Mana cultivation was usually used as a measure of monster strength. Materials that were infused with mana were stronger, more durable. Living beings were not an exception to this. Monsters had significant amounts of impure mana at their disposal, and some could be composed of truly massive quantities of it.

But this was not something exclusive to monsters, just innate to them. Anyone who used mana over time, who recover from mana burn without succumbing to mana addiction, developed mana cultivation, gaining strength, speed, and most importantly, durability beyond that of non-mages.

Cultivators were warriors who have all sorts of secret arts specifically designed to maximize their mana cultivation as fast as possible, only learning spellcasting at the higher echelons. That’s after you strip away all of their cultural baggage, mind you. It was the reverse of the normal way to learn magic, where you learn how to cast magic and develop mana cultivation as you advanced. It made them superlative warriors, but they also languished when it came to utility magic. Given their roles as mostly-independent monster hunters/border patrols, it worked out well for them.

“You dare attack a place protected by the Soaring Heavens sect?” The lead cultivator announced his presence; fortunately Casimir learned how to speak their language so he could sell monster cores to them. Couldn’t read it, though. They were also a bunch of overdramatic whackadoos.

Cultivators didn’t, as a rule, believe in hiding their strength. Well, they do, but only in the sense of making themselves seem stronger than they were. So Casimir would peg them as wind-aspected sorcerers, if he didn’t know they were cultivators instead. There were significant tactical differences between one and the other. More critically, he knew that the one who spoke was as powerful as all five of his buddies combined.

Still, they weren’t entirely unreasonable whackadoos. “I dare to attack slavers.” Casimir shouted in reply. “I’m going to give you one chance to forswear these scum before I send you packing back to your monasteries.” Talking also gave him time to gather mana from the rainstorm and establish a domain. It wouldn’t impede the cultivators at all, unless they try to use offensive magic, but only the stronger ones are generally capable of it. “Kids, get some distance. The rest of you, go with them.”

“Slander!” Refuted the lead cultivator. “This is an Inn of good repute, and you will not stain the name of the Soaring Heavens sect with such vile accusations!” He pointed to the crowd of freed slaves. “Go retrieve the employees and guests of our establishment, while I deal with this interloper.” He shaped a sword out of wind mana, dense enough to take on the appearance of shining crystal, utterly flawless. Casimir was positive he could gift such a blade to another and it would retain its shape for weeks of heavy use.

Another little quirk about cultivators is that they didn’t really believe in improvising their magic, either. Every single spell was a distinct technique that they practiced until they have achieved utter perfection, and given how advanced their ability to shape their mana is by the time they start learning… that meant the few spells they did know were used to their utmost. That? Was a Hero-grade spell.

He needs a little more time to gather the rainstorm’s mana… “Impressive.” Casimir complimented him in his language. “May I know the name of one who wields such a great blade?”

Exactly as intended, the head cultivator puffed up and swung his wind sword a few times, each swing projecting the cut a few feet outside of the blade, angled to slice several dozen raindrops at once. “You face the Young Master of the Soaring Heavens sect, Zhu Tou!” He shouted, mana giving his voice a booming quality. “You speak well, for a mortal. You no doubt have some meager strength, or else I would not have been called to suppress you. Who is before Zhu Tou? I will remember it, if you survive for longer than one second against me.”

Yeah, the rainstorm was beginning to fade. There wasn’t much mana left to siphon. It’ll do. “My name is Toomes, “ Their language was such a clunky mess when you needed to talk about magic… should he translate? Eh… he’ll make something up. “-and I wield the power of the Storm-Gathering Scripture. You are a fool to face me here, at the apex of my strength!”

Zhu Tou laughed. “If this is your pinnacle, “ not even close. “-then I see that I have wasted my time! If you bow before me one hundred times, I may let you live as my servant!” Not even going to pretend anymore that you’re not slaving scum, huh?

Casimir decided to take advantage of the initiative that was ceded to him, drawing his verenium knife and another supplemental item: a sheath that was plugged up with wax. Stabbing the wax through, he let the metal soak in the alchemical poison as he directed the massive quantities of mana he gathered from the storm. With his now free hand, he drew the sword he had looted from that sunken castle: It was probably durable enough to compete with that shaped blade.

To the cultivator’s credit, he seemed to recognize the quality of the blade. His arrogant mein calmed a bit, and he took a fighting stance. It seemed more defensive than offensive, which seemed a little strange. Was he waiting for Casimir to attack first? Was he wary of the water domain? Did he suspect the trick Casimir was setting up?

Well, if he was going to wait, Casimir was going to set up another layer of trap. Bringing his network of curses to the fore of his mind, Casimir started making some edits. Reinforce this, increase the capacity of that, add this little bit to make it all work… There.

He’s not going to have enough resources to use all of these other plans, and he’s out of ideas for other options… time to goad. Attacking things that can see him is not his style. He’s more of a counter attacker. Also, his students are winning against his flunkies. “Every moment you wait…” Wait, how do you say… changing idioms. “-matures my victory like fine wine.” Casimir taunted. “The Storm-Gathering Scripture will gather the…” He should have known better than to try and taunt someone with a language he was not fully fluent in. “...water around this place and crush you.” How to wrap it up? Ah. “This is the warning I, your grandfather, will graciously provide.”

Zhu Tou smirked. Yeah, he fumbled his pronunciation somewhere in there, definitely. Maybe it was a grammar mistake instead. “Do you think to warn me, the Young Master of the Soaring Heavens sect? Well, then I should issue a warning of my own: The Heavens-splitting Blade is the epitome of a warrior’s might, a blade shaped out of the very soul of the wielder. Against its sharpness, nothing can even slow my sword arts! Observe, and you may learn something!”

Finally, the cultivator attacked. They were separated by about a hundred feet, their ability with mana allowing them to easily project their voices at that distance without really thinking about it. He crossed it in less than a second.

But it wasn’t too fast for Casimir. He took a solid stance and parried the incoming swing, the heavily reinforced metal held under the sharpness of the blade, deflecting it past Casimir’s body and allowing him to score a small cut with his poisoned stiletto.

After a few more exchanges, the cultivator using his superior speed to dash in and out of reach and slicing out with his blade with skill as keen as the greatest of mage knights, he stopped, shuddering. “Poison?” He asked, observing the tiny cuts that were the result of Casimir trying to stab him after each parry. They were still bleeding, and the blood was… fizzing. It was a useful hemotoxin. “You think to poison me, who will one day be Immortal?” Cultivators focus on mana cultivation massively extended their lifespan, and supposedly, this extended to a state of ‘Body reformation’ which created an immortal body from their soul. Essentially, they turn into spirits. He’s never heard of any that actually did this, but it was a big goal of most cultivators.

As a side-effect of this, they were complete bastards to curse, as their focus on ‘refining’ their souls heavily resembled the souls of advanced curse wizards, with their networks of curses that tended to block other curses from properly affixing.

This is, naturally, one of the reasons why most curse wizards need to learn how to fight physically with the augmenting side of the discipline: too many things were annoyingly difficult to curse. “Yeah, I made the whole Storm-Gathering Scripture thing up.” Casimir admitted. “Worked though, didn’t it?”

He was probably experiencing dizziness, a burning sensation, pressure in his chest… Not at all conducive to proper strategy. “YOU DARE!?” He shouted, the tightly controlled wind mana surging with his emotional outburst. He charged forward even faster than before, burning through his mana supply to increase his performance beyond the weakness the poison would have inflicted.

Casimir, in return, increased mana flow to his own curses, matching his increased performance. The first exchange put him on the back foot, his stiletto getting knocked away by the cultivator’s flare of cutting winds the instant he tried to stab the more offensively-focused man.

His armor and curses held up, however, making that the only accomplishment of the explosion of wind that the man used to disarm him beyond a few flesh wounds. His sword, as both further away from the epicenter and held more securely, was still in his hand.

Okay, plan check. He’s too strong to overpower with his awesome weapon skills. Poison was a bust, he’s too fast to use Convergence, Thunderclap, or Flash Freeze. His aura of wind mana is fighting the domain, making anything more guided pointless.

Already down to that plan? Alright, start molding the domain. While Casimir set up his final gambit, the enraged Cultivator gathered his strength once more, and moved at speeds faster than David’s best. After a powerful parry fueled by his armor’s stored mana, the cultivator decided he was done with petty matters like keeping enough mana to still fly home afterwards. His sword, shaped with mana, multiplied, spinning around him in a tornado of death. In response, Casimir used a flash of mind mana to fool his opponent’s senses, just for two seconds. To his eyes, Casimir fled his might.

Instead, he went towards it. The swords calmed their rotation at the sight of Casimir’s retreat, repositioning in a defensive formation to allow him to pursue at full speed.

Casimir, in the second of time he had, slipped underneath the defenses and struck the man’s stomach with a verenium acupuncture needle, normally used for complex healing or permanent curses, right in the the center of his crazy pseudo-curse network, and cast a curse. He couldn’t do anything fancy, but he put in as much mana as he could manage into a spike of magic. Specifically, a lightning attraction curse. Then, he fed the domain a tiny scrap of lightning mana, and let the domain loose to do what it does best.

The effects were immediate. The massive quantities of water mana that Casimir had collected from the rainstorm converted into lightning, which all poured into electrocuting both of them. But unlike Zhu Tou, Casimir was prepared. Every scrap of lightning mana channeled itself over his skin, and was directed straight through the needle into the lightning attraction curse, bloating the spell matrix beyond all containment and immediately causing it to have a resistance reaction.

In other words: He got shocked, his organs got shocked, his soul got shocked. Whatever network of pseudo-curses he had before the electric strike was shattered, although Casimir was pretty sure it was fixable. Also, while he’d be weakened by the network being damaged… he thinks the word they use is ‘meridians’? He’d still have the mana cultivation that he developed from those meridians. It really depended on how much of his magic used them as a jumping off point. It was entirely possible he couldn’t cast any spells like this, only swing a sword really well.

The man slumped down, unconscious and possibly dying. The swords of wind shattered at the outpouring of lightning mana, the duplicates apparently being active magic. The first one was still laying there, and now that it was still Casimir used negative magic to disrupt it, letting it dissipate.

He examined the man’s largest wound. “Eh… that needle is ruined.” Casimir said, before he realized he couldn’t hear himself. He has more, anyway. He quickly healed his damaged inner ear, and whistled a brief tune to check his hearing. Satisfied, Casimir continued to assess his enemy’s health.

“...He’ll live.” Casimir pronounced. At least, he’s not in any more danger of dying than most of his fellow slavers. Cultivators were crazy tough.

Dashing over to the other battlefield, he noticed Hanna tending to the subdued cultivators. “Any problems?” He asked his students.

“They were really strong!” Peter exclaimed. “It was like fighting you during that first challenge you gave us, but there were five of them.”

Casimir grinned at the reply. They’ve really grown, huh? “Well, you did well. Cultivators are extremely difficult opponents. Their secret training techniques give them strength that normally requires decades of effort in just a few years.” He was wondering how his new training curses stacked up, actually. Apparently it was more favorable than he expected.

“Thank you for saving us, Mr. Toomes.” Illivere said earnestly. It was more emotion than she usually spoke with, so she must be pretty frazzled by the whole event.

“Hey, these guys were beyond what you should have faced. I should have come back sooner.” Casimir said, apologizing without saying it directly. “Now… What’s this about a dragon?”