Alice offered a weak smile in the waning light. “Are you sure you wanna know?” Her voice was low and defeated. “I thought you wanted to go home.” She didn’t say it as a jab, but out of curiosity.

Gust stepped back and watched each position as Alice transitioned from one to another. Her legs were held at a perpetual crouch while her arms stretched up or to the side in strange configurations.

“I do,” he said sadly, “but I can’t. Not yet anyway. I need to grow more powerful. A lot more powerful. There are some things I need to take care of.”

Gust thought of the Patrons and wondered if he would ever be able to trust someone enough to bring them in on his quest. Everyone in these worlds worshipped the Patrons, and he wanted to destroy them. Being a renegade was one thing, but this was akin to blasphemy. At least he had his father on his side, even if Saith was a different version of him.

Alice’s eyebrows rose and she nodded. “To answer your question, it’s called Shintotsudo.”

Gust tilted his head. “Is it a form of cultivation?”

Alice smirked and paused to wipe her face. “No, it’s not like that. Shintotsudo originated on the other side of the world, where my father’s ancestors were from. He always told me we had a Starsoul in the family who ascended to a higher world. This cycling exercise was his legacy. It doesn’t matter what path you’re on, or what type of mana you cultivate. Anyone can do it.”

Gust fell in beside her and began copying the moves. They didn’t look difficult, but his arms and legs soon burned from maintaining their outstretched positions and his mana felt like molasses. When his cycling slowed to a crawl, Gust tried to force it and lost balance. In a matter of seconds, he was on the ground rubbing the dirt off his elbows.

“Don’t take it lightly,” Alice chided him, trying to hide a smile. She held up one finger as she instructed. “Shintotsudo is meant to train the mind and the body to work in unison so that we may live deliberately, according to our own truth. You keep moving in increasingly complex and difficult positions which will not only train your muscles, but your meridians.”

Gust perked up. “How does it do that?”

Alice brightened as she continued her explanation. “Your pathways carry mana throughout your body in the same way that your veins carry blood. Meridians aren’t opened by default, however, and we can only cycle our mana deliberately. We are all born with the ability to cultivate, but only once we’ve opened our first set of meridians can we call ourselves mages.”

“And opening those things is what kicks off Pathway Establishment,” Gust added proudly.

“Meridians, right.” Alice smirked and Gust felt his heart jump. Once she stopped crying and her mood turned around, she had a nice smile. “These positions dam up your pathways, making it harder to cycle your mana, but it’s just like any other exercise.”

Gust tried again and soon fell to the ground with a grunt. Alice tried to keep talking without laughing… and failed. When she recovered, she said, “If you keep it up… your pathways will be far stronger as a result. They’ll hold more mana and move it more quickly. You’ll cycle and cultivate faster than ever! As long as you do it right,” she quipped as Gust fell to the ground once more.

“You make it look so easy,” he grumbled.

“That’s because I’ve been doing it my entire life,” she said, offering him a hand. “Try watching me with your mana sense. See where the pathways kink, how they stunt the flow of mana, and then focus on those spots when you try again.”

Gust nodded silently. He brushed himself off and watched Alice go through another cycle of her positions. This time, with his mana sense.

Alice lit up immediately with a faint blue. Gust saw the mass of unshaped energy in her abdomen and the channels that ran away from it. As Alice changed position, these channels flexed and thinned in different places each time, but the mana never stopped flowing.

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Instead of jumping back in at full speed, Gust took his time practicing each position while he watched Alice and she gave him tips. He regularly stopped and stretched his stiff muscles. His form wouldn’t be perfect for a long time, but it was good enough.

When he started again, Gust froze. Holding one position at a time was difficult but moving from one to another constantly felt nearly impossible. Not wanting to embarrass himself, Gust pushed harder. His hands were shaking as they slowly moved in a pale imitation of Alice’s grace.

“We can stop any time, you know,” Alice said. She wasn’t even out of breath.

Gust shook his head. “I could do this all day,” he grunted.

Alice grinned and shook her head. Abruptly, she lifted one foot off the ground and went through a different, more difficult set of motions.

“Now you’re just showing off,” Gust quipped.

Alice didn’t say anything, though. She just smirked and hopped onto her other foot as she kept moving.

The sky soon darkened and Alice lit a few torches near the corners of her home. She watched Gust and resisted the urge to give him tips. He was still doing just about everything wrong, but at least he was trying. She didn’t want to discourage him by nitpicking too much, and Gust was a curiosity to her. This boy from another world was full of mysteries that she found herself wanting to untangle.

An hour passed surprisingly quickly, and Gust finally gave up. More specifically, his body gave up.

Gust was stubbornly determined to maintain this new exercise for as long as Alice. He knew she had more experience with it than him, and that it would be easier due to her cultivation level, but kept telling himself he could pull it off, anyway.

That was stupid. When he saw how effortless it still was for Alice, he knew he never had a chance. And she was doing the entire exercise on one foot.

As Gust dusted himself off and prepared to leave, Alice asked in a light voice, “What’s the Swordsman like? I’ve heard so much about him… but he passed through the school long before I arrived.” She glanced at Gust’s closed eye and quickly looked away. She’d heard the rumors, like anyone else, but she didn’t know what to believe.

The abrupt question was such a shock that Gust stopped what he was doing. When Alice noticed, her brown eyes widened. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” she added when she saw his mixed expression.

Gust shook his head to quell her worries, but he didn’t know how to respond. Should he tell her about his father? Or the soul sliver? He decided to go with a little bit of both.

“He was… complicated. The man had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and no one around him ever knew it. I’m only just starting to understand him, myself. He raised me, saved me. He gave me this eye and this…” Gust touched his abdomen and stopped himself from saying the word core. Instead, he said, “… path. I’m lucky to have him, even if all that’s left is a piece of a soul. You follow the Mother, right?” Gust guessed by the green on Alice’s robes. She nodded. “What’s she like?”

Alice’s eyes bulged. “Well… all the stories say she was a gardener and a very kind woman. Also a mother, as you can imagine. She wasn’t even interested in cultivation until her family was taken away from her, but she moved heaven and earth to get them back.” A slight, proud smile crept onto her lips. “As it turned out, she had quite the talent. Her own cultivation kept improving, and her lifespan along with it. When her children passed away, she took their children on as disciples, and then their children, and so on. Now, she’s passed her paths on to anyone who would learn, and she loves us all like the children she lost.”

As Gust listened, he felt a deep melancholy. That was a sweet story, but was any of it true? Did all the Patrons have a similar sob-story built to encourage their worship? A part of him wanted to tell Alice the truth, but without proof, why would she believe him?

Gust smiled politely and nodded along, letting the girl believe in her Patron as she always had, but it hurt him to do so. The Patrons were devils, not gods. That was what Saith told him. They wanted to collapse the layers into a single world and use everything within it to their own purposes.

They didn’t deserve to be worshipped.

“You seem to really respect her,” Gust said eventually.

Alice nodded and returned to her Shintotsudo forms. “Just as you do the Swordsman. As any student should respect their teacher.”

Gust took this opportunity to end the conversation and take his leave. He clasped his hands and bowed his head before Alice, just as he would for the Masters. “That’s a good point. Thank you for teaching me about Shintotsudo, Alice. I appreciate it. And if I can ever pay you back, just let me know.”

The girl’s jaw unhinged, and she blushed. “Oh, um, don’t worry about it.”

Gust returned to the main path. The red stars were just beginning to show themselves as he headed home.

This new exercise had been difficult, but he felt good. The work he did carrying pales of water took a toll on his body, but it was uneven and unsatisfying. The work felt pointless, and that made it all the more difficult mentally.

This, however, was different. The ache in Gust’s muscles, and deeper in his mana pathways, spoke of progress. He felt like he could lay still for days on end, but at least he would be a little bit stronger when he finally stood up.