Max had been reading her textbooks to distract herself of her issues using the bathroom earlier. Every time she thought about it she couldn't help but shiver. That is one thing that would take some getting used to. She was mostly reading to maintain her grades. Any big changes in her grades or behavior would draw attention to herself. She did not want any unwanted attention, least of all from the government. In her previous time through, the government had put combination shock and explosive collars on the essence cultivators to control them. They did it to at least five that she knew of. Those poor souls were little more than slaves of some deranged general that viewed them as something not human and ended up getting killed only months after the essence beasts started appearing. Getting caught by that man is something she seriously wanted to avoid at least until she was confident that she could outrun those that had already been caught.
Just as she finished a chapter as something dawned on her. Her mother had said she called Max's school, but today is a saturday. Why did she say that? She had never heard of any school that had classes on the weekend. She searches her memories of the last few days to figure out what is going on. Max could only feel pity for the poor girl as well as rage at her father when she saw the memories of the past two days. Her father had beaten the poor girl badly, but hadn't broken any bones. However the injuries hurt even more than normal and she had suffered in agony for 24 hours before her mind finally broke. That is what allowed Max to take over her body. This is just another reason for me to hate that bastard. She gave a small prayer for the girl to find happiness in her next life. She clearly deserved it.
Max looked at a nearby clock and saw that it was nearly time for her mother to get home. Her father wouldn't be home for another hour. That is if he doesn't go drinking. If that happens, he could come home past midnight. How that man could consciously drink alcohol and know what it does to him is beyond her understanding. He could simply not care what happens.
Max didn't want to waste any more time with useless thoughts, so she began to examine the black and white essence that she had gathered earlier. She had never heard of essence of this color before. She couldn't even guess as to it's properties. She would have to experiement with it to determine what it did. She lifted up her right hand and tried to channel some of the white essence to a point over her index finger. Nothing happened. She tried channeling the black essence instead and got the same result. She growls in frustration. What is the point of having special essence, if I can't even use it?! After a few moments of thought, she has a sudden idea. She channels both at the same time and a greyish blob, about the size of a pea, appears above her index finger. She manipulates it into various shapes. Well so far so good. But what are it's properties? It's behavior doesn't align with earth, water, wind or fire. Playfully she has it emulate the behavior of a small flame. She immediately feels heat coming from it. Huh? She shifts it to something like a droplet of water and touches it with her left hand. It feels wet. She squints her eyes and makes it into a tiny blade. She uses it to cut a piece of paper. Holy crap! This stuff can behave like any of the elements. Max was terribly excited but something was still bothering her. Normal essence can behave the same way with a bit of practice. It still didn't give her the specific characteristics of her essence. She looked at it's color more carefully. It was almost the same shade as a shadow. She knelt down and put the small greyish blob against her shadow. She found she could actually manipulate her own shadow. She stretched it and shrank it regardless of where a light source was. She tried it with shadows of the furniture and got the same result only it was slightly more difficult. So since it can control shadows and can mimic the behaviors of most elements. I guess I should call it shadow essence. She began to feel light-headed and withdrew her shadow essence back. She couldn't use it for very long until she reached the copper stage.
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When her mother got home, she tried her best to act like the girl. It was difficult since he had to behave very docile and tame. It was frustrating. Max wasn't docile or tame at all. She had been quiet and wanted to be left alone. She gave in to her current fate, since acting out of her normal behavior would likely result in doctors poking and prodding her. That was something she did not want.
She went to the kitchen to help her mother cook as is usual and ate her dinner before heading back to her room to study. Her father came home sometime later. Max could hear something that indicated her father felt remorse and he sounded sober. It was something that was rather surprising. He normally can't go for more than a day without alcohol of some kind. As if apologizing can erase the damage that you have done. His apologies kept going on for some time, before Max heard his footsteps approaching her room. After he came in her room, he appeared to be extremely apologetic and immediately began apologizing for what he did. The man was practically in tears. If you were really sorry, you would stop drinking. She was tempted to yell at him, but that would serve no purpose. Not to mention it would be completely out of character. She made a show of accepting his apology before he left her with an empty promise of not to drink any alcohol again. She didn't believe him. The longest he had ever gone without getting drunk was a week. She wondered how long he could last this time. She returned her attention to her text book to finish up the chapter she was on. She went to bed after a few hours, but had difficulty sleeping.
The next day her father remained sober. Her mother was behaving as if he hadn't ever gotten drunk and hit her in the first place. Max didn't like how indifferent her mother was. After eating breakfast, she spent most of the day either studying or cultivating. She gained another strand of shadow essence. This kind of progress is miles apart from what she experienced in the past. Or would it be future now? It took her almost a week to get a single strand last time. At this pace she will be in the copper stage in eight more days. Not even elemental essence cultivators had this kind of training speed and they were only able to gather a strand of essence every other day. She was looking forward to when the ten essence strands gather near her heart bringing her into the threshold of the copper stage. For every rank beyond the first one, the requirement to advance further would require only ten strands to advance to the next rank. When she gathered a total of one hundred essence strands, she would advance to Bronze stage. At her current pace she should advance to bronze rank shortly after the essence beasts start cropping up. That is assuming she doesn't encounter any bottlenecks. Fortunately there are ways of speeding up her cultivation once she hits the Bronze rank. The only problem is that it requires essence cores from either cultivators or essence beasts to do it or special herbs.
She was dreading tomorrow though. She hated school when she was a man and almost everyone ignored her at that time. But she is now a beauty. Regardless of whether she had a reputation of being sickly, there will likely countless young men trying to get her attention. The girl ignored their advances in the past, but that didn't solve anything. It only urged those idiots on. Most of them thought she was being hard to get and competed for her attention, which illicited alot of jealousy from the other girls. None of the girls had resorted to bullying yet, but it was only a matter of time, if Max did nothing. She didn't want to have to deal with that headache for the next three months while she tried to lay low. Max tried to devise a method to defuse this whole situation, but came up with nothing that didn't involve using her essence. She lay there in bed thinking about a solution half the night before sleep claimed her.