CHAPTER 3

William.

It took a while for me to recover from my recent beatdown; just because I heal fast doesn't mean that taking damage doesn't drain me, both mentally and physically. I was reviewing my plans for the future. My implant was also keeping track of all sensory input from my body.

The weird part of it all is that even though I'm aware of all this input reaching me, my mind is still able to recover without any difficulty. There was a possibility that I might never need to sleep or rest as long as I had refined essence moving through my brain.

Just hearing of the ladies' elemental affinities made me a bit jealous, they all had powerful affinities that promised awesome and amazing powers in their cultivation future. That is, if they survived being slaves on an alien world, or whatever else this magical shithole had in store for them. But I was confident that my unique cultivation method would allow me to gain the other affinities over time, so it didn't really bother me much. Even Suu's essence seemed extremely rare even amongst cultivator's, as evidenced by Aelia's reaction.

Squashing the insecurities tied to my pathetic potential that having a single earth affinity gave me, I was quite excited to see if my ideas regarding their cultivation would work.

The first obstacle to the ladies' growth was a large and steady source of essence. My solution to this was extremely unorthodox, and may possibly be dangerous, but if it worked, their cultivation would grow leaps and bounds in a mere moments

I got the idea from Astrel's essence drain tentacle. She used it to draw essence from my body and I in turn, used the same link to draw essence from her. So it was possible to directly transfer essence from one person to another.

I planned to do more than simple essence transfer with such a concept. Like a USB cord or a fibre optic cable, I wanted to know if I could send not only essence, but designs, patterns and even density information.

Because there was no way I was leaving my allies with the basic core formation process of the locals. Even their best core designs lacked the complexity I believed would be needed in a unique and truly powerful core. At least unique and powerful to my standards.

Plus waiting to absorb the weak amount of essence in our surroundings through meditation would take too much time, and time was a privilege we could scarcely afford in our current situation.

My core's unique properties also moved my plan from impossible to somewhat possible. My plan required the use of my core’s more mysterious properties

Amorphous allows my core to adapt its structure to that of any other core that I had sufficient information on. The level of effectiveness of the copied core would depend on how much data and insight I had on the original.

With this in mind, I was going to copy a small aspect of Astrel's core structure and use it to inject refined essence directly into Minnie's body in order to forge powerful and highly complex cores that would allow me to accelerate her cultivation.

Minnie squirmed nervously under my piercing gaze. I was pretty sure that the mad scientist's manic gleam in my eyes did not inspire any confidence in me at the moment. I watched her skin pale as blood drained from her pixie-like face. For some reason, she was not enthused about being my test/victim subject.

Connecting with my still forming core seed, I commanded my implant to transfer all the data it had processed from Astrel's core and then I willed it all into my core.

I felt a sharp tug as my core folded in on itself to change its structure. The essence cost of the change was surprisingly high, probably due to the incomplete and fledgling nature of my core.

While I was tinkering with my plan, my implant was feeding me information regarding the essence levels, density and type in my local environment. It was this passive data dump that clued me to an unintended side effect of my new seed core to the others future cultivation prospects.

Because my core constantly drained my environment of essence, the ladies would have been unable to cultivate even if they wished to as a large swath of any location I inhabited was constantly being drained by my core of essence.

This phenomenon was something that my implant had been able to properly document with me physically stuck in one location for the better part of three days.

My core had an odd effect on essence. Tinuviel was the first cultivator I observed with a passive ability to absorb essence, implying that the ability was not truly uncommon.

But to me, her passive cultivation seemed muted , even though I had no information regarding the effectiveness of her active cultivation.

But since cultivation not only requires mental focus and will, it stands to reason that active cultivation; where one's full attention is given to the art of cultivation, would be more effective than passive cultivation.

But my new core came with an unusual absorption rate. Where before, I basically had to force the free essence in the environment into my center, my core basically caused free essence to, for lack of a better term, fall towards me.

Unlike the Tinuviel’s passive cultivation which I assumed, she used to filter and refine essence, mine just absorbed essence regardless of type and density. It was only my vibration technique that prevented my core from grinding to a halt, the pain caused by absorbing non aligned essence a near constant companion. Now I spent even more effort than before I formed my core, separating and refining all the essence that entered my core regardless of affinity or density.

It's like my core was a black hole that drew all forms of essence into its orbit.

But despite the benefits, it was really causing me a headache even though it greatly increased my cultivation, slowly improved my affinity for unaligned essence types and made my cultivation advance faster. I even generated less corruption from my refining, making my cultivation far more efficient than that of most, if not any cultivator.

But even as I kept up the facade of being alright in front of the others, my head was still pounding something fierce. I'm sure the symptoms would have been worse if I didn't have my implant; with its computational ability to regulate the level and variation of essence in my body, and my awakened soul with mysterious but also unique abilities.

Still, it was extremely uncomfortable and it put a bit of strain on my mental health. I don't think I'll be getting any sleep for the foreseeable future, at least, not without being forced into a state of unconsciousness.

Bringing my thoughts back to my little experiment (I imagined a tiny version of me above my head, rubbing his hands together in glee, laughing maniacally), I used the parasitic tentacle from my newly altered core to reach into Minnie's body.

Minnie yelped when she felt the tentacle, but I was too focused on the data I was getting to fully notice.

Now that my core had changed form, it was no longer acting like an essence whirlpool, although I still felt a slight, yet passive pull on essence.

Closing my eyes to enhance my focus, I then directed the smallest amount of refined essence I could manage from within my core into her body.

While the tentacle may not have been designed to see through the inner workings of the body, you'd be surprised at the wonders you can achieve with the processing efficiency of a computer that cannot only analyze the most minute piece of data, but also organize that data into complex but meaningful information.

Using essence density, volume and conductivity with various parts of her body, my implant gathered data from Minnie, with my body as a baseline, and was able to create a rough image of her internals.

The movement of essence was mapped based on the flow, density, volume and essence conductivity within her body. The power of science over magic shining through.

Without a center, corruption was slowly gathering all over her body and based on the general drop in essence conductivity of her physical body, her attributes would also suffer accordingly, albeit slightly.

But the biggest surprise was the pattern made up of essence within her body that the implant slowly mapped as it spread the injected essence across her body.

This pattern as far as I could tell at a glance was not physical in nature, but regardless hinted at a detailed map of not just the entire physical structure, but data related to the movement of essence in the body.

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At the rate I was injecting her body with refined essence, it would take several days to map out the entire pattern, the wealth of information would be most invaluable regarding how essence interacted with the human body.

Suddenly, I felt something slam into me.

Whatever it was had no substantial impact on me, but it was enough to draw my attention.

I opened my eyes to see Suu's blade at my throat, the tip placing a sharp pressure on my neck, and Melody was next to an unconscious Minnie; whose body was spasming uncontrollably on the floor.

Clearly something went wrong during my experiment.

"What happened?" I asked, looking around the room.

Suu, still clinging to me with her dagger pressed into my neck said, "I knew we shouldn't have trusted you, you're killing the little one. The only reason why you're not dead is because you're going to undo whatever it is you did and revive her.

I looked towards where Minnie lay on the ground at the other end of the room. Melody had pulled her away from me, probably out of fear that I intended to harm her.

Thankfully, the connection between myself and Minnie remained or this situation might have taken a dive for the worse.

It seems that Astrel's parasitic core tentacle had a ranged function, but this secondary function was costing me several times more than if we were still physically in contact with each other.

My implant was running all sorts of analysis on all the data it was getting from Minnie's body to find out what went wrong.

Until I knew what was causing her convulsions, and had a viable solution, I dare not relinquish my connection to Minnie's twitching body.

"Do something," Melody screamed at me, her voice laced with panic.

Just in the nick of time, my implant sent me a rough preliminary analysis on the data I had gathered from Minnie's body, and I immediately stopped channeling essence into her

Looking through the data, I could now see what happened and what went wrong. Regardless, guilt still gnawed through me at what almost happened.

I should never have used an untried and an untested technique on her. Moving forward, any attempts at improving their cultivation would be tested rigorously, and backed by sufficient data.

Thankfully, there was no physical damage to her body. If I had continued channeling essence into her, who knows what would have happened.

Slowly, I retracted my tentacle and my core shifted back to its seed form.

Minnie's body stopped twitching and she slipped into unconsciousness.

Suu was pressed close to me, her blade still pressed into me

"What the hell happened," Melody screamed at me, unspoken accusations in her tear stained eyes.

Unable to meet her gaze, I stared at the ground, calling myself every kind of idiot I could imagine.

"I'm sorry, I should have tested my theory before I tried anything on any of you. My enthusiasm got the better of me, I have no excuse and I can only ask for your forgiveness."

"And while you don't trust me at the moment, I need to check up on her, I think my attempt to charge her center with essence may have filled her body with corruption. Unless I extract it, it may cause her internal damage or even kill her. Please you need to let me try and fix my mistake, I promise to do better moving forward."

Melody just stared at me,her face flush with anger, I could see past the rage to the fear that she was doing everything to suppress. But she finally let out a deep breath and turned her gaze back to Minnie who was resting her head on her lap.

"Suu, let him go," then she returned her gaze to me, "you better make sure nothing happens to her, we are not experimental fodder to soothe your curiosity. You need to be more responsible, something like this cannot happen again."

I nodded my head at her, and then I felt Suu withdraw the blade from my neck, but she stayed close just to make sure I didn't try anything funny. I rubbed my neck, and nodded to Suu in thanks, though I doubted she could harm me even if she tried. Still, showing a bit of vulnerability could only help my case in this situation

I moved closer to Melody and Minnie and placed my hand on Minnie's stomach.

Morphing my core into my version of Astrel's parasitic core, I was back inside her body, but this time with a little bit more knowledge than the last time.

Some of the reasons my experiment failed were obvious in hindsight, and some concerned precautions I should have taken, even before I began infusing her center. But my failed experiment had also given me some entirely new insight into the nature of corruption.

The first thing I failed to do was to teach the others how to actually cultivate. This key and fundamental step in cultivation. It seemed, could not be skipped. Just pushing refined essence into their body was only half the solution, they also needed to actively refine the essence I provided into their center. Like a handshake between their will and mine

The second reason the experiment failed was my ignorance regarding the nature of essence and corruption. I was once again reminded about Zalla's lecture regarding insight.

I had already posited that corruption was simply "essence" that for one reason or the other could not be processed by the cultivator. There were also limitations to essence refinement. When a cultivator absorbs essence, even after using their will to limit what essence type they choose to refine, some unaligned essence will still get through and will need to be refined out of their center. Also I suspect that concept energy and other forces that are as yet unknown to me also need to be refined by a cultivator as their current level or insight might be unable to process such forces.

Based on my rudimentary analysis, corruption is any aspect of essence that is unusable or for some reason inaccessible by the cultivator.

Not teaching the others how to refine and just throwing refined essence at Minnie's center just ensured that her body would consider most of my injected essence as corruption. This might also be the reason why people back on Earth have bodies filled with corruption.

Without the ability to manipulate essence, all the essence in the body becomes unwieldy corruption, eventually becoming toxic, and damaging the body.

This brings me to the next problem and the reason for my haste in trying to fix my mistake.

Even if Minnie had been able to cultivate, the result would have only been delayed, but regardless the same.

My vibration refinement technique allows me to separate and absorb all essence types. Even though the essence has been refined to the best of my ability, it still contains hints of other unaligned essence types. This means that I was basically infusing Minnie's body with essence she couldn't process or refine.

This just increased the amount of corruption in her body, and the continued infusion of corruption that I assumed was refined essence caused seizures as the increased corruption began to attack her body.

During my implant's analysis of Minnie's body, I made another surprising and unexpected discovery, there was no way I could have been able to discern this new data without first accessing the body of another cultivator.

According to my implant’s scan, Minnie's body, organs and body systems were generating corruption.

The how of it confused me for a bit, but my implant provided more data that provided the final pieces of the puzzle.

Simply put, the body's internal processes generate corruption. This may be the source of the corruption in Earth based humans as there was no essence back home to account for the high level of corruption in our bodies.

If corruption is an unusable or inaccessible form of essence, and my variant of human was able to accumulate corruption without access to any essence in my environment, then the body must be able to passively extract essence from its natural processes. Maybe from eating, sleeping, breathing or any other normal activity in the course of living. Eastern chinese medicine hinted at this possibility

Essence becomes corrupt and congeals into a quasi solid mass that accumulated at the center of important systems in the body that I assumed generated essence. Doing a passive scan of my body confirmed my theory. The human body does generate essence, albeit in relatively minute quantities. Small motes of essence formed within or around certain organs, adding to the refined essence in my center. Although the amount of essence I generated was relatively small compared to even my passive cultivation, I noticed It was several times greater than what Minnie’s body could generate.

I continued to study the points where I felt the tiny, but constant stream of essence. Coincidentally, some of these points were similar to what eastern chinese mythology referred to as body meridians; important points within the body where non cultivator's unable to refine essence slowly accumulated corruption, which in turn slowly damaged the body over time.

Basically, when a person is born, they begin to generate minute amounts of essence. But because they have no knowledge of cultivation, or they live in a world where cultivation is all but impossible, this newly generated essence becomes corruption which continues to accumulate throughout their life until their death. Corruption may even be the true reason for aging.

This new discovery also brought up the possibility that those who cultivate at a young age might be able to advance faster than those who begin to cultivate in their later years due to the lower level of corruption at key points in their body which would increase in size and density over time.

This may also be the true reason for the body infusion stage. When a person cleanses their body almost all the corruption is removed, at least enough to free their center somewhat and allow them to begin cultivation. But the semi-solid corruption remains in place, reinforced by the body's internal essence source and having a far higher density than the cultivator's level of cultivation. The older the new cultivator the denser and bigger the corruption block. This might make cultivation attempts by the elderly difficult to near impossible.

While essence can enhance the physical aspects of the body, this corruption block prevents the body from being permanently enhanced with essence. It is only after the cultivator has absorbed enough essence, created a core, cultivate even more essence of a higher density, and compress said core to gain more access to an even more essence of an even greater density and volume, does the cultivator gain the impetus sufficient enough to attack and breakdown these quasi-solid blocks of corruption that hinder the body’s full integration with essence.

The only unanswered question was why I was able to begin my body infusion, even though I've yet to çompletly forge my core, much less compress it. I had some hunches, but I would make no assumptions without more data.

Turning my attention back to Minnie and armed with new knowledge, I made sure that essence did not leak from me through the connection, and then I noted all the points in the body where the corruption accumulated in the body. Study of these "body meridians," might give me more insight into how essence and corruption interact with the body.

For now I focused on correcting my mistakes. I used my parasitic tentacle to slowly pull out all the free essence in her body. It was the only way to remove the corruption from her body as I still understood little about corruption and my personal control was weak in relation to my implant's computational competence.

After nearly an hour; the absorption process was hastened by my hungry core and my vibration technique, Minnie opened her eyes and yawned.

"William, what happened? Melody why are you crying? Suu, why do you have a blade pointed at William's throat?"

I was so happy that I grabbed Minnie and squeezed her in a tight hug.

"Stop squishing me, we're not at that point in our relationship yet, stop moving so fast."

"I was so happy that I did not even process the last part of her words and simply tightened my hold on her."

After a few moments making sure she was really alright, and a couple of questions about her health, to which she replied that she was tired and a bit hungry.

Then she was squished all over again in Melody's arms, who just sobbed silently into Minnie's hair.

Suu, ever stoic, remained seemingly unaffected by the outpouring of emotion around her.

After we all settled down, Melody turned to me, "so can you tell us what happened and what you did to fix your mistake?" She said that last part pointedly, glaring at me

I bent my head in shame, like a schoolboy caught with his hands in the cookie jar. The others turned to me, clearly curious as to what new information, if any, I gained regarding essence and how it might aid us in growing stronger.

I was about to tell them everything, when I received a notification from my implant that I was being surveilled.

I froze at this news and slowly looked around the room. I could see, hear or feel nothing, but the notification remained nonetheless.

While my senses and my cultivation level may not allow me to truly perceive essence, my implant was a machine that analysed discrepancies in any data it encountered. Something about the data it was gaining about essence within my environment wasn't adding up.

I delved into the data regarding the alleged intrusion and finally spotted the bug.

It wasn't really a bug, but a knot of air essence that floated high above the room and absorbed sound within the localized space of the small room.

Because I no longer turned off my seismic-sense, even after choosing to handle the technique without the aid of my implant, my implant was able to use the data from the pulses generated from my technique to map a certain area around me.

If my implant was still in command of the technique, this magical listening device would have been spotted as soon as it was inserted, but my self applied variant of the seismic-sense technique, while slowly advancing, was still far too inefficient compared to the one projected by my implant.

Smirking, I decided to carry out a little experiment. Who knows, I might learn something new, while at the same time dealing with an unwanted snoop.

Having partial amnesia regarding my previous foible and grinning evilly in my head. I rubbed my imaginary hands together, and put my plan into action.