With a dark frown on her face Rin looked through the broken window. Far in the distance she could see the fleeing back of the demon that called itself Jack Erikson. The bastard had possessed the arrogance to break into her home and that after she had mercifully let it of the first time. Rin tightened the grip round her sword. She should have killed it as soon as she noticed the scent of Spiritual Energy around it. But no, because they were in a public place and there were innocents nearby she had hesitated.

Now she regretted her hesitation deeply. Not only had the demon possessed the audacity to try intrude into her home, no it had actually managed to do it without causing any alerts. If she hadn’t by chance watched one of the screens for the surveillance cameras, the intrusion might have been completely unnoticed until it was too late.

Rin shuddered at that thought. A scene appeared in front of her eyes. A burning house was in the distance, its ceiling caved in. Broken walls surrounded Rin, blocking her view to the sides. And amidst the debris of the walls were corpses of people. Some of them were without any wounds, as if they were merely asleep, but others had been torn apart violently. But for Rin the worst was a young couple lying right next to her, their lifeless eyes staring towards her, judging her. And within the carnage around her stood a bloodied figure with eyes that glowed in an infernal red. The sword inside her hands, a relic of an age long ago, trembled as she raised it and prepared to-

“Young miss, the master wants to see you”

Deep in her thoughts she hadn’t noticed that a guard had appeared behind her. Shaking her head she dismissed the last remnants of the scene. That was in the past and she wouldn’t allow it to happen again. No matter what she had to do for that. After a last look at the garden she turned around and walked away.

A few minutes later Rin was back in the library. Normally the quietness and the scent of old book would calm her down and help her relax, but tonight it was different. After the fight with the demon it felt as if this place had changed. Gone was the peace and quietness and now a silent trepidation filled the air. It was as if this place had been defiled.

Slowly Rin walked farther inside the library until she finally found the person she looked for. Standing with his back towards her was her uncle and current patriarch of the Weiss family, George Weiss. With a frown the man looked down at a small knife lying in his hands. It was an ordinary knife that looked as if it could be bought at every supermarket and yet Rin could feel faint traces of Spiritual Energy coming from it. Which should be impossible. Every object she had ever seen before that had Spiritual Energy inside of it had been a relic of ancient times, created before the Energy started to vanish from Earth and the techniques to create them had long since been lost in the endless stream of time. So, how could something like this knife exist and be in the hands of a demon?

“Ah, Rin there you are.” Finally her uncle noticed her and turned around. Heavy bags had gathered under his blue eyes and his grey hair was unkempt. Still, it didn’t soften the sharp aura around him, a result of countless battles against humans and other beings.

“Our visitor is gone I assume?”

With a sigh Rin nodded. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t stop it.”

“A pity I would have liked to talk to him” Her uncle shook his head sadly.

“Should I follow it? We know where it lives after all, so it should be easy”, Rin asked eagerly. But her uncle waved his hand dismissing her proposition. “For the moment we will merely keep him under watch”

“WHA-? It’s a demon, uncle! We have to take care of it before innocents are harmed!”

Rin shouted in outrage, but her uncle kept calm. “There have been …irregularities about him.” He glanced down at the knife in his hands before he continued. “Maybe this demon is even connected to the reason why we are here in this town. Come with me for a moment, then I can explain it to you”

Her uncle turned around and left the library while Rin followed behind. Despite the late time the rest of the mansion was quite lively. Guards were patrolling the hallways and confused people were wandering around trying to find out what had happened. But that was only natural after an intrusion like this.

A few minutes later the two arrived in front of a small office room. As soon as Rin’s uncle opened the door Rin could see a scene that could only be described as pure chaos. Papers and notes were lying around in disordered stacks, always threatening to topple over if someone touched them.

“I really should clean up sometimes”, her uncle grumbled before he guided Rin to a small table in the back. On it she could see a picture of Jack together with other information about him. It wasn’t much given that they had started their investigation only a few days ago, but it gave a rough overview of his whole life.

“Now then, let us start”

---

With a heavy sigh Jack closed the door of his room behind him. Silently, so he wouldn’t disturb his parents who were still sleeping downstairs, unaware of all that had happened in the last few hours. His entire body was covered in sweat because he had run the entire way home. But now that he was home he could finally relax. Behind the protective formation he should be safe from sword wielding girls that were after his head.

‘Speaking of her, what was with that sword? I have never seen anything like that before’

The sword confused Jack. Sure, he could tell that it was enchanted, but that wasn’t the unusual part. What he couldn’t understand was how it was linked to Rin. A normal enchanted sword would need a bit of the user’s Qi to work properly, but this sword had actually given Qi to Rin. And honestly that scared Jack. Qi wasn’t just a useful form of energy, no, it was a part of a cultivator. No cultivator would have the exact same Qi as it would be shaped by their personality and body. But simultaneously they would also become shaped by their Qi in return. For a mortal, who was even more susceptible to these changes than a cultivator, to accept Qi that was already changed by someone or something else like Rin had done was extremely unusual and risky. Normally that would happen when mortals stumbled over places of power where the wild Qi polluted the air itself. There was no telling what the Qi would do to them, so no one would be insane enough to actually create weapons that would send Qi to their owners.

Jack shook his head. There was something strange going on with this girl. The sword was only the beginning. Why did she hate him so much (the intrusion into her house aside)? And why did she call him a demon? This whole trip had caused more questions than it gave him answers.

At least now he knew that the Qi around Rin truly didn’t come from her. It had to come from an artefact, though it was probably not the sword. After all she hadn’t carried it with her back then.

Still, right now he had a new worry. He had intruded into the house of an unknown organisation and had been caught doing it. It was very likely that they wouldn’t like that, which meant that Jack had to be careful of repercussions from them.

In the end it all came down to one fact. He had just poked a wasp nest and he had to prepare himself for the consequences. And the only way to do that was to get stronger. With a look at the still slowly growing crack Jack sighed.

The strong would rule and the weak would die. Have enough strength and every problem could be solved. No matter if it was in his last life or this one, it was always the same. So he had to gain more strength. Just that this time he would have to gain strength quicker than ever before.

Sitting down on his bed Jack started to cultivate again. Though he had only been away for a few hours, the crack had caused the air in the entire house to be filled with new Qi.

Quickly Jack absorbed the Qi and his cultivation started to increase. From a mere 2 litres that he started earlier it grew, drop by drop. Until finally it reached the size of a small puddle and he had reached the border to the next level of the Qi gathering realm.

Again there was a transparent barrier that had formed around his Qi. A short moment Jack hesitated. Should he really break through right now? That would make refining his Qi later harder than it would be if he waited and started to refine it right away. But in the end he shook his head. He needed more strength right now, even if he got a few problems later on. So he concentrated to break through the barrier around his Qi. And after only a few pushes the barrier broke down and he had reached the second level.

A wave of power rushed through Jack’s body and instinctively he let out a satisfied groan. Small bits of liquid Qi began to break of from the main mass and drifted out of the Dantian. Through the Spiritual Veins they quickly dispersed over Jack’s entire body and he could feel himself getting stronger as his whole body got infused with more and more Qi. It was an incredible feeling, almost addictive in its intensity. Jack grinned in satisfied as he revelled in the feeling.

But his elation was cut short as a small cracking sound trembled in his room. Jack’s eyes snapped open and he stared at the crack a few metres away. The side of it that was closer to Jack had a new fissure, nearly 5 centimetres long and splitting into small a small web of breaks to the edges.

‘Fuck, I completely forgot about that’, Jack cursed in his mind. He watched the crack in muted horror as a small wave of Qi gushed forth from it.

The last few days he had carefully made a few experiment s that had shown him that absorbing the Qi next to the crack didn’t influence it. So he had assumed that it should be safe to keep cultivating in his room. But now he realised that he had made a big mistake in his thinking.

The problem wasn’t cultivating but breaking through. Breakthroughs were often accompanied with disturbances in the surroundings of the cultivator. That was mostly a problem for stronger cultivators that could accidentally create storms or giant craters around themselves when they broke through. But even the small and almost unnoticeable disturbance of a weak cultivator like Jack could have horrific consequences if he was next to something delicate and important. Like, for example an instable hole inside an ancient Sphere.

Worried Jack looked at the crack, but to his relief after the sudden expansion it had calmed down again. Still, the damage was done. Whatever time he had before the Qi would start to spread to the outside had just been drastically shortened.

But in the end there was nothing he could do about it. With a sigh Jack combed through his hair as he made a note in his mind to search for a new place to break through in the future. Maybe inside the basement? It should be far enough away…

Now that the high of the breakthrough and the fear afterwards had vanished Jack felt finally how tired he truly was. It had been a long day after all. After a last look at the crack, Jack fell on the bed and closed his eyes. But even then he needed some time until he truly fell asleep. Too much worries plagued his mind.

When he fell asleep he dreamed of flying like a bird in the wind. And under him a giant horde of monsters teared apart a village filled with humans.

When Jack woke up the next day he was covered in cold sweat. No matter what, he couldn’t allow for that dream to become reality.