As bad as I had felt after the breakthrough the night before, I felt outstanding when I woke up at dawn the next day. Temüjin had placed me in my normal corner near the fireplace after I had broken through, and I woke up warm, cozy, and completely naked. He’d at least had the decency to place a worn fur below me so I wasn’t sleeping on the floor, and another ratty and worn fur on top of me to keep away the chill. My normal blankets were missing, and my clothes were nowhere to be found.

I could hear him puttering away in the kitchen, making breakfast, so I called out, “Teacher, where are my clothes?”

“Burned them,” came the reply. “All the filth in your body gets expelled when it’s remade during a breakthrough. Your clothes weren’t salvageable. I’ve left you a temporary set of clothes on the porch, along with a brush and a bucket of soap. Finish cleaning yourself up at the river, get dressed, and come eat. Today we start external manipulation.”

Translation: Today you learn how to throw fireballs.

Cold water and harsh soap seemed a small price to pay for that. Except the water really didn’t feel as cold as it should. I was bare-ass naked in a glacial runoff stream and not shivering. It wasn’t pleasant, sure, but not any worse than a lukewarm shower. The soap, which I had previously found to be almost unbearably harsh, didn’t sting my skin anymore either. It still stung my nose to smell it with how pungent it was, but it didn’t leave me raw. Curious, I finished my bath and got out of the bathing hole we used in the river and walked to one of the stones in the shallower part. It wasn’t huge, about the size of a beach ball, but it was heavy enough to test my theory. I knelt down and got a firm grip on the rock before lifting it, easily. The size made it cumbersome, but it wasn’t all that heavy. I tossed it away from me and moved to a rock the size of an office chair. This one I had to rock back and forth a little to break free of the muck, but with a bit of effort I was able to lift it as well. It had to be 500 pounds, at least, and I was able to lift it as easily as a bale of hay back on the farm. That’s almost as awesome as fireballs, I thought, as I got dressed and started walking back up to the cottage.

“Did you have fun playing with rocks?” I heard from the kitchen as I walked back in.

“How did you know?” I asked, not the least bit ashamed. It was just two rocks; not like I was trying to throw them for a distance record. I was saving that for after lunch.

Temüjin dished up the usual rice porridge, vegetables, and tea he served for breakfast while answering, “Because I did almost the same thing the day after my first breakthrough. Almost all cultivators do. You broke through in four elements at once, it’s only natural you’d explore your new limits. It also made your first breakthrough rather intense. I don’t know if your others will be as bad so please let me know before you break through again. I want to observe the next one.”

“That one was a bit of an accident, to be fair. I had everything packed up and was halfway back inside before I felt an…urge, I suppose, to go back and work a bit more. I was going to stop when I hit the saturation point, but I felt it again, so I kept pressing. Then I broke through and you found me. Thanks for that by the way, I was a bit out of it,” I said as I fixed my tea. Temüjin took his with milk, butter, and salt. I preferred mine with just a dollop of milk.

He sat for a moment before positing, “That may have been your Mystery boon at work. From what I’ve learned by talking to the few others like us that I’ve met, each patron has one boon that’s a bit more difficult to quantify than the others. Mine are Loyalty and War. The effects are undeniable, but hard to see. How can you know, deep down, that your enemy will move a certain way and attribute it to a boon instead of a gut instinct that’s been honed by decades of leading troops? Or know with utter certainty that a person is lying to you and will betray you almost before they do? You must trust your gut instinct, because the boon amplifies it. Did you try to resist it at all?” he asked, leaning forward.

“Barely. I stopped in the middle of the path for a few seconds before turning back to the river. I didn’t hesitate at all when I felt that I had to keep compressing. They both just seemed like the right thing to do,” I responded.

“Then it was likely your boon at work. I’ve often felt the same when War and Loyalty manifest. Listen to that voice when it speaks to you. In twelve hundred years I’ve never regretted listening to it, but I’ve often regretted ignoring it,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes, before bending to eat. Taking that as a cue that the conversation was over, I quickly finished my breakfast and washed our plates before jogging out to the river.

Temüjin was already there standing next to the scorched area where I’d broken through the night before. I hadn’t taken a good look at it when I came down to clean up earlier, so I moved over to join him. A circular area about three meters in diameter looked like it had been blasted with hellfire. The rocks that hadn’t been moved by the wild Qi vortex were scorched black along with the dirt.

“Damn,” I said, “I didn’t realize it was that violent.”

He nodded, “Most breakthroughs aren’t. What worries me is that the Qi vortex gets larger with each breakthrough. This is already quite a substantial vortex for a first level breakthrough, so your next one should be even more impressive. The scary part is what will happen when you break through to Sage or higher. At that point it might be big enough to level a small town.”

“No breaking through in Gladewood, got it,” I said, grinning.

“Or the house. Unless it’s in your room, that you get to start building,” he said.

I groaned internally. I’d forgotten about that.

“But first, fireballs!” I said.

“First, a lecture on how external Qi manipulation works,” he corrected me. “External qi manipulation is both easier and more difficult than internal manipulation. With internal manipulation you must draw in the qi, and then disperse it through your body. External manipulation requires you to draw in the qi, store it, and then expel it with shape and intent. The qi does not get absorbed by your body and will offer you no benefits. In addition, it is lost to you when it is expelled and you can, and will, run yourself dry if you’re not careful. The stronger the effect, the more qi it requires. Observe.”

He handed me the lens, I was told most emphatically that it was a lens and not a monocle, before taking a meditative position. Qi flowed into his chest and was stored. He continued for the next few minutes as the qi in his chest became more and more dense, more like a cotton candy you’d buy at the fair than the wispy stuff that floated on the breeze around him. Once he was happy with how concentrated it was, he stood and pointed a finger downriver.

“Fire,” he whispered, as a jet of white-hot flame flashed from his hand. Like a flamethrower he plied it over the surface of the water, boiling hundreds of gallons to steam in an instant.

“Wind,” came his next incantation. I wasn’t as startled this time and could see how he shaped the qi he was expelling. A pea-sized ball of air qi launched from his hand and flew downstream for a hundred meters before discharging. My ears ringing, I thought I heard people applauding, before I realized that it was stones falling behind me.

“And when we combine them we get a…fireball,” he said with an evil grin before pointing his finger downstream again. I watched him drain almost all the Qi he’d gained while meditating into a compact ball, containing aspects of both fire and air, before launching it at an upward angle downstream. It flew into the air at least 300 meters before exploding with a whump that I felt in my feet. If he had launched it straight, I realized, it would have ignited the surrounding trees. As it was I could feel the heat on my face from it.

“Now, you will try. I’d suggest starting with stone. As soon as you’re done with your room you can go into town and buy a bed from Batuhan and Irma,” he said, taking the lens from me before going back to the cottage for his fishing gear.

Instead of working against me, like it had when I first learned internal manipulation, my absurd uptake rate helped quite a lot with external manipulation. I started with melding stones. It wasn’t something I could do at a distance, yet, the stream of earth qi became unstable after a foot or so. While I was in physical contact with stone, however, it was fairly time consuming but easy. The morning passed quickly as I experimented. If the stream of earth qi had an unbroken line through stone or soil I could use it to manipulate either at a distance. I could meld, or break, stones. Soil was easily melded to form a soft sandstone. Small pebbles were just as easily broken down into sand, which I then formed into a larger rock that I absentmindedly continued to knead like dough as I walked back to the cottage.

Building a room for myself wouldn’t be hard with the ability to meld stones. It wouldn’t be fast, though. I had completely flattened the table sized rock I used for cultivation to make it more comfortable, but it had taken me a few hours to manage. The larger the room I wanted to build, the longer it was going to take. On the flip side, I didn’t have anything but time now. If I was going to build something, I might as well take the time and do it right. I marked off a generous fifteen-foot by fifteen-foot square which I thought should be sufficiently large for a bed and maybe a dresser. There was no way I was going to keep wearing the same clothes every day for the rest of my training. Come to think of it, Temüjin did say that earth qi could affect plants as well. Mind whirling with plans, I went inside to help prepare our lunch.

Temüjin was already in the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of his salty buttered tea, when I walked in. I was about to get a bowl out of the cupboard when his eyes fell on the stone that I had been molding with qi.

“Let me see that,” he said.

I handed it over without comment. I hadn’t looked at it in an hour, instead using it as a sort of qi stress ball. The stone had started the day as a handful of pebbles which formed a gray lump of rock when melded. A few hours of daydreaming and being exposed to large amounts of earth qi had turned into an almost perfectly spherical stone the size of a lemon. The surface was a striated riot of reds, creams, tans, blacks, and browns and looked as if it had been polished.

“Huh,” I said, “didn’t realize I was doing that. Pretty though.”

“It is, how did you manage it?” he inquired.

“Not a clue, but you’re welcome to keep it if you want. I split some pebbles into sand, then melded them. Then I sort of started to think up plans for building the new room while I was messing with the melded stone. That’s the first time I’d looked at it in an hour or so,” I answered. “Oh, that reminds me, Teacher. Is it possible to meld wood the same way as I can stone using earth qi? I know you said that plant affinity was one of the hallmarks of an earth cultivator.”

“Perhaps, over time. I have interacted with several extremely talented earth cultivators and none showed any prowess with melding wood. They could, however, encourage plants to grow in a certain way. That might be something you could try. I’ll see if I still have any manuscripts that could steer you in the right direction after lunch,” he said while I filled our plates.

Finishing lunch, I cleaned up while Temüjin vanished into his room. He emerged as I was placing everything back where it belonged with a yellowed scroll in his hands.

“We will study this tomorrow. Now, we begin your improved combat lessons,” he said, walking out the front door.

“Wait, improved combat lessons?” I asked, nervously following him outside. His previous training hadn’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows. Ever since the beginning of my cultivation we had ended our morning sessions with me sporting various cuts, bruises, and scrapes. Temüjin, of course, never had a hair out of place. Being a Disciple of Krieg has benefits.

“Improved. You are now a cultivator, if only the lowest tier. I don’t have to take it quite as easy any longer. Now, take your stance,” he barked.

I did. It hurt. Our training had previously involved him making me run, lift rocks, and perform agility training in the river. Now that I was a cultivator we maintained that same regimen, with the addition of random weak bursts of air or fire qi. I was required to counter or dodge those while not interrupting my own exercises and simultaneously healing any damage they caused. After a few hours of that, he walked me through the martial forms I’d already learned, before leaving me to practice my strikes on my own while cultivating. By the time dinner was ready, I was sweating, filthy, and completely exhausted. That was the pattern of my life for the next two weeks. Wake up, make slow progress on my bedroom, and then spend the next ten hours getting the stuffing beaten out of me. There was progress despite (or because of) the pain, though. Rather than carry stones from the river Temüjin had me start bringing them in from the mountain slopes during our training. Ever run two miles? Ever tried it while carrying a rock on your back that’s almost as big as you are? Not something I’d recommend.

If I had been on Earth it would have been pure torture. Here, though, it seemed like good sense. There was an entire world out there to explore and it was going to kill me if I wasn’t strong enough to handle it. Thanks to my abilities I was able to recover in a few hours rather than a few days. While I had been in decent shape when I’d been transported to this new world the training methods Temüjin used had my muscles gaining definition each day. It’s one thing to know that physical and mental exercise is good for you but it’s intoxicating when you can see the results so quickly. I dove into the training with an enthusiasm that the old me had reserved for fast cars and redheads. While I wasn’t about to discount his methods, because they were obviously working, the mental aspect was worrying to me. Enough that I broached the subject during one of our after-dinner conversations on the porch.

“I was wondering when you were going to bring that up,” he said.

“Oh? So, it is normal? Or at least normal for here?” I asked.

“Oh no,” he scoffed, “even here people refuse to train hard. It hurts to push your body to the limits of what it can do. It hurts even more to pass those limits and set new ones for yourself. The disciples of Sects try, of course. They’ll work for years to perfect a qi technique and then crow about it for the rest of their lives, but they won’t push that limit and take it to the next level. They work hard, but they are too stupid and set in their way to work smart.”

“Is it a function of being a Jumpspark then? Because I seriously doubt I’d be putting in this much effort back home. I can’t argue the results, and I’m not complaining. It’s just out of character for me. I was never afraid of hard work, you can’t be if you grow up on a farm, but this…,” I trailed off.

Temüjin sipped his tea before answering, “It’s a function of both of us being a Jumpspark. War, Battle, and Blood, remember? When I train someone my War aspect activates. When you learn, I suspect your Knowledge aspect activates. War makes you more willing to work hard and put forth the effort and Knowledge helps you retain it. Are you regretting your decision?”

“Not at all. From what I’ve seen this world is unlike mine and filled with wonderful things. It is also dangerous and will kill me in a heartbeat if I’m not prepared. Home was like that too, I suppose. But those dangers I knew, and I could prepare for,” I said. We may not have had giant beasts ready to eat us on Earth, but most people routinely drove steel death machines around. And people had been killing each other over stupid things for as long as we knew that pointy sticks hurt when you stabbed people with them.

“If Eolia was willing to arrange the chance to learn from a supernaturally talented drill sergeant then I’d be a fool to throw that away. I won’t lie and say your training is pleasant but I’m willing to learn as long as you’re willing to teach,” I said, and I meant every word.