“Give me a second, won’t you?” Ian was shaking his right hand as if someone had closed a door on his fingers.

“Is it really that bad?”

“Go strike a cliffside and see how your hand feels afterward.”

He hadn’t expected the skill to work so splendidly. With a technique like this up his sleeve there was no telling how much his survivability had increased.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, my dear disciple.” Nolan nearly flinched as he looked up to see Uncle Grey floating above his head. “While this technique is very effective against brute force, a sword strike with the same amount of strength behind it should be able to shatter that martial skill without much trouble. That in itself is enough to relegate the skill to the lowest quality of defensive martial skills.”

“Thanks, old man. I’ll keep that in mind.” Struck by a sudden idea, he said, “Ian, hit me again, would you? The same spot, please.”

Another strike, another heavy impact, and an accompanying crunch of bone.

“Curses, Nolan! What did you do?” Ian disappeared with a flustered leap which saw him soar over eighty metres and land within the distant fountain with an audible splash.

“What did you do, kid?” Sean stared at the courtyard that centred the glade, unease visible behind his dark eyes. “Sounded like Ian broke every bone in his hand just now.”

“Basically I doubled the layer of protection over my gut just before he hit me.” In actuality he had overlapped a separate cycle of circulating inner essence over his stomach, a micro implementation of the skill that was only possible for a few seconds. Sensing a peculiar stare from overhead, he raised his chin in a smug display of pride and said, “Impressed by my greatness, are we?”

There was a strange glint to Uncle Grey’s gaze as he regarded Nolan with subtle importance. “I’ll warn you, lad, not to rely on that little trick of yours if you can help it.”

He nodded. “Yeah, the second I overlap the skill it begins to fall apart.”

“That isn’t to say that the tweak won’t prove useful. While it might disrupt the martial skill, it still creates a few seconds of heightened protection. Just be careful in how you make use of it, for many cultivators have died from misplacing spot-specific barriers on parts of their bodies.”

Nolan let the exchange die down with a nod of acknowledgement, for he caught a slight sag in the old ghost’s demeanor and assumed that his mentor had been seized by the saddening grip of melancholy.

Esteban ran up to Nolan and tugged his tunic upward to expose his flushed midsection. “Wow! When we get to learn this technique?”

“When you reach the fourth level of Body Nourishment,” he smiled. “Look at you, speaking so fluently in the Universal Language.”

“It’s fun to speak new words.”

A bit of movement off to the side caught Nolan’s attention. “Hey Ian, where’re you rushing off to? I was hoping to get some more training in.”

The other boy had turned to leave, but he still had a mind to practice his hand at overlapping the defensive skill in order to raise his general proficiency and to gain actual experience during his exertions.

“If you’re sure.”

They faced each other and readied themselves for another go.

“You two be careful.” Sean nudged one of Esteban’s arms and then led the kid over the spot where the two had been training since the day that they arrived.

Esteban waved and called over his shoulder, “Don’t beat Nolan up too much!”

Over the next eight hours or so Nolan allowed Ian to punch him several hundred times in different areas of his body. He had to admit that the Varai clan’s most notable scion held quite a hammer in his hands when it came to landing heavy hits. At the second level of the Integration stage he was capable of contesting against someone at least two levels above him in a one-on-one battle. Even with Nolan’s recent breakthrough, if he were to fight his friend seriously and in all fairness then he would have to push his body to its limits right from the get-go in order to have any hopes of holding his own.

The two boys shared a meal of grilled fox meat and biscuits nearby the silent cabin, washing down voracious mouthfuls with crisp fountain water as they shared stories of their childhoods. Once they finished their meals they returned to the spots within the fountain that they had opted to occupy in recent months and resumed to working towards their respective gains.

A week later Nolan had everyone gather within the courtyard in order to make an announcement. First, he distributed five of his homemade medicinal pellets to each of the others and assured them that he’d improved their potency to the point that they increased cultivation speed by six percent, instead of five. Then he urged them to drink at least three litres of Divine Spirit Fountain water each day so that their bodies could enjoy a constant supply of internal stimulation.

He went on to say that he didn’t plan on staying within the glade for the full term of allotted time, since they were in a rush to get to Frostport. Once Sean and Esteban reached the fourth level of the Profound Entry stage then he would activate the Millennial Ring’s transporting attribute, else they would leave at the year mark of their stay within the glade.

“Why the fourth level of Body Nourishment?” the former American asked.

“So we don’t have to crawl there.”

“How fast will we run at the fourth level?” Esteban asked eagerly. Switching to English, he said, “As fast as a car?”

“More like a slow horse? I just need to be sure you guys are fast enough to cross the Northern Wilderness in less than a week.”

“That’s unlikely,” said Ian. “There are just as many demonic beasts in the Northern Wilderness as there are in the Dragon’s Tail, at least in the area where I’m from. It won’t be as simple as a straight sprint.”

Nolan sighed. “You heard him. We’ll be walking a dangerous road, so you’ll want to be as strong and fast as possible by the time we set out on our trip.”

The boy’s face paled by several shades and his eyes abruptly grew moist. “I don’t want to go if it’s dangerous.”

“Everything in this world is dangerous,” Nolan said after a moment’s thought, “but that doesn’t mean that you have to be scared of everything. As long as you become stronger you won’t have to worry as much.”

The boy grabbed at the side of Sean’s tunic and began to cry, but was soothed into silence by a few reassuring sentences that the latter uttered in Spanish. After patting Esteban on the head a few times, Sean thanked Uncle Grey as the old ghost led the boy to the edge of the courtyard with promises to entertain him with some visually appealing spiritual arrayments.

“Are you sure it’s okay to baby him? I’ve got a feeling that he’s gonna see some shit on this journey that’s a bit worse than the word ‘dangerous,’ and I’m not trying to scare the life out of him.”

“Give it some time,” Sean said. “He’s more confused than you guys think. I’m not sure that he actually understands the situation.”

“I’m with Nolan,” said Ian, who began to head over to the Divine Spirit Fountain. “I killed my first demonic beast when I was nine, because it would have killed me if I didn’t.”

“I’m no expert on children, but most of my friends were parents and I know that putting that kind of stress on a kid isn’t good for their mental health.” He followed Nolan just outside of the courtyard and the two of them took a seat atop the stony ledge that formed its perimeter.

“Not trying to snub your experience or anything, but I don’t think Parenting 101 is applicable on Venara.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe not. These days I can’t tell up from down.”

They stared up at the artificial sky, a blank slate that was so nondescript that it could have been a vast ceiling of cement. Sean absentmindedly patted down his pockets and then shook his head. “Only positive thing to come out of this mess is that I was forced to quit smoking.”

“I wish I were as optimistic as you,” Nolan laughed.

The man shrugged, his thin lips twisting into a frown. “I’ve got to admit, I have no clue how you’re always so calm. Half the time I’m thinking that I would give anything to go back to my old life, my old problems. Used to be that my mom would nag me to find a nice girl, get married. Now I’m training to fight monsters with some kids in that nightmare world.”

“Yup,” Nolan said, hopping off of the ledge and onto the grass just outside of the courtyard. “Speaking of training, I’m about to dedicate a month to showing you guys as many stances of the Ancestral Body Technique as I can. I’ll start each lesson with a demonstration. After that I’ll have you learn whatever stance we’re focusing on and then you’ll teach it to Esteban, which’ll also be good for you.”

“Why not teach us the same time?”

“Because teaching is a great way to learn. I used to study by explaining my homework to my little brother.” He turned around and began walking toward his training area on the eastern edge of the glade. “My word, I accidently made him an A student.”

Sean followed after him with a skeptic roll of the eyes. “Of course you did.”

“That’s how it goesh, buddy. Someone breaks your heart, you stop caring, ‘nd then maybe your indifference fucks with someone else. The cycle goes on and you get miserable guys like me sitting here wondering where all the stars went. The hell is wrong with the sky?”

“Ian man, why’s Sean wasted?”

Nolan had gone off to take a leak in the woods and also to retrieve some fox meat for dinner. He had just returned to find the man lying in a disgruntled heap beside the Divine Spirit Fountain, his head leaning against the stone just behind where Ian sat with a look of amusement in his golden eyes.

“He saw me drinking some of that wine you gave me, and he asked for some.” Seeing the flash of disappointment that crossed Nolan’s face, he held up his hands and laughed, “Don’t worry—I diluted it, I diluted it!”

“You’re back?” Sean tried to get up but collapsed to the ground as if the forces of gravity had suddenly increased. “Shit, kid, you try some of this wine? I had a single one, a single sip—it tasted like juice.” He attempted to stand again and failed once more. “They don’t play around in that world, wow.”

Nolan picked him up, tossed him into the fountain and then forced him to chug mouthfuls of the wondrous water until he sobered up entirely. It was around this time that Uncle Grey floated over with Esteban in tow, the latter attempting to explain the concept of video games to the former, who appeared genuinely interested in the topic.

The kid deflated at the sight of the huge slab of meat that Nolan had spitted over the fire. “Roasted fox, again? We’ve eaten that every day for a week!”

“And you’ll eat it for another week,” Nolan said with a raised eyebrow, “if you don’t want to starve.”

The kid looked helplessly from Ian to Sean, his eyes eventually lighting up as the lounging teenager tossed him a parcel of waxy parchment that was full of vanilla-flavoured cookies.

“I’m not much in the mood for fox meat either,” Ian admitted. “I know you want to save our food for the journey, Nolan, but it’s not like we’re suffering a shortage of supplies.”

“I guess so.” He walked over to Esteban and summoned a small bundle of dried jerky which he lightly placed at his feet alongside a small loaf of rye-like bread. “Remember kid,” he sighed as he straightened out, “free food tastes the best, even if it isn’t good.” With that, he plucked a stack of cookies from the open parcel and walked over to the campfire while crunching away at a mouthful of flavourful crumbs.