Power didn’t come easy. Those who sought after it either died or covered their hands in blood. The pathway forward would be no different for me. I inspected my friends’ remains and then at myself. I would walk that pathway a thousand times for them… for her.

My eyes lingered on my ray of light. Call it cheesy or cliche. I didn’t care. I could still feel her flame burning within my soul. Lana meant the world to me; I would do anything to save her. It was what the man in the ice wanted; that was why he willingly accepted his fate.

“So, how does this work?” I asked the memory fragment.

“It is complicated.”

I couldn’t see Squids, but I could sense his presence in my mind. He tethered himself to my soul. Creating soul bonds without compliance was a glaring red flag, not that I wasn’t already concerned about the flayen. Unfortunately, I was still at a disadvantage here. Squids had information, and I didn’t know how to force it out of him… or if anything he said held truth. Stubbornly, I waited for more information.

“It was difficult to get the transference to work. Your mind was too weak when we started and needed to be expanded. As much as you protest against my presence, I am the reason you are free.”

“That’s funny. You didn’t seem to help me at all when I was trapped in the abyss.”

“How do you think you ranked up three levels? Squids asked rhetorically, in a matter-of-factly tone. “I increased your intelligence and wisdom. I created the conditions to preserve your dying body. I brought you into your mindscape so that you could scrape by more than a few measly breaths of life. It was my tampering that allowed your soul to find a new host. I am the reason you no longer suffer on the pike. I am the reason for the loop and I am the reason you have any semblance of hope to save your friends.”

I averted my gaze from my staked body and shifted my feet. Death mana lingered in the air. It was so dense, I could almost see the pale gray energy. I felt out of place, and it wasn’t just because of my new body. As much as I wanted to claim that I was responsible for my new life, I knew Tenty was right.

“Why do I no longer return to the spike or my mindscape when I die?” I died a few times already in an attempt to return to my friends sooner. Each death brought me back to where I stood now, a few feet away from my iced body.

“The mind is more powerful than you give it credit. It has a way of—creating shorter paths to get to its end goal, for lack of better words. In your case, transference is the goal. For you, it feels immediate, there is much more to it than that, but all you need to know is that this is as fast as you can transfer at your current level. As long as you can keep your body alive, you can keep living. When it dies, you will be reset back to this spot.”

“How much more power do I need to transfer faster?”

“The power of mages.”

“You’re telling me I need to touch the heavens?” I may be at the top of the lancer realm in terms of cultivation, but that was the lowest realm. Before I made it to the realm of mages I would need to pass the realms of templars and sages. And just as the lancer realm had several ranks, each of the others had their own ranks I would need to progress through, and between those ranks were several levels.

Calamari chuckled. “The heavens? No. You will live among the stars. You will be a star devourer.”

I tried to imagine the path forward. Toppling mages sounded unrealistic. If Alderi’s Population Records were accurate, less than two percent of all cultivators reached the realm of sages. Mages were a fraction of that percentage. To reach the top, I would have to swim through death… the same as any mage.

“What happens when this body dies?” I motioned to my cloned body. Whether the motion helped, Cal seemed to understand.

“Souls transcend time. You will return to this time, but you will retain all your cultivation, including all of your essences.

“A devourer of stars… So what happened to you?”

“In time, you will learn everything about me—my existence, people, purpose, and failures. For now, you need to focus on yourself. Before you can reach the heavens, you must climb mountains.” The presence of Tenty I felt in my mind dampened.

“Hey, you still there? I still have questions… What about loops—I mean recursions? Tents?” I kicked the dirt in response to the silence I received. Soggy’s son of a goat.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

I remained skeptical of Tenty. For one, he was a bipedal octopus. I was pretty confident about my ocean knowledge; octopi weren’t amphibious. They were strictly aquatic. Tenty and his people went against nature. If that didn’t spell fishy…

The Deliverer be damned. I didn’t know how to finish the expression. I butchered the start, and there was no recovery.

The point was, Fishy was too responsive to be a memory fragment. That meant he lied to me from the start and withheld information. He dangled himself as bait and was dragging me along.

So no, I wouldn’t trust Tenty, but I also died in this spot two hundred times. Now, I was off the stake and staring at my frozen body. I didn’t know what to believe, honestly. Cultivating was the only sensible thing to do.

I was fully aware that I was cultivating in the blood of my friends. My own actions repulsed me. This graveyard was the last place I wanted to be. However, efficient cultivation of mana required two factors: an abundance of mana and seclusion.

Dying had a way of changing perspectives. Was cultivating here wrong? Yes. Was it gross? Yeah. It smelled terrible, too. But there was also an absurd amount of mana lingering here—death, water, life, light, and earth practically swirled in the air. It’d be a waste to leave this power behind.

Besides, if I didn’t cultivate this mana, either spirit beasts or the forest would.

The Bloodwoods were seventy miles away from the nearest town, Tom’s Pond. The small farming village was under the ownership of a sage who had since passed away. Tom was an earth cultivator who spent a hundred years in service to the Alderi Empire. His son, Tommy, and a few family friends were now running the farm town.

The pond, a small mountain lake, housed a rare fish known only to most avid anglers. No one traveled to Tom’s Pond, and if they did, they didn’t leave the pond; the insignificant town didn’t even have a portal. Residents dared not explore the Bloodwoods because of the spirit beast.

Though Tom may have been a sage, his son and the townsfolk were mere pages—low-ranking cultivators.

My conditions were prime for cultivation. I had seclusion and I had an abundance of mana. Water cycled through my channels. The mana was cool, malleable, and refreshing. The light blue energy was also refreshing, and when I cycled it, I found myself in a passive state of mind. It was like a wave in the ocean; my only purpose was to be.

I pictured a cozy chair; it reclined and supported the legs, arms, and head. I locked in the picture and willed the mana cycle inside me to conform to my thoughts. Water formed into the chair. I made a couple of adjustments and then froze the design.

On my frozen throne, I cycled my mana, expanding it outside of my channels. Water circulated around me. I expanded the cyclone and increased the speed of its rotation. By creating a vacuum, I pulled the ambient mana toward me. The various manas collected into my funnel. I cycled them around me, stripping them of their essence and turning them into water.

The process of refining mana depended on the energy bound to the cultivator’s soul—fire purified, earth eroded, air weathered, water corroded, darkness smothered, light amplified, life bonded, and death… death just reaped.

Night gave way to day, and day followed night. All the while, I maintained my focus on gathering and corroding mana. With the mana I had absorbed, my soul was at quarter capacity. Within three more days of cultivation, I’d break through to the next rank—becoming a knight. My mind was single to the task. There was plenty of mana for me to gather. I just had to collect it.

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My soul exploded with mana. I’d collected enough water energy to break through my third layer, and now my fourth layer was being filled. I was officially a knight. Knights were the top-tier lancers. Empires heavily pursued them, trying to add them to their armies as captains. Guilds offered them immense bounties. Nobles sought after them to be their guards.

Power coursed through my channels. I had a fundamental understanding of my bond with water. Upon achieving a new level in my cultivation of water mana, I gained profound insights that transformed my understanding and abilities:

My ability to freeze water was based on my molecular empathy. I could empathize with water on a molecular level, allowing for precise manipulation of its state and properties. When I froze water, I changed the molecules from their natural flowing state to one of rest. Water had another state of hyper-activity.

I formed an orb of water and increased the energy of the molecules. My orb boiled, and I could feel its need to expand. I allowed the water to claim its freedom, creating a cloud of steam. Just as I could manipulate ice, I could manipulate the steam. I whisked it around, added more mana, and then let it settle. My immediate surroundings were now covered in my steam cloud. I was confident I would find other practical uses for this.

Water mana resonated with the energy of life itself. My power was not just about controlling water but harmonizing with the mana existing in all living beings. If I tapped into this resonance with life, I could use my mana to cleanse and heal wounds, even severe ones.

Just as water adapted to its environment, my mana became inherently more adaptable. As I controlled my fog, I realized I’d gained the ability to quickly and seamlessly alter the intensity and nature of my spells. With a thought, I turned my cloud into a wall of ice. I then shattered my wall into ice spears that pierced the ground. A breath later, my spears turned into a stream that flowed back to me. I let the water surround me and felt its invigorating connection to life.

I was calm, energized, and in complete control of my power.

I didn’t have a domain yet. I would have to gain another three levels and break through another layer, becoming a templar, before I could harness that power. However, my stronger connection to water felt like I was now touching on that power.

Every body of water was a source of knowledge and power, a living entity with which I can commune. Through this connection, I could sense imbalances in my immediate surroundings. It was quite obvious the surrounding mana was in flux from the battle. The forest hungered for the mana to settle so that it could feast and grow.

At the edge of my awareness, I could sense another hungry presence. It was small compared to the forest but no less hungry. In fact, it was famished. I homed in on the unsuspecting predator and prepared for a feast.