He drank the first bottle of wine in its entirety that night. It was potent in terms of its alcohol content, its cosmic energy levels, and its harsh fvor. He woke at his usual time and began the day with chaos cultivation. Then he drank the second bottle at breakfast.

  “Hey there, Hector! You were serious about rexing for a few days.”

  “Hey, Rod. Hey, Zelda.”

  Rodrick reached for the bottle and Hector pulled it away. “Expensive cultivation resource.”

  “Really? I thought you didn’t need that kind of thing.”

  “Funny story,” Hector began, taking another swig. “I broke through to level five on accident yesterday. Now I’m replenishing my cosmic energy levels.”

  Rodrick grunted. “Do we need to dey our delve because of this?”

  “No. I don’t think so, at least. I’m going to cultivate hard for the next few days. If I don’t think I have enough reserves to be safe, then I pay the penalty to the hotel for you two. I’ll fix it all.”

  Zelda shook her head. “Hector, that penalty applies retroactively. If you dey a week, you don’t pay for the extra seven days. You pay for the hundred and twelve days we’ve been here so far plus the extra seven days. For two people, the penalty would be over twenty-two thousand credits.

  “Oh. I can still afford that if we need to.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Rod and I will go without you.”

  Hector shook his head. “If you go, I go too.”

  Rodrick tilted his head. “Why? You went by yourself.”

  “Because he’s a Xian, Rod. Just because Hector defies most of the stereotypes doesn’t make him different at heart. He thinks he is a better fighter than us.” Zelda gave a clinical assessment, but her words caused Rodrick to frown mightily.

  The rge man expressed his disagreement. “We’re two levels above you. Well, only one now. Don’t you remember fighting the squids with us? We’re veterans of the Coalition Army, Hector. You have a cultivation cheat, sure, but at the moment we’re way stronger.”

  “It’s not like that, Rod. I went by myself because I had the energy reserves and an offer from an experienced delver.”

  “You don’t have the energy this time,” Zelda observed.

  “Well, I want to go anyway.”

  “You didn’t let us go with you five weeks ago,” Rodrick said.

  “I told you it was a bad idea. You agreed.”

  Hector checked the survey results from the System. He was only at five percent energy reserves. Maybe he needed to buy more of the terrible wine before entering the dungeon.

  Rodrick turned to Zelda. “It was our decision.”

  “A rational decision. I don’t know that Hector’s ego will let him do the same. He obviously believes in the inherent superiority of the Xian.”

  The accusation hit too close to the mark for Hector’s comfort. “You realize I’ve been a Xian for less than a year, right? And my dreams came from a man who wasn’t born one either.”

  Zelda forced a sad smile. “I’m aware, Hector. I don’t consider it a personal fw. It’s a matter of minds adapting to the energy of the soul. An Arahant sees reality as a shared experience we participate in. A Jinn sees reality as a set of rules to be learned and exploited. Alfar talk about being part of the web of life. Orisha and Titans view everything through a reductive lens of space and matter. But the Xian? They stand apart from reality and inflict their will upon it.”

  Hector finished the wine to buy himself time for a response. Then he sat in silence, not sure he even had an answer to the accusation. Wasn’t that how cosmic energy worked? He enhanced his body so that outside forces had progressively less influence over it. He strengthened his mind so that no one could touch it. He used an aura to block any harm. He attacked and maniputed the physical location of things through his domain. His externality gave him the ability to move between universes. Every ability he had subordinated reality to his will.

  At a surface level, he could argue that every ability was the same. Confgration made things burn whenever he wished – even things that science said didn’t burn. Yet that was hardly a fair example. True insights not only provided leverage for energy to perform tasks with vastly increased efficiency, they also many times changed what was possible in the first pce. If he excluded any ability based on a true insight, what remained for the Arahant?

  Their version of body enhancement transmuted their physical form to match their personal ideal over time. It didn’t grant them superhuman strength or durability. They simply became Olympic level athletes with supermodel looks and aged at drastically reduced rates. It was more like winning the genetic lottery than gaining legitimate superpowers.

  Their mental abilities were more impressive. Words, writings, and actions all carried magnified influence for any conscious entity that perceived them. It happened passively as a form of effortless charisma, but also could be consciously harnessed to great persuasive effect. He’d seen plenty of that when a group of young adults dominated the culture of an entire unempowered world.

  Their auras carried only weak effect. Basically, they could project illusions. This was usually used by Arahant to increase their personal appearance. It could also make them functionally invisible, as Vivian demonstrated when he first met her. It didn’t really change anything, though. It was closer to a form of mental influence than altering objective reality.

  An Arahant domain was where much of their power came from. Essentially, it was a license for them to perform magic. This could be something as straightforward as making the swing of a sword more deadly or as convoluted as a ritual. They swayed reality to do things. At first gnce, it seemed to be using willpower to make things happen just as a Xian would do. However, as he thought it over, Hector realized the key difference. The Arahant inhabited a consensus reality. They warped reality with their communal agreements. A swordsman could slice through solid concrete because everyone agreed that swords were powerful weapons and that skills could scale to superhuman levels. They didn’t impose magic on the world, they lived in a fundamentally magic world.

  Their realms were rgely personal dream worlds, Hector knew from conversations with his friends. They didn’t do anything to impact reality unless their owner had a true insight. In which case, the rules of resonance and ultimate reality came into py.

  And finally, there was the Arahant externality. It was typically used to summon something into existence. Zelda had huge bat wings that let her fly. Rodrick had a comically over-sized sword. Confgration had a whip made out of fire. They were the closest example of ‘imposing will on the world’ Hector could find. Yet was that really evidence of illusory energy being simir to cosmic energy? An externality aperture was the intersection of a soul with the primordial chaos normal reality floated upon. It could be cimed that an externality offered a shape for chaos to occupy within the world. That was certainly how some Xian had chaos bolts.

  Ultimately, Hector didn’t have a good argument against the philosophy of energies being espoused by Zelda. They didn’t force reality to their wills by different means than him. They operated within the framework of their consensual reality. They’d simply agreed that more things could happen than what a more scientifically minded person would allow. A proper Xian was a power who stood beyond the ws of nature.

  Was that what he was? A proper Xian? A cultivator who would dictate his terms to reality? Was that even what he wanted to be?

  As Hector’s friends left to go about their day, he went to the rooftop for chaos cultivation. With his mind only partly occupied, his thoughts explored the shape of his future. What did he want to be? Certainly if the choice was between a weak nobody and an emblem of power, he had to choose power. That was the only way to have any agency in this crazy multiverse.

  He didn’t have to be a savage dictator. Just because he forced his will on reality didn’t mean he had to do the same with other people. It wasn’t that simple, he knew. What Zelda said of Xian referred to the influence of their methods on their overall behavior.

  How, then, could he be a tyrant in retion to reality without letting that experience taint his personality and interactions with others? The answer certainly was not to be a benevolent dictator. Dictators were inimical to the freedoms of others. Being nice to their supporters may improve the appearance of the leash, but it did not remove it.

  Hector shook his head violently to dislodge the existential crisis. He didn’t have time to worry at the moment. The point at which he could dictate terms to anyone was far off in his future. Right now he needed to worry about surviving dungeon runs, helping his friends, and not letting his bank account get too low. The solution to each of those problems was simple: cultivate as fast as possible.

  To that end, he furiously cultivated chaos for as long as he could continue. Then he switched to aura cultivation. Then mental cultivation. Then start over. Three complete cycles through that routine took him to nightfall. He couldn’t feel any appreciable difference in his energy reserves, so he checked with the System. It indicated seven percent. Ten hours of effort barely did anything.

  The next day he woke early and began by checking his level. Six percent. Without using a single drop of energy, his reserves had decreased. The rate wasn’t enough for him to feel, so without the System showing him numbers it would have gone unnoticed. His soul was drawing from his reserves to saturate. While that was necessary for his long term goal of advancing to level six, the phantom drain would make it that much harder to be ready in just a few days.

  He took breakfast in the cafeteria, ordering several cups of the expensive hot tea that used leaves from Tian. With the slight tingle of cosmic energy migrating from his body into his soul, Hector cultivated using his aura and mind until the bustling cafeteria no longer felt productive. Then it was off to the subway leading to the dungeon to test a theory.

  While riding in, Hector engaged in fervent chaos cultivation. As the doors opened onto the packed station, he found a spot out of the way and began mental cultivation. Jackpot!

  Millions of delvers entered the dungeon every day. They were on edge, knowing they were risking their lives. They came back through the same complex, nursing grief or riding high on exultation. The theory he and Evelyn developed on Earth was that mental conflict somehow generated cosmic energy on the mental band. It was a solid theory, as its predictions brought him to this gold mine. Hector drained the local section down a bit, hopped on the circumnavigating train for a few stops, then got off to drain another section.

  He spent most of the day down there, riding in circles around the dungeon, sucking down cosmic energy from the mental band. When overuse headaches came on, he would switch to aura cultivation. The area was slightly better than the hotel rooftop for that purpose.

  Hector finally left because he felt dirty indirectly benefiting from the plight of the delvers. He grabbed a quick meal and then retired to his capsule to cultivate chaos until exhaustion. Because he’d had a break from using it all day, his externality aperture was rested and ready to transform primordial chaos. He managed to cultivate until midnight. A quick check showed that he was up to ten percent capacity in his reserves.

  The following three days he exploited the mental band of the dungeon complex’s outer area during mornings. His afternoons were spent in chaos cultivation. Then after dinner he used his aura on the rooftop. He worked incessantly at his task.

  The result was he woke with nineteen percent the day of their delve.