THEN

Emrys stood at the edge of the great ancestral forest and watched as Jack departed into the grassy field until he crested a hill and disappeared down the other side. He had enjoyed the human’s company during their travels. Jack had a manic energy that was not found among the tree folk. Emrys was sad to see him leave.

It was not only the separation from his new friend that was bothering the druid at the moment though. As he watched Jack leaving, he couldn’t help but feel that a great opportunity was passing him by. The feeling that he had reached an important crossroads in his life was nagging at Emrys like a bad toothache.

He turned to his silent companion and tilted his head back towards the middle of the forest. They both turned and began to make their way back home. Emrys watched Cyper out of the corner of his eye. The taller druid walked along silently as always.

Jack had wrongly assumed that the older looking druid refused to speak to him because he was human, but the truth was that Cyper had not shared his thoughts with anyone for a very long time. Not since he had left the forest a couple of centuries ago and returned a mere decade later, battered and gravely wounded.

Cyper was a shining example to the small druid clan of why they never left their sanctuary where they were under the protection of the Matriarch as well as the trees. Whatever had happened to him, it had clearly been unspeakable for it had left him forever mute.

As he struggled with himself, Emrys could not help but think that the Matriarch had sent Cyper along as a warning. Had she predicted his dilemma so far in advance. Was she telling him that this is what happens to those that dare the outside world? Or was it a different kind of message?

As they walked through the quiet and peaceful home of his ancestors, Emrys could not help but think that he was making the wrong choice. The druids of his clan had all heeded this rule for centuries.

But none of them had ever advanced beyond the Spirit Realm.

The only exception was the Matriarch. He remembered hearing stories about her when he was young. They said that, millennia ago, she had gone away to fight in the war against the sect of humans that had come to their world to dominate it. When she came back, it was with power that no one else had achieved before.

On the other hand, she had gone to war with dozens of their clan’s strongest warriors. In the end, the Matriarch was the only one who made it back alive. That was the unfortunate truth of advancement, of life. Only the strongest and luckiest survived.

Power would always be reserved for the few.

Emrys connected his mind to the forest around him hoping to get the advice of the ancestors. He felt the whispers of the great grove, but as always, the trees only described their surroundings. The consciousness of the trees could not understand the concerns of the sentient races.

After only a few more minutes of walking, Emrys stopped suddenly. It was not like him to fret about anything. Whatever was going to happen would be decided by fate.

A light breeze blew into his face, the branches and leaves rustling in the wind. Emrys looked up to the branches and watched as they bent, an epiphany suddenly coming to him. Trees always moved in the direction the wind was blowing.

At this moment, he felt that the wind was blowing him towards the death-defying human who seemed to trip over a new miracle with every other step.

Emrys had been sure that they were taking Jack to his execution when they captured and dragged him to the base of the Matriarch. Instead, she had woke from her meditation and taken human form for the first time in over a thousand years.

He had heard his greatest ancestor’s voice for the first time in his life because of Jack. Not only that, but she had blessed him with a tattoo of power. She had actually given her permission for Jack to use the energy of the forest.

This was something that had never been done before.

Cyper kept walking for a few steps after Emrys stopped. The knarled druid turned around and looked at Emrys oddly. Then, he seemed to have a realization before reaching down and touching the bark around his stomach.

Emrys felt a small flex of Cyper’s spirit and he watched as the bark covering his torso retreated to reveal a wide scripted belt wrapped around his midsection. The belt was made of a darker bark than Cyper’s. Dark like the Matriarch’s.

Cyper removed the scripted belt and wordlessly handed it to Emrys. He reached out slowly and accepted it with trepidation. Emrys extended his mind into it and confirmed his theory.

It was a spatial artifact made by the Matriarch out of her own bark. She had known about his decision before Emrys even knew he had one to make. He wondered if she was watching him through the trees even now.

He scanned its contents and removed a small memory crystal. After listening to the short message, Emrys turned around and began to run back towards the edge of the forest, hoping he could catch up to Jack quickly.

He hadn’t thought it would be this easy. He had expected Cyper to try and stop him. Not that he could.

Emrys was much older and much more powerful.

NOW

Jack stood in the middle of the gathering array and manifested his qi. The formation began to glow the same light blue as his lightning with a few arcs of energy rising from it. The outer layer of the script pulled qi in from outside of the array and when it reached the middle layer composed of the helix patterns, it began to spin in the same counterclockwise direction as his energy, forming a small tornado around him.

When it reached the middle, the ambient energy joined Jack’s own naturally spinning qi, and suddenly, his body was being flooded with energy. The vortex of qi was so thick, he could no longer see outside of it. The funnel spun down to a point that was located just below Jack’s navel at his center of gravity in the middle of his body. This was the place where his core would be formed.

Jack was astonished at the sheer volume of qi pouring into his body. In only seconds, more energy entered his body than he had absorbed in the last six months. Also, the environment of his advancement had turned out to be ideal due to the massive amount of ambient energy that was radiating from the majestic wall.

Only a moment before, Jack was running dangerously low on qi. Now, he was overflowing with it. It surged through every cell of his body, increasing his bone and muscle density and reinforcing his skin. Even his brain’s neurons were made more dense, along with every other organ in his body.

When this process was complete, Jack would be improved in every way. Speed, strength, reflexes, intelligence, all would be enhanced by advancement. According to Zachias, he would even be better looking, although Jack wondered how that worked. Better looking by who’s metric?

Unfortunately, he was unable to bask in his own ascension. From the moment he had manifested the weave and completed the qi gathering array, Jack had started something that he would only get one chance at. All of his focus was reserved for the formation of his core.

If he got this wrong, his progression would be over before it began. There was nothing more fundamental to a warrior’s spirit than their core. It was a sphere at the exact center of their being that was a little bigger than a marble. Within that little ball, there would be more matter than in the rest of Jack’s body combined.

With a tornado of power swirling into him, it took every ounce of his will to stay focused on forming his core. He wanted to feel the changes being made to his body, but that would take up too much of his desperately needed attention.

Zachias had helped Jack with the design of the core and then they had simulated the experience of forming it over and over again. To Jack, it seemed like he had completed this process thousands of times. But now that the moment had come to advance in the real world, he was nervous that he would make a mistake and destroy his own foundation.

As the ambient qi poured into him and took on his aspect, Jack used his chakra to compress it into the shape that he wanted. The central layer of the sphere was actually a hollow shell about half the size of a ball bearing. It was a very small space, but Jack had learned that this was where most of his excess qi would now be stored.

At first, he had expressed surprise that the storage space of his qi would be so minuscule, until Zachias had pointed out that all the matter in the Universe had once been able to fit inside a space much smaller than that.

However, the actual shape that the inner layer took was not just a hollow ball. It was covered in tiny holes that would lead to the channels which would run through his core.

Building his core required Jack to compress layer after layer in exacting, excruciating detail. Each layer had to line up perfectly with the one before and the one after. Every one cost him more focus and chakra, which drained his mental reserves.

Even with the flood of power enhancing his chakra, Jack found himself losing more than he gained. The qi rich environment was a double-edged sword.

Although it was giving him the chance to create a much denser core, it was also taking more out of him to form it. Zachias had not planned for Jack to advance in these circumstances. Even his most difficult simulations were not so extreme.

Jack narrowed his perception down to only his core. There was nothing else. His entire being was a sphere slowly forming out of fundamental matter.

As more layers were added, the shape of the channels running through the little ball started to reveal itself. It was a combination of two fractals that blended together seamlessly.

In designing Jack’s core, Zachias had emphasized the importance of choosing a pattern that would fit well with his path. And although neither of them knew exactly what that path would be, it seemed likely that it would eventually incorporate both lightning and wood.

Inspired by the two elements, Zachias had drawn blueprints for multiple cores. Jack eventually decided on the one that Zachias had named the Arc Lotus. Of all the blueprints, it had seemed the most right to Jack and Zachias told him to trust his instincts about this.

The Arc Lotus was a pattern that looked like a tree made of an endlessly branching arc of lightning. At the end of the arcs, there were loops reminiscent of lotus petals. When it was complete, The channels running through Jack’s core would look like a thousand-petal lotus flower held together by a lightning bolt.

With each second that passed, Jack came closer to reaching his goal, and closer to breaking. The strain of compressing all of the qi into the perfect shape had pushed him to his limit, and he was still a third of the way from finishing.

Jack was barely hanging on as he reached the end of his reserves. He tried to drill down for more willpower and found nothing.

From Zachias, who had remained a silent observer during the advancement, Jack felt an unwillingness to help. He was keeping to his promise that he would leave Jack to fight his own battles. Instead of stepping in, he showed Jack images of his family. Frozen memories of the people that were counting on him to survive and grow stronger.

The images gave Jack the will to keep pushing, but it didn’t change the fact that he was out of chakra and mentally exhausted. Going so far beyond his limits was agonizing. His head pounded and he felt something running down his face that he would later realize was blood.

In spite of the blinding pain, Jack refused to give up. He applied layer after layer just like he had practiced in the simulation, without even realizing how close he was to finishing. In the moment before he lost consciousness, Jack heard Zachias’ deep, rumbling voice as if from far away.

“Bitter always turns sweet by perseverance.”

Emrys stood on the grassy knoll in between Jack and their enemies. He turned his neck from side to side to loosen himself up. It had been a long time since he had taken his human form.

Most of his clan were not advanced enough to transform as much as he could, and Emrys did not like to stand out.

As Jack manifested his qi and activated the advancement array, Emrys felt a small pang of jealousy. They could not have picked an environment more flush with energy.

Even his clan’s best training grounds could not compare to this. Only the greatest families of the forest could afford such luxuries.

Still, it would not be an easy advancement for Jack. There was a reason that so few people used such qi flooded areas to break through to the Spirit Realm: hardly anyone could put up with the extra strain.

Although, if Jack managed to successfully advance, his foundation would be solid indeed.

Emrys smiled to himself with his soft features. This was exactly why he had decided to leave his home to follow the strange man. As he stared down the powerful avian beastkin, he felt true excitement for the first time in many years.

He had no doubt that traveling alongside Jack would lead him to many similar circumstances. These challenges would push him to improve or die.

Risk was the only true path to reward.

The bird man from the Black Talon looked down on Emrys from his perch atop the hill. Emrys briefly wondered why Jack had come to have a price on his head, but that was only a passing curiosity. His mind went back to the short message that the Matriarch had left for him on the memory crystal.

“Show them the pride of the Everwood Clan.”

Emrys released his spirit and flexed his chakra, running his qi through multiple weaves as if to remind himself of all the patterns. This was a habit that he had picked up early in his training.

The bird man still stood up on the hill holding his glowing wind blade. He released his spirit as well, and as their auras expanded into each other’s like a huge Venn diagram, they got an approximate sense of their opponent’s power.

Emrys’ excitement amplified as he felt the strength of his enemy. This would not be an easy fight. He may even die. But he was ready to pay that price.

For his own evolution, for the chance to glimpse eternity, he was ready to give up anything.

The druid and the beastkin acted in the exact same moment as if they had choreographed it ahead of time. Both of them lit up with energy patterns swirling over their skin as they activated their body enhancement techniques. Emrys felt his feet sink into the soft ground as his body took on the weight of a mighty tree.

His path’s body technique, named Nature’s Enforcement, emphasized balance, strength, and durability. It was actually an extremely common body technique among the druids, because of its effectiveness. There were those among the tree folk that focused exclusively on body techniques who could use Nature’s Enforcement to perform truly incredible feats.

Emrys was not one of those few masters, but his use of the weave was certainly skillful. He stomped his right foot as he barreled forward with his arms braced in front of him. The bird of prey beastkin appeared in front of Emrys and tried to slice him in two. The druid took the slash on the outside of his forearms and then reached out to try and grapple the beastkin.

If he could get a hold of the quick little birdie, Emrys knew he could finish the fight early with his advantage in strength. Unfortunately, the speed based warrior also knew this, and he managed to stay just out of the druid’s reach before retreating.

Emrys looked down at his own forearms and saw that they both had a small bleeding cut from the wind blade. It was a small injury, but those could add up quickly. If he wasn’t careful, the bird would whittle down his defenses.

The two warriors glared at each other and tried to get a read on their enemy’s intentions. For beings like these, that meant more than trying to read their tells and body language. They were literally attempting to read the other’s mind with their third eyes.

It was a battle of wills that took place every time advanced beings came to blows. They both attempted to mislead their opponent while getting an accurate read on their next move.

Before they could engage again, Emrys added a new weave to his qi circulation and quickly manifested it. This pattern activated a technique that was designed to work in concert with Nature’s Enforcement called Grove Knight. The small patches of bark on Emrys’ body rapidly expanded to cover him entirely in dangerous looking, heavy armor.

The helmet had a T-shaped visor and the antlers of Emrys’ tree form rose from the crown. The shoulders elbows and knees of the suit of bark armor extended into one wicked spike each.

His body gained even more weight as Grove Knight multiplied the effects of Nature’s Enforcement, especially the boost to Emrys’ durability. The druid struck a mighty figure with his large frame and wicked looking armor.

The avian beastkin had formed his own technique and Emrys’ armor was quickly put to the test. The pale-skinned, yellow-eyed man swung his glowing wind saber at the armored druid repeatedly. Each slash threw a crescent of sharp wind qi at Emrys who took them head on.

Wood chips flew from the armor as the many slashes landed. When they stopped, Emrys looked down at himself. There were missing chunks in his armor where the crescents had hit him. He funneled more qi to the weave and the damaged armor repaired itself, more reinforced bark growing to close the gaps.

The two warriors engaged each other hand to hand, their clashes throwing shockwaves that disturbed the short grass. The much faster beastkin ran circles around Emrys, landing strikes and slashes left and right, but the well protected druid shrugged them off.

If the fight continued as it was, Emrys knew that he would be worn down eventually. He had no intention of letting that happen. It was time to go on the offensive.

It was time to show them the pride of his clan.

He circulated his qi in the most complex weave yet, activating the creator technique that his path was named after: the Endless Thorn. His core began to lose qi rapidly as the technique took effect.

As the avian beastkin rushed Emrys again, the grass around the druid twisted and turned brown as it grew so quickly that even the speed-based bird was almost skewered by the now seven-foot long thorns. The dexterous warrior only just managed to retreat from the thorns before smirking contemptuously and cutting them apart with his razor sharp wind blade.

Thinking that he had defeated Emrys’ technique, the yellow-eyed beastkin rushed forward to assault him once again. More grass burst into thorns and the ones that the wind blade had just cut apart grew back longer. The beastkin was forced to dodge and chop more and more thorns away as they continued to grow around him.

Emrys’ qi reserves were quickly depleting as his core struggled to maintain the Endless Thorn. The thin spears of wood continued to burst from blades of grass and began to branch out from the sides of the already formed stakes. Soon, the branching thorns began to look like the antlers that rose from Emrys’ head. They all followed the same pattern that repeated throughout the growing forest of stakes.

The beastkin’s yellow eyes went from arrogant contempt to surprised frustration as he struggled to cut through enough thorns to get back to Emrys. The field of grass was becoming a branching forest of large thorns as the technique spread to cover more ground. The druid controlled the growth to spread only in the direction of the beastkin so it wouldn’t interfere with Jack’s advancement or even kill him.

When he thought about Jack, Emrys noticed that there was a presence slowly making its way toward the tornado of qi that the human stood at the center of. It was the lizard beastkin and she was clearly trying to sneak up on Jack and kill him while he was distracted. Emrys extended his aura in her direction and she hastily retreated as thin spears burst from the grass in front of her.

His attention turned back to the real battle just in time for Emrys to see the avian completely surrounded by his thorns, hacking and slashing with his glowing clear blade to keep them at bay. His frustration was evident as his spirit surged and he used a powerful technique to try and turn things around.

The air around the beastkin felt heavy and dangerously sharp to Emrys’ senses as his enemy gathered it into dozens of large glowing feathers that were packed with the kinesis of cutting. The thorns that touched these dense feathers of wind were immediately sliced to pieces.

Before the avian released his technique, Emrys decided to stop holding back. The druid reached out with his powerful chakra and used his own kinesis for the first time in the battle. The thorns around the beastkin became much more deadly as they were imbued with the kinesis of piercing. Anything that those spears of wood touched now would be easily perforated.

Sensing the danger, the beastkin launched his own technique and the dozens of feathers of wind flew in every direction to meet Emrys’ thorns. They collided with a crack that rang out hundreds of times as most of the forest of thorns were cut down by the slicing constructs of wind.

When the wind slices met the sharp ends of the wooden stakes that were infused with Emrys’ piercing kinesis, the techniques canceled each other out with a boom. The beastkin’s feathers tore through layer after layer of the druid’s technique before they were stopped however. Much of the forest of wooden stakes had been destroyed by the time the beastkin’s technique came to an end.

A few of the razor-sharp feathers even made it all the way to Emrys who reached out with his armored hands and forged kinesis filled thorns from his palms to block them. The bird man immediately rushed forwards to attack Emrys, but the forest of thorns began to grow back just as quickly.

The beastkin was forced to stop and defend himself once again. He was clearly taken aback by this, as Emrys had not released enough qi to regrow so many thorns so quickly. The druid smiled as his opponent finally realized what he was up against.

The Endless Thorn was a technique that progressively gained in strength the longer it was active. It created the thorns that branched outwards in a specific pattern. Even the roots that expanded underneath the ground took on this pattern that repeated itself over and over. In other words, it took the shape of a fractal.

This fractal collected the ambient qi and used it to create more thorns in the same pattern, which gathered even more qi. It was a technique that began small and grew in power exponentially.

If the beastkin had put more effort into breaking the technique when Emrys first activated it, it would have been relatively easy. However, now that it had built up, this battle was a foregone conclusion. Even though the bird had destroyed much of the thorns above ground, there were even more still buried underneath the soil, drawing in qi that the technique used to create more.

Emrys controlled that growth to target his enemy and imbued the thorns most likely to hit with kinesis. The bird man was back to hacking and slashing at the piercing forest growing around him with increasing desperation. As he conducted the technique and waited for his opponent to be overwhelmed, the druid cast his perception behind him to check on Jack.

As he scanned the human with his qi sense, Emrys’ eyes widened in shock.