Chapter Eleven: Watch Your Step

Awakening as a spirit cultivator was simple, but simple did not mean easy. According to the vampires, all Lacy had to do was close her eyes, clear her mind, and “bond with the world”. When she succeeded she would sense the spiritual energy in the air and be able to bring it inside of herself. All of that would mean she had become a spirit cultivator.

The vampire parents had prefaced their instructions with the reminder that they were, in fact, not humans themselves, so what they had learned could be wrong in any number of ways. Still, it was something, so Lacy was grateful. Even if it turned out that they had lied in order to acquire her cooperation it would not be that big a deal. After all, they had let her live despite being, on all accounts, members of enemy races. So long as the koroths kept their end of the deal by not killing their unwitting blood bags, she would be satisfied.

Unfortunately, Lacy found no luck on her third night taking the guard exams. Despite what felt like hours of meditation, the empty barracks room she resided in remained lackluster, as dull as it had ever been. The air did not fill with magical energy.

Still, Lacy hadn’t expected to succeed on her first night’s attempts. Hoped? Yes, but not expected. So she settled into bed with a smile, excitement still bubbling in her chest at the thought of all the magic she would learn.

……

The fourth day of guard exams was the same as the first two. No special trips or anything. Just endurance training in the morning and muscle building in the evening.

However, there was something different about the recruits. Many more glances her way, to start. And several times Lacy felt like someone would walk up to talk to her, but they always backed out.

The fourth night of meditation yielded no results. She did not awaken as a spirit cultivator, but it was whatever. Lacy had plenty of time.

……

It was the fifth morning when things got a bit interesting. The four days prior Instructor Kong had led the recruits on jogs through different parts of the city, but today they went down the same path as their first day, and apparently some citizens were waiting for them.

What looked like a large family stood outside of their home on the street around a table, on top of which sat large drink pitchers and small plates of snacks. To Lacy’s surprise, Instructor Kong let them take an early rest, and he began chowing down on some fruit slices.

An elderly man supported by a cane stepped forward as the recruits were served drinks by young adults who bore striking resemblances to each other and him.

Between bites, Instructor Kong said, “He does this every exam.”

The man in question feebly raised an arm to the sky, and in a raspy voice, intoned, “Yellowvine’s guards are her lifeblood! They protect her people like no others do! Here, within this most majestic city, most cultivators are guards, but that is not the same everywhere. As a boy I lived in the capital and bore witness to the stark differences. In Ten-Jan City there are more cultivators than breadcrumbs left over after a hearty meal. However, who among those cultivators would save your life if it was in danger? Who among the city cultivators would bleed for the city? None, the bastards! Even the capital’s own imperial guards are taken in by their selfish, pervasive culture and see their positions as nothing more than laurels to be waved about narcissistically and rested upon!”

The heated old man took a moment to wipe spittle off his beard and cool off.

“As a young man my small merchant family moved far away from that putrid pile of garbage and waste in search of more opportunity, and we settled on Yellowvine. However, the gods saw fit to test us with one more blasted tribulation! Just outside the city walls our caravan was beset by a pack of spirit beasts led by a Sprout-realm leader, which our family’s four Seeds stood no chance against.” The old man paused dramatically before asking, “Who can infer what happened next?”

“Yellowvine guards intervened,” a recruit near the old man answered.

“Yellowvine guards intervened!” the old man confirmed emphatically. “As if we were their own children! A score of young men, all Seeds, came to our rescue faster than the Sprout beast could even gallop into our ranks! Being outmatched by the pack leader’s realm didn’t cause a single foot to hesitate! Then after the battle of ages heads were counted, and though some were severely wounded, miraculously no one perished but the beasts!”

He laughed heartily.

“And thank the gods no guards died that day, because Kong’s father was among them!”

All heads snapped toward Instructor Kong, who didn’t even seem to register their gazes as the old man hobbled over to smack Kong on the back like an old pal.

“My father told that story every chance he got before he passed,” Instructor Kong said, before putting down the small fruit bowl. “Alright, that’s enough rest. We keep running!”

……

By the sixth day every muscle in Lacy’s body burned every time she did anything, but she kept pushing through because she’d already lasted twice as long as Uru thought she would and her spirit cultivator potential was revealed to her by vampires.

She could do this. Nothing could stop her!

And that was explicitly confirmed by Instructor Kong that evening, who laid everything out on the table after their muscle-building exercises.

“Most of the preliminary exam has passed,” the older man said, poised as ever in his parade rest posture. “There is but one day left. Keep up this harsh routine for just a single day longer, and those of you who put your all into the exams will move on to the second part.”

One brave soul asked, “How do you know who slacked and didn’t?”

“I know,” he asserted. “For some of you, it is too late. For most, it is a matter of maintaining your dedication.”

That was all he said before dismissing the recruits for the night, which Lacy was excited for. Besides the rest that her body sorely needed, Lacy was confident that she was close to awakening as a spirit cultivator. The night before she’d felt…something! She didn’t know what and she wasn’t sure how, but it was something! And something’s always better than nothing!

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Lacy speedran her hygiene routine and the shower with Shu. The other woman reasonably assumed Lacy’s octane energy was a result of excitement for passing the preliminary exam and didn’t hold her up.

Finally Lacy sat upright in bed with her legs crossed, closed her eyes, and took deep, meditative breaths while imagining herself back in the woods. Yesterday she had figured out that the imagery in her mind was paramount for success when for a brief moment, while picturing herself as a child playing and splashing around in a creek, the moment felt real! No longer had she been on top of a shitty, minimalist bunk bed, she was knee-deep in crystal clear waters with cute little fishes swimming around her.

That HAD to be magic!

So she sought to recreate the experience. Lacy first put herself in the exact same setting—being a young girl playing in a creek—but after ten minutes, twenty minutes, maybe half an hour of nothing, Lacy was fed up and changed the environment.

She became a cactus in a desert, subsisting off light rains that came just a few times a year, bearing the harsh sun and wildlife with perseverance. The oneness with her vision materialized, but only briefly.

Buoyed by the crumbs of success Lacy made herself a worm crawling through dark and rich earth, powered so directly by the world around her that another moment of oneness overcame her within minutes.

Next she tried something different, and visualized herself as a magical, fire-attuned lizard that lived on an active volcano, safely basking in the lava’s radiation from just outside the caldera. To her astonishment, that imagery worked too!

She became a sunflower, one among thousands, waving in the wind, taking in the sun.

A big grouper fish prowling her coral reef territory, swallowing smaller fish whole.

A mouse tunneling through soft dirt, munching on root vegetables.

A majestic dragon soaring the skies uncontested! Owning everything the light touched.

A feeble butterfly desperately attempting evasive maneuvers to escape a hungry sparrow.

A wild pig roaming the lush forests, digging for truffles.

An enormous redwood, standing tall for millennia, patiently watching the world around her inevitably shift with time.

A blind bat hundreds of feet below the ground, hunting flying bugs and enjoying the company of so much family.

The scenes came and went effortlessly, and each one was a lifetime of its own, each one as real as Lacy was. This, she realized, was exactly what the vampires spoke of.

Lacy opened her eyes a spirit cultivator, having shed mortality and acquired the powers of the very world around her in exchange for a life of constant bloodshed and strife.

Everything was different. The air was simply saturated with an intangible energy that pervaded everything. An energy that called to her.

“Qi,” Lacy whispered in awe. The vampires had informed her of how spirit cultivators wielded qi—pronounced “ch-ee”—also called spirit energy, and body cultivators were powered by massive amounts of blood essence, which normal people had but at a much lower quality. Also, dual cultivators who practiced both schools and used both energies existed, but that was all they told her. The vampires didn’t go into too much detail about cultivation in general so that she didn’t accidentally show off too much knowledge and get looked at with suspicion.

Lacy instinctively reached out to the qi all around her with both a hand and her will. The qi faintly responded, a whisper in return of a shout. So she shouted louder, demanding that her presence and influence be respected. In turn, the qi heard and obeyed, flowing a bit more smoothly into her.

Now when Lacy looked inward she saw a soul. Her own soul. And it shone brightly, being what was calling the qi toward it.

She shook her head, realizing she was thinking about it all wrong.

Lacy was her soul. The same way as she was her brain. It wasn’t just a part of her, it was foundational to her existence!

Looking deeper, she also noticed a spherical structure within her soul, part of her soul, resting exactly within her heart where all the qi funneled into. The vampires hadn’t mentioned it, so it could have been normal or it could have been unique to her. Maybe a result of her boon? She wouldn’t know for a while because she had no one to ask.

The last change to Lacy’s existence came in the form of an aura, which the vampires had mentioned. It was an expression of her soul, one that allowed her to manipulate the world around her. It was actually the reason her soul could call to the surrounding qi at all, and it was the key to performing spirit techniques, which she knew exactly none of, so it might as well have been useless for the moment.

But it was still fun to play around with. Manipulating her aura, which oozed out of her body like mucus produced by a hagfish, felt like controlling an entirely new limb. Lacy found it incredibly taxing to control both her aura and her arms, having to focus on one or the other. It was while she began stretching her aura as far from her as she could like taffy when her barrack’s door swung open, revealing a large profile, lit softly by the braziers behind him which allowed people to see at night without keeping them awake.

“Oh, you’re awake. Makes things easier,” a man’s deep voice whispered, and Lacy’s nerves froze. “Don’t shout, I won’t hurt’cha. Name’s Jin. I’m here to have fun, if you’d like. I’m good at it, too. Known as The Bull back in Ohg before I moved here.”

Lacy finally recognized the man’s voice. He was the one who asked if the vampires violated her. Steadily, her fear turned to disgust, and from there, anger.

“Anyways, I liked that story you told, Lacy. You’re a tough one, alright. Not just taking the guard exams, but also abducted by monsters and talked your way to freedom. How abouts I show you a good time? You can bite my shirt so we don’t wake everyone.”

Lacy couldn’t believe the asshole’s sheer gall. She was tempted to scream about a rapist right then and there, but had a better idea. She was a cultivator, now! She had an aura that easily reached the man at the entrance from her bunk. What could her aura do, she wondered.

Taking advantage of the moments Jin was willing to wait for a response, she carefully enveloped his entire body within her aura, hoping she could use it offensively in some capacity. Maybe make the water within him boil, or something. Unfortunately nothing happened, but she kept him within her aura all the same, hoping she’d figure something out.

“I will have to respectfully decline,” Lacy said, before remembering what Shu had told her on their first day. “But I imagine Shu will welcome you with open arms if you ask her tomorrow afternoon.”

Truthfully, Lacy imagined Shu tearing Jin a new one after hearing about tonight, but Jin didn’t need to know that.

To Lacy’s surprise, Jin’s tone immediately sharpened as he spat, “How dare you make fun of my grace and point me toward that ugly bitch! You don’t think I can get anyone I want? I’d be in her bed if she looked even half good!”

The woman knew the odds were high that Jin would get upset at some point, but so quickly? She’d specifically let him down politely so that he would give her more time to figure out her new powers while he tried changing her mind.

“Um, when did I make fun of you?” Lacy asked carefully, trying everything she could with her aura. She accepted that she couldn’t manipulated Jin’s body so she tried everything else she could think of, but nothing worked.

She couldn’t condense the water in the atmosphere to create a water attack. The dirt floor didn’t so much as budge when she commanded it to rise. The air remained placid as she begged it to churn. No fires manifested in accordance with her emotions and willpower!

“That’s it!” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Arrogance clouds your eyes so you can’t see when a gentleman makes you an irrefutable offer!”

Jin stomped forward and Lacy was out of time. Her only options left were to scream and channel qi through her body in the hopes that it would give her the power to overcome a man twice her size.

But the next instant another silhouette appeared, and Jin began to float.

“Under Yellowvine Mayor’s authority I am taking you into custody for suspected crimes,” Instructor Kong said as he lifted Jin by the neck. “Watch your step, Initiate Lacy, for sometimes we do not need to venture into the wilderness to encounter monsters. Please go back to sleep, and if you desire head to Shu’s barracks for comfort. I will process these scum.”

Instructor Kong then turned around and left with the squirming man in one hand and another body dangling from the other. This whole time Jin had another recruit keeping a clear coast for him. Or at least, trying.