Devourer Of Destiny - Chapter 136

Ebon Dirge returned to his residence with his figurative purse heavier than it was before his purchases from Martin, in addition to the infusion of fresh lifeforce. The investment in his disguise was something he considered well worth it; before he had left the arena complex, he had already avoided a handful of experts who were no doubt there to try and recruit him. If he had appeared openly, they would have eventually known where to find him and there would have been no end to the distractions.

As the arena staff handled the disposal of the bodies, there no doubt was probably already suspicions there about what he was up to. This was another critical factor in remaining hidden: while the Academy was open to all stripes of experts, a teacher with devilish vampiric tendencies might find many doors closed in their face, acceptance be damned. Lacking strength and influence inside the school, he had no choice but to keep things low key for the time being.

The contestants he had faced on this first round of matches hadn’t been enough to break a sweat on, not that such a thing was in the realm of physical possibility right now anyway. The verisimilitude of Amelia’s homunculus body was quite apt, and it would naturally blink its eyes and breathe like an actual human being, but Dirge had learned that other normal functions didn’t happen. It didn’t sweat, and its hair didn’t grow, something he was a little thankful for. Personal hygiene for a cultivator wasn’t nearly as arduous and equipment-intensive as it would be for mortals, but staying on top of the list of things to shave, pluck, and shape was an annoyance he was happy to do without.

As for lacking in challenge, that was only to be expected. The kinds of people who took to the arena could be separated among those who came for the pay and those who came for the fighting itself, whether because they were battle maniacs or because they were making an attempt to temper themselves in a life-and-death struggle. The former group, the wealth seekers, generally lacked in the sophistication of their techniques and equipment.

Take that very first cocky fellow, for example. The sabre he was so proud of barely qualified as an armament, only momentarily channeling the essence injected into it before having to expel it. Even then, all that provided was a level of reinforcement, something Dirge had quickly bypassed when he broke the blade with brute physical strength.

Dirge had been concerned going into the arena about what techniques he would focus on, but that concern was unwarranted when it turned out that the night’s contestants had all fallen before the strength of his Sky Realm physique. Amelia had given him a body that was devoid of a particular affinity, which gave him a wide berth in choosing potential styles and techniques, and he had yet to settle on a focus.

Thankfully the body itself handled the processing of life essence, saving him from having to embark on the Blood path and whatever that might do to the already peculiar host. Dirge was the custodian of Threnody’s Blood Devouring Universe and could wield it clumsily, but he had no wish to dive into it headfirst himself; those techniques always tended to warp the personality, and had only not done so to his partner because she was so very beyond twisting already.

Dirge set aside the questions of the arena for the moment and prepared to turn back to other things. He still had no real gauge of how much life force was enough, but he decided to defer another visit to the ring for a week. If the homunculus couldn’t even hold out that long after a dozen Foundation Building experts in the past week, he would have to question his employer’s seriousness in wanting to get the job done here.

The next morning, Dirge called over Theo to his office. The lad had a few days now to celebrate his success and integrate the rest of the medicines floating around in his system and needed to be checked on to see if he was ready for the next step.

“Miss Sable,” the young man greeted as he entered the office. His confidence restored and with a few days to recover and to integrate that hill of resources he’d introduced to his body, Theo looked almost disgustingly healthy and youthful now. There was a spring in his step, a conceited air that was bordering on the grating.

“Theo,” Dirge returned the greeting without standing up from his seat behind the desk, “come in and shut the door. I trust you’ve been using your recovery time well?”

“Um,” the pridefulness of the young man quickly deflated and he looked down as he shuffled his feet, “I think I’ve done all right? I feel much better now.”

“Come here,” Dirge beckoned, standing, and the young man stepped forward more. “Closer. I need to check.”

Dirge didn’t strictly need physical contact to perform a quick delving with his spiritual sense, but the young man’s strutting entry was a warning sign that if he didn’t regularly reinforce his command of the situation that he’d soon enough need to resort to more drastic lessons. Since this kid was his first billboard and had already had one teacher trying to poach him, he wasn’t going to become complacent about such things.

Dirge reached out and placed his middle fingers on the young man’s temples, noting with wry amusement as the fellow flushed a bit with the vantage he was trapped in like this. After holding that position for a moment or so — just enough to be awkward — he let go.

“You’ve absorbed only half of what was in your system, Theo,” Dirge announced, keeping his tone flat.

“I, um, I will d-do better, Miss Sable, really, I will,” Theo replied as he reeled back a couple of steps.

Dirge sat down and chuckled. “It’s adequate enough for three days of rest.” The kid needed a little less surety of his footing, a bit more dependence.

“S-so it’ll be another few days before we can continue, Miss Sable?” Theo asked nervously.

Dirge allowed himself a small outward smile while he was grinning much more broadly in his own mind. “Who said that’s how long it would take, Theo?” He paused a moment, looking at the lad’s eyes widening. “We can get started right here and now, of course.”

Technically he could have begun at any point within a couple hours of Theo crossing into the Earth Realm with his physique, but Dirge was building a dependency here, not giving it all away in one go. The usual superstitions about stabilizing one’s base first and sharpening one’s mentality served well here, but it wasn’t strictly necessary here since Theo’s only injury amounted to not even being a concussion.

“Really?” Theo flashed an excited grin, the child in a candy store told he could buy whatever he wanted.

“Of course, really, Theo,” Dirge replied. “Take a seat and I’ll direct you through the process.”

“Uh…” Theo looked around, noticing there was no chair for him here since he had destroyed the previous one.

“You haven’t gotten the new furniture delivered yet, Theo, so you’ll have to make do with the floor,” Dirge reminded the student. “I’m told it builds character, these hard surfaces.”

Theo flushed again. The blood flow of his cheeks was getting a good workout today. “O-of course, I’ll make sure–”

“Hush.” Dirge interrupted. “You can deal with that later. Sit, unless you want me to change my mind?”

Theo rushed to the ground with a small thud as his posterior connected with the stone. He assumed a cross-legged position and wordlessly looked up at as much of Dirge as he could see from the low vantage.

“Close your eyes,” Dirge directed. “I assume your previous teacher began your instruction on this subject, but I don’t know exactly what they taught you about it. It’s customary to go over everything exhaustively beforehand. We’re not going to do it that way. I’m going to give you a brief summary of what you need to know right now and we can cover the rest later.”

Theo nodded and closed his eyes as commanded and waited in silence.

“Very good,” Dirge said approvingly. “So then, throughout your body is a network of sealed off pathways much like your veins, all leading to the cavity in your solar plexus, the spot right beneath your ribcage. Visualize it now as best you can. Once you’ve advanced, you’ll be able to see it clearly for yourself.”

Theo nodded again. “Okay.”

“The first step into becoming a true expert, a wielder of essence and thus magic, is Meridian Circulation, the opening of these meridian pathways,” Dirge continued. “Every person is born with a set number of these, but anybody beginning this stage starts the same way: by opening the first meridian. As you advance you’ll be able to open more, and eventually, you’ll open all sixty-five meridians in your body.”

Theo’s eyes opened. “Uh, Miss Sable…”

“Eyes closed!” Dirge barked, and Theo’s eyes again snapped shut. “Now what is your question that was urgent enough to ignore what I told you to do?”

“I’m sorry,” the student apologized, “it’s just that my old teacher said I had sixty-seven meridians.”

Dirge chuckled. “Well, it’s a good thing you ended up here with me. Your old teacher is a fool; you have sixty-five meridians and two false passageways. If that idiot had gotten it wrong and tried to start with either of those, you’d have likely bled out before you even knew what was happening.”

Theo paled, but he visibly squinched his cheeks with visible effort to keep his eyes closed at that pronouncement of doom.

“This isn’t as bad for your prospects as you think, Theo,” Dirge continued, gentling his tone. “Meridian Circulation is a beginning, not an end, so long as you have the will to persevere. I knew someone born with just shy of forty meridians who went on to do things you couldn’t imagine.”

Of course Dirge knew who that person was, he had seen him in the mirror every time be glanced at one for about twenty millennia, after all.

“I’ll spare you a full lecture on it right now, but listen carefully to me on this. There are all kinds of tales about supreme experts with one-hundred-eight meridians and perfect foundations and so many tiers to their palaces and all of that. They reigned over an era here and an empire there. A great number of those fellows died to experts that, in conventional wisdom, held fewer advantages. So I’ll tell you this and I hope you engrave it on your very soul: there is no absolute perfection. There is only what is suitable for your path. Got it?”

Theo nodded, and his breathing relaxed a little. Dirge had spoken that spiel with utmost sincerity, too; he had known all too many so-called geniuses who had ultimately hit walls in their development in the pursuit of perfection. Many times he himself was that wall. Knowing what he knew now, he understood that potential and destiny were entirely different things. Theo didn’t have much of either, but that didn’t stop any number of those who would ascend to immortality if that was their goal.

“Excellent,” Dirge commended his student. “Now, we’re going to begin your expert’s journey at a point right underneath the webbing between your forefinger and middle finger on your right hand. It helps if your first meridian is somewhere where you can manipulate it. That point, the potential opening, is called an acupoint…”

Continuing along, Dirge narrated the process as he commenced with opening that first meridian for his student. As he performed the procedure, he pondered what way he would progress with Theo’s pool of potential techniques. There was also a delicate dance to consider in molding the kid’s personality. Since the kid liked to strut about, the immortal might very well oblige him a bit, so long as he kept it confined to his peers.

Yes, with the right methods, this fellow might turn out to be an excellent exemplar to draw in the students.