What was the path to true growth?

  I’d been struggling with answers to that for a solid twelve hours now. I’d tried reading bits and pieces of different books written in different worlds including ones from Earth and the world Cael was from, Elesia, and the accounts of what exactly this ‘path’ was and how exactly a person might follow it and reach their goal differed in multiple key ways. The whole thing was confusing.

  But, that said, there definitely was a path of some kind. There was some commonality between all of this magic and spiritualism stuff, and I was determined to find it. I was sure it was the key to understanding my core and how to properly use it.

  Then there was the goal itself. That too was ill-defined and had multiple alternative accounts. Enlightenment, attunement, power, knowledge, immortality, acceptance… it seemed as if the goalposts shifted constantly depending on the author, and sometimes were completely and entirely different.

  One thing I knew was that there had to be some kind of pervasive truth in all of this. These schools of thought, this understanding of nature and spiritualism and mana and this keen interest in spirit advancement, it existed in multiple worlds, and this concept of the path was pervasive through many of them also.

  There was something there. No one seemed to have been able to figure it all out and distill it into book form, necessarily, but the concept was prevalent enough within the universe that a whole bunch of human civilisations who’d never had a shred of contact with each other were not only chasing this goal, but had built their entire cultures and societies around finding the answer to this great truth.

  It was fascinating, but it didn’t really help me to understand more. The truth of it was, reading a bunch of conflicting accounts wasn’t teaching me much, as I didn’t know which information to discard and what to keep, so I decided to keep it simple for now and leave the spiritual quandaries for later.

  The world I was living on was called Elesia, a mana-rich world where much of human society had been shaped by the emergence of spiritual awakening and the advent of magic. The lengthening lifespans of certain powerful Ascendants, those who had Awakened, led to long-lasting dynasties being established and a new social order being established.

  Throughout history, there were conflicts between many families for sovereignty over the lands, people, and resources of key areas such as the Bao Highlands, where the Soulgrave clan rose to prominence hundreds of years ago, or the Crystal Peaks, amongst which the Skyreach Guild laid, sitting on the border of the Golden Empire.

  Skyreach was a guild of Ascendant families who’d formed together to live, teach, instruct, and be hired for their services by merchants, nobles, and kings alike. There were Ascendant warriors, mages, craftsmen, and everything in between. That said, even the most bookish of Ascendants were stronger and longer lived than any Unawakened. They were beyond human in nature, even from the earliest stage of Tier 1.

  There wasn’t much written on the Soulgrave clan. Their patriarch, Cael’s grandfather, was one of the few mages in the country predicted to be capable of becoming an archmage, as well as by far the most prominent Ascendant existing within the family. It was said that he could destroy entire cities alone—his power was unrivaled in his entire region.

  The Soulgraves were the owners of the Bao Highlands, with no lords or kings having dominion there, and were known as powerful warriors, mercenaries, and hunters of fearsome beasts. They’d participated in many wars throughout the last millenia. It was said that they were cursed, but there were no specific details.

  I remembered there being a Mark of Corruption passive in Cael’s status. I tried asking System about it, but he said he had no clue either.

  Whatever. Surely I’d figure it out eventually. Back to studying for now.

  Unlike the Bao Highlands, the Crystal Peaks weren’t primarily owned by an Ascendant clan. In fact, I was pretty shocked to learn that the ruling family of multiple provinces within the area was the Martel family, otherwise known as the rulers of the Golden Empire.

  The Martels, apparently, were not Ascendants of the highest tier. And yet they’d amassed all of this power.

  That was curious. While I didn’t know the extent of the average Ascendant’s power, or exactly how numerous they were, I’d kinda expected the highest ranked ones to own everything, like Cael’s grandfather. Knowing that they only in fact owned some of the things, and that there appeared to be more aspects to power than the tier of one’s core, was interesting. I couldn’t glean much more from the history books at a glance, however, so I moved on.

  Next was trying to shore up Cael’s shoddy understanding of spiritual ascension, as well as physical ascension.

  Reading the principles of progression through Tier 1 led me to understand that Cael was already doing a lot of the basics, but he was missing key elements and that was likely what was holding him back so much.

  There was a lot of documented information on Tier 1. It was the first stage of Awakening, after all, and was the most focussed on establishing a physical basis within your body to house your mana and be able to handle using it.

  As a foundational level of spiritual and physiological growth, it made sense that there were many opinions on how to best do it, and ‘brute force’ seemed to only work for those with monstrous potential.

  So, with that being said, Cael’s method of just doing constant physical resistance training and sword drills wasn’t exactly powering his body, his spirit, or his mind up fast enough. His flexibility was still weak. His body didn’t get enough time to recover. While pushing yourself through injuries was a good way to push the boundaries of your endurance, ample recovery time also mattered and recovery techniques were just as important.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Not to mention his lack of mental stimulation. Cael had barely practiced with his mana in years. For someone who aspired to be an archmage, how did he expect to accomplish something so grand when his main skillset lied in swinging a sword around?

  I resolved to start practicing with my mana after I woke up, assuming I woke up. I needed to figure out how that worked if I was gonna become truly strong—I was only using a fraction of my full potential otherwise.

  Then there was his diet… Cael ate way too much meat and way too little else. Advancing through Tier 1 required nourishment for your whole body. Your organs. Your blood. Not just your freaking six pack.

  No wonder this guy was still at third stage. Ugh.

  I had the system make me some eggs, sheep’s liver, and a healthy portion of kale. Lots of goodness in there.

  It wasn’t that appetising to me. Whatever. I wasn’t eating it for dopamine, I was learning to adjust.

  I forced myself through all the eggs and kale, and about half of the sheep’s liver before I felt I needed to stop.

  I’d try again later with a full plate. If it was anything like reading or exercise, I was pretty sure I couldn’t overeat in this reality. It was only mental barriers keeping me from devouring the entirety of that disgusting liver.

  I needed to break those down. I also needed to learn to take care of myself.

  There’s two sides to this. That’s what I was realising. The brutal and relentless work to make yourself improve, the ‘grindset’, and the mindfulness and restraint necessary to utilise self-care and recover, to accept my current limitations and realise I wasn’t made of steel.

  That’s what I was gonna have to deal with when I woke up, when I became Cael Soulgrave again. A balance of physical, mental, and spiritual training, and time for each of those parts of me to recover.

  But I didn’t have to rest and recover here. Not truly.

  So I was gonna push myself as hard and as far as I freaking could. I was gonna bring myself as much power in these next few days as humanly possible.

  I wanted to read about mana manipulation badly, I was curious about how using my energy really worked, but I’d work through my recent discoveries first. The fact was, when I did wake up, I was still gonna have to fight that Damian asshole, and I needed to be ready for that. Magic was less likely to help me there than what I was already good at. Survive that, and I’d have all of the time in the world to read up on mana.

  Thankfully, I’d found a path to immediate improvement, and a means to lay a groundwork for my future self. If I was gonna use my time correctly, it was gonna be like this:

  “Hey, System.”

  [Hey! How can I help?]

  “Just how complicated can the things I make in here be? Like, could I make a training simulation where something spars with me?”

  [Well, the room’s only limit is your imagination! If you can imagine something attacking you, then you can make that happen!]

  “Right… and it can’t hurt me, right?”

  [If you imagine it to hurt, then it WILL hurt! But no, you can’t sustain real physical damage from your imagination!]

  That made sense. Made me sound a little stupid when he spelled it out like that.

  But whatever. Time to give this a try.

  I walked back over to my training area and moved over the target dummy, instead imagining an image of an attacker.

  It kinda manifested looking like a robot. He came at me wielding a sword, swinging wildly, and the moment I moved my body up to block, he changed direction. When I swung my weapon to the right to try and parry it, however, the robot stopped dead.

  …huh. That wouldn’t do.

  It only worked while I was focussed on it. If I took my focus off of what I imagined my enemy to be doing, even for a second, then it stopped attacking me and went into stasis. I basically had full control of it.

  But controlling an enemy and choreographing its attacks was pretty damn hard when I didn’t even know how to fight myself, let alone how IT should fight…

  I had an idea. Maybe I could program it to do one of the training drills I’d memorised?

  I tried just that. I gave it a basic sequence of movements, strikes, and parries to memorise and then repeat.

  It worked. I didn’t have to focus to have it repeat the same routine, I just had to have that routine committed to my brain. It was so cemented in my mind already that it was like an automatic process.

  Thanks, memorisation skill.

  That meant I could use this thing to train. While the shiny silver robot dude with the flat, featureless face continued to stab, parry, step, and thrust, I came up to him and stood right in his path.

  I started to block his blows. To strike when he blocked. Step when he did.

  Then, occasionally, I made a mistake, and I got stabbed.

  It wasn’t real, I was reminded each time the sword came out of my body and I immediately stopped bleeding.

  Felt real, though. Hurt like a bitch.

  The robot wasn’t deterred by my mistakes, however, nor by my pain, so if I didn’t recover quickly and back up or keep fighting, I ended up getting stabbed again.

  And again…

  Now that I’d actually dealt with horrible blinding pain, I didn’t exactly have to imagine what it felt like. My brain didn’t feel like giving me a watered down version of it, either, so I had to keep moving if I wanted to avoid that horrific sensation of being pierced through the shoulder again and again.

  As time passed, I was able to react to the robotic sparring partner a little easier. I ducked under one blow, parried another, and delivered a strike to its chest.

  Because I found it easier to deal with the moves it was throwing my way, and because it was taking me increasingly less effort to stop it from stabbing me, I was able to step up the sequence of moves it threw at me, making it more complex and even giving it a few options, meaning I couldn’t always react to it in time.

  Yes, I got stabbed a lot. And no, I didn’t care.

  This was freaking hardcore. And I was ready for it. My bed was right there waiting if I wanted to laze around… I thought about erasing it, as it would only take a quick thought, but I decided to leave it there as a reminder.

  That’s who I was before. Not who I’d be when I left this place.

  The me that had walked in here was nothing like the version I’d bring out.