File 14 - Four months

More than four months passed since Sam started living in Philip Lennart’s house.

Sam spent the first months learning the basic job of compounding, selling, and herb gathering in Philip's district. This included Aaron and Feyd’s best spots around the village and the dangerous areas to avoid in the outskirts when alone.

In order to avoid chaos every time he went out, Sam took the habit of wearing a long brown cape covering his body and head. Sam’s face was still visible but when he was inside the village, he preferred keeping his hood firmly on, even to this day.

The cape was made of cheap materials, but “it does the job” as Lisa proudly said when she saw Sam dejected face the first time she presented it to him.

The reaction of a lot of villagers was distant and cold, but no one dared to touch or insult "Gerad's son". Sam asked himself many times how long time it will take for them to finally accept him as a resident.

Sam was a philosophical man, he did not mind the bad vibes he received. After all, they were not aggressives, just distants. And if Sam rebelled and tried to do something about it, he knew the effects could be worse than the current situation.

As he had to live here for now, best was to avoid troubles for the family he was living in.

Since Sam came in this world, he thought a lot of time about what could have happened that day at RESERV.

Sam sometimes felt nostalgic when thinking of his father, but he held no hopes in being able to return to his world.

His current physical condition was a real bother however, and his only rays of light came from the existence of refiners in this world. At least Sam had hope for his body, and for now, that was his goal.

To his relief, this cold treatment was not taking place in the storehouse or when accomplishing gathering missions.

When Sam was amongst coworkers, he was not hiding himself, and his coworkers afraid at first, quickly warmed up to this smart youth.

Concerning Sam's body, even with Mepan’s skin regeneration talismans, numerous places on his body and face had still cracks and his complexion seemed forever pale.

In the plus side, Sam's left arm has recovered almost seventy percent of its mobility and strength, giving Sam enough motor skills to perform his daily needs and work.

Under Sam's right foot, a used wood plate five centimeter thick was fastened, making it possible for Sam to walk without limping. He could not run very fast, but this patchwork gave Sam a better standing.

During these four months, Sam learned to recognize the different plants surrounding Amos village and the mountain’s forest.

He also learned the effects attributed to their use and the way to make potions but as the recipes were scarce he only knew and concoct four potions, but even that was astonishing for someone who started potion-making just a two months back.

The people surrounding Sam had been surprised by this youth capacities at first, but after a while, they believed this was a talent bestowed upon him by fate in exchange for his ordeals.

Sam also got closer to Vincent and Mepan in order to gather more intelligence on refinement and war tactics currently used in this world.

He learned that aside from the martial arts experts who used their strenght, QI and martial skills, the battles and wars of mortals involved cavalry, arrows, sword battles and use of talismans to cast QI based attacks.

Sam started to grow curious about the might of these experts; he wanted to see a fight between experts for himself.

He learned a bit more about Phi continent and the surroundings of Amos village.

Sam heard from Vincent that Obour was one of the biggest city on the eastern side of the prefecture they were in, Bethlehem. Obour was considered the platform for other cities and villages of the prefecture to import and export goods from other parts of the eastern region.

As Obour was such a big city, thoughts of raising it as a prefectural city came often, however its mayor did not accept the honors every time they were presented.

Because keeping Obour’s status as a city allowed him a larger degree of freedom in the transactions taking place in it.

One of the main attractions of Obour, beside its colosseum, was its auction room where numerous high quality items always mysteriously found their way in.

Obour’s mayor has made a point in enforcing the rules to keep security in the city, so strife were mostly non-existent and potential buyers and sellers flocked all year long in this paradisiac environment.

The prefectural city Shiloh was ten days away on the west.

There, according to Mepan, was one of the most famous Refiners school of the prefecture: Heaven Moons School.

This school’s recruiting ceremony in two months was Aaron and Feyd’s target. It was reputed to have nurtured some of the best refiners of Maghen, and many of the refining geniuses of the region were students there.

Once every three years, the school opened its doors to allow new potential students to be accepted.

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Two days ago, Sam assisted to a fight between Vincent who started coming with Philip’s guards during their missions in the forest, and a rank six body realm beast.

That day, Aaron convinced Feyd and Sam to visit a special location of the forest said to have a plant named Red Avena. Cultivators of the body realm had a great need for these plants as it enhanced the QI absorption by applying a potion on the body made with this plant.

Of course the effects were minimal for higher realm cultivators, but for the body realm cultivators, this effect was more than enough for them to seeks theses potions like famished beggars. So these plants could sell for a satisfying price at the Heaven Trade center.

However, before they could reach the location, a huge rank six beast surged from the side surprising Feyd at the end of the convoy.

The beast looked like a bear with green glowing eyes, but it had over grown claws and fangs and its fur was dark-green with black tattoos running from its forehead to its lower back.

After the battle Vincent told Sam this bear-like creature was an Ursak.

According to Sam estimations, this Ursak was three and a half meters tall, and its movements were surprisingly fast for such a tall figure.

Seeing Vincent jumping in front of Feyd with his sword unsheathed, Sam focused on the battle about to unfold, he was of course startled by the appearance of the beast, however his past experience added to Vincent display of calmness in front of it reassured him on the fact that they were not in danger.

When he saw the beast coming from the side, Vincent who was in the middle of the convoy immediatly dashed toward Feyd, and thanks to his fast movements, he was able to come in between the beast and Feyd a moment before the strike.

Vincent blocked the claws with his sword, and using the recoil to propel himself, jumped backward to avoid the second strike coming from his left side. Feyd immediately ran toward the guards who came in reinforcement.

The beast, surprised at first, roared and ran toward Vincent.

In the meantime, Vincent who lost his balance when he landed straightened up, and holding his longsword forward with both hands waited for the beast to come. His eyes were unwavering and carried an intense concentration.

Taking Vincent’s stillness as one of fear, the beast approached faster and swiped once again.

This time however, Vincent did not block.

Just before the Ursak’s claws landed, the ground shacked under Vincent's feet as he moved sideways. For Sam, it was like Vincent's silhouette blurred for a second.

He was astonished.

Sam saw Vincent perform steps that looked similar to the martial steps from his world, but each time Vincent touched the ground, he casted the soil aside. And he was so fast!

So fast that before the beast could stop its attack’s inertia, Vincent was already on its right side.

It was as if he had vanished for a moment to reappeared beside the beast.

Vincent held his longsword high in the air before striking down with both arms.

The Ursak, seeing this let out an angry roar while trying to defend, but the strike of Vincent was so fast that the only thing the Ursak could move before losing its head was its eyes.

The fallen body then dragged on the floor for a few meters before stopping.

When Sam, who had lost nothing from the fight asked what movements Vincent performed to move at such speed, Vincent replied: “Young master, as a eighth body realm expert, my body has been purified and strengthened to a level beyond the mortal realm.” he paused and asked, “You heard of the refiners through Mepan right?”

Sam answered: “Yes, Mepan did try to teach me the refining techniques, the books he gave helped me in familiarizing myself with the knowledge. However, as all the veins in my body beside the ones in my right arm are crippled, I can’t seem to muster enough QI to use talismans when Mepan tested me, let alone refining”.

This was an half the truth as his veins were indeed crippled. This allowed Sam to muster a small amount of QI, but Mepan when testing Sam told him it was nowhere near the required amount needed to use talismans.

However, that was without counting the Marble.

During these four months, Sam discovered that not only the Marble gave him a vast knowledge; he was also able to learn new knowledge astonishingly fast. In fact, Sam was like a sponge. Never forgetting anything he had seen. And it seemed it was not the extent of its powers...

According to Mepan, to muster ones QI, one need to concentrate on the sensation on ones palm and act as if trying to draw blood toward this direction.

At first Sam tried to contract and extend the muscles of his palm. And seeing this, Aaron patiently explained:

"Ah Ah! Feyd made the same expression when he begun his training" "No matter how many times I see it, this constipated face is always killing me!"

Dodging his brother's boot that was flying toward his direction, Aaron pursued, "When we say you must try to muster the Qi in your palm as if to try to pump blood in it, it is meant as a metafore." "The blood is the place your soul is contained for people who are not at least experts of the spirit stage".

"So when Mepan says its like pumping your blood in, he meant to try to sharpen your consciousness in the palm of your hand, and concentrate on the feelings of it".

Since then Sam tried to feel the QI flowing in his veins and muster it, but as his veins were limited in size and numbers, it took Sam a month to be able to feel it and muster what he had. Even so, these results astonished Aaron as he said: "F**k it took me at least one year of arduous training to start getting a feeling of it, I was so smug back then...ah!" he sighed and added in a odd tone "If you weren't crippled how far would you go?"

One day, seeing Sam training to muster QI, Mepan gave him a book on how to refine low-rank plants. It was the type of refining that had the less Qi level requirement, but it contained the theory to begin as a refiner.

It took Sam only a short time to memorize and conceptualize the way refining works.

The act of refining consist in releasing the QI contained naturally in the body toward objects in the palm of the hand. By circulating ones QI around a plant, letting the QI go through it, it was possible to link the plant essence with the QI mustered. Extracting the precious essence little by little and using this extract as a base to make potions or engraving material to use when carving runes on a talismans.

The essence recovered was refined again a number of times to purify it from the unneeded elements mixed in during the extraction.

According to Mepan, the better control ones had on QI manipulation, the better their chance to control a flames to properly carve runes will be.

"To be a refiner one's has to absorb an elemental flame, to be able to wield a flame and not being consumed by it, the amount of control one's had over his QI will be determinant!" Mepan said seriously.

"But, can one not just use a regular flame in order to carve runes? using a medium like the spirit crystal flame rod in order to carve the runes is a process I saw Aaron and Feyd perform numerous times and the result are not bad at all" Sam asked puzzledly. Aaron and Feyd showed Sam how they carve low ranked runes a lot of times, by imbuing their QI in a flame crystal which is a crystal containing an elemental flame, they were able to carve a lot of differents attack and defense based runes, like the Flame Arrows Rune, Fireball Rune, Earth wall Runes, Lightning Stunning Runes... They were all usable runes and their power was not small.

However Mepan replied disdainfully "These are beginners runes and even though at your level of skills you would think of it as a pinnacle, let me tell you this: The difference in power between the same runes created with a flame crystal and an absorbed elemental flame of the same rank is a tenth, a tenth!" Mepan repeated seriously.

The ownership of an elemental flame was also vital because it influenced everything from the speed of refining to the ability to refine some materials, and if you were a cultivator and the quality of the flames was a high tier it could even help in battle. Aaron and Feyd possessed high natural QI so naturally were suited to absorb a lower rank flame, which was planned not far in the future as Philip bought a set of lower rank elemental flame two weeks ago.

As months passed and through trials and observations, Sam started forming conjectures and links between his refining and herbology knowledges.

He even built a microscope based on the first built in his own world, and soon, his room started to look like a laboratory.

Philip was happy and proud to see Sam so hardworking. Furthermore, thanks to Sam ideas, number of headaches had been taken out of Philip’s head.

For example, Sam suggested that if gatherers teamed with adventurers, the adventurers would be able to venture to places only known by locals and locals would be able to gather rarer herbs with more security.

Moreover, Sam studied the plants tediously with the datas available in his memory, and he devised a way to cultivate some of them in greenhouses using the minerals contained in their natural habitat’s soil, taking off further the workload of the herb gatherers' shoulders which could focus on the research of better and rarer quality herb.

Philip was ecstatic with the changes Sam performed in the Lennart’s herb gathering district.

The reason Sam was so hard at work was only to earn money. For Sam, more money meant a better chance to have his body fixed, so he constantly racked his brain in search of useable means with what he had at hand.

All these experiments had allowed Sam to optimize his refining techniques knowing which parts of the plants he needed to refine to get the better quality essence, and this was not small feat. Moreover, he could feel that he was in total control when mustering his QI; the Marble was clearly aiding in the process, making his QI flowing more precisely and smoothly, and even though the refinement was still not perfect because of the lack of QI mustered, Sam was still proud of his advancements, his extracts, while not rivaling Aaron nor Feyd's were at least seventy percent of their quality

His studies from the plants of this world and the control the Marble added in his QI control, allowed Sam to refine with the little QI he had. But he could only refine low-level plants and moss, and could not absorb a flame within his body.

High-level plants or core refining for example was still impossible in his condition.

However, Sam could not tell Mepan he was able to refine and prióduce usable exctract with this little QI.

Because Mepan was still in shock with the changes Sam brought in the Herb department and started to look at this six months awaken beast in alarm. He seemed to have joined Carla's club and were sometimes looking at him with fear in their eyes. So Sam did not want to stand out anymore.

According to what Sam understood of their mentality, they seems to think that he was possessed by a demon, if not how to explain his amazing developments these past six months ?

So for now, he just wanted to continue experimenting, and when he earned enough money to cure himself, he would study refining further.

Thus, the reason for this half truth to Vincent.

Vincent hearing Sam speaking of his difficulties in mustering QI nodded and continued:

“Every living being, as soon as they are born possess QI” “However mustering QI and being able to act upon it in order to improve the body are two different things”.

People of this world were all be born with QI in their veins, normal humans had a maximum life expectancy of 120 years on earth, however these people, without training, had a life expectancy of 180 years.

“Refiners focus their QI toward the outside making it possible for them to carve runes or refine materials, however practitioners focus their QI toward their body in order to purify it, in essence, this is the opposite of what refiners do”

Vincent paused as to be sure that Sam understood and had no questions, he then continued.

“Every practitioners has gone through hellish body training and refinig in order to initiate a connection with their inner QI, the success rate is extremely low”.

“If the practitioner is able to create this connection, he then train and meditate in order to nurture and purify the body with the QI contained in nature. Linking it with the inner QI.”

“That is the first step in order to become a cultivator. When your body start purifying, your senses, body strength and speed deviate further from the mortal realm every step you make in your training”.

While listening to Vincent explanations, Sam saw the guards ruffling the Ursak’s head and took out what looked like a green rock out of it.

When Sam asked what this was while pointing at it and Vincent told him this was a beast core used by refiners and could sell for a good price in the Heavens trade center.

Interested, Sam decided on one of his next study materials.

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