Six weeks passed quickly.

  Wake early for an hour of chaos cultivation. Grab a quick breakfast at the cafeteria, usually just some of the cheap Jinn casserole soups. Head to the rooftop garden to perform several hours of aura cultivation. Go to the gym and max out the weight on equipment to get a halfway decent workout. Have lunch at the cafeteria, typically the daily special, which was at least real food. Use mental cultivation to draw cosmic energy from the mental band into his soul for a few hours in various locations. Get a few hours of practice with his domain in while jogging around the city streets. Grab a good dinner at the ground floor restaurant. Clean up, do undry, and go to his capsule. Chaos cultivate until ready to sleep.

  Hector kept himself constantly busy. He saw Rodrick and Zelda most days, but they didn’t engage in much idle conversation. Zelda was busy with her plots, though this time she was crafting an identity as an elusive expert ritualist instead of a superhero reality star. If given the chance, she’d rattle off her ideas for ten minutes straight before realizing she needed to be elsewhere and disappearing. Under the guise of vetting candidates, Rodrick was making friends with their fellow dungeon delvers in the building. He seemed to be getting a lot of mileage out of his war stories, especially their part in the ritual that burned a world.

  One of Hector’s major motivations for maintaining the intensity and consistency of his training was the System’s assessment of his progress. Hector loved seeing himself improve at things. He always had. Whether it was in the weight room, on a bank statement, or his department’s productivity metrics, the knowledge that numbers were going up gave him an addictive shot of dopamine.

  He’d had the same sort of feeling when he began cultivating. Recently, the System supercharged all of that by giving him the ability to get objective feedback whenever he wanted.

  Survey Results

  Type: Xian

  Level: 4

  Body: 4

  Mind: 2.9

  Aura: 2.5

  Domain: 2.4

  Energy Reserves: 71%

  He’d improved by point two in his mind, point four in his aura, and point one in his domain. Real, quantifiable progress. Unfortunately, the System couldn’t assess the level of his externality. Hector suspected it was excellent due to how often he used it in his cultivation of chaos. Possibly at the peak of level four. It would be really nice to see that number floating in the air as a recognition of his achievement.

  There was far more progress than what was strictly quantifiable. Daily work with his domain caused Hector to realize just why Volithur was so inefficient with his force cables. They’d been braided wrong, causing them to short-circuit and leak energy. Hector copied the method exactly from his dreams, trusting Volithur to be his faithful mentor. Personal experience, however, proved a superior instructor. Hector estimated that he’d increased the efficiency of his domain by ten times.

  A tenfold improvement was game changing in most applications. Including this one. Hector didn’t know how he’d ever been even marginally effective with such a fwed approach to his kinetic domain. In fact, if Hector had been forced to choose between having the efficiency improvement or advancing instantly to the fifth level, he would much rather have the efficiency.

  But wait, that’s not all! Hector had honed his accuracy and speed as well. He had always been somewhat sloppy with his cables, a fact he bmed on him not having the superior mental senses of Volithur. It turned out the main reason he struggled so much was because he simply didn’t have enough time invested into the skill yet. Though he may have inherited some abilities fully formed, most required him to earn his proficiency.

  That point four improvement to his aura was obvious to Hector from his experience with aura cultivation. When he began doing it once more, he’d exhausted his aura in less than half an hour, proving that it was no longer as fit as when he was level one and two. Six weeks ter, he could handle three hours. He had found interesting ways to ramp up the difficulty as well. He could stretch his aura farther from his body to work it one way. He could speed up the tempo of the pump to work it another way. Or he could increase its hardness to work it a third way. Each method hit slightly different, so he incorporated all of them in turn.

  The levels of cosmic energy he collected with his aura were meager, possibly worse than back on Earth. He didn’t worry about that. Every method of cultivation felt pointless compared to the power of chaos cultivation. When he thought of aura cultivation as exercise for his aura instead of a method of increasing his energy reserves, it became enjoyable. Working out was his thing, after all.

  His mental improvements were good as well. He’d resumed mental cultivation in addition to using the mental strengthening technique in the hopes that providing more types of stimulus would work better. The verdict was still out on that one, but Hector intended to stay the course for a while.

  At times he felt like he was wearing himself out. Requesting a survey from the System gave him an instant hit of determination. If that wasn’t enough to get him through a whole day, Hector would focus on the upcoming dungeon run. He’d learned some things about what he should expect. It was nothing good. The government of Union Central gave generous reimbursement to anyone who went into the dungeon for a reason.

  The dungeon was a meat grinder that killed hundreds of people on an average day. On a bad day, tens of thousands perished. Others told him that the Framework behind the System forced miasma to enter the world at specific pces but had no control over what form monsters manifested in. The world of Union Central was located in an active region of the multiverse, so there was always miasma being pulled into the dungeons.

  Most of the time the miasma arrived at a steady trickle that caused a handful of rifts to form. Occasionally, a miasma surge would happen. There was advance notice of a few hours at most. Soldiers would be stationed along the perimeter while delvers were given generous financial incentives to rush inside for a run. Human meat for the meat grinder.

  Yet it paid so well. Twenty thousand credits for a normal run. Eighty thousand credits for entering during a surge. On top of that, delvers were treated with a degree of respect that dwarfed anything Hector ever saw directed to service members back on Earth. They were regarded as noble heroes and received discounts all over the pce. Pretty much the only thing considered more selfless than doing a dungeon run was signing a contract to join the Reconquest of Aes.

  Hector eventually asked a question that had been bothering him for a while. Why hadn’t Union Central just thrown a few high level individuals in each dungeon to sughter monsters? They knew exactly where the monsters would emerge, after all. There wouldn’t be so many human lives spared.

  The answer proved depressingly rational. Union Central wasn’t a true world and therefore cked the energy levels to nurture its locals higher than level four on average – level five for those with talent. Strong foreigners served as the elites here, but they not only struggled to advance, they slowly depleted their energy levels as they spent faster than they could restore. And truly powerful existences were busy elsewhere. Union Central was just one world. The Coalition Army had bigger concerns, as Hector well knew.

  Every problem ultimately seemed to boil down to economics. As the saying went, there was no such thing as a free lunch. Resources were scarce and their enemies were legion. The only thing Hector knew that outright broke the iron w of economics was his inherited insight. Chaos into cosmic energy. If only the trick could be applied more broadly.

  Insights were not so easily passed on. Nor was Hector in any sort of position to solve the root cause of human problems in the multiverse. His concerns needed to focus on more immediate matters. Like getting ready for a dungeon run.

  During his te morning gym workout, a guy began to follow him around. This happened occasionally. Hector was performing the clean and jerk for sets of twenty with five hundred kilograms. He didn’t actually know what a realistic number was for that exercise as he had never invested much time into the Olympic lifts. He knew it had to be considerably less than the load he was moving. Even crazier, the reason he didn’t do more weight was because it couldn’t fit on the bar.

  Unlike the typical stalkers he got, this one actually approached to have a conversation. The guy looked massive enough that he could have starred in the Conan movies. “You have more muscle than most of your kind, Xian. Have you been taking steroids?”

  Hector snorted a ugh. “I’m a dreamer who worked out for years before becoming a Xian.”

  “Really?” This seemed to intrigue the man. “I wonder why no one has tried physically boosting unempowered soldiers and then turning them into Xian. Strength is a product of muscle mass as much as the inherent nature of the fibers, after all. A bulked cultivator would be an absolute beast.”

  “I don’t think people are all that eager to make more Xian.”

  “Those bigots can screw right off. We’re fighting for the fate of humans everywhere.” The man held his hand out. “I’m Conrad. Veteran cyborg special operator.”

  Hector accepted the handshake and gave his own name. “So, Conrad… does cyborg mean that you have robot body parts?”

  Conrad issued a deep belly ugh. “Cyborg is a broad cssification. I’m not mechanized, if that crifies the issue at all. Basically, my constitution is improved in ways that are less invasive. My bones are threaded with carbon nanotube webbing to make them harder to break. I have a bio-engineered organ that manufacture stem cells. Full mitochondrial repcement with optimized organelles. There are genetic modifications to bring me to the very peak of an ideal human physique. Of course I’ve got a top grade neural interface. Pretty much your garden variety super soldier.”

  “You have to be from Terra.” Hector’s reasoning was that too much tech had been invested into Conrad for him to be a dreamer or someone born on Union Central.

  “That’s an affirmative. They don’t let just anyone become a cyborg special operator. Anyway, we don’t have many Xian in the building. Certainly none of them are lifting weights like you. What’s your deal? You’re not a hand-to-hand type, are you? Because that strategy seems mighty crazy to use against monsters.”

  “That would be crazy,” he agreed.

  “Sword? Spear? Giant Ax?”

  “No weapons, either. I fight with my domain.”

  Conrad looked pointedly at the overloaded bar on the ground. “Then I’m not sure why you are putting so much effort into this. Surely your time is better spent in ways that are more directly reted to improving aspects of your combat style.”

  “I do plenty of that as well. I don’t suppose there is any chance a Jinn cyborg is swinging a ser sword in the dungeon?”

  “A ser sword? I don’t think you have a solid grasp of ser mechanics, Hector. I carry a psma rifle, a pistol with incendiary rounds, a chainsaw machete, and a few grenades. If you’re wondering why I’m in the gym myself, it’s because the weapons, the armor, and the air filtration unit aren’t light.”

  “That sounds impressive,” Hector admitted.

  “The nation of Mercom certainly invested enough in me.” Conrad fshed a big smile. “I’m going to get right to my point, Hector. I want to team up with you.”