Chapter 9: What is Cultivation

  At the manor of the nobleman Seweryn:

  "You're joking! What wonderful news this is!" the lord marveled when Justinian informed him that Miss Wachowska looked quite favorably upon his proposal.

  "She did note, however, that she will first send a list of conditions through one of her people, which your lordship must fulfill to win her hand."

  "Naturally! There is no law more sacred to devils than the law of payment for a spouse!" Seweryn shouted cheerfully. He also snapped his fingers for the servants to go immediately to the walls to watch for a courier from the lady.

  The wait, as Justinian expected, was made pleasant with a feast. After three hours, one of the servants burst into the salon where the men were staying.

  "Honorable nobleman! The letter is here!"

  "Then give it to me, and be quick about it, or I'll have you beaten with sticks!" an ecstatic Seweryn urged. The letter was soon brought. The Sarmatian quickly began to read it, but the longer he did, the more worried he looked.

  "I..." he said finally. "...am forced to refuse."

  Belisara, who was present for all of this, narrowed her eyes, sending a glance at Justinian.

  "Why is that?" the young boy asked.

  "She expects me to take her surname! Her surname! Do you know what an insult that is to a devil's reputation, man?!"

  As soon as he uttered these words, shouts immediately rose from the servants.

  "An outrage!"

  "A violation of hellish customs!"

  "Break off contact!"

  Observing this, Justinian nodded his head.

  "I am not surprised at your lordship; I myself am surprised by the contents of the letter that was sent here," he said, disappointed. The nobleman only sighed.

  "What can you do? The servants were right to dissuade me from marrying such a sophisticated woman. I was a fool not to listen."

  The young boy wanted to confirm one more thing.

  "And did the courier's very appearance herald the terrible blow that was to come?" he asked the servants.

  One of the servants sent for information from the person who had received the courier, and soon everything became clear.

  "He was dressed like a complete peasant, with a thick unibrow and graying hair."

  The nobleman whistled at such a humiliation.

  "So she wouldn't even spend money on a proper courier! It's a disgrace!"

  "Your lordship is right that it's a disgrace. For you, however!" Justinian spoke up unexpectedly.

  The devil frowned at these confrontational words.

  "How so, for me? What have I done to deserve such treatment?"

  "Because you trusted your servants more than your own chosen one, with whom you undoubtedly share some memories. The courier who came here was not sent by Wachowska, but by us!"

  Saying this, he took from the table the actual list of requirements from the mistress known for her firm hand and the discipline of her court. As Seweryn read it, he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. For his chosen one had indeed set completely simple requirements, but his own servants had made a mockery of him!

  "How dare you scoundrels play such a trick on me?" he asked, glaring menacingly at the footmen.

  "Lord Sarmata, we live so well here and feast with you. How can we exchange that for the torment one hears so much about in connection with Wachowska?"

  Speaking thus, one of the footmen told of how wonderful their lives were now and how they had heard other devils complain that working for Wachowska was a hard lot.

  Of course, all this was to the great anger of the nobleman himself, who immediately ordered the rascals to be flogged very soundly and from then on took his matrimonial affairs into his own hands.

  He also offered positions to Justinian and Belisara, but they had to refuse, bearing in mind the necessity of cultivating on their mountains. However, there was still the matter of the reward.

  The nobleman first invited them for a private conversation in the chamber where he used to rest—when he needed peace after a hard day of feasting and deep thinking about human customs to introduce.

  "You have performed wonderfully, so I cannot skimp on your reward."

  Before moving on to discuss what he had agreed upon with Justinian, he looked at Belisara and sighed lightly.

  "I see you have accepted Chciwiusz's gift?"

  The she-devil looked surprised but nodded. Seeing this, Seweryn reached into his pocket and threw something that looked like a small, distinctively colored stone in her direction.

  "In that case, this is the best I can offer you. Unfortunately, you'll have to manage your cultivation on your own."

  The girl caught the shard of rock thrown to her and... immediately narrowed her eyes. The energy radiating from the strange mineral seemed absolutely terrifying to her!

  "In a moment of danger, crush it, and it will form a shield capable of withstanding an attack one level higher than yours. It's the best I can give you, considering your principles," the nobleman added.

  The she-devil was clearly moved and bowed before him. Then, at the Sarmatian's clear suggestion, she left him alone with Justinian.

  "Alright, young man, what do you know about cultivation?" the man asked when they were alone.

  "Err... it's about absorbing energy to create the foundations for immortal powers?" Justinian answered, forcing himself to say something sensible.

  His interlocutor smiled and shook his head.

  "Emptyhead taught you nothing, did he?"

  The boy could only spread his hands in embarrassment, at which the nobleman sighed.

  "Well, I shouldn't be surprised. Even before he got his nickname, he never cared about cultivation."

  Justin still had some trouble reconciling the image of the cruel devil built up over the years with the nickname "Empty-headed," but he nodded. The Sarmatian then snapped his fingers in the air, and suddenly, right next to him, a levitating stone a square meter in size appeared.

  It was much larger than anything the boy had seen in the mine!

  The nobleman whispered something, and a moment later the stone turned into a grain-themed scroll, filled with beautiful calligraphy. The boy watched this display of hellish powers with some trepidation but did not look away.

  "Curious what's written here?" the devil asked with a smile.

  Justinian hesitated for a moment, but he had already stepped onto the path of revenge and had no intention of giving up until he had achieved it. Therefore, he soon nodded with determination.

  "Then be my guest. This is the ancestral technique of the Sarmatian family."

  When the nobleman handed him the scroll, the boy began to read it greedily, only to narrow his brows. What was written there was... surprising.

  "Is this an essay about a warrior?" he asked the devil, who smiled and confirmed.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "More precisely—an essay about the progenitor of my lineage."

  The boy scratched his head.

  "And how is this supposed to help me with cultivation?"

  "Its first stage is nothing other than shaping one's character."

  "Character?" Justinian wondered how that was supposed to help him with his revenge.

  The Sarmatian took a deep gulp of alcohol from his horn and continued.

  "If you build a manor on poor foundations, it won't stand for long. It's the same with living beings."

  The boy didn't quite understand what the nobleman before him was getting at.

  "Cultivation is done by shaping one's character through the contemplation of the deeds of past warriors," the nobleman finally revealed with a smile.

  "But from where..."

  "Technique stones contain a reflection of the deeds of past warriors, who once left a part of themselves in the quarries. The more powerful the warrior, the larger the stone that holds their reflection," Seweryn continued. At one point, a tear even welled up in his eye, as if from nostalgia for such wonderful times long past.

  "They react to a character similar to the warrior who left the reflection; this is how the initial selection occurs. When the stone forms a bond with the cultivator, it shows them the way the source of the reflection once trained himself—and at the Ki Gathering phase, his character—to end up at the point where the reflection was taken."

  Justinian frowned at these words.

  "My ledger shows nothing of the sort!" he said indignantly, even pulling the cultivation device from his pocket.

  The nobleman laughed loudly at his indignation.

  "That's because your stone has no reflection," he said, patting Justin on the back.

  "H-how can it have no reflection?" The boy definitely didn't like what he was hearing. Didn't that mean he wouldn't be able to attain great power?

  Seweryn just smiled.

  "I suppose it's due to the incompatibility of your character with the hellish warriors of the past. In that case, the stone will not hold your hand; you must delve into your own mentality, writing down what is important to you inside."

  The boy was not very optimistic about these words, and the nobleman, seeing this, decided to reassure him.

  "Don't worry, this is the ordinary way our ancestors used when they themselves did not yet have the echoes of past warriors," he explained. "Besides, if you encounter any limitations, you can always come to me for advice."

  Justinian thought about this for a moment and finally sighed. He had no choice but to thank him for the advice and part ways with the nobleman.

  Soon he also said goodbye to Belisara, who smiled at him before she left, and he headed back to the Mountain of Plague and Misfortune to begin his cultivation.

  At the same time, the monastery located at the southernmost point of the 66th hellish dimension was increasingly covered in flames.

  This was all due to a guest who had recently appeared at its gates—Maleficius, feared by all the mountain lords of the Sect of the World's End. Now, he gripped the throat of the last living being in the sanctuary—the abbess of the ancient monastery.

  "Is it here?" he asked in a quiet voice in a chamber with a concrete floor, where an ancient altar stood.

  "Yes..." the abbess nodded. It was her last interaction with the world, as a moment later the devil crushed her neck in his hand.

  Tossing the dead body aside, he narrowed his eyes and... stomped powerfully on the concrete floor. The magical formations that had been there for thousands of years did not last a few seconds against his power, creating a huge chasm.

  The resulting hole soon revealed the secrets he sought.

  'Pathetic.' He shook his head at the terrible sight that met his eyes.

  Several meters below the altar were thousands of stone coffins embedded in mud. Many of them—with shattered lids—were pierced with black daggers made of a metal with strange properties.

  'I hope it's not too late...' he grimaced, unable to detect the one he had come for.

  Soon, however, a flash of determination appeared in his eyes, and he dissolved into the air, reappearing above one of the unpierced coffins.

  There was relief in his eyes, as if he were finally shedding a great burden.

  'Human Dimension'—read the plaque written in Old Devilish, identifying the row before which he levitated.

  Maleficius placed a hand on the stone lid and opened it slowly, revealing the figure of a beautiful, young she-devil with black hair and aristocratic features.

  After a few seconds, she opened her eyes, and the most terrible devil in the entire dimension... knelt!

  "So the plan succeeded."

  "Yes, my lady," he replied with his head bowed.

  The woman leaned on his shoulder with difficulty to stand up and look around the monastery basement.

  "It looks different than I imagined," she stated sadly, to which Maleficius responded with silence. His attention, however, was drawn to something else.

  "My lady, your cultivat..."

  "It's nothing," she didn't let him finish. "The most important thing is that I am free. The time to rebuild it will come soon."

  The devil nodded.

  "How should I address you in this world?"

  The woman thought for a moment, then smiled mockingly.

  "Septima sounds appropriate."

  The flames of the ancient monastery gave her scarlet eyes a sinister glow.

  While these momentous events were unfolding in one part of hell, Justinian was sitting cross-legged in his dorm room on the Mountain of Plague and Misfortune.

  'Eh, I hope this works...'

  Before him lay the empty ledger of transgressions and redress. The object seemed to pulse with excitement, waiting to receive its first entries.

  'Let's start with what's most important...' the boy sighed.

  Then, writing in simple letters, he recorded the first matter... the death of his guardian sister.

  'Killed by scoundrels she did nothing to wrong. The world will not be just until her shameful death is avenged,' he placed in the "TRANSGRESSION" column.

  Justinian thought for a moment, expecting some change, but nothing happened.

  So he also filled in the redress column, writing the following words:

  'The perpetrators of this tragedy will die by my hand.'

  Although the blood in his veins began to pulse much faster, still nothing changed.

  Resigned, he scratched the back of his neck, trying to remember Seweryn's explanations.

  'I think every note has to be embellished with a summary...'

  Finally, he also added a comment, in which he acknowledges that the death of someone like her demands his revenge and that not reacting would be a denial of everything important in the world.

  When he finished the note, he ran his eyes over the details he had written.

  '...'

  Reading the added content once again plunged him into contemplation of how his family had been murdered, even though they had done nothing to deserve their terrible fate.

  'I will not stand for leaving it like this.'

  Strangely, it was just then... that he felt strange vibrations in the air he breathed, which immediately disappeared!

  'Was I just imagining it?' The boy's eyes widened.

  He repeated the attempt, however, and soon he was certain.

  As he contemplated the justice of the matters from the ledger and what his approach should be... he could actually feel himself absorbing energy!

  Although he didn't understand how this mechanism worked, it was still a huge step forward.

  He immediately set to practice and after a few hours had already made some basic observations.

  'The power contained in the verses depletes quickly,' he shook his head.

  He soon had to supplement the ledger with several other situations, including his thoughts on the justice of Seweryn's employment policies and the behavior of his servants.

  'What's more, the experience must directly concern something I have seen... analyzing cases from the holy books of the church does nothing,' he sighed lightly.

  'It's a bit troublesome, but it's certainly better than repeating senseless intonations over and over,' he contemplated.

  The process itself was also quite tiring, and the boy quickly fell asleep after practicing it. The exact same thing happened the next day. Interestingly... through trial and error, he discovered that the place that tired him the least was the Pool of Wisdom mentioned by Ignatius!

  'I have the impression that it mainly wards off the feeling of sleep, and the fatigue accumulates anyway,' Justinian analyzed. 'But for now... this is more than enough for me!' the boy rejoiced in his discovery.

  Thus, more days of strenuous work passed, until he finally felt that the topics he knew were being exhausted. Then, with a pricking pain, a small, vertical line appeared on his wrist.

  It was the symbol that he had entered the first level of Ki Gathering.

  Curious about the changes in his body, he decided to try a few standard physical exercises he had learned at the orphanage. Aided by ki, he completed them without a problem in a much better time than ever before.

  It seemed to him that he tired much more slowly, and his strength was noticeably greater. Overall—thanks to the amount of energy available in hell, which influenced the speed of reaching this level—he estimated that he was stronger than a standard soldier after years of training!

  'And this is only the beginning...' he thought, clenching his hands into fists.

  Every night, he saw the death of Sister Teresa and the orphanage fire in his dreams. His lust for revenge only grew stronger then.

  'No matter what I have to do... I will achieve justice for them!'

  "I see you have made progress," a voice interrupted him. It was Ignatius the Hollow-Headed Junior, slowly floating through the air.

  The devil looked him up and down and, stroking his lush mustache, nodded in approval.

  "Good, good," he declared.

  This time, the mountain lord was dressed in long robes typical of an ascetic hermit. He also had long, jet-black hair and a beard that was almost a meter long.

  "It's nothing," Justinian bowed slightly to him in greeting.

  The boy expected that the devil probably wanted something, and his suspicions were quickly confirmed.

  "In three weeks, you are to participate in the start of the holy pilgrimage," Ignatius announced.

  His voice emanated the mysticism of a sage delving into the great truths of the world. He looked like a great master who had descended from a mountain to entrust an enlightened task to an ignorant greenhorn.

  There was, however, a certain snag.

  "I don't want to," Justinian said without emotion.

  The truth is, ever since his mission for Seweryn, he had stopped considering Ignatius trustworthy. Sometimes he even wondered if it would have been better to accept the job offer as a servant coordinator for the nobleman.

  The statement completely threw Hollow-Head off balance, and he almost fell out of the air at the impudence of his only adept.

  At first, he even wanted to teach him a lesson, but barely controlling his anger, he restrained himself.

  'After all, for now at least, I need this insolent reptile...' he sighed inwardly.

  In recent weeks, he had learned the hard way how difficult it was to find any additional adept with his epithet.

  "And what do you want?" he finally squeezed out, gritting his teeth.

  A glint appeared in the young man's eye; he had a plan ready.

  "You will tell me everything about your time in the Kingdom of Peace."

  Hearing these words, the devil gasped. This was one of his embarrassing secrets that he didn't want to reveal to anyone.

  'It's one thing when Voivode Boruta expects a report, but now I have to tell this brat about it too?!'

  Ignatius wanted to immediately turn and flee. Unfortunately for him, however... he was in a bind.

  He really needed a representative for the pilgrimage if he didn't want to lose the mountain. So, holding back the tears welling in his eyes, he just squeezed out through his teeth:

  "Agreed, but only if you place in the top 10 adepts and complete the entire pilgrimage! I can even take you back to Earth then if you're so homesick!"

  After which, too angry to argue further, he flew off towards his peak.

  Of course, for the boy, this was wonderful news.

  And so he began to prepare for the start of the holy pilgrimage, which was to bring him closer to the goal of his revenge. When the fateful day arrived, Justinian went with Ignatius to the mist-shrouded ??czyca. Little did they know that this was the day which would introduce to the wide devilish public a figure who would shake 66th infernal dimension to the core.