The problem with plans, even easy ones such as going to sleep, was that reality would intrude at the first available opportunity.
In my case it was an even mixture of intrusive thoughts, unfamiliar noises, and the fact that physically I felt better than ever: no small aches, no sudden cramps or tingling from numbness because I managed to leave a limb in a less than ideal position.
I tried calming thoughts, regulating my breathing, even counting sheep. Nothing worked, I just lay on my bedroll with closed eyes, but never managing to actually fall asleep.
The fire died down to embers by the time I finally gave up, and while I could certainly coax it back again, I decided not to. Instead, I got my trusty mug and the barrel of beer and proceeded to drink the night away.
I'm not sure if it was my dwarven constitution or my regeneration from being a werebear, but I never even managed to become tipsy, despite drinking what felt like half the barrel.
I mourned the life I had: even if I could get back to Earth, it would take years – decades at least, probably centuries. I would hardly be the same person who left. I read enough isekai stories to know how much such an experience will change me, especially in such a time frame. Add to it the fact that I was in a whole new body – one that was already leagues better than my old one and would only continue to improve, I hardly believed I would be willing to give it up after living in it for much longer than my old life even lasted.
And if I were to go back as my new self, then there was no chance for me to continue with my life where I left it. Add to it the legal trouble my return would bring, and it was more and more unlikely that I would ever return to being Quentin A. McLean, database administrator, avid tabletop gamer. I would have to continue on as Quen Rustbeard, barbarian, monk, cultivator. World traveler.
Sure, my old life was far from perfect, but it had its good points: I loved both of my parents, even after their divorce, I had a few close friends along with a bevy of acquaintances I was on good terms with, a job that I liked and that actually paid a living wage, and a hobby to be passionate about. I even made peace with the downs of my life: my disability and how it had made my high school years hell, the death of my sister and how it led to my parents' divorce when I was 20, my distrust of relationships and intimacy after some rather cruel experiences as a teenager and how it meant that I would probably die alone when my time came.
As I said, not perfect. Not even close.
But it was mine and that was worth mourning.
So I did, with beer in hand. Looking out into the night through a cave entrance, listening to the noises of the forest. Until dawn came and the sun started to rise on a new day. A new life.
***
Staying awake all night feeling melancholy was good for one thing, at least: planning. As such, I started the day with purpose.
I ate a quick breakfast of hard bread, ham and cheese, washed it down with beer, and then proceeded to take a full inventory of my supplies.
It was as Liam wrote it in his letter: I had everything. And from what I could tell, all the tools were of a rather high quality. I also found the cup he mentioned: it looked like a small teacup with a metal lid. The craftsmanship was obvious, but it didn't have any decorations, symbols, or anything else to show it was enchanted – if that was even how locals referred to items enhanced by ki. I tried using it, but when it didn't work immediately, I set it aside.
Instead, I grabbed a spool of string, a knife and my axe and went to make myself a broom. Nothing fancy, just a bunch of twigs bound to a sturdy branch and cut to even length. Then I went back to the cave and swept out all the leaves and small stones from it.
The cave itself wasn't large, not at all like the winding narrow tunnels people go spelunking in, nor like the large caves with their own ecosystems, instead it had a narrow entrance around 4 feet wide opening into what I was starting to refer to as the main chamber, an irregular room of about 500 square feet, with a single narrow side chamber adding maybe another 150.
The supplies were currently piled at the back of the main chamber, but I planned on moving all the food into the side chamber, once I cleaned it out properly. Long term I might carve some shelving into the walls, but that wasn't a priority for now.
For now, I got one of my empty barrels along with a bucket and went for a quick trip to the river to fill it up. Once it was full, I tried picking it up again and it was significantly easier than I anticipated: it wasn't the weight I was worried about, but my balance once it was up on my shoulders. But as it turned out, being barely a couple of inches above 4 feet meant that I was stable even when carrying almost twice my own weight.
The trip back to the cave was easy enough that I decided to just go and fill up the other barrel as well.
Then I cut myself a piece of canvas to use as a rag and proceeded to wash out the side chamber the best I could.
By the time I was done, I was getting hungry again, so I decided to stop for lunch. And while I could procrastinate with the best of them, even without invoking Horatio I could tell this was neither the place, nor the time for it, so I went back to work as soon as I was done with my food.
As the side chamber was still drying, I decided to tackle another pressing problem, the creation of a toilet.
Not having access to modern materials and plumbing, there wasn't much of a point going for anything fancy, just a cesspit, a seat, and a roof above. I chose a spot some 15 feet from the cave's entrance, right along the rock wall.
So I spent the afternoon digging up a large rectangular pit. The digging itself went fast, despite the fact that the soil was rather rocky: my new strength meant that I could make quick work even from large rocks with my pickaxe.
I ended up with a mostly rectangular pit around 6 feet deep that narrowed down somewhat on the side closer to the cave. I lined its walls with rocks, and then laid some halved logs I quickly cut across the opening, leaving just the one hole at the narrow end.
Let me just say, cutting trees is laughably easy in my new body. The problem is more that I have to control my strength so as to not overswing my axe. Cutting them to the right length and splitting them in half with a froe was just as easy.
I then covered the logs with the smaller leafy branches of the trees I cut down, and then I added a layer of earth on top.
For the seat I hammered a pair of logs 2 feet into the ground to serve as posts on the clearing side of the pit and used a heavy chisel and a mallet to carve a small opening into the rock wall opposite of them. That allowed me to add crossbeams above the opening I left. It would still need some properly planed boards both on top as well as for the sides, but strictly speaking, it was already usable as it was, if slightly less comfortable than it could be. Certainly not bad for an afternoon's work.
It was only then, as the sun was starting to go down below the mountain peaks in the west, that I stopped to think about what I was doing. I just put together a usable toilet in an afternoon, basically without breaking a sweat – or much of a conscious thought on the how of it. I just started and went with the flow.
Carpentry was among the skills I have chosen to acquire outright, so it wasn't the fact that I have gained the capability to do this that surprised me, but the fact that I expected the added knowledge to sort of feel foreign – and it was anything but... I would rather describe it as subtle. Extremely so.
And that meant that I would have to examine my own thoughts much more closely in the future. If Liam could implant knowledge with so little impact, then he certainly could implant suggestions or maybe some preconceptions about this world just as easily.
Still troubled by my realization I decided to just have dinner. Wanting some variety, I started by building a fire. It went somewhat easier the second time, but I still needed some oil to get it going.
Once the fire was going, I decided to try a trick I saw my father do when he brought me camping as a kid: I cut off some of the fat from the ham I had and started heating it up in a pan. I didn't add the ham itself, because it would become way too salty if I were to fry it. Instead, I used the melted fat to fry a couple of slices of bread with some cheese on top. I wouldn't really call the result soft, but at least it was significantly tastier than it originally was.
After dinner I put some lentils, beans and dried peas in a pot to soak overnight, got my mug and my beer, and then dived into the book, to finally get a start on cultivating.
The book did not have a table of contents or an index. Instead, it had an introductory chapter that both provided an overview on cultivation as a whole as well as contained plentiful references to the latter parts of the book that went into the details of each different step, including the specifics regarding my classes and the skills gained from them.
According to the book, cultivation, in the most basic sense, is training in the use of ki. As such you have three main goals as a cultivator: enhance your reserves of ki, enhance your ability to bring ki to bear and to learn techniques and methods that can act as force multipliers when you are using ki.
The classical path of cultivation starts with the creation of meridians: pathways that allow for the orderly movement of ki. The most basic method that is common knowledge amongst the citizens of this world calls for the creation of a central circle that runs through the head and the torso, with an intake gate in the throat and outbound connections to the arms and legs. As in this method the latter are only used to deliver ki, there are no return pathways from the limbs. Supposedly the biggest advantage of this method beyond its ease of use is that it can pretty easily be expanded upon, without having to destroy and redo too much of it.
It is also possible, but not recommended, to jump right into body reinforcement: people instinctively take in ki, and if they aren't doing anything specific with it then their body will simply absorb it, becoming stronger in the process. Naturally, cultivation can reproduce and enhance this process, but doing so without meridians makes it harder to later form them: the ki bound into the body already gets in the way. And if the meridians are formed improperly, without first clearing out the bound ki in front of them, then you get blockages in the meridians, that can slow down or even completely stop the movement of ki.
On the other hand, body reinforcement is a convenient tool to train controlling and moving ki along the meridians, as well as dispersing it along the way.
Most people never go beyond these two methods, as both the creation of internal gates and the condensation of a dantian require specific knowledge that isn't readily available. Sure, people know about it in general terms, but there is one rather specific element that they are missing: the fact that they need crystallized ki for both and how to go about creating said crystallized ki. Thankfully, the book had detailed descriptions and explanations.
Crystallization wasn't a purely – or even mainly – physical process. Instead, it was the total and complete subordination of ki to a concept. You needed to isolate some ki and infuse it with your choice of concept to the point where it lost all of its reactiveness, all of its fluidity – leaving behind a small piece of ki that would pretty much reject any further changes. You could grow it, add to it – and even add ki crystallized with a different concept, as they wouldn't reject so long as the two concepts could be balanced in some way or another. What you couldn't do was to refine it further. Well, there were ways around this, ways that allowed you to modify completed ki crystals, but they were power intensive, complex, time consuming and prone to failure.
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This was why it was imperative to use clearly defined, well understood concepts to base your dantian and gates on, and to infuse only the purest version of these concepts into your ki crystals. Failure to do so is what the locals referred to as a flawed foundation.
According to what I read, many sects passed down inheritances, miniscule crystal-seeds of ki, created by senior members with a better grasp on both the concept involved as well as the creation process itself. The younglings then could use these seeds as a starting point to get a leg up in establishing their own foundations. These inheritances, though, were often in short supply, as their creation was made exceedingly difficult by the need to have the personal connection to the creator removed.
Also, there was a warning in the book: ki shapes the mind just as much as the mind shapes the ki. As such it was important to choose and use concepts you didn't mind becoming more prominent in your personality.
On the sociological side of things, this led to sects being organized around central ideologies based on a group of core concepts both to help gather people with the right mindset and to make it easier to immerse their members in an environment that would help them to better understand said concepts.
On the personal side, though, cultivation beyond the basics meant suborning your personality to your power. And the entry point for this comes as soon as you step beyond the methods used by normal citizens – meaning that no dedicated cultivator was free from such influences. And that I wouldn’t be able to keep myself free from them, either.
But back to why crystallized ki is needed, and how it was used: while you can learn to meditate and to discipline your mind, you cannot maintain constant concentration on singular concepts. Stray – or worse, intrusive – thoughts can disturb the purity of your intent, limiting how well you can infuse your preferred concepts into your ki. Not to mention how tedious it would be to constantly dedicate a large part of your mental capacity to ki infusion. And in the case of using multiple concepts, or multiple aspects of singular concepts at the same time, it was rather easy to see that some level of automation was required.
And to prevent this automation process from gradually shifting and losing efficiency or causing problems, you needed to counteract ki’s fluid and reactive nature. This is where internal gates come in: they are in practice nothing but chokepoints that constantly infuse the ki passing through them with their concept. There are two major categories for them, with some outliers: primary gates and technique anchors. Primary gates are used to infuse a general concept into ki, constantly over time, gradually refining the user’s ki, while technique anchors are small gateways that emphasize specific aspects of a concept in order to prime the ki passed through them for use in a rather specific way.
The example that the book gave was an elemental cultivator focusing on wood from the circle of creation. Most of their primary gates would be infusing their ki with the general concept of wood, while the ones near their intake gates would be using the concepts of water or earth, as both fed wood. Their technique anchors on the other hand would take specific aspects of wood, say, the endless growth of plants, and use that to further change the ki they would then go on to use in body refining.
As for the dantian, it was one of the outliers mentioned by the book: its main responsibility was to house the meta-concepts needed for higher tier cultivation: control, ki refinement and cultivation itself. Later on, it was also used for anchoring the soul realm.
As such, its creation was even more finicky compared to gates, and there was no definitive answer as to how to best go about it: each sect and teacher had their own take, either based on their own ideas and observations, or on what they themselves were taught.
The book did compile many of the more common methods and the best practices that seemed to be universal, but the final choice was left up to me.
One of the more interesting options was the creation of a jindan: a golden pearl that served as a more immediate tool to bring the effects of a dantian to bear on one’s ki: usually the dantian was detached from the meridians, and while it could, and most often did store some ki, it was not a direct part of the regular ki cycle. This was because the meta-concepts of the dantian were, more often than not, hard to harmonize with the original concepts people’s cultivation was based on. This separation prevented the two from coming into conflict, but it also limited how much the dantian could affect regular ki.
To go around the problem, one could construct a jindan, a small ki crystal that was linked to the dantian, but not a part of it, put it into their meridians, and use it to directly affect the ki stored within. The idea was rather simple, the problem, as such things go, was with implementing it. Two problems needed to be solved: first, how to forge a connection that didn’t rely on direct contact, and second, how to stop the jindan from coming into conflict with the ki in the meridians without compromising its ability to affect it. Both had solutions, but these were far from intuitive, leading to jindans being far from common despite the clear advantages they provided.
The book also brought up the other obvious solution to the separation between the dantian and the meridians: choosing compatible concepts and simply avoiding the separation. It worked, and there were some prominent clans using this method, but this usually limited people to less esoteric concepts that were often seen as lesser. There were references to exceptions, but usually with notations that said exceptions were using some rather unorthodox methods: if you were not into self-hypnosis, hallucinogens or intentionally traumatizing yourself, most of these were off the table.
What was on the table for pretty much everyone was opening up their soul realms. According to the locals, the soul was the mythical, inviolate core of your being, the source of reasoning that divided man and animals. Never mind the fact that there were actual mythical beasts around just as much if not more intelligent than the average person. Never mind the fact that the soul actually changed and evolved with cultivation. And never mind the fact that the soul realm could be attacked directly.
Once again, the book put the soul in much less reverential terms: it was one’s sense of self, their idea of themselves. As such it was rooted in their subconscious and it did require a level of thinking ability above that of a regular animal, but it wasn’t anything inherently mystical. Though it needs to be mentioned that the book did explain that while the local definition of a soul was false, there was no definitive proof that no actual soul existed.
In more practical terms, what the locals referred to as spiritual cultivation and thought of as strengthening the original soul until it possessed a physical form in its own realm was just them using ki to create a quasi-real space to house ki constructs.
The problem was that despite the inherent problem of the idea behind spiritual cultivation being false, the benefits it brought were undeniable. The soul realm could, once opened up and anchored to the dantian, house and store immense amounts of ki or even hold actual physical objects. Later on buildings and other spiritual constructs could be added to help with cultivation. Also, the soul could be made to act on its own, in a limited fashion, allowing for an even larger part of cultivation to become automated.
And it further locked the concepts you cultivated with into your sense of self by literally – and intentionally – changing your image of yourself. This was a known phenomenon, many people even going so far as to improve upon their physical form by first changing the form their soul took, and then letting their ki gradually change their bodies until the two matched once again – despite the fact that the disconnect of the transition period could have serious negative consequences for their cultivation.
The soul realm also allowed for the more esoteric abilities the most powerful cultivators were known for: domains, for example, were just cultivators overlapping physical reality and their soul realms, allowing them to better leverage their spiritual constructs.
Even without diving into the specifics, I was pretty sure that despite Liam’s claims that just simple body reinforcement could slowly bring someone up to his level of power, giving up any of the major methods used by the locals would be a seriously bad idea, that would severely limit both my advancement speed and my potential.
And the specifics regarding the class abilities I could study proved pretty much the same thing: while some were simple body reinforcement exercises, other would require the construction of rather complex technique anchors, while yet others would be simply impossible to implement without at least opening a soul realm. Take all the totem-based abilities I was eyeing originally, for example: every last one of them would require me to construct the corresponding totem animals as spiritual constructs.
Even just putting together a shortlist of the actual abilities I’d want to get from among all the possibilities is going to be a challenge in itself: the book lists all the possible abilities available for both the classes I have chosen – barbarian and monk – along with all their possible subclasses. And it’s not even convenient enough for all of the abilities to work exactly the same way they did in the game. No, they are all subtly different, having to conform to the actual rules of the world, instead of just their creators’ ideas.
And that doesn’t even consider the fact that I am a werebear, or how my future cultivation is going to be affected by that. I mean, as much information as the book is willing to provide about my classes or cultivation in general, it’s really tight lipped about my lycanthropy. All it’s willing to refer to are the obvious things that I already know about, like my three forms, or my regeneration, but not a single mention of how any of it works. Like, do I already have a soul realm that is housing my other forms? If so, could I take that realm as my own soul realm? Could I use those forms as totem animals? Or did Liam create a completely separate realm for them that I would never be able to access? Or is the whole transformation process based on a completely different principle instead of a highly sped up soul adaptation? Is my regeneration based on the same inherent survival concept that people develop just living? If so, is it hard-coded, so to say? Or is it enhanceable maybe?
And what the book does tell me about my nature as a werebear is often just a description of the glaring problems I would have to face. Just take my future meridians and how their construction is going to have to take into account my transformations for example: because meridians are partially physical, they are pretty much completely unsuited for reacting to rapid changes in my size. It’s rather easy to adjust meridians if you are undergoing gradual change, such as natural growth or gaining muscle mass, but almost tripling in height in under a minute will have them tearing through my insides every time I transform.
The book did have a workaround – using coiled up spirals in my regular form that could stretch out straight when I take one of my larger forms, but the idea isn’t without its demerits: all the better cultivation methods use a much more complex web of meridians compared to the simple central loop that’s in use among the general populace, even if such a loop is a part of them. As such, there needs to be enough space to put all those extra circuits, which would be mostly impossible, if every single line takes up way more space than usual due to the coils. Especially as the available space is already being limited due to me being just 4’2.
Some quick research told me that it would also be possible to construct my meridians using the same structure straw necks have, allowing them to expand and bend during my change as needed. And while this method would allow for the implementation of a more complex set of meridians, it would systematically introduce structural weaknesses to them, as I would have to allow my meridians to be much less rigid than recommended to allow for this to work.
In conclusion, it was safe to say that I would have to have a solid plan in place before I even start my cultivation, because just going for it and winging it would bring me more problems than it would solve.
The only thing I could reasonably get a start on were my senses and how to use them to perceive ki. According to the book environmental ki should be damn obvious once I actually start looking for it – coming from a ki deficient world, the difference should be apparent.
So I put down the book, poured myself another mug of beer, drained it in a single go, then I walked out from the cave, and proceeded to lay down in the middle of the clearing gazing up at the stars. Looking up at an unfamiliar sky was less strange than it should have been: I never spent all that much time getting all my constellations right back on Earth, so it wasn’t like I could really compare the two. The only obvious difference was how bright the stars were without light pollution getting in the way: I could easily believe that even without dwarven night vision I could have walked around that clearing without stumbling, even though there was no moon out. Actually, I didn’t even know if this planet had a moon…
As I way lying there, I started to pay attention to my breathing and my heartbeat. To how I could feel it not just in my chest, but also in my limbs, radiating out, making my blood rush through my arteries and veins. It was a surprisingly strong sensation.
Despite the assurances of the book on how easy it would be, it wasn’t ki that I first found, but an undercurrent of… Thought? Instinct? It felt like violence restrained by weary sleep. I knew that I could rouse it with some prodding, and that if I did, I would transform again, but – for now, at least – there was no imperative to do so.
Finding ki took me another hour or so, more than enough time to first figure out that yes, this world also had a moon. It rose from behind one of the mountain peaks I was surrounded by, and it was about half full. Not knowing if the observations regarding its fullness from back home held true here as well, I couldn’t determine if it was waxing or waning, I made a mental note to come back out the next couple of nights as well to observe how the moon behaves and to start some kind of calendar, if only to keep track of how much time passes.
It was right after that decision when I once again returned to observing my breathing and heartbeat, that my perspective shifted just enough to feel ki. It was in me. It was all around me. And it had always been there. While I was entirely sure that I have never consciously felt ki before, it still felt familiar, like and old ache you learned to ignore and forget about that you suddenly remembered.
I raised my hand in wonder, feeling the ripples my movement made. I decided to not try anything more, and just continued observing, and reveling in the exhilarating feeling of potential that was apparent even from such a casual observation.
Hours passed until I let myself fall asleep, right where I was, lying in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by playful swirls of ki.