Sol walked into Morrisons office after having received the very expected summons. As he was just a few feet from the door, he saw the instructor walk out and glare at him. Instead of yelling or saying something to him, the man just gave him a dirty look and walked away. His jaw at least seemed fixed, though extremely bruised.
When Sol entered the small wooden building, which was only slightly larger than his own cabin, he saw Morrison looking over a paper before looking back up at him.
“Sit down.” The healer said, gesturing to a chair across he was at.”
“I would like to start by saying-” Sol started, but he was cut off.
“Sit down.” Morrison repeated.
Sol obliged and sat down in the chair, doing his best not to look annoyed. He still felt like he was very much in the right, and he was not about to get talked to like he had been the aggressor.
“I’m sorry for our head instructor's behavior. It is inexcusable and truly terrible.” Morrison said, surprising Sol.
“You aren’t upset that I broke his jaw?”
“No, I am not. That does bring up the fact that you have no formal training with your magic though. I should have told you this long before this ever had a chance to happen, but you need to learn the responsibility that comes with being a cultivator.”
“I mean, it seems pretty obvious that it comes with responsibility.” Sol said, not knowing where this was going. “I promise to use it for good and not evil and all that stuff.”
“It’s more than that.” Morrison said. “You managed to make a seasoned training instructor back off when he had you in a disadvantageous position. The only reason you could do something like that is due to being a cultivator. It isn’t as important now as it will be when you get stronger, but you need to understand that power imbalance that there is going to be between you and the average person. You can already likely kill somebody with your bare hands alone, and in a year's time you might not even need that.”
Sol was taken aback hearing that. “Do you think I would do something like that?”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I am saying that with the strength you will be obtaining, a small lapse in judgment can lead to the loss of somebody's life. Unfortunately, that can also happen if you have a lapse in control over your magic. That is why from today forward, I will be training you.”
“Didn't you already offer to train me?”
“No, I offered to give you some tips and pointers, but it is quite clear that you need more than just that given that you are clearly talented with wielding your magic.”
“Talented? All I did was move it to my arms.” Sol said. It had certainly been a step up from what he had been doing before, but it still hadn't been that difficult.
“That is more than most can accomplish in a week, let alone while still in their recovery period. Tell me, what affinities do you possess?”
Sol saw no reason to hide this information, so he let it forth freely. “Life, Death, Light, and Dark.”
Morrisons eyebrows furrowed for a moment. “Are you sure that is what you have?”
“Positive.”
“Let me see it.”
“How do I show it to you?”
Morrison sighed before shaking his head. “This is why you need training. You don’t even know the bare basics. Start by making a string of mana, then trying to ‘untie’ the affinities from each other. This might take a few tries, since you have four affinities.”
Sol did as he was asked. He made a thread of mana inside of his hand and tried to pull the affinities apart. It was tricky at first, as they were all so mixed in with one another that it was hard to discern one from another.
After he finally picked out which one was his light affinity, he separated that from the main string, making a small, secondary string that glowed white. He set that into his index finger to keep it still while he worked to untangle the rest. His eyes were closed and he was turning all of his focus towards the magic inside of him.
The term that Morris had used, “untied”, had really been more accurate than Sol had been expecting. It was as if his affinities were already separate strings that needed to be unjumbled.
When he finally managed to get them all done, he had one string for each affinity tucked away into each finger, aside from his thumb. He opened his eyes to say that he had finished the step, but was surprised to see the tips of his fingers each glowing a different color.
His index was glowing a soft white, for his light affinity. His middle finger glowed yellow for his life affinity. The death affinity in his ring finger glowed purple. His darkness affinity didn't glow at all. Instead, it seemed to make his finger slightly darker than the lighting in the room should have allowed.
“Well, that is certainly interesting.” Morrison said. His eyes were glowing the same yellow color as Sol's life affinity. “Though while I am doing this, I do notice something else that warrants discussion.” The healer's eye flicked to just below the neckline of Sol's shirt, and Sol cringed as he realized he had forgotten about that while messing with his mana.
“Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that.” Sol said, reaching into his shirt and pulling the necklace he was wearing on top of it. It had a very thin chain wrapped around his neck and a small capsule in the middle made of gold.
“Are you going to open it?” Morrison said, giving him a disapproving look.
Sol opened the capsule, revealing the small white tooth that was held inside. “I washed it at least.” He said, trying to make it not seem as weird as it definitely came off.
“Why? Why would you do that?” Morrison asked.
“Spite, mostly. I was still pretty pissed when I bought it. I definitely don’t regret it though.”
“You know, I told Frane that if he found his tooth, I would be able to put it back in its spot. Right now he is out there looking for it on the ground.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Well, that sucks because he isn’t getting it back.” Sol said. “Are you going to tell him I have it?”
“No, I don’t like him either.” Morrison said, laughing a bit. “But if he ever sees you with it, I can’t guarantee he won't try to take it by force.”
“I’m fine with that. It just gives me another reason to take another.”
Morrison suddenly got way more serious, giving him a grave look. “That isn’t how you should be thinking. This was my whole point when I said you need to be mindful of the power gap that will start growing between the two of you. Never have it be the plan to use force, but understand that it is always an option.”
“Understood.” Sol responded. He saw the healer's point, but he personally disagreed that force should never be a first option. If he had been a cultivator back when his village had been burned down, he likely would not have tried to talk the raiders out of continuing their rampage.
“On a less serious note, I am pleasantly surprised to see that you have four affinities, though I must say the combination is a bit odd. You don’t often see someone with diametrically opposed affinities, let alone having two of them. That's like if somebody had all four elemental abilities.”
“I have heard of some having all four.” Sol said. “Like the Fade, the capital's infamous ‘force of nature’.”
“I said it's uncommon, not impossible.” Morrison shot back. “But she is a great example of how powerful somebody with these opposing affinities can be.”
“So you think I can get as strong as somebody like her?”
“Potentially, but remember that she is at the peak of the Assimilation stages of her cultivation. Has been for a while too. You have a long way to go before reaching her level.”
“I am a patient person.” Sol said. “But just out of curiosity, how long are we talking?”
“It varies so much from person to person that I don’t have an estimate other than you have basically no chance of making it in the next decade. Hell, she will likely have stepped up to an entirely different level of power by the time you reach where she is now.”
Sol sucked in a breath through his teeth hearing that. “Maybe I’m not that patient. I don’t really have a choice though, so I guess I am in this for the long run. Now how do we get started?”
“Well in the foundational stages, a cultivator's focus is nearly solely focused on absorbing mana and integrating it into their body over time. Even with that being the case, there are a few ways to practically apply your mana in such an early stage. The first one is to infuse your eyes with mana. This will allow you to see mana all around you.”
Sol listened with rapt attention. “Is there any particular reason it has to be the eyes to sense mana?”
Morrison shrugged. “Not really. Infusing your skin makes you ‘feel’ it more in the air, infusing your ears and the insides of your ears allows you to faintly hear mana, and infusing your nose allows you to smell it. The eyes are just the most convenient way. Also, don’t infuse too much or your eyes might explode.”
Sol stared at the healer, waiting for him to continue. When the man didn't, Sol spoke up. “Are you being serious?”
“Dead serious. Too much mana wth make just about anything explode if it can’t handle the magic within it. The eyes happen to be particularly vulnerable to this as they are not very strong. Doing this often will make them stronger against it, but don’t push it.”
Sol did his best to keep this warning at the very front of his mind as he slowly tried to move mana into his eyes. They tingled lightly as he did this, and that made him nervous enough to trickle it at such a slow pace that Morrison started tapping his foot impatiently.
“You can go a little faster than that.” The healer urged. “I may have slightly overstated the danger of it.”
“Better safe than sorry.” Sol responded, doubling the pace he was infusing mana. As more and more mana entered his eyes, his eyes tingled more and more, but he also started seeing some colors in the air. There was a bit of everything, but it was predominantly the green color of air affinity mana.
When he looked at Morrison, he saw a very dense mix of yellow life affinity and blue water affinity. When he looked at his own hand. He saw a much less bright mix of his own affinities. His fingertips glowed a bit brighter than the rest of his hand, which had clearly been caused by the strings of mana he put in his fingers.
He also saw a very small amount of life affinity and death affinity in the tooth in his golden capsule, which he assumed was how Morrison realized it was there.
“What is this actually useful for?” Sol asked, looking all around the room.
“You can see mana, which can be used to identify how powerful somebody is as long as they aren’t actively trying to hide it. Different mixes of affinities can also have different effects. For example, when I mix my life and water affinities with a certain ratio in my eyes, I can see blood flowing through people's bodies. Sadly that part only works after refining your mana, which is impractical and expensive until you reach the next stage of your cultivation. For now, I will have to set aside my curiosity on what you will see with your affinities.”
Sol thought about what had been said for a moment before his mind hung onto one particular part of what had been said. “What do you mean a good place to cultivate? I know it is better to be somewhere with dense mana, but does it matter where that is?”
“Not where it is, but ideally you want to be somewhere that has a roughly equal amount of each of your mana types.”
“Well, you can get life and death affinity from things dying.”
“I don’t think I want to rely on that.” Sol said, wincing a bit. “Any other ways.”
“Yeah, but that tends to be the best way. Forests tend to have a good amount of life mana and graveyards tend to have a good amount of death affinity. You can find death affinity wherever you find life affinity, but it will be to a lesser extent. Light and dark affinity can be cultivated most easily from sunlight and moonlight.”
“Isn’t the moon light still just light?”
“Hey, I don’t make the rules. I just know them. Maybe if you become a good enough cultivator, you can figure out why exactly it does that.”
“I will definitely be on the lookout for why that is.” Sol responded. “I better get going now. If I want to find somewhere to cultivate, it would be best to do it before it gets dark out.”
“Alright, I will see you whenever you figure that out and need some more guidance.”
Sol exited the building and closed the door softly behind him. He let out a long breath as he started walking for the gate to leave the outpost. After making it out of the walls and picking a direction, he started walking while constantly keeping mana infused into his eyes.
The sun was starting to slowly set and he was having difficulty finding anywhere that would match his needs. He rubbed his head with his hand as he was starting to get frustrated. As he did so, he realized his fingertips were still glowing.
“Shit, that must have drawn a few looks.” He muttered to himself as he sat down and leaned against a tree he could see the life affinity magic in the air mingling with a small amount of death affinity from the tree trunks that were rotting on the ground and riddled throughout the forest.
He figured he might as well try a few things with his mana while he was here, so he climbed the tree, closed his eyes, and began focusing on his mana pathways and the magic flowing through his body again.
He had something specifically he wanted to try, so he tried finding a spot to start unraveling the mana strings in his eyes. He figured that he might be able to try and refine a bit of mana like Morrison had talked about. He didn't care if it was impractical or inefficient, but having different types of sight like how the healer could see blood through people's bodies just sounded too cool to put off.
He tried searching for a spot to start, but he was completely unable to find one. It was as if there was no end of any of the strings for him to start at. He spent the next hour tracing the path of the mana through his body, looking for anywhere he could start unraveling. He found five spots in total that he could start in. There was one in both feet, one in each hand, and one in his sternum, where four balls of mana sat that represented one affinity each.
There were so many branching paths coming from the balls of mana that he didn't even consider trying to start there. He had already started one in his hand, so he figured if he had gotten started there, then he had no reason to go off and try some new part of his body.
Little did he know just how much time he would spend sitting on that tree just to untangle a few threads of mana within his eyes.