Volithur sat across from the Sergeant in the otherwise empty dining hall. His lessons had not truly resumed. The Sergeant had set up the meeting to check on Volithur’s progress.
“You estimate you are a third of the way towards level four already?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“You are making excellent time,” the Sergeant said. “We had thought you entirely incompetent, but you have made up for a lack of talent through persistence.”
Volithur didn’t thank the Sergeant for the backhanded compliment. He would have if the words came from someone who lived in the palace. The fact of his subservience was a persistent ache to his ego, as annoying as the physical bruising that flared with pain when he moved wrong. He had also come to ignore those discomforts – physical and otherwise – as a matter of course. He could only take the circumstances of his life as he found them.
“The reason I wanted to meet with you is to discuss strengthening your constitution. You are at the point where you can begin to incorporate cosmic energy into your body. It is a little harder because you have been cut off from resources, but given your recent improvements in sparring, you could benefit from being a little more durable.”
“Uh, Sergeant, I don’t want to waste any of my energy before getting to level four.”
“Waste? Ward Harridan, body reinforcement is never a waste of resources. Do you think the Lord General is immortal because he has a level ten soul? No. It’s because he has transformed his physical body. Right now you have no advantage in combat over an unempowered human. Simply increasing your soul level confers no power to you, only the potential for power. You need to enhance your body, enhance your mind, grow your aura, and develop your domain. All of that requires you to spend energy. If you simply concentrate on growing your soul stronger, you will see no benefits.”
“I will begin receiving the tea powder elixir once I reach level four,” Volithur said.
“Yes, I understand that,” the Sergeant muttered. “But you are half a year into your wardship. Because we don’t have an accurate age assessment for you, your majority has been set for two years after your wardship began. You have only a year and a half remaining with us. At the end of that time, if you have not shown potential, we will have no choice but to eject you from the barracks.”
Volithur shrugged. “Then do I get another job on the estate?”
“Not any job you would want,” the Sergeant answered.
“I am receiving an education, though.”
“Do you think the Castellan likes you enough to take you on as a scribe?”
Volithur didn’t answer that. No doubt the Castellan would rather assign Volithur to permanent septic duty. That fate just might be worse than a life of soldiering.
“What I am trying to explain to you, Ward Harridan, is that you have a sliver of potential. If you want to make something of yourself, you need to work hard at things other than simply raising your soul level.”
“What about the servants who power the cosmic chamber? That could be a good job.”
The Sergeant’s eyes bulged. “Do you have any idea what those poor souls do?”
“They cultivate all day.”
“No, Ward Harridan, they cycle their auras all day. Cultivation is the practice of self-improvement, which they cannot ever do because they donate all their energy to the family. If you become a cosmic chamber attendant, your path ends. You become like one of the Jinn machines, simply serving a particular function for the rest of your existence. Do not speak again about volunteering for such a duty. If the wrong person hears you express an ignorant preference, your request might be granted.”
“Sergeant, I would rather not be a soldier.”
“Whatever you intend to do once your two years are over, the barracks is the best place for you during your wardship. You report to the Marshal here. Any alternative would put you under the Castellan’s command. And if you don’t intend to remain with us once your wardship ends, then that is all the more reason to train body enhancement now. No one is going to mentor you once you leave.”
Volithur sat still for as long as he could resist the pressure of the Sergeant’s attention, then gave a curt nod of acceptance. That was all it took. The Sergeant began teaching a lesson that had not actually been requested.
“The body enhancement manual used by soldiers trained by the Shaocheth family is known as the ‘cold forged method’. It is a variation of the method used by most nobles, modified to use less resources. Technically, it can be done completely without elixirs, if you are determined enough.
“Before you can begin practicing the cold forged method, you need to understand the theory behind it. We talk about body enhancement as if we are infusing the tissues of our bodies with cosmic energy. This is part of it, of course. We do infuse energy into our bodies. But that is only to allow our soul to bind with our physical aspect. What we call the ‘body aperture’ of our soul extends into every bit of our corporeal form like a shadow. When we infuse cosmic energy with intention, it welds body and soul together.
“As you advance in your body enhancement, the binding becomes increasingly more powerful. Your willpower and self-conception shape your form. Your ability to channel cosmic energy for physical feats increases dramatically. At higher levels, you can stop and even reverse aging.
“The cold forged method begins by targeting the bones. Not only are they the scaffolding for our physical form, they also generate the blood. So we individually harden each bone in turn before moving on to the next type of tissue. You will want to be extremely thorough when you infuse energy. Any mistakes or oversights will be much harder to fix later.”
The Sergeant smiled. “But the first steps are simple enough. Just push cosmic energy into your bones. Do it one bone at a time so you can be thorough. The process takes about a year at your level to do right if you spend an hour on it each day. Most of us are limited by the amount of cosmic energy we have to work with.”
Since the man seemed to be done, Volithur nodded in agreement. “Thank you for this instruction, Sergeant.”
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The Sergeant scowled at him. “I can already tell you’re going to push for level four before you take my advice. The resources from the family aren’t so generous to be worth the delay in your development. You were receiving a single tea powder elixir a month.”
Volithur shrugged. “I don’t think I am very talented at body enhancement, Sergeant. I think the elixir is probably necessary for me.”
“I can’t force a fool to cultivate,” the Sergeant muttered.
In the days that followed, Volithur put the lesson on body enhancement out of mind. Though he did seek out a manual in the library on mental enhancement. It provided two temporary boosting techniques, a strengthening technique, and a sensory training method.
The first boosting technique increased mental focus through an infusion of cosmic energy into an existing mental pattern. Quite simply, you concentrated on something and then squeezed some energy into it. Volithur questioned whether the ‘technique’ was worthy of inclusion in a book when it seemed like something you could easily work out on your own. Volithur had no trouble picking it up.
The second boosting technique quickened thought speed by bringing energy to the edge of the mind and letting it leech through the mental aperture passively. When done correctly, thoughts just seemed to move smoother, like the brain had been lubricated to remove any friction. This one, while less intuitive than the other, proved if anything simpler to gain proficiency in.
The mental strengthening technique required emptying the mind through meditation and circulating cosmic energy. It would supposedly cause all sorts of permanent mental gains over time. Increased intelligence, resilience, endurance, and ‘resistance to foreign influence’. The book emphasized the dangers of Arahant mental manipulation, to which a Xian’s only defense was having a strengthened mind. Volithur worked harder at learning this technique than he had at the previous two, but couldn’t tell if it was at all effective.
The sensory training method consisted of expanding tendrils of cosmic energy through the mind into the outer environment. Essentially, observe your environment with mental aspected cosmic energy. Those mental threads could be paired to any of the senses. The challenge was not extending the tendrils outward, which was simple enough, but interpreting the results. Volithur dutifully used the method, but it mostly just gave him headaches.
There were strobing lights when he used his visual sense. Static and whistling with his auditory sense. Pressure and temperature swings with tactile sense. Volithur didn’t dare try his other senses.
He still spent most of his time outside official training in cultivation. The hour practicing mental enhancement didn’t take too much away from his progress. Nor did the hour he spent training with Khana. Honing his mental voice took time and effort, but she assured him that he was doing well. The hard part was that he couldn’t ‘hear’ his own voice, but had to rely upon Khana’s feedback.
This took the occasionally humorous form of Khana using her physical voice to emulate the noise he had made mentally. Over the course of weeks, he had progressed to the point that his sounds were roughly in the same realm as vocalizations. Very roughly, as Khana’s mimicry made clear. Some of her imitations were amusing and got a laugh out of him. Others… seemed intended to mock. Volithur did his best to ignore Khana’s moments of pettiness, knowing from her continued needling that she still felt bothered that he would rise in status even as she fell. Khana’s jealous cattiness was tempered by moments of grace, where she would offer subdued praise for his improvements and provide helpful advice.
The most disheartening part of the quickly passing days was the fact that the new guys were rapidly improving at sparring. Volithur still beat them every round, but the effort required grew steadily. He could rapidly see a time approaching when their capabilities in weaponless combat eclipsed his own. Perhaps that was to be expected, given their size and strength advantages, but Volithur enjoyed no longer being the worst person in training and preferred to keep some of his fledgling pride intact.
Throughout everything, Thassily grew ever more distant. If Volithur accepted his friend’s daily stories as true, then Thassily had begun to smooch the brewer’s daughter goodbye every time he visited. The budding romance drew a harsh contrast to Volithur’s circumstances. He had taken to hiding before meals so that Ava the cook’s assistant would not find him for a ‘quick chat’.
She had found the little room he shared with Thassily before lunch one day and leaned across him as he lay in his hammock while talking with her face inches from his own. No doubt that had seemed flirtatious in her mind, but Volithur had only stared at the mess that was her teeth – the ones that remained were yellowed and outlined in plaque. He didn’t know how to disengage from the situation without being blunt, so instead Volithur avoided her whenever possible. He certainly made sure not to be in his hammock again during the times she brought food to the barracks.
Between his avoidance of Ava, Thassily’s preoccupations, and his awkwardness with the soldiers, Volithur found much of his socialization happening during the mutual lessons he had with Khana. They had little in common, but found a shared interest in gossip.
Khana loved hearing the second-hand Adventures of Thassily. Her impression of his friend was of a dumb, heavyset brute. Which, to be fare, was consistent with his appearance. Thassily played at being simpleminded to lower the expectations placed on him, did indeed have a little extra weight on him, and had rugged features that made his ever-present bruises appear like the result of a fair fight rather than the look of being bullied. Contrary to Volithur’s assumptions, she asserted her absolute confidence that not only were the two locking lips, but that they were in immanent danger of pregnancy.
In return, Volithur received all the palace gossip he had ever wanted and more. The reason for the sudden departure of Master Aramar and Master Dorian was because Rolanda had rejected an offer of marriage from Master Dorian. Khana had talked with the girl afterwards and learned that Rolanda could not stand how cruel the boy and his father were. Khana simultaneously approved of Rolanda’s moral stance and thought her an idiot for passing on a chance at a safe future.
The beautiful Rolanda was a year Khana’s junior, so she was not in immediate risk of disinheritance, but she lacked any talent at cultivation and her only chance of a good future was leveraging her appearance to migrate to Tian. Apparently Rolanda was not ignorant of her situation. Nor was she certain of her ability to seduce a partner of her choice. Rolanda didn’t even have misguided romantic notions. She simply refused to entertain the idea of marrying someone of mean spirit, reasoning that even if they were kind to her, she would have to witness bullying of others. Learning that Rolanda was every bit as kind as she was beautiful stirred unrealistic fantasies within Volithur’s heart that he was forced to mock into oblivion.
A boy only twelve years old named Cedric had reached the fifth level recently and become the new pride of the fifth household. He had been granted a weekly session in the cosmic chamber – a true privilege given his age. Khana herself had only been in the family’s cosmic chamber six times in her entire life. She didn’t much mind the slight as she self-admittedly did not have much talent for aural cultivation. Elixirs did much more for her.
Then there was Ulysses. The boy had been on the verge of achieving level six ever since the Evergreen Institute’s cosmic chamber. The family had recently procured a silver plasma elixir for him in the hope that they would be able to promote him to the first or second household on Tian. The third through sixth households existed for the dual purposes of training up common soldiers for the army and providing a last refuge to family members before disinheritance. When a household rehabilitated a family member, its reputation in the eyes of the family rose, which increased its ability to requisition resources from Tian.
Ulysses had not yet taken the elixir because he wanted to first cultivate up to the absolute peak of level five and then use the elixir to break through. Apparently this was a common strategy for use of elixirs. While a silver plasma elixir was said to be on the same level as a blood boiling elixir, both considered to be mid tier, that was whispered to be a barefaced lie.
Volithur got the sense that when Khana spoke of Ulysses, she did so as if to prove to herself that she wasn’t avoiding the topic. The girl would wear a neutral expression and force the words out quickly before mentioning one of the other nobles that had formerly been her peers, whereupon she became her usual animated self.
The routine of his life, while not what he would describe as enjoyable, had grown familiar and no longer bothered him after the departure of Masters Aramar and Dorian. He only wished he could break through to level four so that he could get his hands on elixirs once more.