"Are…" Axl paused, unsure of how to continue. "Are you alright? Your… Injury."

  Olkan raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you can tell, can you? Interesting." He then leaned forward, his tone serious. "But don't mind this, we don't have time for such nonsense. I'll be dead soon, and there is much I need to tell you.

  "To the far east is the nearest of the thirteen sects, and where you should go. None of the Oocile cities are safe now, with the Legion this powerful. The sects are your best bet at reaching the F-Grade without a serious bottleneck, your only shot at getting powerful enough. I was rejected entry to even their lowest school when I was at my peak, but I think you have a shot from potential alone."

  The elf warrior paused, his face contorted in anger. "And remember this, the leader of this Undead Legion is the Archlich of the Wailing Blight, Senkul. Bore that name into your mind, the true source of your people's ruthless destruction, the target of your future wrath."

  Axl nodded slowly, thinking of the Vikam instead, letting that anger flare up as he held Olkan's gaze.

  "I can feel the rage in you," Olkan's body surged with Mana, then sagged, as if the vengeful anger drained him of even more vitality. "That's good enough for me."

  He took a swig from another canteen, the metal canister appearing out of nowhere. "We start with the basics—can you cultivate?"

  Axl blinked. "Isn't that just gaining levels?"

  Olkan chuckled. "No. Or at least one way to do so. Meditative cultivation is the practice of drawing in ambient Mana and channeling it into your soul, the formal way to gain levels. It's also the basis of forming a Cultivator's Core, a spiritual organ at the center of the Balanced Path. And most paths, in fact. Even if one day you divert from Oocile's guidance in your quest for vengeance, the Core should be a cornerstone of your advancement, as it is for most of the civilized races."

  "Can other Lineages form them too?" Axl asked, wondering if a human could also get a Cultivator's Core.

  Olkan shrugged. "Orcs generally not, plant-based kin like treants and dryads, yes, and the sentient beasts vary, depending on their kind. But most elves can form cores, yes, but there are some fringe Lineages for sure, much as there is almost anything under the heavens. But this matters not for you, a water-attuned elf is common enough. Or are you a river or rain elf?"

  "Water-elf."

  "Then you likely would cultivate better underwater," he pointed at Axl's neck. "Using your gills. But better than just comfort is the kind of ambient Mana you cultivate with. The Mana here, for instance." Olkan lifted his arms, pointing at the trees around him. "Even the air is dense with wood Mana, a strange form of it that is unique to Mistress Nox's bamboo. I would've given an arm to form my core here. It might have gotten me an attuned one, instead of the unattuned, common one I managed to condense."

  "Do I risk getting a wood Core if I cultivate here?" Axl asked. "I mean, wouldn't it cause problems with my water-elf Lineage?"

  Olkan chuckled. "It takes months to gain even the early levels in the deepest meditation for a decent talent and skill at the practice. There is no accidental forming of an attuned core, you'd need years or decades of access to the environment and deliberate practice. And I intuit that we only have permission to cross this territory, not broad dispensation to live here indefinitely."

  At this, Olkan got up, slowly and carefully. "But let's not tarry this close to the edge, but go further in. I want at least have a day's march between us and the Half-crook road before we turn for the night, just to be safe."

  Axl nodded and got up, adjusting his pack as Olkan got up, the canteen suddenly nowhere to be found. The thought felt shocking to Axl, but somehow mundane to Roken, but his mind was still oddly muddled, sore at the memory of the Dao vision. His body, however, felt better than ever, the surge in his Attributes really making itself felt as he started their trek, Olkan leading the way, Axl trailing behind.

  They walked through the eerily silent woods for long hours at a slow pace, Olkan clearly having at least a vague notion of which way they should go, this already being far beyond Roken's memories, the elf never having left Piril.

  Every few hours, they stopped to drink water and eat small morsels of wrapped preserves Olkan produced from nowhere, the breaks clearly more for Olkan's benefit. Axl soon stopped probing the elf's dwindling Mana with [Mana Shroud], the slow ticking down nerve-wracking to watch. He thought he'd seen it all in the catastrophic battlefields back in Luna, but watching somebody quickly waste away like this was a deeper misery. It reminded him of how his brother died.

  "I've heard people have different Attributes," Axl said during one of the later breaks, the temperature starting to cool into early evening. "Should that matter for me with one of Oocile's balanced classes?"

  "No," Olkan said, clearing his throat. "If you have more of them, that’s better, since our uniform gain would capitalize on that. I've even heard there are means of gaining more, but I never found any real information on how to do so. Perhaps the sects would know, as the most powerful cultivators arise from their halls from a variety of Paths, so I'm sure they hold many secrets for their own. And certainly the best cultivation spots, with the densest, most refined Mana."

  "Isn't it just quicker to kill creatures than to cultivate?" Axl asked, his ticking clock not letting him spend months sitting around just to gain a single level. "I felt the Karmic Energy entering my body when I killed an undead, or those little creatures of theirs."

  "Ha!" Olkan's laugh was clipped by a fit of wet coughing. "The words of one forged in battle. Yes, much easier, much faster, and very likely to get you killed. You only gain enough karmic energy when fighting those close to your power, those much weaker barely giving you any at all, so it’s a constant struggle to even survive this way, much less advance. No, it's better to cultivate patiently, then use your superior power to crush your enemies, perhaps occasionally engaging in a tactical hunt to hone your fighting instincts or try to break through a bottleneck."

  Axl wondered if this was maybe why Olkan was bottlenecked in the first place, but he said nothing.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  "Oy, don't you go silently judging me, boy," Olkan looked mildly annoyed and started walking again. "We all face the one battle that disabuses the notion we could be a purely battle-forged cultivator, chosen by the heavens. A dear ally is torn apart before your very eyes, an injury threatens to break your cultivation, or you barely survive an encounter with a creature far greater in power. These are the hard lessons that beat into you the need to be cautious, to pick your battles."

  "Sorry," Axl said. "I'm new at this, after all."

  "That you are, and thus, it's high time you learn to meditate. Don't do so when we stop, since that may draw in Nox's ire, but it should be fine while walking, if harder. Try to bring the Mana into your gills or breath and pool it at the pit of your stomach, holding it there as much as you can. It's good practice for forming a core, and if you can do that, it will be easier to channel the Mana into your soul next."

  Axl did so, choosing to do so with his breath. The first few breaths felt easy, the Mana in the air filtering through his lungs and into the bottom of his gut, even as most of it diffused off on the way there. But as Axl tried to get more there, the amount he already collected started to rapidly leak, and then was gone as his attention wavered just a bit.

  He grunted aloud, then redoubled his effort, focusing less on getting more from each breath and more on keeping the amount building in his body from escaping. After an hour or so, he could barely continue, the fistful he had accumulated sloshing about in his body like an overly filled cup he had to keep from spilling.

  Then he tripped on a folded leaf's edge, and most of it oozed out.

  "Venting damn," he said, stopping in frustration. "I can barely get it up before it starts wanting to leave more and more."

  Olkan looked back at him in surprise. "Already? Your absorption rate is better than most, even untrained. Seems like Oocile's hand knows how to pick them." There was a thread of bitterness in his voice then, as he leaned against a tree to rest for a moment. "Next, try to bring the condensed Mana into your soul, some picture it being in the back of the head, others the heart, most to a point just below their naval, where their Core will ultimately be. Don't be so concerned about what your soul is, you will notice when you get the Mana in, it's where cultivated Mana wants to go when held properly, like water flowing to the lowest point."

  Axl got the external Mana to accumulate a bit less than its previous peak, where it felt more manageable, and slowly started to bring it to the soul marble formed from [Mind-Soul Bulwark]. He even stopped walking briefly, not wanting his effort to run away at the last minute, but it was as Olkan said. The bolus of Mana naturally drifted in, like sand through a funnel.

  He wasn't sure what he expected, but Axl was still disappointed. The surge of Karmic Energy was so slight, he almost felt like he imagined it altogether. A hundred of these would add up to as much as a single undead crab gave up, if he was being generous. Perhaps with [Mana Shroud] helping, he'd be able to speed the process up, but he didn't fail to remember he was only level one now, and gaining levels would grow more difficult the further up he got. As much as he understood Olkan's cautioning advice, it was clear that meditative cultivation couldn’t be the way he got stronger, at least until he formed Terrania's Foundational Nexus.

  Axl still kept the practice up, half-heartedly, until they stopped once more, Olkan again handing him a canteen and neat packet of food.

  "Is there a way to do this better?" Axl asked, not letting his frustration dim his enjoyment of the magical water he got to drink.

  Olkan let out a weary sigh. "Every single new cultivator gets to this point, at least with you, we can get over it quickly. I understand your frustration at how slow this seems, not like the stories mortals bandy about of meteoric rise into heaven-defying immortality, but that is simply not reality. Perhaps some of the carefully curated clan heirs in the sects have secret techniques and inborn advantages, letting them advance faster than most. But even at the peak, small advances are measured in decades of hard work."

  "But then how is that possible? Don't cultivators die of old age before they break level ten?"

  "No, for the further you advance, the greater your lifespan extends as well. I'm slightly over one hundred and fifty years old, for instance, and reaching the peak of the G-Grade can allow you to live till about two hundred and fifty, perhaps three hundred, while still maintaining the bodily vigor of youth. Only when languishing at a bottleneck does aging restart, as if to warn you against complacency."

  Axl nodded, this making sense now. Roken likely had some idea of this, but no specifics, guessing that cultivators didn't brag openly to mortals about that difference so much, if only because they didn't seem to care too much about mortals at all.

  "You mentioned before that few gain levels through fighting, is that really not an option? I did manage to kill an undead and their crabs relatively easily, and figured I could easily keep doing that."

  Olkan's eyes narrowed. "Yeah? And when a full unit comes to investigate who's wiping out their lowest minions? Even if you manage to survive that, a higher-tiered contingent will be sent afterwards, and then you will die quickly. Even in the wilds, there is no protection from this. Say you scour the southern unclaimed for low G-Grade battles, eventually you’ll stumble upon an F-Grade beast out on a hunt. As much as the Deep System punishes fighting below one's tier with foul Karma, a single killing like this won't bring so much misfortune, and it's unclear if karmic poisoning even applies to beasts."

  Axl grunted, seeing the problem quite clearly now.

  "Also," Olkan continued, raising a finger at Axl to punctuate the lesson, "you are of the Balanced Path, your Attributes evenly spread, so you cannot specialize, thus making it harder to fight those of your own level. Instead, we cultivate better, our cores more in line with our ability to absorb Mana. Managing to attune a Core and thus gain a Mana specialization gives a great boon to your fighting power, perhaps even granting you fighting Skills at the F-Grade. We are simply not aligned with constant battle, but the steady accumulation to then dominate those we have passed by. I was lucky to develop a crafting skill that can also act as a defensive one, but that is not often the case, especially with the more common meditation skills most of us manage to get. I'm hoping you may earn a fighting-based Skill at a sect, perhaps even an offensive one. If you have one of those, few would be tempted to kill you for your title."

  "What do titles have to do with that?" Axl asked, pointedly avoiding the topic that he had two Skills that were most certainly useful in battle. Olkan briefly twitched an eye, but the motion was slight, Axl not even sure it occurred before the injured elf continued.

  "Killing the entitled is a good way to foment grace with the System, above and beyond killing the higher-leveled. You need to be careful of this, since you most certainly have a title from our subsystem—don't tell me if so, keep this information secret, do not even mention it to those who should know, this risks disaster, since your deception skills are barely better than a child's." Olkan paused for a second, catching his breath, then continued.

  "Other than the entitled, I've heard the ten-palmed Keeper of Reial managed to kill a wandering cultivator with an inborn Lineage, which greatly boosted her cultivation, so I presume that is another means to power. But those kinds of cultivators are rare, groomed in the most elevated clans that somehow manage to boost their children's cultivation even before birth. Such people are also usually affiliated with substantial forces, and have other means for individual power as well.

  "Aside from that," Olkan hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide whether to tell a story of dubious merit. "Apparently, Oocile himself killed an ascendant beast that held a Dao, and this was how he earned passage into the E-Grade. But that is just a story told by the old Keepers, every cultivator secretly harboring the foolish hope at a glimpse, at the ever-elusive heavenly treasure."

  Axl put every single ounce of effort into controlling his reaction, his breath steady, nodding as if he were simply absorbed in Olkan's story. But the elf captain paused and tilted his head slightly, a sinister grin blooming on his face.

  "Now this is truly a welcome surprise."