Eric easily made his way to the center of the Frontier. The floating city in space was designed so that all roads and walkways led to the center, where an enormous, empty platform awaited.
He was unsure, but Eric was almost certain that the closer he got to the center, the more expensive everything looked. Just like Ta’ir had said, everything was closed. People moved about, some traded things but there was really no store activity, almost as if they were prohibited from doing so.
“Must be the System rules or something,” Eric muttered to himself.
Circling the platform, he made his way to three giant pillars made of stone and steel. They resembled the small system store he had back at Solace, the only difference being the size and detail. These pillars had careful inscriptions on them, creating an interesting combination between magic, technology and something that he didn’t understand.
“Cultivation shit?” he asked himself, furrowing his brow.
Looking at the three pillars, he noticed that two displayed large windows with a countdown that wouldn’t end for weeks, one being a week longer than the other. Though, the one in the middle one was usable. While the pillars were close together, that was only relatively speaking, he still had to walk for several seconds between each of them. Focusing on the closest one, an explanation appeared:
Nexus: Fear your lands running wild no more. Remotely access your hubs with ease.
“Huh,” Eric said with mild amusement.
Walking to the next pillar with a window, another explanation appeared:
Gate: Through here, ticket holders will gain access to the Frontier and most importantly, the Tower.
----------
Eric stood before a towering pagoda, unsure of how to proceed. Should I just enter and ask for a room? Do I have to make an appointment? Ta’ir said that most places were still closed, so, was this place even open?
With a shrug that dismissed any doubts, he entered. He slid the door open and found a single pale young man behind a counter. No, pale was an understatement, it didn’t even begin to describe him, this man looked very much dead, but a pristine version of dead, if that made sense.
Skin so pale that it turned a uniform tone. Eyes devoid of life. Eric could see a tinge of color, but the sclera had turned black, and any hint of color became difficult to spot.
Slowly coming to terms with his new reality, Eric acted like he would with any other store clerk.
“Hello, I would like to rent a room,” he said, sounding as polite as possible.
Having worked in retail for a short period of time when he was in high school made him real polite when dealing with clerks. Not only out of respect, but also because some of them were only one step away from beating the shit out of the next customer that bothered them.
“Welcome to the Undying Pillar of Bone,” the clerk said, in a voice that sounded far more normal than Eric expected. “What kind of room were you looking for? We specialize in death qi, the higher the quality of the room, the higher the death qi. Or, if you're not quite ready for your journey into undeath, we have more... basic accommodations."
Eric had no idea that this place was specialized for the undead. How could he, he couldn’t even read the signs outside.
Agreeing to the clerk’s suggestion, he rented the cheapest room, with the lowest amount of death qi, with money that Ondal had lent him, since he himself had spent all of it before arriving at the Frontier.
An attendant came from a side room, dressed in clean but simple clothes and asked Eric to follow. The hallway that they walked through really gave no indication of what he was in for. There was nothing but locked doors on either side, some had magic circles or odd symbols, and others were just closed with actual giant locks.
The attendant quickly guided Eric to a room near the end of the hall, they opened the door and gestured for Eric to enter. Once inside, the door closed behind him.
The room was small and completely made out of wood. The only source of light was a magic circle engraved on the floor that glowed faintly and flickered occasionally, as if remarking how cheap it was.
He took out a cultivation manual from the storage ring he had taken from Alex, since he didn’t have the chance to return it. He began to examine the manual carefully.
It wasn’t like what he saw in webtoons, where the bindings were thick string, and the paper was thicker than average. No, it looked just like a regular book, smooth and modern, with the title: “Cultivation Manual for Beginners, 45th Edition By Lamel Ashvelty Heir of—” The name of the author took over most of the cover.
Eric opened it and flipped through the pages. He stopped and noticed the intricate details in the colored images, each one with heavy amounts of text that detailed what the image was and what it was for.
He sat down and crossed his legs. The first pages meticulously detailed various sitting positions: Padmasana, Siddhasana, Sukhasana, and more, each with an accompanying diagram.
This meant absolutely nothing to Eric, the only position he knew from his memories was the one they called “lotus,” and even then, he was sure he didn’t know the correct form. For all he knew, it was on the very page he was looking at and he didn’t recognize it.
With some strain, he tried each form until he finally settled on the first one. Not because he felt particularly more comfortable in it, but because he felt the least amount of discomfort with it. Isn’t that the same thing? he asked himself, though quickly dispelled the thought.
He skimmed most of the book’s first half, since it was mostly an introduction into cultivation. What happened, why it happened, and how it happened. Most of it was lost on him, filled with jargon about spiritual energy, pathways, and realms. Though he did find something interesting.
A section labeled “On the Anatomy of Pathways and Cores.” It described how every species, even humans from different worlds and universes, had wildly different internal structures.
“As an example, some of the evolved arachnids who have achieved a humanoid form possess a meridian that is split into four, and these four must be cultivated at the exact same rate or they risk losing the use of their limbs forever.”
He continued reading, intrigued by the topic.
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“However, no species has ever been recorded to naturally possess more than one core or none at all. Some rare evolutions can split a core into multiple smaller ones or can even sublimate their core into their Star Map. While this transformation bestows power far beyond one's current realm, it comes with the permanent loss of advancement potential.”
He paused at that last part, raising an eyebrow. “Star Map?” Eric muttered, clearly saying each word. It was the only term that he had no notion of. He knew the individual words, but not how they applied to cultivation.
The image that followed the passage didn’t help much either. It showed a sea of stars, linked by intricate lines. The imagery was like a constellation or a technological network, but completely alien to anything he had ever seen when it came to cultivation.
It was as if the essence of a person’s being was projected onto a cosmic canvas. At the center of this map was the brightest star, from it branched paths that split into more and more stars, like an infinitely growing web.
A small annotation beneath the image read, “Not an actual Star Map, mockup for visual purposes.”
Eric raised an eyebrow at the label. He was left more confused than before. What is the purpose of this so-called Star Map? Why is it even included if they aren’t going to say what it is?
Skimming through the cultivation method, he found it incredibly simple. Closing his eyes, clearing his mind of any questions, he took a deep breath and began to recount what he had just read.
“Energy enters through your breath and seeps in through your pores.”
Before he began reading the next part, a question rose in mind. How are people meant to cultivate without the Mana Manipulation skill? Is there another way for people to manipulate the energy within their core? Am I just defective? Or does it have to do with evolution?
With steady breathing, he continued, one passage at a time. Then he moved on to the part that actually solved the question he had just asked: how to feel the energy in his core.
The short answer, he couldn’t. It turns out, that upon evolution, you gained an extra sense that allowed you to feel the energy within your core, moving it at will to cultivate. Children of people who had evolved at least once, were born with this sense. But people from a newly integrated world? Extremely rare.
“That means that you need to level all the way to level twenty normally. Fuck!” he exclaimed, his body language not matching his tone. “Now what?” he asked, taking a brief pause. “Wait...” He paused, a sudden realization striking him. “I don’t need the sense; I already have an entry and the skills.”
Closing his eye, he focused Mana Insight deep within. Surrounding his core in his skill. It felt sluggish, almost like a muscle that he hadn’t used in a long time. He removed it from his core and began to move it around, until he was satisfied with the speed at which it moved.
Enveloping his core once more, he sought the crack he had discovered before. Slowly—incredibly so—he began to thin out Mana Insight, while simultaneously pushing it in through the crack.
Mana insight has reached level 9.
Pain Tolerance has reached level 7.
Pain Tolerance has reached level 8.
Sweat dripped from his brow, his teeth clenched and pain that had no equal surged from his core. Time began to stretch, seconds became minutes, minutes turned into hours, maybe even days.
But finally, after what felt like days, his skill creeped into his core. With a deep gasp, he released his concentration, deactivating his skill. He glanced around the room, the closed environment not allowing him to get a sense of how long he had taken.
He took a moment to calm himself and check his status, to check the rate at which his mana was recovering, though now that he thought about it, he hadn’t felt his mana diminish.
Mana 120/120
To his surprise, his mana was full, curious, he activated Mana Insight once more, this time sensing his surroundings in an attempt to waste mana. What he sensed was unlike anything he had sensed before.
He was surrounded by a sea of mana. If he grabbed any of the strands that were in the small room and pushed it into his core, he would shoot up 50 levels, or more likely, he would explode. Regardless, with every breath he took, he recovered more mana than he spent.
After a few minutes, having finally recovered his calm, he once again moved Mana Insight. This time, however, he took a deep breath out and held it. Once his skill was within the core, he took a deep breath in.
He wanted to feel the mana from his breath enter into his core. And there it was, a tiny amount compared to what he assumed was actually in the air he took in.
He had put Mental Focus to work, figuring out what was happening with the energy in his core, when he was in the city, but stopped when he thought better of it. Now, he set it free, free to grasp as much as it could.
His core, though damaged, was still functional. The mana in the core started to move slowly. After observing it for a while, he realized that it was trying to spin, but something stopped it from doing so. His core was either too weak to make it spin, or the energy was too little for his core to begin working.
Unsure of what to do, he took another deep breath and then another and another, until finally his core started to work. It was slow, but it was working, and it was also leaking. As soon as the core began to work, mana, both processed and unprocessed, began to slip through the crack.
Eric tried to cover the crack with his skill, and even though less of it got through compared to before, some of the processed energy still managed to escape his grasp.
However, it wasn’t all bad, through this, he saw a flaw in the natural way that his core functioned. It basically spun the energy around its inner surface, making it a flaw unique to him, who had a cracked core, but a flaw, nonetheless. However, the cultivation method suggested other movements that avoided the core’s inner walls.
With a new path to follow, he grasped the mana that remained within his core. Using his newly leveled Mana Insight skill, he began to follow the pattern shown inside the cultivation manual.
Time stretched once again as he fell into deep concentration. The room faded away, leaving only the pain he felt when he touched his core wrong.
Mana insight has reached level 10.
Pain Tolerance has reached level 9.
Time was beginning to blur, the only reason that he knew time was even advancing was because his skills kept growing. He hadn’t thought about it before, but no sound got into the small room, so he had no idea if anything was even happening outside.
“Might’ve spent days in here already, maybe even weeks,” he muttered to himself. “No, I didn’t pay enough for them to allow me to stay for weeks,” he added with a chuckle. “They would have kicked me out.”
There, a faint sensation of fulfillment was nearing. He didn’t feel that his core was as full as it was when he crammed mana into it, but the sensation didn’t seem like a lie.
Trusting the feeling completely, he continued his deep breaths and slowly increased the speed of the energy in his core, following the cultivation method detailed in the manual.
In reality, the cultivation method detailed in the manual mentioned that he should move the energy to different points across his body, as if preparing the energy nodes. Not only would this allow the energy to grow stronger, but it would also help create channels for easier strengthening.
However, Eric couldn’t do that. The processed energy would escape from his grasp if he tried to take it out from his core. Without the extra sense that only came after evolution, he couldn’t guide the processed energy out from his core properly.
As the feeling of fulfillment grew ever greater, he brought up his status screen, focusing on his experience.
Experience 9069/9075
Experience 9070/9075
Experience 9071/9075
He was almost there. But just then, intrusive thoughts began to invade his mind. They told him to add more mana, but on this occasion, reason overpowered impulse.
Experience 9072/9075
Experience 9073/9075
He couldn't afford to make that mistake again. Shoving more mana in might level him up, but it would almost certainly destroy him in the process.
Experience 9074/9075
That wasn’t to say that it was a permanent refusal, he was actually saying, “Not now.” And then, with a final breath, he finished.
Experience 9075/9075
Level up!
Experience 0/10800
The energy surged from his core, flowing into the corresponding nodes across his body, completing the level up. There wasn’t anything special about it, but something about it felt different—more integrated, as though his body and core were syncing on a level deeper than before.
Then, without warning, his limbs went numb, a sudden wave of exhaustion crashing over him. The fatigue of staying in one position for as long as he had finally caught up to him. Even his mind begged for more rest.
Eric barely managed to close his eye before he sank into a deep, heavy sleep, his body finally surrendering to the fatigue that had accumulated. The room remained still, the faint magic circle flickering.