“This was a way more interesting of a project than I had been expecting it to be.” The runesmith said as placed the cube of metal on the table between the two of them. “I had to pull out one of my old books on four dimensional matrices and brush up a bit on it. Do you realize how little I get to use that knowledge?”

Sol didn't know what exactly a fourth dimensional matrix was, and he felt like if he asked then he wouldn’t understand half of the words the runesmith would throw at him. Instead, his attention was entirely on the cube in front of him. It was about the size of his head, and there seemed to be nothing particularly special about it.

When he infused some mana into his eyes, he saw a bit of what was going on behind the scenes. Series of lines and patterns were etched through the inside of the cube, and some were so thin that Sol was sure there were even thinner ones that he couldn’t see.

“How long did this take?” Sol asked, picking up the cube and turning it in his hands a few times.

“It is only a prototype, so only about 200 hours of working. Not my best work, but it really is just a proof of concept.”

“Can I give it a try?” Sol asked, setting the cube down and looking at the man.

The runesmith shrugged and waved a bit. “Go for it.”

The runesmith spent the next several minutes explaining how to activate the enchantments and control how much mana they brought in from the astral plane. Sol decided that since it was his first time truly doing any cultivating, he would start by only activating the enchantments at 10% of their maximum output to get used to it.

He had one hand pressed on either side of the cube, and his eyes widened as a flood of mana began pouring into his body. It was an even distribution of life, death, light, and darkness mana. He quickly shut the flow off when his fingertips started burning from the flow of mana. He could feel the magic trying to even out within him, and he did his best to guide the process and keep the different affinities from getting tangled up again. When he was done, he felt like he had just run a hundred miles, and he was sweating and lightheaded.

“This is just a prototype?” Sol asked, trying to catch his breath.

“Well yeah. My standards weren’t very high, I know. To you it may seem like a lot of mana that came through, but to me it really would have just been a drop in the bucket. Actually, scratch that. By the time you get to the blossoming stages of your cultivation, the maximum output of that cube will likely feel frustratingly slow.”

“Thank you.” Sol said, handing over the gold coins he had promised. “If I ever get to that point, would I be able to pay for your services again to improve this?”

“Certainly. I must warn you though, it will be far more expensive, as this was already a pricey process.”

“For craftsmanship of this quality, I think I can live with that.”

Sol got up to leave, but the runesmith stood up and stopped him. “Before you go, you should know that there is a mode for the cube to spit out as much mana as it possibly can, regardless of whether it is an even mix of affinities. There is no way to really predict which affinity will come out more than others, and some magic will leak into the environment when that setting is on. Useful in some cases I guess, but none that I can think of off the top of my head. Just use it with caution, and don’t blow yourself up by setting it to the maximum output.”

Sol left the manor after that ominous warning. He had no reason to stay there anymore and he wanted to get back to the outpost. He carried his brand new cultivation cube in a sack slung over his shoulder. When he got to the stables near the manor, he saw several stable workers washing off Dawn's hair, and the horse with her head pointed high. As Sol told the workers they could leave, Dawn huffed unhappily.

“Oh get over it.” Sol said to his horse as he put her saddle on. A stable worker walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder, giving him a sympathetic look.

“Sir, I am so sorry you are stuck with a horse like her. I do not think I have ever seen a horse as high maintenance as this one.”

Dawn tried to stomp on one of the man's toes, but the worker seemed to know this would happen and had already stepped away. Sol just rolled his eyes and got on his horse, riding her out of the city and on a path back to the outpost.

_____

Mina took a deep breath as she took a quick step forward and infused her mana into the technique she had been trying to practice. She had been practicing this for the past week after she had finished her recovery period and was making rapid progress. With a burst of speed, she accelerated to a sprint far faster than she typically would be able to.

Just a day after Sol had left the outpost, Morrison had announced to the camp that he would be teaching all of the recruits how to cultivate. This had come as quite the surprise and sent waves across the entire camp. Nobody had been more upset by the announcement than the instructor for the training regime.

The instructor had argued against the movement quite a bit, saying that the recruits weren’t prepared for it. Morrison had dismissed these concerns by saying that anybody who wasn't ready for it would fail the process to start cultivating. He had been right, and of the hundred or so recruits, only about ten managed to finish the process and see it through.

After a week, Morrison began going through those who had been successful and showed them how to cultivate their specific affinities and a basic technique they could perform. Mina had only a single affinity, being that of air. Morrison had taught her of a basic technique that allowed her to accelerate faster. It would take a bit to incorporate into her fighting style, but she was already well on her way.

From what she had heard, the most affinities any of the successful recruits had was 2, which while good didn't seem like very many to Mina. Maybe her perspective was a bit skewed due to knowing Sol, who had 4 affinities. Morrison had even mentioned that having three affinities was already a one in a hundred occurrence, with having four being exceedingly rare.

Mina sat down and leaned against a tree as she let her muscles rest from the exertion. Her thoughts drifted to the tournament happening in just a month. It would likely be shaken up quite a bit now by the introduction of cultivators to the bracket. She was even more confident in her potential victory now that she would be faster and swifter with every movement and attack. There were two others who she felt could swipe the victory from her, but she still felt like she had a good shot.

A brief gust of wind brushed up against her face, and she infused magic into her eyes to see the flow of air all around her. She smirked as she did so. She was lucky in this sense to have just one affinity. She could infuse her eyes with magic and not have to worry about her affinities being mixed up. It was also very easy to cultivate just one affinity.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

When she spotted a part in the trees that the wind was funneling into and blowing a bit more than the rest of the surrounding area, she moved over and sat directly where the wind was strongest. It wasn’t the fastest way of cultivating, but she could take in magic steadily as the wind blew across her skin. As the magic flowed through her body, she idly wondered when Sol would be returning.

_____

Sol finally returned to the outpost two and a half weeks after he had left. The very first thing he noticed when arriving was the amount of noise coming from the training grounds just outside the walls. He rode his horse to the stables, having them rope Dawn into one of the fenced off fields. He also made sure to give a preemptive apology to the workers, much to their confusion.

Sol made his way back over to the training grounds, and saw something he definitely had not been expecting. Mina and one of the others were sparing against one another.

That in itself was not an unexpected thing to see but what had him stop in his tracks was seeing them using mana techniques. That meant that they both must have become cultivators in the time he had been gone. If they were each using techniques, then that meant they were either both prodigies for developing them in such a short time or they had training of some kind.

“Aim for the joints with your spear, Mina! Kobent, aim for center mass when using your disruption technique!” Sol looked in the direction of the familiarly booming voice, spotting Morrison in the crowd watching the sparring.

“So, it was you who did this?” Sol asked as he walked over and stood next to the healer.

“Guilty.” Morrison said, his voice not a shout anymore. “They have taken to it quite well.”

“That's good to hear. Hey, if I jumped in there, what do you think my odds would be of winning against either of them?”

Morrison laughed for a moment. “Not high at all. They have each learned how to harness the power of their mana like you did, though not quite as well yet. Their skill in fighting will more than make up for the difference though.”

“Then I guess I’ll just stay on the side for now.”

“Did you find something?”

“What do you mean?”

“A cultivation method.” Morrison clarified. “Did you find one?”

“Oh, yes. I did find one.”

“Care to share?”

“Sure, I can give you a quick peek at it.” Sol said, pulling the sack off of his back and pulling the large metal cube out of it. Morrison stared at it for a moment. “Like what you see?” Sol asked, enjoying the man's confusion.

He frowned a bit when Morrisons eyes started glowing, and his face became one of shock. “Where the hell did you get something like this?” Morrison asked, taking the cube from Sol and turning it to inspect it all over. “Don’t lie to me and say you made it, because this here is so far beyond your capabilities that it isn't even funny.”

“The Earl of the region owed me a favor, and he got his runesmith to enchant this cube for me. I still had to pay for the cube itself, but I definitely got away with a good deal for something like this.”

“That much is obvious.” Morrison said as he turned the cube even more. “Wait a minute. This looks familiar…” He thought for a moment before turning pale and shoving the cube back into Sol's arms. “You didn’t!”

“Didn’t what?”

“Boy, do you understand what you did? How do you manage to unintentionally do so many stupid things that put you in danger?”

Sol furrowed his brows a bit. “What did I do this time?”

“What did you do?!” Morrison shouted, before pulling Sol close and hissing into his ear. “You are in possession of a modified version of the church's divine enchantment.”

“I thought it was kind of an open secret.” Sol said, shrugging his shoulders.

“It is, but that doesn’t mean they would appreciate you having it. Not every member of the church would care if you had this, but those who are truly devoted to that borderline cult would likely turn to violence. If you are lucky, they will see how complicated it is and ask who made it, since you clearly would never have been able to.”

“Damn. That sounds like trouble.” Sol said, shrugging again. He really didn't care that much if the church didn't want them to have this thing, but it would be inconvenient not being able to have it around any members of a choir or clergy. “How do you even recognize it? They are similar, but they aren’t so similar that you could tell they are from the same enchantment unless you know one of them pretty well.”

Morrison sighed as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I used to be a member of the church. It was not a great part of my life, and I left. They don’t exactly like that kind of thing, and they do their best to make the lives of ex-members unpleasant.”

“Is that why you joined the rim guard? To get away from them?”

“Yep, that is exactly why.”

Sol put the cube back in his bag before asking another question. “What did they do to drive you to that?”

“They sent people to destroy the medicines that I developed. It was often that I woke up to smashed bottles all over my ground.”

“That sounds more than making your life unpleasant. That is just downright evil.”

“Yeah, it is. Not much to be done about it though, so now I do what I can here at the rim guards 47th outpost.”

Morrison was starting to look pretty bummed out by the conversation topic, so Sol decided it was probably time to change the subject. “Well, you do a good job here. Speaking of what you have been doing here, which of the two of them do you think are stronger?” Sol pointed at the two fighters, who were still mid spar.

“Hard to tell.” Morrison said, shaking off a bit of the gloom. “Mina is definitely faster, actually a lot faster. Kobent has more raw strength and better control over his mana and his techniques. They are pretty evenly matched.”

“Well I know who I am rooting for.” Sol said, watching Mina get in a good hit with her spear on her opponent's thigh. Blood flew through the air, which threw Sol off a bit. “Wait, are they using real weapons?”

“Yeah, they are. Since I am here, they both agreed that they would use real weapons and avoid any strikes that could prove lethal.”

“Huh.” Sol muttered, watching the two exchange a few more blows. Kobent seemed to be a monster with his mace, and he managed to land a few good hits on Mina. If it weren’t for her focusing her mana on the unprotected parts of her body, then she would definitely have several broken bones.

After they both seemed ragged and tired, they looked to Morrison for healing. The healer began walking over to the two of them, but Mina's eyes drifted over the healer and to Sol, who had been standing next to Morrison.

Her eyes lit up and she started half running half limping towards Sol. Even injured, her movements were faster than Sol would be at a full sprint. Morrison had to grab the collar of her leather armor as she passed by him, and he pulled her back in front of him.

“At least let me heal you before saying hi.” He said, shaking his head as he started using his magic to slowly mend the wounds of her and Kobent.

“Oh you are no fun.” Mina frowned as she reluctantly stood still to get healed. “At least let me spar with him after.”

“Not a chance. You need time to recover.”

“Not like he would win anyways.” She pouted. She then shot a challenging look to Sol. “You better be ready to spar after I am back in tip top shape!”