Chapter 18: Peaceful Cultivation
Damon sat utterly still in an upright, cross-legged position, yet there was no rigidity in his muscles. His breathing had slowed to the point that it barely stirred his chest. His hands were placed upon his knees, making a specific seal with each hand. Tiny motes of arcane energy, invisible to the normal eye, slowly gathered around him and entered his body through his chest. He maintained this posture for around two hours, when he suddenly breathed out heavily.
“A cycle of arcane cultivation takes around two hours, similar to mind cultivation. Another resemblance between the two paths is the inability to gain any additional benefits from doing more than one round of cultivation per day. Unfortunately, progress in accumulating arcane power is much slower, perhaps due to using inefficient arts or perhaps due to not cultivating in the optimal environment needed for the Flame Mastery Arts. I may have selected unwisely… However, it is only a trivial matter. Both the manuals in my possession are insufficient for my aspirations and will eventually require replacement.”
Damon stood up and stretched out his limbs. He had been cultivating on top of a large, flat rock next to the lake. The villagers had crafted him a large wooden house in only a week at the opposite end of the lake from their village. This location was much closer to the waterfall, so the noise could become bothersome for others, yet Damon found it oddly calming.
Several months had already passed since Damon had settled near this village. His injured foot had now completely healed up, and he was able to cultivate in peace. He had only gathered a few strands of arcane energy, even with daily cultivation, meaning he had yet to awaken his Arcane Node. His mind cultivation, however, was progressing steadily, and it seemed as though he would break through to the late stage soon.
Although Damon had already reached the peak of the mid stage much earlier, every advancement between minor or major realms contained a bottleneck. Breaking through a minor stage was much simpler, only requiring persistence and effort in cultivation. The major realm bottleneck, though, was much more difficult to transcend. The chances of succeeding without good cultivation arts, powerful supplementary elixirs, or special techniques were very slim. However, this was a matter for the future Damon to worry about. He had read about this in a tome left behind by Feylis, causing him to understand why it was imperative that he join a powerful association.
Although the villagers acted quite cordially toward him, a sense of distance remained between them and him. This was inevitable, as mortals would always fear a power that was too mysterious and unknown to them. There was one exception to this, though.
“Older Brother Damon! Older Brother Damon!” A youthful voice called out from afar as a young boy with straw-like hair ran over through the forest path.
“Lyndon, you’re back here again? How many times do I need to tell you to go study the books under your father or play with the other children? Why are you always coming to look for me?” Damon shook his head in exasperation at the sight of the boy.
Lyndon, the village chief’s son, had been coming to visit him on a daily basis for around three months now. Initially, he was quite hesitant and shy, though he quickly became accustomed to Damon’s personality and became lively once more. Recently, he had even been pestering Damon to teach him archery and his mysterious powers.
“Older Brother Damon, have you completed your morning meditation already? That’s good! That means you have the time to teach me to shoot arrows, right?” The boy excitedly ran circles around Damon as he spoke.
Damon couldn’t help but smile as he saw the boy. He was reminded of his childhood, before the bandits had attacked. He had similarly begged and pleaded with his father to teach him how to shoot when he was around that age. Alas, the past remained the past, and it could not be changed, no matter how powerful he grew.
“Okay, I can teach you. But only after you complete a trial first.”
“Yay!!! What is it? I can do anything really quickly!” The boy was ecstatic at the thought of receiving Damon’s teachings.
“First, you must train your body. You must run back and forth between here and the village 20 times a day, and you must also strengthen the muscles in your upper body. See that rock over there? Start by lifting that one up over your head 100 times a day. When that becomes easy, use a larger rock. When the rock reaches the size of a crate, you will be strong enough to learn archery. It won’t be easy to do this. Are you still willing?” Damon asked light-heartedly.
“Yes! I will accomplish this task!” The boy yelled before immediately turning around to run back to the village.
Damon watched on cheerfully until the boy disappeared before entering his house. He sat down at a desk and opened up the book sitting on top. It was the guidebook on enchantment. He had no need to study the first-tier spellbook, as he had yet to awaken his Arcane Node. He studied the guidebook for several hours; however, his face was still filled with confusion.
The guidebook is relatively straightforward. It describes several types of runes, with sketches on the corresponding pages. It explains that to learn the art of Runecraft, you must study extensively to memorize and comprehend as many runes as possible. However… What does it mean by comprehension? It’s easy enough to memorize the pattern of the rune and draw it out. I guess it’s not as simple as it seems.
Damon had spent his mornings cultivating both the mind and arcane paths. Afterward, he spent the rest of the day studying and analyzing the piles of books originally belonging to Feylis. Through his increased acuity and near-perfect memory provided by the awakening of his Mind Node, he had easily understood and absorbed knowledge from most of the books. This book on runes, however, had stumped him for a while.
“I’ll just continue to study, and I’m sure I will come to understand it eventually.” Damon reaffirmed his determination and continued to pore over the book.
Half a year later, Damon stood alone in a forest. His hands were making strange seals as he focused on Dawn’s Edge hovering in front of him. After a bit, Dawn’s Edge started to blur indistinctively before finally splitting into two exact copies.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Wow! So, this is the ability to conjure a mirror image that was described in the Mindspire Tempering Sutra. Even I can’t be certain which is the real one through sight alone…” Damon exclaimed and then reached out to touch the two identical swords. His right hand grasped the real one’s hilt while his left hand just passed through it. It did not dematerialize immediately, lasting a minute more before dispersing into nothingness.
“So, they remain even when touched. It must be due to the amount of mental power I used to form it. Let’s try to conjure a moving image next…”
During this half a year, Damon had accumulated enough mental power and finally managed to reach the late stage Node Awakening realm.
Upon reaching this realm, he quickly read through the Mindspire Tempering Sutra manual once more, discovering two new abilities he could train in the section pertaining to the late stage of Node Awakening. The first was the basic ability that all mind cultivators at this realm would be able to use. The ability was to conjure mirror images.
Damon continued to train this new ability.
Several weeks later, a yell of surprise came from Damon’s house in the middle of the night. Damon was sitting at his desk, looking down with his eyes radiating a pure opalescent glow. He had been practicing a second ability that was written down in the Sutra.
It was a secret technique developed by Silas called Truesight, which was performed by channeling mental power into your eyes following a specific path. Although the use of mental power and Mindsense already gave one the ability to see through most falsities, such as illusions, this further enhanced this ability and allowed you to discern the truths of reality.
When Truesight was employed, it shrouded the world in a grayscale tone, allowing you to see the flow of essence itself. Essence was displayed as a bright white light, becoming brighter with increased concentration, whereas the lack of essence was displayed as black.
Damon had already become somewhat proficient at using this ability due to training with it every couple of hours. He had become addicted to looking at everything and seeing whether it contained higher or lower concentrations of essence. By a stroke of fortune, he had glanced down at the enchantment guidebook while using this ability.
When Damon’s line of sight landed on the rune, what he saw was not just lines. He could see the image the rune represented. For example, when he looked at the ‘fire’ rune, he could see a burning flame atop the rune. When he looked at the ‘water’ rune, he saw a small rippling pool of water hovering above the rune. He also glanced at some sheets of parchment on the desk where he had tried to replicate the runes himself. Most of the runes he had copied did not manifest any image using Truesight. Even if it did, it was very weak and unsteady compared to the vivid image he could see from the runes in the guidebook.
With a sudden flash of inspiration, Damon copied the rune while inspecting it with his Truesight. The copied rune manifested the exact same image. This meant that drawing runes while using this ability allowed him to bypass the necessary comprehension required to draw the runes, though his lack of arcane power meant the runes could not be activated.
Damon continued experimenting with his Truesight and Runeography. He came to another incredible discovery. Upon copying it once, he could produce the same results continuously, even without the use of Truesight. With this extensive research, he had also finally begun to understand more about Runeology after his initial confusion.
“The runes used in Runecraft are a primordial form shaped by reality itself. Even for the same rune, they can vary slightly in shape as the exact position of the lines, the direction of the strokes, and the intent behind the Runemaster will produce different results. No two runemasters could produce the same results; every rune is unique. This is why it is said that comprehension is necessary to draw a rune. Without understanding what ‘fire’ was, one could not draw a fire rune that actually produces fire. It will probably just end up producing a spark or something. To think that Truesight could bypass that step…”
Damon continued to study Runeology deep into the night.
More than one year later, Damon sat atop a boulder, fletching some wooden arrows as he watched Lyndon lift a rock the same size as his small body over his head. He had actually become so strong! Damon was very surprised at the results Lyndon was showing. This boy… Does he have such incredible talents in the physical path that he was able to reach this stage without cultivating? Does he have an innate physique? As his thoughts reached this point, he used Truesight to inspect the boy while he wasn’t looking.
Hmmm? Surprisingly, Damon saw a bright light emanating from the boy’s body. It was rotating in a spiral, as though the body was absorbing the atmospheric essence. No way… Is this actually an innate physique? Did I stumble across a genius? Damon’s mouth hung wide open as he watched the boy continue the exercise.
After a few more lifts, Lyndon threw down the rock on the ground and turned to Damon with a large, bright smile on his face.
“Look, Older Brother Damon! That’s 100 repetitions with a rock the size of a crate! Along with my run from earlier, I’ve finally succeeded in finishing the first task! Will you teach me how to shoot the bow and the other mysterious methods you use now?” Lyndon scampered over to Damon and began jumping up and down in excitement.
Damon looked down at the boy, who had now grown enough that the top of his head reached Damon’s chin. His body was now incredibly lean and muscular, even more so than Damon’s own. After inspecting Lyndon for a while longer, He withdrew his bow from his storage pouch and tossed it over to him, along with a quiver of newly fletched arrows. He would always spend time fletching whenever he was deep in thought. The simple action of shaping an arrow and sharpening the tip gave him a sense of contentment. After spending over a year at this village, he had managed to stockpile a very large quantity in his storage pouch.
“Here you go. First things first, go and practice shooting. I’ll guide you after you’ve given it a go yourself.
“Yes, Older Brother Damon! By the way, where did you learn how to fletch arrows?” Lyndon asked.
“My father. He was a fletcher. I learned by watching him. I can teach you as well, if you’d like.” Damon replied, thinking Lyndon resembled his childhood self quite a bit.
“Yes, please, Older Brother Damon!” The boy responded enthusiastically after getting the response he was after, and then scurried away while holding the bow and quiver high above his head.
Damon smiled and shook his head at the sight before becoming slightly grave as he looked down at his own body. His concentration was focused internally, on a weakly flashing node within his chest. This was his Arcane Node. After all this time, he had finally managed to awaken it, but there was a serious problem.
Two masked men walked out of a general goods store back at the riverside town. Behind them, the interior of the store was a complete mess. The shelves and other furniture had been blasted apart, and the shopkeeper was lying face down in a pool of his own blood.
“We’ve finally found the trail. That boy has been hiding at some tiny mortal village this entire time. Send word to the Deputy Hall Master, along with the location. Afterward, we’ll go and find him first for extra merit.”
Favourite Psion ability so far?
