Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on Earth.

-Fyodor Dostoevsky.

After recruiting my new Lieutenants I returned to Amoria. Right after the gates, within a few minutes, I found them waiting for me.

They didn’t even greet me, as the scarlet general said.

“We have a problem. Our powers are waning. We still have them, but they are much weaker.”

I replied, “I know, I feel it too. I am feeling it as the time passes. Maybe it’s because we gained a burst of power from the massacre of Amoria.”

The Scarlet General said angrily, “You promised us power, and now we are losing it.”

I looked around me, and it seemed the rest of them shared his sentiment.

I said calmly, “I think we should increase our power using the scars of fate.”

Everyone started looking thoughtfully at one another. It seemed they grew closer together than to me in the time it took me to return to Amoria. I hoped to close that gap in the future; we have to function like a family or the enemy will beat us by passing through the gaps and stab us in the back.

Dante said, “Why do you think we can use the scars of fate to cultivate our bodies?”

“I passed over one on the way back here. I examined the energy from a distance, and I could tell that we both share the same origin. The scars are clusters of yin energy that deface the fabric of reality. Those monsters that come out either from our world, or from a parallel one, aren’t who created the scars. They just found a portal and walked too close to it, not knowing any better. Probably in the future, with sufficient research, we could use the scars to visit those parallel universes ourselves.”

I paused and let the magnitude of my words sink in, and then continued, “The cultivators can’t use that tainted energy for cultivation, and that’s why they don’t bother closing the scars, but we can gain way more than them. The invisible commander which you all haven’t met yet,” I said while pointing at the ghost beside me, then continued, “Told me on our way back about how the empire already closed a few scars of fate because they were just too close for comfort, and the only thing the cultivators who closed it gained was some magical items. The danger doesn’t equal the incentive for them, but for us, we are going to gain power every time we brave one of those scars of reality.”

I looked at them and could hear the hums of approval each of them made.

Dante asked, “Just how dangerous will it be to close the scars? There are only five of us! I am sure the empire sent battalions to take these things out of commission.”

I answered, “Our powers are nothing to scoff at. They are like the elemental powers in their strength and wide range of use. The more we cultivate, the stronger we will become, and five of us are more than enough if we are smart about it and we use our powers to their full extent. I’ll strategize most of the fights along with the scarlet general, so you have nothing to worry about.”

I saw the general give me a nod of approval after saying that; he was, after all, our most experienced army man, and he would be very useful once we split up to cover more scars of fate as our energy needs will just increase as the time goes.

“What are we waiting for, then? Let’s go get stronger. The empire has to pay for what it has done to us,” the skeleton lord said with his infernal voice. It sounded like it came from the depth of hell or a faraway world, guttural and primal.

All of us nodded in approval, and we started heading towards the gates again.

Amoria was always isolated, but now it seemed like the world was avoiding it like the plague.

We headed towards the closest scar of fate to our location. We didn’t meet another human all the way there.

We scouted the scar of fate from afar. According to the information I had gathered, this was an earth-based tormented scar of fate. The tormented had merged with scorpions morphing them in horrifying ways and enlarging them. The scorpion head came to stop just under my waist, but its tail was higher than my head.

We started preparing. The scarlet general made a two-handed great sword with his blood manipulation power, a great scarlet sword, that looked really impressive.

The invisible commander summoned three ghosts and was going to command them through the battle from afar.

Dante was joining him in the back row as well with his gourd. His gourd had physical capabilities, but he didn’t get used to fighting with it yet, and closing a scar of fate is gonna be rough.

The skeleton lord extracted his backbone right in front of our eyes and was using it as a chain-like weapon. Another backbone grew back in its place immediately.

He also removed his rib cage and used it like a shield, and another rib cage grew back in its place.

I didn’t know he could do that. He said that he could Necromance the scorpions after they die to use two of them on our side as well, but he was going to be in the front row with the scarlet general.

Which gave me the chance to remain in the back row, to avoid physical battle since my body was still that of a little boy.

I created a bow and arrow with my blood manipulation and shot an arrow towards a scorpion after making sure the team was ready; the arrow hit the scorpion right in the head, but it didn’t die. It scurried towards us, along with two of its kind. There were a lot of these scorpions in the area, and we had to be smart about this.

The Scarlet General waited until they were within a safe distance and then rushed one of them. It tried to strike him with the poison in its tail, but he blocked it with the wide part of his sword.

It then swiped at him with its pincers, but he deftly dodged backwards twice, before landing the sword with an overhead arc that cut the scorpion in two.

I was pretty impressed. He was, without a doubt, our most experienced fighter.

The scorpions had human-like eyes on their heads, which was the only clue, other than them being earthly creatures, that they were a tormented version.

Meanwhile, the Skeleton lord stood in the path of another scorpion as well, and when it tried to hit him with the tail, he blocked with his rib cage shield, and its tail got stuck inside, he then slammed the tail in a way that made his backbone weapon circle around it, his eyes glowed brighter at that moment, and he pulled the weapon hard, its edgy parts cut the tail clean off, the scorpion scurried back in pain, but the skeleton lord pursued it, and he raised his foot, and a sharp bone grew from the bottom of his heel, he stabbed the scorpion with it right through the head killing it immediately.

Only one scorpion remained. Dante threw a black lump at it. It started to decompose but it wasn’t fast enough. The invisible commander sent his ghosts towards the scorpion as well. The ghosts attacked by passing through the body of the scorpion; every time one of them passed through the scorpion it got electrified. We could see smoke coming out of the scorpion by the time it got close enough, a final arrow in its weak head after all the decomposition and frying killed it immediately.

This looked terrible, though. Three of us had to work together to kill one, while two of us could solo. We needed to grow stronger, or to learn how to use our powers better through trial and error.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The scarlet general looked at me to signal that I pull a new patch of these things. Fighting right next to the scar of fate is not a very smart idea when you only have a team of five.

I aimed the arrow at the next scorpion but it turned its head at the last moment, and the arrow passed by it, heading for another scorpion beside it. This caused a group of five scorpions to get attracted to us instead.

We had to each take one of them, which was easy for the skeleton lord and the scarlet general, but not for the rest of us.

I called to my birds of prey, which were hovering close by; they carried my body, and I kept aiming for the same scorpion. While not flying too far away to make it focus on me, it couldn’t reach me and I picked it apart from the air.

The invisible commander attacked with his ghosts. The smoke was rising from the scorpion, but it ended up reaching him. It attacked him with its tail, but the tail went right through his body, and the scorpion got a bigger jolt of electricity. His eyes brightened at the realization that he was impervious to these monsters, and he dashed a few times through the scorpion, killing it.

Dante had the roughest time soloing, though. He threw three lumps at the scorpion before it reached him; the scorpion tried to stab him with its pointy tail, and he freaked out, in his fearful state, he unintentionally commanded his gourd to block the attack, but when he realized he could do that, he just hid behind his gourd, manipulating it with his energy, to keep blocking the strikes of the scorpion which kept on getting weaker until it finally dropped dead.

Once he finished his fight, he looked around to see what we were all doing, only to realize we all had finished our own fights and were watching him instead of helping. The scarlet general walked towards him and put his hand on his shoulder, and gave him a stoic nod. That was his way of telling him 'you did a good job'.

We continued on the same way, pulling in groups of scorpions and killing them, our bodies soaking in the yin energy after each kill.

Finally, after we thinned out their numbers considerably, it was time to take out the boss.

The boss was just a huge scorpion, its body was as tall as our tallest fighter which was the scarlet general, and its tail was towering above us, I wondered how it was going to fight using that tail, since it was so tall, and we would need to be pretty far for it to aim its tail at us.

It looked horrifying, though. Not only did it have humongous human eyes, but it also had various human limbs sticking out of its body in various places, even some human heads that had no eyes, where they should have been there was only smooth empty skin devoid of any features beneath.

Me and my group gathered, and they were asking what’s the plan was. It seemed everyone was worried about that boss, and we needed a strategy.

“When you fight an adversary that tall you usually go for the legs, so they can’t carry it anymore, but the issue is, this damned scorpion got eight of the bloody things, we won’t be able to take out the legs.”

Everyone gave him a hum of approval. Each once in a while, one of us looked at the scorpion, thinking we might find a weakness there somewhere.

The scarlet general continued, “Its tail won’t help it at all if we are fighting it from a proximity, the issue is its pincers, and luckily for us it has only two of those, we can focus on one pincer destroy it, and then focus our attacks from the side with the missing pincer.”

We were all impressed by how fast he came up with that plan.

“In order to do that, we will need Dante to attack it with his lumps of that ungodly substance, and the invisible commander to attack it with his ghosts. After the pincer decomposes completely, we will focus our attacks on that side. While both of them finish the job, we will need to distract the boss, preferably from three different sides. That’s where I and the skeleton lord, and Scorn will come in. Anyone have any objections to this plan?”

We all looked at each other and nodded. I said, “No, we all agree. We should improvise, though if anything goes south, we need to be ready for anything that might arise.”

The scarlet general nodded and said, “Let’s go.”

The skeleton lord revived two of the scorpions to attack from the front row, and they accompanied us forward.

We walked closer to the scorpion within throwing distance, and Dante loaded it with his lumps. Some fell to the ground, some hit its body and not the pincer, but most hit the pincer.

I flew towards it, launching an arrow after another wherever, really. I just wanted its attention and its carapace was thick enough that all my arrows didn’t penetrate in the beginning.

The invisible commander went in for the attack, his ghosts preceding him, but he was following right after them. Once the ghosts passed through the pincer twice each, the commander passed through them once as well. His bigger jolt of electricity got the attention of the boss. It looked at him and he trembled a little, but he knew he was invincible. Before he could attack it a second time, the boss screamed towards him, and pain ran through his entire body, and he got paralyzed same thing happened to his summoned ghosts.

I noticed what happened immediately, and I swooped in, turned into ghost form as well, and carried the invisible commander away. Even though he was heavy, don’t ask me how. I know he was a ghost, but he was heavier than me.

I landed with him behind Dante and left him there to heal from his paralysis.

The skeleton lord was on the left side of the scorpion, he attacked its legs multiple times with his chain weapon, but it didn’t even look at him. He felt stupid standing there not even able to pull aggro towards him so he circled back to the front side.

The scarlet general was in front of it. Each time it attacked him with a pincer, he smacked the pincer away with his sword. The revived scorpions were beside him attacking the boss, but the boss seemed confused by them and it didn’t attack them. The issue was that they were too weak to make a difference, anyway.

Cracks started showing on the right pincer, which we targeted after three minutes.

I started shooting arrows towards the scorpion’s head, and it took notice of me. It tried to stab me with its tail, but the birds dodged the attack. In this moment of distraction, the scarlet general gave out a huge war cry and jumped high in the air, then landed along with his sword in an overhead arc that smashed the pincer.

The scorpion boss screamed while taking a few steps back. Its scream paralyzed the ghosts of the commander again, but the commander was away, and he was already coming out of his paralysis at this moment.

Splotches of black covered the entire body of the scorpion, which was the effect of the black lumps of Dante, but its body was nowhere near as weak as the pincer got after the barrage of attacks.

The scarlet general raised his sword high in the sky. I thought he was going to attack with it, but then he looked at me, and I noticed he was pointing the sword at me. I swooped in, and once I was close, he said, “Tell Dante to focus his attacks on its head now. We need to weaken it to finish this fight. Also, find out where the hell is the skeleton lord, I am missing him the entire fight so far.”

I nodded and rose in the sky again, going back towards Dante and delivering the message, before I rose higher in the sky to find the skeleton lord, but he was already closing in on the front side of the scorpion, so I just headed back to the fight.

At this moment I thought, if the best weapon against this scorpion is the black lumps, why am I not using them?

For someone with so many powers, I only used two of them so far in this battle, and that’s not good. I needed more fight experience.

I tried to get a black lump to appear in my hand, but it didn’t work.

I looked at the battlefield and landed next to the shattered scorpion pincer.

I put my hand on it, and felt that I could create a black lump out of it, so I made one and threw it at the scorpion head.

I kept on doing that along with Dante, both of us trying to avoid hitting our friends.

Meanwhile, the general had come up with a new plan: he made the skeleton lord block the attacks of the left pincer, while he kept stabbing the scorpion in the head.

The fight took some time, but the scarlet general finally shattered the head of the scorpion, and it dropped dead immediately.

We gathered around the scar of fate, which was a dark blue slash in the face of reality. It’s hard to describe, you’d have to see it for yourself, but the location of the slash was a no-man's-land. You could go behind it and see the world was fine, but when you looked at it from either side, the sky behind it disappeared. The ground wasn’t there. It just hovered there, ominous and foreboding, and promising of the dangers of the unknown.

I told the team, “Meditate with me, my friends, command the yin energy to enter your bodies. In time, this scar of fate will cease to exist.”

And so we did. We all gained three levels of body dismantling from this single scar of reality.

And my body grew three more years to be the body of a 14-year-old now.

After closing the scar, it left behind three chests with a magical item in each of them. The scorpions we killed evaporated after we closed the scar, but some of them left behind small black crystal, with the boss leaving the biggest one. We checked the crystals and could tell that they contained yin energy, that we could cultivate with. I asked everyone to let me have the crystals though, as I intended to give them to the king of beggars, so he can become stronger without leaving the capital city. They didn’t need to know about him, he was going to be my secret weapon.

We were going to continue closing these scars of fate, and do tougher ones to grow much stronger.

It was surprising we only made the third level of body dismantling. I think it was because all the energy I got from Amoria, which I then passed on to my disciples, was going to run out eventually and we were going to be powerless, because we were already fighting at the strength of the third level of body dismantling. We needed to earn this power; we needed to cultivate, but the yin energy that we earned was now ours. Nobody can take that away from us.

We were only going to get stronger. The empire became very lax after winning the war. They didn’t seek strength, but we wanted all of it.