It had already been two whole days since he and Bao Feng had started their trip to Dongyin. In that time, his mentor had tutored him on etiquette, history, geography, and the most fascinating of them all, magic. He had, to no benefits on his part, taught Ace what knowledge he needed to have a grasp of in Weida, while, on the side, put him through laborious physical tasks more exhausting than anything his old gym teacher used to cook up… oh, and Bao instructed him on a martial arts style developed and perfected by an ancient order of assassins called the Masked. Now, isn’t that Xianxia?
Currently, Ace was readying up for his undertaking at utilizing his elements in the real world. To do such a thing, he would have to successfully imprint a meridian with a fragment of his intent, fundamentally engraving a piece of his desire into a meridian. If he failed, the meridian would be totally ruined for spell casting until he became skilled enough to alter his error.
“So, the amount of Qi techniques you can throw out is directly proportional to the amount of Qi patterns you can circulate at once?” Ace confirmed.
“Correct, if you are circulating three patterns, only three techniques may come out altogether, or if you so choose to, individually,” Bao reiterated.
Ace took a deep breath in. “Time to try it then?”
“Yes. I recommend you start with Darkness Qi as it is your strongest affinity and, henceforth, the least difficult to imprint. Create whichever ability you deem to be right for you,” Bao Feng encouraged.
“Alright, then, here I go,” He anxiously whispered.
Fucking hell, Ace, it’s just a little magic, so what if shit goes sideways? No biggie. He grouched, honestly unsure why he was so jittery about the situation.
Ace plopped down onto the edge of his sleeping bag, slowly clearing his mind of all external distractions, only thinking about entering a meditative state. Time blurred, and he calmly receded into the spiritual domain. After his mind was centered, he began his mission.
In lieu of extending his senses outwards, he searched inwards, locking the intent of his will down on a single meridian. Innately, he was aware of what Qi imprint he wanted to place to the tee, but his subconscious desires weren’t easy to put into worldly things like words. So, to fix the issue of potentially uncertain instructions for the meridian to follow, he dedicated the entirety of his intentions to the meridian leading from his dantian, through his right arm, and terminating in the pinpoint center of his palm.
The idea of the technique was to create a burst of darkness that clouded the surrounding air, something like a flash bomb that would make room for Ace to sneak away, or get a perilous surprise attack in, theoretically ending the fight before it even began. An assassin's dream. Was it a complicated technique? No, but simple doesn’t mean bad; besides, from what Bao Feng had mentioned to him, you could even upgrade an imprint later on. Whether by directly altering your originally placed desire or adding more commands onto another, different, meridian, they both had the same end goal.
But, returning to the events unfolding in real-time, it was wrapping up. Ace’s meridian was… intaking his desires and he could see a spiritual set of runes being marked on the surface of the Qi pathway.
With a final suction force, all of his pent-up will was gone, and the meridian imprint was almost completed. Time for the last step… Damn, here goes nothing. He called forth a mote of Qi. The singular bit of Qi zipped through his pathways, before halting at the point of his engraving.
Without warning, the mote was sucked into the consuming black hole that was the rune, howling in despair as it was devoured. “Darkness never likes to be the one devoured, but it might just be considerate enough to let you know that,” Bao Feng had told him.
Not wrong, I guess. The grain of Qi thrashed, almost managing to slip away from his control. But the instinctive resistance it had was no match against his decree. Ultimately, it succumbed to the meridian's absorption powers, fully integrating into the technique.
It’s over. A mix of exhilaration and solemnity overcame him. While he was happy that the imprinting had, from the looks of it, gone according to plan, it didn’t make him any less apprehensive about testing out his new invention.
The end result was a meridian that was pitch black but brimming with Qi more potent than any other pathway because the energy had wholly been inducted into the makeup of the meridian. Also, Ace was automatically cognizant that no other Qi type aside from darkness could utilize the technique he had made. It could still bring in other Qi types from the outside, though.
Also, as anticipated:
Sub-Level: Qi Gathering: Progress .59%
It was a normal occurrence according to Bao Feng. So, with everything in order and checked out, Ace came back to his body. He could feel sweat rolling down all over his body even with the wintertime air assaulting his being over and over. Had he done it right? Maybe, but it was his very first time doing it, so who was he to say? What if–.
He was ripped from his afterthoughts by the voice of Bao Feng demanding. “Well? Did it go well?”
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Ace harrumphed, glaring at him. “Of course it did,” He shifted his eyes away. “Hopefully.”
“I am sure you did fine, now,” Bao Feng motioned for him to get on with it.
Ace rose to his feet with a grunt and ambled over to the clearing, his mentor in tow.
Once there, he stayed as still as a rock and hastily felt for his Darkness Qi in his core. The effect of the subversion technique would have largely depended on the amount of Qi he used in the process. In the future, he wanted to explore how Qi quantities impacted his technique’s ability to function… if it worked.
Ace located his Darkness Qi, which was getting more straightforward to do with every day that went by. He removed a mote from his Dantian. Aight, now it’s zoom-zoom time. Moving the Qi back and forth through the Meridian, he gradually ramped up the speed at which he rebounded the speck of Qi back and forth, making sure to keep his finesse stable.
It was a captivating procedure. As the mote sped up, it began collapsing into an uncountable number of different particles, transitioning into its liquid form. At a specific point, the darkness was no longer dark because it was flashing so fast that it was shining like a bright light.
Ace was on the border of being too entranced to not even activate the technique… almost. In less than a second, he flung the Qi as hard as he could at the wall of his meridian, right where his palm was. Once he did so, he instantaneously regained bodily functions of himself.
The system was quick to fling notifications at him, but Ace swiped them all away, only paying attention to the commotion happening around his hand.
An absolute eruption of smoky pitch-black shadows left his palm, diffusing into the cool air around him. The wind had no effect on the Qi, bending around it, almost as if to avoid the fate of being devoured by the vortex of swirling darkness. It was a beautiful but twisted display of magical prowess. However, though he had no rhyme or reason to feel this way, Ace felt a faint tugging in his soul from the cardinal north, as if an unseen or heard malevolent force were trying to yank him toward a grim and ominous fate.
He shuddered before uneasily shaking off the suspicion. I’m tripping for sure. He distractedly concentrated on the success of his ability. It had obscured quite a big area after all. Namely, the gas-like darkness was clustered in a severely wonky sphere around Ace with some bits and pieces jutting out irregularly. Curiously enough, the only reason he knew that was because of the innate connection between him and his Qi, which let him know the relative position of the particles.
Luckily for the sake of his progression, Bao had informed him that the Qi would return to his dantian once all the energy in it ran out because of the unique Qi signature that was branded onto every bit of environmental Qi he had taken, effectively turning it into his very own. After it was redeposited into his core, the magical properties inside of the Qi would regenerate promptly. How? Ace didn’t have an inkling of an idea. It was one of those questions he asked, and Bao Feng just drilled a hole into his soul till he shut up about it. It didn’t make him any less grateful for the benevolent System. If you had to regain every bit of Qi you used up, this shit would be so annoying.
After the technique ran out of fuel, Ace turned, grinning toward Bao Feng, who returned the expression with one of his own. It was one of the few times he actually seemed happy. Moreover, Ace was still in the dark as to what precisely went down in the fight Bao had been in, but he had his guesses and many pieces of the puzzle to figure it out.
“Congratulations, Ace. If I were you, I’d come inside the tent and have a look at those system notifications of yours. Usually, people are pleasantly surprised when they take a peek,” He winked at him. “Just a hunch, but I would say that you are going to be very pleased.”
Ace strutted inside the tent and got settled on the sleeping bag for the second time that day. This time with a bit of swagger in his demeanor.
He examined his notifications:
System Interface: (T1) > (T2)
Soul Imprint Unlocked: Identify
Meridian Imprint Unlocked: Darkness Cloud
New stat unlocked: Potency
Achievement Unlocked: Imprint Meridian
+ 1 Potency
(T2) Potency 0 > 1
Achievement Unlocked: Spirit Advancement
(T1) Spirit 10/10 > (T2) Spirit
Pre-advancement points applied
(T2) Spirit 0 > 1
Oh, that extra point was from my Dual Core achievement.
Ace, thrilled with himself, pulled his full status page out for the very first time since he’d done so at the beginning of his life here.
System Interface: (T2)
Name: Ace Williamson
Race: Human / ??? (T1)
Level: Meridian Opening: Progress 9.02%
Sub-Level: Qi Gathering: Progress .59%
Core Qi Composition: Darkness - 49.2% Ice - 50.8%
Title(s): Initiation Survivor
Stats
(T1) Agility: 7.5
(T1) Strength: 5.5
(T1) Endurance: 7
(T1) Toughness: 3
(T1) Perception: 9
(T1) Willpower: 9
(T1) Processing: 7.5
Affinities: (4M)
(T2) Spirit: 1
(T1) Soul: 10/10
(T2) Potency: 1
Soul Imprints:
Identify
Meridian Imprints:
Darkness Cloud - Meridians Required - 1
Ace sighed contentedly. “Damn, I’ve made some progress, haven’t I?” He asked no one in particular, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
After the events that had transpired today, he needed to have a nice bit of sleepy time before doing anything that involved magic or even worse, physical exercise. Ace only did the bare minimum by changing into his night-time clothes before curling up in his comfy sleeping bag and hitting the hay.
The last thing he recalled was the indistinct voice of Bao Feng, who was muttering. “... at play,” and. “... not good if…”
He must have imagined it.