that is what will grant you resources and strength. Take now this first step. Absorb the core. And like so many gods before you, start down the sacred Dao...of Body cultivation."
Gareth felt the weight of the situation. The realisation that this wasn't some game where he frivolously levelled up. It was a world of intricate social customs, spanning generations upon generations of history, culture, and societal rules. These people, these cultivators, had entirely different sets of values to South African Terrans. He had been here for only 8 months now, but had come to realise that head nods, glances, hand gestures, and many mannerisms held entirely different meanings.
He looked forward to learning the customs of a people, so different from his own. He looked forward to mastering combat. He wanted to roam the world, freely, with the strength and skill to be the strongest thing in any given area, yet not abuse that power. To bring some good into the world, so that families were not driven to killing their brothers, sons, or sisters.
He would start with Ellisandra, and keep her safe because she’s a cool chick, but he would eventually move on and explore every nook and cranny of this giant space tree.
With that feeling of excitement burning in his chest, with the weight of responsibility on his shoulders, and with a knot of tension for fear of what the future might hold, Gareth swallowed the next core and started cultivating.
He gently grabbed a-hold of the essence in his stomach, yet as he moved it to his mouth he felt the weirdest sensation envelop his hold of the essence. If his 'control around it' was like a cupped hand, it felt like his hand had been dipped in a warm, viscous molasses-like substance.
It felt weird and he tried to shake it off, and was almost broken out of his meditative state by Guanji gently reprimanding him, "If you want this to work, then you must allow me to control the flow of energy, Gareth."
Giving a minute nod of his head, he manipulated the mana again, and once he felt that disconcerting feeling again, he didn't fight it off. Feeling it guide him, he relaxed control of the energy - only for the energy to lash out against the inside of his stomach.
He frantically scrambled to get it back under control, and managed to do so with only mild internal damage.
Once again, Guanji gently reprimanded him, "It is still you controlling the energy, Gareth. I am merely a guiding hand, ensuring that in your moments of utter overstimulation you have a lighthouse to guide you to your destination."
Heaving a stressed breath Gareth nodded, "Not to sound disrespectful, master, but couldn't you have told this to me before we started?"
"The concepts are so foreign and hard to explain that I have found it better to let students make mistakes and learn from them as we go. While potentially painful, the mistakes you can make in the first tier of cultivation are almost never deadly. Most beginners make the same mistakes, so I have learned what to expect and would have warned you, had you done something dangerous."
Feeling only slightly better, because now he knew shit could still go wrong, Gareth started up for the third time. Luckily third time's the charm, because he managed to get past the weird feeling and maintain control of his mana. He moved it to his mouth.
Taste exploded across his tongue. It burned at the tip, like he'd just licked a hot-pot of liquid chilly-oil, sourness made his mouth salivate uncontrollably, and the sides of his mouth puckered. He could barely taste a sweetness in the air, but by far the strongest was a bitterness on the back of his tongue. It was so powerful that he gagged and vomited a little. Then the taste of sour, bitter bile coated his tongue, and he fully cotched.
It spewed out of his mouth, but instead of splattering all across his and Guanji's fronts, it was swept into a floating ball of disgustingness.
Guanji still exhibited the ability to control strange fluids, it seemed, because the ball of vom-vom floated away and disintegrated.
"That always happens. Keep going." Guanji said mercilessly, handing him a fresh-tasting plant leaf to chew and swallow. The minty leaf sent a cooling sensation through his mouth and sinuses, which pleased him immensely because it cleansed the taste of bile in his mouth and eased the burn in his throat.
Almost rushing, Gareth quickly completed his mouth Infusion. He quickly moved to the nose, to a very similar result. Smells he had never thought to smell assaulted him, and he realised just how much he stank. Luckily, the plant leaf helped.
Next were the ears, then finally the eyes.
It was horrific, and near the end he was just blindly moving energy where the guiding hand led him, while a booming cannon right behind his ears kept beating with his thundering heartbeat.
When he finally finished with his eyes, he was a quivering, vomit covered mess - convulsing on the floor, while a migraine to end all migraines split his skull.
While sounding like an atomic bomb exploding, Guanji whispered as quietly as he could, "We must continue to the brain if this is to end. Push on. Prove your strength."
Gareth forcefully unclenched his stomach, and straightened out of the foetal position. He would do this, because of everyone, he couldn't die trying. This torment would never end lest he change his situation himself. He realised very long ago that other people weren't going to save him, he had to take his fate into his own hands.
So he did.
With a quivering mental hand he grabbed a small strand of mana, and tentatively gilded it over his frontal cortex.
-
He would have flopped over if Guanji hadn't used some sort of energy field to keep him in place; because he lost all control of his motor functions. His mouth started mumbling unintelligible words without his permission, and Gareth completely lost track of himself.
This was why each person had to be guided for their first brain infusion. Guanji winced internally as Gareth became almost completely animalistic and dazed. If not for him, the process would have failed immediately, and Gareth would have persisted eternally as a vegetable.
The boy assured him that no matter the injury, he could regenerate. Yet Guanji would not risk taking chances. The brain is a complex organ, and Gareth might not die, but he could potentially be mentally impaired. Few people were ever brave, or stupid, enough to do their first brain infusion outside of a System temple. Accidents, even with expert guidance, still happened in the very complex and disruptive procedure, that no one would be able to survive.
Gareth would be the first case Guanji was aware of, where the breakthrough happened in a deity's temple.
Gareth had long since lost consciousness, so Guanji carefully took hold of his internal essence and tried to guide the process. It was slow, wasteful in essence, and Gareth died multiple times because his brain just could not handle the strain of what was happening to it. With a final, relieved sigh, Guanji finished with the cerebellum.
Now he would just have to wait, and see what happened…
Guanji, a tier 6 elder that could destroy this entire city if he so wished, was not fast enough to stop the process, and could only watch in stunned horror as Gareth’s body bulged, deformed, and finally exploded in a rain of blood and gore. Too stunned to do anything Guanji was splashed, along with a 20 yard area around Gareth.
“W-what?!” he stood shakily and walked a few steps, to where Gareth had once sat. Where now only a wriggling pile of flesh remained. He didn't know what to do.
In a state of shock, he used his hands to try and scoop his promising disciple back into one piece, but it was useless. Gareth was gone.
A hand, gentle and scaled, grasped his bicep and attempted to pull Guanji away, “Come child, he will survive, but you must-”
“Who DARES?!” he bellowed and pulsed his aura, careful not to damage Gareth’s flesh pile, but the rest of the forge was flattened by his auric technique alone. He whirled on the offending touch faster than lightning, but found no-one, “W-what?” he asked in confusion. Dumbstruck for the second time in what had been a relatively predictable century. But then it clicked.
He immediately fell to his knees, “Great Dragon! Forgive this one’s foolish, brash actions."
He performed a frantic kowtow. For many minutes he remained there, not willing to move until he had been given leave. Aevur knew this, Guanji knew this, and the divine dragon left him there as punishment for a whole half an hour.
At length, he felt a gentle hand on the back of his head, “Rise, supplicant.”
The voice was incredibly ancient, older than time and bore the weight of having seen mountains turn to sand, rivers run dry, and chaotic floods that brought the rebirth of life. It had seen endless cycles of winter, summer, Dawn, Dusk, Noon and Midnight. Ephemerally vast in its deepness, the voice wobbled like flame, and burbled as molten rock.
Guanji would not dare gaze upon his godly visage directly, so he carefully rose to his unsteady feet, bowing deep at the waist. When he spoke, Guanji’s voice had the timbre of fear tinting his throat, and tears threatened to prickle in his eyes.
“Oh Great Flame, I beseech thee, grant me the wisdom…to help my disciple. If not, I beg that a Great One intercedes. Please, heal him.”
A tear fell from a devastated master, and from one master to another Aevur granted his mercy.
“Leave thine charge in my care. My domain shall safeguard his soul.”
Guanji was not so foolish as to show any form of discontent, even in his aura, so he once again kowtowed, “This one thanks The Great Dragon for his generosity.”
“Your devotion is payment enough.” Guanji felt a puff of breath from the great bellows of his lungs, the scent of burning coal and smelting steel enveloping him like a crafter called home. He felt a giant, scaly, warm, hand rest on the back of his head.
Guanji had never actually spoken to one of the gods before and was thankful for that fact, as he felt a shiver run up his spine. His touch was gentle, like that of a grandfather, but his voice was strong, demanding, and had an undercurrent of violent confidence.
Guanji still daren’t look up, so he hurried backwards down the path back to Volun…he needed to inform Margrave of this development.