Thirty-Nine
 
“I don’t say this lightly. But, you’re terrible.” Diur pronounced her ruling with a straight face and Kon felt his spirit fall. For the last four hours they had been perched near an E-Grade rift where the ambient energy was thicker. He had been trying to make the classic cultivation method work for himself.
It hadn’t gone well.
“Finally found something he’s not good at!” Diur said a second later, yelling down to Alice. She was busy wrestling the wriggling mass of tentacles and fur that the E-Grade rift produced. She said it was practice, but the growing size of the monster core bag hinted that it was all profit driven.
“Finally!” Alice yelled back with a laugh. She stopped playing with the monster and ripped it in half. Kon tried to piece out how she had managed that with only one hand.
“I think she used her boot?” Kon groaned as he forgot about trying to figure out how she had done it and reflected on his poor performance. The key to cultivating like Diur did was by drawing in the energy and slowly compressing it into a core like a monster did. The first step was saturating one’s body in the energy and opening up channels.
The moment he drew energy in though, his nodes ate it up.The original node would process the energy and then disseminate it to the other two. All that four hours of breathing exercises had earned him was more alert senses and some stress relief. The amount he drew in with even an hour of specific breathing was less than a single shank of E-Grade monster meat.
“I figured that’d happen. We’ve tried this before but I wanted to see if he was really special or if we just found something new. Looks like we found something new,” Alice said. She stayed down on the forest floor covered in gore. The deep clouds promised rain soon and Kon wanted to get to their newest shelter before he ended up drenched again.
For the last two days they’d been moving slowly to the edge of the plateau, Alice bringing out every trick she knew to avoid the packmaster and the peak D-Grade beast. The monster was a higher level than Alice, but Kon was sure the energetic Knight could win a fight against it.
She hadn’t lost one yet.
“Alice, have you managed to find an appropriate rift for me?” Kon asked as he shimmied down the tree. His pack and laser rifle were set next to it and he quickly strapped everything on. The holopad was wrapped in a survival blanket to keep any extra moisture out of it as much as possible. It was cheap but still should have been weather proofed and sealed for hard vacuum. No one wanted to take any chances of losing the videos and pictures Kon had taken of the crystal door.
“There’s one close by. Peak F-Grade, rift can be cleared by you two if you work together. I think the treasure is neutral based. Felt that way.”
“We have to clear it ourselves?” Kon asked, stupified for a moment. Alice looked at him like he’d suddenly sprouted a third head.
“Yeahhhh, why wouldn’t you?”
“I thought we were on a timeline. I assumed you’d go and get the treasure and we’d…” Kon trailed off as Alice continued to stare at him blankly. She recovered a second later and coughed to clear her throat.
“There is some old wisdom I will share with you. It’s from our home. Assume makes an ass out of you and me.” She stopped and stared at him for a moment.
“I don’t get it?”
“It’s wordplay for how the word was originally written. Doesn’t quite have the same impact as it should now. The intent carries through though.”
“I can’t believe you thought Alice was going to let you just consume treasures without earning them!” Diur said with a laugh behind him. She had jumped off the branch of the tree and landed silently next to him.
“You’re not some spoiled child on the World Ship. We earn our keep out here. It’ll help with your aura too.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask about that. What exactly does the aura do? You’ve kinda talked about it and I see yours is all purple, but why’s it important?” Kon asked as they started to walk through the forest and back to their daily camp.
“You’ll understand as you grow stronger and are able to fully tell apart auras. You can only see the color of them and how they swell and retreat, correct?” Diur took over before Alice could say a word.
“Yeah.”
“What you’re seeing is actually how they’re moving energy around themselves. Beware the warrior without an aura. If you fight a cultivator who’s strong enough to compress and conceal their aura, you should either yield or flee.”This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Shoot those guys from space. Few railgun rounds from orbit calms them down, right quick,” Alice chimed in. She seemed content to let Diur handle his curiosity while she led them back towards camp. Diur frowned at Alice’s back.
“At a high enough cultivation level, even that might not be enough. A B-Grade cultivator will have multiple techniques that allow for transportation or shieldings. An A-Grade could shred a warship in space without leaving their palace.”
“Excuse me?” Kon said as he stopped dead in his tracks. Both of the women turned and looked at him confused.
“Yeah. Not a whole lot of those guys around though. To find rifts strong enough to support an A rank cultivator the world would need to have been overrun for centuries and left to grow stronger and stronger. Might have one in a sector. B-Ranks you can have a couple kicking around in a system maybe,” Alice explained quickly. Kon forced himself to follow them even though his mind was reeling.
“And they can just cut starships out of the sky?” Kon asked dubiously. Both of the women looked at each other, then back at him, and nodded.
“A peak A-Rank Knight can shatter worlds when they put their minds too it. Unless said world is filled with appropriate amount of energy. Same rank stuff. It gets weird as you get higher up. The gap between C and B is a hard gap, that’s where the true powerhouses are,” Alice said. There was a wistful note to her voice as she spoke of them.
“Correct. Our Masters are usually peak E-Grade, Elders D-Grade, then Ancestors are C-Grade. The Founder is rumored to be a B-Grade, but nobody knows for certain if she’s even still alive. She found a satellite that had been overrun and wished to cultivate there centuries ago. Space lanes back then weren’t as well understood and there’s a chance that her ship was lost.” Diur stopped and bowed her head slowly for a moment before continuing on like nothing had happened.
“Anyways. Once you reach ME-Grade you'll be able to sense more about an aura. It’s a calling card that shows the world who you truly are,” Alice said as they continued on their march.
“What does Alice’s say?” Kon asked absently. He was still stuck on the image of cutting a warship out of the sky with the swing of his hand.
“It’s a purple flame to me as well. I can feel it though. It feels like a fight. A real one, not just a spar. As if death is right there, lurking, staring at you. It causes your heart to beat faster, adrenaline to release.” Diur spoke in halting sentences, closing her eyes partly as she remembered.
“And that’s why it has to be earned. If I just went and got them all your aura would be lacking. It would scream, "Please someone rob and beat me, I’m a nepo baby.”
“You would be looked at unfavorably amongst cultivators as well. There is a limit to what even the greatest scions can be given. Our galaxy is a violent and dangerous place and our place in society is as its guardians against the rifts. To have a blank aura or even worse, one that speaks of entitlement or sloth, it’s an embarrassment,” Diur said.
“So to fit in I have to go and clear these rifts myself? I can still use the laser rifle, right?”
“Yeah. You’re fighting up grade, you can use it.” Alice sounded mad about having to give even that much up. If she had her way, he’d be bashing in the brains of every rift beast with a rock or his fists.
“If your training continues in the same vein as it has been going, I have no doubt your aura will be fine,” Diur reassured him.
“Then we can work on things like aura attacks. Still haven’t quite gotten the hang of that myself,” Alice admitted. Kon’s head was still spinning enough that he didn’t feel like chasing that tangent.
“Is Diur going with me. Or am I solo?”
“Diur has her own fun challenge. I found a mutated beast that I think is a native. Its guarding a natural treasure that’d be perfect for her. If she can get past the guardian,” Alice said with glee in her voice. Diur at first seemed excited for the chance, but the longer she stared at Alice and the woman’s definition of fun, the more she paled.
“What’s my rift like?” Kon asked.
“Nope. Learning to do your own intelligence work is part of your training. Well, it’s squire training but we can get you started now. Once we’re off this rock and you’re officially my squire we can follow the guidelines but I suspect you’ll be far ahead of the curve. Your fellows won’t be thrilled.” She said the last part with a dark laugh.
“Huh?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’ve decided I will petition to form a squire squadron and become a mentor. It’s a mentorship thing, generally the best in a class will get picked up by a Knight who wants to teach the next generation or earn contribution points with the Chapterhouse. Usually you take the best performing cadets, but I’ll take you on, grades be damned.”
“My grades were fine,” Kon grumbled. Alice laughed at that.
“I’ve seen the prepaid education system that colonies or smaller groups buy for their kids. Shit’s terrible. But working with you has been rewarding and has helped me with my own skills. Revisiting the basics and relearning some things with experienced eyes has helped. A few more of you and I’m sure I’ll figure more out,” Alice was enthusiastic.
“Are…are you saying you wish to become a mentor just to grow stronger by relearning basic skills?” Diur scoffed.
“Nooooo….yeah? No, definitely not. I like teaching, I think I’m getting good at it! And then we have this new methodology to work out too. Need some new test subjects for it before we can present it to the Chapter Elders or President. And when you become a mentor you get access to all sorts of cool systems that I generally have to pay for. Systems that will be helpful with identifying the runes you discovered,” Alice continued on. Kon was just staring at her back.
“She thinks she’s a good teacher?” He didn’t dare voice that thought though. He just kept his rifle tucked to his chest and thought about the rift he was going to run soon. Cultivating normally had been a swing and a miss, but he might still be able to advance with body cultivation. If his training didn’t kill him first.