“To use such a potent art like that… it seems like a waste, doesn’t it?” Tobias asked with a shake of his head.

  “Yes! That’s the entire point of the novel!” Samantha agreed passionately. “His obsession with his brother’s wife caused him to squander his wealth and talent. Trying to force his unrequited affections on her by using a memory-altering art only made everyone miserable. Even killing his brother and spiriting the wife away to a remote part of the world–where no one knew either of them–wasn’t enough to truly convince her that he was the one she’d fallen in love with. Her heart remembered even if those memories were changed.”

  “If I were her, I would’ve spit [Toxic Bile] in his food every day,” Silas huffed. “I’m glad she’d hidden away that locket with her wedding portrait. She might not have realized otherwise. I don’t get why she was sad after getting vengeance, though. Shouldn’t she be glad?”

  Samantha conveyed Silas’s thoughts to Tobias, and Tobias rubbed at his chin. “I believe it was because the art had scarred her so badly. Even if she had proof in her hands that her current ‘husband’ was an imposter, that didn’t erase the years of fake memories she’d been given. Speaking from experience, even knowing my memories are false doesn’t completely remove the emotions from them when I recall them.”

  “I’m so sorry Tobias!” Samantha apologized. “I didn’t even think about that perspective when I suggested this book.”

  He gave her a kind smile in response. “It’s fine. It was actually a good chance for some self-reflection! I empathize with her situation, and I liked how realistically the author portrayed her emotions upon killing the fake husband. I think this was my favorite so far.”

  “Really?” Silas questioned. “I liked the story about the shape-changer better. It had more action and less mystery!”

  Samantha laughed and passed along his words to Tobias, who also chuckled.

  As the three of them continued to discuss the book and the conversation wound down, her mood noticeably fell. These short reprieves were barely keeping her afloat, and felt like they were getting shorter all the time. Two years had come and gone since she’d advanced to Peak Bronze. Two agonizingly lonely years. All in all, this marked nearly 3 years straight in the cultivation chamber and 9 years in this accursed rift. She only knew of time’s passage at this point by looking at her profile, which now showed her at 26 years of age.

  At first, the isolation wasn’t too grating. She interacted with Silas and Tobias at every opportunity, which helped to keep the feelings of claustrophobia at bay. The trouble was, there was only so much the three of them could talk about. Especially when considering that Tobias didn’t have much in the terms of actual ‘life experience’ he could share as a construct. Yes training took up much of her time and attention, but not nearly enough to make the situation wholly bearable. After the first full year she couldn’t take the continuous training anymore, and she knew she wasn’t the only one suffering.

  Silas had been asking for more and more time in spatial storage to pass the days even though he disliked having to hold his breath. It was even more solitary without his companionship in the chamber, but she didn’t begrudge him the time away. Unlike for her and Tobias, there wasn’t much in the way of ‘spiritual beast martial arts’ that Silas could study and practice, which added an element of monotony into training for him. Spars were a decent means to increase his attributes or gain combat experience, but they weren’t terribly interesting to participate in for hours each day, and days on end.

  Tobias never overtly expressed discontent with the training regiment, but he did seem extremely enthusiastic when she suggested reading and discussing books together. Tobias was also happy to read the books aloud for the group so everyone was at the same spot in the plot. Silas struggled in the beginning to completely follow along with the spoken words, but over time had improved his listening comprehension.

  After so many years of scenarios there were numerous mundane novels under the ‘resource buyback’ section of the rift shop to choose from. Each book only cost a couple of points, which, in her opinion, was a bargain. These creature comforts were practically the only thing keeping them all sane, after all. She used to admire those warriors of legend that supposedly spent centuries doing nothing but training, but now she pitied them. Such wholehearted devotion to a single task seemed impossible, let alone remotely enjoyable.

  Letting out a sigh, she purchased the next book that the three of them agreed to read and piled it atop the growing stack next to the main jade pillar. She looked up into the ‘starry sky’ and silently prayed to whatever deity might be watching for the strength to endure.

  Just until Low Silver. Please, I have to make it to Silver!

  Samantha kept the mental notifications in her focus for several long moments, fighting back the mild bitterness she feared Silas would feel through their binding thread. She was of course glad that Silas had advanced and that she’d received benefits accordingly, but this wasn’t the message she’d been desperately wanting for so, so long. Another year had passed with excruciating slowness, and yet she was still barely halfway to Low Silver.

  Perhaps she’d miscalculated how long it’d take to reach Low Silver because this was a tier increase instead of a normal rank advancement. It could also be that Low Silver was just that much harder to achieve than Low Bronze, so her past experience wasn’t a good comparison. Maybe it was a combination of those things, and the fact that Low Silver was only two ranks away from the 2nd floor’s cultivation rank limit. Or, perhaps, it was none of that at all. Regardless of the reason, the fact remained that she’d badly underestimated just how long it would take to compress a second qi droplet.

  She knew that, rationally, her speed of advancement since becoming a cultivator was unusually quick. This was true even now… though the 10 years she’d already spent in this rift felt like an eternity. She had to try and keep things in perspective, else she might fall completely into despair.

  If she was on the first floor, reaching Peak Bronze might have taken her 80 years. Most cultivators never reached that level at all and would stop progressing at Mid or High Bronze. Low Silver was incredibly rare, and a dream that few achieved even when harshly restricting how many meridians they opened. The fact that she knew she could reach Low Silver should have made her ecstatic, let alone progressing through the entirety of Bronze Tier in a handful of years like she had.

  So what if this takes another three years? That’s nothing! Silvers live to be 500. This is a speck of time in the grand scheme of things. Yeah… this is fine. I’ll be fine.

  Samantha’s mood slightly improved at the internal pep-talk–one of many she’d given herself as of late. Then, she braced herself to look at her profile. This once-joyful activity had become a source of dread for her because it reminded her of how much time she’d spent here. However, the emergence of a new bond ability refreshed her sense of excitement and curiosity–albeit only slightly. She pulled up her profile in as much detail as she could and reviewed its entirety for the first time in years.

  One of the first things that stood out to her–apart from her age, which she pointedly avoided looking at–was that the efficiency for [Desert Breeze] had improved from high to exceptional. She had continued tinkering with the art and believed that it was getting a little easier to use already, but it was nice to have her efforts be officially recognized by the system.

  She was glad to see how everyone’s attributes had been increasing as well, especially in Tobias’s case. His rank had crept up again to keep pace with her own advancement, which had kept him ahead of her in raw values for everything except Agility. His impressive stats made him a force to be reckoned with, and she suspected that anyone who underestimated him based on his rank alone would find themselves unpleasantly surprised.

  Seeking out the changes caused by Silas’s rank up, she took note of how Silas’s increased qi pool and regeneration had affected their shared resources. Though his pool size had only increased by 10 and his regeneration by 2, the multiplicative effects of her various arts, bond abilities, and qi saturated body effectively gave both of them +24 to their shared qi pool and up to +9.6 to their shared regeneration (with Sage’s Rumination active). As for [Dynamic Movement], it appeared to be a passive art that would remove some of the resistance she encountered when moving at speed. She supposed that [Tailwind] did something similar for Silas, though she’d need to take him out of storage to ask him about it and confirm. If she guessed correctly, their little game of her using [Desert Breeze] to affect his flight might come to an end. They’d have to make up a new way to pass some of the time.

  Thinking about when she’d eventually need to finalize her [Mongrel’s Regurgitation] choices, she wondered if this would be a more synergistic addition rather than [Antler Shot]. The most interesting aspects of the ability were that it specified both gasses and liquids and was multi-rank, meaning she’d potentially be a more effective fighter even in the water. She wouldn’t know for certain until she purchased [Dynamic Movement] and experimented with it. If it didn’t end up working as she expected and she didn’t like it, [Mongrel’s Feast] allowed her to recoup the cost and then some. However, she still wanted to wait for all of that until after she reached the next tier. She wouldn’t be surprised if Silas advanced once more and gave her another ability by then.

  Samantha sighed and let her focus on the profile fade, dismissing it from her mind. She’d take a 20 minute break while she waited for her newly-expanded qi pool to refill and then resume her training. It was about time to pull Silas out of storage anyway, and this was a good chance to ask him more about [Tailwind].

  Another year passed… then another… and another.

  The hefty lump sum of points she’d started with when buying her first day of cultivation had dwindled from 1,582,175 down to 385,651. Most of the expenses went towards the chamber itself, but a couple thousand points had been happily spent on entertainment and enrichment for the three of them. The books alone stopped being enough to keep her sane, so she’d needed to rely on board games and learning random hobbies like calligraphy to stay busy.

  Low Silver had been tantalizingly close for months now, which had made her particularly anxious. She despised this suffocating cultivation chamber she’d had to call home for over a decade, but she also didn’t know if she was ready to face the Ancient Cliff Drake yet. She questioned if her suffering would be enough to see her to victory, or if she would emerge from the rift only to be killed anyway. To even acknowledge the possibility that her solitude would be in vain was viscerally painful, but the doubts never stopped floating through her mind.

  Realizing her attention had slipped, she narrowly raised her arm in time to deflect a slash from Tobias with her buckler. Though she wasn’t cut, his superior Strength forced her forearm backwards to collide with the side of her face. Her entire arm seemed to reverberate upon receiving the blow, and she let out a grunt of pain as she was pushed two steps to the right. She used the sideways momentum to duck a follow-up attack, then spun into a retaliatory slash to prevent him from dominating the flow of battle. As he jumped backwards to avoid the spearhead, she used the shaft’s enchantment to extend its striking range just enough to cut across the chin. The large gash in his face closed up almost as quickly as she cut him, making it seem like she’d missed hitting him entirely. Still, he’d had to use up some of his precious qi reserves to repair the damage, so she counted it as a success.

  “Good recovery!” he acknowledged with a grin.

  Samantha didn’t verbally respond, but she felt the right corner of her mouth quirk up at the praise.

  If I win this spar, I’ll finally have a new record! 4 wins every 10 bouts. He’s been using arts less, so he must be low on reserves. Just a bit longer and I’ll outlast him…

  The arrival of a new notification caused her heart to skip a beat, and she anxiously pulled it to the forefront of her mind to see if she’d finally advanced.

  “URMPH!”

  The wind was knocked out of her as Tobias landed a front kick into her midsection and she was flung into the back wall. She collapsed to the floor wheezing and clutched at her broken ribs. In the next breath she felt the cold metal of Tobias’s glaive against her neck, and she tapped the ground to acknowledge her loss.

  Tobias let out a relieved breath. “Phew! You nearly had me. I was almost out of–” Tobias’s words abruptly cut off as his qi reserves bottomed out and his form dispersed.

  She slammed her fist against the ground in frustration and snarled a curse.

  Can't I have just one thing go right? One?!

  Angrily snapping her head up towards Silas, she saw that he was purposefully staring in another direction and making himself small in a bid to avoid her ire. Immediately, the fiery rage that consumed her was replaced by shame. It wasn’t his fault that he’d advanced twice before she’d reached Low Silver, nor was it his fault that she had been so desperate for her tier increase that she prioritized checking the new notification over fighting. She thought that she’d been doing a decent job over the years of keeping her feelings of bitterness to herself, but it seemed that Silas had been more aware than he let on.

  “I’m… I’m so sorry, Silas. It’s just–I’ve been…”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” Silas’s words were heavy with his own feelings of shame and guilt. “If you weren’t bonded to me… If the binding thread wasn’t expanded… you would’ve advanced by now. I’ve been taking too much away from you, and I’ve been leaving you by yourself a lot when in storage, so…”

  Samantha pushed herself up and went over to him. She scooped him up into an embrace and buried her face into the soft fur of his back. “Don’t ever think this is your fault. If we weren’t bonded I would be dead already a thousand times over. Even the expansion of our binding thread saved my life! Without it, Harold’s elixir would’ve destroyed me and my cultivation base. If I could go into storage and pass the time, I know I’d take the chance, too. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  He nuzzled closer to her and she could feel his mood shift. The negative emotions didn’t vanish completely, but a more positive one became the most dominant in the swirling mix: pride. She set him down gently and stroked his head.

  “Congratulations on your advancement, Silas.”

  Samantha was sure her heart was going to beat out of her chest.

  This was it. Today was the day–she was sure of it this time.

  She strained against the fog of power flowing through her dantian as she squeezed it tighter and tighter.

  “OBEY… ME…!” she hissed between heaving breaths.

  Her entire body was soaked with sweat and she’d lost count of how many hours she’d been fully engaged with trying to advance, but none of that mattered. Silver was within reach, and she would die before she let it slip through her fingers. She ached at a spiritual level as her cultivation base was pushed to the limit pressurizing her dantian. The fog within her center resisted her efforts to compress it at every turn, but the stubborn energy slowly began to coalesce into larger particles as she strained against it with all of her being.

  “You…”

  More particles began joining together, each union sending a small shock through the dense cloud.

  “...will…”

  Reaching some sort of critical mass, the largest beads acted like magnets and started pulling the smaller ones towards them.

  “...CONDENSE!”

  The final beads snapped together and a wave of purifying power rushed through her. She gasped in a mix of pain and relief as the intense pressure in her dantian was instantly released and impurities in her body were burnt away.

  Samantha selected ‘N’, and the notification immediately updated.

  She trembled as her body was reforged and rebuilt. Her muscles became stronger and more efficient, her ligaments and tendons became more durable, and her bones hardened and grew denser. Even her senses and her mind were affected. From one moment to the next every sensation became more, and it was only then that she realized that tears were running down her cheeks.

  She was weeping.

  Unable to hold back the emotions any longer, she curled up on the ground and let the sobs freely escape her. She had done it. She’d really, finally, done it.

  A comforting, soft warmth butted up against the exposed nape of her neck. Silas leaned into her with his full weight, sending feelings of love and affection to her through their binding thread.

  “Congratulations, Samantha.”