Maxine felt mentally and physically exhausted. She had no idea how long it had been since she started working on her decoy and had only taken a break to cultivate. All she knew was that Hellen hadn't told her how much blood her decoy would require. It had drained two liters of her blood and that blood loss made her feel woozy. However it was her own fault for modifying Hellen's clone method, so that she wouldn't have to spend days creating her decoy. She had created the decoy cell by cell in the form of an infant and fed it her essence in a steady stream to grow it at an accelerated rate while stimulating it's muscles to ensure proper muscle tone.
However during this process, Maxine discovered the trick to making her decoy male. While it grew, she adjusted the hormone levels, so that there was more testosterone in it than estrogen. It had been a trial to maintain that since the hormonal levels kept trying to switch back on it's own to make it a female. I guess all of my creations are predisposed to be girls.
Maxine had completed the frame of her decoy after what seemed like a long time. It towered over her at nearly six feet tall, but she still hadn't decided on what to make it look like yet. In her head, she tried to make changes to her own face to make it look more masculine and failed horribly. Every attempt ended up looking like a very masculine girl. She needed more data to work with and decided to ask Hellen what Guan looked like.
"Mom, what does Guan look like?" Maxine asked Hellen via spiritual sense.
"I was wondering when you were going to ask that. Let me send you a mental image," Hellen replied and Maxine recieved a image of him in her mind. She found it jarring. His face neck were covered in skin colored serpentine scales. The only area that she could see that wasn't covered in scales was around his eyes. So, that's where the scales on my essence armor came from. I hope I don't have any of those pop up on my skin. However if she concentrated, she could envision his face without the scales. Without those scales, he looked like an ordinary man with a gentle smile. Why did I think he looked gentle? I know for a fact that he is quite vicious to those that try to control him.
"So, that's what he looks like," Maxine said more to herself than anything else, "Now I can make a more believeable decoy."
"Glad I could help, sweetie," Hellen said.
Maxine went back to creating a better mental image of her decoy by using Guan's appearance as a base. She kept on adjusting it's appeareance, so that it would almost look like it was her sibling. After she was done adjusting it in her mind, she felt something was off. She sat down to think for awhile and realized what it was. It has no scars. In order to remain hidden for this long, it would have needed to live in the wilds and it is nearly impossible to avoid getting injured by essence beasts while living in that kind of enviroment.
Maxine started adding scars onto the frame of her decoy. She put a eight inch long scar on the right side of it's chest, a claw marked scar on the left shoulder and a few other small nicks across the rest of the frame. However she quickly noticed that she had essentially given her decoy the same scars that she had on her body when she was still a man. She had even added the small notch on the left ear that a Blade-Tail Cat had given her in her past life.
Maxine unconsciously reached up to touch her left ear as she remembered how she had earned that particular injury. In any case, that should be enough. She shook her head and started to finish up the smaller details of her decoy. Once she was done, she smiled to herself and took a few steps back to admire her work.
Maxine had made it so that it had an athletic build. She examined each muscle group to make sure that they were properly formed, but her face heat up when she noticed that it was anatomically correct. This was an unexpected scenario since she hadn't made male genitalia on her decoy when it was at it's infant stage. She had thought that it would have been as well endowed as a Ken doll, but that isn't what happened.
"Hmm, I woke up at an interesting time," Hellen teased and Maxine felt her her embaressment surge uncontrollably.
"How long have you been awake?" Maxine asked.
"Long enough to see you staring at your decoy's manhood for a full minute," Hellen said, "You could have just put a fleshy bulge there instead of that. I never imagined that you were such a perfectionist."
"It wasn't intentional!" Maxine exclaimed.
"Sure it was," Hellen teased in an amused tone, "It actually makes some sense as to why you would make it that way as long as you were planning on having a baby with Emily. If it survives, this creation of yours would suit that purpose quite nicely. Although your father would probably insist that you modify it's so that it has his Y chromosone, but that can wait until you are silver stage."
"Seriously? It can be used like that?" Maxine asked.
"Yes, it can," Hellen replied, "But if you are going to have a baby of your own, I suggest you do it before you reach gold stage."
"Why is that?" Maxine asked. I have a feeling she is going to say something that I won't like.
"Because your ability to reproduce decreases as you become more powerful. It's nature's way of balancing things out an essence cultivator's might and it can't be done via artifical means. The odds of artifical insemination are even lower with essence cultivators than it is with normal humans," Hellen explained, "For example, if you were ovulating right now, the chances that you would become pregnant is less than fifty percent. It would be closer to twenty percent once you reach silver stage and less than one percent when you reach gold stage. Using artificial means would be less than one fourth those odds."
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?" Maxine demanded. This could be a serious problem. With my current rate of progression, I might reach silver stage before I am even fifteen and gold before I am thirty. I seriously doubt that I will ever get comfortable with the idea of having sex with a man in that time frame. Not unless I can find a technique that would enable Emily make a male clone in that time frame.
"Because there are ways around this problem such as fertility potions," Hellen answered.
"Oh, I was scared there for a moment," Maxine replied, "I guess that I will need some of those when I decide to have kids."
"Alright," Hellen said, "Just keep in mind that the herbs for those potions are rare enough that it may take you awhile to find them."
"Understood, mom," Maxine said, "I need to get my decoy clothed and armed now, so I will be a bit occupied for awhile."
"Okay, sweetie," Hellen said, "Don't over do it."
"I won't," Maxine replied.
After Hellen retracted her spiritual sense, Maxine ordered her decoy to form clothing that looked identical to the Shadow's Embrace Armor. Unfortunately it only looked that way. In truth, it had roughly the same defensive ability as her essence armor. Now all I need to do is make a glaive and it has to be something comparable to my Twilight Iron Blades. Maybe there is still some Twilight Iron ore in the Shadow Cat's cave, but I will need more of it than I needed for my blades. I am not sure there is enough left in that cave to satisfy even half of what I need to make a glaive.
Maxine turned her head to look at the clock on her bedside nightstand and saw that it was six in the morning. Damn, I started working on my decoy at seven o'clock last night. I didn't think that it would take me eleven hours to make my decoy, but it did. I hope mom isn't too angry that I was gone all night.
Maxine was aware that she couldn't go to the Shadow Cat's cave and mine anymore twilight iron until after her mother woke up. It would only make her mother even more upset than she, most likely already, was. So, she decided to get on the computer to wait until her mother got up.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Maxine began to go through all of the student application emails on the computer. Due to her enhanced cognitive ability, she only needed to look at each email for a couple seconds to read through them. However there were well over five thousand applications to look through and it would take her awhile to look through them all. She had expected more, but she guessed that most people were skeptical about her ability to teach others.
However when Maxine started reading the emails, very few of the emails had the details that she asked for such as their age of the student and home address. For those emails, she decided to write a response that she would consider teaching them in one month. She had asked for their address in order to observe her potential student for that one month to ensure the character of her potential students. She did not want a student that might become a monster that kills normal humans.
As Maxine continued to read the emails, one person asked how much she was going to charge. That was a legitimate question and it was one she hadn't even thought about. It was a problem. She knew that she couldn't charge too much or the vast majority of people wouldn't be able to afford it. On the other hand, if she charged too little, no one would believe her cultivation technique would work.
After a few minutes of thinking, Maxine came up with three means of learning her techniques. The first method was through one large payment of five to twenty thousand dollars. The price depended on how far they want her to help them progress and she would assist them by using whatever resources that she could procure. Not to mention she would help them develop a basic fighting style, but she wouldn't help them any further after that. The second method would be bare bones and she would only charge one thousand dollars in total, but she would teach them her cultivation technique as well as ensuring a stable formation of their essence core. Beyond that, they were on their own. The last method wouldn't involve an immediate payment, but instead she would have go under contract with her school. Their training and any resources that she would use on them would come out of her pocket, but they would have to give her a small percentage out of any income that they gain from any missions that they participate in for the government. She intended for this method to be similar to joining a guild and for everyone in her school to look out for one another. Maxine expected that most of her students would take this method of learning her techniques and would make a precedent for other groups to form. That would help humanity as a whole to ensure a greater chance at survival.
Even with the payment method taken care of, there was still the issue involving the rules for Maxine's martial school. She had to make them clear and simple enough for a child to understand and at the same time, she needed to make the punishments for violating those rules harsh. I guess the first rule would be if any of my students are involved in any form of criminal activity, I would eliminate their ability to cultivate any further and turn them into the authorities. Damagine their essence core should do the trick for that since any damage to a person's essence core is extremely difficult to repair and once an essence core is damaged, it will constantly leak essence. She decided to write up a list of rules and a few templates for replying to application emails.
Right as Maxine was about to start writing those things, she heard her mother moving around and got off the computer. Maxine went to the kitchen to start working on breakfast since Silky was going to wake up soon and she wanted to get on the good side of her mother.
Maxine had warmed up the skillet to cook bacon and eggs when her mother walked into the kitchen. Maxine's mother put her hand over her heart and seemed to be relieved before she got angry. "Maxine! Where have you been?" Maxine's mother demanded.
"I got caught up in an experiment using my abilities in that place that I told you about and lost track of time," Maxine answered honestly.
"You still could have used one of your clones, or whatever you call them, to let me know," her mother said, "I was worried sick."
"I wasn't gone for that long," Maxine said.
"Maxine, I don't care how powerful that you think you are. I will still worry if you don't let me know where you are," her mother said.
"I am sorry, mom," Maxine said sincerely, "I really did loose track of time."
"I know that now, but that doesn't mean you get off scott free," her mother said, "I want you to do a deep cleaning of the whole house." That could take me at least a few hours even with using my shadow essence.
"Alright, mom," Maxine said resignedly as she continued with making breakfast. Sometime during Maxine's talk with her mother, Silky had come into the kitchen and sat down at the table to wait for breakfast to be ready. It didn't take Maxine long to finish cooking breakfast and served a plate for her mother, Silky and herself.
After breakfast was eaten, Maxine's mother left the house to go to work and Maxine waited for five minutes after her mother left to create over a dozen shadow tendrils out of her own shadow. Mom never said that I couldn't use my essence to speed things up. I will just treat this as training to gain greater control over my essence and spiritual sense.
After Maxine made certain that Silky was busy reading, she went to work cleaning the house. Each of her shadow tendrils did a different task. A few of her those tendrils were pulling dishes and other items out of the cabinets to wipe down the shelves underneith them and at the same time some of the other tendrils were washng the dishes. Maxine didn't have to do any of those things herself. She only had to stand in one place and control each of the shadow tendrils with extreme care in order not to break anything while she cleaned in this fashion. It had only taken Maxine half an hour to clean everything from the ceiling to the floorboads.
As Maxine moved to clean another room, she heard someone knocking on the front door. She went to the front door and scanned outside to see who it was. It was Emily.
Maxine quickly opened the front door and gave Emily swift hug. Maxine's action had startled Emily and it took a moment for Emily to return the hug.
After they parted from their embrace, Maxine asked, "Not that I am complaining, but why are you here?"
"I called your mom earlier and she told me that you disappeared last night," Emily said, "She also told me that you were cleaning the whole house as a punishment, so I came to help out." Maxine felt touched that Emily was so thoughtful.
"You didn't have to come, but thank you anyways," Maxine replied with a smile on her face, "I already got the kitchen cleaned and I was about to start working on the TV room when you showed up. How about you join me?"
"Alright," Emily said as she followed Maxine into the house and greeted Silky when she came into the TV room. However Silky was too engrossed in her book and hadn't even noticed that Emily was there.
"Watch this," Maxine said while feeling like showing off as she created over a dozen shadow tendrils and created feather dusters at the ends of some of them.
"That's amazing," Emily said with wonder in her eyes, "I didn't know essence had practical uses like that."
"Yeah, it does," Maxine answered as she started to clean the room using them, "You could probably do the same thing with your divine essence, but it might be harder to make it manifest into something physical like mine."
"Oh, I didn't know that," Emily responded, "Is controling those tendrils of yours hard?"
"Individually, no they are not, but as a group, it is alittle challenging while talking with you," Maxine said calmly, "Infact, the most that I can do is talk while I manipulate them."
"Really?" Emily asked while a mischievous smile appeared on her face, "What if I were to distract you?"
"Depends on the distraction," Maxine said while smiling back.
"Let me test your concentration then," Emily said as she hugged Maxine's neck and kissed her on the cheek.
"That isn't nearly enough to distract me," Maxine said confidently, but nearly faltered slightly when Emily started to nibble on Maxine's ear, "Nice attempt."
"I am not done yet," Emily said into Maxine's ear before moving back and giving Maxine a deep kiss. Maxine froze in shock and so did her shadow tendrils. That's completely unfair and unexpected. Time to retaliate.
Maxine grabbed Emily around her waist as she kissed Emily back with vigor. Some of Emily's divine essence leaked into Maxine's body through their kiss and it seemed to trigger something within Maxine's blood. Maxine felt her blood start to churn inside of her veins when Emily's divine essence reached it. Maxine's skin began to heat up and she felt a strange sensation on her ears and forehead while she enjoyed the kiss with Emily. This continued for a few blissful seconds as their tongues entwined before Hellen rudely interrupted them.
"Maxine!" Hellen roared at Maxine via spiritual sense.
"Can't you let me enjoy this for just a few more second without being interrupted?" Maxine asked without breaking her kiss with Emily.
"Use your spiritual sense to look at yourself!" Hellen exclaimed and Maxine rolled her eyes as she scanned herself with her spiritual sense.. She nearly backed away from Emily in shock at what she saw. Maxine's ears had become pointed like an elf's, her skin transformed to a pearlescent grey and n egg-shaped golden jewel the size of a marble appeared to have grown on her forehead with two matching pea-sized ones to either side of it. What the fuck?!
"What the hell is going on?" Maxine asked Hellen.
"You need to calm down first and stop the release of your bloodline energy," Hellen said, "It is the reason you look like this now. You should revert back if you can stop it from being released."
Maxine attempted to control the churning sensation in her blood. However Emily had clearly detected Maxine's bewilderment as she started to back away from the kiss. Well, Emily already knows that I am an alien, but I doubt she would expect my appearance to change. If nothing else, I will just have some explaining to do, but I can't let any of the essence cultivators in the area see me like this. Maxine focused all of her will as she struggled to control the bloodline energy coursing through her body as her shadow tendrils vanished into a greyish mist. Fortunately she managed to control the bloodline energy and retracted it back into her blood. However it had taken her nearly ten seconds to do it. That had been plenty of time for Emily to get a good look at Maxine's transformed state.