by A F Kay
Lead
Copper
Silver
Gold
Gem Levels
Jade
Topaz
Sapphire
Diamond
Divine Levels
Angel
Archangel
Demigod
Deity
The next page contained a few large words: Harvesting and Meridian Poses (Basic). Ruwen turned the page and read the caption: Harvester Open Pose.
The picture under the caption had a standing figure with their arms above their head, palms facing each other with fingers pointing upward, and legs shoulder-width apart.
The next page read: Harvester Closed Pose.
This time the figure looked the same except their wrists were crossed over their bellybutton.
The next twelve pages each had a pose that referenced a Meridian and had a picture of the body part it represented. Ruwen thought some of the poses looked similar to the statues he’d seen on the islands in the previous room.
The next section read: Breathing Techniques (Basic). This page didn’t have pictures. Instead, each breathing technique had a short description. He looked at the only two listed.
Condensing: The most fundamental breath. Inhale until your lungs are at capacity. Pull in sharply with the diaphragm as if you were coughing and focus this pressure inward, exerting the force on your center as you Harvest. Breathe out sharply and take three regular breaths before repeating.
Fortifying: The most used breath. Exhale sharply, emptying your lungs and minimizing the distance between Meridians. Take a short shallow breath immediately followed by exhalation. Repeat seven times, almost as if panting. Take three deep breaths exhaling slowly after each. Repeat from the beginning.
Both of them were bizarre ways to breathe. Ruwen couldn’t imagine they would be suitable for anything. But they must be important if they were in this book.
He turned the page and saw a new section titled: Refinement Forms (Apprentice).
Ruwen grew excited. These were actual forms, not just single poses. If what Tremine had said was true, then these forms were valuable. The librarian had said countries had gone to war over things like this. Ruwen hurriedly turned the page.
But the page didn’t budge.
He leaned down and tried again, but all the pages remained locked in place. The word Apprentice jumped out at him. Level twenty was the first level of Apprentice. Ruwen’s Cultivation Stage was only nineteen, which made him an Initiate. It appeared the book would only let him see the Refinement Forms when he gained another Cultivation level. He had a quest for that, too. It was the only one left from the initial twenty Madda had given him. She had thought it would take him decades. Instead, he’d done most of the quests in less than six hours. Hours which he remembered nothing about.
He brought up the quest details:
Pick One Side
As a Novice, you Cultivated into two dimensions and as an Initiate, three. An Apprentice must embrace the whole, twisting their center to encompass both simultaneously.
Reward: Cultivation Rank of Apprentice (Stage 20)
Reward: 2,000 experience
Well, that still didn’t make any sense. And any kind of twisting was impossible because Ruwen’s Spirit wasn’t dense enough to properly manipulate. At the current level of Harden, he had to channel one hundred Energy to affect the Spirit inside him. It just wasn’t sustainable. In all honesty, the only way Harden became practical was at level five of the spell, when the cost would be reduced to twenty Energy per second.
He had five remaining spell points and would have to use four of them to advance Harden to level five. That seemed like a terribly steep cost. There were a lot of other spells that he would love to learn. Spells that would help him get to level six faster.
Memories of Blapy’s reaction to his Harvesting came to mind. She had been impressed with the amount of work Uru had invested in Ruwen, which gave him the ability to Cultivate. From that perspective, anything he did to improve those skills couldn’t be wrong.
Even though he didn’t want to invest the spell points in Harden, it was the logical thing to do. He brought up his Profile and switched to the Spells. Finding Harden, he added four more points to it and hit Accept. It was now his most powerful spell, and he wanted to throw up.
Harden would now increase the density of an object within fifteen feet of Ruwen. Most importantly, the channeling cost to work on the world's hardest substances was now only twenty Energy per second even though the maximum of the spell remained one hundred.
Anxious to see the results of this expensive spell, Ruwen closed his eyes and found his center. The head-sized ball remained, and the area around his center contained a multitude of tiny flecks like a gust of wind had scattered dust around a room. This must be the Spirit he unknowingly Cultivated whenever he entered his center. As his near-death demonstrated, he needed to control that. When he finished with this, he needed to try those two poses.
Focusing on the Spirit, he pictured the symbol for Harden and channeled twenty Energy to the spell.
The head-sized ball of Spirit disappeared.
Ruwen’s concentration shattered, and he opened his eyes as he canceled the spell. He squinted at the bright desert light and breathed deeply in and out until his thoughts settled. Spirit gained by six hours of constant Cultivating had just disappeared in a blink.
Closing his eyes, he found his empty center. But it didn’t make sense for it to be empty. Harden didn’t destroy, it only made things denser. Maybe the Spirit remained. Perhaps, it just couldn’t be seen.
Ruwen immediately thought of his Magnify ability. But would that work on something inside his body? The idea seemed ludicrous, but he toggled it on anyway.
It didn’t make any difference. The view with it on or off was emptiness. Wanting to make sure, Ruwen slowly moved his gaze across his inner self. On the third pass, a glint of light appeared. He focused on it, and his Magnify brought it into focus.
A tiny ball of Spirit, the size of a grain of sand, spun in his center. The vast ball of Spirit that had terrified him before now looked pitiful. Ruwen gently passed his mental hand through the Spirit, and it moved a bit before his hand passed through it. Even at this density, it remained a gas.
Ruwen toggled off Magnify and opened his eyes again. Harden had worked better than expected, and now he had a new problem. From the quest Pick One Side, it seemed like Ruwen needed to manipulate the Spirit in his center. But now it was so small he could barely detect it. If he had any hope of completing that quest and reading further into the book, he needed to gather more Spirit.
He studied the Harvester Open and Closed poses for a minute. Then he opened his Void Band and placed the book, still open, in his Inventory. He didn’t want to close it because he wasn’t sure he could get it open again. Especially now that his Spirit could barely be seen.
Ruwen stood with his wrists crossed at his waist. For the first time, he focused his thoughts on his center while keeping his eyes open. The desert, with nothing to distract him but sand, made this easier.
Slowly Ruwen separated his wrists, his arms stiff as they moved. As soon as his arms rose, the world grew dark. Ruwen immediately stopped moving, and the darkness paused as well. He lowered his arms, and everything became brighter until his wrists were crossed.
Still focused inward, Ruwen raised his arms again. This time, when the light faded, he continued. As his arms passed his hips, the world became black. Slowly Ruwen continued raising his arms. Almost immediately, the world brightened again, but the temperature dropped dramatically. The sudden drop in temperature caused the wind to whip viciously around him, and he squinted his eyes to keep out the sand.
As Ruwen’s arms continued higher, the temperature returned to normal, but nothing else seemed to have changed. He stood there with his arms in the air for a minute. Wondering if he could skip the intermediary phases, he brought his arms straight down, not in an arc, and crossed
his wrists at his waist. The light or temperature didn’t change this time.
When the light had dimmed, and when the temperature had dropped, Ruwen had seen wisps of Spirit enter his center. But just past the temperature change, the Spirit had stopped flowing, even though his arms had been in a higher pose.
Ruwen sat back down and thought about it for a minute. He was thrilled that the poses seemed to give him control over his Harvesting while focused inward or lightly meditating. But for some reason, once his arms rose, the Spirit Harvesting had stopped. Either that meant he had posed wrong, or nothing in this pocket dimension was affected by the higher pose. The poses were simple, and he didn’t think they were wrong, but there was only one way to be sure.
Yes, there was only one conclusion. If Ruwen needed more Spirit to continue forward with his quest and the book, then he needed to go someplace where there were things to Harvest, and he could gain Spirit without being killed.
And that meant someplace other than here or in Blapy.
Chapter 29
Ruwen stepped back through the door and into the Harvesting room in Blapy. The air here felt wet compared to the dry air of the pocket dimension. His clock read 1:01 AM, giving him two and a half hours before he needed to meet Hamma and Sift.
He turned in a slow circle, looking at all the statues. Even though he had condensed his Spirit into something barely visible, he knew it still constituted a significant amount since it had surrounded him at one time. He didn’t want to leave without at least trying one of the Fortifying poses. But which one?
He wanted to Fortify his entire body, but he needed to start somewhere. Sift’s heart had reached the Jade level and stopped a crossbow bolt. And Jade was only the first step in the Gem levels. What could a person survive if they leveled to Diamond? Or one of the Spiritual levels?
Shaking his head, Ruwen refocused on the statues. Torso would be a good choice since it looked like the largest Meridian and he would get a lot of protection from it. But he also had armor for his torso. Even though his cloak’s hood provided protection, he rarely had it up, so his head was probably the most vulnerable.
The brain had a separate Meridian, and while Ruwen wanted to protect his mind, there were other Meridian’s that would provide more immediate benefit. Fortifying his Light Meridian, for instance, would protect his shoulders, neck, and head. Protecting everything from his shoulders up felt like the right decision, so he found the Light Meridian and walked across the bridge to its statue.
The statue had been carved out of marble, and the details of the woman were soft and indistinct. She sat with legs crossed, her torso leaning forward at a forty-five-degree angle. Her arms were held as if she hugged a large tree, and her fingers just touched each other. Her head was thrown back, and she stared up into the sky.
“That doesn’t look comfortable,” Ruwen muttered to himself. “None of these do, actually.”
He had never been the most flexible, probably because he had ignored his body until lately, but he sat down in front of the statue and tried to mirror it. When he thought he’d done an adequate job, he closed his eyes and focused on his center.
After a few seconds, Ruwen triggered Magnify to help him find the condensed ball. It had already grown bigger as the Spirit’s natural movement caused the gaseous Spirit to begin expanding again. He needed to figure out a way to keep it compressed without regularly using Harden.
Interestingly, a thread of Spirit formed and grew upward toward his head. He turned off Magnify and held the pose for ten minutes. Opening his Inventory, he spun the cutout and looked for any difference. His shoulders slumped at the result.
Meridian - Location - Level - Progress to Next Level
Light - Head/Neck - Lead - 0.01%
One-hundredth of one percent! Ruwen calculated how long at this rate it would take to level just one of his twelve Meridians to Copper from Lead: ten straight weeks.
He took out The Worker’s Guide to Harvesting and reread part of the section on breathing.
Fortifying: The most used breath. The Harvester exhales sharply, emptying their lungs and minimizing the distance between Meridians. A short shallow breath is immediately followed by exhalation. Repeat seven times, almost as if panting. Take three deep breaths exhaling slowly after each. Repeat from the beginning.
How could this technique make any difference? Ruwen couldn’t think of a more awkward way to breathe. He practiced a few times and looked around to make sure he remained alone. He felt foolish. It must be in the book for a reason, though, and it couldn’t hurt to try.
Ruwen assumed the pose and started the strange breathing. The rapid breaths made him a bit dizzy like he was hyperventilating, but he managed to mostly follow the pattern. After cycling through the pattern a few times, his neck and head grew warm. He paused and focused on his center. This time, he didn’t need Magnify to see the shaft of Spirit that climbed from the tiny ball up into his head.
With new enthusiasm, he set a timer for ten minutes and then focused on the breathing pattern. He had to stop every few cycles to breathe normally, but he stuck with it. When the timer went off, he quickly checked his progress.
Meridian - Location - Level - Progress to Next Level
Light - Head/Neck - Lead - 0.11%
The breathing had increased his efficiency by ten times! And he knew he wasn’t doing it exactly right yet. This was much more manageable, and would only take a week at this pace, much better than ten weeks. And there might be other variables that could help improve the speed. If he had more Spirit, he wondered if it might increase the pace. Just one more reason to find a way to Harvest soon.
He managed another forty minutes of the pose and breathing before the Vertigo debuff wouldn’t go away anymore. Still, for his first time Fortifying himself, he felt good about the results.
Meridian - Location - Level - Progress to Next Level
Light - Head/Neck - Lead - 0.57%
Ruwen returned to the main island and then walked through the large boulder and back into Blapy. Or maybe he’d never left, Blapy hadn’t been very clear on that. But she had been clear on stupidity. Like not reading something important when it’s given to you.
He walked into the library and sank into one of the reading chairs. Pulling out The Black Pyramid: Rules, Guidelines, and Procedures, he started to read on page one.
“Reading is bad for you,” Sift said.
Ruwen looked up as Sift dropped into a chair across from Ruwen. He glanced at his clock and saw it was 3:15 AM. He’d been reading for over an hour.
Ruwen had made it through three-quarters of the book and felt comfortable finishing the last bit later since the previous couple of sections had dealt with groups well above Ruwen’s current level. He put the book away.
“You are bad for me,” Ruwen responded.
Sift nodded. “True. You learn anything?”
Ruwen leaned forward. He had actually. “Did you know you can’t desecrate the bodies of the dead creatures here?”
“I think you made that word up,” Sift said.
“It means you can’t disrespect their bodies. Like cut them up, or play with them, or –”
“You play with dead things? That is weird,” Sift said.
“I don’t play with them. I’m just telling you what the book said.”
Sift cocked his head. “Did it give that example?”
“Well no, not exactly, I was just –”
“See what happens when you read too much?”
Ruwen shook his head. “There are rules on power leveling, on group composition, on the number of artifacts you can equip, the level of your gear compared to your Class level, Cultivating isn’t allowed until level fifty –”
“Sounds like you wasted your time. None of that applies to us.”
Ruwen remembered the lightning arcing through his body. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Well, I learned two things since I sat down. First, I’m hungry enough to eat four pancakes instead o
f three. Second, I am an amazing person. Because I still accept you even though you want to play with dead things.”
Sift stood and walked toward the library door.
Ruwen followed. “I do not. That was just an example I thought of because your vocabulary is smaller than a Clasper’s.”
Sift nodded. “Funny you should bring that up. In this very room, I found you wearing a Clasper like a shirt. You are really sick.”
“I was not wearing it! My hands melted through it.”
Sift laughed and touched his arm to the wall.
“Kitchen,” Sift said and then stepped through the portal.
“Hey! I thought I was going to die!” Ruwen said, following him.
The only light in the kitchen focused on a single table. Sift grabbed a plate and placed five pancakes on it. He carefully put two sausages on each pancake and then drenched the whole thing with syrup.
“What happened to four?” Ruwen asked.
“They’re warm. Findley must have just made a new batch,” Sift said. He tilted his head back and yelled into the darkness. “Findley, I love you.”
Ruwen grabbled two plates and added food for him and Hamma.
“You don’t have anything specific to Cultivation in your interface, do you?” Ruwen asked.
Sift shook his head, his mouth full of food.
“You can’t wait? You have no manners.”
Sift swallowed. “The other four are my manners pancakes.”
Ruwen shook his head. “Can you try flipping the person cutout in your Inventory that displays all your gear? Maybe there is something on the other side?”
Sift’s eyes glazed as he focused on his interface. “Nothing. My interface is the basic one you had before Ascendancy.”
“So you can’t see attributes, skills, or abilities?” Ruwen asked just to confirm.
“Nope. I even have to remember my tasks. They aren’t made into quests for me to track. It’s just not fair.”
