The flickering light of the campfire illuminated Quin and the trio who sat around it. The crackling of the flames and the occasional sizzling of the fat that dripped off the hares and into the fire provided a cozy atmosphere that Quin was loathed to break, but there was much to prepare and no way to know how much time he had until the first prisoners and challengers arrived.

“Before we begin, I have a small request.”, Quin said.

“Of course, teacher Quin, how may I help you?” Nayda answered.

“I think it’s time we stop talking so formally. I tire of it. The student-teacher relationship is a connection that will hold our entire lives so there is no reason to cling on to this artificial distance between us.”, he said.

“Thank you, teacher. In that case, I think I should also do this, it is long overdue I think.”, she answered and removed her mask and hood. Like a butterfly out of a cocoon, her mask and cloak had concealed a bright-eyed, lively young woman with unruly brown hair and vibrant green eyes.

“I was starting to feel awkward in my ceremonial outfit, but I didn’t really find a good reason to remove it yet.”, she said. “I was told to be as respectful and polite as possible by the Great Oracle, but I’m not sure I could have kept up the facade for long.”

The contrast between the formal and distant priestess hidden behind long robes and a mask compared to the lively young woman was quite jarring to Quin. Most seasoned cultivators would have stayed cautious and slowly tested the waters, but it seemed that Nayda hadn’t yet seen how cruel the world of cultivation could be.

A short glance at Seylin and Rafir showed that they were similarly inexperienced since they showed no large reaction to this turn of events and their relaxed postures revealed that they didn’t have any worries at the reveal.

When the hares were done, the trio quickly ate while Quin contemplated how detailed his first lesson should look and decided that a rough overview would suffice for now. Knowing too much wouldn’t help them for now, but it was helpful to have a general idea of where one stood in the grand scheme of things and what was possible to achieve.

“To begin with I want to make it clear that while I can give you tools to help you cultivate, I cannot cultivate for you. If you form an overreliance on teachers to guide you through every minutia of your cultivation journey you will forever be chained to their understanding of it.

I want you to be able to solve problems on your own and only when you can’t see a way forward will I step in to help you take a step further. In the next few days and even weeks, I will start by providing you with different visualization models that you can use to improve your meditation.

Before we begin with that though, I have decided to give a brief overview of the different stages of cultivation.

The cultivation journey can be divided into four major realms, the first three of which can each in turn also be divided into three stages. The names of these realms and stages may differ from region to region, but what you have to do to progress will always stay the same.

You are currently at the first stage of the first realm. The first realm revolves around the necessity of procuring spiritual energy and incorporating it into your cultivation base, which is housed in your spiritual repository.

Your stage, the Spiritual Energy Gathering stage, is the purest expression of this endeavor, as it is purely concerned with the accumulation of spiritual energy. Conversely, if you want to compare yourself with others of your stage, the amount of spiritual energy you have available will be a large advantage compared to those who have less.

Just like a great cook can’t do anything without ingredients, how efficient and well-trained your spells and techniques are will not matter if you don’t have the spiritual energy necessary to use them.

The next stage and the one you are currently working towards is the spiritual foundation building stage. at that stage, you still expand the amount of spiritual energy you have available, but you also work towards refining it until its amount and purity are sufficient to be condensed into a core.

That is also the final stage you can reach purely by utilizing spiritual energy. The second realm is then concerned with developing your soul while the third realm requires that you find your own Dao. The final realm is that of the ascenders and even I don't know what is required of you there.”, Quin said.

The trio looked at him expectantly, clearly fascinated by those higher realms they hadn’t been told about before.

“Since those realms are so very far above your own, explaining them now won’t do you much good.”

While their disappointment was clearly visible, none of the three thought about interrupting the lesson. Getting taught by an experienced cultivator with such a clear vision of the greater picture was a rare blessing none of them wanted to squander.

Stolen novel; please report.

“So, coming back to your own realm, there are many different avenues through which you can increase your spiritual energy, but the easiest one is, as you already know, meditation in environments that contain much of it.

Besides a higher ambient concentration of spiritual energy, our meditation sessions can also be enhanced by specific breathing patterns, as you have already demonstrated. What you may not know, is that the mental image you have while meditating can severely enhance or hinder your progress.

Since developing a working mental image is quite hard, most of the time younger cultivators get taught to clear their minds completely of extraneous thoughts until only the breathing pattern remains.

This eliminates the risk, but also the possibility. I have even known several cultivators who reached the second realm without one, but by that time it is so ingrained in one's habits that developing one can be very difficult.

What they did instead to supplement their meditation was to ingest copious amounts of food rich in spiritual energy, as well as various medicines which boosted their rate of absorption. Needless to say, their spiritual energy was muddied beyond belief, and none ever advanced another step.”, Quin continued.

This time Nayda couldn’t hold on to herself though and posed him a question with obvious worry.

“I am sorry teacher Quin, but I have also received many spiritual beast meals and a few medicinal baths. Is there a way to repair my cultivation?” she asked. Seylin and Rafir also looked worried and it was obvious that while they may have not been as pampered as Nayda, they had still hunted and eaten several spiritual beasts.

“No, you don’t have to worry about that. Spiritual energy purity only becomes a concern once you reach the foundation building stage and even then a regular but measured intake of supplements is not only not detrimental, but almost necessary if you want to condense your core with any amount of certainty.”, he reassured them and then asked. “Are you all familiar with the method of visualizing your spiritual repository?”

While Nayda hesitantly nodded, both Seylin and Rafir clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

“I am afraid not teacher Quin. Rafir and I are mostly self-taught with the help of manuals rented from the temple library.”, Seylin answered for the two of them.

“I have done it a few times, but it seemed pretty useless until now, so I haven’t tried it in quite a while.”, Nayda said.

“You are right that this method wasn’t very useful to you until now, but the mental image you have while cultivating will influence your spiritual repository over time, so it is important to monitor it for any unwanted changes.” Quin said. “This is obviously not a problem for those meditating without one such image.”

His audience nodded at that statement and once again confirmed to themselves that there really was no substitute for a knowledgeable teacher.

“As you should be aware, your spiritual sense guides the flow of spiritual energy inside your body. That is not the only thing it can do though. Since spiritual energy has both a physical as well as a metaphysical component, it can connect to both. This dichotomy is also true for your spiritual repository.”, he continued. Seeing that his audience had seemingly no idea about this second component, he decided to expand upon it.

“The most apparent example for this metaphysical component is for example, that spiritual energy slowly takes on certain characteristics of the environment it is in. Should you ever enter the lair of a demon worshipper you will notice that the spiritual energy inside it can make you physically ill while empowering them considerably.

On the other hand, spiritual energy inside caves will naturally attune towards being dark, sluggish, and stale and techniques that embody those attributes will be noticeably stronger than others. there are other ways to alter spiritual energy, but you are unlikely to encounter those any time soon.

The metaphysical component of your spiritual repository is, that the totality of spiritual energy together with all your spells and techniques and your mental self-image results in a spiritual world that you can access with your spiritual sense. The only thing you need is the right intent while connecting with your spiritual repository and you will find yourself inside it. This early into your cultivation journey it is likely that you will only encounter a chaotic mess of disparate influences on your spiritual energy, which will only settle in the coming months and years.”, he said.

While giving his speech Quin had been thinking about his own situation. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there was a feeling that his lesson could also help his attempts at finding the powers that he knew dungeons should have.

He then tried to reframe what he was trying to do. He was searching for innate abilities and the way to activate them. While it didn’t need to be immediately obvious, every dungeon he had ever visited had figured it out, so it should at least not be hidden or unintuitive how to find them.

The only thing he hadn’t yet done that every dungeon would do sooner or later was to cultivate and, coincidentally, to inspect his spiritual repository. He then returned his focus to his waiting audience.

“Follow along with me.”, he said. “Use your spiritual sense to connect with your spiritual repository and focus on your desire to see your inner world.”

The moment he uttered that sentence he had an epiphany. He had subconsciously referred to the island as his inner world for a while now. It had just felt right. On a whim, he connected one of his large spiritual senses with the land, but this time not with the intent to absorb or eject but to connect.

From one moment to the next his view of the world changed. Where he had previously had various dulled sensations that indicated the overall health of the island, he now knew with perfect clarity what was happening on the island. He knew where every tree and critter was, he saw every boulder and flowed along with the river all at once.

But just as if not more importantly, he had a distinct feeling that if he willed the earth to move, it would. He did so immediately but on the other side of the island to not spook his visitors, which he could also observe.

With only a small flexing of his mind alongside a considerable amount of spiritual energy he first raised the earth into a large mount and, after only stone remained around the mound, spiritual energy was automatically used to substitute earth at an even steeper price. If he hadn’t had a faucet that constantly spewed new spiritual energy for him to use he would have run out of reserves rather quickly.

Meanwhile, his three students had also managed to connect with their inner worlds and so the whole group was smiling just as wide as he currently was.