Victorious Jack looked down at Rin’s unconscious form lying on the ground next to him. Her body, still covered with fur and sporting large claws looked completely inhumane. He could only hope that the corruption had been stopped soon enough to keep her mind sane. Her body would recover soon, now that the Qi within it was gone. Already there were patches of fur shortening and giving way to the skin under it. Still, he couldn’t be sure if there would be no aftereffects until she had completely recovered. And speaking of recovery…

Jack winced as he moved his arm, trying to get a better look at the injury. His bloodied clothes obscured the view, but he knew the wound that Rin’s sword had made was deep. Even as a cultivator he would need weeks, maybe months to recover from it. It would be impossible to hide something like this, his parents would get suspicious.

With his uninjured hand Jack reached into his pocket and took one of the vials inside of it. The green coloured healing potion inside of it shook under the movement. It was only due to sheer luck that the vials hadn’t shattered during the fight. With his thumb Jack removed the cork on top of it before he downed the green liquid with one gulp. He winced as a bitter taste filled his mouth, bad enough to make him feel nauseous.

He gagged as he felt the slimy liquid running down his throat. Immediately his body heated up. It was as if liquid fire was flowing through his veins, a feeling almost too painful to comprehend. With a groan Jack tried to stay conscious, fighting back against the pain.

After what felt like hours, but was probably only minutes, the pain started to subside and Jack started to relax. Slowly he lifted his right hand into his field of view, wincing as the movement intensified the pain back to the former levels. The hand was healed, all those small cuts and bruises he hadn’t even noticed during the fight healed.

Jack waited for a few moments for the pain to lessen again, then he carefully pulled back his sleeve. Just as he had expected, the wound on his arm was still there, too severe to be cured by the healing potion. Still, it showed signs of recovery. The outer edges had pulled back together and a dark clot of blood covered the wound.

A soft sound made Jack stop his inspection. Rin had started shifting around, still not wholly conscious, but it wouldn’t be long till she woke up. By now most of the fur had retracted and her hands had changed back from the claw like forms they had before. He wasn’t sure if her teeth had done the same, but he definitely wouldn’t touch her mouth to find out. He liked his hands, losing one to a bite wasn’t something he wanted.

Jack hesitated for a moment. Should he stay here? If she woke up and was still mad because of the corruption he would have trouble fighting back, with the aftereffects of the potion still hindering him. Or worse, what if she wasn’t mad and simply decided to go after him anyway? Even before the corruption had started her behaviour hadn’t been one he would call friendly anyway.

Before Jack could decide Rin woke up. Slowly her eyes opened. Jack frowned as he saw that they were still changed in colour, changed from their former grey to a bright green. The pupil had even changed a bit in form, becoming more oval than round, as if they had started to become like a cat’s eye.

Weakly her eyes wandered around before her vision fell on Jack. A surprised look flashed over her face and she tried to sit up. Quickly Jack stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

“You should be careful. Your body is still hurt from the corruption” ‘And from all those bolts of air I shot into it’

The second part Jack left unsaid. Weakly Rin nodded and let herself sink back to the ground. Satisfied Jack nodded. By now even the last parts of the corruption had faded. Her eyes aside he couldn’t see any hint of aftereffects from the corruption. Except… maybe her ears were a bit sharper than before? Eh, not that important, she was sane as far as he could tell, so he wasn’t needed here any longer.

Slowly Jack stood up, wincing at a new burst of pain from his freshly recovered body. He hated the aftereffects of potions like these. Still, they were useful, at least if one was outside of danger, otherwise it was suicide to drink potions. Turning around he began to walk away from Rin.

A tug on his trousers caused him to stop before he made more than a step. Looking back he saw Rin grasping at it with trembling fingers. Pain and exhaustion marred her face, but her green eyes shone with determination.

“Why?” A single word came over her lips. A moment she hesitated, biting her lips before she continued. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Because”, Jack said as he sat down on the ground next to her, “I’m not a demon, you know? The whole demon thing had been a huge misunderstanding” Seeing Rin starting to frown and open her mouth, he lifted his hand, interrupting her.

“I know, I may feel like a demon to you, but I’m something different” A slight smile formed on Jack’s face as he watched Rin’s expression becoming confused.

“Hooh? And what are you, if I may ask?”

Jack’s head snapped around. A middle aged man stood a few steps behind him in the darkness of the hallway. Instantly Jack tensed. When had he arrived and why hadn’t he noticed him before?

The man made a step forward. Soft moonlight illuminated his face. Jack’s eyes widened. The man resembled Rin a lot, the same shape of his eyebrows and the same steel grey eyes she had before the corruption.

The man gave a small bow to Jack.

“Greetings, I’m George Weiss, Rin’s uncle and the leader of the local branch of the Demon Hunters. I’m sorry for all the trouble she has caused”

He turned towards Rin. A worried look flashed over his face as his view fell on her eyes, only to vanish a moment later as he saw that she didn’t show any other aftereffects of the corruption. A slight frown formed on his face.

“You are in a lot of trouble young lady”

He turned back to Jack.

“I’m afraid that Rin has decided alone to act against you. My orders were to stand down for the moment and only to observe the situation. So, again I’m sorry for her behaviour”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. Rin had acted alone and no one had noticed it beforehand? Moreover, her uncle conveniently appeared just a few minutes after their fight had ended? It would be hard to find anything more suspicious. Jack couldn’t trust the man.

Slowly Jack stood up, his eyes never leaving the man, observing any movement. But George remained calm. A slight smile was on his face, as if he was amused by Jack’s antics. In the end Jack relented and asked:

“You said you observed me. To see if I’m a demon?”

The man nodded. “We were unsure if you were one or not. To many differences to the simple minded monsters that are the demons and yet you smell of Spiritual Energy. And that brings me back to my question. If you’re not a demon, what are you?”

George’s sharp eyes pierced into Jack. Unfazed Jack looked back. Still, internally he was trying to gauge how much he should tell. He had to get the demon misunderstanding out of the world, but it wouldn’t do to tell everything. Not until he knew if he could trust the man.

“I’m just a normal human”, he finally replied with a shrug. “Though I am able to absorb Qi- Spiritual Energy “ He corrected his mistake quickly.

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A look of confusion crossed George’s face.

“Absorb the Spiritual Energy without becoming a demon? How is that possible?”

Jack let out a slight grin. “Well”, he drew out the word, “I could teach you, but I would have a few requirements. First off, I want your guarantee that you won’t act against me, my family or my friends, be it directly or through the use of others. ”

George nodded slowly “I can’t give any promises about the rest of the demon hunters, but as long as you don’t attack us I think we can agree, that at least my branch won’t harm anyone close to you. What else?”

“Second, I want her” Jack pointed at Rin.

A frown appeared on the George’s face. “If you want to get revenge on her and kill her, I have to reject the offer. Same if you want some other compensation from her”

Jack could see a slight blush on Rin’s face as she heard the later part, but he ignored it. Instead he simply shook his head and replied:

“It’s not that I want her for anything. I want her as my disciple. I will train her personally to absorb the Q- Spiritual Energy. I will only train her, no one else. Afterwards she can teach the rest of you, I don’t care.”

Any other time Jack would have laughed about the look on Rin’s face. It was pure confusion and bewilderment, as if she couldn’t believe the words she had heard. Sadly George’s reaction was the different. A look of doubt began to form on his face.

“She tried to kill you before and you still want to train her? Why?”

Jack let out a weak grin. The man was right, Rin had tried to kill him and to be honest he hold a small grudge because of that, even if it was because a misunderstanding. But there was something a lot more important than that.

“She has the talent for it. I can see it. And I don’t want to waste any more time than necessary by training more than one person”

And indeed he could. Somewhere along the whole corruption something fundamentally inside of Rin had changed. Small Spiritual Veins had begun sprouting through her body. Compared to Jack’s own they were lacking at best, but she would be able to cultivate normally. And given the threat of the sphere breaking and flooding the world with Qi and monsters he would use every help he could get. Hopefully it would take some time before she realized that no one else in her family would be able to cultivate without Spiritual Veins.

Rin however had clearly a different opinion.

“Why should I become your disciple?! I’m still not entirely convinced that you aren’t a demon. This whole thing about absorbing Spiritual could simply be-“

“Rin!” A sharp exclamation of George interrupted her. His grey seemed to pierce into her. “Be quiet for now”

Jack hesitated for a moment before he continued.

“Now then, onto my third and last requirement. I will need your help in the future”

Internally Jack grimaced at that. He didn’t want to ask them for help, he didn’t even trust these so called ‘Demon Hunters’, but he didn’t have any choice. By now it was clear that they had at least some power in this city, and even beyond if George’s words about him merely being a branch leader could be believed. If he could get them on his side it would be great for the future.

George narrowed his eyes.

“Stop. I can understand that you want to keep your family safe. Even becoming Rin’s teacher is at least somewhat understandable. But you wanting our help? Boy, you may try to hide it, but I can see that you don’t trust me. Why would you want to have someone you don’t trust behind you? And don’t give me some stupid crap like ‘keeping your enemies closer’. I believe you are intelligent enough to understand that that is just a good way to get a knife into your back”

Jack hesitated for a moment, then he sighed. That would take a while to explain.

---

“… and the monsters will hunt down everyone. If we want to have any chance to make it out alive we will have to work together.”

When Jack ended his explanation silence returned to the dark hallway. He had spent the last few minutes to explain everything. The crack, the returning of Qi and the dangers that would to come for humanity. With a few changes of course. He simply told that he found the crack inside the sphere because he happened to live right next to it. Pure coincidence, nothing more.

The face of Rin’s uncle was concerned, clearly he was worried by what he had heard. After a while he slowly nodded. “I think I understand” He paused for a moment, before he continued “I accept your offer”

Jack noticed that Rin looked at her uncle uncertain. Clearly she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being his disciple, but at least she didn’t openly protest like before.

“Anyway, I want to hear more about this calamity you described, but we should continue this talk later. While we have evacuated the hospital your fight was loud enough to alarm even the neighbours. The police is coming. We had slowed them down in the hope to clean up the scene, but” , he looked around, “you have destroyed the place even more thoroughly than we expected. Anyway, it was a pleasure to talk to you, Jack. Rin, come, we are going home”

Reaching down he helped Rin standing up. After a last nod towards Jack he turned around and left, Rin following behind him. They barely made it a few steps before Jack remembered something and he called out to Rin.

“Wait a moment!”

Hastily he reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the vials with healing potion. With a few steps he stood next to Rin and pressed the vial into her hand.

“That is a healing potion. Please give it to Larry. Simply pour it over the wounds and they should recover. It won’t work against lost members or wounds that are too serious, but it should help at least a bit”

Curious Rin looked down on the potion before she put it into her pocket. She gave a slight nod to Jack, then she turned around and continued walking.

Silently Jack watched Rin and her uncle leave. Just as they reached the end of the hallway, Rin turned her head a last time to look at Jack, her green eyes still confused at what had just happened. A moment later they walked around a corner and vanished from Jack’s view.

With a sigh Jack sunk back down to the ground. Agreeing to help Rin was risky, especially with her attitude towards him, but if she could gain enough strength she would at least be able to help protect the people. Not to mention that her whole attitude was because of a misunderstanding. And wasn’t there a saying about keeping his friends close and his enemies closer?

With a sigh Jack stopped the thought. He would have to wait and see how Rin would act in the future. Until then he could only try to get stronger himself. And the fight with Rin had given him a new way to do it.

Jack looked around. The hallway was still baring the marks of the fight that had happened earlier. Large scratches marked the ground where Rin’s claws had cut into it and the walls had cracks. But Jack looked past that. Beyond the mundane damages there was another change in the hallway. With the destruction of Rin’s sword a large amount of Qi had been gushed out of it. All of this Qi was still there, though it got more and more dispersed as it got pulled away by the void zone. Still, a sizable amount was still within Jack’s reach.

Jack hesitated for a moment. If he cultivated this Qi it would be the same as using one of the swords, he would become corrupted by it, though he wouldn’t be as easily affected as Rin was. Still, there was an undeniable danger from acting like this. And yet Jack was feeling torn. It was such a big amount of Qi, it would be a waste to simply let it disperse. Not to mention that it was even more concentrated than the Qi inside of his room, so he would be able to cultivate faster.

In the end Jack sighed and closed his eyes. He had decided. No matter the danger, he had to become stronger. Quickly he began cultivating. Slowly the Qi around him began to fill his lungs, before it was absorbed into his Spiritual Veins and got send towards his Dantian.

Immediately Jack noticed the difference between the Qi around him and the one he normally used to cultivate. Before the Qi had been gentle, easy to control and guide towards his Dantian. But now it was fighting, actively resisting every try to use it.

Jack winced as the Qi began to send small tendrils outwards, clinging to his flesh as it tried to stop its movements. For a few moments the Qi stopped, but when he used a bit more force, the tendrils broke and the Qi started moving again. But what remained behind of the tendrils started to fuse with his flesh. Just like Rin before he began to show signs of corruption. Small strands of fur began forming on his body. Something began brushing against Jack’s mind, muddling his thoughts. An ancient will trapped inside the Qi, still alive and yet dead for centuries.

Still Jack focused on moving the Qi. After some struggles it finally had reached his Dantian. Different from normal Qi it wasn’t a pale white cloud of fog, but a shade darker, moving sometimes without any order from Jack.

Jack repeated the process again and again, absorbing more and more Qi. But the more Qi he gathered within him, the more restless it grew. It started to push against his controls, trying to escape and wreak havoc inside of him. Its form began to distort more, turning into a deformed ball the size of a small car riddled with dents and hills. So after a few more times he finally stopped.

Carefully Jack began to split a part of the Qi from the main cloud. As if it was cut with a sword the cloud began splitting. But as Jack began to separate the parts, the cloud began to resist. The different parts tried their best to recombine, small tendrils formed between them and pulled them together, but Jack simply increased his efforts and after a few moments a large part split off.

Slowly he guided the pieces out of his Dantian and into the Spiritual Veins that were used for his cultivation of the “Blazes of the Netherflame”. Using it just like normal Qi he began to cultivate it.

Slowly the Qi moved through the Veins, losing more and more of its mass while its colour changed towards the pure white of refined Qi. Its resistance began to falter until it finally stilled completely, the will inside of it completely depleted. Finally it returned back towards the Dantian where it fused with the rune that floated there. The rune grew by a bit and the black haze that surrounded it, almost depleted in the fight before, started to reappear. But simultaneously Jack felt a nauseous feeling welling up within him.

Up until now all the Qi he had absorbed hadn’t changed anything permanently for him. Just like with Rin he would have changed back soon, with only a small chance of long time effects. But with the integration of the Qi into the rune that had changed. A small part of him was now changed forever. Though that part would get shrink when he got stronger in the normal way, it would probably never completely vanish.

Jack pushed the thought aside. It didn’t matter for now. With another thought he grabbed more of the Qi, ripping it out of the cloud, despite its resistance. He had to make the best out of this chance, no matter what!

Quickly he cultivated more and more of the Qi. Bit by bit the cloud of foreign Qi inside of him shrunk. Simultaneously the rune grew more and more. Finally, as the cloud was nearly completely spent the rune’s growth suddenly came to a halt. A slightly shimmering layer had formed around it, constricting it in its advancement.

Jack let out a grin. He was at the border to the next level. Just a small push and he would become a 3rd level Qi gathering cultivator.

Jack concentrated and the black haze around the rune started to move. It formed itself into a small, needle-like shape. Another thought and the needle poked into the shimmering barrier. Just like last time the small effort was already enough to destroy the barrier. The shimmer around the rune vanished and Jack had reached the next level.

But different from last time his Qi didn’t stay idle at the change. A strong suction force suddenly sprung forth from the rune, pulling the Qi around it to itself. It didn’t matter if it was the black haze around it or the foreign Qi, everything got pulled closer and closer.

Without any refining the Qi began to fuse with the rune. Upon fusing the rune started to refine its new parts by itself and in just a few moments the size of the rune nearly doubled. But this growth wasn’t sustainable. When the rune had reached 3 times its former size- now it looked like a small ball that could be held within an open palm- the Qi around it finally became depleted and the growth stopped. Still, Jack had made a huge leap towards the next level.

With a slight grin on his face Jack opened his eyes. If there was anyone else around they would have seen a dark light shining for a moment from within his eyes, casting his face in warped shadows.

Satisfied Jack stood up and stretched. Overall he was happy with this evening. He had have to fight, yes, but afterwards he had managed to clear the misunderstanding, made a first attempt at an alliance and had even managed to breakthrough to the next level in his cultivation.

But he should stop when he was ahead. Already he could hear the noise of sirens coming from outside of the hospital. Just like Rin’s uncle had warned, someone had heard the commotion from the fight and had alarmed the police. And Jack definitely didn’t want to get caught here.

Still smiling Jack vanished within the darkness, heading home.