double post. long over due.
Chapter 4 -class
“All right i am mika and kids today all of you will be learning a cultivation technique suited to your needs. Plant users will follow me and come over to this corner of the classroom. I will guide you on your cultivation skill. Animal type will go to teacher rachael at the back. Elemental students will be outside with andrew. For the rest of you not in these groups your specific trainers will come and assist you.”
Seats shuffles as the kids stood up and gathered at the respective areas.
“Kids, what are plants? Are they alive? What do they do? Do they give life? Think carefully. Give yourselves a minute to think about what it can do.”
After what seemed like forever….
“Come here little girl, what is your name?”
“Ariel.”
“Tell me ariel, what is your tree?”
“ A flower”
“Do you know what type of flower is that?”
Ariel shakes her head.
“Show us your flower”
Ariel brought out her hand and willed a small daisy into existence
“Ariel your flower is a daisy. Is your daisy pretty?”
Ariel nods her head again.
“Close your eyes, can you imagine your daisy in your head?”
After a brief pause, ariel nods her head once again.
“Imagine a wind blowing by, can you see your daisy moving with the wind?
After a brief second of pause, ariel once again nodded her head.
Everyone watched in amazement as her daisy slowly started to sway. No one said anything as teacher mika put her finger to her lips and stared everyone into silence.
“Now can you imagine your daisy starting to grow taller and bigger?”
Ariel once again nodded. Her eyes still closed and no one could say anything under the watchful gaze of teacher mika.
Everyone watched as the daisy grew taller and bigger.
“Ok ariel, that is very good. Now open your eyes and look at your daisy.”
Ariel opened her eyes and look at her daisy. But in her surprise because of the difference, her daisy disappeared into nothingness once again.
“Now as all of you can see, it is very simple. All you need to do is imagine what it can do. Today we will focus on doing what you just see until the end of the class. Marcus, because you are an irregular, you will not be summoning your tree but you will continue to do the same. Also for your tree i want you to imagine it growing from a seed. You must understand that your tree is a vine and since we do not know what kind of vine it is, your imagination will shape it into what it can be. As for the rest of you, when you are not sure , feel free to ask me anything. One at a time.”
With a quick visualization, i imagine a very very small seed. So small i can barely see it. Slowly, a vine comes out. But which way should my vine grow? How does it grow? That does not seem right. Something does not fit. What went wrong? I kept visualizing the vine in my head but i could not understand what is wrong with the visualization.
“Teacher mika, what does a vine look like as a seed?”
Teacher mika stumbled at that question. There are many types of vines and there are all kinds of seeds for vines and to ask for a type of seed is something hard to explain. Especially in my case where nothing is know about my vine and that it is too dangerous to bring out my vine.
After a brief thought,teacher mika replied:” since you are still not allowed to summon your tree, i cannot tell you much on how it looks like. however we will let you learn about vines from books. Come with me later and i will bring you to the bibliotheca to let you learn about them. Can your read?”
“Yes”
“Good. That makes things easier.”
As the class ended, three other kids had the same issue of visualizing and came along to the bibliotheca.
“Let's see. Plants, plants, plants. There we are, leaves. Root, fruit and finally vines. Ok now we have them. Take them back to read. If there are any questions, ask them in the next class.
after collecting the books, everyone headed down for the combat classes. Everyone has to learn about combat even if it is just the basic. knowing how to block and how to attack is a need to know in this kingdom. people with the abilities high enough for combat needs to protect their loved ones from danger and also protect themselves.
combat class was somewhat easy for now. we mainly needed to build stamina and for that we had “jogging.” it was more of a game of “Cat and Mouse” actually. but since everyone had different amount of stamina, the class slowly split up so that the fast chases the fast and the slow chases the slow. it was tiring but fun. how hard do you want to tax kids around the age of 8? that was just the basic, after all that fun it was the serious stuff. the proper training depended on the type of tree. those with trees that were weapon/armor oriented tree would focus on combat the revolves around it. animal/plant type would train on how to use their tree. those with special types of tree have their own specific training menus for combat.
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once again, because i am not allowed to summon my tree, i had to go for the next best thing. ropes and traps. it is quite interesting as to how to build traps. i should add that to my mental training menus to make it less boring when i do my cycles. and as for ropes, well vines do look like ropes so why not. hand to hand combat can come later anyway.
after that came the elemental classes. they were all boring though. basics about the different elements, where to find them what they look like, creatures that are the embodiments of those elements and where to find them ETC ETC. after hearing about them for 2 hours, every five year old had become brain dead. first was cultivation. that was not too hard for most, then was the jogging, which was physically tiring and then there was finally the elemental classes that gave everyone information overload. i simply listened to the basic and ignored the rest. we are all going to learn about the further details anyway in the future classes.
going back to the dorm after the meal, i started reading up on the books, i found nothing that looked like the vine i had. however, based on the books the common factors about vines was how it can be used. flexible like a rope and it has the ability to cling onto almost anything. they have sensor like abilities to help them find thing to cling. some even have thorns. and then there is the woody ones that grow thick and huge.
with that in mind, i slowly build up the stages of a vine. from the mustard seed to the lone tendril that sprouts out and clings on to the first thing it could. but given that this is mental space, there is nothing for it to cling to so it coils itself then lashes out its tendril feelers repeatedly while growing longer and longer. nothing could help it as it continued to grow longer and longer while finding a thing to cling to. then somewhere along the way a bud grows then came the flowers from it. From the flowers came the fruits and then finally the seeds. I stumbled at this point. How does a plant die? with no answers, all i could do was leave the plant to fade from my mind while i restarted this process.
The cycle repeated itself . It was a long slow process. When I completed the first 1 cycle of rebirth, it took over 20 minutes. According to the teachers and seniors, if you work hard and is proficient in cultivation, you can complete more than 10 cycles at the same time 10 times at half the time if not lesser time.
As a light recap and understanding cultivation is about the flexibility of the mind. It is like a reservoir. You draw from the reservoir to summon your tree. The cultivation method is like a dam. The more you build it the more it can store.It is also what that limits the flow of power.
It explains why I fainted during the first summoning. Small reservoir with big drain and no limiter.
It does not explain why I summoned a corporeal tree on my first try though, guess the force is strong in me.
With those in mind I decided to train the flexibility of my mind. I imagined the first vine in my head. It grew to a mental equivalent of ½ hand tall. Next I imagined it waving left and right. No leaves nothing. Just a vine waving left and right.
Next I tried to imagine another seed. Step 1. Success.
So I went to step 2. Growing the 2nd vine. However, when I started growing the 2nd vine, the image of the first vine disappeared from my mind. Guess step 2 was a failure. No complains there. I just started and I am doing “advanced” training.
Knowing where my current limits are, I dedicated 1 cycle worth of time to step 2 as part of my training as well. Every 10 cycles I would visualize a 2nd vine. with every set of 10+1 cycle, the time it took got shorter. After a month of cultivation, i finally had a breakthrough with the 2nd vine. However, that only worked if i kept the image of the first vine still and unmoving. it was still a breakthrough though. i lost the 1st vine’s image after the 2nd vine grew to ⅛ hand tall of mental size. not bad i would say but i still have a long way to go.