Tantra takes a breath,

Qi flows into her lungs, and almost as fast as it enters her body it’s absorbed into her core. Whatever is compressing her soul tightens, sending a shock of something throughout her body. It is not pain, she knows pain, this is some sort of concept given a voice. She can’t parse what it is, it’s not loud enough. But it will be, soon, she’s getting so close to the tipping point.

But that’s okay.

She won’t cross.

The same instinct that tells her where the limit is also gives her a kind of understanding. Crossing the threshold would be disastrous, in a way that’s worse than death, and Tantra has no intention of experiencing it. But she needs to be faster, to go back and help her friends, so she edges the line, getting ever so close before she takes a break and returns to normal gathering. She wonders what it is she’s doing, surely she didn’t stumble upon another secret technique? That would just be ridiculous.

It might be a new training method though, she doesn’t really care though, all she knows is it helps her get back to the field where her friends are fighting faster. They take breaks too, but not as frequently as Tantra, since she has a use for her Qi other than circulation, and their bodies don’t have to deal with the exhaustion of boosting. It’s kind of funny, she needs to boost, just a little bit, to even walk now, yet boosting just exacerbates the issue.

She takes in another breath,

Something speaks to her, just a whisper, but she can tell that they’re words, if only garbled into incoherent nonsense. That’s another curiosity, what is talking to her? She can tell it's a concept, so maybe the dao? But that doesn’t make sense, if it were so easy to touch the dao everybody would have, and it doesn’t…feel right. It feels twisted, like how a mutated spirit beast might compare to one that was born.

It could be the dao, or something like the dao, but it is something she most certainly does not want.

Something to ask Rakan. She wishes the tide would be over already, she feels as though an age has passed in just a few weeks, and she has so many questions that need answers. About beast tides and her soul situation both.

Why do the beasts run to their deaths?

Isn’t their rampage a thing fueled by the need to survive? yet they run themselves through the spears of the villagers. What is it that the Godbeasts do to their minds for this kind of reaction? Why don’t they attack each other? Why aren’t humans affected?

So, so many questions.

-

What is persistence?

In simple terms, it is to keep trying, no matter the obstacle.

A more obnoxious description would label it as the willpower to keep moving, keep pushing, keep struggling. It is to look at the world and spit in its eye, declaring that you, above all others, will surpass the shackles that confine us. Superseding logic, overlooking reason, it is the ability to just keep moving.

Rakan knows all about persistence, even got a dao for it, almost two decades ago at this point. He never got a second one, much to his disappointment, but it’s fine, he’ll keep deepening his roots until he gets his due. That’s the thing with dao’s, you need to have knowledge on the subject, but that isn’t enough to push you over the line.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

You need stress, you need a challenge.

It’s why he hasn’t anchored, forcing him to strategize his fights rather than brute forcing it with Qi. It means he’ll have more opportunities to acquire a dao, like right now, as he faces a horde of monsters on his own for days on end.

Persistence.

He organized this with the village elder, so that he may face the struggle and either succeed or fall. But he does not fall, he refuses to fall. They aren’t even attacking him all that much, but the multitude of strikes he’s weathered has left his body battered and bruised. He could dodge, but then he’d miss the opportunity to strike, and therefore miss his opportunity at a dao.

He’s hoping to get a dao of bludgeoning, or perhaps the dao of the club. To do that he needs to strike, and to strike he needs firm footing, so he weathers the blows as a necessary sacrifice and pulls on his dao to keep him standing, to keep him striking.

It’s strange how Qi changes once a concept is introduced, his Qi a light teal, instead of the radiant white of an unmarked soul. It’s not very good with fine application, which makes the blood infusion technique harder, but it’s great for situations like these.

He barely needs any intention at all to keep his body standing, barely needs to convince reality that he can keep fighting. Even though he’s been battered with so many wounds. The mark on his soul and the color of his Qi refuse to let him fall.

It’s even a part of his dao’s mutation.

That’s the second step, some people call it specializing but from his perspective it's a mutation, because it changes how the dao works irrevocably. His stops him from falling, stops him from failing, when a wound should end him it simply won’t, he’ll make a declaration to reality every time he comes to fall, a simple sentence that has morphed his soul into a giant ethereal pillar, standing tall and strong through fierce winds.

That pillar holds him up as he takes on dozens and dozens all alone constantly for days on end. He can feel his dao growing, ever so slowly, as he pushes through the pain and fatigue, but he’s not trying to grow his dao, he’s trying to get a new one.

He grits his teeth and keeps fighting, keeps swinging.

Until…

He hits nothing but air.

He blinks and looks around him, a mountain of corpses surrounding his person, and no more beasts charging.

The tide is over.

“Fuck.”

-

Tantra stares at the eyes of a corpse.

If there ever was a silver lining to a beast tide, it would be the sheer amount of resources it leaves in its wake. When contained within the right preservation scripts, the amount of meat they’ll harvest will be enough to feed the village for years. The pelts they skin could be used for clothing, bedding, or sold to passing merchants. Although the price will be ridiculously cheap considering the shear supply that was just dumped into the market. Then there’s the bones, even a mongrel has an enhanced skeleton, making them perfect for tools, weapons, and arrows.

Was it worth the lives lost?

Probably, at least from a perspective completely detached from empathy.

Tantra isn’t so far gone, so mostly she’s just mad, mostly at herself.

You’re too weak, the rage says, and she doesn’t really have a rebuttal. She only did the job of maybe four villagers, while Rakan managed an equivalent of fifty. If her arm were healed, could she have done more? Probably, but that doesn’t really matter does it? Their deaths aren’t her fault, she didn’t bring the tide and indeed she probably saved a few by taking their place. But if she could’ve taken more of the burden?

Perhaps the corpse in front of her wouldn’t be a corpse at all.

Its gaze isn't accusing, nor sympathetic, nor anything. They’re dead, they lost their ability for expression when their soul left for the cycle. Just a bag of meat and bone now, decorating the scenery with a rictus of…not pain, but fear? Must have been a quick death. At least there’s that.

“Tantra,” Kisrin says from beside her.

“Hmm?”

“Let’s go back to Yorins place.”

“You go ahead, I have things to do.”

“They don’t need us anymore” He points out.

“...”

“Tantra, c’mon, let's go.”

Tantra lets out a long sigh, “okay.”