For an hour, Masters Ephraim and Christos stood outside of their school’s most honored home, which they had offered to the acclaimed swordsman of legend before his ultimate demise.

The first got tired of waiting and crossed his legs to cultivate. The second was not willing to be so idle. Christos never stopped trying to probe the building’s mysterious defenses for cracks. He spread out his mana sense and delicately laid it over every inch of the home, but all he found was a dark force like an impenetrable wall that refused to yield.

But he did not give up.

Such were the first lessons drilled into every cultivator: patience and perseverance. Christos battered that wall from every direction, with every trick he knew, but all he broke was a sweat.

When the boy finally emerged, Christos leapt forward so quickly, with such anticipation that he neglected to account for the defensive array of sword mana surrounding the building. It was unlike anything he had experienced before. Even the Matriarch could not come within a dozen yards of this building without feeling the air become as sharp as a blade.

This boy, however, walked right in as if nothing were wrong.

Mid-air, the elder changed course and landed back beside Ephraim. He shoved his left hand into his robes to hide the long gashes running down his wrist and palm. The pain only served as a reminder that this foolish, worthless Demon from the underworld had somehow come into possession of the Subtle coin and the power it held.

A Master should not move against his students, he knew that. But Christos didn’t need to. He had other options.

Ephraim rose to his feet and held out his arms. “There you are! I was starting to wonder whether you’d perished in there. The place must be bigger than it looks from the outside,” he added with a wry smile.

“Just a lot to take in,” Gust replied carefully. “There are a lot of old books, but not much else. I even tried to carry one out, but something stopped me.”

“That is a shame,” the elder said thoughtfully. “The Swordsman was an extraordinarily powerful man, he would not travel without a veritable trove of treasures. And anything a man like that would treasure, would be absolutely priceless to the rest of us. Tell you what, if you do figure out a way to take anything out of that place, even if it’s just a book, we will see to it that you are provided with everything you need to progress. Potions, pills, spells, artifacts, whatever you need. So, please, do go back in and see what you can manage. You are absolved of your cleaning duties for the rest of the week, but do not waste your time. We expect results,” he added in a slightly somber tone.

Then, with a slight nod, Ephraim turned his body and laid a hand on the other elder’s arm. After a second, Christos snapped his gaze away from Gust. He pulled his arm free and slapped a pouch at his waist. Gust’s jaw dropped as the elder leapt onto a flying sword and disappeared into the forest.

As the other man left view, the Ephraim turned his head. “I won’t be far, Augustus. Do find me when you have something to report.”

***

Gust stepped to Saith’s home and climbed the stairs. Before their conversation ended, the soul sliver explained a few things to prepare him for this exact situation. As it turned out, Ephraim was quite predictable.

“When you leave,” he’d said, “they’re going to expect something from you. Those bastards might pretend to support you, under a façade of respect, but they’re just biding their time. My sword’s defensive array fills the area with sword qi and uses it to prevent anyone from seeing inside. If you tell them you tried to take something with you, but that the barrier prevented it, they’ll believe you. They won’t know any better,” he snorted. “That will only buy you so much time, however, as they will not give up easily. None do when so much power is at stake. You will need to make yourself useful; indispensable, even. Become one of their top young disciples, get attention from the Matriarch, and the prestige you might bring to the school should be enough to protect you.

“But, again, this is only temporary. Focus on your cultivation, Augustus. By the time you begin laying your foundation, you should already be gone. The Reborn Empire has a descending gateway you’ll need to find a way to use, but we’ll go over that later.”

There was no true limit on how long Gust could spend in the sword space, but Saith was only a sliver of a soul, and his original body was gone. The qi he held was all he had left, and he had to use it efficiently.

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So, the young man sat in front of his father’s sword and thought about what he should do. Gust asked for more concrete help or advice before leaving, but Saith insisted that the coin’s ambient qi, and a Demon’s talent, would be enough for him to leap over his peers.

It wasn’t that Saith lacked resources, rather that Gust was too weak to use any of it without risking permanent damage. Even if he survived such intervention, Gust’s sudden jump in cultivation would make him an even larger target.

Slow, steady progress was ideal. Gust just had to survive in the meantime. Saith thought of that, too, however, and reminded him of the Subtle Blade’s array. If anyone attacked him, as long as Gust made it here, he would be protected.

A part of him still worried he wasn’t the right person for such an important task. Gust was the kid who signed up to play hockey and gave up two weeks in because his feet were too cold. The guy who quit his job at a grocery store because he didn’t like having to actually talk to the customers.

What would happen in a hundred years when he got tired of this quest? Or if he reached the end and found that he hadn’t worked nearly hard enough?

Gust couldn’t let that happen.

As he sat and stared at the black ribbons of shadow that ran down the length of the blade, he thought of the concept of ambient mana. If the coin emitted mana, then so must the sword.

With that in mind, the young man clasped his hands and grinned as if he’d just found a short cut.

The he began cultivating… and a painful wail erupted from his throat as he felt knives entering his lungs, his abdomen, and every pore on his body, or so it seemed. Gust coughed and his eyes flared. He stared down at his pristine skin, felt at his neck and his stomach, and spat on the floor.

But he found no blood.

After a minute, he recalled the term sword qi. As far as Gust could tell, qi and mana were just different words for the same thing, not that he would say that to Saith or Christos.

Pure mana, which he assumed was what he’d been cultivating so far, didn’t seem to have any underlying effects on him, but cultivating sword mana was like trying to fill his body with blades. Maybe he could build up a resistance to it, but Gust wasn’t going to be trying that again for a long time.

So, he went over his other options.

Gust had a low weekly stipend of merits, the currency within the school, but didn’t know what to spend them on. He could save them up for cultivation materials, spell books, or to sign up for classes, but with so many options he didn’t know where to begin. If Saith hadn’t asked him to stay away for at least a week, Gust would have popped in for a quick chat.

He decided to take a walk. If he ran into Master Ephraim, he figured he would act frustrated with his failure to retrieve a book, and say he was trying to clear his head.

Instead, he headed straight toward one of the few people who had been nice to him. Theo.

The tan, curly headed cultivator was outside the chore house talking with his friend, Oba, when Gust arrived.

Oba was covered in streaks of blood and breathing heavily, but he was in good spirits. When it was just him and Theo, the two of them were laughing and recalling a story about when they had just joined the sect and one of their fellow disciples forgot how to breathe because he was overthinking the cultivation process.

But when they saw Gust, Oba cleared his throat and grew serious again. Theo kept laughing and called out a greeting, however. “There he is! How’s the next step coming along? Feel better now?”

Gust nodded, “Loads better, now that I’m not afraid of dropping dead every day.”

Theo grinned and clapped him on the back. “That’s the spirit! What are you doing over here? I heard the Masters had some special job for you. Can you believe it, Oba? We’ve been here for years, and this guy gets special treatment after only a few weeks

“It’s just the coin,” the serious boy answered.

Theo rolled his eyes. “I know, man, it’s just a joke,” he said in an imitation of the other boy. “Really, though, what’s up?”

Gust didn’t waste any time. “What do you guys spend your merits on?”

Theo’s eyebrows raised. “Well… that depends on what I need. I’ve spent most of mine on accessing spell books, these chains,” he raised his arms, “and extra days outside. Right now, I’m saving for a potion.”

Gust looked at Oba, expecting him to answer as well, but he only met Gust’s eyes with a flat look. Before things got awkward, Gust asked, “What do you mean, extra days outside? Also,” he sighed, “is there anything fun you can spend them on? I mean, how do you all live like this? Cultivation requires years spent in quiet meditation; don’t you ever get sick of it? Don’t you ever just want to go home?”

At that last question, Theo grimaced. “I’m sorry Augustus. I don’t mean to rub it in, but we can go home. That was what I mean by days outside. People can use them to go anywhere, but most visit their families.” Just as Gust deflated, Theo lit up. “But the rest of us like to make proper use of our hard-earned time.”

Oba barked a laugh and started shaking his head as he turned to leave.

Theo lowered his voice. “As you can tell, some people don’t mind all the sitting around.”

Oba spoke up then. He eyed Gust flatly and his voice was wooden. “One does not cultivate for fun, nor for personal gain. One does it to serve their country, their community, their family, and their school. We all have our own reasons. A Sorcerer saved my family and noticed my talent. After watching that man easily dispatch the beasts who maimed my entire family, do you think I needed any convincing? Now that I am capable of doing the same, I regularly do. Do you think I complain about being bored when there are mortals out there being possessed and used by vengeful spirits, or enslaved by rogue cultivators? No. I don’t.”

With that, he turned around and left.

While Gust’s jaw hung open, Theo winced. He cleared his throat and held out a hand toward the bloody, departing mage. “That’s probably why he’s opened two more meridians than me.”