65 – Groundwork for the future

Ishrin thought about breaking through to Tier 4 on the way to the Chasm, but then reasoned himself out of it. It would be a dangerous breakthrough, given the possibility that some shards of Lucius’ soul could still be within him, and he wanted to be safe rather than risk doing it on the move. Also, there were other things to do to maximize his gains before breaking through, things that needed their due time.

With the threat of Syrma and the Dynasty fading from the forefront of his mind after so many days of being at the center of attention, he decided that he could afford to wait. And he was not too concerned about time constraints. Knowing how to overcome bottlenecks meant that his biggest time sink was filling his core to reach the peak of the tier, but as he had demonstrated to both Melina and Lisette, filling the core quickly was always possible as long as there were monsters or ambient mana powerful enough to absorb.

Breaking to Tier 4 was done by saturating a cultivator’s body with mana and creating meridians to better allow for the arcane energies to flow. Usually this step was done all at once, as it was painful and hard to control. Having already done it once in the past meant that Ishrin could afford to do it differently this time around, though. Mana started leaking out of his core, seeping into his cells agonizingly slowly. His control over mana and force allowed him to avoid disintegration, and his mental discipline allowed him to bear the pain.

The flow of mana was never more than a trickle, disappearing into his body but saturating it all the while, making it stronger and better in every way, reshaping the very cells themselves. It would take a long time, but the result would be worth it.

“What are you doing?” Asked Lisette, ever curious about magic. She could feel his mana moving around in strange swirls.

“Laying the groundwork for my meridians.” Ishrin said.

“Wait, you can do it piecemeal?” Asked Melina, suddenly interested in the matter. “I imprinted them all at once! I had to train for years so that I could maintain the perfect mental image of how I wanted my meridians to be.”

Indeed, that had been how Ishrin had done it the first time around as well. Bottlenecks were considered so for a reason, and the reason was that they took a lot of effort, resources and time to overcome. Usually, one could not cheat their way past a bottleneck without paying dearly for it—in the form of a stuck cultivation—but Ishrin was not an average cultivator anymore. Up until Tier 15, unless he deviated from the standard path of Tiers and bottlenecks, the road was mostly downhill compared to what he had to do the first time around.

“That’s how it’s usually done. Except in the case of some geniuses,” he shot a look at Lisette, “who just happened to form meridians on their first try. But you can see how your meridians and hers are very different, can’t you? Not just in shape but in quality too. How you make them influences how they shape your magic. And your magic couldn’t be more different than hers.”

There was no better way to form meridians, at least if you did it the normal way. And, despite her being some sort of savant, Lisette had still done it the normal way, unlike what Ishrin was doing. The only difference was how they shaped magic to better suit what their owner wanted to do. Melina’s meridians worked well for what she used magic for, but they would not work very well with Lisette’s magic, and the other way around was true as well. Plus, as time passed and they cast more magic, their meridians have adapted ever further.

“Are you doing the same for you? Making them fit your needs?”

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Ishrin nodded. “I need to make sure I don’t lose my edge. And empowering the body as well in the process.”

Casting two tiers above his station had been what had allowed him to stroll around this world without suffering from crippling fear of death, after all. The power gap this ability allowed him to bridge was larger with each Tier he moved up, but the maintenance needed to keep the advantage grew proportionately. Sooner or later, a time will come when Ishrin knew he would have to make a choice between delaying a Tier up so that he can keep his advantage and build a better foundation, or sacrifice the advantage for a quicker growth of actual power. The trade-off was not easy to calculate, but fortunately that time was still quite far in the future. Not until his first tribulation, for sure, and tribulations never happened below Tier 8, as far as he knew.

The way to the Chasm was longer than one expected it to be when seeing the canyon from Semiluminal. This was due to the fact that not all entrances were equal, and the two teams needed to enter the Obscure Chasm from a passageway that was five and a half kilometers north of Semiluminal, which was among the safer routes to the depths of the earth that also led to the ruins they wanted to explore. Duke Elstrom had informed Melina that, even though this entrance was safe compared to other access routes, it was still wrought with dangers and monsters that could ambush them at any moment and warned her to keep her eyes open at all times.

Especially to make sure that his son didn’t get hurt. He also mentioned that she and her team could use the rest of the boy’s party as a meat shield, but Ishrin was quick to tell Melina to ignore the last statement, eliciting a reaction of relieved approval. It was amusing and worrying, that she thought he might agree to use teenagers as meat shields, but perhaps it spoke to his past actions and behaviors that she would think that.

The road was a beaten path of compacted dirt and uneven stones. It was regularly walked by many men and beasts pulling carts full of coal, iron and other minerals and precious gems: the miners made braving the Chasm their job in search of riches beyond imagining, and spent their days and sometimes their whole short lives in the shallow levels of the unnatural hole, digging away at the magically enriched rock. Some braved the depths more than others, and their carts were full of exotic materials that shone under Ishrin’s magic vision, and he noticed that the other miners didn’t even dare glance at them and at their riches, knowing full well that those who braved the deep depths were best left alone.

Before they reached the entrance, Ishrin tried to take the time to make some conversation with the boy he was supposed to protect and his party but was met with great resistance. Coming from the earlier conversation with Melina, who—for some reason—warned him against being too much of a dick to strangers, he tried to approach them with milder tones, offering a helping hand. Unfortunately the boy did not seem to view Ishrin as worthy of his time.

“I could rig up a spell for you and your friends, so that you won’t have to stand in the rain anymore. It’s just temporary, but it will spare you a cold.” He said.

Sir Westys shot him a look, revealing the true reason why he was looking down on him. “A mere Tier 3 telling me what to do?” He scoffed, “please, if I ever fall so low as to need the charity of someone weaker than me, I will just kill myself.”

It was unfortunate that the process of preparing the groundwork for his meridians had forced Ishrin to drop the concealing veil shrouding his true level of power. It had cemented the boy’s idea that Ishrin was just a minion serving under Melina for some undisclosed reason, instead of the party leader. Although, to be fair, it had been his fault in the first place for delegating dealing with the noble to the fox-girl in the first place. In the end, he thought it was amusing enough that he decided not to shatter the boy’s flawed view of the party who was escorting him. Lisette, of all people, seemed especially eager to see how the boy would react upon seeing Ishrin’s true power.

Despite the playful intentions, Ishrin was taking his job seriously. He might not like the idea of being forced to play escort to some snotty noble brat, but he was here now, and he was not going to let someone day just because they were annoying. That had been old him. That was what Lucius would do. Not him.

It was important to note that Ishrin was also well aware that the quality of his stay in Semiluminal was now tied to the whims of the Duke, therefore he had to ensure the wellbeing of the duke’s son and, but this was just out of his newfound sense of justice and to make sure Melina wouldn’t tear him a new one, of the boy’s teenage companions.