CHAPTER 67
Azra'il - POV
"Again," I said, pointing at the sentence written on the board. "Subject, verb, object. In that order. Always in that order, unless you have a very good stylistic reason to break the rule, and neither of you here has that reason yet."
Ghislaine, sitting at the corner desk, rewrote the sentence for the third time with that stony patience that had already become her trademark. Eris, beside her, scribbled her own version with considerably less enthusiasm and considerably more haste, clearly hoping speed would make up for precision.
It didn't. It never did. But I'd already given up trying to convince her of that through argument; only blunt repetition seemed to work, eventually.
〈Eos, progress report. Full timeline, from Buena Village to today.〉
I asked the question almost out of habit, looking at the board without really seeing it, while Eris rubbed out her own handwriting for the fourth time with a sigh dramatic enough to rival any stage actress.
[On leaving Paul's house, your Body Refinement was at the Jade Body stage, nearly complete. Since then, almost a year has passed within the Boreas domains, most of it in the city of Roa.]
〈Continue the progress line.〉
[Over that period, you completed the Jade Body, advanced directly to the Adamantine Body, fully concluded Mana Condensation, and currently sit near the peak of Foundation Establishment, one step from Perfection. Practically an entire realm of advancement, considering your starting point.]
An entire realm. In nearly a whole year.
"Azra'il." Eris raised her hand, without really waiting for permission to speak. "Is this sentence right?"
I corrected an agreement error without fully pulling my attention from my own thoughts, a habit old enough to have become reflex by now, body present in the room, mind split between the board and the uncomfortable arithmetic Eos had just handed me.
In my past lives, in a proper cultivation environment, a real sect, with mana veins mapped out, spiritual concentration formations built up over generations of ancestors who'd devoted their entire existence to exactly that, progress of that size would have taken someone like me, at worst, a few weeks.
Here, it had taken nearly a year.
〈Eos, if I'd found a decent place from the start, where would I be now?〉
[Conservative estimate: Spirit Core, Crystalline stage, at minimum. Possibly Golden Core, depending on the environment's quality.]
〈Two or three realms beyond where I am.〉
[Correct.]
Ghislaine looked up from her own notebook, her ears tilting slightly towards me. "You've been quiet for a few minutes."
"I'm thinking."
"About what?"
"About how much time I've wasted," I replied, more honestly than I meant to, and quickly corrected course before Eris decided that deserved an investigation of its own. "Carry on. Next sentence."
Not because I was slower at cultivation itself. Because Roa, with all its bustling trade, its loud nobility, and its generous population density, was, from a spiritual standpoint, a perfumed desert. Ambient mana there dissipated too quickly, consumed by hundreds of small everyday spells, distorted by the sheer volume of people living packed together. Trying to cultivate seriously in a big city was like trying to meditate in the middle of a market on fair day, technically possible, but offensively inefficient.
Eleven days without cultivating at all had merely been the spark for that realisation, weeks ago. The real problem ran much further back, across entire months spread between lessons exactly like that one, shampoo bottle negotiations, bedtime stories, and the general management of a life that had become, without me consciously deciding so, far fuller than any original plan had accounted for.
I didn't regret a single minute of it.
But I also couldn't keep putting off the rest indefinitely.
I watched Eris hunched over her notebook, tongue between her teeth from borrowed concentration, and Ghislaine beside her, every letter carved with the same discipline she devoted to any sword. Two people who, months ago, I'd never have imagined capable of keeping me this far from my own advancement for so long.
It wasn't regret I felt. It was just the belated clarity that certain accounts, sooner or later, needed settling.
"That's the lesson for today," I said, closing the exercise book with more firmness than the situation called for.
Eris looked up, surprised. "Already?"
"Already. I need to deal with something."
I decided, right then, that it was time to disappear for a while. And the first person who needed to know, before anyone else, was Rudeus.
I found him in the shampoo workshop, shaping another batch of bottles with that patient concentration only earth magic seemed to draw out of him.
"I'm going to disappear for a while," I said, with no preamble.
He didn't even look up from the bottle he was shaping. "How long is 'a while'?"
"A month. Maybe less."
That did make him stop.
"A whole month?"
"I'm going into seclusion. Serious cultivation, no interruption. I'll find somewhere isolated enough for that." I crossed my arms. "I want you to tell the rest of the Boreas family after I'm gone. There's no point in me explaining the same thing four times, with the added trouble of having to invent some lie or vague story in the middle of it."
He considered that with a seriousness I appreciated, without his usual nervousness. "Will you be alright?"
"I'll be in better shape than ever, Chubby. That's exactly the point."
"And if something happens here while you're gone?"
"You and Ghislaine will handle it. The two of you don't need me holding your hand the whole time any more."
He nodded, slowly, with the expression of someone recognising, at once, the trust embedded in that sentence and the real weight of the responsibility that came with it.
"Fine," he said, at last. "I'll cover for you. Make up something reasonable for Philip and Sauros, and, most importantly, stop Eris from organising a rescue expedition."
"She'd be capable of it."
"She would absolutely be capable of it." He crossed his arms, and something in his face shifted, a silent calculation forming behind his eyes before turning into words. "But I want something in return."
I raised an eyebrow. "Are you in a position to negotiate?"
"I'm covering an entire month of absence with no decent explanation. I think I've earned the right to negotiate something, yes."
I considered that with a mix of amusement and genuine curiosity. "Go on."
"When you get back," he said, "I want you to teach me some of your techniques. Not the ones with a sword, we both know I'm hopeless as a swordsman. But I still want to learn unconventional magic. The kind you invented, or brought from wherever it is you're really from."
"That's quite specific for a last-minute request."
"I've been thinking about it for a while," he admitted, without any embarrassment. "You know things nobody in this world knows, Azra'il. I know you do. And every time I ask, you dodge with some generic answer about 'universal principles' and change the subject."
He wasn't wrong, which made the observation slightly more irritating than it would have been otherwise.
"That's going to demand more patience from you than you usually have available," I said, finally. "Unconventional magic isn't learned by memorising a formula. It requires rebuilding how you understand mana flow from the ground up."
"I'll have a whole month to prepare myself mentally while you're gone."
"Fair point." I considered it for another moment, then decided the price was fair. "Agreed. When I'm back, we start."
He smiled, pleased with himself in a way I rarely saw outside genuine magical breakthroughs.
"Take care," he said, finally.
"Always do."
I left without further ceremony, ceremony was never really my strong suit, but I didn't get far before I heard footsteps too quick behind me, followed by a second, far calmer and more deliberate pair.
Eris and Ghislaine, evidently, hadn't been satisfied with a lesson interrupted with no explanation at all, and caught up to me in the middle of the lawn before I reached the main gate.
"Where are you going?" Eris asked, still clutching her exercise book under one arm, Lièxīn strapped to her belt as always.
"Training. A month, maybe less."
"A MONTH?" Her shout echoed across the whole yard. "You can't just disappear for a month!"
"I can, actually. I'm doing it right now."
"BUT THE STORIES—"
"Will wait, Little Pepper. I won't forget a single one."
"Then I'm coming with you!" She was already adjusting the sword at her belt, as if that solved the entire logistical problem. "I need to train too. We can train together."
"You can't."
"WHY NOT?"
"Because it isn't that kind of training," I said, choosing my words carefully. "I won't be swinging a sword. I won't be running, or lifting weights, or repeating any forms. It's spiritual training. Prolonged meditation, with no interruption at all."
Eris frowned, utterly lost. "Spiritual training? Meditation? That's... what? You're going to sit staring at a wall for a month?"
"Basically."
"THAT DOESN'T EVEN SOUND LIKE TRAINING!"
"It's the single most important kind of training there is, even if, to you, it looks indistinguishable from an extended nap."
"Then I can sit staring at a wall too! That doesn't sound hard!"
"It would be, if you tried it," I said, with no desire to go into the reason why. "Trust me when I say this isn't something you can replicate through sheer will. There are years of difference between what you imagine and what actually needs to happen."
She crossed her arms, sulking, with the expression of someone excluded from something without understanding exactly what, but with no real argument left to continue the debate, and I recognised, beneath the performative tantrum, something closer to genuine worry, the kind she still didn't quite know how to express without feeling weak in her own eyes.
Ghislaine, for her part, stayed quiet for a moment, processing the explanation with that seriousness she reserved for anything connected to real training.
"I've heard of masters who retreat to mountains," she said, slowly. "To train alone, away from everything. Whole months, sometimes years. I never quite understood why, but I always assumed it was something like this. Solitude as part of the method."
"It's something like that," I said, without elaborating further. It made no sense trying to explain cultivation, the dantian, or channelled mana flow to someone whose own world had never developed the concept, it would be like explaining colours to someone who'd never seen light. "Except, in my case, it's more literal than metaphorical."
She nodded, accepting the explanation without demanding further detail, with the same practical trust she applied to any situation of real risk. "Will you need perimeter protection?"
"I'll take the necessary precautions. No one will get close enough to need guarding."
"Look after Little Pepper while I'm gone," I said, looking at Ghislaine.
"Always do."
Eris huffed, offended by the implication that she needed looking after, but said nothing more beyond a "Come back soon" muttered low enough that she could later deny having said it with any feeling at all.
I went back to my room before actually leaving, swapping my usual outfit for simple traveller's clothes, dark fabric, with no crest or embroidery that might give away any noble connection, and covering my white hair and the rest of my face with a hooded cloak I'd worn in similar enough circumstances before to know exactly how to adjust without looking suspicious.
White hair drew far too much attention in a city the size of Roa, and not for the reason most people would assume. A child with an appearance as distinctive as mine was, by this world's standards, far too convenient a target for anyone involved in the kidnapping and slavery trade, a problem recurring enough in Asura's large cities that any attentive parent avoided letting their children walk certain streets alone.
I could, obviously, effortlessly tear apart any idiot who tried their luck with me. But that would involve noise, witnesses, and an amount of bureaucratic paperwork with the city guard I simply had no patience to face before a journey of several days. Avoiding the whole problem was, without question, more efficient than resolving it.
I crossed the city on foot, blending into the ordinary flow of people carrying baskets, pulling carts, shouting out prices from market stalls, the kind of anonymous crowd no guard examined closely, because examining everyone closely would take more time than any guard was willing to spend. I passed through the main gates in the middle of a group of merchants arguing over import taxes with an almost religious enthusiasm, and not one of them so much as glanced my way.
I only slowed my pace once Roa's walls had disappeared behind me, gradually replaced by cultivated fields, then open pastures, then increasingly dense, increasingly undomesticated vegetation.
I set off into the wilder territories of the Boreas domain that very afternoon, leaving the city and its walls behind with an almost physical relief.
〈Eos, long-range scan.〉
[Initiating. Cataloguing points of interest within a thirty-kilometre radius of current position.]
It was, essentially, having a living strategy game map installed inside my own head; Eos marked every spring, every unusual rock formation, every pocket of mana slightly denser than average, updating the list as I advanced, automatically discarding anything contaminated by recent human presence.
It took three days of walking, three days that, for any ordinary person, would have been an ordeal, but that for me were just transit time, before Eos finally flagged something worth investigating up close.
[Anomaly detected. Rock formation, six kilometres to the north-east. Extensive underground cavity present. Ambient mana signature 340% above regional average.]
〈Interesting.〉
[I recommend direct investigation.]
The cave's entrance lay half-hidden behind a curtain of dense vegetation, the kind of place no one would stumble on by accident and no one would have reason to look for. I went in, lit a flame of mana in my palm, and followed the natural tunnel deeper into the rock.
I wasn't the only one interested in that address.
Three shapes rose out of the darkness ahead, cave wolves, judging by their elongated bodies and eyes reflecting my mana's light like cheap mirrors, larger than any ordinary wolf, with claws adapted for climbing wet rock. They growled in unison, the kind of coordination that suggested a pack long established in that cave.
The first lunged with a leap that, to any novice adventurer in this world, would probably have looked frightening. I dodged without moving from the spot, turning my own body just enough to let it pass straight through where I'd been standing, and delivered a sharp strike with my Jian to the side of its neck before it finished its arc through the air. It dropped without even finishing its growl.
The second and third attacked together, in a flanking attempt that would have worked against any ordinary combatant. It didn't work against me. A burst of air magic tore through the second one's chest before it completed two strides, and the third, seeing both its companions already on the ground, hesitated for a fraction of a second, more than enough time for me to close the distance and settle the matter with the same economy of effort.
The silence that followed had that quality of a space newly emptied of life.
I dragged the three bodies out of the cave, one by one, leaving them in the vegetation outside for nature to decide what to do with them. I had no interest in cultivating surrounded by the smell of decomposing carcasses, however efficient the elimination had been.
I went back into the tunnel and kept descending.
I found a lake at the bottom of it.
Still water, dark, surrounded by raw crystal formations that glowed with a cold blue light and grew along the walls with an almost artistic regularity. The air inside was already noticeably denser, charged with ambient mana that, by this world's standards, probably already qualified the place as a small geological treasure.
I stood at the edge for a moment, feeling the dormant potential of that space.
"This will do," I said, aloud, purely for the pleasure of hearing the decision being made.
I sealed the cave entrance first, earth magic reorganising rock until it formed a barrier solid enough to withstand anything short of my own will to leave. No one would get in. No one would interrupt. The kind of isolation any serious cultivator from my own history would recognise as the bare minimum condition for genuine advancement.
Then, I opened the inventory.
The interface unfolded before my vision, invisible to any eyes but my own, entire columns of items catalogued across more lives than I could count, organised by category, origin, and a priority system that only made sense to me.
〈Eos, let's turn this into a proper cultivation pool.〉
[Suggested reagents available, accounting for scale and planned seclusion duration.]
I selected the first item on the list, and the vial materialised in my hand with that slight displacement of air that always accompanied the transition between dimensional space and reality, Liquid Condensed Mana Elixir, the main ingredient, a golden liquid where tiny stars seemed to swim beneath the surface. I poured it into the lake's dark water, and it immediately began spreading in luminous filaments, densifying the ambient mana at a speed no natural process could replicate in centuries.
[Direct consumption would result in complete meridian rupture for approximately 98.999% of known organisms.]
〈Good thing we're not drinking it, then. We're only swimming.〉
I selected the second item, and the Celestial Spring Essence materialised in my palm, pale blue liquid that purified every particle of physical dirt and magical residue the instant it touched the water, down to the lake bed, previously invisible in the darkness, becoming perfectly clear even under the crystals' faint light.
I scattered the Spiritual Jade Powder along the banks, materialised straight into my open palm, and watched, with quiet satisfaction, tiny glowing mosses begin sprouting on the stones within minutes, followed by flowers that definitely belonged to no botanical catalogue on this continent.
A single drop of Eternal Moon Dew, silver as living mercury, calmed any residual turbulence, leaving the lake's surface smooth enough to look, at first glance, solid.
A single drop, just one, because any more would be unnecessary waste, of Refined Spirit Dragon Blood enriched the water's overall vitality, ensuring my own body would benefit not just from the mana flow, but from constant vital support.
I finished by materialising a handful of Powdered Mana Crystals, dissolving them along the perimeter with a single gesture, small natural batteries that would keep the energy circulation stable even once I stopped actively intervening.
I considered, for a second, calling up the Drops of Primordial Chaos from the bottom of the inventory.
〈Better not.〉
[Agreed. Probability of turning the entire cave into a dimensional anomaly zone: 87.4%.]
I discarded the selection without a shred of regret, and closed the interface with the same mental gesture that had opened it.
By the time I finished, the lake was no longer an ordinary lake. It was, for all practical purposes of this world, a cultivation site capable of making any archmage of the Asuran nobility lose decades of their life out of pure envy.
〈Eos, estimated classification.〉
[Mana concentration: approximately 0.003% of the Celestial Pool you used during your eight hundred and twelfth life.]
〈Only that?〉
[Correct. However, compared to this world's standards, the estimated classification would be: divine-tier cultivation site.]
I smiled at the corner of my mouth. "Good enough."
I took off my clothes, folding them with a care that matched nothing of the urgency I felt underneath my own calm, and dove in.
I sank to the bottom of the lake, letting that impossible water wrap around every inch of skin at a temperature too perfect to be natural, the weight of the depth pressing gently against my chest as I crossed my legs into the lotus position my body remembered from a thousand different lives, fully submerged, the crystals on the walls casting a faint, steady glow through the water above me.
I closed my eyes.
For over eight years of this cycle of existence, counting from the very first cry in this new skin to this exact instant, I hadn't cultivated the way a real cultivator should. Patchwork corrections. Progress stolen between distractions. Advancement won in the dead hours of early morning, and in this past year, squeezed between language lessons and shampoo bottle negotiations.
Never, not once since Azra'il Greyrat was born, had I allowed myself what any disciple of any decent sect would consider a basic right: absolute silence. Complete isolation. Unlimited, uninterrupted time, with no one knocking on the door with some unusual request.
I held my breath deep, for the last time, for now, since the water around me would handle the rest.
I let the ambient mana begin flowing through my skin, testing the limits of my own body with the delicacy of a river still deciding which path to take between the stones. My dantian, dormant for far too long, began to warm, slowly, like an ember rediscovering its own fire after a long cold night.
〈Eos, one last thing before I truly begin.〉
[Listening.]
〈These past few months of distraction, if I can even call them that... weren't wasted. I learned more about the reason to grow stronger in these months than in any previous seclusion across my last hundred lives.〉
[Share, if you wish. I'm not obligated to understand sentimentality to record it accurately.]
〈The old sects taught that attachment is weakness. That the path to true power demands severing everything that binds the heart to the mortal world.〉 I let the thought settle for an instant, feeling my own dantian pulse in response. 〈I disagree. I always have, actually, I just never had sufficient reason to test that disagreement with this much conviction before.〉
[Continue.]
〈I'm not going to cultivate to leave Little Pepper, Ghislaine, and the perverted Chubby-Cheeks behind. I'm going to cultivate precisely to make sure nothing in this world, or any other, ever manages to take away the people who matter to me.〉
Eos didn't reply immediately, and I recognised, in that small delay, her equivalent of a reflective pause.
[Well. After more than a thousand lives recording your motivations for the pursuit of power, this is one of the rare cases I'd classify as genuinely good. The previous ones ranged from "revenge," to "boredom," and, on one particularly memorable occasion, "to prove some idiot hermit wrong about something he himself didn't even remember properly." This one, at least, has the decency to involve people other than your own ego.]
〈Can I consider that a compliment?〉
[You may.]
I smiled, there alone, in the warm darkness of that impossible water, and let the thought dissolve along with the last bubbles of the conscious breathing I wouldn't need again for quite some time.
The world outside, the manor, the lessons, the training, Sauros's shouting, and Eris's loud voice echoing down corridors I wouldn't hear for weeks, simply ceased to exist.
All that remained was my dantian, the flow, and the ancient patience of someone who'd already climbed this same mountain hundreds of times before, and knew, with a certainty no recent distraction had managed to erase, exactly how to take one more step.
The water around me slowly began to glow.
I closed my awareness entirely to the world outside. Now there were only two things.
Me.
And the path ahead.