The brilliant skies and white clouds gradually took on the shade of a conspicuous, sepia-tinged blue as the Sohwl passed the crest of the day into its expected route to another afternoon.

Midday was over, but the blistering heat remained.

On top of a few islets, reefs, and jutting rock formations in one section of the Lake Sagathan waters, the three Earthloch scions could feel that sunlight with unobstructed intensity.

Yet none of them was much affected by it.

Vesiphis looked at the fading soft crimson glow on his hands.

A tiny thread of the same light connected an ethereal part of his being to Randuman's, the old Haragol Onthoakt, who squatted on a ledge like rock overgrown with algae with a cheeky grin.

If Elrhain and Agwyn were here, they would have recognized it as similar to the magical tether Lilian had cast to tie them to their parents on the night of blessings.

This time, it was Romero who performed the magic. Though the effect was far weaker, it was strong enough that Randuman could jump in to intercede at the first hint of real danger.

A fact that displeased Cadfael quite a lot, as his opinion of 'training' was rather barbaric. But the gloomy boy could only accept the arrangements in the face of the old man's Oceanic might filled thick cranium.

After casting his magic, Romero had manoeuvred the boat away from the islets.

He would circle the waters to keep a lookout. His father tasked him so that only a fair number of gheists with appropriate strength would get in this region, with any more being thwarted.

The high Earthen Mage wasn't omnipotent. He was no great lake spirit to control its occupants with majesty alone.

What he had were tools used by many cultivators who hunted gheists on the lake. He also had more than simple attack spells in his repertoire as a mage.

Alchemic powder and strange liquids, immobilizing ropes and pots full of concoctions that smelled worse than a mound of three-cycle dead fungus. These were all necessities for a cultivator who hunted deep in the lakes, all made from higher-ranked gheist blood or magical materials.

Vesiphis knew that these life-saving items were expensive, hence quite efficient. He had seen the same used in Reanakt Saphur's place too.

But even then, there was a chance of failure. The scent of a dhionne's blood, the shock waves in the water, and the dying roars of gheists were all catalyst enough to draw the attention of unwanted interlopers.

Though, to the three combatants, each with egos too big to fit in their child-sized noggins, that mattered little.

"Young master Howell has yet to form his Nascent Totem. Are you sure you want to go in first?" Randuman asked the shark-eyed boy.

"Ya. I'm still some ways off from lightin' all thousand nodes ya'see. But it's fine. Pa gave me this!" Howell replied, lifting his spear high as if to show off.

The weapon had a white-bladed edge fashioned from a menacing gheist fang. Smooth, angular, and sleek, the dynamics of the blade were optimal for underwater harpooning. The gleam of manna Randuman's eyes could discern also proved that it was no ordinary trinket.

"That’s a talisman. An imitation of your branch’s [Kraken’s Fury Spear] Totem, if I am not wrong.” Randuman said, clawing his chin with an impressed exclamation.

“Right ya are! Pa told me to train and see if I could use this talisman's technique he taught me. Since it’d be practice for my Nascent Totem later.”

“I see. Then there’s no need to worry. I have full confidence you can be an excellent fisher with your father’s teachings!” The Onthoakt laughed, and Howell cackled along.

“Well then, I’ll be off! Don’t slack now, Busyfish, Black meanie!” With that said, the fishing enthusiast spun the talisman spear above his head a few times and then vaulted into the water like a sealion.

Vesiphis could only sigh at the ripples that lingered on the lake's surface.

Unlike Howell and the Haragol family, Vesiphis could not naturally breathe underwater. He was also quite far from achieving origin breathing, the art of breathing life through manna alone.

Hence, his and Cadfael’s fight would be different.

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Howell assured them that he could bring the fight to them. Vesiphis simply hoped that this over-enthusiastic younger cousin of his wouldn’t take too long in keeping his promise.

***

“Ugh, there. I’m done. Pheeew!” Rister plopped on the floorboard of the boat. He had crammed the miniature truck of a gheist inside the storage area, the large cavity under the floorboard of this hollowed-out giant canoe.

The young man had far over-used his manna and meridians today. His muscled twitched at even the slight hint of exertion, and the feeling wasn’t comfortable at all.

Elrhain, who eyed the man, wondered how the weight of the Rockfin Crocofish didn’t sink the boat. But not to mention capsizing, the boat didn’t seem to even dip in the slightest.

When he asked Rister, the young man weakly waved his hands as he replied, “I don’t really know. I think it might be the work of the magic arrays the mages inscribed on the hull. You can ask my brother later if you are curious, my lord.”

“It’s fine,” Elrhain said. He shifted his eyes back towards lake Sagathan.

Ysbail, Cati, Agwyn, and Ruba grabbed onto the boat's edge while staring in the same direction. The four toddling girls were rather worked up.

“You can do it, Howwieee! Busyfiiiish!”

“B-Black meanie, don’t dieee!”

“Grandpa is the strongest!”

“Here’s a health to the company, and one too my lass~,”

Elrhain rolled his eyes, seeing Agwyn singing sea-shanties while rocking her head left and right. Maybe the tune was catchy, but the other girls also started humming along not soon after.

“By the way, U-uncle Rister,” Elrhain asked another question that had been on his mind for a while. “Onthoakt Haragol, ahh, your father.”

“I think the old man would be happier if you just called him grandpa Randuman.”

“Right, grandpa Randuman. He mentioned how we nobles cultivate differently from normal people. Could you elaborate on that?”

“….”

“W-What? Did I ask something weird?”

“Nah. Just. I’ve never seen a toddler speak so well. Man, Earthloch main house kids must surely eat something else since young, huh?”

“-Ha ha ha.” Elrhain awkwardly scratched his head. “Who knows? But my question….”

“Yeah, that. Let me think for a bit.” Rister put his palms on his temples as if to block the high heat of the Sohwl. Or maybe, calling up the information was just that gargantuan a task for a guy who would honestly love to catch a wink right now.

“My lord knows about the basics of cultivation, right?”

“Yes!” Elrhain raised his hand in affirmation, “Teacher Tudor taught me this.”

He repeated the concepts he knew, such as the various cultivation roots and the stage names a dhionne must progress through until they arrived at the mystical Beyonder realm.

“Teacher Tudor only taught up to this point. I really didn’t ask either since I thought I could just look it up in the archives… which I forgot to do.”

Rister slowly sat straight with his legs folded together from his sprawling position. “That’s about it. But man, you can read too? Gheistcores, main house toddlers really are crazy.”

“-Ha ha ha.”

“’ Kay. Let’s see if I can supplement Master Shaman Tudor’s teaching.” Rister looked proud of the fact for a second. “So, you know that in the Mortal Realm, you first saturate the nodes in your Totemic Soul, which are wholly random in aspect, with manna till they all ignite, yeah?”

Elrhain nodded.

“After that, you have to find a suitable ichor from either the spirits or some alternative sources. Then, you inject the ichor into your Ichoric Heart Chamber.

This causes the nodes in your Totemic soul to magically realign their aspects depending on the aspects of the ichor itself. With that, your Ichoric Heart Chamber will gradually begin its transformation, and a Marrow Core will start forming in your physical body…. My lord?”

“Oh, please go on. I’m just jotting it down for future reference!” Elrhain urged the man to continue as he wrote furiously on a piece of crumbled gheist hide parchment he had taken out from Captain Anouk’s satchel.

“… Man, you can write too? Okay, don’t make that face. Where was I? Right, so the Marrow Core is physical, unlike the Ichoric Heart Chamber. It emerges as a blood-red gem inside your heart, which you can see with your inner vision.”

“Like Gheist Cores?”

“Similar. I don’t know if gheists need ichor to form their cores though. Can they even connect to the Astral plane?”

“…. Teacher Tudor said that everything in the Astral plane, like the Totemic Soul and the Ichoric Heart Chamber, has a projection into the physical plane. But that only beings who can think can feel the Astral plane.”

“Ah! Right, I forgot about that part.” Rister concurred, snapping his fingers. “According to what’s written in our house’s cultivation scripture, the Marrow Core is precisely the special whatsit you need the connect the Astral plane with the physical plane.

Since it’s the projection of the Ichoric Heart Chamber, you can say they are like two ends of a tunnel. One opens in the Astral Plane, and the other in your body in the real world.

Before forming a Marrow core, the apertures and meridians, which are the projection of the nodes and channels of the Totemic Soul onto your body, are also pretty much useless.

Mortal dhionne only ever uses manna for brute force. They can’t flow manna through meridians or release them outside through apertures as easily Cultivators can. These Meridians spread throughout your whole body are all connected to a particular object.”

“The Marrow Core?”

“Smart little main house lordling. You are correct.” Rister praised.

“What does that have to do with creating a Spirit, er, Nascent Totem?”

“I’m getting to that. So, after you realign the aspects in your Totemic soul, you can start using cultivation techniques. Since now you are finally in the Earthen realm!”

“Oh, so that’s the breakthrough?”

“Yeah. And it was damn hard.” Rister nodded as he looked back in memory lane, wincing at some phantom pain long forgotten.

“Usually, the aspects in the Totemic soul before realignment vary so much person to person that using the same cultivation technique to produce the exact result for any two dhionne is nigh impossible. But that ain’t a problem after the process. If they consume the same ichor, that is.

Cultivation techniques each have their unique ways of refining manna. What you do is, you use that refined manna to connect the various nodes and channels in your Totemic Soul to construct unique structures called Frames.”