“What exactly is it that you wish to know?” she finally asked.
“I’m just thinking how I can learn to fight better, I guess? I mean, I need better offensive moves. I was about as useful back there as a flute on a deer hunt. But you… well, you stomped that beetle like it was an artform. The way you moved the Ki through every part of your body…” He narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. “Come to think of it, where’s your Kaku?”
She frowned, crossing her arms. “That is quite a personal question. It is considered impolite to ask.”
He shrugged. “You know mine. Also, we’re kind of in this together. Probably better to know each other’s limitations and whatnot.”
“It is a fair point. Sharing knowledge of our abilities may yield better outcomes. It would prove to be unvirtuous if I insisted on secrecy and got either of us hurt as a result.” She’d been muttering to herself while blinking rapidly, but then she gave a sharp nod and spoke up. “Very well. Like you, I have a rather unusual Kaku: the skin.”
“The skin? What, all of it?” he exclaimed, eyes widening. “I didn’t even know that was an option. Wait, so that’s why you can move your Ki around so easily?”
“Not exactly. As with all Kakus, the seams lie thicker there, which for me means they are strongest right beneath the skin. It allows for easy use of Fortification techniques.”
She held up her hand and a moment later a dark-gray layer of Ki sprang up around it.
“But internal empowerment requires me to expand the seams inward, into the muscles, just like most other people. The rest is years of training, of course. Frequent and strenuous training.”
Dario looked like she’d spat in his face.
“That’s not really an option due to, ah, let’s call it a conflict with my religion. What about shortcuts? Nobles must be sitting on a pile of secrets.”
“Shortcuts?” she asked with a grimace, as if it was a dirty word. “The only thing that comes to mind is weak-willed individuals using pain medicine to deepen their seams. But that is not-”
“There are pills to dull the pain?” Dario shouted. “Damn that cheap old bastard!”
Nika just gave him a confused look, then shook her head.
“The reality of it is that we have different strengths and use different types of Ki. Even if I taught you how to use Fortification when striking, your light Ki does not have a suitable aspect for it. If I may, Dario, I think you should lean into your strengths. With extraordinary eyesight and excellent skill in Ki control, you might consider techniques that allow for striking at weak points, as an example.”
Dario only grunted in acknowledgement as he considered that. Finding and striking at weak points was easier said than done. There hadn’t been any visible weak points to the beetle, not with the shroud covering anything, shifting around to deflect attacks. His gut feeling said that he’d first have to find out what the shroud was made of, before he could figure out how to remove it.
She was right about the aspect, though. Fortification wouldn’t work with the aspect of luminosity; his hands would just glow like beacons if he wrapped them in light Ki. The more he thought of it, the more he felt drawn in the direction of figuring out how to use plant Ki. That would give him not only more aspects to work with, but maybe also different methods of attack.
Not much later, as Nika continued work on the heavy foundation of their structure, Dario was bent over a few seeds with his tablet next to him. Despite his love of shortcuts, he'd rather not move back into the maze looking for an easier way out, just in case there were more of the weird beetles there.
Like all aura, that of plants is a reflection of their nature. It wants to avoid danger and to grow and spread. It will always seek out an environment where it can thrive, though it can be fickle at times. Focus on the vine seed first, that should be easiest. If you can coax it into sprouting, that should get you in the right mindset to later lure its aura into your seams.
Dario cupped the pouch in his hand, adding a few drops of freshly purified water with the other, before once again whispering sweet words to the unseen seed.
“Hey there little one.” He glanced over to Nika to make sure she couldn’t overhear before continuing. “Don’t you wanna come out of hiding? There’s a whole other world out here. Well, to be honest, it’s also pretty dark and wet here at the moment. But we can change that.”
He held the little pouch close to his face and then a small ball of yellow light popped into existence above the dirt. Not much happened, but Dario still kept it up, his Ki reserves slowly shrinking as he shone a warm glow onto the pocket of dirt. He played around with it, creating different shapes with the light while trying to use as little Ki as possible, losing sense of time until Nika called out to him.
“The foundation is complete! I have been pondering your desire for gaining strength and I believe this may prove to be an excellent exercise for you.”
He looked over, brows lifting as he saw how far the construction had come. Large slabs of stone were lined up to form a large square platform, about as tall as him and wide enough to be the foundation of a large house.
“We will stack shale now instead of basalt. It would be a terrible idea for a lasting structure, but for our purposes, it should hold. They must be stacked in a certain formation. I will demonstrate.”
She went on to pick up a beam of shale, moving up some crude steps to carefully place it on top of the foundation, then placing a thinner slab perpendicular to the first one, stacking the corner on top.
Then, it was Dario’s turn. He bent over, locked his arms around a beam and let out a mighty grunt as he heaved, managing to lift it a few centimeters off the ground before dropping it again.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Ancestors, no, that is not the right form,” Nika said as she marched over. Dario was already puffing and rubbing at his back. “Bend your knees, keep your back straight. Focus on these muscles,” she said, slapping her lower back and quads, “push Ki there as you squeeze them and lift.”
Again, she lifted the beam as if it weighed nothing.
Dario carefully picked out a smaller slab before following her instructions. This time, he did barely manage to lift it, though his Ki didn’t seem to be helping at all. It was as JeeJee had said, the seams just didn’t go into the muscles yet. Still, with a monumental effort, he dragged it up the steps.
“I will have you know,” he said between heavy breaths as he dropped the slab in place, “that this goes directly against my core principles.”
“Oh? Which principles are you referring to?” Nika asked, visibly interested. “Are you a follower of the Golden Mean? Or perhaps Ishida Baigan’s ‘The Virtuous Cultivator’?”
“What? No. I’m talking about the Principles of the Hammock: Avoid hard work at all costs; always look for shortcuts; do only the necessary for survival; only leave the hammock for something interesting.”
He proclaimed the principles with a proud smile, then grimaced as he looked down at the slab of shale. “Unfortunately for me, this counts as necessary for survival.”
Nika was shaking her head as she scowled at him.
“You’re making light of important values. Temperance is a virtue, but licentiousness is a vice. You would do well to remember that.”
“Not clear what most of that means, but yeah, sure,” Dario muttered as he went to grab another slab. Nika completed two trips by the time he was back up, groaning loudly as he tossed the slab down. He looked up as he caught his breath, squinting at the gap they’d fallen through. There was something off about it. It was hard to say, completely covered in rock as it was, but he felt like there was a familiar sheen to it that he couldn’t place.
Anyway, it was still a long way to go before they’d reach the ceiling.
“So what are your plans after we get out of here? I have to admit, I have no idea what nobles actually do all day.”
“The best of us try to live a virtuous life while fulfilling our duties to the clan,” she said as she gently lowered a thick beam of shale. Then she took on a serious look, setting her jaw as she stared up at the ceiling. “As for me, I intend to go all the way up to meet my grandfather, the Patriarch of the Houjo clan.”
“All the way up? You mean to the seventh floor?” Dario turned fully towards her, eyes wide and mouth slightly agape.
“Certainly. As the middle daughter, I’m not expected to reach higher than the fifth, but I intend to exceed those expectations.”
He let out an appreciative whistle. “That’s quite the ambition. Do you know what it’s like, up there?”
She shook her head. “It’s considered detrimental to one’s development to know the mysteries of the upper floors. We are expected to unravel those mysteries as we climb. But I know that cultivators of that level are capable of amazing feats.”
A smile lingered on her lips as she stared up at the ceiling, but then she looked over at him.
“And you? How far do you intend to go? You’d make quite the explorer with those eyes. I believe you have the temperament for it, too.”
“Oh, no, you’ve got me pegged wrong there. I don’t intend to leave the Basement at all. Got people to take care of,” he said, looking at the ground with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll head back to the Belt, probably start looking for a wife so I can settle down. It might be boring, compared to your grand ambitions, but it’s a fine enough life for a simple man like me.”
He waved his hand by his head, believing that there was some bug flying there, but as his eyes shifted he thought he saw a puff of brown mist. Before he could get a good look at it, it was gone.
Nika didn’t seem to have noticed, just looking at him thoughtfully, before nodding once and getting back to work.
They worked mostly in silence then, getting into a rhythm as the stones stacked higher and higher. The labor got harder as their structure grew, so Dario took regular breaks to keep cultivating his vine seed while Nika worked on tirelessly. During his third break, something finally changed, a tiny shoot poking its head up out of the dirt. Dario watched with bright eyes and a growing grin as it unfolded and straightened, grabbing for his tablet.
I did it! A tiny little vine has sprouted!
Congratulations! I knew you could do it. Let it grow a little bit further, then try to take the aura into your body. It’ll resist - it needs to be lured in, remember? Think of your seams as fertile ground. Once it has passed through your seams, making it into your Ki, you can feed it back, starting a cycle of growth. The first time is the hardest, but I promise it gets a lot easier.
After feeding it a bit more warm light, it grew, slowly but visibly. But no matter how much he tried to take control, the small bud of green aura refused to move. He left it and did another few trips with the stone beams, climbing up the quickly growing tower.
Time passed as they settled into a routine, Nika taking breaks only for food or sleep, while Dario kept growing his little vine and trying to harvest its aura. He still didn’t see any benefits from trying to push Ki into his muscles, but on the second day, he finally managed to get a trickle of plant Ki into his seams.
After trying a number of different techniques and ways of thinking about his seams and the energy, none of which seemed to work, it was another trick that finally got it done. A tiny tendril of light curled up from the budding sprout up to his belly button. He’d noticed that the plant would follow the light, so he figured maybe the aura would as well. Combined with his mental efforts to grasp it and lure it in, he managed to guide a trickle into his belly button, pushing it down his less-developed seams into his lower body. The sprout seemed to wilt slightly, drawing a tiny bit back into the dirt.
It was a profoundly strange feeling when the bit of verdant energy crept through his seams like a root, completely different from working with light Ki. Now that the aura was in his seams, it had become Ki which was firmly under his control. He played around with it for some time, moving it slowly through his seams. It seemed to thrive, seeming to grow within his seams, maybe by taking fragments of energy from his body. His control got quickly better, to the point where he managed to push it out again, once more having it follow a bridge of light back into the little sprout. To his satisfaction, the sprout thickened and grew visibly, giving him a working basis to actually begin cultivating with plant Ki.
Nika gave him a funny look when he jumped up and cheered, holding the pouch with a tiny sprout in his hand. But she was in good spirits herself, as the tower was quickly progressing. They continued to build, Dario taking regular breaks to practice with his new plant Ki, getting ever more used to the feeling of moving it around.
It was on the second day that they finally reached high enough for Nika to approve the use of chalk for the top layers of the tower. To Dario’s relief, this stone was much lighter, allowing them to do more and faster trips. Rushing the final layers, Dario eventually found himself standing on top of an only slightly shaky tower, looking up at a ceiling that was almost within reach.
But now that they were nearly there, another problem became plainly obvious.
“From here, the tower will grow considerably less stable with each added layer. But the real problem is the potentially unstable rubble right above our heads. I have been considering this problem, as I believe you have too, judging from your frequent humming and head scratching. But I have not yet managed to theorize an adequate solution. We may be forced to accept more risk in the final ascent.”
Dario hadn’t been thinking about that at all. What had started as a crazy, impossible suspicion had grown to something of an obsession the closer they got to the ceiling. And now that they were right below, all he could think about was finding out whether or not it was true.