Zeal of the Mind and Flesh: A Cultivating Gamelit Harem Adventure (Spellheart Book 1)

by Marvin Whiteknight

  “Imagine you are a fish sitting at the bottom of a still puddle. All the mud has sunk to the bottom and the water is clear. But if you flick your tail and stir the water then the mud will mix with the surrounding water. This is what I want you to do with the zeal. Focus your will and shove at the earth. Stir it into action, into revealing itself!”

  Earth... I ruminated on the concept, treating it like a mantra. What was earth? It was strong and hard like a rock, and huge like a mountain. It could be found in huge boulders the size of cities, and also tiny grains of sand. The stone dais must have been helping me because I suddenly had a degree of focus I usually only attained during the the most delicate moment of an elaborate project, or when I fought with the elves after first coming to this world.

  Using my will, I shoved at the world around me. And I did it again, and again and again. If I was a fish in a puddle, then I was jumping clean out of the water and doing cartwheels in the air before I finally sensed something.

  After the tenth attempt, the earth responded to my call. I couldn’t do anything with it specifically, but I could agitate it. Make it show itself.

  The earth shook. Sava grabbed her egg in her hands and held it up to protect it, eyes full of surprise.

  “What next?” I asked quickly. I didn’t want to lose this incredible feeling just yet.

  “Oh, um…” She blinked in surprise. I had finished faster than she’d expected. “You need to pick out the earth aspect zeal and draw it towards your crystal. But not just any earth aspect zeal. It has to be compatible zeal, otherwise you’ll end up lowering the quality.”

  I cast my mind into the earth spellheart. It felt like... dirt. Like packed mud that had hardened years ago under the weight of thousands of years of beasts and people stepping all over it.

  Then I searched the zeal that drifted lazily around me. One bit here, one bit there. There was one that gave me the same feeling as my crystal! I called towards it with my mind and by the invisible force of my will I pulled it towards my earth spellheart. I don’t know how long I sat there, tugging at tiny particles of zeal one at a time and drawing them towards me. I do know it was a long time before I finally opened my eyes again. The sun had nearly set.

  Sava was seated near me, meditating as well. Her nature spellheart was in her hands.

  “Did that thing get bigger?” I asked in surprise as Sava opened her eyes.

  “Look at yours Theo,” Sava gestured, and sure enough I glanced at my spellheart. Before it had barely been the size of a gemstone on a ring, but now it was the size of my thumbnail!

  “It grew!” I exclaimed in amazement. “That’s amazing!”

  “Well, you just spent the whole morning cultivating zeal into it. And by the looks of it you did a very good job! I think it’s improved a whole level in quality. It’s now a mid-quality spellheart instead of a low-quality one.”

  Earth Aspect spellheart (mid-grade)

  This spellheart is bound to Theodore Waltz. Its dominant affinity is the dirt aspect of Earth.

  I frowned. Only mid-quality? Well, that just meant that I’d have to come back and do this tomorrow!

  “So, what does increasing the size of my spellheart do? Other than making it bigger?”

  “The physical dimensions of a spellheart are an approximation of the amount of zeal that it contains. Increasing the spellheart’s size means increasing the zeal. That means you’ll be able to cast bigger spells, and cast them more often.”

  “Wait, so you mean when I use the spellheart to cast spells I’m actually using the zeal?”

  “Well yes, where did you think the energy came from?”

  Damn. What ever happened to self-regenerating mana pools!?

  “So, theoretically, I could use this spellheart until it shrank down into nothingness?” I asked.

  “Not in one sitting, you’d burn yourself out doing that. But yes, you could use that spellheart until there is essentially nothing left. Past a certain threshold, it won’t even be able to hold itself together though.”

  We left Sava’s egg on the dais. Sava said it would be good for the child to have the cultivation enhancing effect of the dais while she was growing.

  In favor of giving me room to practice I opted not to return to Sava’s tree house. Instead, we decided to camp out for a while near the grove, both to keep an eye on the egg and so Sava could forage for more raw materials. She’d sold every leaf and herbal mixture she’d stocked up on so there was no point in opening up her shop. She had nothing to sell. So instead, we set up a small camp near the grove. Sava’s treehouse was an hours walk away through dense underbrush, so we decided to use that time training rather than traveling. Besides, Sava had sold most of her potions, with the intention of replacing everything with more valuable potions using my help. I spent my days practicing using zeal while Sava went off into the forest to search for ingredients

  “Alright. It’s time that you learned some real spells. That little run in with those... unsavory individuals we had in town should have proved to you that you’re a valuable commodity, Theo. If you don’t learn to defend yourself, you’ll be passed around like an old trinket.” Sava said, having recently returned from a forest expedition. The jump in her step told me her search had been successful, and the eagerness with which she instructed me made me suspect she was eager to receive my help in return later that night.

  I nodded in agreement. I needed to be able to defend myself. As hot as being a stud for an entire clan’s worth of elves sounded, I valued my freedom. Any intimate activities done by me would be on my own terms, with someone I genuinely cared about, like Sava.

  “Right then. So, combat spells it is.”

  “You’re not ready for the higher end moves that I can pull off with nature magic, but that’s okay. Frankly, earth magic is better suited to simple, brute force techniques anyway.”

  Sava guided me through the process of activating the earth zeal from my spellheart and guiding it to pick up a rock and fling it at a nearby tree. By my third attempt I was throwing fist-sized rocks fast enough to make pitchers wet themselves. I could manage bigger rocks as well, but not nearly as fast.

  “How are you feeling?” Sava asked me about two hours in.

  “Great! This is incredible! I’m doing magic!” I grinned.

  Sava laughed. “Good. To be honest, I’m just as surprised as you are. Normally, a heartwielder in the lower levels shouldn’t be able to last longer than fifteen minutes. I guess you’re just particularly well suited to the earth aspect.”

  I smiled wider. “About time something went my way. I’ve always wanted to be talented at something.”

  “I think you’ve got a knack for cultivation, Theo. I bet in a few short years you could even catch up to me. Of course, I’ll be even further ahead by then, thanks to you.”

  I winked. “Give me three months.”

  Sava checked on me three more times to see if I was ready to call it a night, but I kept training. I was just starting to really get a feel for this earth magic stuff. At the moment, I was trying to figure out how to pack ordinary dirt together into harder clumps.

  My particular spellheart favored dirt over stone, and because of this I was able to manipulate the former to a far more accurate degree and utilize it in higher quantities as well. Unfortunately, dirt balls just don’t pack as much of a punch as rocks. I wanted to find a way to pack the dirt tight enough that they wouldn’t come apart when I hit something. Or at least pack a little more force. Besides, I couldn’t always depend on finding conveniently sized rocks whenever a fight broke out, but I could be reasonably sure that there would always be dirt somewhere nearby.

  I’d had some moderate degree of success, but they still weren’t sufficient for making projectiles. After making dozens of piles of hardened dirt, I came to the realization that this stuff might actually be pretty useful as a building material. Sava lived out of a tree, but there were whole hosts of smaller buildings on the ground, like shoddier versions of wha
t I’d seen in town. I knew from looking around that I’d be able to design better buildings and structures than what I’d seen so far, and if my magic let me do it quickly, I might be able to provide a valuable service worth money. Besides, it was good practice.

  And that’s how I got into construction. Four days and a dozen failed experiments later I’d finally managed to make an enclosed one-story structure using earth zeal. I’d never worked in masonry before, but I was certain this was a lot faster and easier than trying to stack bricks. My final creation was a squat, circular building with a dome over the top. I didn’t know anything about architecture, but I did know domes are strong shapes. I cut a little reinforced hole in the top center for a smokestack and built a combination support-column-chimney in the middle. I also strengthened the sides and cut a few windows out to bring some light in.

  It wasn’t the Hagia Sophia, but it didn’t immediately collapse in on itself, so I chalked it up as a win. It was a far cry from the glorious hundred story wizard’s tower I’d first envisioned, but sacrifices had to be made for practicality. Baby steps.

  I made a few dividers to set up rooms and was trying to dig out an underground tunnel for the bathroom I was building when Sava finally got back. She’d been out on another plant gathering trip, this one lasting more than a day.

  “Theo, not to disparage your taste in decor, but what’s with all the piles of mud?”

  I jumped behind her and covered her eyes.

  “They were practice,” I replied. “Now no peeking, I have a surprise for you!”

  I walked her with her eyes covered to the front door of my mud house.

  “Ta-da!” I said, pulling my hands out from in front of her. “I made a house!”

  “Ah... it’s very... homely,” Sava said lamely.

  I frowned. “You don’t seem very impressed.”

  “No! It demonstrates a skillful and creative project with earth zeal. I could never have done something like this with my nature spellheart. However, all these structures are very visible. I’m on the outskirts of the Riverweed tribe territory, but not that far away. I’d rather not draw attention to this area if I can help it. The tribe will seize control of the grove if they find it, which means no more fast and easy zeal accumulation for us.”

  “You’re not impressed with my house,” I said crossing my arms.

  “It will be a very nice place for you to sleep. And for me to store some materials. It looks like they’re faster to make than growing a tree with a home inside it, so maybe you could make a garden. It just looks a tad uncivilized.”

  “What? Uncivilized? How is this worse than sleeping in a tree?”

  “No self-respecting wood-born elf would sleep in the dirt when there’s a perfectly good tree nearby.” Sava replied.

  “Oh, come on, before coming here I lived underground. There wasn’t a dot of sunlight to be seen, and behind my walls were hundreds of feet of packed dirt. Even so, it was a clean, comfortable place to live. At least, that’s how it was before I made a mess of it.”

  Sava visibly recoiled. “You lived in the ground? Like a mole? Or worse, a dwarf!?”

  “That’s right! And I liked it too.” I glared at her. “You know, you should be a bit more understanding of people who are and live differently from you.”

  The elven herbalist glanced furtively between me and my dirt building. “Fine. I’m sorry I insulted your… house.”

  I smiled “Alright, I’ll forgive you if you spend one-night living with me in my mud hut.”

  In the end Sava broke down and agreed. I even talked her into reinforcing the walls by using nature magic to grow a thin matrix of fibrous plant roots throughout the hardened dirt walls. The end result was that a layer of deep green moss covered the entire outside surface of the structure, which went a long way to offsetting the ugly brown color and hiding its presence by matching the surrounding undergrowth. All in all, I was actually rather proud of my creation, even if Sava wasn’t.

  She complained frequently about how living on the ground was for bears, trolls, dwarfs, and orcs. And how that any day one of those scary ground-dwelling creatures was going to sneak up and attack us in our sleep, and that we were crazy for sleeping on the ground when there were perfectly good trees available to hang a hammock in. She didn’t shut up until I started telling her about the first shelter I’d built, the lean-to made of dead leaves and sticks. She went quiet after I threatened to change the deal to a night in one of those.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SEVERAL DAYS LATER, we were still cultivating in Sava’s secret cultivation-enhancing glade. I was seated on the central flat stone slowly accumulating earth zeal. I’d gotten better at the task, to the point where I could work nearly three times as fast as originally. Sava was in the middle of teaching me a trick that I could use to make cultivation easier. I’d been going through a lot of zeal for my building projects and various experiments. Unless I found a way to replenish my reserves more quickly, I wouldn’t be able to keep this pace up.

  “You’re at the level where you can pull many individual pieces of earth zeal towards you at the same time. That means you’re ready for a better zeal accumulation technique. This one is simple, and it’s pretty much universal across the elements,” Sava stroked her egg, which she’d pulled off the dais to make room for me.

  “Imagine yourself in the center of a hurricane. You are in the eye, at the calm center. All around you the storm rages, spinning around you. It is slowest farthest away from you, but as the wind gets closer the power and speed of the storm grows more powerful. Imagine that you are generating this storm with every breath. With every breath, the storm brings the earth zeal closer to you, forcing it together in the surrounding air. From there it should be easy to compact it and add it to your spellheart.”

  I did as she said. The cultivation technique came to me surprisingly easily. The air swelled around me and the earth zeal spun in slow circles drifting towards me, resisting their nature as they floated through the air. I frowned. That didn’t seem right. Forcing the earth zeal to resist its nature was making the cultivation technique slower. Surely there must be a way to get the earth zeal to come towards me without compromising its natural tendencies.

  Maybe I could simply have it flow towards me across the ground? No, let it sink towards me! That felt right. Earth obeys the forces of gravity, so I just needed to shift that in my favor.

  But just as I was beginning to get lost in thought, Sava shouted something that broke my concentration.

  “It’s hatching!”

  I blinked. The egg!

  Suddenly a huge crack rippled across the shell of the greenish-yellow egg in Sava’s hands.

  I stared at it intently. I wasn’t sure if I expected a tiny fist sized-elf to pop out of there or what, but I definitely knew that thing was way too small to have a baby inside of it.

  What actually happened was even more surprising. Instead of a tiny elf, a shower of golden-green light sparkled in the air. But the sparks didn’t fade. Instead they came together and formed a glowing ball of light. It was like a firefly, but too bright to look at. There might have been something inside that ball of light, but I couldn’t make it out.

  “What the heck is that?” I asked.

  “That’s your daughter, Theo.” Sava said in a motherly tone. Which I suppose was fitting given the situation.

  “Why is she a glowing ball of light?”

  “She’s a wisp. Like all elves when first born. She won’t take physical form for a few years yet. At least not until she’s accumulated enough zeal.”

  “I know I’ve said this before, but that’s not how biology works.”

  Sava shrugged, but then her brow furrowed, and a look of concentration appeared on her face.

  “I think I may have spoken too soon... that’s not a girl, that’s a boy!” She said excitedly.

  I blinked. “You can tell?”

  “Theo, this is important! Male elves are one in a thousand, especi
ally if you’re only counting the ones who aren’t cripples. Having a fully healthy son? Your line is virtually certain to spread across the kingdom!”

  “Well, what should we name him?”

  “What about... Sofi, or Sali, or —”

  “No, no son of mine is going to be stuck with a name like Sue. Give him something tough. Something that will make the other kids think twice before pushing him around on the playground. How about Tyrael, or Thanos?”

  “You just want his name to start the same as yours!” Sava huffed.

  “I could say the same about all of your suggestions, Sava!”

  “In elvish culture, typically, the mother names the child.” Sava chided. “Although, that’s usually because the father has too many children to care.”

  “Fine, how about... Le- no, Segolas!” I’m an idiot. That name was a total rip off of —

  “I love it!” Sava said aloud. “Segolas it is. Come here Segolas.”

  Sorry kiddo.

  To my surprise the little glowing ball of light actually obeyed.

  “So, when does he grow up? Or at least become more than a wisp?”

  Sava shrugged. “This location is good for cultivation with many types of loose zeal. It will probably only take him three or four decades to build a body.”

  “Three or four decades!” I said in surprise. Then with a sudden thought I asked “Sava, how old are you?”

  At first, I feared Sava might take the inquiry personally, since back home it was often considered taboo to ask about a woman’s age. Sava however didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by the question. It probably had something to do with the fact that elves don’t seem to age.

  “Was a wisp for just under a hundred and fifty years. It takes ages for a wisp to manifest a body this far from a good vitality source,” Sava glanced at me. “Although, any wisp that hangs around you is bound to grow into an elf quite a bit faster.”

  One hundred and fifty years!

  I wasn’t able to conceal my look of surprise fast enough. She didn’t look a day over twenty.