Chapter 13 Khyree begins to Cultivate

Khyree walked out of the portal and looked around for a bit. He would take a few steps in one direction. Wait for a few minutes. Then repeat but in a different direction. He continued these actions for the better part of an hour, while constantly looking all around him. He looked up as far as he could in the trees. He stomped the ground in random places. He even went as far to place his ears against the bark of the trees and listened intently for moments at a time.

“Damned Immortals. Can’t trust them for anything. They could be hiding anywhere,” Khyree mumbled to himself as he continued to look around. “Well hopefully we haven’t been gone for so long that the Sect sent some more people to come and find us.”

Finally convinced as much as he could be, that there were no Immortals in hiding around him, Khyree sent a thought into his Sapphire Rose ring and then threw himself to the ground. Seconds later, Kendrick Aminu and the two inner students were tossed out of the portal before it slammed shut with a kinetic explosion. The senior servant landed awkwardly on the forest floor, but the inner students were able to quickly reorientate their trajectories and land safely on their feet.

Antwan Darras and Jaylen Stone both had confused looks on their faces as they discovered that they had various treasures cradled in their arms with no recollection of how they got there. The last thing they remembered was walking into the portal. Then nothing. Until they found themselves being cast out before the portal erupted and disappeared.

Antwan looked back to where the portal used to be, and saw nothing that indicated that it once was there. Yet he could clearly remember stepping into its liquid silver opening. “I guessed we must have failed,” he muttered aloud.

“Brother Antwan, but look at these treasures we captured. Truly we must have had some fortuitous encounters,” said Jaylen as he examined the treasures in his hands. He had a random assortment of swords, robes and items clutched tightly in his grip.

“Indeed brother. Jaylen, do you recall anything from our time inside of the pocket realm?”

“Not a single thing brother,” replied Jaylen. His eyes were still firmly fixed on the treasures in his arms.

The lost memory bothered him, but he supposed there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. This was not the first time he had been called to investigate an unknown portal. He knew that sometimes strange things simply happened around them. Shoving those thoughts to the back of his head, Antwan sent all of his treasures into his interspatial ring.

“Wake the servants, and store your riches. We need to report back to the Sect right away,” he said to Jaylen. Then he headed off in the direction from which they had entered the sacred hunting ground.

Jaylen quickly stored his treasures and moved over to the unconscious servants. He kicked them both a little harder than he needed to. But they were just servants in his eyes. Humans. They could be found a dime a dozen in any village or town. Frankly, with so many humans on the planet, they were no better than pests to an Immortal like Jaylen. “On your feet. It’s time to go. We wasted enough time here, thanks to you,” he said before turning and following in Antwan’s wake.

Khyree staggered to his feet. He looked over at Kendrick to see him also getting to her feet, with a dazed expression on his face. “Brother Kendrick, are you unwell?” he asked with concern in his voice.

“Ah, yes brother Khyree I am fine,” Kendrick replied. He winced as he clutched his ribs with a frown on his face. “Though I could have done without the rude awakening.” Kendrick looked around and for the first time noticed that they were back in the clearing, with the inner students Antwan and Jaylen heading back the way they had come in. “What happened? I can't seem to remember anything. Did we complete the mission? Where are all the other servants?” he asked.

"I'm not sure of anything myself brother," answered Khyree with a look of confusion plastered on his face. "But we should hurry up and follow the inner students before we get left behind."

Kendrick nodded his head and silently agreed with the young Khyree. So they dusted themselves off and followed the inner students out of the forest. Neither of them had any desire to tangle with any of the many essence beasts and creatures that they could hear on the prowl in the sacred hunting grounds.

Back on the Sacred Barque, Kendrick was saddened to hear about the loss of the rest of the servants. Though many of them were not close and personal friends of his, he had known some of them for years, even if they were just faces he recognized in the crowds or on some random job assignment.

While Kendrick sat near the bow of the vessel and thought of the lost servants, Antwan and Jaylen discussed the various treasures they had obtained and what they were going to say in their reports.

Khyree silently stood by himself near the stern of the vessel. He watched as the sacred hunting grounds faded away into the distance. He had mixed feelings about what had transpired there. He hated the option that he had basically been forced to accept. Already the challenges of his new life had begun. He could feel the ancient artifact straining against his will in its attempt to absorb the essence of the world and the universe.

He knew that the spellscript inscribed on the ring was set to constantly absorb and channel a low amount of essence energy at all times, but he didn’t want to take the chance of alerting the inner students to the fact that he was now capable of cultivating. He knew that the information would come out at some point in time, but he didn’t want it to happen right after the supposed failure of a mission. He simply could not imagine that working out for him too well.

Already he could feel the sweat begin to drip down his brow as he wrestled with the control of the ring. He fervently wished that he could slip inside to the ancient realm and consult with Talib the spirit automaton some more regarding the script, but he knew his current situation made that impossible. Khyree vowed to himself to one day find a way to establish a means to communicate with the spirit while outside of the realm.

Khyree found himself struggling so much that he was unable to appreciate the lush scenery below as they headed back to the Sect. All he could do was silently struggle, and hold on as the Sacred Barque cleaved its way through the afternoon sky.

By the time they had all arrived back at the Sect, Khyree was mentally and spiritually exhausted. He couldn't remember a single time in his life that he had ever been as worn out as he was at that point.

He blew through the disembarkation and the debriefing with the chief servant as fast as humanly possible. He practically flew as he ran back to his residence. He knew that brother Kendrick would balk at his sudden departure, but that was a problem he would deal with later.

As soon as Khyree made it back inside his home, he barricaded his door and immediately made his way into the most secure room in the building. Along the way he grabbed his copy of the Sect's cultivation manual.

Once he was seated comfortably, he quickly perused the cultivation technique provided by the Sect and refreshed his memory of the breathing patterns, the cycling structure of the essence and the mental mnemonics of the Nine Breaths Shadow technique.

Khyree adjusted his breathing, and recited the mnemonics for a few cycles before he finally unleashed his hold on the ancient artifact, the Desert Rose Ring.

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The relief he felt upon finally relaxing his will for the better part of the last twenty-four hours left him trembling almost in bliss. A sensation that lasted for almost a full second, before it felt as if a huge cloud of something intangible was sucked into the ring. Khyree felt the ring become heavier, but it wasn’t a physical weight. It was something..other. The next thing he knew he felt a rush of pure energy as it flooded into his being.

The energy came in as a wave as it flowed first into his skin and then proceeded to make its way through the tissues, the veins, and the organs in his body. Khyree compared his body to a dry desert basin as it got flooded by a sudden and unexpected rain storm. He felt the fatigue leaving his body, his muscles felt full and were throbbing with power. There was a pressure that was starting to build up within him. A pressure that with every wave increased exponentially. Khyree felt as if his very cells were beginning to swell. Within moments he felt as if he was going to explode from the pressure.

That’s when he remembered that he also had to apply the cycling structure as well. “First I sense the essence as it enters my body, then allow it to saturate my entire being. Only then do I allow my will to encompass all of the energy and then force it to compress into my spiritual center. The next step is to allow the energy to build as I continue to compress it into a weapon appropriate for my nature,” Khyree thought to himself.

Khyree thought back to all of the weapons he had seen depicted on the walls in the ruins he had explored back when still lived in the Northern Wilds. He had seen Immortals and humans wielding all types of weapons from staves, swords, bows and arrows and some that he didn't even have names for.

He knew from reading the Sect’s cultivation manual that whatever weapon he chose to represent his nature would have a huge impact on his cultivation. For it would be that weapon that he would wield to open the space to the Ether and form the Etheric Channel. The more powerful the weapon he selected was and the closer it came to his actual nature would determine the size of the opening that would eventually become the bridge between his two selves.

Khyree continued to condense the energy as he thought about his nature and the weapons he remembered in his mind’s eye. He thought about many varieties of swords he had seen, from the broad bladed to the slender and hooked tips. Then there were spears, the long wooden handles encased in metal and the piercing tips. As he cycled the many weapons through his mind, he discovered that none of them felt quite right. That and he could never quite see himself wielding any of the weapons.

He thought about what that meant to him as he compressed all of the energy in his center over and over again, one layer at a time as he contemplated his nature. He thought about what kind of a person he was. His personality type. His goals, and what he was willing to do to achieve them. He thought about all of the pain he had endured so far in his life. He thought about the Immortals he had encountered.

It was then that a thought occurred to him. He wanted to be free. To be strong. He wanted to be powerful enough to pave his own way. He knew that true strength was the kind that came from inside. His will. His determination. He wanted the ability to punish the villains. It was a series of thoughts that led him to consider the most powerful thing that he knew of.

He felt a moment of pure harmony as his nature was revealed to himself and his will shaped the compressed energy accordingly. Unbeknownst to himself, Khyree had managed to condense much more energy into his weapon form than any Immortal that had come before him. By an order of magnitude unseen in the lower realms.

The condensed energy inside of him began to pulsate in rhythmic bursts that sent out waves in increasing heat. It began to emit a gravitational field as it slowly began to rotate in place. Khyree watched in silent amazement as the sphere of energy as it was so clearly formed now began to take on a life of its own. It was freely absorbing and compressing the essence being flooded into his body all by itself. Khyree felt like a bystander as he watched the unusual development.

The cultivation manual had not mentioned anything like this within its papyrus pages. He felt as if he just might be breaking new and terrifying ground in his first attempt to cultivate. He found that he was excited and scared at the same time. For there was a single passage that he had read that reverberated in his mind as he watched the energy inside of him moving on its own accord. A passage that read that a single mistake during this initial stage could lead to the crippling of one’s cultivation base and or even death.

Khyree chose to put his fear to the side as he diligently continued to practice the Sect’s cultivation technique. There was not even the possibility of failure in his mind. He would succeed. He would be free, and his enemies would be punished.

He watched as the sphere of essence energy increased in size over the course of hours. In his mind’s eye he saw it go from the size of a pea, to the size of a watermelon. But its transformation did not stop there. For then the energy began to go from a colorless vapor to a fiery red incandescence. Then the sphere began to shrink down in size, as if it was now collapsing in on itself.

With each shrinkage the sphere changed into another color and the heat and field of gravity increased. Orange was the next color, followed by a bright yellow that reminded Khyree of the sun that hung in the sky. Yellow was swiftly followed by white and then finally blue. The sphere of energy was now half the size of a sunflower seed and steadily getting smaller.

There was a tiny spark, and then the sphere winked out of existence. Immediately, Khyree felt as if a massive invisible hole had been torn inside of himself. Blessedly he felt relief as all of the essence that was bottled up inside of him was sucked into the hole. A hole that he knew connected directly to the Ether. It was as if the hole was not a hole but a tunnel instead. No, it was the Etheric Channel. As the essence from the world and universe was sucked into the Etheric Channel, a different type of energy began to flow back out and into his body.

Khyree knew that this energy was his own personal essence that would be used to fuel his cultivation. Immortals referred to this personal energy as Ka. As he examined the shadowy wispy strings of Ka that slowly began to make its way throughout his body, Khyree knew that this was the darkness type Ka that the Hidden Valley Shadow Sect cultivated. This was the type of Ka that gave birth to their vaunted hidden techniques. Powerful Immortal Techniques that were exclusive to the Sect. Though Khyree knew that he still had a ways to go before he would be able to learn their hidden techniques.

Khyree found that he was surprisingly happy to see that he had passed the first crucible. The first of the so-called ten thousand steps on the Path to immortality. That from this moment on, he was no longer just one of the regular run of the mill humans. He was something special. Something that should not have come to exist because of his unique condition. Something that only through an incredible twist of fate, the inventiveness of an ancient spirit automaton and his own will to live that allowed him to overcome his highly unusual issue to become something he never truly wanted to be in the first place.

For it was on this day, the first day of the third month of the calendar, that Khyree, adopted son of the Mourntree family, a true human child of the Northern Wilds, became an Immortal.

Unable to help himself he accessed his system’s interface to see what if anything had changed. It turned out that quite a few sections were updated.

The System

Name: Khyree Mourntree

Age: 19

Race: Human???

Sex: Male

Weight: 79kg

Height: 182cm

Health: 100/100

Health Regeneration Rate: 1.578/hr

Immunities: None

Physical Defense: 3.5 kilogram force

Physical Offence: 3.5 kilogram force

Ka Levels: .00118811881

Ka Accumulation Rate: .0000990099/hr

Immortal Rank: Stage 1, rank 2.

Skills: NA

Abilities: Nine Breaths Cultivation Technique (efficiency 100%) Turn on/off, Detect Essence Turn on/off.

Ambient Essence Levels: 3,000,000,000,000

Equipment: Ancient Ring Artifact (Desert Rose Ring), Sect Ankh

Khyree was shocked to see that by simply becoming an Immortal that his health regeneration rate had increased by over twenty times. He knew that Immortals recovered from their injuries quickly, but he had no idea just how efficient the process was until now. “No wonder, Varnan and his crew never stayed down for long, whenever I was able to hurt them. Damned Immortals.” Khyree thought to himself with a distasteful look on his face.

Not only was he able to recover faster, but he was stronger. Much stronger than he was before. At least twice as strong as he was previously. “Nice,” Khyree thought to himself. “Now my enemies will be able to feel me. At least the ones on my level that is,” Khyree thought with a smile.

Khyree was glad to note that his system gave him the option to cultivate automatically. With this option on, it did not matter if he was actively or passively meditating, he would always be cultivating and exchanging the essence of the world and the universe for Ka from the Ether.