Maxine woke up feeling both nervous and happy. It was friday and today Maxine's students were going to form their cores. That was only the reason why she was nervous but the reason she was happy was because her fear of men had slightly diminished. She figured it was due to being in a room full of them for the last few days without any incidents. She was hoping it would apply to all men and not just her students.
Maxine started to get ready while in high spirits. She grabbed the Steel Silk Vest she made last night and put it on. It provided more protection than wearing a breastplate made of titanium alloy and weighed alot less too. She had made it after discovering that Silky could produce a huge ammount of silk a day and collected three days worth of it to make this armor. However, if she had to rate it, it would be at best a high grade bronze armor. The reason she made it in the first place was that the feeling of those eyes on her had really bothered her. Whoever was watching her was getting more and more hostile. She wanted to have this extra layer of protection, just in case.
Maxine had gathered ten more bronze cores minus what she fed to Silky and what she used during cultivation. She had dropped off all of her copper essence cores at Emily's house on wednesday since she couldn't use them herself. General McKenzy hadn't been letting her use the ones from the base's stockpile. Regardless, Emily had more than enough cores to help her reach bronze stage in half the time. Maxine would need to start hunting for more copper essence cores soon, so that Emily doesn't run out.
Her driver was stoic as always. He barely acknowleged that she was there as he put the car into gear. He seemed so emotionless at times that Maxine wasn't competely certain that he wasn't an atomaton. It would explain why she wasn't that afraid of him. She scanned him with her spiritual sense out of curiosity and found out that she was only partially correct. His right arm and left leg were high-tech prosthetics that responded to the electrical impulses of the nerves that normally signaled muscles to move. He even had a gun of some sort built into his prosthetic arm. She had only heard about that kind of tech in her past life years after the apocolypse happened.
Maxine arrived inside the military warehouse with her essence armor on as normal and looked at her students. "Today is the day that you guys will form your cores. I will give you a short explaination on what you need to do and what to expect. Is that clear?" Maxine said in a tone she adopted from General McKenzy. She felt some fear from being near them, but she was able to manage it. Her recent interactions with them had dulled it somewhat. She still hadn't become comfortable enough to drop her essence armor though.
"Yes, Ma'am," they said almost as one.
"Good. Now listen up. When all of you have gathered all ten of the required essence strands, you need to bring them to a spot just to the right of your heart. After that put them into a flower formation with all their ends touching in the middle. Put that flower into the strongest spin that you can manage until it resembles a vortex. If you are doing it right, a small jewel will start to form in the middle of it until it encases that small vortex of essence. When it becomes stable, you will have formed your own essence core and you will become a rank 1 copper stage cultivator. This is one of the harder steps in cultivation. However, the method I taught you is very safe and I do not think that any of you will experience any dangers with this. However if any problems arise during the formation of your core, either myself or Amanda will come and resolve it. Now grab one of the provided essence cores and get started."
Maxine watched them acquire the essence cores and start cultivating. Maxine extended her spiritual sense and monitored them all very carefully. She could tell that Amanda was doing the same. It was going quite smoothly. The first few formed their essence cores quite smoothly and Maxine had asked them to sit quietly while the rest finished.
Unfortunately there is always one person that somehow messes up. Maxine saw the poor man's face covered in sweat as she detected that he wasn't able to maintain the spin of his vortex and it was becoming unstable. Maxine walked up to him and hesitated for a moment due to fear because she needed to have physical contact with him to help him. However, she didn't want any of her students to get hurt. She grit her teeth and grabbed his shoulder. She sent her own essence into his body and stabalized his vortex. She montiored it very carefully as the core started to form. If Maxine hadn't saved him, the backlash of his exploding essence would have killed him. After his essence core finished forming, she pulled her hand away from him. The fear from that breif contact had made her feel sick, but she was proud of herself. Three days ago she doubted she may have just let him die because of her fear.
She walked back up infront of of her students and continued monitoring them. Fortunately, there were no more incidents. All twenty of her students formed an essence core and officially became rank 1 copper cultivators.
Maxine was about to tell them how to refine essence cores when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked over and saw it was General McKenzy. It made her uncomfortable that he touched her, but not afraid. It had bothered her for some time that she barely felt any fear towards him. If anything she felt safe when she was around him. She put alot of thought into discovering the reason for it. She understood part of her was grateful that he had put her father into prison. She had frequent interactions as well that would explain why she had less fear of him than most other men. Add to that the fact that he refused to reveal her name to the press and any politicians that demanded it, and that caused Maxine to trust him not to harm her in any way. Although she was still angry at him for putting her through that test. She had almost pissed herself from fear and had been a hair's breadth from severely injuring Amanda when she had taken on his visage.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
"How is their progress?" General McKenzy said.
"They have just finished forming their cores. I can double their training speed after today and they will reach the goal of one tenth my strength in twenty three days," Maxine answered in a business like tone, "I will need seven hundred and twenty more copper essence cores for that to happen."
"We have more than a sufficient supply of those. Carry on," he said before leaving.
After the general had left the building, Maxine started explaining the refinement method of essence cores to her students and gave them a demonstration. Several of them wanted to try it on the spot, but Maxine insisted against it. When an essence core is refined, it's energy will disperse all at once if it isn't absorbed within a few hours and they still needed a night to allow both their bodies and cores to recover. She dismissed them for the day and told them they will start refining essence cores on their own and that she would teach them how to use their spiritual sense and a few essence based attacks tomorrow.
Afterwards, Maxine was driven to the conservation area where she visited Silky. Silky had gotten bigger. Her spider had been only two and a half feet accross when she found her, but now she was closer to three feet across. Maxine guessed it was due to the essence cores she had been feeding Silky. It didn't matter to her though. She had never heard of a Widowmaker Spider reaching iron stage.
Maxine wished she could bring Silky out with her whenever she taught her students. Silky could act like her therapy pet and keep her calm. However she knew it would cause a panic if she tried. After Silky brought out a full spool of silk, Maxine fed Silky another bronze essence core and sat under a tree to pet Silky in silence. Silky seemed to enjoy the attention as much as Maxine liked to pet it.
Maxine was brought out of her reverie when she felt the eyes again, but the feeling disappeared a moment later. She hadn't expected to feel them here and she look around carefully. However, she didn't see anyone. Instead of searching the area with her spiritual sense, Maxine touched Silky's mind and requested to see if Silky could smell whoever it was. Maxine knew that spiders have a very strong sense of smell. It helps some of the more active spiders in hunting for prey.
Silky could smell the person and lifted one of her fore legs to direct which direction that person was in. Now that Maxine had a direction to search in she could focus her spiritual sense into a narrow beam. It didn't matter if they were a cultivator hiding their presence or someone wearing a high-tech getup. She would still be able to find them.
Maxine searched for only a few moments before she found him. He was only about three hundred feet from her behind some trees and he was walking towards her at a steady pace. It startled her when she saw who it was. It was her best friend in her past life, Patrick Mason. He had fought beside her for years and disappeared only a week before she died as Maxwell Adams. She didn't even know why he would be here, but what truly confused her was his cultivation. He was rank two bronze stage cultivator. She knew perfectly well that he hadn't started cultivating until after everything went to hell. So why is he so strong now? Could he be a reincarnator like me?
Maxine didn't even have time to think about any of this as Patrick came into sight. He still had raven black hair, steel blue eyes and a square jaw. Although he didn't have a full beard that he had in the her past life, there was no doubt that it was him. He looked every bit of the fifteen year old muscle bound jock from her memories. It's definitely his body, but does he have the same mind? I have to find out. There was only one way for her to be sure. She would have to fight him. A person's fighting style was better than a fingerprint. No matter how hard someone tries they can't hide their own ingrained movements. If his fighting style isn't the same, it just means that someone else had been reincarnated in Patrick's body instead of their own.
However, there was another reason she wanted to fight him. He had made her angry by stalking her for the past five days. During those days, she had become anxious whenever she was outside because of that feeling of being watched and now he followed her to the one place she felt safe. Maxine almost couldn't resist the urge to pummel him.
He was already less than fifty feet from Maxine when Silky sensed her anger and started hissing at him. Maxine quickly formed her essence armor and manifested her blades.
"Easy now. I didn't mean to scare you," Patrick said in a soothing tone as he stopped approaching, "I just want to talk."
"Silky, go hide in your webs," Maxine said while keeping her eyes on Patrick. Silky stoped her hissing and scurried into her spiderwebs. Maxine got into a fighting stance and told him, "You lost your right to talk things out five days ago when you started following me. Now you have to earn that privledge. Prepare to defend yourself."