Before finding the manuscript, Rix had never heard of any kind of power outside of the System. He’d certainly never heard of anyone gaining it from a book of all places. He’d stumbled on it by accident, a mostly burned tome in his parents’ antique shop the day after their deaths. He didn’t know where it had come from or whether his parents realised what they’d been sold, but Rix realised. It was a tiny sliver of power that anyone could take for themselves. Even someone like him.

  It was also dangerous. Despite being a child, he’d known instinctively that it was something forbidden. Power in Cloudpiercer came from the System. Anything outside that was a threat.

  At least, it would have been a threat in its complete form. All that remained after fire ravaged the shop was a few scant pages, and even those were incomplete. Still, they contained enough to give Rix a foundation. They’d guided him through a process of working with some other kind of energy, something called qi. According to those soot-stained words, qi was everywhere all around them. An infinitely abundant source of power.

  Initially, Rix thought the book was fiction. An energy source in the very air he breathed? Ridiculous. But desperate for even the chance to improve himself, he began following the book’s instructions. It had taken him years of experimentation and guesswork. Learning the exercise to drag qi into himself was like learning to breathe again, and that was just the beginning. Forcing it to move through his body, opening the latent meridians and dantian within, that was something he had no analogue for. It had been arduous and painful, but with perseverance, he built himself into someone who could wield qi.

  Unfortunately, from what he could tell, that didn’t make him much more powerful than a mortal. Despite sharing names with a Martial Soul’s spiritual network, he hadn’t received any physical strength or spiritual gifts when he’d finally forged the channels inside himself. His body was basically as strong and durable as before. Furthermore, the manuscript had been so damaged that what remained didn’t even tell him how to use his qi in any meaningful way. Through trial and error, he’d fashioned a kind of blunt force approach of flooding a particular place in his network with qi, which produced some results, but it was no true technique and it exhausted his meagre supply of qi in seconds. As much as having a secret made him feel powerful, the reality was that, by Martial Soul standards, his current abilities amounted to a parlour trick. Even the lowest Whisper could break him like a twig.

  He’d spent many nights dreaming of what the rest of the book may have held. Was it the beginning of another path to true power? Or was this always destined to be inferior to the Martial Path? Based upon the overwhelming dominance of the System, he suspected the latter, but the question was moot because no matter how much he subtly hunted for information, he’d never found another hint about how to expand the tiny foundation he’d created. He’d eventually concluded that if the information existed, it was beyond his reach. To get his revenge, he needed access to the System, which had led him to concoct this plan.

  It was clear there were risks coming here with some version of a spiritual network already active. How much overlap would there be between what he had and what he was about to receive? Would qi and mana play nicely together? These uncertainties had stopped him initially, but when every door was closed to you, sometimes the only choice was to leap through the window.

  Now he was about to find out what sort of landing awaited him on the other side.

  There was a loud crackling sound and a searing heat began to wend its way through his body, stealing his attention. It started at the extremities, the tips of his fingers and toes and the top of his head, and crawled its way through him like a slow-moving fire. He felt his body tense and flail involuntarily against his restraints as some new part of himself was burned into existence. He’d half expected the process to retread the same meridians he’d already created, but instead the array seemed to be etching new channels into his body. He felt some small joy in that, as it meant perhaps his secret would remain hidden, but it was hard to feel relief while also in agony. His other meridians he’d formed over a period of years, methodically pushing outward. It had hurt, but it was a candle compared to the inferno that tore through him now. He realised his mouth was open wide in a silent scream.

  The heat began increasing, pouring into him and converging in his chest just above his stomach. Though the meridians it created were new, like his older ones, they all met at his existing dantian. And now the mana was gathering there. Though he was aware of very little beyond what was happening inside him, he felt something shift in the air around him. A sense of vibration.

  “Is that…?” said Scarface.

  “No. Something’s wrong,” replied the Steward.

  Rix was dimly aware of them moving nearby, but his body was in chaos. There was pressure building at his centre, an endless torrent of energy with no obvious outlet. He felt something inside him bending and warping to accommodate. Instinctively, he pushed out with his qi, but it was like trying to dam a river with a single rock. The force of the incoming mana was overpowering.

  “…already open…”

  “Should we…?”

  “…burn out…”

  The panic in the room washed over him, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Then, moments before he felt like he was about to be ripped open, something inside him burst. There was a rushing sensation, and the pressure blissfully dropped away. He could breathe again.

  Slowly, the world came back into focus. Rix found himself still strapped to the chair, his body soaked in sweat, the two men staring at him in confusion.

  “What in heaven’s blood was that?” asked Scarface.

  The Steward only had eyes for Rix. “You will tell me this instant how you already have a dantian.”

  Rix’s stomach was in knots, and he was still reeling from the mana bath, but he had a line prepared for this. “My parents…they thought if I already had the appropriate network in place, I might be more attractive to the Martial Corps,” Rix said, his voice still trembling from the procedure. “They took me somewhere; I don’t know where. A basement. There was a man with an array like this. It cost them a lot.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  It was a flimsy lie. Rix had never heard of such a procedure. Anything to do with System assignment was policed ruthlessly. But it was the best he could come up with.

  The Steward studied him for what felt like an eternity. “And you didn’t think to tell us?”

  Rix looked down. “I was afraid I’d get in trouble.”

  “Trouble? You nearly got yourself killed. The array tried to compress mana inside you to make something that already existed. By all rights, it should have turned your organs to ash.”

  Both men stared at him. Rix held his breath. He knew Martial Souls could detect one another, sometimes even from great distances. It had something to do with their spirit eye. He’d always assumed his pathetic little power source was invisible to them. He’d certainly never been noticed by any Martial Souls around the city. But perhaps that was just because nobody had looked closely enough.

  “Your dantian and meridians appear to be correctly formed,” said the Steward. “As far as I can tell, the process worked in spite of your foolishness.” He sounded surprised, but it was tinged with relief rather than outrage. It certainly wasn’t the voice of someone who had discovered something heinous.

  Rix let out a sigh of relief. Somehow, he had gone undiscovered.

  But he wasn’t out of danger yet.

  “I’m sorry for my deception, sir,” Rix said, trying his best to look pathetic. While his small build was a hindrance in many regards, when paired with his hollow cheeks and big eyes, it made him more than a little sympathetic.

  The Steward gazed at him for several more seconds, as if weighing his sincerity, before his expression softened a little. “Your parents were stupid to try that. No Martial Corporation would take someone with a spiritual network formed in some backwater basement. But, given the circumstances, I’m willing to overlook this.”

  “Pity,” said Scarface. “We could have thrown a few more heartstones onto that sentence of yours. Let you enjoy Spiritlock’s hospitality a little longer. Give you more time to dive, you know?”

  Rix chose not to engage with the man. Instead, he used the moment to attempt to feel out what had been done to him. His spiritual network felt different, larger, but there was still only the familiar nugget of qi nestled in his dantian. Though he had the pathways, he wouldn’t have access to mana until given his System Seed. Fortunately, at that moment, the Steward moved to his desk, opened a drawer, and withdrew a tiny shard of yellow stone. It looked like a smaller version of the System Stone.

  “Let’s finish this. This seed will bond with your mind, granting you System access. Do you have any questions?”

  Rix realised he wasn’t breathing. He stared at the seed. It was a tiny thing, too innocuous-seeming to be the source of so much power.

  “No, sir,” he said.

  “Very well. Don’t blink.”

  He stepped forward, holding the seed up just a foot from Rix’s head. Rix felt a surge in the air and, after a moment, the man removed his hand and the seed continued to hover there. Then it began to vibrate slowly. The air around his head grew charged, and Rix watched as the shard became brighter and brighter until it disassembled into a beam of light that shot straight for Rix’s eye. The transition was so fast, he couldn’t even think of dodging. There was a flash of something electric that seemed to shoot through his newly forged meridians. His vision turned white, and he let out a startled cry. The experience wasn’t painful exactly, just overwhelmingly in its intensity as something other pushed its way into his mind.

  Mercifully, the process was quick. After just a few seconds, the sensation began to fade. In its place, Rix was left feeling something wonderful. Everything about him felt better. He opened his eyes, marvelling at the clarity of the stones in the floor, the vibrancy of the different book covers on the shelves. His body felt limber and powerful, as though years of neglect and starvation had been scrubbed away. And there was something new moving in his dantian like slow-running water. His mana. It had a completely different texture to his qi, more sterile, more intense. But what was most shocking was that it flowed into him with no effort on his part. To draw in qi was a wrestling match, an act of exertion and dominance. But with mana, his spirit created it on its own with guidance from the System. From what he understood, his mana would refill constantly at a fixed rate with no thought on his part. Already, the quantity in his dantian was beginning to outstrip his meagre supply of qi. No wonder Martial Souls were so powerful.

  “You are now officially a Low Rank Whisper,” said the Steward.

  A grin split Rix’s face. A Whisper, the first tier of the Martial Path.

  He didn’t know much about being a Martial Soul, but he knew the basics. There were five tiers. From lowest to highest they were: Whisper, Spark, Nova, Omen, Edict, and each step up was significantly more difficult than the last. For every hundred Sparks, it was said just ten made it to Nova, and that ratio only got worse the higher you climbed up the chain. Rix wasn’t sure if there were any Edicts in Cloudpiercer Citadel. Even the First Masters of most corporations were stuck at Omen.

  But the power graduation didn’t stop with just the tiers. Within each martial tier were four ranks: Low, Mid, High, Peak. As a Low Whisper, he was the smallest fish in the ocean, but at least now he had a chance to swim.

  “Congratulations,” said Scarface, but his smile carried an edge. “Let me give you the last part of your welcome package.”

  In the blink of an eye, something cold and hard closed around Rix’s neck. He didn’t even have time to cry out. His hands shot up, finding a thin metal collar now ringing his throat. He ran his hands along the rim, but found no discernible edge or fastening point. As far as he could tell, it was now a single smooth piece of metal.

  “That’s your tether,” said Scarface. “I wouldn’t bother trying to remove it. That’s a Nova-tier artefact. The best in the business. Made by Ironguard Enterprises, our illustrious parent corporation. As long as you wear that, you obey the rules of the prison. Or you don’t, and we use it to show you the error of your ways.” The way he said that implied he’d almost prefer it came to that.

  Rix felt a moment of violation, but it hardly mattered how he felt. Nova-tier placed the artefact two full tiers above his current level. Trying to remove it would be the definition of futile. The tether didn’t seem to have any immediate negative effects, so he decided to simply ignore it.

  The Steward cleared his throat. “Your mind is now enmeshed with the System. Try reaching for it. It should be instinctive.”

  Rix experimented, reaching out with his mind toward the sense of other that seemed to be pressed up against it. He felt it flex back and then words became overlaid across his vision. They didn’t obscure anything; it was like they were being projected into his mind’s eye.

  [Path]

  Tier - Whisper (Low)

  Class: Unfused

  Weapon bond: None

  Style: None

  Embodiments: None

  Aspects: None

  Mana: 200/200

  Essence: 0%

  Techniques: None

  Body

  Agility - 13

  Strength - 7

  Vitality - 7

  Mind

  Acuity - 10

  Mana Control - 10

  Mana Capacity - 10

  Soul

  Authority - 0

  Sovereignty - 0

  This was a lot to take in, but it wasn’t enough to dampen the thrill that he felt seeing his Path made real before his eyes.

  “I can see it,” Rix confirmed, unable to hide the awe in his voice.

  The Steward gave a thin smile. “There is much to understand about the System. The Quartermaster will explain some of it when you see her tomorrow. The library also has a few texts. But any truly valuable information is earned, not given.”

  Rix wanted to ask more, but the man was already returning to his desk. “My duty here is done.”

  Seizing his arm, Scarface unbound Rix and dragged him from the room. Despite his newfound physique, the man handled him as easily as before. Once in the corridor, Scarface spoke. “I bet you feel like you’ve just been given everything you ever wanted, hey dreg? We’ll see if you still feel the same way tomorrow.” He clapped his hands. “Well then. Let’s continue the tour, shall we? Final stop. Meeting the other prisoners.”

  follow, , or would mean the world.