Reincarnated As A Peasant - Book 2: Chapter 38: Progression

Second Week, Fifthday, Late Afternoon

Landar, Sakura

Landar

The hallway where the cultivation rooms where at was in the sub floor of the student building, and on the way to the fields. I was familiar with the space as I passed through it practically daily for classes, practice, or testing new spells and even some of the contraptions I’d been able to tinker with since coming to the school. Though there was precious little time for that.

“You’re sure this is going to work?” I kept my voice low, as if I were simply talking to myself.

Sure am boss. The data I need to properly pin down where you are growth wise, will take a a while to parse out from observation. Even direct contact with your core and mana pool only give me about half the data I need.

“And you think, ascending, or progressing or whatever will help with that?” I was skeptical. I had grown in power several times already in just the last two weeks having Sid. Learning proper magic, growing my repertoire of spells and spell theory, and of course getting some help along the way had I was sure increased my level at least once or twice.

Yup. We know you have a mismatch between your body, and your core and pool strength. Yoru spells and ability usage are far more potent then they should be given the data I have on your body. But with all the mana and life mana flowing around all jumbled up in your body it’s difficult to tell just how much of a mismatch there is. By analyzing a formal ascension of your physical body I’ll be able to tell exactly by how much.

“Okay, okay. Let’s just find a room.”

It took me almost twenty minutes to find a room that was free, and usable. Meaning they weren’t covered in awful from someone’s recent growth, or still resonating with static mana from a failed attempt. Or somehow else indisposed.

The room had clearly been intended for group work. As there were six cushions that surrounds a single elevated cushion in the center. I don’t think I want to know what types of things people get up to in rooms like this.

The faculty usually use it to help students who have been injured untangle mana pathways or chie channels that have been damaged. Or learn to control their magic if for some reason it gets out of control.

Oh, that’s not so bad.

According to the disciplinary archive however, this room is typically used by the student body to copulate in a full spectrum mana field in small to moderate sized groups.

Ah, thank you for that Sid. That is . . . exactly what I thought people would use it for.

You’re welcome boss!

I shook my head as I pulled an extra cushion over to the spot I had chosen in the circular room. As I sat on my oddly comfortable throne of cushion mat hybrids I folded my legs and sat in what I grew up calling ‘indian style’.

Though I suppose the proper term is the lotus position.

It straightened my spine perfectly, and I found myself balanced. Though I could also feel the nerves in my butt going numb. Yet another reason big guys like myself, both in this life and my last one, didn’t usually take to formal meditation practices. The extra weight tended to mean it was that much more difficult to stand after a session.

“Alright. Now, how do I do this exactly?”

Normally teaching you this would be handled by a guidance counselor after month one of your first semester. Which is when most students are expected to be ready for their first formal ascension while at the school. But have no fear, I’ll walk you through it!

I was hardly filled with confidence.

“Alright, let’s get to work.” Before I could even close my eyes and begin cycling the technique that Sid was filling my mind with, someone knocked at the locked door.

Sighing I got up and went to see what was going on. When I opened the door I found someone I was very much not expecting to see until some time tomorrow.

“Uh . . . Hi Sakura. What’s up?”

“Oh, I’m sorry for intruding Landar. But uh . . . this is the multi-cultivation room. Yes?” I nodded, and her expression shifted from discomfort to a different kind of discomfort. It was difficult to read her, which was at least one of the reasons I always felt so unsure around her. “Good, um. Would you mind if I joined you for a cycling session? I am close to a minor breakthrough and I would like to see real progress before tomorrow’s field class.”

“Ah, I see great minds think alike then!” I smiled and it was clear she didn’t get the reference, though she understood the meaning. She bowed respectfully.

“Yes. I take it you are close to progression as well?” I nodded. “I am uh . . . glad to hear it.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I kinda always thought you didn’t approve of me.”

Her expression shifted through several mixed, or just plainly unreadable emotions.

“ITs true we haven’t always seen eye to eye on everything. And, I do in fact have . . . reservations about what I’ve seen of your perspective on duty, and responsibility. But i’ve never wished you ill, I hope you know that.”

I nodded. “Thanks, but uh . . . like, what reservations?” I opened the door more and let her in, and returned to my double mat set up in the corner. When I sat down, and faced her sitting opposite me, she grimaced at my setup. A clear look of . . . disappointment? I wasn’t entirely sure.

“Time is short. Perhaps we can have a discussion about it another time?” Sakura asked, as she arranged her mat and took up a perfectly executed lotus position as if it hardly caused her any discomfort or difficulty.

“Sure. But uh . . . I want you to know that despite our differences from our original homelands, I don’t hold any ill will towards you.”

“And I hold none towards you.” Sakura gave me the first genuine emotion I had seen from her since our duel in the palace of the coin lord. She smiled.

More like beat down. She manhandled me like a rag doll, despite the wolf going beast mode.

“Cool, so . . . let’s both just uh, get to work then?”

She nodded, closed her eyes, and I felt her corner of the chamber swirled with a whole lot of energy as she moved several types of mana through her body and soul. But the chamber had been well designed, and her work did not disturbed mine.

I closed my eyes, and began to cycle.

***

The work was extremely difficult. I had to infuse my muscles with mana from my pool, and chie or life mana from my core. Every muscle fiber was bathed in full spectrum mana, as Sid called it, even as my bones felt marinated in it.

Within only a few minutes my body felt like my bones were vibrating, and my muscles were all on the verge of cramping from over exertion.

Every time I emptied my mana pool and core, the cycling technique Sid had shown me, as simple as it was, allowed the room to refill them just as quickly.

The author’s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

It felt exactly as it had the first time I had ascended with Gragon in the woods all those years ago, only ramped up to eleven. But even as the feeling was more intense, my mind was sharper, my will stronger, and my body far more resilient.

I could do this. There was not a doubt in my mind.

Things peaked several times, as my body felt like it was straining against something heavy inside. Every time I threw my body against that barrier trying to absorb more mana, more life energy, the power would dissipate out into the air around me.

Come on you little piece of crap body, go already!

I pushed again, harder than I ever had before. Like trying to hold onto a rampaging bull with every muscle in my body, as that bull tried to rip me apart in every direction.

“God damn it, Go!” I growled through gritted teeth as the effort reached a new peak. Pain seared my body, my bones felt liek they were about to melt, and my eyes felt like they were about to jump out of their sockets with the strain of the effort.

“Come ooooon!” My toes curled, my leg muscles spasmed, and I could feel one of the bones in my right leg start to give way. My veins began to burn, and every nerve in my body caught fire in an instant as I pushed even harder, pulsing both mana and life energy at the same time. Forcing them to work in concert, despite warnings I had received that doing so would be painful.

No pain no gain! I shouted into the void. If Sid responded, I didn’t hear it.

Suddenly like someone flicking off a light switch it was over. My stomach filled with black bile, and I hurled it into the container Sid had suggested I get from one of the rooms alchoves. I felt slimy as my skin slowly pulsed and pushed black goo out of my pores. Even my hair became almost instantly matted with a thick tar like substance.

“Let me help,” a pale of clean freezing cold water washed over me in what felt like a deific stream of cleansing power. There was mana in that water, I was sure of it. When it was done I wasn’t completely clean, but the worst of the smell and awfulness was gone, and Sakura smiled down at me and handed me the still oddly full bucket of water she had grabbed from another one of the small alcoves in the room.

“Allow me to be the first to congratulate you on properly advancing.” I don’t know why, but I felt judgment in those words, and a sudden annoyance pestered me about how she had said it.

“Thank you. Uh . . . one second.” Sid, Sid did you get what you needed?

Calculating hold on . . . and, Got it! Wozah, that’s better than I thought. Technically, you’re mid gold by eastern standards, and level 12 by the western scale. You’re higher on the western scale a bit because you know so many magical circuits now. But the two systems aren’t really that different. Congrats boss!

Thanks!

“Uh . . . sorry for distracting you Sakura.”

“Nonsense. This is, tragically,”She screwed up her nose exaggeratedly. “The hallmark of progression along the path of the dao. Nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it is to be celebrated. I can sense . . . yes your core has stabilized some. And it seems you have cleaned out almost . . . seven meridians in a single attempt! Very impressive. No wonder it was causing you much pain. Um . . .” She looked torn for a moment, then made up her mind about something.

“A piece of advice if you care to listen. Most cultivators clear their meridians one at a time. Doing as you did . . . well it must have been excruciating. Though one can not detract from its effectiveness. You are now solidly on your path, very well done given where you began your journey. Mid Gold is impressive, I just recently made it to high gold myself.”

She gave me a respectful bow, then returned to her seat. “I hope you won’t mind waiting until I am finished with my attempt? I am trying to map a spell onto one of my meridians, but I am being forced to modify the circuit of the spell ‘on the fly’ so to speak. And I fear breaking the seal on the door might damage my progress.”

“Sure, I can wait. Um . . . would you like another set of eyes on the problem?”

Sakura smiled, then with a flex of her will the spell curit, matrix really as it was dozens of circuits all woven together in an intricate three dimensional pattern rather than a two dimensional one I was used to working with. But more than a few of the individual circuits were familiar to me.

“If you have an insight I would be most interested.”

“Complex.”

“Indeed.”

***

Sakura

Vines with thick thorns the size of daggers weeping venum erupted from the earth around the target. A moment later cracks of fire ran up the vines like lighting, burning plant matter on the outside of the vines as fuel, the inner workings of the vines were still cohesive, as they then wrapped around another dummy and shattered it to pieces.

“IT worked!” I shouted over the empty field, and then released the spell.. “I’ve been working on that spell for over a week now. Thank you.”

“Uh . . . sure. I mean all I did was show you how I was substituting elemental circuits in my Jet of Fire spell to create a Cone of Cold effect.” Landar shrugged in a non-chelanse display that was so stereotypical of Americans in movies and books back home in China.

But while the Chinese media might have made it out to seem like Landar didn’t care and was just doing this on a whim, I could clearly see he was excited almost as much as I was about the spell.

“Yes. But your simplistic solution showed me that I was overthinking it! All I had to do was add a delay, and a limiter to the fire effect, so the vines could grow thick enough to hold. And the fire wouldn’t burn so hot that it would devour the plant and shorten the spell length.”

I bowed gratefully, and when I righted myself I found his face was clearly red. Even in the dark of the field after sunset.

“Yeah, I agree. I saw that matrix you made and uh . . . you were overthinking it. Like writing computer code, sometimes dozens of lines of more code aren’t what’s needed. Sometimes all you need to do is copy past a single line. Or move a comma. There’s a reason I gave up coding and joined the military.”

I felt a chill run down my spine. “You were in the American Military?”

“Oh. Yeah, didn’t I mention that?”

“I thought you were a diplomat,” I said it more as a statement then a question. FOr that was what he had said before. He had been a diplomat for his people. Did he lie to me?

“Well, I was later in life,” He explained. “But earlier when I was a young man fresh off my grandfather’s farm, I joined the US Army. Fought in the sandbox a bit, before leaving and joining a contractor that paid more.”

“So . . .” The floor had fallen out of my stomach. “You were a mercenary? A cold blooded killer for hire?” Just like in the tv shows. American mercenaries were heartless killers, only in it for the money.

“Well, kinda. We mainly did in-state security work. You know, crowd control, protecting diplomats and the like. It’s how I got into diplomacy actually. But uh . .. well that’s a long story. Maybe for another time? You seem a bit . . . angry.”

“I am not angry,” I lied. “I simply respond negatively when people lie to my face.”

“What?”

“No one can go from murdering for money, to being a diplomat in a single lifetime. Your lies betray you for what you are.”

My face was burning with rage now. I can’t believe he’s still trying to doop me into believing this blatant lie. Who could possibly go from using a gun to using their words in a single lifetime. No one could be that skilled.

“Woh now. I am not a lier.”

“I thought not. But then why do you insist on lying to me?”

Landar looked lost for words. Caught in his deception. I knew it.

“Wait. Hold on. Why would I lie about this? That makes no sense. How old were you when you came here, Sakura?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It matters. I was pushing sixty, fifty eight years old.”

“You. . . were much older then I was when I came here.” I felt some of the heat in my spirit ebb. Someone that old, could have, theoretically lived such a storied life. Perhaps.

“ I wasn’t a career diplomat. But I had ties with several leaders in the Pacific thanks to my time in logistics and state side diplomatic security as a contractor. I got . . . well, let’s just say by that time in my life I was well off enough to have a personal connection with a senator or two. When one of my friends ran for president and won, and then got in a bind? He reached out to me for help and I said yes.”

“What could possibly make a leader ask a soldier to play diplomat?” I demanded, still angry, but far less than I had been. Perhaps he’s not lying after all. Perhaps I misjudged him.

Landar chuckled. “The Japanese is what.”

That took me aback for a moment, and I didn’t know how to respond.

“They’re a prickly people, if you say the wrong thing in public. Even mentioning certain subjects, like what happened during world war two in China, could get a man fired. And . . . well, the careerists before me hadn’t played nice.”

“And somehow you, a soldier turned mercenary, could?”

“No. Not at all, that’s why I was picked. Oh training taught me the basics of how not to give offense. But I was so out of left field for the Japanese government, largely they didn’t know what to make of me at first. We were two aliens staring at each other, unsure of how to not piss off the other. They saw a giant former army grunt with fists the size of boulders that didn’t physically fit in their country let alone socially. They just wanted me to come in and not break everything. They largely saw me getting selected as a kind of punishment by the US president at the time, and . . .” Landar shrugged.

“They weren’t entirely wrong.” He chuckled. “On the other hand, I thought I had to be walking on eggshells all the time. It worked out, neither one of us wanted to piss off the other one, while knowing nothing about each other. Gave us space to learn how to communicate. Space none of the ‘professionals’ had. You know?”

I glared at him, but nodded. Encouraging him to continue.

“Over the years I got good at it though. Really good at it. And my area of responsibility expanded more and more. Until one day I woke up, and realized . . . I was doing the job. And doing it decently enough for an army grunt from the middle of nowhere.” He shrugged. “Do you want to know my real name? My Earth name, that is?” he asked, and it was my turn to respond.

I nodded, and waited.

He grinned. “My name is James. What’s yours?”

“James?” I tested the name out. “And here you are Landar?” he nodded. “My name is, was, Genji. But here, I am known as Sakura. It is a pleasure to meet you, officially, James Landar.” I extended a hand out for him to shake in what I knew was a very western gesture. Both in this world and the previous one.

James took it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Genji Sakura. Officially, at least. Well, it’s getting late. Why don’t we call it a night? But let’s also promise to meet back up to talk more about . . . well, everything. I’m curious what you think of my view of ‘responsibility’.”

I felt my face go red again, and I swallowed the embarrassment. “Of course. Good night James Landar.”

He let go of my hand and started walking off, waving behind him as he did. “You too, Genji Sakura. Good night. And congrats on the new spell!”