Korin walked the hunting trails outside of the city. He stopped and checked a few of the snares to see if they had caught anything over the night. Walking forward, he saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

He dropped to a crouch and unslung the bow off of his back. Korin silently crept over the trail towards the sound. Moving off the trail, he climbed through the tall grass. He saw a doe raise it’s head up above the grass and look around. Pulling an arrow from his quiver, he nocked it on the bow string and sighted up on the doe. He took a deep breath in and let the arrow fly as he exhaled.

The arrow struck true and hit the deer with a hint of essence. The deer simply fell to the ground. Korin ran over to the deer and inhaled deeply, pulling in the essence that escaped the deer with it’s death.

He spun the essence in his chi spiral as it condensed. Closing his eyes, he focused on making it as pure as possible. After a few minutes of this meditation, he added the essence to his center.

Glancing down at himself, he nodded in satisfaction. His essence had only a tint of grey. Before his mother had helped him, his center was a blackened mess.

As the son of a cultivator, he was very aware of how the universe worked. Some children grew up to nursery stories with moral lessons. Korin was raised with his mother teaching him how the basic elements formed everything. How celestial formed life and angels. How infernal formed death and demons. He was also aware of the limitations that it had placed upon him.

The vast majority of celestial cultivators were good people. Most of them were priests for the church. While most were healers, a sizable amount were more warriors with celestial essence enhancements.

Likewise, most infernal cultivators were not good people. The quickest way to power for an infernal cultivator was through prolonging death, necromancy, and demon summoning. Some infernal cultivators were enhanced warriors, but the majority focused on summoning.

His mother was a water cultivator. She was able to pull essence from any water source. She said that she was able to gain more essence from the river that borders the city than that of a still source of water.

Korin did not inherit the ability to cultivate from water like his mother. That would have made life far simpler. Korin was an infernal cultivator.

Looking down at the doe, he knew that he could have gotten more essence off of it. If a creature or sentient died with extreme emotions, they released more essence. He never could bring himself to do that. He would rather give a quick clean kill than resort to something like that. He bent down and picked up the doe. Settling the doe over his shoulders, he started walking back towards the hunting lodge that he and the other hunters lived in. He just filled his quota before breakfast and got a decent amount of essence in the process. It was going to be a good day!

* * *

Hector was sitting on the porch enjoying the morning sun while he repaired the fishing nets. The hunters and the fisherman traded favors and their catches to give each member a variety of skills. This time, it was Hector’s turn. So here he sat, mending a fishing net instead of out checking his snares.

Either the fishermen from the lodge were trying to catch the boulders sticking out of the river or the fish of the river were just plain mean. He was examining one of the tears that stretched the length of the net. Three strands of the net were the only things that had prevented this net from being torn in two.

He looked up at the sound of feet pounding along the western road that lead to the city. When he saw it was his friend’s mother, he reached down to assure that he was wearing his sword. Paige was not the type to show up unannounced, let alone at a speed a non cultivator would be proud of on their horse. Something was going on for her to be using essence to get here in a hurry.

Hector tossed the damaged net to the side and waved his arms to get her attention. “Paige!” He yelled. “Are the fire imps attacking the city again?”

She turned towards him and lept the last thirty yards. Landing lightly next to him, she grabbed his shoulder. “No imps this time Hector. Where is Korin?”

Hector pointed to the north. “He left with the sunrise. Depending how things look, he could be gone all morning. What is going on Paige? I can help.”

At that moment, Korin rounded one of the bends alongside of the river. He had a good sized doe over his shoulders as he walked towards the hunter’s lodge. Paige slapped him on his shoulder, then ran out to meet her son.

Jumping down from the porch himself, Hector ran after Paige. Hector was a cultivator as well of moderate skill. Paige was significantly more trained than he was. As he was only D5, she reached Korin much faster than he did.

As Hector got close enough, he heard his friend greet his mother. Then, he asked her where the fire is for her to be rushing around. Hector could see her roll her eyes at him from twenty feet away.

“I’ve learned about the opportunity that we have been waiting for. The guild has found a new dungeon that simply does not have an affinity. This means that anyone can cultivate there. This can accelerate our plan by years!”

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“If it really is affinity free, you would be able to get enough to open your Liver meridian. That’s just the start. Hector here can go with you. You owe me for opening your water affinity channel. This will help you out a bunch too. The two of you should have no problem filling up a group for the dungeon.”

Hector nodded. “Yeah, of course. I’d be more than happy to help Korin. It does sound like it could be an amazing place to grow. When would we need to leave?”

“If I know Frank, the expedition to the new dungeon is leaving in the morning. You will need to grab your camping gear. Dress warm, those mountains can get cold.” Paige cycled some essence through her eyes and looked at the two young men.

Both had worked very hard in keeping their essence pure. Her son’s essence was a light grey color. Hector had been an earth cultivator, but he had wanted more. She had forced open his water affinity channel. This mixture of earth and water had turned him into a plant cultivator.

Paige looked at her son’s long time friend. For being such a young cultivator, he had done very well with his chi spiral. His essence was mostly brown, but she was starting to see a hint of green now. She couldn’t be more proud of either one of these young men.

* * *

When Paige moved here with her son ten years ago, they had decided that there was a chance to start over here. She had made enough silver to buy a few beast cores from the guild. Those would be just what she needed for her son.

There was a feature here that she learned about that made her grab her son come running. There was a rather large bandit camp nearby that had been trying to prey on the city. It was large enough where the bandit camp may have been considered a small city in its own right.

The bandit leader was an ambitious man by the name of Wolf. He had lead that bandit city to a small amount of power. Then, he made a mistake. One of the caravans that they attacked had three new guild members with little to no training. As such, they were jokingly called fishies.

There had been an intense fight that killed the three guild members and fifteen of the bandits in that raiding party dead. As bad as that was, it got worse. One of the fishies was a ranking guild member’s cousin. Orders came down swiftly for the guild to eradicate the bandit camp.

Paige and Korin got there fast enough to talk with guild leader Frank before the battle. She had explained her son’s situation and her plan. Frank had no love for infernal cultivators and took quite a bit of convincing. You can not choose your affinity channel, so Frank had grudingly admitted that he may not be a necromancer intent on summoning. Korin had sworn that he had never, nor did he have any interest in summoning. He agreed to help, on a condition. Frank would be meeting with Korin regularly. If Frank saw any inclination towards necromancy or demon summoning, he would take the young man to the king himself.

Paige had taken part of the raid. Her pay for the job was different than usual. Instead of coin, she was aloud to bring Korin with her to the raid. The raid was brief and brutal. Ten C rank cultivators made quick work of the bandit camp.

After the bandits were dealt with, Frank allowed the team to help strip Korin’s center. Korin drank as much water as he possibly could, then swallowed a beast core. The core pulled all of Korin’s essence into itself and then pulled in all of his corruption. After all the corruption was pulled from him, Paige took control of all the water that Korin had drank. She wrapped it around the beast core and pulled it and a gallon of water from his stomach.

She increased the pressure in the water and crushed the beast core. As soon as he was able, he was instructed to start cultivating. Korin began working to pull in all of the just released infernal essence with the deaths of so many bandits. All of the guild members watched and guarded Korin, but let him know that they would be keeping an eye on him.

It had been a successful mission. The bandits would not be bothering the caravans. The city was paying a nice sum to the guild for removing the bandits. More importantly to Paige, all of the corruption had been removed from her son.

Korin spent the next three hours cultivating in the ruins of the bandit camp. Only one member of the guild had stayed with Paige and Korin. The C8 wind cultivator had simply said that he had orders. When pressed, he said that he was to stay just in case to help. He thinly veiled threat was obvious to everyone.

When the last of the infernal essence had been incorporated into Korin’s key spiral, he dropped to the floor exhausted. Since he learned how to cultivate, he had only been able to cultivate in a small burst to take in the energy released when an animal died. He had learned how to cultivate from an area saturated in infernal energy, like a graveyard. Even then, it had been a challenge with so much corruption in his center.

The difference was huge. Hunting animals like deer did not provide much essence. Graveyards offered steady essence, but it was very diluted. The death of the thirty bandits only hours ago had released a visible dark cloud of infernal essence. A human released so much more essence than a simple deer.

When the last of the cloud disappeared into Korin, he nodded weakly. Paige lifted her son to his feet and wrapped his arm over her shoulder. She could have easily carried him like she had when he was an infant. She doubted that his 21 year old pride would endure that.

She stayed with him for the next day as he processed the essence from his chi spiral. She was very proud of how he managed to to process all of that essence and let only the smallest amount of corruption into his center. After it all was processed, Korin was an F6 cultivator.

The guild still would not accept an infernal cultivator. Thanks to Frank’s deal, they would not hunt him down as long as he kept his end of the bargain. The guild did not specifically forbid Paige from working with her son on cultivating, but it certainly would not help her.

She had a plan on what they could do though. She had started working on this plan the moment she figured out her baby’s affinity channel. He would only have a few options. Necromancy and demon summoning would be the fastest path to strength. Until he was discovered, then it was imprisonment or execution. No, being an infernal summoner would very quickly lead to death. He would need to be a non cultivator or a melee fighter. Another option would be to change his affinity. She would only need a way to test it first. Until then, she would help train him with weapons.

That opportunity came two years later. Korin had decided that he wanted to work for the city as a hunter. This would give him a chance to practice some skills, such as archery, tracking, and herbalism. Paige had pushed him hard to learn alchemy and herbalism to help support her plan. Korin had turned out to have quite a knack for it.

Everyday when he went out hunting, he would come back with his packs full of herbs for him to use. He got better and better at hunting and usually come back with some game. This had the added benefit of giving him a chance to cultivate a bit of essence as well.