[Progress report.] I demanded.
“Hah, it’s not easy, Master Gerald. Although I have many opportunities to examine the rift, the duration is just too short to do anything more than a rudimentary analysis. If I was closer to the next Realm I might be able to do more, but as things go, without the brute force of a Sky Realm Cultivator, I have to rely on my subpar technique.” Thener said, sighing.
He examined the rift every month ever since he began working for me, but progress was slow. I could see he was desperately trying to better understand the rift, but he lacked the proper tools and abilities to fully grasp its structure and intricacies.
[Time… I might have something for that. Stand still and open your mind.] I stretched my finger and touched his forehead. [Don’t resist.]
“Ah!” Thener cried and jerked his head back as if struck by lightning. However, he was not hurt and instead quickly closed his eyes, taking on a meditative position. Shortly thereafter, he opened them again with a firm expression.
“Century in a Blink. I see… This might work.” He quickly stood up and bowed. “Thank you, Master, for this gift. I will train diligently for the new opportunity next month.”
I nodded. [Good. Try it out, see if it helps. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to come up with something new.]
“Yes! I will work hard!”
Satisfied, I nodded and left him to train. Just over half a year has passed since I was sucked through the rift, and though my progress towards freedom was slow, we were making progress. Thener would slowly develop a deeper understanding of the rifts so that we would eventually be able to open them without relying exclusively on the brute force of Sky Qi to open a passage.
If that happened, we wouldn’t be able to go through manually, but it would become possible to use teleportation Formations. I would then have two options for destinations. The first one was going back to Neloron like when I first left Earth, and the other would be to wait for John to finish the Anchor in his base and connect to it there.
I preferred the second option, but if after a decade the Anchor still wasn’t complete, I would have no choice but to take Neloron over the gray wasteland. Little Qi was still a thousand times better than no Qi, no matter how backwater the place was.
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I returned to the mines and examined the storage. We managed to gather just over fifty Dreadstone bricks, and my Void Stone storage chest became laughably insufficient to store any extras a long time ago.
Thener didn’t focus on studying the material, but that was fine. We had plenty of time and were in no hurry. Developing a new alloy could wait.
[Progress report.] I called to Bram who was taking a break from excavating the ore. [How is the little guy doing?]
“Yes!” The man answered and stood up. “About Felix, he is progressing well, if a bit slower than normal. Then again, considering how much Qi he has to convert into Soul Essence, he is actually Cultivating at lightning speed. He had just recently reached the third stage of the Spirit Accumulation Realm, and his martial training is also progressing well.”
[Good. Any bottlenecks?]
“None. As you predicted, his Cultivation is smooth, if a bit more demanding. The kid seems to enjoy it though. The golems were also a nice touch. He is improving quickly.”
I nodded. Everything went about as I expected it. Since my Terracotta army was a bit useless, I decided to let Felix use it as sparring partners. I simply lowered their power by about 99.9% and gave them to Bram to teach the kid martial arts. The gravel they were made of was extremely fragile, but for someone just barely stronger than a Mortal, they were still too tough to break with bare hands.
The kid couldn’t use any external energy either, since it would immediately be devoured by the environment. Because of that, only body-strengthening techniques could be trained. Anything concerning internal energy was allowed by the world, anything concerning external energy was not.
That was the price to pay for being weak. Nothing could be done to change that.
Well, I could construct a chamber out of Void Stone to block the effects of Dreadstone, but it wasn’t practical, and I didn’t have that much material on me, no matter how much I plundered. Void Stone was very rarely used in specific circumstances, so it was not easy to get hold of. Spirit Veins were full of the stuff, but mining it would just ruin the vein, so it was very rarely done.
And so little Felix had to train his magic in a purely physical form. With his perfect soul, he was picking up concepts very quickly, just like me. He also only had to be told things once to remember them and was quick to notice his own mistakes. For those he didn’t, there was Bram.
The seasoned Cultivator had decades of experience, something even a perfect genius couldn’t compete with. He knew tricks and moves that were nearly impossible to figure out on your own. Techniques had to be tested in combat so that the irrelevant or detrimental moves could be changed and improved.
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There was also the immensely important understanding that only came with experience. Just training theory was not enough, live combat was always required. The problem was that everyone had a plan, that is until they got punched in the face. Then all technique and style went out of the window, replaced by rough, predictable animalistic impulses that could easily be countered by simple, rudimentary techniques.
[Excellent. Increase the difficulty when you see he almost mastered his style. Don’t let him get complacent or settle into a routine. He has to be adaptable, remember that.]
“Yes, Master! Your will shall be done.”
I inclined my head and went away.
While to outside observers it might seem like I was just using Bram to train Felix, I was actually training Bram at the same time. He was forced to teach someone so much weaker than himself that every single mistake could be fatal. He had to quickly improve his thinking and his actions to keep up with the kid, while at the same time, he worked the mines, boosting and improving his manipulation of Qi.
There wasn’t much I could teach a seasoned Cultivator like him, especially after he was set in his ways for so long. The greatest development was only possible by reshaping his mind, changing his thinking patterns, and giving him new perspectives.
Teaching him Martial Arts was useless, and giving him new Cultivation Techniques even more so. He already had his own Path, something that was quite unlikely to drastically change at 300 years of age.
Even with all the experiences and knowledge I had, some things were just not possible, even for me. I could bring people back from the dead, kind of, but changing a Cultivator’s Path to something better just didn’t happen.
It was like trying to turn a dog into a cat. Or a man into a woman. Things like that just couldn’t be done, not without completely losing the identity of what you were trying to change in the first place. The only way it could be done would be by completely destroying the original and building something new out of the broken pieces. And would you know it, most people had a name for a process like that. It was called death.
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It happened on a day like any other, when I was out hunting far away from the village.
A blinding flash of light illuminated the dull, red, dreary sky, and a painful rumbling followed. A glowing crack opened, one made of black lightning and with swirling red energy inside. The rift stretched beyond the horizon, thousands of times larger than any I had ever seen before, and as I curiously flew closer, a truly colossal beast came through, followed by another.
The first was some kind of an ape whose skin was like stone, with spikes on its limbs, and veins of precious ore worming across the surface of its body. The things glowed in the dim light of the Ashen Wastes, as the beast with the body of a mountain crashed down, sinking into the stone as if it was water or mud.
The second creature following after it with a roar was just as large, if not larger, its body like that of a snake. The head, however, with its many spikes and protrusions, told me it was a gigantic Wyrm.
The mere cry of the beasts as they broke through the fabric of reality was strong enough to ripple the surface like a wind pushing the waves of a lake, and the quake that came after as they struck the ground was a thousand times stronger.
The Ape punched the Wyrm as it went in for a bite, its massive fist seemingly traveling in slow motion from its sheer size. Moments later, I felt the blast of wind and the sound of what I imagined would have been like experiencing a nuclear detonation from afar.
A crater began forming beneath the beasts, the Dreadstone ore and dust pushed aside like it was nothing.
There was a crackle of lighting as the Wyrm shook its head and twisted its body, flicking its barbed tail at the Ape. Another explosive wave came, carrying with it the energy of the strike as well as the pained roar of the beast.
The spiked tail scraped against the colossus, digging deep groves into the surface of its stony skin, yet the size of the Ape was such that those deep ravines were barely even scratching the surface.
A beam of Qi, concentrated and well-aimed, burst out of the primate’s mouth, striking the snake. A crackle of energy intercepted the beam, dispersing it over a larger area, until the Wyrm retaliated with one of its own.
Blasts were exchanged, and the land was continuously stripped of its top layer, reaching the dangerous bedrock beneath. The two didn’t care. Concentrated Dreadstone was ground beneath them, hands, feet, and bodies coated entirely with it, yet they didn’t seem to notice, or care.
They battled for a bit longer, but it was clear the Ape was having a harder time. It got wounded more and attacked less, the relentless aggression of the Wyrm not letting it properly retaliate.
With a final, powerful blow, the Ape rid itself of the serpent, and jumped into the sky, through the rift it came from. The tear in reality began to close.
The serpent hissed at it and straightened its body, clearly enraged its opponent ran… again. Suddenly it froze, and its body twisted around, its massive, piercing eyes turned at me.
“What are you looking at, ant?!” It snapped at me.
Its words boomed in my ears, the harsh voice amplified by anger and magic. It was more of a rumbling thunder than a spoken sentence.
I was far away, yet I could feel the rage from the beast. In its anger, it flicked its tail and attacked. Like a whip, its body moved, and if a tsunami of rocks was already a natural disaster, that action was even more so.
I felt my blood boil. The heat of my body increased exponentially and I burst into flames, growing to the limit. My body expanded thousands of times, yet against the beast, I was no bigger than a pup.
The tail approached, lightning flickering around it. Contact with it meant death… or at least severe pain. Unacceptable.
I flexed my body and roared, pushing immense power behind it. Ten Souls were instantly consumed and converted into pure energy. A beam as thick as a building smashed into the beast at near-light speed. A perfect Arcane Blaze. My strongest one yet.
The beast snarled and stopped, pulling back its tail.
“So you have claws… little mouse.” Came an amused rumble.
I flicked out its forked tongue, tasting the air. It glanced at the shrinking rift and then back at me.
“Hah. Lucky. You get to live… this time.”
With that, it spun its massive body around, and with a mighty leap, jumped through the rift in the sky. I stood rooted on the spot, watching as the crack slowly healed, and closed. Fresh Qi filled the air for a moment before it was consumed by the wasteland.
And I just remained there and began to laugh.