Cultivation.

Craved by many, but achievable by few. The few chosen able to practice it are reverently called warriors, in honour of their unceasing sacrifice for the continued existence of humanity.

It is the process culminating aether in your core, using it to achieve feats that defy the laws of energy conversation and physics by directing an unceasing amount of aether into your body, refining and strengthening it far beyond the natural limits of the human body.

They say that, if one were to reach heights that only a handful of people in the history of humanity have achieved, aether would course your veins and one would be able to have a body comparable to that of a god.

At least that’s how John would sum the black-haired boy’s, whose name was Ronnie as he had found out, lecture up. He wasn’t sure whether he should believe these obviously grotesquely exaggerated stories, but judging by the fact that there was a magical substance called aether in the very air around him there had to be at least a kernel of truth in his words. Or so he hoped.

What surprised him the most about the lesson, though, was that he didn’t really have anything against Ronnie, even though he was an annoying kid. He sometimes seemed slightly strange, but who didn’t have a quirk or two, really? Not to mention that he was a good source of information about this world he knew absolutely nothing about.

And, most importantly, not headache inducingly hyperactive.

A pair of eyes bearing the same colour as a clear summer sky was attentively watching him, who had just asked for some time to digest the newly gained information. John ignored them and stared at his thick and calloused hands. Rubbing one of them with rapt attention, he continued thinking about the impact this information could have on his life.

But first, he would have to find the answer to a question that nagged at the deepest recesses of his mind. His dark brown eyes whipped up to meet that of his fellow classmate. “Why is the Golden Gate gathering warrior children? How are they even gathering them without interference of other powers? Shouldn’t kids like us be quite important?”

Ronnie scratched his curly hair. “Well, I don’t know? If you really want that question answered, I guess you could ask our teacher tomorrow.”

John facepalmed. What was he doing, asking some random kid about things it couldn’t possibly know about? He was getting old. Well, his mind was.

“Anyway,” Ronnie resumed his lecture, “I guess that it’s now time to tell you about how you go about cultivation.”

The kid, who seemed to be around the same age as John, dragged himself a bit closer to him, as if his next words were of utmost importance. “Have you inspected your core yet?” he whispered, a playful smirk lighting his slightly chubby face up.

John decided to play to the other’s childish antics and responded in kind, “No. How do you do that?”

“Well, you sit down and concentrate on your mind. And them BAM-“ Ronnie simulated an explosion with his hands. “You are inside your core. Or at least that’s how I understood it.”

Suppressing the exasperation in his heart, John tried to not despair at the fact that he had once again seriously expected a detailed and useful explanation from a small child. The shit eating grin on his face didn’t really help, either.

He breathed in and out slowly, closing his eyes in an attempt to search for his core, however one may go about that.

“Oh, and if you’ve done it, just think about creating something in it. A block of wood or whatever will already do,” Ronnie added.

“What do you mean with that? I can actually create things in my core?”

“Yes? The stuff you create makes even more aether, so you can make even more stuff with it! It’s like an endless aether machine.”

John nodded, concentrating even harder on finding his core.

A long time passed, and nothing happened. John was already starting to feel like an idiot when he finally managed to grasp something. When he had almost given up, relaxing himself in the process, he was able to sense some sort of mental connection inside his head. It was a peculiar feeling that was similar to a slight tug at his mind. He felt that, if he wanted to, he could easily follow the tug into wherever it would lead him.

He did exactly that, and the world went dark for a brief moment.

When John came to, he found himself floating in the middle of a strange circular space. A grey fog permeated the region, with only darkness beyond that.

He waved his arms around the mist, watching it swirl around in fascination. John had imagined many things when Ronnie had talked about the core, but this was definitely not included in them. Was this some sort of virtual region? A trick his mind was playing on him? And what happened to his body whilst he was inside? Furthermore, did time here pass normally?

There were far more questions than answers, so he focused on the task at hand again.

Remembering the words of his tutor of sorts, he imagined creating a wooden plank. In his mental picture, it was similar to the ones back on New Pandora, finely polished with a certain gleam on the surface that indicated something John had long since forgotten.

The fog reacted to his mind, flowing from the whole space to form a plank exactly the same as he had imagined.

When he looked around, he realized that the fog had become somewhat thinner. With the consumption of the fog, the brightness of the space he was in had also become somewhat dimmer, but strangely enough it didn’t affect his vision one bit. He was somehow able to see clearly, without any obstruction. John was even able to look behind the wooden plank, of which he could clearly see every single fibre of.

Deciding that he had inspected the plank for long enough, he commanded it to fly up to the darkness surrounding that space. It followed his mental commands, bouncing off at the spot where the fog and darkness intersected.

John wanted to walk towards it, but instead of a well-placed step on thin air he found himself shooting through the empty space. A scream that he couldn’t even hear escaped his lips. He crashed into the invisible barrier.

There was no pain. John opened his eyes, carefully knocking on it, then hitting it with his fists after seeing no reaction. He continued in this way, but no matter where he touched or hit it, the invisible wall seemed indestructible. Even when he imagined shattering it, the wall didn’t budge.

Sighing in resignation, he imagined another few planks into being until the fog had nearly run out.

Seeing the strange sight of fog forming material once again, John couldn’t help but wonder how this process worked? Just what was aether to be able to produce matter?

No matter how much he wracked his mind around this topic, he couldn’t find a logical conclusion. Feeling the firsts signs of a headache, John decided to let the matter drop. Instead, he watched the plank carefully in search of any hints.

After staring at it for some time, he saw a faint white fog streaming out of the whole plank into all directions. Just like the aether that the guard had released a few days ago, it evenly dissolved into its surroundings. The process, however, was painfully slow. Even after a few minutes, the amount that was released seemed like a tiny droplet compared to the vastness of his core.

Since he didn’t want to spend hours staring at a wooden plank, John exited that strange space by once again following the mental tug, finding himself face to face with Ronnie. He was in the same position as before, making it seem as if no time had passed.

Taking a deep breath, John had to forcibly suppress the maniacal smile that threatened to split his face into halves. If this core worked the way he thought it did, then its possibilities were endless. His possibilities were endless.

“Ronnie.”

“Yeah?”

“Does the fog-“

“You mean aether?”

“So that stuff is aether? That would explain a lot. Anyway, how long does it normally take for the aether inside to refill?”

Ronnie stared at him as if he were an idiot. “Well, duh. How the hell am I supposed to know that? It’s not like I know what’s going on inside your core.”

“Then how long does it take for you?”

“Uhhh around a day I guess? But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. Our teacher told me that my rate is quite fast for someone who had cultivated as long as I did.”

John put a hand on his chin. “Then what about the strange barrier around my core? Am I somehow able to remove it?”

“Yes, you can. You just have to imagine the darkness receding from your core space, making it so that you have more space available. But doing so is quite costly if you ask me, since every single bit of cleared space requires a huuuge amount of aether.”

John couldn’t suppress the smile anymore. He half glared half smiled at Ronnie, who, oddly enough, didn’t seem fazed by it. “Is there anything I can’t create?”

“Well, it is said that, if you have enough aether at hand, nothing is impossible inside your core. I’m not too sure about that though, since I’ve never even heard of somebody creating life. Just imagine the consequences of one being actually able to do that!”

Ronnie suddenly stood up, starting to pace around the room.

“R-Ronnie? What’s going on?” John called out to him, but it seemed like his words didn’t get through to the quickly moving boy.

For quite some time, only the sound of his shoes tapping on the wooden boards could be heard as the child didn’t say anything and John decided to just sit and watch. Then, Ronnie stopped just in front of John. His arms latched onto a pair of bony shoulders with lightning speed, shaking them intensely along with their owner as he shouted,

”It would mean that all of this-“ Ronnie let go of John and sprinted over to the window, ripping it open and gesturing at the garden outside. “Could be happening inside someone else’s core! That we could all just be little pawns being manipulated by an almighty being?”

The boy gripped his head with his hands, once more pacing around the room. “What if, in reality, only this continent existed? The moons could just be illusions, just like the sun. That would certainly prove the theory of the planet staying in the same place whilst every other celestial body is just cycling us…”

He continued rambling, leaving a stupefied John to stare at the most certainly strange boy. How old was he? Certainly not much older than John himself, probably around five to six years old. The scene he was experiencing right now shouldn’t even have been possible since that boy’s brain shouldn’t be that developed yet. And yet the theories he was spewing out his mouth were proving him wrong.

Even he, a modern person with advanced knowledge who had suddenly found himself in a new world, hadn’t thought about seemingly inconsequential things like that this seriously.

Perhaps he had taken all of this just too casually.

John’s eyes began to shine as he thought about the perks of having someone like that as a friend. He stood up and approached his rapidly moving temporary teacher, gripping his right shoulder in order to prevent him from ignoring him.

He knew that trying to speak to that kind of person would be meaningless. The only way he could make his presence known whilst the other was ruminating like that would be establishing physical contact.

Sure enough, Ronnie turned around faster than John could even see, exposing his sky-blue eyes that were filled with a tinge of madness. Ronnie grabbed both of John’s shoulders in turn, leaning in so close that their noses almost touched. “Do you understand? This, this is why one can’t create life in one’s core! It isn’t, no shouldn’t be possible, right? RIGHT?”

John shoved a hand between them, pushing the other boy away. He had already guessed that something like that would happen, but that didn’t make it any better. Plus, the spittle on his face was gross.

Not that he minded Ronnie’s antics too much, for that matter. Over his long past life, he had met many other weird people, some of them easily topping this kid in terms of weirdness. But he could understand why other children would avoid him. Hell, even he would have avoided him had he been reincarnated a few years ago.

‘Ahh the joys of a hobo’s life.’ John shook his head. This wasn’t the time to reminisce about that dark chapter of his life.

“Yes yes I do.” John almost wanted to ask him about the other questions about cultivation he had, but figured that it would be a bad idea to give this kid ideas based on advanced knowledge. Who knows what kind of things he could do with that?

John didn’t want to live to experience the things that boy could potentially unleash on this planet, and most certainly didn’t want to be responsible for the creation of another monster.

“Anyway, can you somehow use the items you’ve created?” John asked. Although he had already seen George do the very same, it was better to be sure.

Ronnie didn’t say anything, just stretching a hand with crisscrossing scars out.

At first, nothing happened, but then a small rock occupying half of Ronnie’s palm suddenly appeared in the previously empty hand. There was no indication of it having been shoved there, not even the sound of the air being pushed away that one may expect from teleportation.

John closed his eyes, taking a long, deep breath. This was what he had searched for: A way to use his knowledge to its utmost. And with the abilities of his core, he was sure that creating deadly weapons that far surpass the current medieval ones wouldn’t be too hard.

This theory, however, had yet to be proved.

With unceasing trembling John slowly moved his hands over the still rock, taking it into his hands. It was smooth and comfortably warm, as if it had just sat in the warm midday sun for a few hours. The barely noticeable weight indicated it wasn’t dense. He further moved it closer towards himself, sniffing the rock. He didn’t smell anything from it aside from his own stench.

Ronnie snatched it back just as he was about to lick it, preventing him from getting an insight as to how detailed creations inside one’s core were. “Hey! I was still inspecting it!”

Ronnie stared at him as if he were biological unrecyclable trash, holding the rock protectively in his hands. “You’re strange.”

“You too.”

“But you’re even stranger!”

“Says the kid who thinks about things that no one his age should be able to!”

“What? Was that an insult, huh!?”

“Shut it kids, before I make you!” a voice interrupted them.

John stopped in his tracks as he realized who the owner of the voice was and where it came from. Like a wooden puppet, he mechanically turned his head towards the open door, where his teacher leaned on the doorframe. Though his face was mostly neutral, he could see a hint of a smile dancing at the old man’s lips.

“You know, had it been anyone but me you’d have been asked if you were crazy for thinking about such stupid ideas, Ronnie. I guess that’s also the reason you’ve landed in my group.” Their teacher walked into the room, his eyes rapidly darting around as they took every little detail in. Finally, they stopped on John. “You know, I’d never expected to have two weirdos in my group, not to mention of such a calibre.”

The old man’s steps sounds ceased to echo through the now deadly silent room. He fixated them with a smile, and then laughed to himself in a way that just creeped John out, turning around and leaving the room just as quickly as he had come.

When the door slowly closed by itself, John finally recovered from his shock. He didn’t know why, but the old man had sent shivers down his spine. “Is he always like this?” he asked his companion, who was still blankly staring at the door.

Ronnie snapped out of his trance, a shiver visibly travelling from the roots of his hair down to the tip of his toes. He shook his head and turned to face John. “To be honest, I don’t know. In the few chances I’ve had to speak with him, he always had that strange smile on his face. Actually it’s the same as the one he’s had on our Awakening ceremony, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, let’s just hope that damne-“

Ronnie’s had clamped around his mouth before John could finish his sentence. He looked at his companion questioningly, but the other just nervously looked around the room whilst holding a finger up to his lips.

“If I were you, I’d rather not complete that sentence,” he finally whispered after he had ascertained that no one had overheard them. Even though it was just the two of them in the room.

John quirked an eyebrow, pointing at his friend’s fingers that had become white due to the pressure they clamped around his mouth with.

Ronnie released him immediately, but instead of retreating he came even closer, until John could feel a warm breath tickle his ear. It gave him goose bumps, but he decided to treat it as a childish antic. He did start to wonder about Ronnie’s sense of personal space though. “They say that he hears everything that happens in all of Golden Gate, no matter where you are.”

“Pffffhahahahah”

Ronnie pouted when he saw John laughing at him. “Okay then, try it! I dare you!”

Hearing that, John laughed even harder. Wiping a tear off a his eyes, he shouted, “Okay then, let’s try it. Let’s just hope that damned t-“

““Troubadour telling false stories about our esteemed teacher in his favourite pub dies a tragic death”, is what you wanted to say, right?” the voice of his teacher completed the sentence for John.

He had somehow appeared behind a curtain, stepping out to face them with his trademark half smile. A pressure that that was threatening to crush John and Ronnie was emanating off him. John’s knees were trembling, nearly giving in, but he barely held on by sheer force of will.

The pressure vanished as quickly as it had appeared, causing both boys to stumble forward.

“Y-yeah. That’s exactly what I wanted to say. How dare he spread lies about our teacher!” Ronnie quickly shouted whilst John was still blankly staring at the curtain their teacher stepped out from.

The old man with an eerie smile nodded repeatedly, saying, “Good, good. It’s nice to know that my students care so much about my reputation. Although it’s actually a she, but I guess you didn’t know that.”

He glanced one last time at his trembling students and promptly went out of the room for the second time, his steps echoing through the apparently silent hallway outside.

They waited for a few more minutes, until they couldn’t hear his steps anymore before they moved again. John’s head robotically moved around the room, surveying every little nook and cranny someone could have hid in.

He rushed up to the curtain, only to discover that there was no such thing as a trapdoor underneath it. It looked like a completely normal wall, and after he knocked on it he realized that it wasn’t hollow in any way. He repeated the process for every object in his room, including the underside of his bed, but didn’t manage to find anything suspicious.

Defeated, John sat down on the floor, his legs pulled up to his chest and blankly staring out of the window. Ronnie settled down next to him, mimicking his posture.

“Hey, you know what Ronnie?”

“What?”

“We have the best teacher in the world.”

“... Yeah, we do.”