When she was five months old, she could crawl.

She crawled everywhere, exploring the house from top to bottom. There were four bedrooms. One held Thera, her Mother, and her Father. One held her older sister, Margie. The really large one had the four maids and the cook in it. That one had bunk beds. And the last one was a guest bedroom.

There was a parlor; a kitchen; a huge pantry filled with old-fashioned preserved foods and stocks of grains and spices; and a few rather large empty store rooms and closets. Finally, there was a study filled with an extensive library of books.

When Thera found the study, she surprisingly found that the books were written with English letters.

The words themselves weren’t English, but they used the same letter system. Learning how to read the books in this world became a lot easier while working with familiar characters.

Thera pushed the book across the floor to her father and-as it was relatively thick and heavy- she thumped it down upon his foot.

“OW! WHAT THE BLAZES-”

Sir Maverick jumped up from his chair and looked around his feet. Spying Thera and the book, he smiled. 

“Hullo, Thera~ What have you got there?” He picked up the book and read the title, then looked at Thera confused. “How did you…never mind.” He walked over to the bookcase to put it back.

No No NO! Thera thought. I’ve got to get him to read it somehow!

She did the only thing she could think of: she cried, reaching out for the book.

Sir Maverick stopped, confused. What was wrong with Thera? After much confusion, and crying and reaching for the book, he finally got the right idea.  

Since he could not bear to see her cry, he gave in and took her to the couch nearby, where he sat down next to her, tilting the book so she could see it.

Her father opened the book. Success! Took you long enough. She thought. Thera pointed to the book and babbled something happily towards her father.

She pointed at words, and he sounded them out. It seemed that all the letters worked the same way.

The book itself was rather interesting, as it was an introduction to a kind of energy called martial spirit.

 According to the book, this martial spirit could take on a corporeal form, if the martial artists had trained their inner energy. After a certain level, they could even take in outer energy and use it as their own.

Each level gained added strength, defense, speed, and an increased comprehension of the physical universe.

Training usually began around seven years old. It started early because there was only a three year window before the amount of martial spirit gain was fixed. Outside of extreme, life-threatening practices, the amount could never be greater than the limit.

Thera imagined it as a bridge across a huge bottomless gulf, leading to a hidden mountain village. Depending on how well made it was, a certain amount and weight of goods can go across it at any given time.

If one was lazy and only made the bare necessities to cross over, the amount of goods that could be carried along was not much. Perhaps only as much as one unit’s worth.

But, if one put in the effort and made the bridge sturdy and large and wide enough, then one could bring multiple units across at the same time, saving both time, and effort.

So, say one person had a basic unit of ten per day, and another had a basic unit of twelve per day, and they both cultivated for ten days. By the end of ten days, the first person would have amassed one hundred units of spirit, but the other person would have amassed on hundred and twenty units of spirit, pulling ahead of the first person by an entire two days’ worth of cultivation, according to his capacity.

In the end, those who had a greater internal capacity quickly left the lower levels behind.

Interesting. So this ‘martial spirit’ stuff adds onto the physical nature of the practitioner. Thera observed as she listened.

There were different classifications of martial practitioner, and each class had ten levels. These classes were white, yellow, green, blue, purple, red, orange, brown, grey, and black. White was the lowest level, while Black was the highest. Kind of like karate. She thought.

There were also rumors of a level above Black class, but as far as anyone knew, no one had reached that stage, so it remained a rumor.

Sir Maverick smiled down at Thera when he talked about this. “You know, your Papa is an Orange level two practitioner. That’s how papa was able to become a noble and marry your mother.”

Huh. So he was a relatively high class according to the levels. Most lower-ranked noble knights Sir Maverick’s age were around the green level in martial spirit cultivation. So that meant papa was an exceptionally talented individual.

It seemed that, the higher the rank, the greater you were held in esteem.

What Thera didn’t understand was why training didn’t start before seven years old. If they started training around age five-per se- that would give them a much larger spirit capacity, wouldn’t it?

By this time, Thera was only five months old. She had taken the past two months to explore the house, due to the constant interruptions from the maids and her sister when she wanted to explore certain areas.

Her father closed the book. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you chose this book on purpose.” He said to Thera. “But you need at least six more years to reach the age of reason, or else we could start your training right now.” He sighed.

Thera thumped the book. “Da!”

Sir Maverick answered in a light, joking tone. “So, you’re ready to begin right now, is it~? Alright then! It wouldn’t hurt to show you how, I suppose. You’ll forget it in a few minutes or so anyways. But…still… it doesn’t hurt to practice for when you’re older, does it?” He placed the book on the desk and sat Thera down on the floor, where she could see him.

“Ahem~!” He coughed into his hand, and then raised two fingers.

“There are two different forms of matter: matter at rest, and matter in motion. Thus, there are two different ways to cultivate martial spirit. Neither is exclusive to the other, and both can be used interchangeably.”

He raised only one finger this time. “The first way of cultivation is cultivation of motion. In order to gain proficiency, you need to physically practice a certain skill, such as the basic punch. Scholars have called this, the ‘cultivation of kinetics’”

At this, he threw a small punch, stopping his fist a few feet from Thera. That punch generated a huge wind which blew Thera over from her sitting position. Books tipped off the shelves, and papers flew off the desk.

 In a moment, however, Sir Maverick had sped around the room and gathered all the pages before they could go out the window. He placed the now-disorganized stack upon his desk.

Thera sat up, laughing. That was an impressive punch!

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“You liked that, did you?” He chuckled, and added proudly. “You’d need to throw a punch of this caliber a thousand times before being able to know how to do it.”

Thera’s laughter petered out as she waited for him to talk about the other way of cultivation, although she could still somewhat guess what it was- given the introduction.

“Ah, but the first way is a bit difficult for a tiny baby to do. You can’t even stand yet, how could you cultivate using this method~?” He asked her jokingly.

Thera raised her eyebrows and looked up at him while nodding: a face which clearly came across as “Go on; what’s next?”

He cleared his throat again.

“Right, let’s move on, then. The second way of cultivation is cultivation of rest. This might seem strange, but just because someone is sitting still, it doesn’t mean that they can’t move, right? But all you need for this method is to be able to sit up. Even at your age, if you had reached the age of reason, you could do this.”

He sat down on the floor, meditation style.

“It doesn’t really matter how you sit, actually. I just find this pose the most comfortable, since I have to sit still for a long time while I concentrate.”

“Focusing inwards, discover the pulse and flow of your internal energy, and where it resides compared to where you need it to go.

“Those who practice this method take their internal energy and concentrate it into their bones, muscles, tissues, organs, and skin: in that very same order. The higher the concentration of energy within the bones, the stronger they will become.

“Most people take up to fifteen years just pouring their internal energy into their bones until they arrive at the strongest concentration you can get: the diamond-bone stage.”

He scratched his neck. “I think the record was taking only nine years to acquire it? And even after that, the person still grew normally, so don’t worry about staying a midget forever if you accomplish it by the time you’re fourteen or fifteen.”

By now, Sir Maverick had completely been taken up in his role of ‘teacher’ to the point where he forgot he was just talking to a baby.

“Next come muscles, which are separated into tendons and actual muscles. I say that because it’s best to strengthen the tendons first. The tendons anchor the muscles to the bones.

“You don’t want to strengthen the muscles and then have them ripped out of their spots because the tendons weren’t strong enough, right? Right?” He looked at Thera, waiting for an answer.

“Ga-gurul!” She crooned, uttering some encouraging nonsense word.

He grinned, delighted. “After the tendons, you strengthen the regular muscles. Don’t worry about looking like a thick-muscled barbarian, though. While they do get stronger, they still look relatively the same. The only 

thing that changes is the explosive elasticity that gives you a major increase in agility.”

Thera nodded in her sloppy baby fashion. She didn’t really have complete control over her muscles, yet, so she struggled to keep from falling over again. When she had righted herself, she looked up at her father. “Eijuuu?”

“It’s a good thing that you asked!” He nodded seriously, continuing his lecture:

“After muscles, there are the tissues and organs. We strengthen these because there are some martial techniques that can bypass the muscle defense and deal internal damage. This also gives great benefits to martial practitioners in breaking down the various elixirs or spirit pills that we may come across.

“But don’t use those things too often!” He warned. “Someone who rises in rank due to elixirs alone has never reached Black class. Elixirs may help you to attain a higher rank in a shorter amount of time, but they skip the path of understanding, simply supplying raw power to breakthrough to the next level.

Ahem! Getting back to topic, your papa is only just starting the stage where he is strengthening his internal organs. And it is one of the longest stages to complete, taking, at average, as much as thirty years to complete. But, papa here is a bit better than average, so he should be done in about fifteen more years: less, if I can gain enlightenment.

One lucky guy gained enlightenment and managed to finish this in is ten years, and that person also became the quickest to become Black class rank ten. His name was Tharen, but afterwards, he became known as ‘God-hand’.”

Thera stared at him attentively.

“After that is just the last stage: Strengthening the skin. It must be strengthened to the point where it is even harder than diamonds, or else any old diamond sword, given enough strength, could pierce you.”

“The higher the concentration of energy you have; the stronger the physical defenses are; the more force there is behind attacks; the faster the reaction speeds, and the more you can understand and use the laws of the physical world around us. Thus, scholars have come to call this way the ‘cultivation of potentials’”

He looked out the window and chuckled, momentarily distracted by memories from his childhood. Thera waited for him to continue.

He turned to look back at Thera. “Where was I? Oh yes! Since children quickly get exhausted using the first method, they are often trained solely in the second method up until they are ten years of age.

At that point, they can no longer increase their intake capacity, and are given physical techniques to practice the first method with. So, how did I do, Thera-tot? You could understand me no~? Of course you didn’t. Papa used an awful lot of big words, didn’t he~?”

As soon as he was finished, Sir Maverick switched back to his usual ‘doting parent’ mode.

Thera ignored his ridiculous display, ruminating on what she had learned.

Yep. Huge skills still required a huge amount of effort. It was best to start as young as possible—Then an idea came to her. If all it took to cultivate was reaching the age of reason and following the steps, then was there any real reason why she couldn’t start out now?

There was no reason not to. In fact, most of the Black martial practitioners were rumored to have started practicing at least half a year earlier than others.

Also, Thera was insanely bored. As a baby, she really had nothing to do aside from her daily exercise. As a former adult, the toys a baby usually plays with were incredibly dull to her. This training method was far more interesting.

At that point, Mother Helen came in and grabbed Thera. “Here you are! Let’s leave Papa to finish his work in peace, shall we? Mama thinks it’s about time for your nap, anyways.”

“Ah, you can leave her here. She isn’t bothering me at all!” He said.

Mother Helen sniffed. “Sure, and those papers are just going to end up doing themselves. It looks like you haven’t done a thing! Therefore, regardless of who’s bothering who: she is going to her crib, and you are going to your desk!” She huffed off, Thera in her arms.

 Papa’s face fell as Thera was swiftly carried off. Then he looked at the stack of papers and sighed, beginning to sort them out one by one.

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