by J D Astra
Chapter 22
SHIN-SOO MADE SURE to call out a fresh taunt every time he lapped me on the field, but I didn’t let it distract me. To the contrary, I pulled each of his wasted breaths down to my core and used them as fuel for more zo.
I shuffled my feet as I made my way around the field, my thigh muscles vibrated with weakness, but I never stopped. I cycled energy, cleansed, and recycled munje all in one breath, turning myself into a machine. Mae guided me through the process, giving me much needed encouragement and instruction.
“How do you know so much about munje?” I asked out loud when I was jogging alone, far from earshot of my classmates.
“I know I had something to do with the nanite manipulation technology. I can spout off project designs for quadra and paraplegic prosthetic bodies, gene expression manipulation, and so much more, but only dealing with the human body. I know I’m supposed to know a lot more, but... I don’t.
“I’ve been self-analyzing these past few weeks, and I’ve noticed that there are huge gaps in my subroutines, personality, and knowledge base. It’s as if I wasn’t originally intended for the container you and your father found me in, like I’m just a partial download of what I’m supposed to be. How strange, right?”
‘I don’t know what most of those words are,’ I said in my mind as another pack of students passed me.
“It’s fine. All you need to know is that I can help you with all your zo recovery, and hopefully in time, more than that.”
I cycled another cloud of energy through my core, and Mae hummed in interest. “I see that you’re shedding heat in the conversion that you could be using instead. You’re losing energy this way, but your core isn’t equipped to convert it. We’ll need to make some additions tonight, so prepare for another huge meal with no pork belly.”
‘Great, my favorite.’
When we’d finished laps on the field, the other students moved into sparring, and I moved into horse stance. My legs trembled, but I kept my mind on my core and cycling energy. After three minutes of this, my legs refused to hold me any longer, and I collapsed.
Laughter flew across the field from where Shin-soo and his cronies were sparring. I gritted my teeth and returned to the pose with shaky legs. This happened again, and again, until the class ended.
Cho helped drag me to the showers where I—thankfully—washed on my own despite Cho’s concerns I would slip. His coddling was playing on my nerves, but I had to remember he was just being a good friend. I would be fine, they’d see, and this behavior would stop.
Then it was off to Woong-ji’s Core Foundations class. I was surprised to see that many of the students in her class were still working on building their first band from the material inside their core. I’d missed a lot of the talks on theory, purposeful block placement, and other important bits, but I was sure Woong-ji would fill me in at our one-on-ones. Aside from that, I was keeping up with them when it came to core creation.
The gong rang out, indicating that it was time for lunch, and the students filed out of the classroom. Shin-soo took a detour around my seat to give a firm kick to my behind that radiated up my spine. I tensed my jaw but refused to acknowledge him. I would get my retribution by catching up and surpassing him.
When the classroom was quiet, Woong-ji looked to me with a kind smile. “How are you feeling?”
Tired. Weak. Frustrated. Eons behind the others—though not in core creation, thankfully. I cut off the pathetic line of complaints in my mind and dipped my head. “Ready to begin.”
She chuckled and pulled her big, fluffy pillow off her raised dais, then brought it to the spot directly in front of me. “I was not questioning your ability, Jiyong. I know what you’re capable of, and what you will be capable of at the end of the semester if you continue on this path. I was simply asking if you were all right.”
I bowed. “Thank you, Master. Apologies. I’m doing well.”
“Liar,” Mae spouted in my head, and I ignored her.
Woong-ji chuckled again. “Other than the disc melted into your chest, your extensive burns, your muscle atrophy, the nineteen long weeks ahead of you, you mean?”
“I like her,” Mae said with a superior tone.
I sat up straight. “Those things aren’t preventing me from being well. They’re just part of my life, for now.”
Woong-ji smiled. “Your spirit is unshakable. A true Bastion. Now, let us begin.”
She walked me through the theory of Machina Core, but didn’t discuss it as if it were theory, but as if it were fact.
Mae whispered when Woong-ji broke off. “She’s right. Your core is made up of nanites, the tiny machines, but I’m still not certain what that crystal is at the center. It’s playing the role of a production component—taking raw energy and recycled nanites and making new nanites based on the instructions you’ve coded into the blocks on your band. I wish I could take it apart and study it more closely.”
‘When I’m dead, it’s all yours.’
Mae gave an audible shiver. “I’ll do my best to make sure that’s a long way out.”
An extra thirty minutes with Woong-ji didn’t feel like enough, but it was great to be able to ask questions and get answers, back and forth, without other students interrupting. I reminded myself that I’d get another hour later tonight, and that would start to compound over the coming weeks.
Cho, Yuri, and Hana reserved me a spot at a table close to the buffet, and I ate as much as I could manage in the hour I had. The woman from the kitchen brought a hot pot of fish stew out just minutes after I arrived and brought me a bowl of it.
“I’m glad to see you’re on your feet again,” she said with a smile.
I bowed. “I’m so sorry, but tell me your name again?”
She patted me on the shoulder. “I don’t think I told you my name. It’s Bia.”
“Thank you, Bia. I’m sure with your food, I’ll be strong again soon.”
“Better eat up.” With that, she returned to the kitchen.
When I turned back to the table, Hana was grinning ear to ear. “What?” I asked, confused by her devious smile.
She shook her head and pulled her tea to her lips. “Nothing.”
I put down as much of the fish stew as I could before my stomach threatened to rip open. “Can’t I just convert the food into munje and eat more?” I asked Mae as I sat back, holding my gut.
She whispered through the damaged speaker on my chest, “Your body has to break the food down first to get access to the nanites stored inside it, then mobilize them. As soon as I find a way around it, I’ll let everyone know.”
Cho leaned in. “Not everyone, right?” He looked across the room and whispered, “I don’t want Shin-soo knowing.”
I chuckled, then stopped abruptly and held my stomach as the food threatened to come back up my throat.
“No, we won’t be giving our enemies a leg up,” Mae whispered back through the speaker.
The warning gong rang out, and I rose to my feet with the help of my cane.
Yuri pointed to it. “You should get one with a sword inside. That would be cool.”
I cringed. “I hope not to need one again for a very long time once I recover.”
“Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug.
Yuri walked at my slow place to En Manipulation and caught me up on what I’d missed. We were still working with water, but we were changing its states—from liquid, to gas, to solid—and creating snow, rain, sleet, or steamy clouds.
This was something I was already familiar with from manipulating water back home, and I was grateful I wasn’t so behind in this class. I was sure my luck of keeping up would end when it came time for the li and ry classes.
It was exhausting work to shift the water’s state as rapidly as the master asked for, but I managed to survive until the gong rang for the next class. By the time I made it to Munje Recycling I was ready to sleep. Mae was right. I’d overdone it. She hummed a motherly, “I told you so,” and I tried not to rol
l my eyes, lest Woong-ji think I was doing it to her.
We were working on zo recycling in today’s class, which was something I’d done all morning just to keep standing. Woong-ji mentioned, just as Mae had, about losing the heat in the conversion.
“This heat will get into your body and make you hot. Do too much of it, and you can melt your brain. Don’t melt your brain; some of you need it.” The class chuckled at this.
“Learning to convert heat is tedious. It takes concentration. Heat is not munje, it is raw energy, and that is much harder to see and hold onto. There are many methods of heat recycling, but I will teach you what I believe to be the easiest. It is not the most complete method, which you will learn in your fourth year—if you make it—but this method will keep you from killing yourself in combat when you need to recycle as much zo as you can.”
Like the cleansing exercise, Woong-ji had us visualize the heat inside us. “When recycling zo becomes automatic, the next step is to see the heat you lose without thinking. Focus on your core as you recycle the zo, feel the warmth, put a color to it, watch that color seep out and into your body.”
I looked inward and brought my mind’s eye to focus on my core, then began cycling out some of the used zo from the morning’s class. I watched the dull, used munje push through the crystal and half the same amount of energy come back out into my band, ready to be reborn into new munje.
But I wasn’t concerned with that energy. I wanted the heat. Warmth. Fire. Like the burning when Mae and I fused together. A tiny zap of blue lightning carved its way out of my core and off into my body. Then another. I saw it!
Woong-ji continued. “You might conjure smoke, water, gravel, or any number of visualizations for the heat, but the important part is learning to harness it. You can visualize whatever you need to, but collect that heat and run it back through your core. If you see water, create a bale. If you see gravel, create a shovel. Smoke, create a chimney. Funnel that heat back into your core and process it like raw energy from your surroundings.”
The examples she gave didn’t help me. How could I capture lightning?
Mae’s face appeared in my mind’s eye, watching the zaps of blue lightning, which almost threw me out of conversion. “Try a lightning rod?” she offered.
‘What is that?’ I vocalized in my mind, and she smiled, then her entire body appeared next to my core. It was disorienting, but when she began to draw with her arms, showing attachments linked to my core, I saw more clearly.
‘Use the metal to attract the lightning back into the core.’
“Exactly,” Mae said with a smile as she disappeared.
That would require building an actual component onto my core instead of just visualizing a solution.
Mae chuckled. “What do you think everyone else is doing? They’re not just imagining a bucket or a shovel. Those are the symbols of the designs they’re building to collect their heat. Her methods are genius, honestly. I’m taking notes from her.”
I blew out the air in my lungs and cut off the cycling of zo, then focused on creating the rods that would loop the lightning back through my crystal when the heat tried to escape. By the time the gong for the end of class rang, I’d created a very tiny sliver of metal coming off the bottom of my reservoir.
Woong-ji clapped her hands. “This was good progress for everyone. I’d like to see you successfully recapturing a quarter of your lost heat energy by next class.”
When I tried to stand, my legs buckled under me. I pulled my cane up to catch myself before I fell, but gritted my teeth at my forgetfulness and my weakness. I still had a long way to go.
Chapter 23
DINNER WAS QUICK SINCE I could barely fill my stomach with the first round of food. Hana, Cho, Yuri, and Mae all tried to convince me to eat seconds, but it wasn’t possible. I was exhausted and just wanted the day to end already.
But I still had an extra class with Woong-ji. No matter. She was my favorite instructor by far, and I knew that she would be forgiving of my status. Cho walked me to her classroom, but it was empty. He offered to stay with me, but I told him I’d be asleep. The pillows were a great comfort, and I relaxed into them as he left me.
Mae was silent, allowing me to rest until Woong-ji came in. “You’re here already.”
I sat up from the pillow with a start. “Yes, apologies. I was weary.”
“Weary,” she said with a chuckle. “You’re barely conscious.”
“I’m ready to learn,” I said, sitting up straight and opening my eyes wide.
She laughed at this and pulled her pillow down next to mine. “Jiyong, sometimes rest is the real remedy. I’m not going to teach you more recycling techniques tonight.”
“But I need to learn,” I protested, my heart pounding.
She put an aged hand on my shoulder. “Youth. You’re so concerned with what’s next, you forget what’s right now. I will teach you something tonight, but it will not be recycling.”
My brow furrowed. “What will I learn?”
“Restful meditation.”
“Restful meditation?” I asked with a quirked brow.
She sighed and pulled her joined hands to heart center as she closed her eyes. “I must explain something so you can understand. War is the hardest experience you will ever know. War is a battle for the mind, soul, and body. Sometimes, sleep is enough for the body, but not enough for the mind or soul. When that happens, we need restful meditation.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t been in war. Busa-nan isn’t at war... I don’t understand.”
She hummed. “You’re not at war?”
“Well... no?” I asked.
She cracked an eyelid and looked at me. “You don’t fight off your family’s need for care every day?”
How did she know that?
“I—I prepared for that,” I stammered the words.
She nodded. “And so you battled with machines to prepare for your family’s needs before you came.”
The blood drained from my face and I swallowed. “I...”
She looked at me, confused. “You worked at the arborum before coming here, right? You battled with broken machines, fighting to fix them. Your ma munje is exceptional, after all.”
“Yes,” I said with too much enthusiasm, then dialed it back. “Yes, I worked at the arborum. I won’t be able to return to that in the off season, and I’ll need to find more work to support my family for my second year.”
“This!” She pointed at me. “This is the war you wage with the future. I will teach you to pretend the war doesn’t exist so that you can live right now and do what needs to be done to win the future war.”
“Just shut up and learn, Jiyong,” Mae groaned.
I nodded to Woong-ji. “I’m ready to start living right now.”
“Let’s begin,” she said as she returned her hands to her heart center and closed her eyes.
I mimicked her pose and evened out my breathing. After a few minutes, she spoke again. “Stop thinking about anything that’s happened or that might happen. Think only of your breathing, the rising of your chest, the expanding of your lungs. Feel your legs on the pillow, the dobok on your skin, the air through your nostrils. Be what, where, and when you are right now. Let everything else go.”
I tried to do as she instructed, but my mind wandered to what had happened in the street fight, Hana’s wide, terrified eyes, and the pain that arced through my body. Every time I dismissed a thought, a new one popped up.
“Master?” I asked, growing frustrated with my lack of results. “Despite my efforts to focus on right now, I am seeing moments from the past. Should I try focusing on my core or cycling energy?”
She chuckled. “That would defeat the purpose of the exercise. It is normal to see the past or future imaginings, things you’re worried about or excited for. It’s a natural human compulsion to fill the head with thoughts, keeping it busy so we can’t expand our consciousness.
“The mind must be tamed, just like the
core, if you are to access your full potential. Keep doing your best. You may not be able to clear your mind completely even after several hours of practice. Cleansing the mind takes strength, and when you start, your mental muscles are weak. You must strengthen them like you would any other muscle; effort and time.”
She returned to silence, and I recentered my focus on my breathing. Time seemed to drag on into eternity as I tried, and failed, to clear my mind of all thoughts and images. I found myself yelling in the void of my mind to try to silence the constant stream of thought, but it didn’t work.
How long had I been sitting there, battling myself for quiet? Hours? Was it well into the night?
Finally, Woong-ji broke the maddening silence outside of me. “That’s enough for tonight. I want you to get plenty of rest.”
I blinked my eyes open, startled to see my surroundings. I’d spent so long in the streets where we were attacked nights ago, and in my hospital bed as I talked to Mae, that I’d forgotten where we were.
“You’re disoriented?” Woong-ji asked with concern.
I nodded. “A little.”
She hummed. “Perhaps we pushed too hard on the first try. I want you performing a minimum of ten minutes of meditation every day, preferably at the start of your day if you can. Then slowly over the weeks, graduate to fifteen minutes, then twenty, and so on.”
“How long was that?” I asked as I looked to the window. It was twilight outside. Sparkling neon lights blinked around the city central where buildings towered forty stories up. Rainbows of light projected over the palace in its white, glittering stone pagodas.
Woong-ji touched my shoulder gently. “It was thirty minutes.”
“What?” I demanded loudly as I lost my balance. I threw my hands back and caught myself. Woong-ji smiled kindly.
“Your mind is a valuable tool that many munje users overlook. When you need to think clearly, you must have a quiet mind. To focus on one thing, you must only see and hear one thing. If you are concerned about a teammate in a coming battle, will you be focused with all your attention on how to execute that battle?”
