Since Gust was excused from his regular responsibilities for the rest of the week, and he wasn’t able, or willing, to comply with Ephraim’s request that he remove something valuable from his father’s former home, the young man was at a loss as to how he should spend his time.

He couldn’t cultivate, the sword mana was too painful. He couldn’t enter the sword space, Saith asked him to limit that to once per week. And he couldn’t spend too much time outside without arousing the Masters’ suspicion. There simply wasn’t anything to do.

The day he spoke with Theo, Gust headed back to Saith’s room and spent the rest of the night agonizing over the destiny he signed up for. When he headed home that night, he knew he needed a distraction.

And so, the next day he brought some reading material. The basic cultivation manual was dry, but it was better than nothing. He had only skimmed the book at first, reading passages he deemed important and skipping others, but now that he had a lot of time on his hands, he read it from cover to cover.

The Mana Absorption stage was the most basic. There wasn’t much more to it than: fill your soul with mana, then break through the barrier so you can fill it with more.

Near the back of the book, however, it described the second stage, Pathway Establishment. He was only in the first level of Mana Absorption, but after he reached the second and filled his soul again, cultivation would become more complicated.

Instead of forcing his soul to grow larger, he would be poking holes in it. These holes led to his physical body and connected to his meridians, which served the same purpose as veins, but carrying mana instead of blood.

The first meridian was connected to the heart. Each level of Pathway Establishment represented the opening of another meridian, though this book only described the first.

As a cultivator opened their meridians, they would constantly cycle their mana through those pathways, strengthening the affected areas. They could even send mana to an injured body part to help it heal faster.

And that wasn’t even the best part.

When Gust eventually opened that first meridian, he was poking a hole in his soul which allowed it to interact with the world. One part of this was the mana sense.

Mana senses were like a third eye which a cultivator could use to observe the world around them. As the soul increased in power, the sense would reach further and be more accurate. Gust struggled to understand what such a sense would be like but grew excited to unlock it.

Even more exciting was the final concept this book mentioned: spells. So far, Gust could only accumulate mana, and try to spin it into a whirlpool shape. Upon reaching Pathway Establishment, he would finally be able to use it.

This, more than anything, made Gust eager to cultivate. He wanted to fly on a blade, or shoot fire from his fingertips. He wanted to do anything but sit in that house, but Gust knew he needed to keep the Master’s happy. He constantly worried that, if they realized he wasn’t even trying to help them, they would just kill him and find a way to bind the coin to themselves.

So, as boring as it was, Gust spent almost every waking hour in the Swordsman’s barren home.

After finishing the cultivation manual, Gust picked up his father’s journal. He flipped through every page, hoping to find a few written in English, but it never deviated from the odd, pictographic script his father used. It reminded Gust of Chinese or Japanese, but he had searched the internet and wasn’t able to find anything that matched.

There was one person, of course, who could translate it. Gust sat on his father’s bed and stared at the man’s sword, thinking about bringing the journal in with him next time.

But then he wondered whether he even wanted to know what his father wrote.

The more time Gust spent in this world, the more his image of his father changed, and he wasn’t sure whether it was growing more accurate, or less.

The version of his father he met inside the sword wasn’t anything like the version he’d known. The person the Masters referred to didn’t sound at all like Seth Perry, but Gust was well beyond denying that they were the same person.

Saith, the Subtle Blade, must have experienced something during his time in the underworld which turned him into Seth Perry, the distant father. The explanation was probably somewhere in those pages, but Gust worried what else he would find.

When he was young, Gust’s father was quick to express his disappointment in his son. As the years passed, the old man learned to keep his opinions to himself, but Gust had no doubt that they only grew worse.

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He also had no doubt that this book would hold his father’s deepest, darkest thoughts. That was what journals were for, after all.

Gust brought the journal home that night, and he didn’t bring it back the next day.

***

When the tenth day came, Gust couldn’t have been happier to go to class. He’d been so bored that even cultivation sounded fun. Anything would have been better than being stuck in that house all day with the same book to read, and too few merits to borrow another.

But now, Gust’s days would return to his old schedule. He was one of the first students to arrive at the class grounds that day, and he quickly found a spot of grass in the corner to sit and cultivate.

Gust couldn’t help but smile, as he was finally using his time wisely.

Then Ephraim sat in front of him, brandishing a fake smile and clearing his throat. “Any progress?” he asked.

“Well, no. I’ve been too busy to cultivate.”

“I wasn’t referring to cultivation,” the Master replied dryly.

“Ah, right. No,” Gust winced. “The Swordsman really didn’t have much, only some old books and that huge sword.”

“Old books? You can do better than that, Augustus. What kind of books? What were their titles, what are they about, what do they say?”

Gust was prepared for that. He shrugged, “I can’t read them.”

“Have you tried transcribing them?” the Master asked, sounding tired.

“Yes,” Gust lied, “but even the paper I wrote on couldn’t leave the room. It flies right out of my hand, or shreds into dust if I don’t let go.”

Ephraim seemed to accept that explanation. He nodded his head in thought and cradled his chin. “That is a shame. We may need to take more drastic steps if we ever wish to extract anything.” After saying that, he rose to his feet without so much as a glance in Gust’s direction and walked over to the corner of the small clearing. There, he stood watching over the students, deep in thought.

Gust had been hoping to get a few tips regarding cultivation, but he was happy to simply be left alone.

As the class day ended, and Shen began, Gust fell back into his routine. Now, though, he had no problems focusing on his cultivation, even for hours at a time. Whenever Gust grew bored, he would imagine himself casting spells and flying, and return to cultivation without a complaint.

When he joined Locke on the first of the following week, Gust avoided looking at the mosaic in the center of the courtyard. Every time he thought of the Patrons, Gust checked his cultivation like a tongue poking at a loose tooth, and grew frustrated that he wasn’t progressing faster.

“Hey,” Gust called out as he approached Locke with an empty vat. He held out his arms. “I’m back.”

The blonde young man merely nodded. “Thought you were too important for grunt duty.”

Gust winced. “Oh, come on! The Masters only took me away for a week, and I couldn’t even help them!”

Locke snorted. “Whatever. You’re one of the favorites, now, so you’ll just keep getting special treatment. Like Isaac. Or Oba.”

“And not like you, you mean?”

Locke stopped working and held his broom tightly. He clenched his teeth and stomped toward Gust. “You know, when I came here, I thought it would be different. I thought we would all be given the same chances to cultivate, the same resources, the same attention. I thought it would be the students who worked the hardest who succeeded, instead of some lord’s son, or a merchant’s daughter.” He shook his head, “But, as it turns out, this place is just like anywhere else. The Masters choose favorites based on who’s willing to do their dirty work, or who’s parents could afford the biggest bribe. They’ll accept anyone with the right amount of talent, but if you aren’t from a wealthy or influential family, you’ll be stuck cooking or cleaning for someone who is!”

Locke suddenly turned his head and stopped talking. He spun on his heels and walked back to the vat he’d been standing next to, dropped his mop into it, and cradled his head in his hands as he shook it.

At first, Gust wasn’t sure what to say. He liked Locke… sort of. The blonde guy was cynical and quiet, but not that bad once he opened up. Even if the Masters’ special treatment toward Gust was temporary, he recognized that he had a few advantages the average person wouldn’t.

The first was his talent. The people born on this layer started life at the first level of Mana Absorption, and while Demons were born without cultivation, they had a higher talent for it. Gust wasn’t sure how large the difference was, but he imagined it was enough to make people fear Demons in general.

The second advantage was his father’s coin. Since Gust always carried it around, he was always surrounded by a denser field of mana than the rest of the school. At least this was an advantage he could share.

Gust pulled the Subtle Coin out of his pocket and held it out toward the boy he had almost been friends with, before the Masters ruined it. Locke turned and squinted at the coin held out toward him. He tilted his head.

The Demon smiled. “You know, cultivation’s pretty boring. We’re basically just sitting alone for hours on end. I wouldn’t mind having someone to sit with, ask questions, or even just talk for a while. I can’t give this away, but it wouldn’t hurt to spread the wealth a bit, right?”

“What do you mean?” Locke asked carefully.

Gust rolled his eyes. “I’m saying, let’s cultivate together! I don’t see why everyone does it separately most of the time, there’s obviously plenty of mana to go around.”

“The world’s full of mana, sure, but when we cultivate we’re taking some of it for ourselves. You can’t see it yet, but the more time you spend cultivating in your room, the less mana will be there. Cultivating as a group is even worse! It just means you’re splitting the available mana between yourselves.”

Gust paused. He hadn’t known that, but he nodded as if he did. “Right. Look, I want to progress as much as anyone, but what you said was right. It isn’t fair that some of us have advantages that everyone else doesn’t have. So, why not share?”

Locke’s eyes tightened and he reared back. “Why? Because your cultivation will be slower.”

Gust laughed. “Yeah, I get that. But yours will be faster. It’s called a sacrifice, Locke. It’s what friends do for each other. Look, you don’t need to come hang out at my house every night, but once a week wouldn’t hurt. The little guys gotta help each other out, right?”

The blonde mage nodded slightly and let out a soft, “Sure.”

And as he watched his partner leave with an empty, clay vat, he thought, “Maybe he’s not so bad.”