It didn’t even have a proper title, and only held cryptic poems. The text had grown famous for allegedly being stolen from the Sanger Family’s elder prior to its proliferation, being known as the Sword-Soul Manuscript.

It was also utterly useless, as far as Zefaris was concerned.

For entertainment, however, it was quite useful, insofar as reading it out loud in a mocking tone of voice and laughing at the pretentiousness of it.

Zel ended up both reading aloud from all four of the pulps she’d brought and feeding Zef sweets as the worst of the pill’s effects seemed to have already subsided.

It was over before the sun even set, and Zefaris felt no great change...

...But she did feel lighter in a sense; cleaner in a way beyond the physical. She knew it was a nonphysical cleanliness because, by all accounts, her body was still absolutely filthy, and it took another half-hour to get all the damn tar off even with Zel’s assistance.

In her effort to make absolutely sure not a single bit of spirit-tar was left on her body, Zef plucked the Philosopher’s Eye from its socket to wash it and check the inside of the socket, not even thinking about what she was doing where it would’ve been a reluctant ordeal yesterday. Only when she popped it back in and stared at Zel’s rear end did she realize the strain of using it was now a fraction of what it had once been.

It took long enough of having the eye open before she felt the need to close it that she wasn’t sure saying its usage time limit had grown tenfold would suffice.

That alone was enough to justify the pill in her mind, let alone the subtler benefits that came alongside it.

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“I figured something like that would happen, sounds like the pill just helped wash out the vestiges of old traumas,” Zel commented when Zef brought it up.

“Yeah,” Zef agreed, adding, “Considering the ordeal, I can see how some barely-functional street urchin turned martial artist would step one foot into the grave by taking one of those pills, though.”

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Ozmir had always known the value of a white lie, for many novices failed to understand the foundational implications of leaving the First Circle.

It was not overt strength, but the shedding of valueless burdens so that one may act without impediment, even if the metamorphosis did yield some truly valuable, combat-applicable bodily alterations. With the dissolution of the Azoth Stone and its absorption it would be dispersed throughout the body, the entire person effectively becoming an Azoth vessel over the course of several days.

Such Azoth accumulation would be densest in the brain, bone marrow, vital organs, and other nervous tissue in decreasing order, with other bodily tissues also being thusly suffused at Azothic Densities an order of magnitude lower.

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This rendered the individual all around faster, tougher, and stronger, due to the improved characteristics imparted to their nervous system, with shorter reaction times and improved signal throughput. The suffusion of the bones and their marrow would result in the Azothification of blood cells, strengthening the immune system, improving the blood’s capacity for transmission of oxygen and essentia, as well as accelerating natural healing.

In effect, taking the step into the Second Circle elevated one’s limits squarely beyond those of mundane man…

...And was still treated as an inferior cultivation method by Azoth Stone Cultivation practitioners, for its benefits were not nearly as dramatic and obvious as those of devouring a forest-drake’s stone. Were the subject to survive the traumatic mutations and inevitably internal struggle against the beast’s essence, they would forcefully appropriate a fraction of the beast’s preternatural power and perhaps even be able to tap into greater portions of it by suffusing their newly-engorged Azoth Stone with copious amounts of appropriate essentia to trigger a transformation. One who had thusly subsumed a forest-drake could possibly grow reinforced scales on one’s forelimbs or breathe fire.

Indeed, his preferred method’s detractors were not entirely wrong; because it was not comparable to theirs. The Second Circle was a foundation intended for the person to build upon themselves, whereas what it was being compared to entailed forcibly appropriating the essence and strength that another had built.

Those within the Second Circle could even still consume Azoth Stones, but their body metabolized them in a fundamentally different way; with proper preparation, they could be rendered much safer, the essence to be subsumed could be made to submit less violently, and as a result could be more seamlessly intertwined with the consumer.

The foundation of the Three Kings Cultivation Method was the simple ability to move on and change as was necessary, and to do so without needing to take from others.

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Another day.

Another breath of change.

In between sparring with Zef to help develop her own style, Zel got thoroughly lost in exploring the allowances granted by her rapport with the Primordial Self. Chief among them was something that she laughed at herself for not expecting, something that the Tablet detected as a trait synergy.

Through her rapport with the Primordial Self, Zelsys no longer needed to force her own body into compliance with Fulgur and raw will...

...Meaning Breath Engine no longer required constant focus.

It could no longer lose synch or stall if she were to be thrown mentally off-balance, and its output had grown by the amount of Fulgur she had previously burned to override her body’s natural breathing reflex. A small fraction of every breath, but one that would quickly stack up over time.

Now it was just a tiny spark of will and Fulgur both to get it going, and the Primordial Self kept it going as if it were another unconscious bodily function.

With this increased responsiveness, she could even replace the startup sequence with a simple technique that could be invoked quickly, one that Zel had not even considered beforehand.

Engine Breathing: Spark Plug

There was no complexity to the technique, it would just burn some Fog to make the necessary Fulgur and use it to kickstart Engine Breathing whilst also letting the Primordial Self know that now was the time. The trigger - besides just willing it to activate - was as simple as a snap of the fingers.