The cssroom was not rge. It also had a lot of desks in it. Perhaps if Volithur had been more graceful or less nervous those facts would not have been quite so relevant. But he was not particurly graceful and his sweaty palms attested to how nervous he was.
He stepped on Khana’s toes a lot. And ran into furniture with some degree of regurly.
His partner reacted to his shows of incompetence with mild amusement and heaped praise on him when he did something even halfway right. The more nervous he became, the calmer Khana grew. It worked the same in reverse: the calmer Khana grew, the more nervous Volithur felt.
Only so many worries could fit in his head at one time, so he had to rotate through the many excellent options for concern. Where it was socially appropriate for him to pce his hands. The location of the nearest obstacle he was about to trip over. Proper pces for his gaze to linger. Was he breathing too loud? Had she noticed his unfortunate anatomical issue? Which of the several dances he had been taught were they currently practicing?
They didn’t even get to Khana’s math lesson. She apparently preferred to dance during her time – or maybe she found delight in tormenting him.
When Volithur fled back to the barracks, he drank down the cosmic water from the Head Scribe and began to work on his arteries. As he turned to pce the vial in the gssware receptacle, he saw the Marshal standing there, reaching out to take the vial from his hands.
After scrutinizing it for a moment, the Marshal squinted at him. “Where are you getting cosmic water?”
Volithur’s newly enhanced heart skipped a beat. “Uh, the Head Scribe provided it to me, Master Marshal.”
“How often does the Head Scribe do you this kind of favor?”
“Every day,” Volithur admitted.
The Marshal nodded. “This expins a lot about your sudden improvement. How are you extorting resources from him?”
“Master Rowan wants to win another trophy from the academic competition. The Head Scribe needs me to win and feels he would lose face if I represented the household without being his student.”
“Foolish pride, then,” the Marshal said. “I would not have extended the opportunities to you I have if I had known of this.”
Volithur inclined his head to hide his shame. If he had just drank down the vial in the cssroom like usual, he would still be in the good graces of the Marshal. Somehow, he had lost sight of the fact that the deal with the Head Scribe should be kept secret.
“Your heart appears to be well done. I will follow through with the promise I made to you,” the Marshal said. “Tomorrow you move up to the intermediate group for combat training.”
As Volithur retired to his hammock, working on pushing energy into his arteries, he wondered if being promoted to the intermediate group was a punishment for deceiving the Marshal or a reward for extorting the Head Scribe. At least he would still be receiving a weekly elixir. The blood vessels were proving rather easy to enhance, so he hoped to be able to complete that stage of body enhancement in a week or two.
After that came the respiratory system. Volithur’s reading had led him to expect a massive increase in endurance once he had an enhanced heart and lungs. The more advanced soldiers never seemed to be out of breath no matter how hard they exercised. As he drifted off to sleep, he looked forward to seeing the effect of his improved heart the next day.
Whether he had gained much endurance or not did not seem to matter much, he discovered. The intermediate students moved fast, hit hard, and had zero familiarity with the concept of mercy. Volithur found himself knocked to the ground, thrown to the ground, and even choked unconscious so quickly he didn’t have a chance to demonstrate any cardiovascur improvements.
He felt much like he had when he first joined the beginner css: weak and incompetent.
Weaponless sparring was only the warm-up for the intermediate css. After a few rounds, they transitioned into spear training. Instructor Lisbet separated him from the other students and had him run through very basic solo drills while the rest of the css practiced more eborate moves in pairs.
When css ended, bruises peppered his limbs, torso, and face. Volithur wished he were still among the beginners, but resolved himself to growing strong enough to fit in with his new peers. He pnned to finish his circutory system fast. The respiratory system, while extremely important, was said to be one of the easier systems to saturate with cosmic energy. Just a wind pipe and lungs.
After that came the digestive system, which took a while. Then, finally, he would be ready to enhance his muscles. That was when cultivators truly gained inhuman might.
The knowledge from cultivation manuals swirled about his head, offering the strong opinions of their various authors for his future benefit. Though there were a lot of minor disagreements, all the books in the library agreed in broad terms. There were plenty of written warnings about other schools of thought, so Volithur knew that the ‘cold forged method’ was not the only popur style of body cultivation. It was the one the Shaocheth family endorsed, though, which meant it was the only one he would ever be given knowledge of.
That day ended with an embarrassing dance lesson, though Khana had the good sense to focus on the simpler dances. There was less tripping and occasionally he even earned a word of praise from his enthusiastic instructor.
It was fair to say that Volithur did not care for the changes that had been made to his life. Morning sparring frustrated and physically pained him. Evening dance lessons frightened and befuddled him in odd ways he spent a lot of time not thinking about.
The only thing he enjoyed was body enhancement. Finishing his circutory system was a major accomplishment. It would drastically increase his ability to survive trauma since he could now use just a touch of cosmic energy to seal off blood vessels at will. The soldiers told tales of great warriors losing an arm and then continuing to fight throughout the rest of the day. Now that could be Volithur. Not that he wanted any part of Xian war.
In addition to enhancing his lungs, Volithur continued to work on the sensory exercises ‘mimic monkey’ and ‘twin touch’. They didn’t cost much cosmic energy to train, even if they weren’t very useful to his development. No one was using secret techniques that he could steal and observing primordial chaos had no benefits that he could determine.
Indeed, he wasn’t sure why he bothered to py the ‘twin touch’ game at all. The fear chaos inspired in him faded away over time. Instead, the activity felt strangely hypnotic like watching the random fluctuations of a campfire te at night. It entertained some primitive part of his mind searching for patterns in a pce patterns did not exist. He considered it a waste of time, but perhaps his roommate Jay was right about him needing to rex every once in a while.
When the vial of tea powder elixir arrived at the end of the week, Volithur completed the entirety of his left lung. The changes that wrought to his anatomy perplexed him. His enhanced lung’s greater esticity strained his diaphragm and the muscles that lifted his rib cage, making it hard to take deep breaths. Yet he definitely felt that he needed less air than before. His breathing had been thoroughly enhanced.
Not wanting his organs to be asymmetrical in their saturation level, he got a solid start on the right lung that day, then completed it at the end of the next week and made a little progress on his wind pipe. In that time, he continued to be abused in sparring and flummoxed in dancing. Though… he was getting better. Volithur wouldn’t say he had moves but he didn’t think he would any longer be bad enough for someone to remark upon his incompetence.
