He’d been on the edge of his goal for weeks when it finally happened. Under Hector’s will, miasma on the ntal band transford into cosmic energy, which he began pulling into his soul only to expel it back through his mind – giving the energy another opportunity to absorb on its way through. It wasn’t an official cultivation technique, but it worked better than so he’d co across. Maybe he just had to give it a cute na and teach a few people to make it legitimate.
The change ca about abruptly, between one cycle and the next. He felt utterly full and the friction of energy on his aperture dropped to zero. His mind was now at the peak of level seven. For it to advance any further he would need to advance his soul.
It was a welco achievent, easing so of his anxiety over how his aura was progressing. Then, rather than dive back into body enhancent, he decided to work on his domain. Fortunately, there was synergy with a mission that had co up. Miracle Squad went out by itself to handle increased miasma levels in a nearby valley.
Isabel glanced towards him. “What are you scowling about now?”
“Nothing. I’m just not thrilled that my aura is still so far behind the rest of my apertures.”
“You’re thinking about the Sandwich Technique.” She shuddered at the thought. “Better to just take your ti, Hector. There’s no rush to advance.”
“My aura needs to get stronger before I can advance.”
Isabel didn’t disagree, but she did change the subject. “I have another joke to exchange.”
Hector found himself smiling. These competitions never really went anywhere, but it was sothing he looked forward to. “Go ahead. I have one ready.”
“Mine is funny,” Isabel assured him.
“Let’s hear it.”
“A man goes to a physician, who says he must stop masturbating.” Isabel was giggling already, and hard enough that Hector had trouble hearing the rest of it. That wasn’t a problem because Fred told this joke often. “The man asks 'why' and physician says ‘so that he can start the examination!’”
Hector shook his finger. “That’s cheating and you know it.”
“It’s not!”
“That is Fred’s joke.”
Isabel stuck her tongue out. “You laughed, so I win.”
“I haven’t even gone yet!”
“We both know you are not funny, Hector.”
He ignored the accusation to trot out one his father had always been partial to. He wouldn’t even feel guilty since Isabel was blatantly ripping off jokes now. “So there’s this woman who was out on a walk when she crossed the path of a frog sitting on a fence post. The frog calls out to her. He says ‘hey there, beautiful lady, I am a prince turned into a frog by a horrible curse – if you kiss and change back, I will marry you and make you a princess!’”
Isabel tilted her head to the side. “Is this sothing that actually happens? Arahant magic?”
“No, it’s a joke, Isabel.”
“A man is a frog?”
“Yeah. There are stories on the world I’m from about kissing frogs to turn them back into princes. Then the woman becos a princess and lives happily ever after.”
“They really tell such stories on your world?” A somber shake of the head. “Truly strange.”
“Can I finish the joke now?”
“If you must.”
Hector drew himself up, ignoring the interruption. “The woman looks at the cursed prince for a couple of seconds, obviously deep in thought. Then she shakes her head, picks him up, and says ‘no thanks, I would rather have a talking frog.’”
The silence that followed was deafening.
“I really did win,” Isabel finally said, putting him out of his misery.
Fred joined their conversation then. “Can I get in on this joke competition?”
“No,” Hector and Isabel both said.
“I’m going anyway,” Fred said. “What does a robot do after sex?”
“I thought the R word was considered super offensive among Jinn?”
“You can’t use it, but I can. So… what does a robot do after sex? He nuts and bolts!”
Hector’s laughter trailed off as he caught sight of a mountain rising above the miasma in the distance. “Not to kill the vibe, Fred, but I’m pretty sure that’s where Wendy the antimatter containnt unit killed the giant spider.”
Rover Fred confird his suspicions. “This is indeed the area the two of us almost died.”
Hector had a brief flash back to the events of that day. Their team delivered an antimatter strike to kill a monster capable of destroying Stronghold Gamma. Only Hector and Fred returned from that mission. In the aftermath, Fred’s damage had been so pervasive that his cognition unit had been installed in a brand new rover instead of repairing his old body.
During that sa trip, Hector conducted his first experint using resonance against miasma. At the ti, absorbing a sliver of miasma into his soul seed like the dumbest risk of his entire life. Yet that impulsive action was a key point on the path to achieving his second insight. Feeling the spite behind miasma led him to a better understanding of how actions reflected intents.
The shadow of Volithur’s inescapable need for vengeance beca clearer when he saw the sa emotion from outside. His core motivation, as revealed to him by Mila the Strigoi, was improving things. For much of his life, that motivation was pointed at the functioning of a warehouse, his bank account, and his own physique. Given a window into the hateful dysfunction that destroyed Volithur and was hell-bent on taking out the entire multiverse… Hector had beco obsessed with solving the problem.
Hector often struggled to understand his behavior from back then. It was like rembering drunken escapades. Only instead of alcohol influencing him it had been a nascent resonance with ultimate reality.
“I’m not going into that,” Fred announced. “Non-Xian should stand guard out here.”
Hector and Isabel hopped down from Fred and were joined by Esther, who broke away from flirting with the two Titan brothers Ajax and Nestor. The final mber of their team, the Sage of Restoration, remained at the rear of Fred’s bed, feet hanging over the edge as she played on a small ga console. No one was sure exactly what ga she found so fascinating, but Esther swore it was a farming simulator. The Sage had originally been attached to Miracle Squad to help them heal mbers of the patrols on duty, but at so point they decided Hector was too critical to be far from a healer.
Also, she wasn’t needed often back on the Stronghold. Between Miracle Squad and their sister team Mitigation Squad, miasma exposure had beco uncommon. Dying from that affliction was thankfully even rarer.
Hector led Isabel and Esther towards the sudden drop in elevation that contained a sea of misty miasma. The easy motions of his domain hitched as it encountered a density beyond the ambient levels. A deliberate application of willpower got things moving again at the appropriate tempo. His footprint didn’t even shrink as they subrged themselves in the fell poison, just grew brighter with the light created as a byproduct increasing in intensity.
Despite so effort, Hector never managed to reduce the glowing side effect. It represented an inefficiency in his conversion process, but not one he could overco. The sa thing happened with chaos, so it didn’t really have anything to do with miasma specifically. He couldn’t justify devoting any more ti to what wasn’t an actual issue. That minor inefficiency didn’t hold him back when he was surrounded by so much fuel ready to be consud. The only reason he made any effort towards getting rid of the glow was because he got tired of squinting through the harsh light.
“How deep are we going?” Esther’s voice held a hint of wariness. Though unwilling to pass up a banquet of cosmic energy, she wasn’t quite comfortable imrsing their bubble of safety into hell.
“Deep,” Hector responded. “I need to challenge my domain and command is certain there is a minor rift down there that we can close.”
Esther grumbled her disapproval of the risks they took, which caused Isabel to shoot him an amused smile. It was as if the Azure Spear Maiden was saying ‘look at the soft woman struggling to adapt to the lifestyle of a true warrior’. At least that’s how he interpreted the look. That might just be so of his own opinions coloring his assumptions. He’d long since co to the conclusion that the heart needed to be tempered if one wished to avoid becoming a hollow spear.
So many of his peers were cowards. Matthias and the other heirs of Volithur in the Miasma Mitigation Project were the most obvious examples. None of them possessed even a trace of the hard edge a warrior needed. They were soft and skittish and indecisive creatures. Given the depth of caution invested into their hearts, Hector didn’t think it was possible to rehabilitate any of them into warriors. No matter what levels they reached, they could never be anything other than hollow spears.
Isabel and Esther summoned their externalities. It was ti for them to plumb the depths. The three of them jumped onto Esther’s sword, then held onto Isabel’s spear like it was a safety rail. The girls had gotten pretty good at this maneuver. It could almost be called smooth.
They departed the rocky path to drop down, their glowing sphere brightening.
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