The Disciple wasn’t in the shrine the next day.

“She got an urgent message from somewhere,” the shrine’s caretaker shrugged his shoulders at Nimrod’s question. “The only thing she told me was that she had to leave in a hurry, and that she didn’t know when she’d be back.”

Feeling frustrated, and wishing profusely that no other Beasts would find their way into the village before the Disciple returned, Nimrod went back into the forest.

He couldn’t hunt properly with only one functioning hand, but he’d been spending most of his time in the forest for most of his life, and could turn his knowledge into gathering fruits, nuts, berries, roots and other edible plants. He spent the first half of that day looking for anything edible he could find, but for his own meals and to trade to Zeke and Hannah. At noon, he went back to his clearing, and to his attempts to teach himself how to cultivate.

The following few days went about much the same, and with no discernible progress. Nimrod’s right arm wasn’t healing. It wasn’t worsening, but it also wasn’t getting any better. And while he was slowly remembering more of the motions the previous Disciple performed while cultivating, he found that he couldn’t emulate them properly. It wasn’t even an issue with his bad arm. The old man was significantly more flexible than Nimrod, and could balance in contortions that had Nimrod falling flat on his face and behind time after time.

Every day that passed raised his feelings of helplessness and frustration higher and higher, and he found himself minimizing his contact with the other villagers as much as possible. On the first couple of days, his socializing was limited to just one short visit to Zeke to sell the day’s finding. He had to visit Simon on the third for more poultice for his arm, but even there he made it clear to the herbalist that he wasn’t much interested in conversation.

Five days after he’d ostensibly become a Disciple, Nimrod was standing in the clearing he was starting to refer to as ‘his’ with his feet adjacent to each other and both hands resting at the level of his waist. He’d already decided that he’d limit himself to easiest movements he could remember the old Disciple performing, and try to get them as accurate as possible. Taking a moment to focus, he closed his eyes and imagined the old man’s motions, trying his best to follow along.

Each arm rises slowly up, tracing a half circle on its side before meeting again high above his head. Both hands pushing down while the palms remain pointed towards the ground until back at the same spot they started from. Arms rising again, tracing the same half circles and meeting again above him. Hands pushing down again, palms still pointed towards the ground. Left leg slides sideways, staying straight, while the right leg bends with the knee pointed straight forward. Balance shifts to the left leg, which bends while the right straightens. Torso turning to the left. At the same time, the right arm rises in a half circle while the right remains at waist level…

Nimrod stumbled suddenly, thrown out of his focus by the conflict of keeping his right arm at its place while at the same time trying to raise it.

“Left hand rises,” he mumbled to himself. “Right stays where it is.”

“What, in the name of Cassandra the Iron Swan to you think you are doing?” the cold, furious voice shocked Nimrod out of his thoughts, and he felt all of his frustration at his continued failure explode out of him.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he snapped angrily.

“It looks like a paralyzed monkey mocking the Way of the Five, but I’m really hoping you have a better explanation.”

“I’m not trying to mock anything!” he shouted, turning towards the voice. “I just…”

Nimrod’s angry retort died out at the imposing vision before him. She was about a hundred and ninety centimeters tall, not counting a pair of iron gray horns which corkscrewed upwards for another thirty, terminating in sharp spearlike points. In spite of her long gray hair, which was caught in a braid reaching down to her lower back, she didn’t look to be older than her early twenties, and her angular face and strange, rectangular pupils gave her a strikingly mesmerizing look.

If her none-human appearance wasn’t an indication enough, the gray robe she wore clearly marked her as a Disciple of the Metal Element. The simple garment did nothing to hide broad shoulders and smoothly muscled arms and legs, the latter of which terminated in large cloven hooves, the same iron gray as her horns. It also dialed to hide a pair of breasts that would have looked ridiculous on a smaller woman, but were perfectly proportioned for her large frame.

A massive iron maul, which Nimrod doubted he’d even be able to life, was held in her right hand, its head resting lightly over her shoulder.

“Well?” she asked after Nimrod’s words sputtered to a stop. “You just?”

“Please forgive me, Disciple. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I might consider that, if you would care to explain why you were mocking the Teachings of the Sages.”

“I wasn’t mocking them! I was trying to remember how the old Disciple cultivated, so I could learn to do it myself.”

“You can’t just learn to cultivate. You need a core to even start.”

“I know that! I have a core, but I don’t know how to start.”

“A good place to start would be to ask whoever gave it to you. Or at the very least go to your village’s Disciple.”

“Nobody gave it to me!”Nimord was trying to stay calm and polite in front of the powerful cultivator, but found it hard under the effects of his continued frustration. “I got it from the seconds Beast to slip by the Disciple and attack me! And I’d have asked for her help, if she’d actually been here to give it!”

“And how, pray tell, did a mundane villager not only survive fighting two Beasts, but also managed to kill one of them to take its core?”

“I don’t know! Something killed it, and nearly took off my hand while it did so.”

He’d been waving his bandaged right arm at her while talking, and she suddenly reached and caught it gently in a surprisingly soft hand. She brought her maul down with a lout thud, and used her right forefinger to trace one of the black lines that still ran parallel to the veins on his right forearm.

“This looks like a rather severe essence burn. These only happen when you try to use a technique several tiers higher than your tempering.” She quickly unwrapped the bandage, her hold on Nimrod’s wrist gentle, but as unyielding as a steel cuff. “And this looks like the backlash from an attack technique at the same level.”

She released his hand, and took a step back. Raising both hands to the level of her eyes, she brought them together to form a triangle between her thumbs and forefingers, right in front of her nose.

“Let me see,” she said, looking at his stomach through the triangle. “Tier one Fractured core, no open meridians. Makes sense, with you not knowing how to cultivate, but then how did you use a technique, and especially one that focused from your hand?”

She shifted the triangle to look at his hand, and gasped out loud.

“A Perfect ability Core!” she broke the triangle and grabbed the front of Nimrod’s shirt, raising him up and pushing his back against a tree so that his legs dangled in the air and his eyes were level with hers. “If you used that without any tempering, it’s a wonder your arm is still attached! But where did you even find something like that?”

“I don’t know! I don’t even know what an ability core is!”

The Disciple took a deep breath, and Nimrod found that as scared and confused as he was, his gaze was still drawn to the rise of her considerable chest. He averted his eyes as quickly as he could, but there was little chance that she hadn’t caught their straying. Saying nothing, she lowered him to the ground and released him. She then took a step back and sat down cross legged on the grass.

“We seem to have started on the wrong foot. Please, sit down. We’ll introduce ourselves, and then you can tell me the full story, and we’ll see how to get your arm treated, and how to get you properly trained to start on your new Path.”

Nimrod was already on the ground, his legs unable to hold him up, but he made an attempt to pull himself together and sit in something resembling calmness.

“I’ll start. My name is Eleanor, of the Iron Horn clan, Disciple of the Path of Metal, and master-errant of the Kingdom of the Fivefold Lotus. May I ask for yours?”

“Nim… Nimrod Hunter. Nothing more.”

“Well met, Nimrod Hunter. Now, could you please tell me how you came to have the power needed to fight off and kill a Beast?”

“I already told you, I don’t know. It’s never happened before.”

“Then can you start with anything estrange that happened to you lately? Maybe I will be able to tell where that core in your hand came from.”

“I guess… I guess everything was normal until that wolf got here…”

He told her about being chased by the Beast wolf and his pack, escaping through the nearly frozen river, and stumbling into the old, seemingly forgotten, tower. Her eyes widened when he recounted how he used the book he couldn’t read to start the fire.

“A Manual! It must have been! And you were close enough to absorb its essence when it burned. To think you’ve used up a Perfect Manual to give yourself a core you can’t even use…”

“I did not!” he interrupted her, remembered anger and helplessness overriding his desire not to provoke her any further. “I don’t even know what a manual is, but whatever it is I burned it to stay alive! Not to mention that I did use it. It saved my life, even if it did almost take out my arm.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. There’s no way you would have known, and I can respect doing whatever you needed to survive. I’m sure that was the source of your core, but I’d still like to hear the rest of story if you’re willing to share it.”

“That’s quite a story,” she said when he was done. “I’d like to see this tower of yours at some point. Everything in there is yours, of course, but there might be things that could benefit other Disciples as well.”

“Wait a minute, everything there is mine? How…”

“Assuming it’s really abandoned, of course. Rights of salvage are very clear about the rights of any Disciple who discovers and explores old ruins and caches.”

“But I wasn’t a Disciple when I found it. I’m not sure I even count as one now!”

“Mere technicalities. I’m the ranking Disciple around here, so my word is what counts. But that’s going to have to wait until later. We’ll want to get you started on cultivating, and as soon as Irene gets back, we’ll want her to take a look at your arm. It’s not going to heal without some serious help, and Metal isn’t an element that lends itself to healing.”

“Why isn’t it healing? I mean, I noticed that there isn’t any improvement, but you seem so sure of it.”

“Because it needs essence to heal, and that core is eating up all of the essence your arm generates. It’s going to make your life a lot harder until you’re strong enough to charge it properly.”

“What do you mean?”

“OK. Introduction to cultivating. You’ve got a Beast core, and you’ve swallowed it to use it as a cultivation core. What you want to do next is have it absorb more essence to grow stronger, and use that essence to temper your body so that you become stronger as well. You do that by opening your meridians, which are channels that let the essence flow through your body. Your problem is that any essence that goes into your right arm is going to get eaten up by your ability core, which means that until you can absorb essence at a high enough rate to fill it, you can't afford to open the meridian that leads there.”

“So can’t I just leave it closed?”

“You could, and you will. But as long as the meridian is closed, any technique that uses both hands will be half as effective as normal. At most. And every cultivation technique other than the most basic requires both hands.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard about techniques before. Are they like the ability you said I have?”

“Yes and no. A technique is both the knowledge and the muscle memory needed to perform a series of movements meant to move your essence in specific ways to cause specific effects.”

“Like that thing you did with your fingers to see my core?”

“Precisely. I moved my hands and fingers in a way that made the essence flowing through my fingers form a lens that lets me see the essence in others. You were also trying to perform a technique when I found you. In this case, a technique that makes essence flow towards your core to increase your rate of cultivation. But even if you’d have performed it perfectly, it wouldn’t have done anything because your meridians are still closed.”

“Wait, but if I can’t use the technique without opening my meridians, and I can’t afford to open my meridians, does that mean I can’t cultivate?”

“Not at all. It just means you’re limited to the most basic of cultivation techniques.”

‘And that technique is?”

“I’ll teach you, but if you don’t mind, I’d really prefer to do it back in the shrine. The courtyard is designed to increase essence density, so you’ll get better results there. And at this point, you’re going to need that advantage, I’m afraid.”

They stood up to go, and when she picked up her maul Nimrod saw that it left a small depression in the ground.

“So what are abilities?” he asked as they headed back to the village.

“I told you that techniques are about moving your essence to make it do things. An ability does the same thing, but instead of using the movement of your essence, it stores essence inside a crystalline core, similar to your cultivation core, and then discharges it to create the effect without the need of anything other than your will.”

“That sounds a lot stronger than a technique.”

“It is, in some ways. It’s faster, and your enemies can’t anticipate when you use it. But it’s also more limited.”

“Limited how?”

“Well, a technique is knowledge of how to create an effect. For example, my essence vision. I know how to perform it, and I know why those movements work. That means that I can change the technique if I need to. So if I’m in a situation where there’s a lot of essence, I can decrease the power to make it less blinding. Or if I’m trying to find a faint essence trace, I can increase the power to make it more visible. An ability just does the one thing it does, and it does it with all of the essence it has stored.

“In addition, I can improve a technique. Learn how to perform it better and how to feed it more essence. So it can grow with me. Right now I have a Flawed core, so I can safely use any technique up to Flawed. When I refine my core to Scratched, I’ll be able to learn how to boost my techniques to the same level. I can either find someone to teach me the improved technique, learn it from a scroll, or even spend the time to improve it on my own. But an Ability requires a Manual of at least that level before it can be improved.”

“I see. And a Perfect ability is high ranked?”

“The highest. Which is why I was so upset that you’ve destroyed the manual. Supplied with enough essence, it could have been used to teach quite a few Disciples before it lost its power.”

“I see. I’m sorry I destroyed it. I had no idea it was this valuable.”

“I realize that. And I realize that you had to have that fire to survive. It’s part of why I want you to show me where the tower is. If it has more Manuals of that tier, than it’ll be a huge help to all of us. And it looks like we’re going to need all the help we can get…”

Her voice trailed off after that, and she was silent the rest of the way back to the village.