Volithur ground his teeth during his walk to the palace. As useless as the rock he had received from the Evergreen Institute may be to him, he did not want to surrender his reward. Every precious resource that came to him he earned through hard work and perilous falsehoods. Gifting one of them to someone so much wealthier than him seemed a travesty.
Nevertheless, he had his orders.
His listless walk ended with him at the door to the Castellan’s office, facing the desk of the Castellan’s Clerk who studiously ignored him. “Excuse me, Master,” he began.
“I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” the Castellan’s Clerk snapped, then resumed rearranging his desk.
Once Volithur’s patience had truly worn thin, the Castellan’s Clerk glanced up at him. “What is your purpose here today, Ward Harridan?”
“I wanted to surrender a resource to the Castellan for use by the family.”
The Castellan’s Clerk stared at him in confusion for several heartbeats before rising and walking to the door, muttering “well, this is certainly unexpected” as he knocked and announced ‘Ward Harridan’. The door opened, formerly invisible cables of power glowing like a dense swarm of fireflies as they manipulated the handle, stretching deeper into the office where the Castellan sat with his feet on his desk, a goblet of wine held in a single hand.
“Come on in, then, Ward Harridan,” the Castellan growled.
Volithur walked to stand across the desk, bowed deeply, and placed the cultivation pebble down. “I wish to give this resource to the family. I think the household can use it better.”
The Castellan swung his feet onto the floor and bent forward to squint at the rock. “Do you have a hundred more of these, Ward Harridan?”
“Uh, I do not, Master Castellan.”
“Then I am thoroughly uninterested in the trinket you received as a reward from your little contest.” The Castellan flicked the cultivation pebble back towards Volithur. “While I have no doubt you contributed to the victory of Master Ulysses, I have very little interest in the academic reputation of the household. Shaocheth is in the business of war, not books.”
Volithur returned the cultivation pebble to his pocket and bowed. “Please accept my apologies for disturbing you, Master Castellan.”
“Are you not going to demand your fifteen minutes in the cosmic chamber?”
The words were delivered lightly, but Volithur sensed a trap in them. Demand. “I believe you wanted to wait until I was judged worthy of receiving that gift, Master Castellan. I would not presume to know when I am ready.”
The Castellan took a sip of his wine. “An education has done wonders for your behavior, Ward Harridan. You can have your fifteen minutes this evening. Report here after your class ends and wait outside with my Clerk. After the nobles have finished their evening session, you may sit inside the chamber and absorb whatever dregs remain. You are dismissed, Ward Harridan.”
“Thank you, Master Castellan.”
He made it back to the barracks in time to eat lunch with a room full of hungover soldiers. The simple loaf of bread felt paltry after the fancy meals from his trip, but Volithur enjoyed the atmosphere much more than the stuffy private dining room. The Sergeant eventually stopped by to sit with him.
“Good to see you back, Ward Harridan.”
“Congratulations, Sergeant.”
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“And congratulations to you as well, Ward Harridan. I worried about you for no reason, it seems. At your rate of growth, I would not be surprised if you reached level two before Ward Thassily.”
“I hope you are not suffering too much after the celebration,” Volithur said.
“Self inflicted wounds always hurt the worst,” the Sergeant quipped. “But you shouldn’t worry about me. My organs have been tempered, so I can shrug off the effects of alcohol much better than the poor men who followed me into battle against that cask of rum.”
Volithur debated his next words before speaking, but ultimately decided he didn’t need to be quite so fastidious of proper decorum among fellow commoners. “Sergeant, what is level five like?”
“I can’t really answer that yet,” the Sergeant shrugged. “When you reach a new level, every bit of energy is drawn into the walls of your soul to fuel the spiritual transmutation. At the moment, my well of power is bone dry. It will take me months to recover.”
“Months! Every time?”
The Sergeant laughed. “Advancing isn’t easy. The legends of cultivators reaching new levels while in combat are based on a few outstanding talents on Tian who were stuffed to the gills with resources that don’t exist in the modern world. Purple tingle mushrooms and giant tortoises went extinct long ago.
“Ah, you look too serious. Don’t worry about the impact of reaching level two. You’ll recover such a meager amount of energy in a week or two even if you don’t work very hard.” The Sergeant stifled a yawn. “How was your lesson with the Marshal?”
“It was good.”
“The Marshal is a petty noble. I believe his mother was a young lord. She died on the battlefield before making a name for herself, and her children had to find their own path forward. Our Marshal made his living at war, eventually coming to serve in the Lord General’s army.”
“So he knows the Lord General personally?”
The Sergeant snorted a laugh. “He might have heard the Lord General speak once or twice. You have had more personal interaction with the master of the family than most of those in the palace. That includes noble descendants.”
As he finished his loaf of bread, it was time for Volithur to return to the palace for his class. He took his seat at the back of the room, ignored by the Head Scribe and the front-seated Ulysses as if they had never taken a trip together. He and Hazen exchanged cold nods with each other as they settled in to serve as spectators to the lesson directed at their superiors.
Volithur scrutinized the degree of shimmering among his classmates to get a feel for their power levels. The Head Scribe was only at the fourth level, Hazen the third, the beautiful Rolanda – surprisingly – only third as well. Ulysses was all the way at the fifth level, though rather than shimmering like everyone else his radiance seemed solid and fixed. Volithur wasn’t sure what to make of that observation.
In general, most of the nobles were at the fourth level while most of the commoners granted the right to sit in on classes – the children of senior servants – were mostly at the third level. The lacking power of Rolanda seemed to take a little away from her previously overbearing beauty. That perhaps explained why she had not yet won a husband with status. For whatever reason, Khana did not come to class that day.
The lecture on society passed swiftly, a lot of the material obvious even to Volithur while the things he found unfamiliar were so niche he doubted he would ever need to know them. Then came the section on script, which remained as simple for him as ever. Finally, they arrived at the final section of the class.
He had always sat passively while instruction in spirit happened since he had previously lacked the capacity to participate. Now, however, he went along with the mind opening exercises with renewed vigor and almost jumped to his feet in excitement when he felt bursts of static. The quiet words of the Head Scribe as he recited popular poetry took on a strange echo in Volilthur’s mind.
Then, like suddenly seeing a hidden second perspective on a cleverly done drawing, the mental static came into focus. It was sound. More specifically, the Head Scribe was broadcasting his own voice mentally at the same time he spoke aloud.
Background bursts of static from the distance suddenly grew clear as well. He heard an announcer give the current time. An imperious voice snapped a command to dispatch a messenger to the third floor. A couple held a long distance conversation about their plan to attend a play in the city. It was as if an entire new world had been opened up to him. Conversations were constantly happening on what the Xian called the mental band.
Just after the end of the hour – which Volithur knew because of the periodic time announcements – the Head Scribe bowed and thanked them for their time. Volithur strode purposefully to the Castellan’s office and sat near the man’s annoyed Clerk.
He was close to a level two soul after his time in the Evergreen Institute’s cosmic chamber the previous day. He just needed a little more of a push to get there. And this could be it.