I take a deep breath. Do I really want to go spouting my personal philosophy at these kids? Then again, why not. It’s better for them to know where I stand. “My way of life focuses around a single word. The word why. Why did you guys do all that? Why am I allowing this? Why is this city such a pile of shit?”
I turn around and look all of them in the eyes. “Why should I care about you guys in the first place? Why is this dungeon smothering any form of human progress by providing barbarians with highly advanced materials? Why are shops allowed to sell shitty versions of Tower-dropped weapons to naive newcomers?
“It’s all because I want to know. I want to know how you guys will develop. I want to know why these dungeons are here. I want to know why this city’s moral compass is so skewed. Honestly, learning new stuff is all I really care about. So just make sure you don’t get in between me and the things I want to know.
“Learning new stuff will get a lot harder if the entire world is after me, so thanks for being a rather juicy distraction. The only reason I told you guys not to consciously kill, is because I want to know. I have read through a thousand, thousand books in order to formulate the theory about the initial two realms being a formative period, so you guys are my test subjects.”
The words “a thousand thousand” sound pretty cool, but I will have to introduce the concept of millions and billions pretty soon. I have found no words for numbers bigger than a thousand, and I will probably have to make them up myself.
“Don’t get in between me and the knowledge I want, as that is basically the only way to make me really angry.”
There, now it’s all open on the table. Only after reading through hundreds of thousands of history books did that theory form. I started to see a pattern – whatever the historical cultivation figure was doing in his initial two realms was indicative of his activities in the later realms. This is the first time truly testing it out, so I don’t want my test subjects to mess up my experiment.
They all look rather bashful, except for Vox and Angeta. They are just secretly grinning at each other. I wave my hand, as if to wipe the current mood away.
“That’s enough serious business; let’s go beat up some innocent dungeon animals. The last thing you guys should do before forming your initial core is fully integrating your new powers into a fighting style. You all have nearly enough qi to enter the qi condensing stage, you just don’t know how to use it effectively yet.”
I turn around with a big grin on my face and walk through the dark doorway.
⁂
Tess feels a twinge of apprehension. The last time she walked through that dark portal it almost spelled her doom. The one in a thousand chance that allowed her to live is not something she expects to happen again. As the weird guy, whose name she still doesn’t know, disappears into the black fog, a cold hand grasps her guts.
She looks around, observing the state of the rest. Vox is staring at his hand, fingers splayed wide. Bord is… gone. He must have leapt into the portal when she was still pondering things. Angeta claps Vox on his shoulder and drags him through after her. Tess looks further down the line and her eyes meet Ket’s.
“I…” He begins to speak, but can’t find the words.
“Yeah, I wanted to settle some scores. Thank the Tower that I decided to leave them alive.”
Ket’s troubled expression fades as he narrows his eyes in response. His mouth shows a vicious smirk. “I also left them alive. They won’t be much longer though. It’s not my fault they can’t even escape from the sewers, right?”
Ket murmurs something to himself about missing legs, too soft for her to hear properly. Tess had seen Ket before this entire discipleship started. The melancholic youth had placed himself on the lowest rung of society; he was a baggage carrier for diving teams. Tess’ position was just above his, being a sneak is a slightly less shameful profession. She is sure that quite a few high-ranking adventurers won’t be alive by next week.
“That should teach those arrogant assholes a lesson,” she thinks to herself, the slight feeling of glee wiping away her previous fears. She flexes her body a bit, feeling strength surge through her every fibre. She has come into contact with drugs before, the one time she joined in is a hazy fog filled with bliss in her memories. She can’t think of any form of drugs that would be as fulfilling as this cultivation business though.
Now in a much better mood, she steps through the dark mist.
⁂
I pull Lola from my necklace and place her on the ground.
“Only help the rest if they truly need it, okay?”
She twitches her nose, puffs her chest up a little and turns around, facing the dark cave stretching ahead. How can a rabbit give off such an air? It is almost as if she is a spoiled little lady, huffing in annoyance at her overprotective parents. It’s a good thing I don’t believe in corporal punishment, else I would have given her at least ten minutes of tickling for that small insubordination.
My danger sense process takes control of my legs, moving me forward one step. Before I can even bother to figure out why, a loud smack resounds. I see Bord bouncing off the wall. I check the process’s settings and turn the intervention threshold up a few notches. No need to get out of the way of attacks that can’t even hurt me, right?
I walk forward as Bord struggles to get up from the uneven floor. The first pair of glowing eyes have appeared in the tunnel, so I dash forward and punch one of the racoon dogs in the face. Its face explodes, showering myself and the cave around me in small bits of gore and wet fur. This is why practice is important, not to become stronger, but to control my strength with precision.
The next dog gets his skull caved in by my adjusted punch. I have a good feel for the power of my arms now. I try kicking a dog, but my foot just ploughs through its midriff, cutting it into two. Leg muscles are quite a lot more powerful than arm muscles, so the spray of intestines was to be expected.
Braincore cultivators have to calculate everything. In combat situations, I used to have a good quarter of my brain occupied with solving muscle tension requirements for planned movements. I could plan one or two moves ahead, but the complexity of simulating a complete skeleton with muscles took up too much power to plan more. That’s the shitty thing about this method of movement. It took up a quarter of my brain power on every realm. Calculating the force necessary for a mortal to jump upwards would be like adding one and one together. Calculating the same move with the power of the foundation realm is like adding a few thousand to a thousand. At my previous pre-ascension peak I was adding up numbers that had hundreds of digits, and the complexity of the moves meant I sometimes had to multiply or divide these numbers. The more power I had, the more power it took to calculate the necessary amounts of force that needed to be applied to each separate muscle. Now, however, I can relegate the calculation of movement to my heartcore, it will accept a simple command like “go there,” and execute it with optimum efficiency.
The fourth dog gets all his ribs cracked by my kick. I use my braincore to calculate the necessary force and let my heartcore do the physical work. I sense a few ribs splinter off and slice into the beast’s heart and lungs, just as planned. I can’t help but smile at the massive improvement I gained. Battle used to be a slow-motion slog of hellish math. Every move needed to be planned, simulated, refined and then executed. I had to spend the entire battle with a large portion of my qi flowing through my brainpan, just to be able to calculate everything fast enough. This also meant that truly dangerous battles took years from my perspective.
Now I can roughly plan hundreds of moves and possibilities ahead and leave all the tedious movement to my heartcore. Fine tuning punches against weaker enemies used to take me a few dozen tries, refining my algorithms after every attempt. Now I am fully tuned up to fight against these weak dogs after just four hits. I look back and see the entire group looking at me with pale faces.
I quickly wipe the grin and blood from my face. I laugh a bit, embarra
ssed.
“I gained some strength recently, I needed to fine-tune my use of force. You all should do the same. Use the least amount of force to inflict a lethal injury, don’t waste your power uselessly.”
I nod to myself and turn around, walking deeper into the cave system. I snap my fingers and execute my area scanning technique, blue lines in a grid shortly flash into existence.
The layout has changed? I compare the current map to the first one I still have on file. The main branches seem to be similar, their details and small branching paths are not. Does the dungeon generate a new floor for each party?
“Why is the layout different from last time?”
The group that is busily stepping over the smears of gore halts for a moment. Selis stumbles a bit and falls. She throws her hands in front of her face, trying to soften the fall. Her momentum gets stopped while all the blood on the floor gets shot away from her, covering the rest of the group. Blood is water, after all.
“Huuuh, sorry.”
She looks down with red cheeks. Ket plucks a piece of skull from his face and walks on. “The main tunnels remain the same.”
I can always count on Ket to give me short and concise answers. I compare the two maps again, and he is right. The paths have different bends and twists to them, but the main intersections are similar. The room layouts are also the same, not in shape, but in function.
Bord bumps me aside, muttering an apology as he waddles on. A new group of dogs is visible in the gloom ahead, the deepening dark behind them an indication that an open space is coming up. The heartcore cultivator rushes ahead, a grim look on his face. He turns the first dog he reaches into a pancake. A large spray of blood bursting from the flattened canine in a circle pattern.
Should I tell him to preserve energy again? I watch him pound dog after dog into a fine paste, who knew that a spoiled little brat like him could grin so savagely? I will snap him out of his bloodlust before he can get lost in it though. Blood-drunk body cultivators are super annoying. I decide to let him figure that stuff out by himself. Even the world’s most valuable lesson needs an active listener.
I decide to do something useful in the meantime. I pull a bar of steel from my ring and slice it into small workable chunks. Every new sect disciple in every xianxia story I ever read got a complimentary welcome spatial bag or ring filled with goodies upon joining the sect, right? I hum a tune while immersing myself in the crafting.
Chapter thirty-six
Control
Awhite smile is surrounded by red splatters. A row of teeth that contain endless amounts of savagery. That is the first thing Tess sees when she finally enters the dungeon. She is suddenly paralysed by fear, some instinct deep inside of her screaming to stop, to not move or it will see her.
A hand wiping across the face suddenly frees her. She hears the man in question say something about increased strength, but it does not enter her ears. Only the gist of the last sentence said lingers, something about using the minimum force necessary for lethal injuries.
Tess looks at the face again, now wiped clean of any dirt and blood. The savage smile somehow turned into one of true joy, a row of pearly whites filled with satisfaction. She decides to shudder for a bit, letting the tension drain out of her. The sudden flash of blue lines everywhere snaps her out of it completely.
She hears the man ask another question and a sudden wave of lukewarm wetness splashes across her face. Swivelling her head to the source, she sees the blue-haired girl standing in a ring free of gore, looking down at her feet. Water is blood; blood is water. Tess has learned something new today. She decides to just ignore everything happening around her, the continued shocks a little much for the still shaken girl. She wants to smile, but the droplet of blood running over her lips stops her from opening her mouth. She just decides to walk forwards.
It is a good thing she stepped out of the way too, the biggest of their group rushes forwards and starts turning softhounds into mush – with his fist. The weird guy pulls a glimmering bar of metal from somewhere. Qi lines appear around the bar before they flash out of existence, the small cubes the bar turn into the only evidence they were ever there.
Her mind is blown again when she realises that Bord’s behind may be a better blunt damage weapon than the most exquisite club. She looks at her own ass and decides to leave sitting on enemies to Bord. Finally, fully exasperated, she pulls a small black dagger from her waist and throws it forwards. She can barely make it out as it spins in the gloom, but she doesn’t need much light for her next move.
The dagger clatters to the floor after colliding handle first with a softhounds nose. The dog sniffs it a bit before he gets blown away by a small fist that suddenly appeared with a dark flash. Her smile returns in full at the sight of the previously unconquerable enemy smacking against the cave wall. She catches Bord’s eyes, and they grin at each other in the middle of piles of minced meat. Maybe that blood splattered look isn’t as bad as she first thought?
⁂
Spatial rings are impossible. Looking at the black ring around my finger through the lens of science brings forth a paradox. I know of no theory that could explain the phenomenon. In the past, I spent loads of thinking power trying to figure it out. There are no traces of wormholes, black holes or multiple dimensions when I use the ring’s spatial functions. All this wasted effort did allow me to realise that using science in combination with a strong mental image or will powers up the scientific effects a lot.
In hindsight, it only makes sense. Science is a product of the human brain. Using the product and the producer in tandem is bound to create interesting effects. Using them both in combination with forces that take Newton and his laws out back and beat them up works even better.
It was common sense that spatial rings can only be made by foundation realm cultivators. I would agree with those people, if not for the pendant around my neck and my braincore. Making a spatial ring is done with the same process I used to create my Tree. Just shove so much stuff and energy into a physical place that it starts to spill out into another dimension.
Being a mental cultivator is a cheat sometimes; I have never come across a ring with a bigger capacity than my own. The creation took a lot of effort and required some very specific circumstances, so I will have to improvise with the ones I am creating now.
With a basic outline of a plan in mind, I begin. I agitate the molecules of a small steel block, using up a small stream of qi in the process. It starts glowing within seconds, and I carefully guide the molten metal into a tree shape. When the blob of metal is shaped similarly to my own pendant - a flattened Tree around five centimetres in height - I let it cool. A single tap of my finger and some boosted vibrations flake off all the oxidised metal, leaving a gleaming miniature Tree floating in front of me.
I pump a good amount of qi inside the small sculpture and begin squeezing. Ten seconds later my head starts hurting slightly, but with another push, the hyper-compressed metal inside the trunk flows into another space. The slight ringing sound caused by the vibration is swallowed by the fighting sounds around me. The small Tree has shrunk down to a quarter of a centimetre. I look up to take stock of how everyone is doing.
We are still walking through the first floor, I am taking a nice and relaxing stroll while my students are flitting about, beating up dogs. Their official name literally translates to “squishy dog,” so I looked through all the synonyms of those two words and named them “softhound.” Their fur is indeed incredibly soft; it’s a shame the leather keeping that fur together is about as strong as wet tissue paper.
Back to my ring project. I melt another cube of steel and form it into a ring. A quick scan of my disciple’s fingers gets me the perfect measurements. I manually oxidise the outside of the ring, turning it a dull black. This was called patina if I recall correctly. The miniature spatial tree floats over to the ring and I let it sink inside the black metal until it is half submerged. I pour some qi inside and feel a space of a few cubic
metres. In the Cultivation World, this would be a low-grade spatial ring, perfect for beginner cultivators.
The following five rings take less time; I finish the last one in a few seconds. We have reached the ending of the first level by now, so I put them away in my pocket. I don’t know if putting spatial pockets in spatial pockets is possible, and I have no desire to find out. The energy contained in these things is comparable to a nuke, and I am talking about the ones I just created. I think my own spatial ring could be described as a planet cracker if detonated. Some experiments are better left as thought experiments.
Lola bumps my leg to get my attention. I thank whatever gods there are that she hasn’t activated her qi horn. I can’t take her seriously when she does that. I am walking through the last room, the few dogs that are still alive won’t be for much longer by the looks of it.
The group gathers around me as the last dogs are mercilessly murdered. Selis waves her hand around, gathering the dog fluids covering every student. She hovers the murky red glob over her hand. This could be a problem, her affinity with water could easily shift to blood. That would limit her water control, although her blood attacks would be stronger. “Do you plan to become a blood mage?”
She looks up startled, putting her glasses back on. I will have to introduce the concept of contact lenses to her. “Uhmm, n-no?”
“Then why are you using blood instead of the water inside it?”
She looks at the hovering glob of gore above her hand with a doubtful expression. She timidly places her other hand above the sphere, pulling both hands apart slightly. The underside of the undulating blob becomes a darker red, while transparent water drops are being pulled from the top. She ends up with a sphere of pure water and a hand filled with dark red powder. I nod with satisfaction. Now let’s blow her mind one more time.
I pull a bit of water from her grasp and form it into two disks. I fine tune the disks to the correct curvature. I pull the glasses from her nose while hovering the two water lenses in front of her face.
The DAO of Magic Page 29