Chapter 26
1
John spent the next couple weeks in something of a routine. His attention was divided between speculation and practice. Each day brought him a little closer to his goal.
His mornings were spent in study. He divided his time evenly between Lunar Radiance and the twin branches of Culmination and Neutralization. The former seemed tangibly close to a breakthrough, while the latter seemed almost nonsensical in practice.
Afternoons were spent coordinating with Jules on transitioning the guild to Obsidian base. He had worked incessantly on transporting all of the genes the guild had accumulated to the vault in Obsidian. John was shocked at the sheer number of genes they had acquired.
Evenings were when John practiced Lunar Radiance. He remained convinced that he was on the right path for enlightenment. Rather than just allowing moonlight to saturate him, John studied the moons themselves.
Limited though his success was, he was able to glimpse a fragment of the higher truth. His understanding continued to grow with each day of study, but the finer points still eluded him. He was sure a breakthrough was close at hand, but finding the missing pieces was proving more difficult than he had hoped.
He did not focus entirely on the cultivation, however. He and Liz also explored around one of the the three main bases they frequented. It helped John to get a better sense of how each moon reacted in different circumstances.
For Liz’s part, it allowed her to gain Wizened genes in an attempt to catch up with John. He helped her when she asked, which wasn’t often. In general, she preferred to take down her pray alone.
She displayed increasing proficiency with the Mind Cultivation she had chosen to learn. It was something called Heaven’s Path. She surprised John when she told him she had used a Wizened gene to choose it.
She didn’t divulge the details of the trial she underwent to earn the scroll, but John assumed it was something quite complicated. As he sat back, watching her manipulate her opponents with near infallible accuracy, he goggled in impressed disbelief.
He was impressed to learn that she could adapt her tactics to nearly any foe. It didn’t matter if they had four legs or none, fur or feathers. Liz could always seem to bait her opponent into a foolish attack that left them defenseless to her trap.
She did not content herself to fight only the Wizened foes she needed to advance. She pitted herself against everything she came across in a determined attempt to further her understanding. Her single-minded drive inspired John to work ever harder on his own goals.
The two of them explored more and more of the Garden as the weeks passed. John spent the time focused on glimpsing the grains of truth missing for his breakthrough. He felt like the edges of the bigger picture were slowly coming into view, but he had yet to digest the entirety of the thing.
Liz on the other hand seemed almost made for her Cultivation. Despite it being a tier higher than Lunar Radiance, Liz seemed to blow through the early stages of Heaven’s Path like she had cheat codes enabled. He didn’t know what a Gate Breakthrough entailed for her, but it was clear her mind was well suited to the journey.
She tore through any foe that crossed her; leaving John to collect any genes below Wizened if he wished. He often did just for the sake of adding to the stores, but only if the prey had been Enhanced or better. The rest, he left alone.
In this way, they began to get a particularly good idea of the lands around each base. It became apparent just how much there was to explore as they continued to find more places they did not expect. Such as when they came upon a cave that led them to an underground world.
They never ventured too far into an area, having learned not to trifle with the Garden from the massive cactus. Neither of them wanted to run into anything that formidable again. Their efforts were only partially successful, however.
They discovered no less than four new Divine beasts in their travels. They were lucky enough to avoid inciting violence from them, which was lucky considering three of the four were discovered while engaged in violence with others of their stature. John and Liz simply watched on these occasions, taking note of what they could before leaving as peacefully as possible.
He had not progressed to openly hunting Divine beasts yet, especially after what had happened with the cactus. He did like to have an idea of where they could be found for when that day had come. So, he marked their rough location on the ever expanding map Jules had come up with.
For his part, Jules had been working on transitioning all members of the guild to live primarily in Obsidian Base. He had commandeered a section of the base to serve as the official headquarters. He was often seen hurrying between there and the palace to arrange various details or confirm a decision with John.
As for Vulsa, the Kulthaq was content to be detained in Obsidian Base. As a willing prisoner, John wasn’t going to clap them in irons. Instead, he allowed the bug creature to live in the palace alongside himself and his friends.
He wasn’t particularly worried about treachery. He believed Vulsa when they said they had no desire to return to their master. As such, Vulsa would not attempt mutiny. And since his stipulations for remaining in Obsidian prevented treachery against other occupants, he didn’t bother applying a heavier hand.
Not that he thought the odd creature posed much danger to either Liz or Jules. The former had already proven her superiority while the latter had taken to friendly conversation with Vulsa each time they met. It seemed to John as if it was the first time they had experienced companionship from another.
John had also taken some time to examine Vulsa in great detail. He had a suspicion that the compulsion Kulthaq felt was related to the spirit. Moreover, he thought it had something to do with the very concept John was struggling with.
Instead of an unblemished and freely circulating spirit, Vulsa had something of a veil across his spirit. John could still see the core of Vulsa’s being, but it seemed to be warped by a foul presence. It was like something had been stuck into the middle of Vulsa’s spirit and twisted like a spaghetti fork until it was wrinkled and improperly circulated.
John recognized the phenomenon. It was how his own spirit had felt after the deadly cactus needle unbalanced him. It was a foreign spirit inserted into Vulsa. Or more accurately, projected.
“Of course,” John had said when he made the connection.
If he was correct, that meant the solution to Vulsa’s problem was the very solution that John had been unable to achieve thus far. Third Eye of Callysta seemed capable of crossing all bridges, but the ability to do so continued to elude him. For now, he waited.
2
Three weeks after Jules first set foot in Obsidian Base, the transition of the entire guild was complete. That was made all the more impressive when John noticed how much it had grown since its inception. More than three hundred people had been signed on as guardians for contracts around half a dozen bases.
The list of clients had grown exponentially to the point that Jules had needed to do the Garden’s equivalent of hanging a help wanted sign in the window. He explained to John that he had enlisted the help of Elaina Parks to gauge the worthiness of new hires. Since she had been the only person to meet John’s expectations in her own group of applicants, he had supposed she was qualified to pass judgment.
John applauded the man’s continued foresight and determination. In truth, John had no need to concern himself with the guild anymore. Jules was the one who was lacking in his progression.
What John did do was give Jules the power to award genes directly from his vault to the rooms of guild members as tasks were completed. That made it a great deal easier to distribute them than having a pile of people streaming in and out of his room around the clock to collect.
That didn’t cut down on the traffic as much as Jules had hoped, however. Guild members were still stopping by near constantly as contracts were completed to drop off the excess spoils in accordance with their employment agreements. The sheer size of the guild made Jules come to John in search of a solution.
After a bit of thinking, John had manipulated Obsidian Base to grow a series of depositories where anyone could offer genes or other spoils as a donation. Anything put in would be transferred to the vault. Jules then instructed all guild members to deposit their dues directly.
With that issue solved, they were left with the final issue of maintaining presence in the bases Jules had spread to. He suggested simply spreading word of Obsidian Base as the official headquarters of the guild, but John firmly rebuffed this. He maintained that Obsidian would be the unreachable haven his guild could escape to.
In the end, Jules came up with the idea to simply employ people to run a stall in the business district of each base. It would be an undertaking, but not one they weren’t equipped to handle. That would leave Jules free to run the guild while only stopping at each base once per day to collect new contracts.
Since each contract request required a room number by which to reach the signee, Jules could simply hire couriers for each base. They would deliver either regretful denial or details for when to meet a guild member to carry out an accepted contract. It still sounded horribly involved to John, but Jules insisted it lessened his workload considerably.
For security purposes, John considered forbidding guild members to speak of Obsidian to clients. The separation from their contracts would give some security to guild members. When he told this to Jules, he pondered it before agreeing.
He explained that he had been feeling a lot of anxiety as the person in charge of sending people on dangerous assignments. Each contract put not only the clients but the guild member he chose to protect them at risk. He felt like he was responsible for hundreds of lives.
It had apparently got so bad that Jules had sought advice from John’s father. John felt a twinge of guilt. Both from dumping the guild on Jules and at his absence from such a stressful ordeal.
He had become so self absorbed that he had left an entire organization to Jules. One that he had wanted to start. One that he had not taken part in since the beginning.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jules said when John had apologized. “You may have had the idea, but I’ve made it my own. Not only are we earth’s only security service that I’ve been able to tell, we’re also at the forefront of geological exploration!” He exclaimed.
“Geological exploration?”
“Yes. Every time a guild member explores a new area, they tell my group of cartographers, and it’s added to the big map.”
“Wait a second. Cartographers? You’ve hired map makers?”
“Hired? I could hardly stop them once I showed them that map you found. I expect they would foam at the mouth if I told them I had a way to chart exact distances between bases.”
“Why haven’t you then?”
“I’ve been waiting until the guild was transitioned fully. I have a feeling they won’t want to wait when they find out. Bunch of workaholics,” he added with an ironic eye roll.
“How soon do you think we can get started?” John asked.
“Well, now that we’re getting settled, I suppose I’m ready when you are.”
“Excellent. Bring your map friends tomorrow. I expect there is going to be a lot of math to do,” John said.
He left Jules after that to do some practicing. He had almost had a breakthrough with Lunar Radiance. There was just something he was missing about the application.
John tried to hone his mastery of spiritual circulation, hoping to cross some invisible threshold he thought he was missing. He couldn’t figure out what the problem was. His instincts told him it had to be an important and fundamental aspect of the spirit.
His inability to progress always brought his mind back to Third Eye of Callysta. He had been attempting to learn how to use Culmination. The concepts involved had proven difficult to decipher.
Now, while John sat thinking about the roadblocks he was suffering, he made a connection. His goal was to learn how to project Neutralization onto the fruits so that Liz could attempt to gain Divine genes. He had been thinking of himself as a converter for the fruit.
That did nothing to help him in the task, but what it did do was remind him of his revelation at the hands of Light Thrower. He thought back to his realization that the moon was a sort of converter for the sun’s light. How he had come to understand that he himself was a moon.
What he had not understood until then was that unlike a real moon, John did not have a radiance of his own. A true moon in the spirit of the cultivation should soak up light and energy and return it to the world as beneficial nutrients. Therein was John’s shortcoming.
He had not yet learned how to give back what he took in. Unless he counted blasting giant holes in cactuses, anyway. Until he learned to spread his spirit peacefully, he would never make the breakthrough he sought.
Invigorated by the idea, John dove back into the scroll for mention of projection. He spent the entire afternoon scouring the lines of the paper. Now that he understood what he had been looking for, John could see hints and signs pointing to the information he was missing.
He didn’t reach the breakthrough he had been hoping for, but he did start to uncover the methods for projecting his spirit. It was a complicated process. It required both determination and visualization.
John had to circulate his spirit while also allowing his essence to spread from him. He envisioned it like an invisible cloud around him. It was like someone wearing a strong perfume nearby, only instead of a scent, his spirit would be what interacted with the people around him.
After spending the entire evening working on it, John felt the meter of progress notch forward ever so slightly. He was slowly learning to push beyond the borders of his flesh to feel the world around him with his spirit. The practice was unsettling, and he understood why it was among the last concepts he was expected to master.
He felt sure he would grow proficient in time, but he was equally sure there was still something he was missing to complete the puzzle. At the end of the day, John went to sleep disappointed but hopeful. The morning would bring a whole new adventure.
3
The next day, John woke to the biggest problem he had faced since entering the Garden. He had been only partially paying attention to the passing of days. As a result, when he looked at the calendar and found that his sister’s birthday was only two days away, he understandably began freaking out.
He had no idea what to get her. Apocalypses made it difficult to shop for birthdays. In the end, John was forced to admit to himself that he was out of his element.
He returned to the garden that day with the problem of his sister’s birthday looming over him. He was so preoccupied that when Liz showed up to tease him, he was unable to return her banter. At this she frowned and demanded an explanation.
“What’s wrong with you?” She asked.
John begrudgingly explained the problem he was stuck on. He knew he was only asking for Liz to tease him some more. She surprised him by taking the matter seriously, however.
“Well, what does she like?” Liz asked.
“That’s just the problem. Before all of this happened, she would have been a lot easier to shop for. Now I don’t know what there is.”
“What would you have thought to get her before?” Liz persisted.
“Uhhh, maybe like, something pretty?” John supplied lamely.
Liz gave him a look that was equal parts unamused and disappointed. She shook her head resignedly before lamenting.
“That poor girl,” she said.
“I told you I’m not good at this,” John said.
“You’re thinking about it wrong. How would your sister spend an evening before the takeover?”
John considered it for a few seconds. Things had been so different since the Kumani came that he had trouble recalling how anyone spent their time half a year ago. After a moment though, he came up with something.
“She likes old music,” he said.
“Old music? How old are we talking?” Liz asked.
“Old old. Like, the older the better. My dad has an old record player that belonged to my great grandfather. Emma used to listen to all the old records that came with it. She would sit there for hours just listening to them.”
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“That’s good. Music is something we can work with,” Liz said.
“Yeah, the problem is that all the stores you could have found something like that in are gone now.”
“Perhaps. Something might be done about it, but I see your point. What else?” Liz asked.
“Okay, well she likes a good problem to solve. Puzzles, you know?”
“We can probably find something that she’ll like. Anything else?”
“Colors?” John asked.
“Colors?” Liz repeated.
“Yeah. She likes those games where you sort things by color. She finds it really satisfying I guess,” he said.
“Alright. Music, puzzles, and colors. It’s something to go on at least. Now you just have to find a gift that satisfies one or more of those interests.” Liz encouraged.
“Thanks. That actually helps a lot,” John said sincerely.
“Of course it does. I’m awesome,” Liz said, punching him on the arm.
John met Jules soon after. He was busying himself with what looked like a mountain of preparations. Despite his workload, the man looked as excited as John had ever seen him.
He had chosen a large building near Obsidian temple to stage the operation. It was pretty basic, but had the size needed for the work that was to be done. As he beheld the scene, John realized how much work there must have been.
Jules was flanked by more than a dozen men and women who also appeared quite involved. They were all exchanging words in a jumble of shouted formulas and aggravated corrections. He had never seen humans look so much like a colony of ants.
John stood well away from the proceedings. He was afraid he would be expected to jump into the mess. Luckily, Jules wanted no such thing.
“Oh, you’re here. Wait right there for a sec, we’re just getting some final figures sorted out. It should only take a few minutes,” he said when he had spotted John.
John stood aside while people bustled around like they couldn’t find their own head. It was interesting to watch. He found himself giving them all tiny little bug voices as they scurried here and there.
“Much to do. Must work fast,” he squeaked to himself as he watched a girl duck under the arm of a man who was handing a sheet of paper to another woman.
“Writing numbers. Lines. Letters. Have to hurry,” he chittered at the sight of a man scribbling furiously on some paper that another person was already using.
“Master Jules will whip us if we do not work hard. He is-”
“What the hell are you doing?” Liz suddenly asked from right beside him.
John jumped like someone had just leapt from hiding and shouted “surprise!” He let out a short exclamation at her sudden appearance. Then he furrowed his brow at her.
“You know, it’s funnier when you mess with Jules,” he said.
“Yeah. He is pretty fun to mess with. But still. You let your guard down. What was that you were saying?” Liz asked.
“Oh. Uhh, nothing important. So, you’re here to see the big show huh?” John tried to redirect.
“Obviously. You know I was thinking about it, and you might try going to one of the Kumani shops. They have certain tools and resources to help train the mind. You may find something suitable for your sister there.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe I will,” John considered.
He was loathe to seek out the aliens for anything. He definitely held some resentment. But sometimes it was necessary to compromise. While he was lost in thought, another person approached them.
“You too?” John asked as his dad sidled up.
“Yeah, I figured I would see what a moving base looked like. They’re pretty excited, aren’t they?” Jack asked with a nod at the group of busy bodies.
“Yeah. Apparently, there is a lot to consider about turning our base into a car. I knew Jules would have a cow if I suggested just putting it in drive and going, but I didn’t realize he was going to go all Spock about it.”
“Ahh, let him have his fun,” Jack said before exchanging polite greetings with Liz.
In due time, Jules came over to John. He looked ecstatic. John prompted him as he approached.
“You about ready?” He asked.
“Just about. I’ve had everyone punching in hypothetical locations all morning to calculate how close we are to various bases we know about. It’s given us a general idea of where we are relative to other places. It also helps us estimate the exact size of this place.”
“What have you come up with?” John asked.
“It’s big,” Jules said dramatically.
“Wow, how many nerds did it take you to work that one out? ‘It’s big’? Seriously?” Liz taunted.
“By my calculations based on the furthest distance we’ve been able to come up with, it’s something like ten times the size of Jupiter. But that isn’t the craziest part.”
“Ten times the size of Jupiter? That would be like a sun,” Jack observed.
“Yes. It’s a statistical impossibility by my calculations. Moreover, some data previously collected indicates that no matter where you go in the Garden, days are always the same length of time and nights always contain at least one moon,” Jules said.
“I don’t understand the significance,” Jack said.
“The significance is that those things aren’t possible. A planet this size would have to be spinning impossibly fast on its axis for days to compare to earth. Jupiter is the fastest rotating planet we know of, twenty-eight times faster than earth. A planet ten times that size would have to be rotating something like 500,000 kilometers per hour to match it. And while the mass of the planet is directly responsible for the rotation speed, one factor disproves the whole mess.”
“What is that?” John asked.
“The stars. On earth, the North Star never moves from its position in the Northern Hemisphere, right?”
“I guess so, why?” He asked.
“Because some of these guys have been studying the night sky as well to compare what we know to what we see.”
“And?” John asked.
“And the sky is fixed. The stars don’t move. The sun and moons all make their way across the sky at a set rate. But constellations are never changing.”
“What does that mean?” John asked.
“It means this world is artificial,” Jules said excitedly.
4
Before John could even try to question Jules about the insane proclamation he had made, one of the cartographers sidled up and passed him a series of notes which he accepted without question. It was apparently what he had been waiting for, because he immediately set off.
“Alright. Here we go!” He said as he trotted back to the control panel.
John followed a few steps behind. He was content to let Jules do all of the work while he watched from leisure. Nevertheless, he intended to be close by to aid the procedure if necessary.
Jules began selecting options for the journey. He had apparently familiarized himself with the system quite thoroughly. He was moving and selecting options John had not known existed.
Soon, a large projected screen covered one of the walls of the room. It showed a sort of top-down view of Obsidian base and the surrounding landscape. Coordinates, altitudes, time of day, compass indicators, and various other figures littered the periphery of the screen.
The team of cartographers grew very excited at this. A couple of them unrolled what was undoubtedly the largest conglomerate of paper John had ever seen and began staking the corners. When it was flat, John saw that it was the map Jules had mentioned them working on.
John was taken aback at both the size and the detail that had gone into the creation of such a work. It was not simply dots with names indicating locations. There were mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, grasslands, swamps, and anything else that had been encountered by anyone in the guild since its start.
As he watched, the team located Emerald base on the map, denoted by a large emerald. John could easily recognize the different areas around the base. He was even able to pinpoint the place he and Liz had encountered the giant cactus. The skill with which the cartographers worked was undeniable.
They made markings starting at Emerald base, indicating to Jules that they were ready for the next step. He made a selection on the screen, and another information box appeared there. It was a distance and direction calculation.
35,000 miles
247° SW
7 Days Remaining.
At this, the team got out special looking mathematical tools and made marks based on some key they had created to measure distances on the incomplete map. One of them carefully walked across completed sections of the map while holding a piece of string. Another held the other end down on Emerald base while a third read out numbers to them that meant nothing to John.
“They’ve been making adjustments to the map as we receive more accurate information. This is probably about the dozenth iteration. They’re all hoping it’s the last.” Jules explained to John as they watched several members of the team converge on the spot they had designated for Obsidian base.
“I can’t imagine why,” John said.
They were all lying down in a circle on the map to draw the landscape. It was amazing to see it happen. Within ten minutes, the map looked almost exactly like the top-down image displayed on the wall. The base itself, the team omitted from the drawings.
“Hardly accurate to include it when it’s about to move,” Jules explained.
“That makes sense. Do you want me to tell them about the bases nearby? We might as well get as much for the map as we can, right?” John asked.
“No need. I already got all that from your dad. He’s a lot better employee than you by the way,” Jules said.
True to his words, the team of map makers soon spread out across the paper. They all worked on a different section of the surrounding area until John could see a rough depiction of everything he had come across since joining his father’s shuffle.
“That’s amazing,” John said.
“Yeah, they’ve actually drawn all of this up already. We were just waiting for the accurate locations before adding it to the map. It helps to make it look better if they’ve sketched it beforehand.”
“This is insane. I don’t know how you found so many geniuses but I’m happy you did,” John said.
“Same way I found you,” Jules laughed.
They watched the team work with singleminded determination. It took time, but soon enough the last mark was placed, and the map was ready for them to proceed. John smiled at the excitement in everyone’s face as Jules gave them a count down.
“If you thought what they’ve done so far is impressive, just wait,” Jules said in an undertone before reaching zero.
With an excited pause just before pressing the final button, Jules launched the base into motion. John was surprised, not because he or anyone else was unbalanced by the base suddenly lurching forward at a few hundred miles an hour. But because the opposite was true.
In fact, it was as if they weren’t moving at all. They felt no change in the gravity of the world. If it hadn’t been for the screen depicting the land around them, he wouldn’t have believed they had started moving at all.
The base moved unobtrusively across the land. It seemed to impossibly part the environment around it as it passed, leaving it undisturbed and unchanged in its wake. John wondered how any of this was possible, but Jules’s assertion that the entire world was artificial gave him the impression that “possible” was a lot more open for interpretation than he had suspected.
Unlike John, the team of experts jumped to work at once. The second the base had started moving, they were lying down instruments against the paper and making small denotations for landmarks and waterways. They worked like a well-oiled machine, rotating roles of watching the landscape pass, making general notes of locations, or beginning the arduous process of drawing out the world as it scrolled by.
It was like watching a movie in fast forward. John had never seen any group of people work so well together or so efficiently. They did only the basics of the map in order to keep up with the insane speed of travel, but even so, a clear image of the world they passed by would appear on the page soon thereafter.
John watched them go with something akin to longing in his eyes. The way each person seemed to work perfectly with all the others with very little problems was inspiring to him. It reminded him of the way Liz could move just the right manner to make her enemies do what she wanted.
“All things are connected,” he muttered to himself.
After only a few minutes passed, John got a strange notification.
“Approaching Quartz Base. Base Leader: Karbizal. Issue Challenge?”
John quickly declined before turning to Jules.
“I can see the names of bases we pass,” he said before sharing the name of the base they were coming closer to.
Jules shouted the information out to his team as they made a notation of its existence. They passed the base peacefully, though no doubt arousing some excitement in the inhabitants as they did so.
That day was spent observing the insanity of Jules and his cronies. The further the base traveled, the harder the team had to work to keep on top of things. Eventually, Jules had to admit that they could not maintain the effort for twenty hours straight.
Luckily, he was able to adjust quite a lot about the journey. In the end, he reduced the speed to about half its maximum potential. That didn’t make it easy for the team, but they could at least keep up.
This also didn’t negate the need for a cooldown period. But that was okay, as the cartographers would need a cool down far sooner than the base did. With trial and error, they reached a medium that everyone could handle. At the end of the day, John was impressed by the thousand miles they had covered as well as the rough depiction of the journey the map makers had been able to lay down under such pressure.
They had not traveled for the full twenty hours. In fact, after only four everyone was ready for a break. Eight hours in, Jules relented.
“We can pick this back up tomorrow. Rest up until then. We can fill in some of the missing details later. Good work everyone!” He said as he dismissed them.
“I’m going to stretch my legs and see what the terrain looks like. I should be back soon, but don’t leave without me,” John said to Jules before he headed for the door.
Liz and Jack, who had been quietly observing the proceedings for the last several hours met him as he made his way to the exit. Liz looked as bored as he felt, but his father looked content. He stopped to talk with them as they converged on the door.
“Well, that was boring,” Liz said.
“Yeah, it was more drudgery than I had hoped for. But now I’m going to explore a new area. So that’s pretty exciting,” John said.
“I’m coming too,” Liz said automatically.
“I figured. Dad?” John asked.
“You two have fun. I should get home to your mom soon. You know how she would worry if neither of us came back tonight.”
“Good point. Alright. I’ll be back soon,” John said.
“You better be. Don’t forget Emma’s birthday,” Jack reminded.
He exchanged an odd glance with Liz as he said this. John noticed but couldn’t make sense of it.
“I’ll be back,” he promised.
He made his farewells, hoping to be back home in the morning. Then he and Liz left the building to explore the Garden in a brand-new place.
5
John was hovering in air thirty feet off the ground. He and Liz had been exploring the new area around Obsidian base. The sun had just disappeared below the horizon, and soon the two moons would be their only source of light.
The volcano base had situated itself between two stray mountains near the end of a long range of their fellows. John could see the area on the other side of the mountain range quickly turn to desert. Behind them lay dense and unbroken forest land.
Deciding they had both seen enough forest land to satisfy them, they had chosen to explore along the edges of the desert, where lush green turned to dry and cracked ground before giving way to harsh desert sand. They were not there to hunt, neither needing any of the lesser genes in any case. But they soon found that no beast they spotted was less than Wizened.
No weak creatures were anywhere to be seen. Hundreds of Wizened beasts populated the area. Some entire herds of them roamed the edges of the desert.
The density of powerful enemies was startling. John also marked a terrifying number of Divine foes in their short flight from the base. Some were peacefully moving along, while others clashed with great exclamations of spirit.
“This is where the real danger lives,” he said to himself.
“What’s wrong?” Liz asked, hearing him murmur.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about the difference between here and Emerald base. It’s more like the area around Thunder Fox, but even that seems tame compared to this.”
“Don’t be stupid. It’s tame because it exists around Suné’s base. Without someone powerful enough to keep the area in check, of course it’s going to seem more dangerous,” Liz said.
“Hm. Good point. We should go back soon. I don’t want to get caught up in anything.”
“Caught up in anything? Ever heard of minding your business?” Liz asked.
“What kind of a stupid question is that?” John laughed as they turned back.
As they neared Obsidian’s great volcano, they came across the scuffle of a pair of Divine beasts. One was a boar, similar to the enhanced boar that John had killed all those months ago. This one was much larger, however. Coarse brown fur covered it, and two horrendous black tusks protruded from its shrieking mouth.
It was shrieking due to the much smaller foe that was battering it. A stark white ram with an extremely impressive pair of curved horns was continuously charging it from its flanks and slamming into the sides of the great boar. The angry pig was knocked to the ground and forced to reset itself with each pass.
John stopped to watch the pair fight. It appeared entirely one sided, until the boar managed to regain its feet in time to turn on the ram. With a great toss of its head, the boar caught the ram horn to tusk and sent it tumbling to the ground.
Without so much as a second’s hesitation, the boar was charging the fallen ram. The latter struggled to its feet but was unable to escape the fury of the hog bearing down on it. John was sure it was about to be ran through by the black tusks of the beast, but his jaw dropped at what really happened.
The ram stood to its feet just before the boat reached it. Without much more than a lunge forward, it met the charge. John saw the fastest circulation of spirit he had ever witnessed in the instant before impact.
The ram seemed to surge with it. And as he watched, John saw the pulse expelled from the ram at the point of impact with the boar. The effect was instantaneous and immense.
Both of the boar’s tusks completely splintered on impact, a feat John had never even heard of. Moreover, the boar was stopped in its tracks as the head butt continued to bash the body of the beast directly. Even from the height they hovered, John and Liz could hear the rib cage of the boar crack.
The massive boar was sent careening backwards in a manner suggesting it had been launched from a gigantic slingshot. John couldn’t believe his eyes. It crashed through two smaller trees before coming to rest ruinously against a sturdier trunk.
“Holy shit,” John said as he beheld the silent aftermath of the scene.
They waited and watched from above as the ram stopped moving. Its foe was clearly already vanquished, and it made no move to approach the fallen boar. Instead, it seemed to collapse in exhaustion at the base of a tree.
“This is the part where you forget to mind your business isn’t it?” Liz asked as she watched John eye the ram.
“Looks that way, yeah.”
John was doing more than just watch the ram, however. He had been inspecting it carefully the entire time. After its great crash against the boar, all of the formidable spirit it had exuded seemed to have abandoned the beast.
John wondered what kind of cultivation path it followed. His own let him draw more spiritual energy from the light around him. Apparently, the ram had no such means.
It made John consider something though. He had been edging towards the understanding that he himself was the moon in the equation of Lunar Radiance. Gaining energy through moonlight was simply a beginning step necessary for understanding the potential of the skill.
What he had been considering most recently was the idea what if he really was supposed to be the moon, he would have to learn to affect those around him in the way moonlight affected him. That was the application of his spirit he needed to master.
He had begun the process of projecting his spirit, but he was far from able to harness it to that extent. But as he watched the exhausted goat, he realized that wasn’t the only way he had learned to use his spirit.
The next second, he had his bow in hand. He pondered what it was that he wanted to do for a moment before proceeding. A new idea had suddenly come to him.
In the past, he had only ever wanted to attack with his bow. He had poured his desire into the string and the bow’s nature had done the rest. Now, however, he started to consider the nature of Lunar Radiance itself.
It was not a spiritual cultivation based around harming others. In fact, the cultivation itself was unable to cause harm. The damage done had always been an exertion of John’s will.
In other words, John had been corrupting the purpose of his own cultivation. He had begun using it for his own desires, rather than following the path it laid out. He had not been far enough along to understand the true purpose of Lunar Radiance.
Now, however, it was clear to him. The radiance of the moon. It was to provide light; to lend sight to those in the dark. It was security for those who felt alone. It was the assistance of a benevolent observer. It was that ray of light in the dark that gave one the endurance to continue on.
“I am the moon,” John said as he drew his bow.
6
John released his spirit arrow a moment later. He had not charged it with the intent of destruction. This time, he let himself feel the essence of the moonlight within him.
He felt it’s cooling, soothing, and invigorating properties flow along the pathways he had established for it. Instead of destructive energy, he allowed the rejuvenating energy to swell into the arrow he was forming. To his surprise, it took an enormous amount of his stored potential to make an arrow this way.
He realized it was because his bow had always contributed to the formation before. In this instance, John was doing all of the work. His bow apparently had no ability to create arrows for anything but killing.
Despite the strain, John was able to solidify the arrow with some extra time and effort. When he had, he took aim at the resting ram and loosed his arrow. It zoomed down and connected with the beast in an instant.
The arrow splashed against the beast like it was shot from a water gun instead. It spread over the startled ram who quickly regained its feet and began looking around for signs of company. The arrow had soaked immediately into its fur without a trace.
John’s deeper inspection told him otherwise though. As soon as it hit, his arrow began lending itself to the ram’s stamina recovery. The exhausted spirit of the creature began to circulate once more. It was nothing like its normal rate, but John could tell that it was recovering more quickly after his intervention.
It was not the outcome John had expected, but he was still pleasantly surprised. He was even more surprised when he got the notification a moment later.
“Congratulations! First Gate of Lunar Radiance has been opened!”
John felt an immense swell of his previously depleted spirit as something like a lock broke open within him. He thought back to when he had learned Third Eye of Callysta and the insanity of pain he had endured to achieve it. This felt more like he was a fountain, with spiritual energy bursting from him in all directions.
He took a deep and satisfying breath. He slowly contracted and contained his spirit as he brought his heart rate back down. He laughed out loud at his success.
Below, the ram he had used as a Guinea pig trotted away. It was unwilling to stick around and see what happened next. John didn’t even notice this as Liz had already gained his attention.
“What’s going on?” She asked.
“I did it,” he said.
“Wow, that explains it all. Thanks,” she said, bemused.
“First Gate breakthrough. Two down, one to go,” John said.
Before Liz could slap him with another scathing response, John got yet another thrilling notification.
“Congratulations! As the first from your planet to break a Spirit Gate, you have received a Title: ‘Spiritual Forerunner!’ All spiritual cultivation is now 20% easier! This Title gains the Trailblazer Distinction.”
John almost cheered. He had achieved another first for earth. He was surprised no one had managed to break a gate by then. Of course, spiritual cultivation was no easy thing to master.
“Oh man,” he said, “I have to get a move on with my Physical Cultivation. Maybe I can get all three firsts.”
John was inspired by the thought, but he didn’t have high hopes. In any case, he had finally achieved his goal. Now he could set his focus on the future once more. He and Liz returned to the safety of Obsidian base after that, and John quickly bid her farewell before returning to earth and thence home to his family.
“I am the moon,” he told the ceiling of his room as he drifted off to sleep.
What is this chapter called?
