Okay, so nothing too impressive, but this was a stepping stone! Being able to do anything at all meant that the biggest hurdle had already been passed!
I flipped the switch off in my mind to extinguish the effect. Then I flipped it back on. Off and on, off and on again and again until it barely took an instant of concentration to activate the spellheart’s power.
“Cute little spell Theo, but it’s highly inefficient. You’re wasting zeal right now. If you keep casting spells like that your spellheart will shrink until it’s unusable. I’ll teach you how to properly use magic tonight. And how to draw zeal from the natural environment.”
”As eager as I am to learn more magic, I think both you and I know you’ve got other plans for tonight." I said with a wink.
Sava blushed, and I grinned. She’d been practically clinging to my arm ever since we’d escaped those gangsters. Even a clueless gamer like me could take a hint. “A shame you bonded the only earth spellheart we got. Now I’ll have to spend time cultivating the hard way. Luckily, I have just the place. I’ll show you when you’re ready.”
***
It was almost sunset by the time we made it back Sava’s residence at the edge of the territory of the Riverweed tribe. Sure enough, Sava skipped the lesson she promised. We gnawed on some leftover food from that morning and then she beckoned me to bed.
Who was I to refuse such a beautiful woman? Especially one who was letting me live with her. Granted, she did kind of kidnap me.
“I can’t believe I wasted so much time with you before we did this!” Sava moaned as she rode me.
“You were still in mad alchemist kidnapper mode back then.” I said, bouncing Sava up and down on my cock with my arms.
It didn’t take much longer for the elf to let loose a cry of pleasure, which was quickly followed by a matching cry of my own.
Sava climbed off of me and sank down cross legged and straight-backed on the ground. She entered a meditative stance and breathed deeply and deliberately.
“Sava? What are you doing?” I asked curiously.
“Shh, Theo, didn’t you feel that? Look around!”
As I basked in the afterglow, I noticed something funny happening in the air around the two of us.
“What are these?” I asked Sava, poking at the tiny specs of light that were dancing in the surrounding air.
“Do what I do! This is a rare chance, don’t let it go to waste!”
She sat up, sitting cross-legged with her palms facing up in her lap. She sat straight-backed and let out a deep breath, loosening her muscles.
I did the same, though much slower. I’d meditated before, but after realizing enlightenment wouldn’t grant me fantastic mystic powers I gave up on the hobby. In this world, it actually could grant me mystic powers, so I wouldn’t be giving up so easily here.
“Focus on a point, Theo. Visualize the particles of light swirling together, settling and forming a structure around that point.”
I did as she said, and much to my surprise, the flecks of light stopped moving randomly and started drifting slowly towards me.
“You’re losing them Theo! You must maintain constant focus!”
She was right. I was so caught up in amazement watching the floating specs of light be drawn towards me and Sava that I forgot to focus on the invisible point above my hands. The moment I restored my focus the particles began drifting towards me again.
It took me an hour to really get the hang of what we were doing. By then I had a sizable spec of light, about a fifth the size of my admittedly small earth aspect spellheart.
“Not bad, Theo! Yours is nearly as big as mine!” Sava said holding up a small white spellheart of her own.
“So, you just made a spellheart, I take it? And that was... vitality?”
Sava nodded. “Just so. This little stone is extremely high in terms of vitality. There’s a whole mess of lesser zeals mixed in that the vitality is riding on top of, and they won’t be useful for anything, but the vitality can be transferred and extracted, being of tremendous use in cultivation. Unfortunately, vitality spellhearts like this aren’t stable, so they have to be used immediately. This was great! Normally it would have taken me a year to gather that much vitality! And you filled this whole room!”
“What was different this time?” Sava usually went quiet after we slept together, and she usually said the experience was good for her cultivation base, but this was different.
“You! You’re amazing Theo. You must have experienced a breakthrough in your cultivation base. You’re still locked at the zeroth level of zeal accumulation because you haven’t bound a spellheart, but I think once you do you’ve got the vitality to immediately jump right over the first level of zeal accumulation. Now be quiet and watch.”
Sava took my spellheart from my hand and held it to her lower abdomen, pressing it against her bare skin. Then it vanished into her body.
I blinked. “What just happened? You can absorb spellhearts into your body?”
Sava laughed. “No silly. I absorbed it into my womb. I’m preparing to lay an egg!”
I blinked again. “Wait, so that was for real? Elves lay eggs!?”
It was Sava’s turn to look confused. “Well how else are you supposed to make new elves? How do ‘humans’ do it?” She put air quotes around the word humans, like she still believed I was making that up.
“Well, for humans, the mother carries the baby inside her, and then they pop out and cry for milk and hugs and diaper changes.”
“They just... pop out?” Sava stifled a giggle. “Like, fully alive and walking around?”
“Babies can’t walk around right away. They need a few years before that.”
Sava’s composure broke down and she started laughing uncontrollably. “Theo... I think your mother just didn’t want to tell you where babies came from.”
“It’s true! It might not be how elves are born but that’s where humans come from!”
Sava, still laughing, shook her head. “How would women fight if they had another person inside them? How would they work? For that matter, how would a whole person fit inside another person?”
“They’re babies! They’re smaller than adults. They have short little stubby arms and legs and big heads that their necks can barely hold up. They don’t really do anything until they grow a little, they just sort of sit there and be babies. I don’t know, I’m not a developmental biologist.”
Sava giggled again. “Alright Theo. If that’s what you want to think then so be it. Just make sure you say hello when your daughter hatches, okay?”
“Fine...” There was no use trying to teach human biology to Sava. She clearly didn’t believe a word of it. I still had my doubts though about whether I could even produce offspring with an elf.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I awoke to quiet morning air. Surprisingly, Sava was next to me, sound asleep. Usually she always woke up before me and had breakfast well in hand by the time I rolled out of bed. Maybe it was time I return the favor.
I knew my way around Sava’s tree house well enough to find supplies. The big black plank of wood served the same purpose as a stove, treated as it had been in the same manner as the ironwood except imbued with aspects of fire and heat. I tossed some vegetables in a pan carved of similarly dense ironwood. It wouldn’t burn and would work the same as a cast iron pan.
After digging out Sava’s pan, I picked out a selection of our usual food. I didn’t see any oil, so I ended up cutting the fattiest portion of some type of plant-rabbit hybrid creature into a handful of thin strips. My idea was to make bacon, but really it ended up being more like fibrous meat chunks. Still, I got a few good strips of plant meat cooked.
That alone hardly makes a good breakfast. I don’t think Sava kept much flour around, which ruled out pancakes. And for practically anything else I’d need eggs.
Ah an egg! I spotted something on the table. It had an odd sheen to it, like a yellowish glimmer, but otherwise it loo
ked much like a chicken egg.
I shrugged. Right, breakfast.
But then a thought struck me. Wait a moment. What was that Sava said about laying an egg?
“Oh, you saw it.” Sava said, yawning as she got out of bed.
I quickly backed away from the frying pan.
”Yeah, I saw it...”
“Bigger than I expected. I think she’ll be born much stronger than usual.”
“So... there’s an elf inside of this?” I asked. “It looks a little… small.” I was holding the egg very gently now.
Sava simply snorted and shook her head. “You and your ridiculous stories about children popping out live and fully formed with arms and legs and that nonsense. If you’d ever laid an egg you’d know I was struggling to lay that for a solid five minutes while you snoozed away. I would have woken you for it, but it came a full week sooner than I expected. This little girl grew fast.”
“Should you be sitting on this or something? You know, keeping it warm?”
Sava rolled her eyes again. “We’re not birds Theo. She just needs time to naturally cultivate and grow. In fact, staying too close to her will cause our natural energy absorption to interfere with hers. Better to just leave her be. I’ll take her somewhere special soon. That’s where she’ll be able to absorb the most zeal. With help, it will only take her a few years to mature into an elf. Speaking of, since your going to become an earth aspect spellwielder you may want to try and cultivate there yourself.” Her eyes darted back and forth, making sure nobody else was listening. “Don’t tell anybody.” She whispered in a low tone. “But a couple years ago ago I found a nexus.”
I matched her conspiratorial tone. “A nexus. Oh excellent… what is a nexus?”
Sava rolled her eyes. “Usually a magical nexus is where at least two leylines cross. The one I found though isn’t natural, which is why nobody’s built a school on top of it. I imagine some ancient, powerful cultivator created an artificial nexus to train in. Or maybe it was created by a dungeon core establishing itself in the nearby area. I don’t really know, but at its current level it will be very useful to someone in the first few levels of zeal accumulation. I certainly wouldn’t have reached the fifth level this fast without it.”
Sava took over my crude attempt at breakfast and soon enough we had an edible meal. Afterwards, she decided it was time to take both me and her egg to her secret little grotto.
It didn’t seem to impressive at first glance. Just a tiny little glade with a stream running through it. It was surrounded by moss-covered trees and a ring of thorny vines. I had to crawl through a tiny gap between the vines that Sava showed me to get inside.
That’s when the feeling hit me. I’d been learning how to detect zeal thanks to my efforts at practicing with the earth aspect spellheart, and this place was positively overflowing with energy.
According to Sava, this secret nexus was the whole reason why Sava settled down in this remote part of the world. She was engaged in isolated training in the hopes that she would be able to fuse with her spellheart, at which point she would ascend to a new level of cultivation.
“See that little flat stone dais in the center? That’s where I usually sit. It must be some sort of sacred treasure, because when I sit there my mind clears and my zeal accumulation rate triples!”
“Let me give it a try.” I said curiously. I was still new to this whole cultivation thing but tripling my cultivation rate seemed like a very good thing. “Do I have to turn the thing on?”
“No , just sit on it and let it do its thing. Try it with earth zeal. You cultivated life zeal last night, but this will be a little different, since you actually have a spellheart for earth. Take out the earth spellheart and focus on it.”
Sava switched into lecturing mode while I calmed my breathing, settling down cross-legged into the posture I’d always seen people meditate in. “I’m going to teach you the most basic cycling technique there is, the one everybody starts at. It’s simply involves getting a feel for the earth zeal around you, pulling a little of it towards you.
“Imagine you are a fish sitting at the bottom of a still puddle. All the mud as sunk to the bottom and the water is clear. But if you flick your tail and stir the water then the mud will mix with the surrounding water. This is what I want you to do with the zeal. Focus your will and shove at the earth. Stir it into action, into revealing itself!”
Earth... I ruminated on the concept, treating it like a mantra. What was earth? It was strong and hard like a rock, and huge like a mountain. It could be found in huge boulders the size of cities, and also tiny grains of sand. The stone dais must have been helping me because I seemed to have a degree of focus I usually only attained during the height of combat in a video game, or when I fought with Sava after first coming to this world.
Using my will, I shoved at the world around me. And I did it again, and again and again. If I was a fish in a puddle, then I was jumping clean out of the water and doing cartwheels in the air before I finally sensed something.
After the tenth attempt, the earth responded to my call. It couldn’t do anything with it specifically, but I could agitate it. Make it show itself.
The earth shook. Sava grabbed her egg in her hands and held it up to protect it, eyes full of surprise.
“What next?” I asked quickly. I didn’t want to lose this incredible feeling just yet.
“Oh, uhm, you need to pick out the earth aspect zeal and draw it towards your crystal. But not just any earth aspect zeal. It has to be compatible zeal, otherwise you’ll end up lowering the quality.”
I cast my mind into the earth spellheart. It felt like... dirt. Like packed mud that had hardened years ago under the weight of thousands of years of beasts and people stepping all over it.
Then I searched the zeal that drifted lazily around me. One bit here, one bit there. There was one that gave me the same feeling as my crystal! I called towards it with my mind and by the invisible force of my will I pulled it towards my earth spellheart. I don’t know how long as sat there, tugging at tiny particles of zeal one at a time and drawing them towards me. I do know it was a long time when I finally opened my eyes again. The sun had nearly set.
Sava was seated near me, meditating as well. Her nature spellheart was in her hands.
“Did that thing get bigger?” I asked in surprise as Sava opened her eyes.
“Look at yours Theo.” Sava gestured, and sure enough I glanced at my spellheart. Before it had barely been the size of a gemstone on a ring, but now it was the size of my thumbnail!
“It grew!” I exclaimed in amazement. “That’s amazing!”
“Well, you just spent the whole morning cycling zeal to it. And by the looks of it you did a very good job! I think it’s improved a whole level in quality. It’s now a mid-quality spellheart instead of a low quality one.”
Earth Aspect spellheart (mid-grade)
This spellheart is bound to Theodore Waltz. Its dominant affinity is the dirt aspect of Earth.
I frowned. Only mid quality? Well, that just meant that I’d have to come back and do this tomorrow!
“So, what does increasing the size of my spellheart do? Other than making it bigger?”
“The physical dimensions of a spellheart are an approximation of the amount of zeal that it contains. Increasing the spellheart’s size means increasing the zeal. That means you’ll be able to cast more, bigger spells.”
“Wait, so you mean when I use the spellheart to cast spells I’m actually using the zeal?”
“Well yes, where did you think the energy came from?”
Damn. What ever happened to self-regenerating mana pools!?
“So, theoretically, I could use this spellheart until it shrank down into nothingness?” I asked.
“Not in one sitting, you’d burn out your meridians doing that. But yes, you could use that spellheart until there is essentially nothing left. Past a certain threshold though it won’t even be able to hold itself together thou
gh.”
We left Sava’s egg on the dais. Sava said it would be good for the child to have the cultivation enhancing effect of the dais while she was growing.
In favor of giving me room to practice I opted not to return to Sava’s tree house. Instead, we decided to camp out for a while near the grove, both to keep an eye on the egg and so Sava could forage for more raw materials. She’d sold every leaf and herbal mixture she’d stocked up on so there was no point in opening up her shop. She had nothing to sell. So instead, we set up a small camp. I spent my days practicing while Sava went off into the forest.
***
“Alright. It’s time that you learned some real spells. That little run in with those... unsavory individuals we had in town should have proved to you that you’re a valuable commodity, Theo. If you don’t learn to defend yourself, you’ll be passed around like an old trinket.”
I nodded in agreement. As hot as sleeping with dozens of beautiful elf girls sounded, I valued my freedom. Don’t get me wrong, I’d take them up on it if the offered, but it would be on my own terms.
“Right then. So, combat spells it is.”
“You’re not ready for the higher end moves that I can pull off with nature magic, but that’s okay. Frankly, earth magic is better suited to simple, brute force techniques anyway.”
Sava guided me through the process of activating the earth zeal from my spellheart and guiding it to pick up a rock and fling it at a nearby tree. By my third attempt I was throwing fist-sized rocks fast enough to make pitchers wet themselves. I could manage bigger rocks as well, but not nearly as fast.
“How are you feeling?” Sava asked me about two hours in.
“Great! This is incredible! I’m doing magic!” I grinned.
Sava laughed. “Good. To be honest, I’m just as surprised as you are. Normally someone without developed meridians shouldn’t be able to last longer than fifteen minutes. I guess you’re just particularly well suited to the earth aspect.”
Zeal of the Mind and Flesh Page 15