We formed a circle around Reya, letting Eric heal her to the best of his ability. The mute priestess let out small whimpers and gurgles as the blood flow slowed bit by bit by, her flesh knitting itself back together underneath her brother’s hands.

In the middle of the healing process, another snake came to attack, lunging at Matt this time, but he’d been prepared. The strike was blocked by a thick wind of plum petals, and he sliced the monster in half lengthwise before it could retreat.

I saw a bead of sweat on his forehead. “Fuck those are fast,” he muttered with a manic grin on his face.

His pupils were dilated, and I saw that battle crazed face he made when he was fully focused on the sword. I smacked him with the backside of my spear. “Snap out of it.”

“Shit, sorry,” Matt said, changing his eager stance to a more defensive one.

The idiot had been this close to running off into the field to search for enlightenment or something, I’d wager.

Slowly, seconds ticked by. After half a minute, Reya had gone quiet, the bleeding stopped. There was a good amount of grass stained red. It was more than certain to attract more monsters.

“Can you walk?” Marie asked the priestess, and she nodded. “Good, then we move.”

Reya stumbled a little for a moment, but I caught her. “Lean on me,” I said, and she gave me a thankful nod, as we started walking through the field again.

Everyone was quite a bit more on edge now. Despite Marie’s warnings, experiencing monster attacks in person was always quite different from hearing about them. None of us had expected the sylters to be so damn fast, at least.

A few minutes later, another one lunged at Liam, who sniped it out of the air with a swift slice of his dagger. Not too long after, another one came at Reya, but I blocked it with my hand, activating [Reflection], and the serpent bit its own tail. Before it had a chance to regain its bearings, I snapped forth with my spear, cutting it down.

Luckily, there weren’t any more attacks after that, and no one was hurt too badly. Emilia had started using her Qi to keep track of the ground, in a kind of tremorsense. It didn’t work perfectly on the soft earth, and used much more Qi than was usually worth it, but we didn’t exactly want another encounter.

20 minutes later, Reya was able to walk by herself again. Her Divinity helped boost her constitution passively, so she’d regenerated the blood she’d lost.

After 10 more minutes, Emilia stomped her foot on the ground, and a stone spike rose from it, impaling a large rodent. It was still squealing and struggling, even with the rock through its chest, but soon stopped its movements.

“Fucking hell. This place sucks,” Emilia commented. “Qi is running below half now, won’t be keeping up the tremorsense for much longer.”

“Drop it,” Marie ordered. “I think I’ve got a better grasp on things now.”

She soon proved that it was true. Marie used nature Qi to get a better feeling of the grass all around, letting her know when it was disturbed. She’d used the time Emilia bought to properly adjust it to the environment. The more restrictions you put on your Qi, the cheaper an ability was.

Now, Marie’s senses would only work on this very specific species of grass. She couldn’t tell what was going on in any of the shrubs, so we avoided those, and stuck to the high grass instead. There were multiple times when she warned us about sylters or lirers approaching, and we were able to care take of most of them swiftly.

One of the lirers, though, managed to be a rather big bother. Somehow, it managed to survive a swing from my spear by leaping back and catching the blade in its teeth. I immediately shook my weapon, but the rodent hung on tenaciously, and had begun chewing through the metal of my weapon within seconds.

Immediately, I slammed it into the ground, but the creature still held on, and by the time Matt sliced its head off, a good third of my spear’s blade had been eaten.

I looked at the damage worriedly, and Matt’s eyes went wide when he saw it. He quickly looked at his sword and held it a little closer to his chest.

The rest of the day, I cycled metal Qi through my spear, the metal slowly knitting itself back together. It was a horrendous expenditure of Qi, and meant I largely couldn’t participate in fights anymore, with Ann taking my position instead.

And she did well, too. Instead of using her usual fire magic, she zapped the creatures with lightning, leaving them easy prey for the others to finish off.

We did get a couple more scrapes, but it was nothing Eric and Reya couldn’t heal. By the end of the first day, we all plopped down heavily once the formations to repel monsters were set up. Matt gave a heavy sigh, while Emilia and Marie just laid on their backs, breathing heavily. Both had exhausted their Qi reserves a few times over to keep vigilant.

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My spear was almost back to its regular condition, but at the same time, I was almost out of metal Qi. At least I’d have the time to meditate and replenish my resources a bit throughout the evening.

None of us bothered to cook a full meal. We just ate from our rations instead, drinking plenty. Tomorrow we’d stop by a checkpoint obelisk again, which would let us restock our water at least. Looking at my rations, I had enough to last the rest of the way. And if we ran out, well, at least we could make a fire and cook the monster bits here. I wouldn’t be eating raw cave rats again as long as I stuck with the party.

Matt plopped down next to me with a heavy sigh, letting his back fall onto the floor. He had his eyes closed, but he smelled strongly of plum. It was a telltale sign he was cultivating, or running through battles in his head.

That was one of his talents. [Inner Eye] or something. It let him simulate battles by closing his eyes, actually moving the Qi around and even practicing his stats. I almost considered trying to copy it with mirror mind, before deciding that I really didn’t need to strain that ability any further right now.

Instead, I just watched Matt. My senses for Qi had grown sharper since learning aura suppression, by quite a bit, even. I could see his Qi flow through his chest, and rapidly reinforce areas. His arms, legs, sometimes his sword, too, despite the fact that it hung loosely by his side.

A few minutes in, he charged so much Qi into the weapon that it began to vibrate a little, and plum blossoms began to fall down onto Matt, covering him in pretty pink flowers. I smirked as I watched him, cycling Metal Qi from the air into my spear, and having the metal knit itself back together.

The blade was almost whole again, just a small nick remaining, but the edge wouldn’t be as good as after sharpening. My control wasn’t precise enough for that, yet. I kept a few whetstones in my inventory, but if I really needed some, I could also always ask Liam. He was properly obsessed with keeping his daggers sharp.

In fact, as I scanned the improvised campsite for him, I found him sitting with Marie and the twins, running a stone over his knives. The grinding was so quiet I could hardly hear it. They seemed to be talking, too, and I smiled at them.

Ann sat with Emilia, once the latter had risen from the floor. They seemed to change between meditating and chatting, and I smiled their way. Ann gave me a short wave.

Then, I turned my attention towards Matt again. Watching him had always been fascinating to me. I could do image training, it was something my master taught me, but never something I particularly pursued. Meanwhile, to him, it came as naturally as breathing.

Just watching him move his Qi around was interesting. It was so… artful. Almost fancy, in a way. It would twirl and twist and spin, then lash out. By now, he was so deep into the battle, that with each imagined swordstrike, a small wind blew some more plum petals about. They didn’t just fall straight onto him anymore, some even covered me by now.

A moment later, they’d dissolve back into Qi. I moved to absorb some of it, and found it quite easy. The falling leaves seemed to disintegrate quickly, becoming tiny particles of Qi that Matt would usually use in fighting, but at the same time, they saturated the surrounding air. I could make use of this.

So, I set about meditating as well. Voyage worked best when walking, but I needed some metal Qi right now, so I focused on it anyway. It still profited from the experiences I got while travelling, after all, and using it to replenish my Qi stores instead of advancing my cultivation was much less stringent with rules.

I started taking the Qi from the air, converting it into metal, then channelling it into my spear perpetually. The small hole had soon fixed itself, and my core was beginning to fill up, but I kept cycling it through the weapon anyway.

Since it was corebound, it naturally grew more powerful the stronger I became, but having Qi flow through it like this would also slowly reinforce the weapon. Some of the dregs would stay behind, dissolve into the wood and metal, and temper it. This was the very basics of forging weapons with Qi.

Of course, I wouldn’t be able to forge my own weapon. But since this one was bound to me, I was able to skip all the intermediate steps and just deposit Qi into it. So, slowly, I filled my core, repaired my spear, and waited as the evening drifted by.

Eventually, Matt’s eyes snapped open and he gulped for air, like someone who’d almost just drowned. There was a manic look in his eyes again, as they darted around the campsite, looking for threats. Not like he was terrified, but more like he was looking to lunge at them.

“Matt,” I softly said, “campsite. Battle was all in your head, you’re safe.”

He snapped to me as though I’d screamed, and his hand grasped for his sword. I wasn’t worried though, and his face cleared up once he heard “safe”. He took another raspy breath, closing his eyes for a second, clenching and unclenching his fists.

When he opened them, he shot me a smile. “Phew, thanks, Fio. Got a bit too into it there.”

“What kinda fight did you go through?” I asked.

“Ah. That. Well, I tried fighting people from my old swordsmanship school. Emphasis being on tried, there. I got my ass kicked by my old teachers,” he said, then gave a crooked smirk. “Well, I’ll surpass them one day.”

I smiled back at him. “Seems like a lofty goal, surpassing your masters.”

“Not at all,” he said seriously. “More like it’s a student’s duty.”

There was a brief silence between us. I thought of my own master, and honestly, the thought of surpassing him seemed hopeless. Well. Had seemed hopeless. I did have mirror mind now. Maybe, if talents like that and iron will could be acquired, I had a shot.

“Yeah, you might have a point,” I told Matt.

His serious face turned into a smile again as he leaned back, holding himself up with his hands. He stared into the sky a bit. “You full on Qi?” he asked.

“Eh, about halfway there. You were meditating for a while, but I still had to fix up my spear.”

“So it’s dull right now?”

“Sure is.” I nodded.

He grinned. “So clearly we’re sparring.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”