The new miasma vein not only existed, it was vast and potent in a way that portended terrible things to come for the multiverse. Hector learned much about the practice of predicting miasma vein formation from Cruiser Erin. The most important things to know were the two primary sources of the miasma that traveled across the primordial like an evil stain.

  The most relevant source for predictions were corrupted worlds. When the soul of a world fell to corruption, it became a miasma factory for a time. It never lasted long since every monster sought out humans to slay. When enough people died, the universal envelope would fail and the primordial tear apart reality. The miasma would then be free to coagulate within the primordial and seek out new worlds to terrorize.

  The second source – or perhaps the first source, since it was the original – was a nexus hidden deep within the primordial. According to the religion the Arahants received from the Yazata, that nexus was the core of a dead god. They said it was the remnant of Tiamat, leaking ichor to strike back at the descendants of the Ophanim from beyond the grave. Jinn orthodoxy avoided labeling the exact nature of that nexus, but they did possess some evidence it was once a major source.

  These days it hardly mattered. Miasma came mostly from the many, many unempowered worlds that had fallen. The nexus seemed to have finally given up the ghost. If it was indeed the core of Tiamat, then it had been venting miasma for longer than the entire existence of the true worlds. Something like fourteen billion years. The corpses of gods apparently took a long time to decay.

  No matter the provenance of the miasma vein, its current potency raised serious concerns that a cascade event would soon take down the multiverse. A single Jinn Cruiser could barely put a dent in the issue. It didn’t matter that against monsters they operated at the same level as the most elite forces of the Coalition. They were still only a single group and could not be everywhere. A typical tour of the Coalition Army involved many smaller detachments leaving and returning to the main body at regular intervals so that multiple worlds could be stabilized at once.

  Hector didn’t let himself fixate on the miasma vein. His mission was Aes. Until then, his priority was getting strong. If that assisted with the other situation, great. He couldn’t do more than he already was, though, and would have to accept that.

  Two further months passed, these ones at a manic pace. Each world they entered was under severe attack and about one in five they had to abandon altogether. Cruiser Erin lamented that they could not sterilize the worlds before their souls became infected and they turned into breeding grounds for miasma.

  The worlds they saved were unlikely to remain safe. Odds of subsequent rifts forming were so high it might as well be certain. Hector put himself into autopilot. He fought on the worlds. He trained aboard Cruiser Erin. That was his life.

  Bright spots existed, of course. Darius and Riley, when not hiding away from the world in the privacy of their private bedroom, were happy. Should all of existence be doomed, at least he got to witness that outcome before the end. The Arahant members of his retinue were close to being full in their reserves once more. Enough so that Conflagration and Piercing could occasionally join them on missions.

  Another bright spot was the progress of his domain. Hector was inching closer to the peak with that aperture. He’d also begun to raise his externality when large monsters were around to bathe his transit sphere in cosmic energy. Gathering the extra energy didn’t do much to help his externality improve, but it gave him more reserves to train his domain and aura.

  Perhaps the brightest spot of all was his investigation into aura training. None of the techniques he possessed were on the level of effectiveness he needed, with the exception of the dreaded Sandwich Technique. He couldn’t face the pain of that technique again. Nor did he have time to recover from aura strain given his strict schedule.

  So he’d decided to try his hand at inventing a new technique. He had improved several over the years, which made him hope he had enough depth of understanding to succeed. Hector began by summarizing his understanding of how apertures were trained. A required component of any aperture exercise technique was flooding the threads with cosmic energy. Beyond that, any good technique layered a secondary mechanism.

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  For some techniques, that secondary mechanism was providing an external pressure to force the cosmic energy into the aperture threads. He’d done that with his realm, using hostile resonance to force growth. It also happened with the Sandwich Technique, when the body and the domain squeezed the aura tight.

  There was also the mechanism of forcing the aperture to perform its function under stress. The Shuttle Technique did that – the difficult to hold tensions were a major component of its effectiveness. And the final mechanism he identified was inducing strain to the aperture threads. Basically hurt them so they would grow back stronger. The Sandwich Technique did this by having the aura expand while being restrained – the effectiveness of that technique was largely due to using two separate mechanisms, Hector believed.

  But what if he exercised his aura with external pressure and stressful functioning? There should be no damage, then. He would find a way to stack the two methods that wouldn’t require him to take time off from his day job of saving the multiverse.

  Obviously his new technique would begin by flooding his aura with cosmic energy. That went almost without saying. Beyond that, the primary function of a Xian aura was blocking. What did that look like? An isometric hold, he decided. Then the external pressure. He could borrow from the dreaded Sandwich Technique and use his peak body and near peak domain to provide compression to his aura.

  Before he attempted it, though, the technique would require a name. Hector immediately rejected the idea of naming it after himself. He had been granted two sobriquets, so there was no need to seek further fame. At a certain point it became shameful seeking more attention.

  The technique involved an isometric hold, so the name should reflect that. His considerations led him towards something near and dear to his heart. He’d spent much of his life in a gym. And while most of it was about consistently putting in the reps, there was an undeniable stereotype that even someone as practical as himself fell into. Fit guys liked to stand in front of mirrors.

  “The Flex Technique,” Hector whispered, trying out the new name.

  Then he began the work of experimenting. His initial efforts didn’t do much of anything. He couldn’t figure out if it would work better with a fully extended aura, a drawn in aura, or one held in between the two extremes. Much of the time it didn’t feel like it worked hardly at all. The best he could say in those early phases was that the technique didn’t waste cosmic energy. Just time.

  He was determined, patient, and believed in his theory. So Hector began to play around. Did he really want to be fully flexed or would a partial flex held longer be superior? Neither was great, he concluded after rigorous testing. There simply wasn’t enough strain.

  So he increased the force he applied with his domain. That proved more than his aura could handle. Instead of an isometric hold, it became a slow collapse. Hector paused to reconsider at that point. There was no amount of force strong enough to strain his aura without being too strong to keep the exercise isometric in nature. The Flex Technique was dead on arrival.

  But perhaps he didn’t need to be strictly isometric. Maybe the collapsing version could work. An emphasis of the eccentric phase as he resisted the collapse. Hector tried out his idea. After pumping his aura full of cosmic energy, Hector flexed it hard and began to squeeze his domain about it, forcing his aura to collapse.

  For the sake of the exercise, Hector calibrated the force from his domain so that the collapse took as long as possible. The slow motion failure began to make him feel the burn after five seconds. At thirty seconds he was desperate for it to be over. Then he did the second repetition, making it go even slower. He managed to drag it out to a full minute.

  Wary of over-training with a technique the world had never seen, Hector paused then and gave it a day to see what the result was. So far as he could tell, there was no problem. Day by day, he worked the new technique, forcing slow collapses of his aura while he resisted with everything he had. There were certain ways to maximize the tension he felt and Hector began to optimize the exercise.

  After a week of testing, he concluded his effort a success. He had a new technique that was superior at training his aura than any other he knew. Perhaps it offered improvements less rapid than the Sandwich Technique, but it wasn’t injurious. All he needed was a new name since this obviously was no longer the failed Flex Technique.

  He decided to call it the Aura Collapse Technique. The name wasn’t likely to matter much since it had exceedingly strict requirements to train. The body and the domain both had to be stronger than the aura, which wasn’t usually the case with cultivators. Hector’s unique circumstances made some things unusually rapid.

  The new technique promised to be useful as he was only days away from finishing his domain. Then all of his available reserves could be funneled towards improving his aura. It was still only halfway to his goal, perhaps eight point five on the System’s scale. It wouldn’t stay that low for long.

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