Congratulations! You have advanced to Mid-Novice.

  Tyler opened his eyes, adrenaline flooding through him as a swell of newfound energy blossomed in his limbs.

  "Fuck," he gasped. “Holy cow.”

  This was a rush like he'd never felt before. It was similar to that surge of energy that had accompanied his Awakening, but this time he was in a position to actually appreciate it. He'd gotten competent enough in his cultivation to know what his mana was supposed to feel like, and this was a qualitative increase in every possible way.

  His soul felt deeper — stronger — and the sea of mana roiling within it seemed to have grown even larger as he brushed his senses through it.

  There’s no way this is normal, Tyler thought with a rush of glee. Or else the Reamans would’ve surely been practicing all day by the time they reached adulthood. It has to be the Curse.

  Of course, everyone’s mana capacity increased with advancement. He was pretty sure that was the case, given the implicit references he’d seen all over his Analysis of the cave carvings. But it had felt like a gradual thing — one that was nice, but nothing game-changing until you got to a much higher level of cultivation. The Reamans thought that the increase in effectiveness of one’s mana was always the most awe-worthy thing about advancing.

  But for him…

  He had already struggled to reach the bottom of his stores, and now they must have grown again by half.

  Tyler laughed.

  He’d gotten better at perceiving the entirety of his soul in the past month, to the point where he could usually wrap his mind around the sheer mass of his mana pool and measure out just how much of it he’d actually consumed in a training session. It had taken some strenuous training — a sort of stretching of his mind and spiritual perception to widen his metaphorical field of view until it could encompass the entirety of the huge lake sitting in the middle of his soul.

  Now, he supposed he was right back to square one.

  And as brilliant as his increase in capacity was, he supposed the Reamans were right that the increase of power was the most awe-worthy thing about his new state.

  When his threads of mana circulated through his channels, they carried a strength to them that they hadn’t before. The mana itself felt denser, more liquid. It had always held an ephemeral quality to it, especially in contrast to the sheer size of his pool, but now he could see it beginning to condense.

  Tyler engaged the Flowing Sands, and even with the offhand execution the technique rushed through him with a steadiness that would have taken him his full concentration just minutes before. It took less time to get started, and once it thrummed at full force he realized it was a fuller force than he could have ever managed before the advancement. There was more to it in every possible way.

  He slammed his forearm against his favorite boulder, and his newly strengthened muscles let the strike land with an impact that was satisfyingly deep. It might’ve sent tremors running through his arm, but the Flowing Sands increased his durability and control, as well.

  And perhaps best of all, his inflammation felt like it had gotten just a smidge less intense.

  “Man.”

  Advancement. He’d only experienced it once, and he was already addicted.

  He was a Mid-Novice now. Then there was High-Novice, and Peak-Novice. The average Reaman civilian was Peak-Novice. For so long, that had felt like such a far-out goal — he’d subconsciously written it off as unattainable. But now, it felt like it was so close. For the first time, he considered that he might even go beyond that. Journeyman.

  He let out a shuddering breath, the sheer amount of possibilities blooming in his mind. There were so many more things to do.

  And for the first time, he felt like he had a perfect path forward.

  He walked up to the tree, his steps just slightly more powerful than they'd been a minute prior, and patted it with a grateful hand.

  "You know, Magic Banana Tree, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your existence."

  He brushed the back of his hand against the bulb, and it took his entire store of willpower not to immediately start gnawing on it. This was pure power sitting right there — waiting to be consumed — but it was also fairly mild in the grand scheme of things.

  Yes, that petal had helped him over the edge, but it was really the accumulated Resonance from all his cultivation and the weeks and weeks of training capped with the enormous influx from that life-or-death fight against the Duneclaw.

  If he ate this entire thing, he wasn't sure that it'd even do that much for him. No, what was far more exciting was what the bulb represented.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Bananas. A host of magical fruit, each one further increasing his cultivation.

  He wanted to do a mad cackle like some sort of supervillain. If he could bring back a Duneclaw corpse every day...

  Tyler smiled.

  That was probably a lot of bananas.

  — – —

  He'd been exhausted enough after the fight to flop onto his bed and instantly drift off, but despite it probably being closer to sunrise than sunset, the advancement had made him restless with energy.

  His thoughts couldn’t stop racing with plans, and every time his gaze drifted to the softly-glowing banana tree it sent a jolt of excitement running through him. The swarm of duneclaws were still crawling over the vicinity, and he wanted to meet their challenge — to move, to fight, to bring back their corpses and turn them into cultivation fuel.

  But despite the impulse and his newfound power, he knew that going out into the swarm was a terrible idea.

  So to occupy his mind, he examined the cave carvings once more.

  This was a bit of a routine for him these days, when he was too tired to train and too awake to sleep. He could garner quite a bit of insight from the carvings nowadays, and his Analysis prompts had grown into long, sprawling paragraphs of text.

  He realized that it was a bit odd, just how much he was able to understand the Reamans. They were very similar to humans in more ways than just physical, and he didn’t know if that was just sheer coincidence or if something deeper was going on. Maybe they’d all evolved from some common magical ancestor, or maybe it was just the Dimensional Storm mashing worlds with similar species together.

  But whatever it was, he'd grown to appreciate the intricacies of Reaman culture through these techniques. They were a strong warrior people, but also scavengers, and their techniques reflected the dichotomy of that relationship. They could never rely on their strength alone, but strength was also necessary to execute their martial arts — both the ones based around fighting off much larger and much smaller opponents. A Reaman Warrior was hard and soft at the same time, immovable yet endlessly flexible.

  There was a great beauty to it, which only made him more peeved that he couldn't execute the majority of their techniques.

  Tyler had learned to make do with that he had — and he couldn't wait to test just how long he could maintain the Flowing Sands, given the level of control he’d been granted.

  Now that he'd advanced, though, he had an inkling that maybe he could try tackling another.

  The techniques weren't quite arranged in terms of power, but from what he gathered, a level of power was necessary in order to use many of the techniques that were higher up on the pyramid. At Low-Novice, the only one he’d been able to pull off was the Flowing Sands.

  Now, he was ready to experiment again.

  The Dragon’s Bones

  The Dragon’s Bones is a core body fortification technique of the Art of the Sandstorm. When activated, it channels the practitioner's mana to momentarily suffuse the body, imbuing it with the unyielding toughness of a dragon’s bones. This technique shines in short defensive bursts, allowing the user to endure powerful strikes or protect vital areas in moments of critical danger…

  If there was anything that screamed Resilience, it was this. It felt perfect for him, from the circulation pattern to its versatility between Aspects. Bone practitioners obviously had the advantage with this one, but it looked like those with the Aspect of Sand could also use it, and some random paragraph in his Analysis had mentioned that this technique had actually been stolen and co-opted from the Reamans by another race that used different Aspects.

  Most importantly, though, it didn’t have any external component. His Curse wouldn’t hurt him with this one.

  He'd made many clumsy attempts at it in the past, but he'd always foregone more extensive practice in favor of honing his mastery of the Flowing Sands, which was much more immediately helpful for his situation.

  But now he'd advanced, and he’d grown comfortable enough with the Flowing Sands to use it in battle. He was ready to move up the pyramid.

  It was meant to be paired with the body-strengthening exercises at the bottom of the other pyramid. And so, once again marveling at how all his injuries from the battle had been healed by the advancement, he set himself in front of his favorite pounding rock and began to work at it.

  His bones were hard — strong in a way he could have never imagined before coming to the island. Months of doing these exercises had granted them a level of durability and density that had only been increased further by the new rush of natural Resilience flowing through his veins. Even without any techniques helping him, he thought that his body these days could stand up to those of professional athletes in the old world.

  But now he delved deeper into his soul, feeling the way that the spiritual meshed with the physical in each inch of his being. His mana channels spread out infinitely, confined yet endless. And as he pushed his mana through them, he didn't do it in the wide, rhythmic circle that the Flowing Sands required. Instead, like holding a breath, he pushed all of it deeper and forced it to settle deeper — into the smaller branching channels that touched more upon his skin, bone, and sinew.

  Like it had in the hundreds of times he'd tried this before, his soul gave out at the unnatural motion, his mana flowing back into his core after an instant. But this time, he felt with a subtle jolt that something had almost happened. For just a split second, he'd been on the cusp of imbuing the Aspect of Resilience into himself in a way that he’d never done before.

  Tyler nodded, pondering the attempt.

  There was definitely progress being made here. It really was a perfect fit.

  The movement was strenuous — incredibly difficult for his soul to hold — and yet the Resilience somehow clung to the position at the same time. It felt natural for his mana to do this, to imbue something very close to the property from which it had been named. Perhaps he'd never been strong enough to do it in the past, but now…

  He slammed his shin into the boulder again, flooding his mana through into the limb at the last second. The impact thudded through his body, but it didn't hurt nearly as much as it should have.

  Tyler grinned. There it was — his first clumsy, inefficient, horrible execution of the technique.

  He couldn’t wait to do it again.

  It had taken him more than a month to consistently use the Flowing Sands at the level of a Reaman child, and this technique was far more difficult to learn. There were many less intermediate steps between complete failure and full mastery, and the level of control needed dwarfed anything he’d ever accomplished before.

  It might have been that this first success was pure luck. The Dragon’s Bones was practiced by those preparing to be Reaman Warriors, and it was said that it required months — if not years — of dedicated study to grasp. He imagined a wise Reaman Shaman would tell him to practice patience, and that a first success was nothing but a mirage of the potential one could achieve after years of repetition.

  But somehow, he felt like this wouldn’t take nearly that long.