38th of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

“What do you plan to do now?” Elder Stronggrow asked Newt. The experienced man could tell his student and rightful patriarch had no intention of staying within the clanhold.

“I have done everything in my power to assuage my guilt over Uncle Victor’s unfortunate death. I have spent a day begging forgiveness in front of his grave, ensured his wives and children would not suffer and would receive fair treatment, despite the harm he had caused to our family. I hope it will help me cope with the heart demon, but even if it’s not enough, there’s little more I can do here. Unless you have better advice?”

Elder Stronggrow shook his head, his helplessness clear on his face.

Newt ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. Somehow, he knew his efforts were not enough, but he could not delay his plans for the sake of his heart demon. For all Newt knew, obsession over it might even make the demon stronger.

“I plan to search for Father and Mother, but that requires money. Senior Blackfist suggested a way to earn money.”

Stronggrow’s eyes went wide. “Newstar, keep away from banditry!”

Newt stared at his teacher, brows furrowed in confusion before he burst into laughter.

“Teacher, I assure you, Senior Blackfist’s reputation is entirely undeserved. He is a man of great learning and someone I should look up to.”

Stronggrow frowned at his naive student.

“No, really!” Newt defended himself and Blackfist. “Senior Blackfist made the pills you and Elder Marrow consumed. He also knows a great deal about forging, spell formations, and just about every type of cultivation technique.”

Elder Stronggrow relented. “And what did he suggest?”

“The imperial family and orthodox faction had founded the Association long ago, an organization of orthodox and lone cultivators which provides all sorts of work and contact opportunities.”

Stronggrow nodded grimly. He knew about the Association, but the notion of the rightful patriarch of his family joining such a group to act as a mercenary horrified him.

“What of your honor?” Stronggrow said.

“What about my honor? Eliminating demonic cultists, monsters who threaten unprotected settlements, or rogues who betrayed their clans and sects… All Association work is honorable. It might not be prestigious or glamorous, but all of it is extremely honorable. That’s the point.”

Stronggrow allowed the silence to settle, speaking only when he found the proper words. “Newstar, Association is a gathering place of vagabonds, it was made to keep the rogue cultivators from banditry. Only the poor resort to joining it.” Stronggrow had more to say, but Newt snatched his chance to speak.

“Teacher, pardon my disrespect, but our clan is so poor, we sold our previous patriarch and his wife into slavery.” Newt’s words struck the old man like a slap. “We have no resources to purchase spirit beast cores to awaken the new generation’s spirit roots, and we have dwindled from a clan where someone of our cultivation was only fit to clean the kitchens to the point where those ancient cleaners are stronger than our standard for elders.”

Newt looked his teacher in the eye, and could still see the wise man’s denial. “Teacher, we are so poor, we should envy the beggars. But the good news is we can work and earn, and little by little help our clan rise to its former glory.”

Elder Stronggrow was on the verge of tears. He wished to cry not out of gratitude or joy, but out of humiliation. He, a wise man nearly four centuries old, needed a seventeen-year-old youth to fund him and his clan.

“Don’t be so dejected.” Newt placed a hand on the frail, old shoulder. “We could make it a family tradition. Once someone reaches the second realm, they join the Association for a year or five, see the world, earn some resources, and return home to enrich us both with their knowledge and their wealth.”

“Newstar,” Stronggrow did not know what to say, so he hugged his student and wept.

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“Once you return, I will head to join the Association.” Elder Stronggrow broke the hug and stared into his student’s sapphire eyes. “I will speak with Marrow, he will probably volunteer once I return. If we are establishing a tradition, we should lead by example, and show the next generation there is no shame in the deed.”

Newt could still sense his teacher’s resistance and helplessness. He squeezed the old man’s forearm. “Teacher, don’t let this become a heart demon.”

Stronggrow jerked, sitting straight, eyes open wide. “You are right. It’s just doing some communal service. It’s neither shame nor doom for our clan, but returning to the empire the blessings the empire has graced us with.”

The abrupt change shocked Newt.

“Teacher,” Newt hesitated, his voice faint, “how bad were your heart demons?”

Elder Stronggrow held Newt’s gaze for a long moment. “Bad. I took over two hundred years to rid myself of them, and we are not discussing the topic.”

Newt changed the subject, talking about what he had learned from Blackfist, or at least the matters they agreed Newt could share with others. He tried to explain spell formations to his teacher, and while Stronggrow understood the concept, he lost Newt once the young man started discussing the flow of energies between the various glyphs forming the runic array.

Newt spent another day in his home, transcribing his family’s third realm techniques, visiting cousins, and taking time to enjoy himself with people he once found dear. By evening, he found that the conversations were empty pleasantries.

He had drifted too far. Three years of slavery, the rush of cultivating his layers, and two near-death experiences in Magmin’s realms had changed him. While his body was seventeen, Newt felt like an old man, and the others could sense it too.

The next morning, Stronggrow and Marrow were the only ones bidding him goodbye at the clanhold’s threshold.

“Take care, Newstar,” Marrow said. “I wish you luck on your travels.”

They half bowed to each other. As for Stronggrow, all he and Newt exchanged was a long look. There was no need for words or pleasantries, the old man understood his student, and the student understood his teacher.

“Take care of the clan.”

Newt left his clan for the second time that year. He had a feeling it would be years before he returned, and he was fine with that. His home had become a strange place of bad memories, and the only reason he had to visit them again was the Magmin’s realm hidden inside the mine. But Magmin had grown mad. Its realm was no longer a guideline for Newt to follow, but a deathtrap to keep Magmin safe from its pterodactylus heart demon.

Unlike Magmin’s scorching inferno, the world was full of life. Snow had melted weeks ago, streams gurgled as trees bloomed and vivid colors spread through the green world. Newt’s base needs had diminished. He needed sustenance once a week, and he had not slept once since he had passed out in the mine, after tormenting his body and mind for days.

Newt’s destination was three weeks away by foot. He could have covered the trip in as many days if he used Fire Burst without stopping, but he did not even try, knowing he would expend his spiritual energy long before reaching his destination. Instead, he wanted to observe the world, the mortals living peaceful lives, and to study his clan’s third realm techniques he had copied prior to leaving.

On the second day, he stopped at a roadside inn in which he had rested incognito when he went to visit the Black Fist Gate. Newt ordered a tea and a bowl of the pottage from the fat, greasy innkeeper and was about to sit down and skim through the movement technique when the door slammed open.

“Help! Allosaurus—” a peasant shouted, and a maw as big as the man’s torso opened behind him.

The chair beneath Newt flew and crashed into the wall as the youth propelled himself in the opposite direction. In a flash, a black aura covered his body and clothes, making him look like living rock.

The peasant screamed and ducked just in time for the jaw to snap closed above his head, and for Newt to smash into the dinosaur. Newt punched its skull and the allosaurus reared in pain, standing nearly ten feet tall. Newt straddled the dinosaur’s jaw, keeping it shut with his legs, and pummeled the dinosaur’s temple with a fist as hard as solid granite.

The beast screeched, but after a dozen blows it teetered. Newt kept punching until the skull gave with a crack, and the allosaurus toppled over, its head misshapen.

Everybody in the inn stared at the surreal scene with their jaws slack.

“Where did an allosaurus come from?” Newt muttered, dropping Granite Crust.

The terrified peasant was so beside himself that he answered Newt’s question.

“Honorable cultivator, a pack of allosauruses attacked my cart. I left the gastonias to fend for themselves—” the peasant grabbed his hair, his eyes wide. “I left them harnessed! My gastonias!”

The irrational man ran down the road, all alone to fight a pack of predators to save his beasts of burden. Newt took a moment to process that information, before catching up to the peasant in two Fire Bursts, and overtaking him with the third.

He turned around the bend and stopped. Not fifty yards away, four allosauruses with olive-colored scales feasted on the dead dinosaurs behind an overturned cart of freshly plucked spring cabbages. The beasts posed little danger to Newt, but defeating them would sap most of his spiritual energy.

Why didn’t I bring my spear? In his rush, he had left the spear where he sat at the table. Newt looked at the peasant, still running towards him and shouting, then at the allosauruses, one of which had raised its head and stared at him.

It growled in warning, then went back to its feast.

I better go fetch my spear first. No reason to make life harder for myself.