Endrian woke up especially excited about today, because today he get’s to really look into the new world of cultivation. He felt like a kid on christmas. He could hardly wait to get to school and he ran through his morning ablutions and was dressed in record time, not that anyone was keeping record. He grabbed some dried meat and ripped off a hunk of bread that would be used at breakfast then ran off. By the time he arrived at the gate the sky was still dark and hadn’t even changed hues yet. He was stopped by the gate guards to verify who he was unfortunately he forgot to get the token back from Chiyo and they still hadn’t issued a school uniform for him, well now that he thought about it it was probably in the closet in the room he was supposed to stay in. That being the case and the fact that the guards didn’t recognize him he could only wait while they verified who he was.

‘This would definitely be an advantage of staying here.’ Endrian thought. ‘I wonder if they still have that room? We never really talked about it because no one brought it up and I just didn’t want to think about it. Hmm I’ll have to ask about that for days when I won’t want to leave here for whatever reason.’ After his inner monolog and a bit of time someone showed up.

She looked like an academy student based on her clothes. She was older than Endrian, probably around 16 or 17 years old. She had lavender colored hair and she looked like a complete bitch. Of course it could just be a really bad case of RBF, also known as resting bitch face. She also had that skin deep winter coat that almost everyone else in this world seemed to have. She opened her mouth and said in an arrogant and haughty tone “We have no such person listed as a student of this academy. Stop pretending you are something more than you can be peasent.”

‘Nope she’s a bitch.’ He thought and then said. “I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name.”

“I never spoke my name let alone threw it for you to ‘catch.’” She said still maintaining her arrogant tone and look.

“Thank you for taking the time to verify for us senior Thoselia.” one of the two guards said and then turned around and said to Endrian “You will need to leave now or we will be forced to detain you.”

“Before you detain me let me verify something.” Turning to look at Thoselia he asked “Did you actually verify with academy head Chiyo, or any of the priestesses?”

“Why would I bother them at this time of day when there is no need.” she retorted.

Right then two more guards walked over. One of them pointed at Endrian and yelled “Oi, you! Do you know how much trouble we got in the other day?”

Endrian paused for a moment and realized he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Night before last you left and then the whole academy went crazy looking for this little boy. After they found out that you left while we were on guard duty they docked us 7 days worth of merit points.” She angrily stormed up to Endrian and towered over him as he only stood about to her waist.

Thoselia spoke up with surprise “You know this peasant?”

“We don’t know him, but we know that after he left Chiyo and all of the priestesses were pissed and we even heard that the city guard commander Rantak personally escorted him back.” the guard woman said.

Hearing this Thoselia’s had a look of surprise and then quickly what color she had drained out of her face as she turned to Endrian and said “I’m sorry for detaining you little brother. I hope you won’t hold a grudge against me.” she said while forcing a smile on her face.

The current guards didn’t know how to react at first but when they thought about the fact that he had told them to ask academy head Chiyo about his identity, and that when he had gone missing the higher up people in the academy started searching for him that probably meant that offending him was like offending the academy head. Coming to this conclusion both of them looked at each other and then one quickly said “Sir we apologize for not knowing who you were and hope that you can let us off with a warning.”

“You were just doing your job so no harm done.” Looking over at the other guards he could see a panicked look in their eyes as they started to catch up to what they may have just done to themselves. As they were reacting he continued on and said “As for you two, again you were just doing your jobs and as long as there is no standing rule to keep people in I will talk to academy head Chiyo and see about helping you get your merit points back.”

‘I’ve never been a fan of blaming someone for doing their job. Arrogant people that think they are above doing their job, well that’s another story.’ He thought to himself.

After getting the two guards names so he could see about helping them out he walked in to the academy without paying any further attention to Thoselia. ‘Well that pretty much ruined the excitement I had for today. Ah well can’t blame that on anyone but myself.’ he thought as he walked towards to spire which the church had reserved for his training. Climbing up to the fifth floor he quickly found the room that was discussed yesterday and opened the door. While the instructor was not here yet there was a stack of books, probably about 15 or 20 of them, that could be found on the only table in the room. Grabbing one of the chairs that was scattered around the room he sat down at the table and started looking at the titles on the books.

“Celestial Heart, Divine Demon Eyes, 8000 Mysterious Steps, Titan Body….” he read all of the titles out loud. He grabbed the Titan Body manual as that sounded pretty cool and was possibly defensive. Opening it up he started reading. ‘To cultivate you must have a metal affinity. The first level of the Titan Body requires absorbing metal mana. You will need to find the best metal affinity mana and absorb only that. Then draw a pattern for a titan on your skin and pour the absorbed mana into the pattern. There was a diagram with a humanoid body on it that showed numbers in different locations with the feet, hands, lower arms, lower leg, upper arms, upper legs, groin, abdomen, chest, low back, upper back, and finally the head. Follow the order of reinforcement shown here.’ There were more pages that had information on the next steps but Endrian was already frustrated.

“Oh, come on! Draw a pattern, great! With what??? Blood, ink, cut it into my skin with a knife. What pattern you could at least give a diagram of the pattern for me. What is the best metal affinity, is it one that resonates with me, one that has a specific color, one that I think is best?!? Gods! This is about as helpful as having an artist write a technical manual on a computer programming language when all they have done is play a computer game.” Endrian exclaimed in frustration. The last sentence was said in English as there were just too many terms that had no translation yet.

Thinking, and hoping, that it might just be that specific manual he picked up another one and started reading. Unfortunately it was mostly the same. He looked at the stack in some despair and went through another three before throwing them away in frustration. ‘This is just rude! This is almost as bad as being at the point of climax and hearing one of your kids crying during the best sex of your life! John Malkovich said it best in Rounders, “I feel so unsatisfied.” with his fake russian accent.’

Sighing and placing his elbows on the table and cupping his nose, mouth and chin, he stared at the cultivation books. While he was contemplating them the door opened behind him. However, Endrian was lost in contemplation and didn’t pay attention to his surroundings while he was trying to figure out what to do. So when he heard a man’s voice say “I see you have found the techniques we are going to cover today.”

Endrian jumped out of his chair and turned to face the person while getting into a fighting stance. Taking a second to realize that there is nothing to fight he said “Holy shit, you scared hell out of me.”

“That’s a decent reaction at least you didn’t run away like a scared little boy.” the man said.

Endrian looked at him with a little irritation “Hi, I am Endrian-” he tried to smooth over the first meeting and bring things back to a more normal conversation bt he was interrupted.

“Yes I know who you are. You may call me Instructor Suseras. Now we have much to cover, tell me what you have learned from the manuals without any guidance.” he requested.

Endrian looked the man over and what he saw was someone who looked to be in their 50’s or 60’s. He had salt and pepper hair which gave him a refined look. His yellow eyes were still very sharp and didn’t look like they missed anything. He also had a neatly trimmed beard that had turned salt and pepper as well further adding to his refined look. Other than that he was a decent looking man with fairly symmetrical features. He was wearing a robe that was black and had golden trim on it with a silver cord that had 4 black stripes at the end near one of the tassels. It was hard to tell his body type under the robe but he did not look like he was overweight at all.

Finally done with his cursory inspection Endrian replied “Well there seems to be something about each manual that focuses on a specific element, from the books that I have read a pattern of some sort is used to enhance the cultivation, though the pattern is rarely described in detail. Other than that they seem to go in phases or step forward by enhancing the body one piece at a time.” Though he really wanted to say that they were worthless and that all they did was tease a person with the hope of something good without ever delivering it. However, he was able to restrain those thoughts and give what he felt was a somewhat decent analysis of the techniques he had looked over.

With a slight look of surprise Suseras said “That’s a very competent break down of the cultivation techniques. So then, what was troubling you when I came in.”

“Well while I have a concept of the general principles there are no details. Often times it says use a pattern here but does not give a diagram of the pattern. Nor does it specify how to use the diagram. For example the Titan Body; in there it says to draw a pattern on the skin and infuse the best metal mana into that pattern. So how do I draw the pattern, do I use ink, do I cut it into my skin, do I use some animals blood, what? There’s no substance. It feels like someone telling me to learn to fly by showing me a cliff and telling me to feel the wind. It’s just frustrating and unsatisfying.” Ender finished his rant with more than a little frustration but it wasn’t directed at Suseras.

The instructor smiled and said “I see, you’re one of those.” Holding up a hand to placate Endrian he said “You are a detail oriented person who values logic and structure. I’ve seen a few like you in my time here. Actually we have a girl similar to you in the array department.” Pausing for a moment to gather his thoughts he said “There are reasons that there are no details especially when it comes to cultivation. Let’s go back to your Titan Body cultivation; there have been many people that have cultivated this what we found is that the pattern used to represent the titan was different from person to person. Sometimes so drastically so that there were no similarities. Also as to how to draw the pattern again it varied from person to person some did like you said and cut the pattern into their skin, others used ink and placed that ink under the surface of their skin making it a tapestry for their cultivation. So the reason for the lack of details is because there is no one correct way to cultivate a given technique.”

Endrian’s forehead and eyebrows were scrunched up as he frowned. “Then what is the purpose of having these cultivation techniques at all?”

“Well most people don’t try to analyse everything down to the last grain of sand. What they do is look for something that resonates with them. Then the read it and become inspired by the possibilities. Their imagination then helps them fill in the details. Honestly it’s why I love to teach. The diversity that can be displayed by the mind and heart is truly stunning to behold, and children are the best at expressing such amazing things.” He said as he looked at Enderian with a passionate gaze. Then his eyes turned dull and he continued on “And then there are people like you. You break down everything analyse it until there are no secrets and then you call it complete. When in reality all you have done is kill the techniques true potential.”

Endrian felt pretty offended at this point but was unsure of how to respond without being a complete ass. Before he had time to figure it out Suseras continued “I will give you this, though, detailed people do often have the ability to bring to light details that may have been missed that do add to the capabilities and detail oriented people do tend to excel when working with arrays so there is that. Now, back to task. What do you know about cultivation in general, the levels, rules, and requirements?”

For the next hour or so they discussed cultivation and what Endrian knew which was some and Suseras supplemented Endrian’s knowledge with his own. What Endrian determined was that the cultivation ranks were as follows Gathering > Condensing > Earth > Core > Sun > Heaven > Spiritual Body > Spiritual Mind > Immortal. Each rank has 9 levels in them. There are usually bottleneck or walls at the third to the fourth level and from the sixth to the seventh level. With a final wall or bottleneck when transitioning between ranks. The condensing level would be condensing the mana that you absorb into a location of power in your body. These locations correspond roughly to spots from the chakras from the previous world according to what his instructor said. At the Earth rank the condensed mana will solidify. At this point you have really stepped into the world of cultivation. Also most people are not able to go past the Earth stage. The core stage becomes like a core of a planet at this stage you start to generate your own mana that has affinities. At the sun stage the core and planet turn into a sun which continues to generate power at an exponential rate. It is also at this stage that the cultivation goes from a physical cultivation to a ethereal. The heaven realm is creating multiple suns in your ethereal cultivation realm. Beyond that are the spiritual body, spiritual mind and finally the immortal ranks. There were not many people in the history of the world that Suseras knew about that had reached these ranks. Due to this the only information he was able to gather was that the cultivation purified the body and then purified the mind to become immortal.

Endrian asked about why you wouldn’t be able to change cultivation techniques after reaching the earth stage and he was told that he could, but he would destroy his current cultivation down to the peak of gathering. He would have to start condensing all over again. The reason that he was given was that when cultivating the mana flowed in a specific way and when you changed cultivation techniques the flow would change which would destroy your current cultivation. Suseras even said that when you go to the ethereal cultivation it would destroy the ethereal realm because the mana flow would be disruptive. Endrian felt that was kind of a stretch but at this point didn’t have a better explanation so he had to roll with it for now.

While all of this was interesting and exciting to Endrian it still did not help him with his cultivation. He understood intellectually that it was supposed to be more intuitive but he didn’t have a switch to just shut off his brain from analyzing what he was doing and what he thought he was supposed to be doing. So he decided to read over the different cultivation techniques here and study them as much as he could and see if he could glean some type of hint. If that didn’t work then he would just start studying one of them and attempting to cultivate based on what he could figure out. If all else failed then he could study all of the cultivation techniques he could get his hands on and compile them down into something usable with clear instructions that he would be able to follow. This did make him concerned for long term cultivation though. At the same time he made the logical conclusion that someone was able to figure this out on their own so they can’t possibly be locked forever to a technique, or it could be a technique could be modified and extended to allow for growth. Unfortunately that was not something he could verify right now.

After his long, interesting, and eye opening discussion with Suseras, Endrian left to get some food. He was pretty sure that he would be recognized there due to being marched through there last time with Kuuthyia. After lunch he headed back to the spire that he was now unintentionally referring to as his spire. Now was time for array studies.

He arrived back at his spire and climbed to the fifth floor again. He went to a slightly different room than the cultivation room. There he saw a bunch of tables in the room in orderly lines and with clear spaces around them. Each slightly rectangular table had four chairs around it with a chair being on each side. One of the tables was currently being used by a young woman.

As Endrian checked her out he was stunned. She had a beautiful face, the symmetry, the proportions, her long bright red hair that had dark brown highlights in it. She was probably between 14 and 16 years old, though as Endrian got older his ability to determine age at a glance has gotten worse. You could tell from her face that she was not overweight at all. She was wearing a robe that looked two or three sizes too large on her and was not flattering at all. It’s drab grey color doing nothing for her. But if he was right she was definitely a 8 or 9 on his scale. Give her a few more years to fully mature and she may just break that scale. After thinking about this he then felt a little weird and complicated. She was very attractive but he felt a little, well a lot, pervy for checking out a girl that was probably as old as his youngest son from his previous life if the time was consistent. At the same time he was in this life younger than her so it was just awkward and weird and a little pervy to him. Sighing at the annoying complications in his life he decided to throw all those thoughts to the side and look around for the instructor.

Moments later he found her, and she was watching him much like he had watched the girl working. He felt a little grossed out and weird at the same time from this. After being looked at like he was a tasty piece of meat Endrian decided not to stare and only noticed that her face was chubby and that she had purple hair that was at least down to her shoulders. In that glance he figured that she was probably in her 30’s or 40’s. But he got a definite creepy vibe from her so he focused back on the girl working at the table. Who was fully immersed in what she was doing.

The older woman came up to Endrian and said “My name is Arzhu, and I am the array master at this academy.” She casually placed her hand on his shoulder and started rubbing it.

Before she could go any further Endrian shuddered and then said in a somewhat childish voice “Teacher can I go to the bathroom, I forgot to when I got back from lunch.” In his head though he was saying ‘What the ever loving fuck! Let’s get the hell out of here and talk to Chiyo.’

“Sure-” she said and he bolted before she had a chance to finish. After tracking Chiyo down and informing her of what happened. Chiyo said “Ah yes we knew she had a thing for young boys. Boys rarely if ever go through the array department so we didn’t do anything about it and it was eventually forgotten. It’s probably been 10 or more winters since we had a complaint about her. I apologize for that but she is the best instructor we have in arrays.”

“You can set me up with the second best or well anyone else as far as I am concerned. Also I don’t think you should leave someone like that there. It’s too easy for them to take advantage with their position and power and could be traumatizing for the boys. Not to mention it’s just creepy and disgusting.” he said quickly. “Tell you what I am going to go study in the library while you work out a new array instructor for me.”

Endrian spent the rest of the day in the library studying. He read about arrays and finally found a decent dictionary to round out his vocabulary as much as possible. There were some abstract thoughts that he didn’t know the words for and still had to describe them. Which was irritatingly cumbersome.

He went home after it had turned dark and grabbed some leftover food. He checked on his sisters to see how they were doing. They had taken one of the mock exams today and he was looking forward to how they handled them. While he was going over them his mom came and found him.

“Ender I wanted to let you know that in about 5 days time we are going to face our first challenge. There was another weapons dealer here selling bows to the city guard and their family wanted to remove us from the competition. I thought you might be interested in watching your father in his first competition since you were born.” Allyce said.

“Wait. Back up. What do you mean challenge?” he asked completely confused.

“Ah I probably haven’t told you about this as we were never challenged in Landow. So let me try to explain it clearly. When there are civil disputes between families the women will try to work things out, however if there is an irreconcilable problem or one of the parties does not want to compromise then a challenge will be issued. At which point the men will go to an arena and fight for their families rights. The terms of the challenge are written up by the two families. The winner has their terms validated.”

“So is dad going to be facing a fight to the death?” Endrian asked with some concern.

“Well death is a possibility but it is frowned upon. Generally the fight goes until one of the combatants surrenders or is incapable of fighting.” she said with a thoughtful expression.

“Okay, that’s good at least. Then the terms of the fight are they restricted to what was discussed or disputed?” he asked trying to understand this system.

“The terms are generally kept within the terms of the dispute. However, that is up to the women of each family to decide.” she explained to him.

“Can we go watch?” Endrian asked. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this as it seemed like a dangerous and in his opinion somewhat stupid system for settling disputes, but he was intrigued and he wanted to support his dad.

“Of course you have to come. It is expected that all awakened member of the family will be there. If there are unawakened then one of the mothers will stay behind to look after them. Often many other families will come and watch the match as well because these kinds of fights are pretty rare. Most families prefer not to endanger their husband without good reason, though it does happen.” Allyce said.

“One last question; what’s to stop a powerful family from just taking everything?” this was what was really bugging him about this type of system.

“Well there are some rules in place that are regulated by the city to keep people from doing whatever they want. A family is only allowed to face 5 challenges per year and can only issue two challenges per year. This helps reduce families from trying to eliminate other families, though again it does happen. The nobles are particularly bad about doing this when someone offends them. Which is why I warned you about the Naxremmis family.” she said with a pointed look and with that she left and went back to her room.

Edrian finished checking over the mock exams. All his sisters had done a decent job of answering the questions. There were some incorrect ones with Etopha doing the worst and Ethese doing the best. After he finished the papers he left some notes on the errors they made and what to watch for then he went to sleep.

The next day he had instruction again with Kuuthyia which was starting to seem pretty interesting instead of just constant repetition and working the basics. Esalana was there as well to watch as he started to mix in some skills to use while fighting. There was an honest to goodness movement technique that relied on using the mana in your body to create explosive changes in direction. Imagine a professional athlete that fakes left, then right, and then goes left so quickly that a normal person would break their ankles from the impact of the movement. Then take that up a level. The essence of the skill was to make your opponent believe you are moving in that direction and to respond. So it was more than just moving the feet it was almost a whole body commitment and then add into that maintaining a proper form for using a given weapon. It was taxing but fulfilling. There were also mana reinforced attacks strengthened muscles at specific points to increase the speed or to change the movement. It was actually quite amazing.

She had also narrowed his weapon choices to a double handed spear and two swords. Endrian’s style was much too aggressive for use with a shield. By this we mean too aggressive what was meant was that he would lead more with his sword and would not rely on his shield when he should. When he did rely on the shield he would often lose sight of his opponent and not have a feel for where they were giving them a huge advantage. So the only option was to go without a shield or to go with a small shield and he would rather have more damage and visibility. So she had switched to weapons that allowed for flexibility and damage. She worked him for the entire morning and into the afternoon. Then released him for lunch on his own. After eating lunch Chiyo caught him and directed him to the array classroom again. She said that the array master was not going to be instructing him and after talking with Suseras she felt that one of the students might be the best to teach him. So he was introduced to the same young woman that was working at the table when he first arrived. Since he had gotten past her looks yesterday he didn’t feel as awkward about interacting with her anymore, fortunately.

“Hello, my name is Lailah.” she said in a very demure tone.

“My name is Endrian. I look forward to working with you.” he responded.

At this point Chiyo had left and Lailah started questioning him about what he knew of arrays. Which he explained that is was a pattern that could be used to interact with the ambient mana. Each pattern was fairly artistic and pretty and that for the desired use the pattern would change. Other than that he had found about 10 or 15 different patterns but no descriptions on how the pattern was determined or why that pattern specifically would create the result it does.

“Mm, that’s a good basic understanding of arrays. Now most people look at arrays as something that is artistic and that by drawing some random patterns they can get some amazing results. Though they tend to stay within established patterns. They just tweak them to do something more than before. Some are even able to find additional patterns and use those to accomplish amazing things. The patterns that are most used can be found in nature. An example would be the city shields, these originally came from a tree called an Oophurwip. These trees grew in copses and had a natural shield. I have been working at understanding how the array itself works. I have the feeling that each part of it holds specific meaning and capabilities. I have even discovered the portions that are the storage part of the mana which is amazing because that means that at least in the array that I am studying that it stores mana to support its consumption when in use.” she effused.

All she’s really missing are glasses and she would completely have the nerdy fan girl look and attitude. Endrian couldn’t help but smile at just how adorable she was. She was so geeking out over a magical array. It was both amusing and cute.

“Ah, I’m sorry I got caught up in my own thoughts again.” She said while looking down.

“Don’t worry about it. I understand exactly how that is.” he smiled at her when she looked up to encourage her.

“Okay so let’s get to practicing. I will give you an array image and I want you to draw it at the table. Oh! Before that we need to go over safety.” She said excitedly. “So we always use the tables when drawing any arrays because there is the chance for failure and if that occurs then the array may mess up and explode. This doesn’t happen very often but can be very dangerous when it does so these tables have shield arrays on them that will trigger in case of an explosive failure. Now here is your ink and parchment. These are for training purposes when you get better at them we can upgrade to more difficult materials…” she continued going on and on about different topics all related to arrays or the tools to create them or the materials used. Finally giving him a pattern to draw out and get accustomed to.

He spent the rest of the day trying to get that one array to be drawn correctly and get some type of response out of it. Sadly he was not able to succeed much to his consternation. Over the course of the next 4 days he varied between studying cultivation techniques, array patterns and martial skills. During some off time he would go and study at the library for more information about the planet. Where he learned that there were actually 4 continents and he was on the Appolonia continent. This was the primary home of the Daehe which were the beastkin. He found the reference to the Frak who from the description were the equivalent of mythical dwarves. There was also reference to the Aefua which were from what he could tell, elves. Though they did not match the typical look of elves being tall and thin with long three fingered hands and feet, though they did have the pointed ears. They had very long limbs while there body was thin and their head kind of smallish for their height. Endrian’s best description is they looked like twig people. The last race he found reference to were the Ruobile. These things were typically a blue color had 8 limbs and had a weird crystalline body.

After all of this time he had succeeded in forming an array which had made Lailah very excited as she was happy that he was making progress. Though his success really just meant that he had finally managed to copy the array perfectly. He still didn’t have an understanding of how the arrays were designed. This didn’t stop Lailah from giving him a few more patterns to practice with. She said that he needed to get decent with making arrays before he could break them down. Which seemed a little backwards to Endrian but without any other options he had to go with what he was told. Also he did manage to make a few of these blow up which was eye opening for him. Fortunately no one was hurt due to the safety measures in place.

He had also started cultivating again after reading through a number of techniques with little to no enlightenment on their discrepancies. So he decided to go ahead with experimentation since he could change his techniques as long as he didn’t reach the Earth rank. The cultivation technique he decided to experiment with was the Titan Body to see how things went. With this he moved smoothly into the Condensing rank of cultivation and was in the process of experiencing the differences with his current cultivation as compared to others. He had taken Suseras’ advice and tried winging it, so to speak, to at least give this worlds concept of cultivation a chance. You shouldn’t judge things unless you have tried them. The worst that could happen was having to start over, right? Anyway his breakthrough occurred the day before his father’s challenge so he hasn’t really had a chance to determine the ins and outs that have come with his improvement.

Overall, the increases in his martial training, the minor advancements in array construction and his cultivation rank up were clear indications that he was starting to make progress again. Satisfied with what he was starting to accomplish he went home to get some rest. Tomorrow would be the challenge that his dad would have to fight for. He was both worried and excited to see what would happen.