Axiom

by Dennis Vanderkerken

  Artorian paused to make sure she was following. “A normal person likely isn’t bothered by this intake until they’re about my age, at which point the body starts to break down. Really, it’s just corruption being a nuisance. Once you get to the entry-stage of cultivating, one’s ability to actively draw Essence in speeds up the process of dying if you are not careful. So, preventing corruption intake becomes paramount. The technique you have allows you separate the drop of Essence from the whole and mostly reject the corruption from entering your bucket. I noticed you all have a little celestial glow that shows the main bias in your Essences, so your technique is not flawless.”

  “For every ten to twelve hands of time, I would say you passively gain what I consider a single unit of Essence. It’s not an exact measurement, but there’s an average I can deduce after having watched you all so long. For ease of understanding, twelve hands are an hour, as one hand is five minutes. Even if you would gain a unit in ten hands, I’ll call it twelve so you can follow this next section.” Yvessa nodded to show that she was following, and the resting man went on.

  “This part will differ slightly for everyone. The reason why I round it out is for convenience. See, I heard something interesting from Jiivra. Adding too much Essence into muscles causes ‘backfire’. Also, never add corruption to your body if you can help it. Sweet mercy, what a day that was. I lost weeks of progress cleaning that up.” Artorian sighed and rubbed his forehead, taking a good drink of water while his caretaker smirked.

  “When you actively cultivate, the rate at which you draw in natural energy increases threefold. Three and a bit. That’s the basic spiral, which is rather good even with its limitations. Tarrean draws in three times as much as that, so his technique is a vast improvement over the basic one. He somehow broke up his spiral into two additional spirals. Reminded me of a diagram from my Academy days. It seemed to be the beginning of a fractal? The shape was a… triskelion? Yes, that.”

  Yvessa laid a hand on Artorian to pause his words, her smirk now a frown. “You can cycle Essence to your eyes and study someone’s cultivation base? How? Who taught you that?”

  Artorian scoffed but dodged explaining that secret for now, “Not exactly difficult once you figure the basics of Essence out. Now, back to the lesson! For every drop of Essence you gain when actively cultivating, Tarrean gains three. Just to give you an idea of how useful it would be to enter the D-ranks. Now, that is only counting a single affinity channel. So long as nothing is interfering, you get one drop per affinity channel of every affinity so long as you are somewhere they can be gathered.”

  Her voice cut his off lecture, “Interfering?”

  Artorian derailed for a moment before finding his thoughts once more. “Oh, yes. Say that you, for some reason, could not cultivate nor passively pull Essence. You would be stuck with the Essence you had in you to sustain yourself. I’m sure you’d be fine for years, but it is possible to be cut off from replenishment, and that would be an awful fate indeed. Say that you had a water affinity. If you went somewhere, say a desert that held absolutely no water. You’d wither not just from the environment but internally as well.”

  “You have one affinity channel. Passively, you pull in one drop. Tarrean has two affinity channels. Passively, he gains two drops. I have four.” He could see her fingers drumming on her arm—more lecture was needed. “When I actively cultivate, I do not get three times the intake. I only get two. I am not using the spiral from the Memory Stone; it didn’t suit what I needed and would most likely have just killed me.”

  Yvessa cycled Essence to her eyes, determined to have a good look at his Center and whatever idiocy he was concocting. To her surprise, she could see details that normally eluded her, like a veil had been moved out of the way and she was looking at something she was holding in her hand. “Just. Just walk me through… this.”

  A veil of sorts did indeed protect the internal secrets of powerful cultivators. Normal folk were free game, having no protections, and some of the Initiates only had a wavering tarp. When Artorian had checked, he found that Tarrean and Irene possessed vast, thick veils. Yet, those protections diminished as people slept. Equally, they also strengthened when Irene had noticed she was being observed. He didn’t know how she’d known, but the veil had thickened in the span of a thought.

  His assumption was that she’d purposefully not desired her inner workings to be seen. That had made him wonder—could that mean the opposite would hold true as well? Her clear gaze gave him hope that his test was succeeding. “How many rings do you count?”

  Yvessa counted on her fingers. “Five, six… nine?”

  Artorian clapped softly with one hand on the palm of the other, pleased that she was able to see so deeply. Check-mark one success off on the list. Wanting your method to be seen was sufficient for his entry-level abilities. “Correct, I’m currently at nine.”

  Her distressed voice snapped at him, “Currently! More of these things are going to be added?”

  Artorian settled back into his pillows, quite pleased with himself. “Oh, yes. Allow me to give you a tour of Boday de` Artorian! They’re only circles when you’re looking at them straight down, as you are. In truth, they’re as you guessed—Essence tubes formed as circles. I’ve spent a grand amount of time spinning my Essence in all manners of woven varieties. I have found that not only does the corruption separate, but Essence does as well. Every circle going outwards from the Center holds a denser type of energy. From inner to outer, the separations are as follows: the purest Essence I’m able to get refined to that quality–”

  He was interrupted right away. Yvessa surprised him with her observation, but it only made him proud. “Is that inner circle going the complete opposite way of all the others?”

  “Indeed! That is the only circle I have pulling inwards, while the rest push outwards. The interactions of the spin are a little complex. I’m not merely going around in a circle, but inside to out as well, and there’s some additional direction that makes all but the innermost circle spin from its center outwards.”

  He got back on track; he loved the cleverness of this next part and hoped his caretaker would as well. “So, the innermost circle is the purest Essence. Then in order: celestial, air, fire, and water Essence, followed by circles of corruption in the same order. Water is always the densest, and it pushes away the furthest. Yet, even the thickest of water Essence will always be less dense than the lightest celestial corruption! I am spending all this Essence on the circles because it is paramount that I keep everything moving. If anything settles, that’s it—I’m dead.”

  “My survival thus far, while painful, was dependent on my body receiving large amounts of Essence to keep it functioning. While the corruption was fighting amongst itself, as they each attempted to force their identities on the others in an ugly mix, separating them has allowed some insight into their interactions.”

  He needed another drink of water from speaking so much, and he was excited to keep teaching. “So, as Essence and corruption flow into me in their raw states, like is pulled to like. The greater the speed at which I have things moving, the less difficult it is to refine something and the more it ejects unsuited components to the next circle. I found some tricks to keep the density filters without sacrificing speed, though I’m going to need to disassemble more baskets to get a grasp of it.”

  “When some celestial Essence enters my inner circle, it gets refined. The purified Essence moves inwards, and the separated corruption shunts outwards, where it is entrapped and slowly refines further to release additional Essence. The corruption is launched out of circles it doesn’t belong in, then bounces further and further until it gets trapped in ‘its’ tube.”

  “Again, when the celestial Essence refines to a greater purity, it loses density and sinks back to my inner circle. It’s like this for all the Essence types I have. I refine them all individually, yet at the same time. The purest Essence is what I use to sustain the circle-tubes that hold ever
ything together. It’s a poor technique… in that it’s horrendously wasteful.”

  “On a happier note, I am slowly making adjustments to the design, hopefully into something more permanent and stable. It takes extra Essence to ‘basket weave’, but efficiency rises. I save an extra little bit of Essence from then on. Progress is incremental, but by the celestial, I’m getting the hang of it!”

  “What is particularly entertaining is when some water corruption enters the weaved tube that holds the fire corruption. It’s as if there’s a brawl! A fiery warrior jumps from his seat, ruthlessly barrels forth, and slams his fist into the water corruption’s face to send it launching back out of a rowdy tavern. They do not at all play nice, and any interactions are violent.” Artorian was beaming sagely, still amused at the memories of the complicated interplays in his Center.

  Yvessa nudged him in the arm. “Sounds like you’re not as bored as you seem, Mr. Sleeps-All-Day. I think you’re trying to hide letting slip that you’re going to add even more circles. How would that help?”

  Artorian had his hands back up defensively. “Well, right now, I am on the verge of… *ahem*… exploding into large, meaty chunks.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Artorian! You explain yourself right now!” Yvessa refilled the water cup and handed it over, glaring at him as she waited for an explanation.

  “Make me! …Just teasing, please don’t.” He flashed her a playful smile, though she didn’t relent in the slightest. As her face puffed up, so he quickly got back to it.

  “As I was saying, I can squeeze and condense Essence down so until it fits in the tube. Even then, I can only condense so much into the rings before I reach a critical mass and… hmm, *pop*. I am already at the point where my circles are expanding in size, which leaves the spot closer to the middle of my Center a little vacant. So, I will be adding additional circles for further and further refinement and containment. There will come a point where I run out of room, but I’ve a plan for that!”

  She was clearly displeased with him as he told her this. “You are just allowing corruption to accumulate? What’s wrong with you? That’s a massive disaster waiting to happen.”

  Artorian’s waving hands were instantly back on the defensive. “No, no! I have two methods to my madness! One, confining the corruption not only neatly stores it in my circles but prevents it from roaming about inside of me and doing harm. Since the types I have are rambunctious, corruption is instead pulled out of my body and stored in my Center.”

  “Two, the compound Essence I absorb purifies me as I actively cultivate. As I take in new Essence, the starlight that strikes my Center also burns off some of the corruption I’m keeping trapped in my Center. I’m not sure what to call that kind of lost corruption, but the light just shears it away, and it flows out of me. So long as the starlight blazes and my circles rotate, I am losing more corruption than I gain on a daily basis.”

  Having the wind taken out of her sails, Yvessa just shifted in her seat. Rather ladylike even, but it came with the distinct emphasis that she wanted to backhand him. With a hard stare, she moved on to the next accusation, “Rotate doesn’t sound the same as spin. I think that you are playing with forces that no one understands, that you are going to make a mistake, and that there will be no one there that can help you. There is a reason we all use the same or similar cultivation technique.”

  Artorian was at a loss; for once, he didn’t know how to explain himself. He started with the cultivation motions. “It goes up, and… around, and they all sort of move like a ball spinning in a ball, which is also in a ball…”

  “Just… just watch. Easier to show you.” He stopped speaking, losing the thread of his own explanation. His mind dove to his Center. Yvessa cycled Essence to her eyes and watched, hoping to be able to save him if he started to accidentally kill himself. Artorian’s Center began to glow as he shifted into active cultivation. Concentrating, he let the suction of his Center grow beyond the confines of his being.

  Rather than omnidirectionally pull from the land around him—as was typical for cultivators—he aimed to only take from the direction of the sun above him. The influx of Essence changed to an upwards cone, and Yvessa saw the Essence flood into him faster. From a cone, it focused again, reshaping to a pillar angled towards the sun. Yvessa had to hold on to her seat when she felt the *thrum* of energy moving around her. Her hair frizzed, and little pops of static snapped over her garb.

  When the raw energy of the heavens crashed into the old man, his Center exploded with resplendent starlight. The innermost ring began to rotate on a new axis rather than merely spin in place on a flat plane. The circle-tube itself still spun in a variety of directions to control and contain the Essence flows, but now, the entire assembly of rings moved as a whole.

  She started to understand his earlier explanation after seeing it. When each ring spun and rotated fast enough, it had the appearance of a ball. Each ball fit inside of another ball exactly large enough to hold it. The celestial Essence ring started getting up to speed after the purified Essence one. Then the air ring followed suit, then fire. After a long minute, all the rings were spinning, and raw Essence and corruption were filtering between them at an astounding rate. It was a conflux of denser things moving to the outer edges, while the lighter energies moved further and further inwards.

  The bright blaze collected itself in his Center, visibly bleaching and searing off scraps of colored corruption in the outermost layers. Yvessa likened it to a fence which had the paint stripped away over a great many years but in fast forward as the compound starlight Essence streamed in at a pace beyond her comprehension. The sheer amount of Essence he was taking in outstripped her personal cultivation by leagues—even if her spiral was better than the circle at protecting her from corruption in the first place.

  Yvessa’s attention snapped to an out-of-place bubble of Essence developing in his Center. It didn’t follow the patterns of everything else going on, and she watched it move out of his Center entirely and travel to the back of the old man’s shoulder. It was clear that Artorian was intentionally moving that little bubble since the nesting spheres continued without pause.

  In a dark spot on his back, deep down in the smallest parts of his body, that bubble drew out corruption and scooped it up. Dark masses collected in the wobbly orb, one group of thick energy after another. Even some blood and tissue when he wasn’t careful enough; the process wasn’t flawless. The gathered corruption had been causing him pain there. With it gone, he would no longer feel it, or at least, it would hurt less.

  Yvessa couldn’t believe what she was seeing. He was cleaning his body just by shaping and moving Essence? By the celestial… he was expelling impurities! She tried to think about the situation logically. Sure, this was great for his well-being and might even let him steal a few years back, but overall, the damage was done! Or… was it?

  The bubble filled with corruption, but the large patch was also shrinking. Looking closer, a lined network of Essence was being used as fuel to sustain the shape of the scoop. It took Yvessa several minutes of deep observation to see that Artorian was pulling Essence from the celestial ring and refilling the cells with it after he stripped out the corruption. Body repair with celestial Essence? No wonder his progress was slow; he was literally patching himself up from the inside out!

  Yvessa closed her eyes, retrieving the Essence from her eyes to her Center. Her fingers pressed to her stressed temples. “You made a cultivation technique, found a way to remove corruption from your body, and managed to find an Essence source that satisfies all four of your affinity channels at once. All this… in the span of a few seasons?”

  Artorian heard her, given that he had been expecting her to speak eventually. He began slowing and stopping the process of his active cultivation. It took a full minute before she had her response, and his voice intoned a profound tiredness. Each step of properly starting, maintaining, and stopping his method took effort.

 
; “Not quite, my dear. I made the concept, and now, I’m building it after finding methods that work. I have some nasty anecdotes of failures and accidents I’d rather not speak about. The reason I know where to look for certain corruptions that have filled my body, for example, my entire left shoulder is my own fault. I lost control of my corruption tubes due to a bad Essence weave and flooded myself with corruption wherever the leak happened. I was so panicked that I shoved my purest Essence out of me. I would rather have my progress abandoned than it get devoured by all that corruption.”

  Yvessa had one of those looks again, and Artorian twiddled his thumbs. He was about to get a not-informative lecture, and he knew it. “Yes?”

  “Then why do I think that not only did you not lose your Essence, but the corruption didn’t get it either?” She spoke slowly with deliberate words. Artorian looked like he was about to try to weasel his way out of speaking like a petulant teen, but she snapped her fingers at face to force him to focus. “I’m on to you. Tell me.”

  The old man hadn’t wanted to touch on this yet. “I may have accidentally discovered how Essence is stored in an Aura. I didn’t lose a single drop of Essence; I just found a… new storage space. In truth, I’ve been using it to hide what cultivation level I might be at from all of you. I don’t know how the system works when I’m not playing by the normal rules, and I will likely never have a fractal.”

  “An Aura is incredibly useful as a storage shed, and every aspect I’ve told you about so far still has leaps and bounds of potential for individual improvement. Since I know you’re going to ask, I’ll give you the list again: your Center is a bucket, your body is a well, and your Aura is a village. When I prodded before, I couldn’t begin to understand all that beautiful space. How could I not make it where I store all the good stuff while my Center is a canvas of struggles?”