“Any Ideas?” I asked as I casually tossed the two large ration tokens into the air before catching them again. Shimak looked thoughtful as her fawn lay next to her with it’s head in her lap. The beast had lost it’s newborn awkwardness and had grown quite a bit since she’d bonded it. In contrast my own beast had hardly grown at all. It was extremely unfair. Shimak casually ran a hand over it’s dark-grey coat as she looked at me.

“Well that’s a lot of money for the lower caste, but for warriors that’s only around a month's pay.” She said as we sat on a couple of rocks down near the river. It had been a week since I’d earned the money but today was the first day both Skimak and I had been free in a while and I was using the opportunity to grill her for information on speeding up my cultivation. “A beast core goes for at least 500 tokens, probably more with how few they’ve brought in lately. So you’d need way more than you have now.” She continued while I scowled.

“That’s literally years of pay. Assuming I never buy anything” I said incredulously.

“Yeah, well that’s life as a lower-caste.” She said with a shrug. That was easy for her to say. Her father had been one of the higher-ranked guards. She’d been fairly wealthy compared to anyone outside the upper-caste before her dad died.

“So if we wanted one. We’d have to hunt it ourselves.” I said with a sigh.

“Would probably be a bad idea anyway. You're just getting started and your energy hasn’t had time to really balance out yet. Adding in a big blob of unpurified energy would probably throw your dantian out of whack and you’d waste weeks trying to fix it.” Shimak explained in her ‘impatient teacher’ voice.

“Alright, no beast cores then. Anything else that could help?”I asked as I picked up a small rock and skipped it across the top of the river. It was an awkward throw from a sitting position but I got 4 hops before it dropped below the water.

“An herbal supplement would probably be best.” She said as she launched her own rock. Her’s skipped five times and I shot her a dirty look as she grinned at me. “The most direct way to speed up cultivation is just to ingest something that contains essence. Like a beast core, but It’s hard on your body unless you can find something with a pure source, or have a foundation solid enough to withstand the upheaval it will cause. However, the best way is to find something that will increase your rate of natural absorption. That’s where medical pills and elixirs come in.” She explained giving her fawn a pat.

“Pills are basically refined monster cores that use various ingredients in order to gentle the cores power making it easier to absorb. Not sure how they make them but they are REALLY expensive and not that great anyway. Since the energy enters you directly it doesn’t get absorbed in the same way. It usually just ends up directly in your daintain without being absorbed into the rest of your body. Which means the amount of Essence you have increases but you don’t get the full benefit of it. Doing something like that once in awhile is fine, and highly useful for making breakthroughs, but if you do it too much you’ll end up with an inflated rank. Where your rank ends up ahead of your body. You’ll have the raw essence of a high-ranked cultivator without the skill or prowess to match. You can even hurt yourself if you force too much essence through a body isn’t strong enough to handle it. Elixirs on the other hand use plants to adjust the body's internal functions. They are used for all sorts of things but the most useful in your case would be something to let you absorb essence faster. You still have to do the work yourself, it’s just gives you a bit of a boost. Much gentler on the body and will give you a much more stable foundation. You might be able to get one of the cheap ones for thirty or forty tokens.” She said as she picked up another stone.

“What about a middle of the road quality one?” I asked curiously as I threw another rock. This time I concentrated on the movement of my arm muscles as I threw and the rock skipped twice then buzzed along the top of the water for a good twenty feet before finally falling in.

“Oh that’s cheating.” Shimak said as she threw her own stone. I just grinned at her.

“I’ve got to take my advantages where I can get them. Against your strength and endurance cultivation I get beat up every time we spar, but I can can throw rocks with the best of them.” I teased as I picked up another rock.

Her red eyebrows furrowed as she scowled at me. “It’s your fault for being too slow.” She said as she grabbed her own rock. “ And a decent elixir for a Body-Ranked cultivator…. Say one-fifty? That’s the reason the upper-caste children are so much stronger. Their families can afford all the good stuff the rest of us can only dream of, but still it’s not like you just wanna drink them all the time. Even though they are more natural then all the other options you can unbalance your cultivation if you use them all the time. Hard work and hard training is still the best way. ”

So it’s all about money here too……

I thought as I rubbed my chin. That was the worst part about being young again. I had lost my chin-beard so I had nothing to scratch.

“So I just need a way to make some money.” I said as I considered options. The simplest would just be to head into the woods and kill something. Even a small beast carcass would be worth dozens of tokens and a live one that could be raised or bound would be worth hundreds. But two kids selling off beast meat would gain us all sorts of unwanted attention.

I could try starting a business or something, I had faith in being able to game a iron-aged economy well enough to make some decent money but I didn’t really have any practical skills and all trade had to go through the clan.

A way to use money to make money….. Where It never has to touch the clan………

Then I grinned. “Hey Shimak…… Where do the warriors drink at?”

****************************************************************************

I walked through the tavern’s large wooden door and took in the ambiance. Hard looking men and women laughed over their drinks while scantily garbed barmaids flittered about the room, putting food and drink onto tables while they dodged groping hands. Music with a vaguely eastern feel filled the the place with a lively atmosphere. A large hearth sat in the middle of the room providing heat for the large space with the tables scattered haphazardly around it.

I scanned the room quickly for the proper prey. I needed some men who were enjoying themselves enough to try something new, but not enough to get violent. Then I saw them. Two men and a woman in warrior gear sitting at a small round table, laughing a joking while they tossed bone dice out of a tin cup.I walked calmly up to the table and slid into the empty chair as if I belonged there.

As the chair scraped the three of them looked at me with a mix of incredulity and amusement. It was to woman who spoke first.

“And what the hell are you doing here kid? Your daddy send you out to buy him a bottle of Hanho” She asked with amused eyes. She wasn’t much of a looker but her eyes sparkled with a light that made me think she wasn’t a bad sort.

I shook my head. “Na, came to find some action.” I said as I drew my ration tokens out and sat them on the table. “What are ya guys playing?”

They looked even more incredulous and a dark-haired man with a ridiculously bushy beard spoke up. “What are you drivin’ at.You mean you wanna throw dice with us? Roshk ain't a kids game boy. Go back to your mom.” He didn’t sound angry exactly, just exasperated.

“You mean my money’s no good here?” I asked mock angry.

“If he wants to play let the kid play. I’ll take his money.” Said the third man at the table. He was a lanky man with dark-blond hair and a scar over one cheek. I looked over to him and smiled making him laugh.

“I’m not taking a kids money. Blood and bile, he can’t be more than twelve.” The bushy-bearded man said.

“He wants to play, let him play.” Argued scarface. “ I need the money,”

“If you didn’t spend so much on whores you wouldn’t need to gamble so much.” The woman said with a barked laugh.

“Hey, Those ladies rely on my patronage. It wouldn’t be right to cut them off.” The blonde-man said with a grin.

“Fine, whatever.” The woman said and just like that I was in the game. It took me a while to learn the rules but the game was pretty simple and against my semi-inebriated opponents I was able to hold my own. I was even up a few tokens but that hadn’t been why I’d come. I just needed an opportunity to put my plan into motion.

The table shouted as I won another decent pot and I yawned theatrically and started to get up.

“Don’t be like that kid! You can’t run out after a big win.” The bearded man said with a slight slur.

“It’s past my bedtime. I gotta work tomorrow and Judan will have my ass if I’m late.” I said as I scooped up my winnings.

“That old rat is still alive.” The scarred man said with a snort. “Tell him I’ll kick his ass if he gives you trouble now sit down and have a drink.” I’d made a pretty good impression on the three of them and had made myself some friends, but I still had work to do.

“Fine, but I’m tired of Roshk. If we're gonna gamble we need a real game.” I said as I slid back into my chair. The three looked at me with interest and I smiled. Now I had them.

I hadn’t been able to get proper cards made so I’d settled for wooden tiles with the suits and numbers cut into them. The order had cost me five full tokens but I was pretty happy with the result. It was crude, and they were hell to shuffle, but they worked well enough. Besides, there was one thing in the world I refused to be without.

“You guys ever played poker?” I asked as I dumped the tiles out on the table.

************************************************************************************

“I can’t believe you made a hundred tokens in a month.” Skimak said disgustedly as we walked through the market. The sun was setting and a cool breeze blew down the mountain cooling the air as night started to fall.“You’ve got everyone in the village playing that game you made up.”

My plan had gone a bit better than I’d imagined initially. Within a week of introducing this world to the glory that was Texas Hold’em there were at least three games going on every night in the tavern. The old woodworker that made my Skimak’s bow had even given me a cut of his profits since so many people were ordering tiles made. The town was fertile ground for someone who’d been playing the game since I was in junior high in my last life.

I wasn’t amazing or anything but I was definitely the best player in the village so far. I was sure that would change eventually but even then I should be able to make decent money. My main concern was that I couldn’t win too much too quickly. It wasn’t good to pull too much water from your only well and I liked the people I played against most of the time. That meant I had to lose nearly as much as I won to keep things interesting for everyone else. I could only milk a few tokens a night without ruffling feathers or making anyone destitute.

Last night however, one of the upper-caste had come into the tavern looking for some female company and had wanted to play. So I’d fleeced him for over fifty tokens. He hadn’t even been upset and laughed it off as he bought two girls and left the table. On the other hand, fifty tokens nearly doubled my own money.

Which is how I’d afforded the small bottle in my pocket. The dark green liquid it contained looked like some sort of kale filled concoction some health nut back on earth would have drank but to me it was going to be a final test. I’d payed an even hundred tokens for the elixir and spent two more to bribe Jadan for a day off. The old potion maker Shimak had bought it from said it would last twenty four hours and I was pulling out all the stops.

My plan was a simple one. The area around the forest was densely packed with world's essence and the deeper in the forest you went the stronger it became. The river-bank on the village side was where I did most of my cultivation. The essence there was at least half again as good as it was up the mountain where the village was. However, I wanted every advantage I could get my mitts on. So I was going to cross the river and cultivate on the other bank instead.

The essence was even more dense on that side and should give me an extra boost. That would give me the most possible advantage while still letting Rupert stay in the water where he wouldn’t dry out. Then I’d drink the potion and spend an entire day and night cultivating my second path. If I didn’t notice anything useful happening after that, I’d stop cultivating my second path all together and focus on the first one from now on. Shimak thought I was an idiot to waste something so expensive on a long-shot but I was convinced I’d figure out the puzzle. I just hoped I’d like the answer I came up with.

I woke before sunrise and Skimak and I did our normal training before I headed down the mountain. The run started to rise as I traveled turning the sky pastel shades of greens, and blues. The blue sun of this world created the oddest looking sun-rises and produced colors in the sky that were both alien and fascinating. I ran the entire way. I wanted to squeeze out every extra ounce of usefulness I could and I wanted to completely exhaust myself before I started my training.

I crossed the river in one of the small boats, listening to the oars splash against the water and the faint creak of the wooden hull. It was a moment of peace and profundity and my mind stilled as my arms worked to pull my little craft across the wide river. I moored my little boat on the other bank then sat down at the edge of the water and summoned my beast. He immediately slid himself into the water swimming agilely for a few seconds before settling himself on the bottom as usual. Then with a deep breath I pulled out the glass vial and downed the continents in a single gulp.

The taste was bitter, like brustle sprouts, but the texture was the worst part. The liquid held chunks of suspended plant matter and I nearly gagged as I choked it down. Then I sat silently in the dawn light, unsure of what to expect.

The effect was much more subtle than I’d imagined. I was expected some boiling heat or coldness, waves of energy hammering my insides but the reality was nothing like that. My perception of the world just shifted slightly. It was if my body was some transceiver and someone had adjusted my frequency dial slightly. Had it happened slowly, I would have probably not noticed but the suddenness of the change tipped me off because my perception suddenly sharpened.

I could feel the world's essence more strongly now. It was so thick down here I’m was surprised I couldn’t see it with my eyes, but the most interesting change was that the bond of spirit, or will, or whatever it was I shared with my beast had sharpened as well.

I’d felt emotion from him before on at least one other occasion but now I could make out details. What emotion he had anyway. His general mood was one was colossal unconcern. Not the sort of feigned nonchalance you see on dangerous predators. Instead his concern was genuine as though he honestly didn’t care what was happening in the world around him. He was content to just sit on the bottom of the river and do nothing.

It would have been comical if it hadn’t been so depressing, but today sitting on the bottom of the river was exactly what I wanted him to do anyway. So at least we were on the same page. I made the necessary hand seal and started to pull in power.

I wasn’t sure if it was the location, the elixir, or the combination for the two, but the power, which normally came in a tiny trickle, today came in a small stream. To someone with high-talent and a good beast this was probably merely ‘average’ but to me it was at least three or four times better than usual.

Essence poured into me and I frantically circled it around my daintain in accords with my second cultivation path. The extra volume of essence made the process surprisingly difficult. My normal absorption was so slow it had never been an issue but today I needed a great deal of focus to keep the energy refining fast enough that my meridians wouldn’t become over-loaded. It was hard, but not impossible and once I got the hang of it I slipped into a meditative state as the hours slowly ticked by.

I was only distantly aware of the temperature climbing as noon approached, and cooling again as the sun set hours later. Night fell but I continued to cultivate, the world’s essence coursing through my body. Then the flow of energy started to wane as the elixir wore off near dawn, until it settled back to it’s previous level.

I turned my focus inward trying to inspect my body for any changes. My normal routine let me cultivate for about four hours a day, but I’d just cultivated for almost twenty four straight hours at much improved pace. I must have absorbed nearly a month's worth of essence in a single night. If I was going to find out what my second cultivation path actually did it would be now, when the difference between my current state and where I was yesterday would be most pronounced.

When you cultivate your body absorbs essence in accordance with your cultivation path. The energy you move through your body is absorbed first by whatever parts of yourself the cultivation path focuses on. So Skimak’s strength and endurance path granted by her ash-fawn means her muscles get the first and largest chunk of that power. The rest of that power then goes into the dantain, however as it settles a small fraction of that power is absorbed by every part of the body.

This essence ‘runoff’ gives every cultivator their base-line power boost. It’s the reason why even someone who cultivates a pure defense path will still be stronger, faster, and more agile than a normal human. My problem was, while cultivating my second path with the silver glow, that ‘runoff’ was the only essance my body ever got, and to make things worse I was absorbing essence so slowly to begin with that I was pretty much useless compared to every other cultivator. It had been nearly three months since I’d bound my beast and while Skimak would be making her breakthrough into the Blood class in a few months. It would take me at least another year to reach the same level and I’d only fall farther and farther behind.

Which is why I’d come up with this plan. If I couldn’t figure out what part of my body the second path was improving then I’d give up and only cultivate my first path. It would doom me to the bottom of the cultivation barrel, but even a below average cultivator had it way better than a common peasant of the lower-caste.

I searched my body and mind in desperation hoping for something, anything that would give me a glimmer of hope….. but I found nothing. I must had searched for most of an hour, checking everything I could possibly think to check but I still came up empty. Unless the silver path was granting me some weird ability I couldn’t think of it really did appear to be useless. Which didn’t make any sense. I could feel how much energy I was pulling it. It wasn’t much but It was definitely enough to measure. When I cultivated, the area around my daintain where I moved the energy was absorbing it. I could feel it. All that energy had to be changing something. Nothing could absorb that much energy and remain unchanged. It was going somewhere and doing something, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what.

Sighing in resignation I pushed my focus down through my bond with Rupert and called up the image of the first cultivation path. Tomorrow I’d have to start back on this one. At least then I’d be more nimble. It wasn’t much but it was something. The points and lines formed before me as my mental map of the cultivation path appeared and I sighed again as I looked at how dull and dim it was. With a path this bad I’d never be…….

I blinked, sharpening my mental focus. Yes, there was my first cultivation path, with all the lines in all the places I remembered but I would swear the lines weren’t as dull as they used to be. Granted, they were still dim but when I’d last looked the glow had been so dim I could barely make it out. Now I could see it clearly enough, it was just sad looking. It was like my cultivation path had improved, only by the smallest amount, but still. That was impossible wasn’t it?

Then again that amount of things I didn’t know about cultivation was an endless ocean compared to the small cup of things I did know. Shimak had told me cultivation paths were fixed until a beast evolved, but she was a 12 year old girl who’d gotten all her cultivation knowledge from her father and out of a single book. She might have a bucket of water to my cup, but it was still a long way from the ocean.

I took a mental step back and reviewed what I actually knew. Each cultivation path deposits essence in the body as power moves through it. The location of that path dictates what part of the body gains improvement. My first path was mostly around my joints and ligaments, making them more flexible and more resilient. Those paths were based on the characteristics of my bound beast. Which is why Shimak’s fire type fawn gave her increased endurance. After all deer run alot.

My animal on the other hand just layed around. Sure he was flexible and a good swimmer when he felt like moving but that was only secondary. Most of the time he just sat around and did…. What?

I reached into the shallow water and scooped him off the bottom. He’d grown noticeably over night from all the pure essence I’d fed him but I could still lift him without strain. I sat him on the bank next to me and really looked at him. This time without the disappointment I usually had but as an impartial observer. What the hell exactly was he. All beasts I’d seen here were odd hybrids, but I had no idea what Rupert could possibly be based on.

I looked closely with new eyes. He was oblong, not really serpent like, but he had a clear body structure. His head was facing me, and although he had no eyes or ears, or really anything else the shape of his skull was visible and he had an obvious mouth.

I touched his skin. It had the same sort of rubbery feel I was used to, sort of like a cat-fish but almost porus. Like he gained his nutrients not from eating but from absorbing microscopic organisms in the water. Like some of those sea invertebrates I used to see on discovery. However, in this world that took on a whole new meaning, because not only did it give him a means of absorbing food from the water but it probably also made it easier for him to absorb essence…… Pieces started to come together and my mouth drew into a slow smile.

A creature who specialises in absorption, a mysterious silver cultivation path that seemly does nothing, but does it around the dantain where energy is absorbed, and a cultivation path that seemed to inexplicably improve. Two plus two plus two makes six.

Of course it wouldn’t seem like anything was happening. Once I’d memorised the energy channels for the first path I didn’t look at it very often and the brightening would have been so slow I wouldn’t have noticed even if I checked it all the time. My mind started to race with possibilities.

A cultivation path that improves cultivation paths. That was like the ultimate cheat. Yes it was slow, and even if I only cultivated the second path it would probably take years to catch someone who had a good path to start with but what about after that? The more I cultivated the faster I’d be able to cultivate. The start would be brutal but what about five years from now…. This body would only be sixteen and I’d have been doing nothing but improving my cultivation speed for years. I’d be absorbing a ridiculous about of energy by then.

It was like an old PC game I used it have that let you make your own magic spells. It was a cool system but extremely broken because it let you create spells that increased your basic attributes permanently. So you could cast a spell that made you permanently better at casting spells. Which in turn let you cast more powerful spells that increased the stat even further. Sure it took a while to get going but eventually you’d max out your magic stat. Then you could just make spells for all the other stats and poof. You had a character who had 999 to every stat, who could kill any enemy with one attack, and run across the entire game would in seconds.

I grinned evilly as the first rays of dawn touched my face. It would take a while, but I’d get there. And woe to the world when I did.

AN: Alright! Second chapter as promised.

Thanks to all my readers and especially to those that have left reviews. You've rallied my rating from the depths!

Enjoy,

-- Dutchman