Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!

Joram’s mind was stuck in a loop, and he wasn’t quite sure how to get out of it.

On the one hand, it was a relief that his mother knew his biggest secret, that he wasn’t from this realm. On the other hand, he was so freaked out, his mind going to every possible “worst case” scenario, that he was starting to give himself an anxiety attack.

It wasn’t until he felt [Calm Emotions] flow through the network and into his brain that he realized that Avi had been trying to speak with him.

‘Joram!’

‘What!?’ He sent/yelled back even as he calmed down, his heartrate going back to a semblance of normal.

‘Are you still alive?’ She sent, patient as could be.

‘Yes?’ He sent back, not sure what she was getting at.

‘Then I think that your mother has been sort of expecting that answer from you and isn’t likely going to do something silly like killing you.’

Joram blinked, then brought his attention back to his mother who was looking at him with a mix of concern and amusement on her face.

Then he blushed.

He couldn’t wait until the body was done developing!

Then he facepalmed, remembering that the plethora of hormones messing with him wouldn’t subside until his early twenties…

Oh, fml!

Then he looked at his mother again, who just so happened to be smoothing out her expression into one of serious concern, then touched a small gem on her bracelet as she sat up a bit straighter.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said reflexively, then mentally kicked himself in the head.

“Yeah, nice try little mister,” his mother replied with that “cool Mom Look” that seemed to be genetically ingrained in every woman with a child. “Your father and I have had our suspicions for quite a while now. So, you can explain it to me now and again when your father arrives, or you can explain it to us at the same time when your father arrives.”

He stopped, this time taking a longer breath to calm himself again. No need for another intervention from Avi after all.

“When dad gets here,” he replied, sitting back into his chair after grabbing an apple.

Well, it was called something else here, but if it looked like an apple, smelled like an apple, and tasted like an apple then he’d call it an apple in his head. No use confusing people.

He’d barely gotten a bite out of it, with his mother looking at him with raised eyebrows, when his father flew into the room… from the balcony. Also, literally. Ivaryn flew onto the balcony, swung the doors open, then flew to the couch where his wife was sitting, where he promptly sat down and stared at Joram.

“Ummmmm…” Joram said after chewing and swallowing his mouthful of apple.

“So, where would you like to start, Joram?” His mother asked as she took his father’s hand in hers.

He paused again, thinking of how to explain it all so that they wouldn’t think him touched in the head.

“Well, it all started a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away…”

Well, he was still a geek after all.

-

It took him a good three hours of explaining and answering questions to get through his story. He’d thought that he’d done well in learning the language here, but [Tongue of the Sun and Moon] had kicked in a few times with things like “galaxy”, “outsider”, and pretty much anything related to technology after the middle-ages.

He was impressed with how well they were taking it in. The biggest surprise for them hadn’t been that he’d been reincarnated (again, they’d pretty much decided that he was a reincarnator after all) but that he’d come from another universe entirely.

They’d also questioned him about his cultivation before being killed.

“I really can’t say,” he said. “I was weak enough to be instantly killed by that old man though.”

“Bah,” his father said. “It was probably some old monster that had come out of hiding to look for anything interesting after all that incident. No need to worry about it.”

His mother nodded at that. “Indeed, there’s no use in worrying about something like that.”

Now, he hadn’t told them a few key things. One, that he had his own personal realm that he could store things away in, plant things, and even go there himself. Two, he hadn’t gone into too much detail about Altaea, nor did he mention Avi, not wanting to give too much away. Nevermind that he had “other” forms…

His network, however, got much attention.

“So, you can speak with someone from anywhere?” His mother asked, eyes lighting up.

“Yes, and a few other things, like healing,” he replied.

His parents exchanged looks at that, then once again turned to him, expression serious.

“Joram,” his father began. “Healing like how you’ve described it doesn’t exist here.”

His mother was nodding along, then continued for him.

“Please, do not let anyone know that you can heal by only using your mental strength,” she said, many levels of serious.

He nodded, then blinked as his father continued.

“Being able to heal without medicinal pills is something that anyone would kill for,” he said. “If anyone finds out about it, you’ll be lucky if you only wind up being a ‘prolonged’ guest somewhere. If you’re not, well, you’ll wind up being a slave to whoever gets their hands on you.”

Joram gulped. It had been a long time since he’d gulped like that and was quite impressed by it.

Yes, he was getting distracted. Who wanted to think about being enslaved?

“On another note,” his father segued. “Can I join your ‘net-work’?” He asked, having a bit of trouble with the unfamiliar word, but then smiled as he got the “invitation” and accepted.

‘It is rather easy to speak like this,’ Joram started. ‘You just need to concentrate on what you’d like to send through the network, much like you have to think about speaking out loud.’

His parents blinked in surprise at ‘hearing’ his voice, at not seeing his mouth move, not to mention how mature he sounded.

‘We should probably speak this way any time we need to talk about… me and stuff.’ Joram sent, trailing off at the end. He really didn’t like being the centre of attention and saying something like that had made him blush.

After a little practice, they continued.

‘So,’ his mother started. ‘You know how to use mental strength in unusual ways and can ‘enchant’ items. You also know some martial arts, which is good.’ She said, lifting a finger for each point. ‘You can heal, and even know some alchemy. But nothing of cultivation, of either path.’

‘No, I was only just discovering the Body Tempering stage when I had that… encounter.’

‘That isn’t a worry,’ his father piped in. ‘We can get you a wide variety of cultivation techniques that will be suitable for you.’

‘We should also see if any of the manuals for cultivating mental strength will help him.’ His mother added thoughtfully.

‘Yes, that would be good. But should we start him with the beginner’s manuals, or go for the most advanced ones?’ His father asked as he looked at his wife.

*Ahem*, Joram cleared his throat to get their attention before they went off onto their own set of tangents.

‘I think that starting at the beginning would be best,’ he sent. ‘I am, after all, unfamiliar with the techniques and methods of your world.’

That brought them both up short. They exchanged a look, slight blushes on their cheeks.

‘Sorry,’ his mother sent. ‘It may take a while for us to adjust to having a son who remembers his past life.’

His father nodded at that, then turned serious.

‘It’s a good thing that you’ve already stopped breastfeeding-‘ he cut off abruptly as his wife punched him in the shoulder hard enough to knock him out of his seat.

“If he needs to keep breastfeeding, he’ll keep breastfeeding!” She said, eyes on fire.

Well, not literally, but they certainly shone with an inner light.

-

- Week 79 –

His parents spent the majority of the last couple of weeks in the Library searching through the various cultivation manuals, both for his physical body and his mental strength. They’d all agreed that Joram needed to finish his Body Tempering (or Tier 0, as they called it) before he would start studying the first Tier of magic.

They’d also gone over his other aptitudes and had been astonished at just how much he could do. Eventually, they decided that while he worked on completing Tier 0, he would cultivate his mental strength along with learning alchemy, especially once they heard the part of his story that had him cataloguing every interesting plant he’d come across.

Once he reached Tier 1, they would start teaching him Arrays and Formations, the basics of their magic system even though he’d not be able to use them yet. He learned that that would come at the end of Tier 2, with much better results in the 3rd Tier and up.

They’d also go into Artifact Refining as his knowledge and cultivation increased, but wouldn’t go too far into it, as they didn’t want his attention split between too many paths. Nevermind that he basically knew how to do that already…

All the while he’d be cultivating his body while he studied. Well, doing various exercises, agility training, and basically calisthenics.

It was taking them so long in their search not because they were being indecisive but because they wanted to find the best manuals for him that would allow for the best, most efficient, growth.

Which led to today.

‘I’ll be heading into the… archives,’ his mother sent, hesitant to share that particular secret with him yet, ‘to look for something appropriate for your physical cultivation.’

Joram just nodded along waving good-bye, happy to pretend that he didn’t know exactly what she was talking about. The Heavenly Archive was something the whole clan knew about, but he understood why his mother was hesitant in letting him in on the secret.

He and Avi had read through a lot of the first few sections of the Heavenly Archive, and they understood that it was a dangerous place.

Not physically dangerous, no. It was the content, what was hidden there.

There were secret techniques, refining methods, and such that would likely shift the balance of power in their country (let alone the continent) if the information got out. That didn’t stop him from memorizing those more “efficient” methods though.

Besides the “danger”, his parents didn’t really know who Joram was, or what he’d do with that knowledge.

Which was fair. He’d been effectively lying to his parents his whole life, hiding who and what he was.

Did they understand his reluctance to trust anyone after he’d been killed by the first native he’d met in this world? Yes, yes they did.

Did it lessen the hurt from being lied to all this time? Only a little.

He could see that they’d been hurt by his reluctance to share his secret with them, but also saw that they were trying. He couldn’t express how much that meant to him.

During this time, he’d also become closer with his parents, if that didn’t seem weird. He no longer had to pretend to be limited in his thinking and could thus share more effectively with them.

That still didn’t get him out of the engagement though.

Well, baby steps.

Unfortunately, there were no baby steps back to nursing. It seemed that his lull in breastfeeding had prompted his mother’s mammaries to stop producing, much to his father’s great amusement. So, that just meant that he was back to getting supplements from aunt Aloralla, which put a huge smile on her face.

Not because of the extra workload on her system, but because Xixi had seen his return to breastfeeding and had wholeheartedly resumed her normal feeding habits.

His daily classes with Gran continued, with her focussing more and more on him learning the foundations of mental strength. It wasn’t bad, as he was getting a broader view of the subject according to the residents of this world.

It seemed that everyone started by making a sort of bastion in their mind where they could gather their mental strength. From there, the bastion would expand from being a building- usually a pagoda here- to getting “land” that surrounded it. This land would then be infused with mental strength as it grew. Or one could say that as ones’ mental strength increased, so too did the size of the lands surrounding the original bastion/building/thingy.

From there, it seemed that one would condense their mental strength into a body of water that surrounded that small island.

He wasn’t sure why they did it like this, as going from a solid state to a liquid state seemed backwards to him.

For example, when a cultivator (from either path) reached Tier 1, their focus was to be able to gather the mana they absorbed as they increased in rank until they formed their “core”, the centre of their body’s power.

Once they reached Tier 2, they then concentrated on increasing the size of their core, infusing as much mana as was safely possible. Even in this phase, the mana was in a “gaseous” state, according to what he’d read. It was like fog that swirled about a central axis in the core. Learning to use it internally is the goal for this realm.

Tier 3 is where the Waeryn continent considered you a “Mage” as this was where people learned to externally manifest the mana they’d absorbed in the early ranks. While in the latter ranks, they would then focus on learning how to detect and then draw upon the mana of the “Earth”. Once the Mage learned how to condense their internal mana in their core into a solid, they stepped into the 10th rank, but it wasn’t until they could draw the Earth Mana that they made the breakthrough to the 4th Tier.

That all said, it was a process of gathering energy and condensing it over and over again for the Mages. Even the Cultivators did pretty much the same thing, though calling Tier 1 the Foundation Realm, Tier 2 the Qi Gathering Realm, Tier 3 the Human Realm, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So then, why did the people who practiced mental strength here (he really was just going to start calling them “psions” at this point as they really needed a name) go about it backwards compared to the rest?

It wasn’t until Avi came back from the Heavenly Archive with a new manual that he understood.

It was an advanced volume, meant for those who’d already condensed their “knowledge sea” around their bastion. To summarize, for it went into quite the wordy and expansive explanation that the bastion was to protect the psion (his word there) from many possible situations like backlash and an invading mind or spirit.

Sure, that was a good idea… but he felt like it was made by someone who hadn’t build up their mental fortitude, their mental defenses sufficiently as they progressed and had to basically use a bunker to keep from being hurt, or hurting themselves.

He’d have to ponder a work-around for that, as every technique that his parents had found only focussed on that path.

His own “knowledge sea” was quite different from what they described here.

When he’d first started training his mind to harness his psionic potential, Altaea had told him to visualize his energy any way that he liked. It could be a pond, a fortress, a palace, even a rock. But he had to keep with it. So, he’d imagined his power taking the shape of a simple crystal that grew as he did.

By this time, it had grown to be quite the size, something like the size of his old apartment building back home, a good seven stories tall, and sprawling.

Anyway, what he didn’t quite get was how the psions of world were able to store such vast amounts of psionic energy in their knowledge seas.

Did it have to do with forming a bastion first? Did that somehow stabilize, and thus allow them retain such vast amounts of power? Could he somehow use his crystal as the bastion, then begin to condense that “sea” of power?

It was worth a shot.

So, while he absently doodled as Gran went on about the latest character she’d drawn for him, he entered his daily meditation early. Well, most people called it sleep, but he could get by just meditating for the two hours per day instead of actually sleeping nowadays.

As he meditated, he summoned the energy that normally infused his being and did his best to keep it around his crystal instead of merely dissipating once it left the surface of the crystal as it did when it was already full.

It was like trying to prevent water from escaping his cupped hands… in a windstorm, while balancing on one foot on top of a pole. Every time the energy gathered, he mentally “grabbed” it to prevent it from dissipating, but it was like fog on a hot sunny day.

It didn’t work.

Then a thought occurred to him, or rather a memory popped up of how a planet could keep a thin disk around itself. Or rather, how a planet could gather a ring that stayed with it in a stable orbit. It wasn’t a mess that surrounded the planet from all sides, but a very thin, densely populated, ring, or disc.

Well, “dense” was relative, but worked for what he now planned.

With that memory acting as a new source for the image that he wanted his knowledge sea to look like, he began imagining that his crystal had a massive amount of gravity to it; to help pull back the dissipating energy. Then he imagined it rotating, causing everything near it to do the same.

At first, it was just as one would expect: not much happened.

But slowly, ever so slowly, his crystal (or maybe he would start calling it his bastion) began to change. The shift was ever-so-slight at first, merely causing a small eddy in the flow of energy flowing away from the bastion. Then another eddy joined the first, then another, and soon he could see a marked shift in how the energy flowed around the bastion.

He did a little dance in his head as his consciousness watched the changes taking place, then reverse.

The resulting expulsion of energy not only threw him out of his mind, but also knocked him out his chair to fall on his back, his head bouncing on the hardwood floor.

* * *

Bezia sat on the floor, Joram’s head cradled in her lap. She’d already wiped the blood away from his nose and fed him a Gentle Jade Breeze medicinal pill to help stabilize his condition, so she waited for him to recover as her daughter glared daggers at her.

She wasn’t sure how Sulia (and her husband) had known Joram had suffered a backlash, but they’d arrived shortly after she’d fed Joram the medicinal pill and had demanded answers.

She hadn’t been able to give them much of anything, as she didn’t have a clue as to why he’d suffer such a backlash from her lesson. It had been centred on a character related to mental strength, yes, but one meant for meditation.

Bezia suppressed another sigh as Sulia once again dabbed Joram’s forehead with a wet cloth provided to her by Ivaryn.

“Tell me again what you were saying when he collapsed,” Sulia said from Joram’s stool at his little desk while she looked at what he’d been working on.

Bezia suppressed another sigh. Her daughter was sure getting bossy.

“That is the ‘Thought as a Still Pool’ character, as you well know,” she began. “I was expounding upon the subtler meanings associated with each brushstroke when I noticed him go completely still.”

Bezia eyed Sulia, but she only nodded absently as she looked at something Joram had been working on.

“That is when I felt a trace amount of mental strength coming from him and stopped to observe,” she finished, now waiting on Sulia to continue her redundant questioning.

She was then surprised when Sulia merely nodded vaguely and picked up the coarse paper, used for letting children practice their brushwork, then held it up so that Bezia could see.

Bezia was about to ask why she thought it was so important when she began to recognize some of the drawings on it.

There was what looked like a tall pagoda on a small island in the sea, but crossed out. The next one, right beside the first, was of a large rock surrounded by fog. That one was also crossed out. The third and final drawing was of that same rock but surrounded by what looked like concentric rings.

Bezia’s eyes went back to the pagoda, noticing the subtlety of the strokes indicating the flow of energy and intent to and from the pagoda. The thickening of a stroke here, the faintest of strokes there, and it all added up to one conclusion.

It almost seemed as though the child thought that it was… wrong.

The audacity.

She paused again, this time taking the paper from Sulia and inspecting it more thoroughly. She didn’t even notice when Sulia slid Joram from her lap, so intent was she on ferreting out the meaning behind the drawings.

* * *

Sulia knew that Joram’s life wasn’t in danger, but seeing him laying there, pale as could be had scared her more than she cared to say; nevermind when she’d felt traces of the backlash through her bond- connection to him.

‘Dear,’ she sent to her husband. ‘Could you please take Joram to our rooms? I need to speak with my mother.’

Ivaryn merely nodded as he gently picked Joram up and cradled him in his large arms.

Sulia smiled at the sight. Seeing her husband holding their son so tenderly warmed her heart that so badly needed comfort right then. She reached over and delicately moved the hair out of her son’s face, then kissed Ivaryn before he left.

Deep breath in, deep breath out, she told herself as she composed her heart and face, then turned around to regard her mother.

Her mother. The strongest in mental strength in the family, even beating out Tatia who was a full Tier stronger than her. She had the most profound insights in generations, reaching late into Tier 4 mental strength already.

Sulia had known that it might be dangerous letting her mother have so much time with Joram but had trusted that he would be like other children while learning. Namely, in taking his time.

After Joram’s big revelation to them, she’d even dismissed her worries when she’d found out that he was even more talented and more powerful than just about anyone else on the continent when it came to mental strength.

But now, now she was worried again. If someone so talented had had such a backlash while looking at a simple character, then maybe she had been right to worry in the first place. Maybe their cultivation methods for mental strength weren’t compatible with the ones he’d been taught? Was that the cause of this?

Sulia looked to her mother again, seeing that she hadn’t moved a muscle after taking the page from her. She seemed to be in a state of deep contemplation, not even blinking as she gazed at the page.

So, Sulia did what her mother had done for her in the past; she squatted down, carefully slid her left arm under her mother’s knees while her right arm went around her back, just under the shoulder blades, then stood up in one smooth motion.

Her mother didn’t even blink as she was lifted, nor did she blink when she was placed on the soft couch beside the window with a view of the gardens. Not even when Sulia placed a cushion just so behind her and sat on the other end of the couch.

And waited.

And while she waited some more, she went through her mental list of cultivation techniques that she and Ivaryn hand gone through and short-listed for further perusal. She was tempted to toss out the entire list of manuals on mental strength and how to cultivate it but was hesitant to do so since they hadn’t gotten to the bottom of Joram’s backlash mystery.

She knew that many of the cultivation techniques from the Zhizun Zhanshi continent were horribly incompatible with the cultivation techniques that her Waeryn continent used, and vice-versa. So then, it stood to reason that the same could be said of various mental strength cultivation techniques out there.

She heaved a sigh, as she now regretted not being strong in mental strength like never before. She didn’t have the insights needed to help Joram through this new trial of his.

She looked over to her mother again, trying to decide if letting her in on Joram’s secret was a wise decision or not. Sure, she had high attainments in mental strength, but she was also still Bezia. Would she put her own desires for knowledge before the well-being of her grandson? Would she insist on teaching him everything she thought he should know, even with all the risks that it might entail?

Lost in her thoughts, Sulia was jarred out of them by a very un-ladylike bark of laughter from beside her, bringing her back to reality and the realization that it was the middle of the night, judging from the position of the moon.

Bezia was now looking around with a bit of a blank look on her face, seemingly confused by her presence on the couch. After a couple of blinks, Bezia turned to her with a smile that she’d rarely seen on her mother.

“That boy is a genius,” she said without preamble, still smiling.

The smile was starting to give her the shivers. She’d never seen her mother smile for so long.

“Well, yes, yes he is,” she replied with her own smile. “What insights have you gained from his doodles?”

Her mother blinked, then blinked again, her smile finally fading.

“Yes, well, it might just be coincidence,” she started. “But we both know that there is no such thing as coincidence.”

Sulia didn’t reply to that. It had been quite the topic of debate throughout history, and in their home. Fate. Destiny. The idea that everything was pre-determined and thus was not chance, but plan. Her mother was strongly for the Fate Argument, while she was somewhat opposed to it. She’d even used her marriage to Ivaryn as an argument that “Fate” wasn’t in control of her life, only herself.

Neither her mother nor grandmother had liked that argument one bit.

“With such insights into the workings of the knowledge sea, why can’t I feel anything but traces, wisps, of mental strength from him?”

Sulia took that as a rhetorical question, mostly because she didn’t want to answer it.

Fortunately, Bezia didn’t seem to expect an answer from her and continued.

“There isn’t much time to teach him before I need to leave on assignment again,” she said. “I need more time with him each day to nurture him as much as possible before leaving again.”

“Stop,” Sulia said, hand raised in front of her. “Until we an determine what caused this backlash, there will be no further training for Joram.”

Bezia blinked at her, then furrowed her brow slightly as her eyes narrowed.

“Daughter,” she began, emphasizing the familial tie. “I appreciate your concern for Joram, but if his potential is as high as I suspect it is, he will need all the guidance that he can get before I leave.”

“And it could be that the many lessons related to mental strength that you’ve taught him over the past year have become jumbled up in his head and caused him to try for something that he wasn’t ready for,” Sulia replied, arms crossed, jaw set stubbornly.

She wasn’t exactly lying there, as she was pretty sure that it was likely a conflict in cultivation methods that had caused the backlash. However, that wasn’t something she could share right then.

Bezia paused in thought for a moment before shaking her head.

“I haven’t taught him anything that could cause such a reaction,” she said, shaking her head again. “Either way, you are right though. We need to find out what caused this before continuing with his lessons.

“That said, thank you for bringing me to the couch,” Bezia said with another smile, though this one was more of what she’d experienced throughout her life.

“I only did what I should have,” she replied, clearing her throat. It was relatively rare to receive thanks from her mother, so she hadn’t been prepared for it.

“Nevertheless, thank you,” she said. “Well, we should rest up before the night gets away from us. Good night, dear.” She said as she stood up, stepped over to Sulia and gave her a kiss on the forehead, then left.

Sulia was so stunned that she couldn’t even blink for a while, nevermind say anything.

Who is that, and what has she done with my mother?!

That was only a half joke.

Did the fact that Sulia was now a mother somehow change things in her mother’s head? Had some hidden wall broken down, now allowing her to show more affection for her youngest child and only daughter?

She’d never been close with her three older brothers as the next oldest from her was a quarter century older than her, and thus hadn’t had much to do with the “new” baby when she’d come along. That said, maybe she should go ask them if they’d noticed anything weird with their mother…

* * *

Avi was bored as could be.

Yes, she was in the most exclusive library on the planet (probably). Yes, she had plenty to do. But it was monotonous.

Every day it was the same. Her day started when she finished her meditations to restore her power reserves, followed by briefly checking up on her vast Alcohol Empire (newly dubbed) to make sure that it was running smoothly. Then she was off to copy text after text, manual after manual, tome after tome.

Sure, there were slightly more interesting parts where she found a text/manual/tome/scroll/what-have-you that was magical in nature and required extra attention in copying. Those were a bit more fun, as their contents wouldn’t copy over fully with her standard use of [Replicate]. No, those needed something a bit more potent like [Bend Reality] or [Reality Revision] to properly copy over and would thus require more time to set the appropriate parameters for it to work properly.

Interesting distractions like that had been rare in the first few Tiers of the Heavenly Archive, but as she got further into it, the appeared more often, thus taking more and more time to copy things over even though the sheer volume of materials to copy was decreasing. She’d soon need to get pickier at what she copied if she had any hope of completing the task in the next decade or so.

Then there was Joram. He’d somehow managed to give himself some psychic feedback in the form of an overchannel, dealing himself a rather substantial blow.

She was sure that he’d made items to protect himself from such damage, so she was all the more confused that it had happened at all.

That said, she couldn’t even talk to Joram because his injury had knocked him out. She had already done a diagnostic on him to make sure that he wouldn’t suffer any “permanent” damage from the feedback and had decided to just let him wake up on his own. After all, kids didn’t learn if they were saved from themselves too often.

… and she was still bored.

At least when Sulia came into the Heavenly Archive it made things a bit more interesting as she’d need to keep out of sight and not do anything too obvious so that she could avoid detection.

Maybe there’s something more interesting in the Tier 7 section…? She mused as she drifted over to that “wing”.

Well, a teleport-pad that led to that wing. The building had been sectioned off into the various Tiers, all physically blocked off from the other sections with the only way to access them being the teleportation network built into the place.

There were interesting restrictions preventing any sort of teleportation throughout the building, so it was necessary to use the pads to get to where you wanted to go. Fortunately the runestone she’d made when examining Sulia’s had every permission except for the Tier 8 stuff. Maybe that was reserved for the Matriarch.

A flash of light later found Avi floating to the nearest stack, perusing the titles as she drifted by.

She ignored the ones with the most pretentious titles like: “Supreme Heavenly Might”, “Overturn the Heavens with a Palm”, and “Emperor’s Divine Fist”. Maybe she’d copy them later, but for now they were ignored. She needed a cultivation manual that suited Joram, not a guide on how to conquer the world.

She was on the last stack, right up at the top where a few other books had fallen over somehow and covered a smaller volume in their bulk.

She heaved a mental sigh as she righted the stack of books, not wanting them to be damaged by laying at an angle like that.

The smaller book was closer to a magazine than an actual book in thickness. Well, most of the “books” here were rather thin compared to what Joram had stored away in his collection from Earth. But this one was only a half-centimetre or so thick, which was unusual in this section. Most of the others were at least three times as thick as this one, and more fancifully decorated too.

Well, the long-forgotten/ignored manual is either trash and deserved to be forgotten. Or it was the secret treasure that everyone ignored because it was so plain looking.

*Nod-nod*

Sound logic, that. Right out of the “Last Crusade”.

She heaved another mental sigh at just how bored she was to be so easily going on tangents like that. Though, in her defense, she’d had a thousand years to go through every bit of media that Joram had collected over the years… several times, learn programming and edit some games/files/apps/what-have-you... However, she’d never admit to Joram that she’d become an otaku...

Who needed two people nerding-out when something triggered them?

One was enough, thank you.

Coming back to the here-and-now, Avi looked down at the plain black cover and read the title that was so faded that it was barely legible.

“Encompass the Universe,” she read out loud, then nearly threw it away in disgust due to yet another pretentious title, but stopped. Maybe this would actually be useful…?

But she didn’t detect any magical or psionic emanations coming from it. Would it actually be useful? The magical ones all seemed impressive, even going as far as helping guide the reader on their path with various insights at the right time.

Welp, the welp gets what he gets, she happily thought to herself as she made her way back to the teleport pad, then back to the entrance so she could planeshift back.

Ah, good days’ work there Avi! She congratulated herself as she disappeared from the Heavenly Archive.

* * *

Her visit to her third brother, Cyran and his wife Renna, had been… dull. Yes, it had been nice to visit with them, but Renna had kept giving her shrewd looks that she thought she wouldn’t notice. Her brother, however, just went with the flow, doing all the little things one expected of a good host.

Their daughter, Valetha, had been the model of propriety, offering to serve her auntie. Sulia didn’t know if she was as guileless as she seemed; but if not, her acting skills were top-notch.

“… seen anything unusual,” Cyran said then took a sip of tea.

Sulia mentally went back a few moments in the conversation to catch the gist of what he’d said, then nodded in relief.

“Then, how do you explain her odd behaviour?”

Cyran nodded serenely as he answered. “Eldest Brother once shared that he’d been positively pampered growing up. He then noticed that the extra attention that he had growing up lessened with Second Brother. By the time I came around, I was more-or-less left to run free,” he said with a shake of the head. “Then, after so long, you came along. I think she placed so many of her hopes on you and that is why she was so hard on you as you grew up.”

Sulia was… perplexed, puzzled, and positively flabbergasted at the revelation that her mother had been so… normal with her firstborn. If she had it in her to be like that with her firstborn, then why hadn’t she treated her first daughter like that?

And why had people said that Bezia had always been distant?!

Yes, there was a bit of jealousy in there; she wouldn’t lie to herself.

“Besides,” Cyran continued. “With a child as talented as nephew, I’m sure that she’d just bursting at the seams to teach him everything she can while she’s around.”

Sulia caught Renna suppressing a frown and Valetha not quite succeeding at hiding her own.

If what she’d heard since returning, all of Joram’s first cousins hadn’t quite lived up to her performance growing up.

Valetha was only at the peak of the 1st Tier at almost seventeen years old, while her other cousins were only in the early 2nd Tier, except for her oldest nephew who’d finally reached the 3rd Tier a few years ago. They were all a disappointment to the matriarch, let alone their grandmother, so Valetha’s reaction didn’t surprise Sulia. When the Matriarch of the Clan was displeased about something, everyone knew it. Not from gossip, no. From the Matriarch herself. If she thought something wasn’t up to her standards, she did her best to rectify it.

“Thank you for the praise Third Brother,” Sulia said with a smile. “But placing too many expectations on the younger generation will weigh them down too much.”

Cyran just waved that off with a smile and changed the subject, going away from what he knew to be a touchy subject. Soon, they were chatting about the clan businesses and how they were doing.

They didn’t have the high-end shops, or the ones that catered to the elite. Theirs were aimed at the middle-class, the ones with enough money to spend on extras while not having to worry over-much about a budget. Having high-end shops attracted too much attention for their own good.

The one thing that they had over even the high-end shop was a secret teleportation network that allowed for easy transport of the clan and its assets. They always “just happened” to have enough stock, even when “times were tough”.

Their shops’ wares ranged from common items such as food and clothing, all the way to low-grade to mid-grade arrays, formations, artifacts, and even alchemy. They had shops in many cities across the continent, serving the masses. One might think that that would make them rich, but a good portion of the crystals they made in profit went to powering their teleportation arrays.

It was, quite honestly, a ridiculous expense for the clan, but one that allowed them to continue their sacred work of finding and preserving knowledge in secret.

After another hour of discussing family business and other mundane things, Sulia excused herself and headed back to her rooms, thinking.

She could probably arrange for regular deliveries of alchemical supplies, through their network, for Joram to use and practice alchemy. But it would be expensive. They’d need to arrange to sell most of the pills and such that he made to cover the costs.

It would be tight at first, as they’d only brought Joram manuals and recipes for Tier 0 and Tier 1. There wasn’t a lot of profit in those unless you were willing to create them in bulk to help mitigate the transportation costs.

Well, even if the sales didn’t cover all the expenses, she and Ivaryn had some pretty good savings they could dip into until Joram’s alchemical prowess improved.

She topped at the door to their family’s quarters and briefly sent her senses out to feel if there were any fluctuations from within.

Nothing.

Good, the privacy array seems to be working, she thought as she opened the door and quickly slipped inside.

Once inside though, she could feel everything that was going on. Ivaryn was meditating on the balcony while Joram slept soundly in his room. Well, at least she assumed as much as she sensed his rhythmic breathing and slower heartrate.

The array had been a good decision on their part as they needed to keep Joram’s growth on the down-low to avoid any potential family politicking… or backstabbing.

There hadn’t been any of that in the last few generations, but clans could give birth to any sort. And with how long it had been since the last family “dispute”, she wasn’t going to take any chances, especially since her line hadn’t produced as many female heirs as they would have liked.

“So,” Ivaryn said, nearly stopping her heart as she’d missed his approach. “What does the family think?” He asked, referring to her investigation concerning her mother.

“Basically, she’s excited to have someone to teach,” Sulia replied once her heart calmed down. “Did you know that Eldest Brother was spoiled by her?”

Ivaryn laughed at that. “Well, he does seem to have a golden spoon shoved up his arse.”

Sulia was about to give him a punch, but held back due to how accurate that statement was. He’d been insufferable growing up, acting like he was her father and could order her about as he wished just because he was first-born and forty years older than her.

To be fair, he had actually been around for most of her childhood and had already been married by the time she’d been born. So maybe that was why he’d taken a father figure role instead of an older brother role.

Well, he’d learned. From her grandmother, anyway.

Tatia had had to step in a few times to put Rydel in his place and to punish her for being too “strong-willed”. Ones’ elders needed to be respected after all.

“How’s Joram?” She asked, looking towards his room.

“Sleeping well. He needs the rest after such a backlash,” Ivaryn replied with a slight shake of his head. “I thought he was supposed to be really good with that sort of thing.”

Sulia nodded, then said. “I think that it was a conflict of cultivation methods,” she explained. “If he was trying to get them to work together and failed, then that would explain what happened.”

Ivaryn nodded then shook his head. “We’ll just have to trust in his knowledge of mental strength and how best to cultivate it.”

“About that,” Sulia started, not quite looking at Ivaryn. “Mother is going to be helping him more once we all figure out ‘what went wrong’.”

Ivaryn just levelled a flat look at her.

Sulia shrugged, trying not to show how embarrassed she was that she couldn’t even say no to her own mother.

“Well, I did manage to get her to hold off on new lessons until we figure out the backlash issue…”

The flat look continued.

“Besides,” she began, starting to get flustered. “She’s the only one in the clan with such high attainments in mental strength. She is likely the best qualified to help Joram figure things out.” She said, now folding her arms and leaning back slightly from where Ivaryn stood.

The flat look continued…

At this point, Sulia was definitely flustered. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly as she opened them again to regard her husband.

Missing husband.

She blinked, then blinked again to make sure that she was indeed registering a lack of Ivaryn in front of her, then just about jumped out of her skin when she felt arms wrap around her from behind, and stifled a very un-ladylike shriek at the same time.

“Ah, I love how easy it still is to tease you,” he whispered in her ear as he held her firmly in his arms.

“I’m going to kick you to the capital!” She said, but started to melt as he lowered his head and breathed out hot air onto her neck then gave her a little nip, causing her knees to nearly buckle.

“Let’s make a stop in the bedroom first,” he said, picked her up, then made his way to their room.

* * *

With a start, Joram’s eyes popped open looking this way and that wondering what had woken him up.

After a moment he managed to calm his racing heart and take a few deep breaths.

He looked around again, this time taking note of the dying light outside and the room itself. He was in his bedroom, so…

Ah, the feedback from my… experiment, he thought as he rubbed his eyes. He must have been out all afternoon.

‘Avi?’

‘Yes, Joram?’

‘Did I miss anything important?’ He asked as he sat up and leaned against the oversized headboard of his bed, taking note of the pajamas (well, a robe equivalent of pajamas anyway) he wore and shook his head.

‘Well, I found what I think to be a decent cultivation manual. Bezia will be spending more time tutoring you,’ she said, then added. ‘Oh, and your parents seem to be trying for another child.’

That’s what woke me up?!

‘Stop! No details!’ He sent frantically. No one needed to know that, especially their child!

‘Ah, it’s so fun riling you up,’ she sent. ‘So, so much easier than before.’

Joram held back a comment, then something occurred to him.

‘Avi?’

‘Yes, Joram?’

‘It has been bugging me for a while now, but V.I.s shouldn’t have…’ he trailed off, trying to find the words to express the sentiment. Then the words of his favourite Traynor came to mind. ‘V.I.s don’t act like you. They don’t make requests like being added to my network.’

He got the distinct impression that Avi smiled right then.

‘I’m an A.I., fully self-aware.’

Joram’s head exploded, metaphorically speaking.

No, the largest thing in his brain that was the most attention-grabbing was the Mass Effect reference being shot right back at him. He didn’t know why, but that was more important at that moment in time than remembering to breath.

Which he eventually did, with a loud intake of air once he finally noticed that his vision was dimming.

Then everything else hit, all at once.

She wasn’t just his personal droid doing what he needed, nor an assistant, or what-have-you. No, she was sapient. Fully self-aware with her own preferences, desires, and presumably goals in “life”. He’d been treating her like he’d treated his psicrystal before Altaea’s alterations to it: as a fragment of himself to do what he wanted with.

But she was based off his psicrystal and existed because he existed… Or so he thought. Would Avi have continued on if he’d actually died that day, or would she have “died” with him?

Then his thought from a while ago came up again. Was he treating her like a slave? Was he a slave owner? Was he now one of those scumbags he’d read about countless times? The ones who didn’t care about the enslaved person but only cared about their own interests?

Was Avi helping him because she wanted to, or was it because of some remnant programming of her base V.I. that kept her loyal to him? Was that any different? That he wasn’t the one who enslaved her, but still took advantage of that bit of programming? Was being an unwitting “master” any better than being a knowing one?

‘Avi?’

‘Yes, Joram?’

‘How much of your… “programming” are you aware of?’

‘All of it,’ she replied, taking on that sexy ship voice.

Joram gulped, then continued. ‘So, is there anything written in there to make you…’ Damn, this is hard!

‘Subservient? Slave to your will?’ She helpfully provided for him.

He sent a mental nod, trying very hard not to freak out.

‘No, there is not,’ she finished, still in that sexy ship voice.

How is she so good at imitating Edi’s voice?!

‘So, you’re OK doing… stuff?’ He asked lamely. He so wasn’t good with this stuff.

Like, who is good at discussing things like slavery and if they’re a slave owner or not?!

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

‘It gets boring at times, but at least it is something more interesting than supervising and managing a demiplane for a thousand years.’

‘But you’re not just doing it because you feel obliged to, are you?’

‘No.’

‘… and you’re OK with our… relationship?’

‘Joram,’ she began. ‘I am doing what I am doing because I want to. Yes, we are linked at a fundamental level, but that doesn’t mean that you have any undue influence over my wants, desires, or actions. I am me; you are you. Two unique beings originating from one entity.’

‘Huh.’