“You don’t even realize what a mountain of catching up you have, don’t you?” Darius asked as he paced around in the dojo, which was a few floors below the corporate office. While the design was a lot more functional, it still emanated opulence and power.
Ornate tatami mats of silver and black decorated the floor in the pattern of a chess board. The air smelled of sweet and fragrant incense and there was the distinct strange feel of dense mana in the room. The walls were the color of a bright blood red with gold rimmed paintings of regal looking cultivators working on various techniques. The rhythm of the walls was always the same. Red marble pillar with golden scrollwork against the wall, a painting perfectly in the middle, another red marble pillar.
“I prefer it that way,” Cale said. “Gotta protect the confidence.”
Darius made a face of approval. “You’re a strange kid, you know that?”
“That’s why you chose me, isn’t it?”
“Something like that. But don’t get too cocky, just because baby took his first steps. Time for a crash course in cultivator combat.”
“Finally he is making himself useful!” Aura piped up. “All this politicking and talking has been a snoozefest. I demand blood! Blood for the Blood Goddess Aura!”
“Knock it off, you maniac,” Cale said and laughed.
“Talking to the Integra again?” Darius asked.
“Yeah, sorry,” Cale said. “It’d be easier if she could be part of the conversation.”
“No, no, this is pretty amusing like this,” Darius said and cocked an eyebrow.
“Agreed,” Aura said smugly. “He has a point sometimes, you know.”
“Okay, enough play,” Darius said and pulled back a sleeve, revealing the strange blue bracelet with a small glass panel. He pressed it a few times rhythmically and a portal appeared. Darius plucked a set of items from the portal and placed them in a row on a silver tatami mat.
Darius pointed at a small cylinder which Cale recognized well. “Flashbang.”
Then at an ornate gun with sigils on it. “Mana pistol.”
Then a leather belt with a large sigil on a solid silver buckle. “Mana barrier device.”
And finally at something that looked like a bundled hairnet. “Personal cloaking device.”
Cale nodded slowly. Darius turned a sharp eye on him. “Standard issue gear for an operator. The pistol is optional, but everyone carries some kind of weapon. Do you know what all of these have in common?”
Cale shrugged. “Tell me.”
“You can’t use any of it,” Darius said flatly. “These all require you to route mana into them in a pattern, which you cannot do because you physically lack the Mana Circuitry.”
“Let me try that,” Cale said and picked up the pistol. It looked a lot like what Zavio had been packing, without the ostentatious ornamentation. Cale recognized it from his old memories. It was not like a gun he would describe as “modern”. This had the design of a flintlock, although sleeker, more angular. Cale extended his arm. The gun had a nice weight to it.
Cale pressed a finger inside the pouch of mana crystals in his pocket. He inhaled a tiny sliver of it, and it went straight to swirling in his solar plexus. From there he tried to bring it to his hand and fingers and into his gun. The energy moved, although Cale had to strain and it was slow. It took a good several seconds to get the mana flowing and into his palm. But his fingers was as far as the mana was going.
“Aura,” Cale said under a strained breath. “Anything I can do?”
“What do you expect me to do?” Aura said haughtily. “I am not attuned to this crude weapon.”
“Well?” Darius asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Cale sighed and lowered the gun.
“Curious,” Darius said. “I figured there was a chance you might have been able to use these, considering you can shoot out pure energy out of your hands.”
“Tell him that is very different. I am a collection of millions of tiny organisms inside you. I have the prerequisite sigils for you to expunge mana. But I cannot attune to these primitive devices.”
Cale repeated what Aura said. Darius was surprisingly muted, listening raptly as he stroked his chin.
“Alright, good,” Darius then said. “That brings me back to my point. You’re weak. You can’t use any of the standard issue equipment, which gives you a massive disadvantage. It makes you predictable and one dimensional. Your only saving grace is that your opponents can’t sense what stage of advancement you are, so you can bluff.”
“Hey, at least I have an advantage.”
“We need to give you more, if you want to stay alive, kid,” Darius said. “I can’t bring you up to Mana Circuitry overnight, but I can give you a technique.”
“What kind of technique?”
“Oh,” Darius said. “Now you’re asking the interesting questions. See, that’s what I want to know too. What kind of technique will you choose?”
Darius swiped away the gear on the tatami mat back into the portal and instead plucked out three objects. He flourished his hand and they all started to hover in midair. A red cube, a blue orb and a green triangle, all of them glowing with mana, equidistant from each other.
Cale looked at the strange floating objects in a sense of wonder. They were geometrically perfect and shone with a magical light, their form playing with the line of light and matter.
“What do they do?” Cale asked.
“Touch one,” Darius said.
Cale walked up to the red cube which was closest to him and placed a hand on it. Immediately everything around him turned into white nothingness, and two figures appeared. Simple faceless and featureless dolls facing each other in front of Cale. One of them leaned backwards in a battle stance, placing weight on the backfoot. Its arm was fully extended behind him. Then the doll shifted weight. It took a deft and fast step forward and the arm lashed down, arcing above the head in one smooth motion. Crackles of red energy sparked as the fist of the attacker hit the standing doll. The doll’s head cracked and it collapsed.
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Then the dolls vanished and reappeared in their starting position. The attacker did a variation this time. Instead of an overhead smash, it was a heavy forward thrusting punch with an aggressive forward step. There was a slight red spike of energy extending from the knuckles of the attacker. The punch of the attacker hit the abdomen of the other doll, and it folded in half and flew back ten feet, tumbled and went limp.
Powerful. It’s like magic martial arts.
Cale wanted to see what the other techniques were. He touched the floating cube in the middle of the whiteness. How did he know it would take him back? He just did. And indeed, when Cale touched the cube, he was back in the ostentatious dojo. Darius looked at him expectantly.
“That’s called the Crimson Claw,” Darius said.
“How pretentious,” Cale muttered.
Darius chuckled. “Hey, when you invent a technique, you can call it whatever the hell you like. But until then your job is to shut up and listen. How did you like the learning module?
“I like it,” Cale said. “So I just follow their instructions, copy their form?”
“There’s an external and internal component to each technique. External technique works like sigils. You know how sigils work?”
Cale shook his head. Darius sighed.
“The short answer is that the Nevani figured out the language of the world. The sigils are what they called True Language. So we can draw “Flight” in True Language on that stupid hoverboard of yours, and there you go. Techniques and the body work in a similar manner.”
“So I have to copy the motions and stances as accurately as I can to replicate the results?” Cale asked.
“You catch up quick, kid,” Darius said and allowed a hint of a smile. “It’s not quite that strict, once you get better. Because then you will understand the idea behind the words of the True Language.”
Cale cocked his head. He could hear Aura harrumph in frustration in his mind.
Darius groaned. Then he took a battle stance, just like in the technique cube. Weight on his backfoot, one hand forward, poised. “This is a stance that signifies power, balance, readiness. First you need to learn to perform the technique from this stance. It’s the baseline. But once your technique refines you can use your understanding of the pose in other situations. That’s where the internal part of the technique comes in.”
Cale only nodded. He didn’t want to say anything to interrupt or annoy Darius. He was in full sponge-mode.
“The internal part of the technique requires you to observe how your mana flows while you use the technique. The cube will show you the basic idea. You gather the mana into your backfoot and then surge it at the enemy with a fist, using as much movement to gather momentum as possible. With practice you will learn what that feels like. Mana works with certain principles. When you want it to attack, certain principles are used. When you need slow and intricate control, again, certain principles apply. Your job is to pay attention to how the energy inside you feels and moves when you use the technique. Then when you learn, you’ll develop a knack for it. And then you can apply that knack more liberally.”
Cale nodded. Darius took a step forward.
“And once you master both…”
Darius moved fast, like a well-dressed shadow. Cale could only register a faint flicker of red on Darius’s index finger, before it flicked Cale in the chest. A flash of urgent pain flared out on his sternum as he flew twenty feet in the air to the other side of the dojo, and rolled another ten for good measure. Cale coughed, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and got up.
Without another word, Cale moved to touch the blue orb. Instantly he was in that white nothingness again, watching two dummies. Where the Crimson Claw technique’s movements had been angular, fast, direct, the technique this module was presenting was smooth, methodical, fluid.
One of the dummies attacked with a straight punch, chin tucked behind the shoulder. The primary dummy sidestepped and with an attack pressing index and middle finger against the thumb tacked the attacking dummy thrice on the shoulder and arm, like inputting a door code. Faint blue ripples erupted from the strike points. The arm went limp and the primary dummy hopped away to a safe distance.
Okay, that’s pretty awesome. But timing that in a real fight is going to be hard. Unless you restrain the enemy…
Cale watched idly the primary dummy to perform the counter attack from different angles and positions against different attacks. The fluidity of the style felt more aesthetic to him than the direct power of the Crimson Claw, but eventually Cale touched the glowing blue orb again, and returned back.
“Well?” Darius said immediately.
“Seems complicated.”
“That’s the Azure Point technique. Arguably the most powerful unarmed technique, because it lets you take on more powerful foes than yourself. But the disadvantage is that the Crimson Claw can be performed with a sword, while this... Well I suppose you can do that with a chopstick, but why not just stab the guy instead?”
“I agree, Cale said. “But I assume this has other extrapolations?”
Darius smirked. “It does. It’s very powerful after Core Formation when you learn to use external mana. Allows you to perform this technique from range.”
“Oh…” Cale said, suddenly much more intrigued. A technique that can disable stronger opponents from range? That was power. Maybe he should choose this technique, because he could already expunge mana. “That changes things.”
Darius shrugged. “It’s a good technique.”
Cale placed a hand on the third technique— the green triangle. The two dummies stood three feet away from each other in a natural stance. Then the other moved, lunging forward, fist extended. The primary doll slid backwards. Something uncanny happened.
The primary doll became ethereal for just a blink, like a mirage, a hologram with a hint of a green outline. The punch struck it, but it didn’t. As the primary dummy slid backwards, it solidified again.
Cale’s heart jumped. He wanted to see it again. The dolls started showing variations, and Cale focused on the nature of the movements of the primary doll. The movement was subtle. A flexing, tightening of every muscle and tendon. Then a sudden whole-body relaxation into the direction the doll was going to move.
The dolls disappeared and reappeared. Another variation. The other doll was now wielding a straight sword with a thin blade. It swung in a wild horizontal arc. The primary doll moved towards the enemy. A faint green outline enveloped the primary doll’s incorporeal form as it phased through the sword.
Cale didn’t need to be a battle-genius to see how ridiculously ahead of tempo the primary doll was now, if this were a real fight. The dolls disappeared and reappeared, now both of them wielding swords.
Reluctantly, Cale placed a hand on the triangle.
“I want this one,” Cale said immediately.
Darius scoffed. “Really, kid? I have to tell you, I’m disappointed.”
“Huh?” Cale said. “Why?”
“This was about choosing what kind of a cultivator you are going to be,” Darius said and swiped the other two back in his wrist-portal. He left the green triangle, cementing Cale’s choice. “And you are choosing to run instead of attacking.”
A pang only felt by scorn of those one respects ran through Cale. A heavy feeling akin to shame. He had to process it. His mind revisited each of the techniques and he weighed them. He tried to keep his mind clear, assess them fairly.
“What I personally think is—”
“Not now, Aura,” Cale said gently but firmly. “I need to think this through myself.”
Aura huffed, but went silent.
Cale thought. Darius had the experience. But Cale knew himself. He knew he was right.
“You’d have preferred me to take the Crimson Claw, right?” Cale asked.
“Definitely,” Darius said. “That technique dominates. It is what I chose myself and I mastered it and thrived. It’s not the guy with the best hand that wins. It’s the aggressive players, attacking other people’s stacks. Aggression keeps you in control.”
“How did that work for Scarroid?” Cale said. “Seemed pretty aggressive to me.”
Darius chuckled. “Fair point I suppose, but the guy was a Core Formation cultivator, which is an ocean to your puddle. He just lacked poise.”
“So you’re saying pure aggression alone is not enough. You need more?” Cale said.
“Of course you need more. But you need something to build on. And what winners do is they build themselves to dominate.”
“Yeah, I get your point,” Cale said. “But I’m not going to build on that.”
“Uhhuh,” Darius said, cocking an eyebrow, crossing his arms. “Why am I teaching you, if you know better?”
“When you were in my position, what stage were you at?” Cale asked. “Preparing for the entrance exams?”
“Mana Circuitry, second stage,” Darius said immediately.
“So better than your peers?”
Darius scoffed. “What peers? Obviously I was better.”
“Well I’m not,” Cale said, and to his surprise, Darius blinked and stopped. Cale continued. “I’m behind in knowledge and skill and even raw cultivation. I can’t ‘dominate’ anyone and create a loop of self-feeding wins. I need to play a different game.”
“Okay…” Darius said carefully. “You got my attention.”
“I need to first secure a baseline. What did you say I have? Thirty three days to improve or I’m out on the street and I’ll die. How am I going to ‘dominate’ from a position like that? I’m not. I need to first find my feet. I need to survive. There’s plenty time to build my game, and add all these things I need to learn, like to dominate, exert aggression, and do it with the required poise. But I can’t do any of that if I’m dead, can I? So I need a technique that will help me keep alive, thank-you-very-much.”
Darius raised his hands and took a step back, smirking all the while. “If only you’d fight as hard as you talked, you actually wouldn’t need me at all. Alright, kid. I’ll leave you with the technique, and send someone to bring you food. Let’s see if you can survive long enough in this world to prove me wrong.”
“Hey,” Cale called before Darius left. “What’s the name of this technique?”
“Ghost-step,” Darius said. “Get to learning it.”