While Erik had undoubtedly made gains, it was Ebon Dirge who had reached a new territory of enlightenment while the prince was recuperating.

The implantation of the Page of Gluttony had gone off without a hitch and had meshed with Erik's Darkness affinity. While providing his young subject with this "gift", a part of Dirge's consciousness had remained in that inner space with the Codex of Sin and that first flame of destiny, and that is where he had made new inroads.

The ancient devil had expected more resistance to the idea of learning a devouring art, but the prince had gone along with it almost too easily. Myriad explanations could be made for that, but what he saw in his inner world was remarkable.

The tongue of flame representing the destiny of River had flared up at the moment of the prince's decision. Something in that interaction had driven it to activity, and putting together the ease of Erik's acquiesence the beginnings of a theory stirred.

The hallmark of that flame's original owner had been a tendency towards deception, both of himself and of others. River's last words had spoken of an "End to Illusion" even. At the moment that Dirge had sought to finagle another holder of destiny, that flame had risen and he achieved his objective without fuss.

Beyond that, though, the brightening of the flame had revealed something else: a black hole that Dirge had never noticed before was there in his sea of consciousness, a center that held that destiny in its orbit. It was alluring and alarming in equal measure, as his intuition told him it was something integral to his future path, but it was an uninvited guest in the place at the center of his being.

All of this was incomplete and only fuel for speculation, but it was far more important than the prince's advancement. An *infant* infused with a page from the Codex of Sin would show similar progress, after all.

Dirge directed the prince in the pool on basic methods for using the energy of the spirit vein below in cleansing his opened meridians. There was little profound about the process, just another step in amending the ignorance Erik held towards his own cultivation. There *had* to be something more to it than making him a display of the royal family's wealth, or else they could have well stopped early and still have brought him into Meridian Circulation to show off.

As the young man went to work, another peculiarity came from out of the blue. The devil could feel a presence scanning over the countryside not with spiritual sense, but with another kind of power. It manifested as a pair of eyes that seemed as though they peered through time and space both.

Dirge sneered. Oracular magic was finicky and annoying, considered by most immortals and divines as a useless toy. That someone was trying to use it around him was bad comedy.

The core principle of the oracle was that their strength needed to be superior in the first place. If one clashed over a vision with others of near equal power, it was nigh useless. And if one tried to catch a glimpse of a much higher power...

Dirge mentally grasped the hidden eyes and traced them back to their source, a villa to the far northwest. One of the sects in the heart of the March Kingdoms, then. The ancient devil had not wanted to confront them so soon, but since one of them decided to come knocking he would not refuse to act. He squeezed and the spectral eyes popped, dissipating into energy he sucked in as their connection to their owner was severed.

With the energy of the eyes came bits and pieces of knowledge, filling in many gaps in Dirge's understanding of the situation of the kingdoms. It was a welcome harvest, one that he would have taken more time and care in acquiring had it not shown up on his doorstep.

The intruder was a member of the Rising Zenith Sect, one of two sects that presided over the mountains that encircled the former valley capital of the March Empire. They and their counterpart, the Setting Nadir Sect on the far western range, were the cultivation powers that used the March Kingdoms as their playground for supremacy. The two sects kept other powers out of their shared valley, keeping it sealed for a future where one of them would occupy it.

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As the Rising Zenith's Augur, their preeminent expert in oracular magic, the owner of the eyes was privy to many of the plans built through his vision. Filtering through the bits and pieces that were coherent, one particularly important one caught the devil's attention.

Dirge examined the prince, currently stripped down and bathing in the pool. On the young man's chest over his heart was a fingernail-sized patch of skin that was lighter than the rest. The devil wouldn't have paid much attention to it before, but now it stood out like a beacon.

The Seventh Prince of Eastmarch, pariah and prisoner of the royal family, had inherited one of the keys to rebuilding the March Empire. With it, the door to the mausoleum of the Last Emperor would open. It was the exact kind of opportunity one would expect someone destined for greatness to be hiding, except the boy himself was ignorant of the details.

It was a rare and special thing for this key to be concealed from even Dirge's senses. It was all too easy for a Paragon to believe they stood above all mortal artifice, but this was a clear case where he was proven fallible. Without being able to see Erik's flame of destiny, there would've been nothing remarkable about the young prince to attract his attention.

This, in itself, was intriguing enough to pursue. But first, he needed to ensure his chosen subject was up to the task.

"Master, since we are improving your meridians, now would be a good time to review your understanding of your next steps of cultivation," Dirge said in the Godweapon's metallic voice as he moved the hilt to float overhead.

The prince's eyes snapped open and he looked up at the devil's vessel. "Uh, next I finish opening my meridians and then work towards building my foundation, right?"

Dirge suppressed a sigh. "In very broad terms, that is correct. However, you do not need to have all your meridians opened before making your preparations for Foundation Building, master. Meridian Opening is only half of Meridian Circulation. The other half is gathering and compressing the essence you have stored, bringing it from a gaseous state to liquid and then to a solid. That is the basis upon which your foundation will be carved out."

Erik frowned. "So opening more meridians isn't necessary?"

"Correct, although that too is a simplification. More meridians will allow you to manipulate more essence and employ it in some specific ways. But no rule says you cannot pursue both paths of improvement simultaneously. In truth, you should have begun liquefying your internal essence when you were beyond ten meridians, master."

Dirge was indeed offering an orthodox path to the prince without guile or artifice. There were many schools of thought on the process, with some linking the density of essence to a percentage of opened meridians to total meridians while others did indeed wait until all meridians were open, or pushed the compression of internal essence as far as it could go before opening more meridians. All of these worked, although they required different levels of talent, of the instructor's skill, and of the amount of time one was willing to remain in a stage.

"So I'm running behind and nobody told me? That's unfortunately typical, I guess. I wonder what my cultivation would be now if had I met you sooner, Onyx," the prince mused with a sigh.

"You are not that far behind, master. Achieving your foundation before you are twenty is still possible. Catching up will require some risk, though. It is experiences and trials that spur advancement. Once we have depleted the currently available energy from this spirit vein, we should leave it some time to recover before your next session."

Erik nodded, his chin striking the water below. "Yes, we shouldn't sit around here. I know just the right direction to head in, too."

"Oh?"

"I imagine everybody looking for me will be looking in this region or along the way back to the capital. In light of that, I think the safest place might in fact be the one they think is most dangerous, Onyx," the prince said with a wry smile. "What if we headed south and played around a bit with the forces of Southmarch? That way I can avoid doing anything to make my situation here irrevocably worse and maybe even gain some merits, once we have a story to justify it."

Dirge wanted to maintain his stance in not driving the prince in a specific direction, so he was willing to make things work wherever the boy chose. The boy's plan was indeed a sound one, given all the available information. The path south was one filled with opportunities that they wouldn't be able to grasp staying in Eastmarch.

"As you have instructed, I will leave the political dimension to you, master," Dirge replied, recalling the boy's earlier boast. "Let us then proceed by first finishing your meridian cleansing and then using the remaining ambient energy to begin condensing your internal essence. Once that energy is exhausted, we can seal this cave for a later return and proceed south into Southmarch, where we can gather information and plot a more specific course for future development."

The prince smiled. "Great. So how does this condensation work?"