Traveling as a cultivator is an annoyingly long process. Until they reach Rakan’s level at least. The reason is quite simple, they still have to cultivate and train. Tantra maintains a constant motion with her club, up, diagonal slash, up, diagonal slash. A perfect figure eight.
Apparently not for Rakan.
“Too slow,” he says, “I can see a dozen openings to break through in just the last few seconds.”
Tantra grunts as she doesn’t stop swinging, “not…fair”
“Yeah well, tell that to someone with my cultivation as they puncture your lungs.” He says, “you’re only on the first step of a long and vast journey, kid. Most cultivators out in the world have the years under their belt to crush you, you’ve gotta compensate with skill.”
“Easy…just…avoid…bandits,” Tantra says.
Rakan snorts, “you think those are the only people you have to worry about? We might all be under the watchful gaze of Rikidan, but cultivators will be cultivators, and we’ll find a reason to fight if we really want one.”
“But…why?” She asks.
Rakan shrugs, “honour, prestige, for the fun of it? Does it really matter? in the end there will be fights I can’t protect you from, assuming I even care enough to do so.”
“Sounds…stupid.” She says.
“Yeah, that sounds about right, I’m one of those idiots that fights for fun though so you should really watch what you say.” Rakan says.
Tantra snorts, which interrupts her delicate balance of breaths as she swings, causing her to have too slow down to catch it again. In that time, Rakan appeared in front of her and punched her hard in the sternum.
She wheezes as she collapses to the floor.
Rakan waits for her to catch her breath and get back to her feet.
“Why did you do that?” She scowls.
Rakan shrugs, “for the fun of it mostly, but also to prove a point. See how easy it was for me to render you helpless? There are cultivators out there much stronger than I am who won't even need you to fumble to get such a perfect opening”
“How am I expected to match you?” She raves, “you have decades on my cultivation.”
“I’m not training you to match me kid, I’m training you to survive me.” Rakan says, “and you’d be surprised by how many stories there are of the little guy beating a well established cultivator.”
“Those are just stories,” Tantra points out.
“Yeah, and most are embellished. But a few are based on true stories, like that bard song about Kikir.” He says.
“Who?”
Rakan raises a brow, “haven’t heard it? It should be pretty popular, even in Ralth, what, never been to a bar?”
“I’m thirteen”
“So?”
-
Yorin takes a bite out of the unseasoned meat.
“I miss rice,” he grumbles.
Tantra raises a brow as she swallows her own piece “It’s barely been a week. Besides, living off the land is very cultivatory, isn’t that your inclination?”
“Not if it’s for sacrificing rice.” He replies.
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Tantra chuckles as Rakan rolls his eyes and Yorin pouts. She doesn’t want to admit that she can sympathise with Yorins point, she misses noodles very much. But she’s a realist, and prepared herself for going without, unlike one specific idealist.
“I can’t wait to get home,” Yorin says, “my mom can make the best rice this side of Testhim, just you wait, you’ll renounce your silly noodles once you get a taste.”
Tantra scoffs, “‘renounce’? What, now that you’ve learned the big words you’ve decided to add them to your vocabulary?”
“You’re the one who taught me them!”
Tantra shrugs, “true, it just doesn’t really fit your whole image.”
Yorin rolls his eyes, “and what might that image be oh magnanimous Tantra?”
“The lovable buffoon” she says simply.
Yorin squints hard at her, “I’m just going to ignore the last part of what you just said.”
“She’s not wrong though,” Kisrin adds, “you do have a tendency towards idiocy.”
“But I haven’t even done anything!” He whines.
“You have a mouth,” Etra points out, “and what comes out of it is more than enough.”
Yorin takes a big bite out of the mole meat and grumbles, “you guys are bullies.”
“Lovable bullies,” Tantra adds.
He swallows, “True, but still bullies.”
A slight chuckle ripples through them and Rakan looks on bemused. It’s been a while since he’s seen camaraderie like this among cultivators, it happens, sure, but it’s more the exception rather than the rule. Different cultivators advance differently, and those above tend to abandon those below for the sake of that ever present progress. That kind of environment makes it difficult to cultivate friendships, ironically enough. Cultivators can do anything but maintain a social circle.
“You know, I never thought of it before, but why do they call it the DarkWoods? It isn’t particularly dark in comparison to a normal forest,” Kisrin points out.
“It’s because of the void wraiths,” Tantra says.
“The what?”
“Void Wraiths, there’s plenty of them at the centre, no one really knows how or why, but their there.”
Etra raises a brow, “aren’t wraiths only supposed to exist on recent battlefields?”
Tantra shrugs, “The going theory is that the DarkWoods was a battlefield, at one point, and the Qi of the centre maintains the wraiths.”
“Should we be worried about them?”
Rakan snorts, “looking to travel to the centre of a foci already kid? Bold, and stupid.”
“Well we’re going deeper right?” He points out, “what if we run into one?”
“We won’t,” Tantra says, “the DarkWoods isn’t so small that a month's worth of travel would take us to its heart.”
“Really?” Kisrin asks, “the Qi already feels pretty dense.”
“The Qi that radiates from a foci is practically solid,” Rakan says, “at least that’s what master Jorin told me. Never checked because I don’t have a death wish.”
“Huh,” Kisrin says, “why don’t more cultivators just train a decent distance from a foci then? With this amount of Qi they should be able to expand their cores ridiculously fast.”
“Why don’t you go ask the tribals that question” Rakan replies, “assuming they don’t just kill you.”
“Are they really that bad?” Yorin asks.
Rakan shrugs, “no, but they’re territorial, and very wary of outsiders. That makes them more likely to take a violent approach to, from their perspective, protect their homes.”
-
The rate of Tantra’s gathering is half again as good as when she started little over a year ago. Which is a pace that isn’t matching the growth of her core. Unfortunately the control exercises don’t have much relevance to taking Qi from the world. It’s not about control, it’s about convincing reality that the Qi is yours, then you have to filter it through into your core, which is a control relevant step, but it’s not nearly as important as the first. Luckily the Qi is thick enough here to where she doesn’t really need to worry about running out. She might never have a full core, but she can still store a decent amount.
The other benefit of being closer to a foci is her little breathing mutation. She never really noticed it before, it being miniscule enough as to not attract attention. But now? Here? The Qi is so thick that she can’t not notice it. She can feel the roots of her foundations dig deeper and deeper just from sitting here, and it’s started to affect her in other ways. She’s marginally stronger here, and she only needs half as much sleep as she would normally. The others got extremely curious by how she’d been slowly needing less and less sleep the deeper they traveled, so she had to fess up about her mutation.
Rakan didn’t seem particularly pleased, “fuck,” he had said eloqently, “we need to pick up the pace.”
“Why?” Yorin says, “Isn’t this a good thing?”
“What she just described is how normal animals become spirit beasts. I have no interest in turning my student into a beast-blood.”
“But I haven’t changed at all, and I’ve been like this for almost a year.” Tantra says.
“If normal Qi density could mutate an animal then we’d only have spirit beasts.” Rakan bit back, “C’mon kids, walking’s over, we need to get out.”