Chapter 6

  Time passed like sand between Yin’s fingers, days of studying and cycling came and went. He made progress on his cores, bringing them all the way up to the verge of iron, and was forced to stop there until he was ready for his iron body.

  That left him a lot of free time, which he spent studying and training Secretary. Of course ready to give the spirit more pure scales when it did well.

  Secretary had been studying right alongside Yin and was starting to suggest its own scripts to try. That had led to a light script that only worked under direct sunlight, and a preservation script that couldn’t actually hold anything without destabilizing.

  Yin loved watching his little companion try things out, it was like an even better version of the artificial intelligence he’d trained in his last life. Secretary didn’t need libraries of data on hand to do its work, it could actually remember on its own or ask questions. Its most frequently asked question was ‘can I have another?’ when he gave it scales.

  But now it was about time for Yin to make a decision and advance. He got up and wandered through the natural corridors in the compound until he made it to a ceremonial hall. Entering he sat in the center on a small platform and cycled to calm himself.

  Soon he wasn’t alone in the room anymore, Emriss patiently waited for Yin to open his eyes. ‘’Are you sure you want to do this?’’ She asked.

  ‘’I absolutely, completely, do not.’’ Yin answered bluntly. Growing slightly frantic as Zeurel and a very tall woman who was her healing master entered, holding bottles of poison. ‘’Honestly, I’m thinking I might defect and just go ahead and jump into Tiger’s mouth right now. I don’t want to do this.’’

  Everyone ignored him, just as he’d asked them to several times over the last weeks, knowing he’d wuss out before the start. It was time for Yin to get his Bloodforged iron body.

  He’d debated it for a long while, with many of his myriad instructors, and eventually was forced to agree that it was simply the all around best choice for him. There were those that increased stamina, balance, speed, strength, senses, how his body reacted to different types of damage. The supremely strong healing properties of the Bloodforged essentially gave him most of those. And almost all his instructors agreed that the iron bodies with mental enhancements were one and all not as good as the physical ones.

  Those effects could almost all be gained temporarily, with potions and treasures, or through rigorous cultivation. How that cultivation was done though no one had elaborated on, much to Yin’s chagrin.

  Zeurel set a bottle down in front of Yin and grinned at him wryly as he continued to complain. She’d grown quite a bit, in several ways. She had advanced to highgold, and in the process experienced a great growth spurt. Unfortunately she was still a naturalist, so her frame was plain for anyone to see. Her horns had grown out a bit, giving Cherie a pair of perches in the fluffy jungle of hair.

  ‘’You’ll be fine Yin, I’m here to make sure of that.’’ She said and Cherie whistled in agreement, splashing down on Yin’s head and sending a wave of her cleansing and nourishing water madra through his body. If he hadn’t already been at peak condition he would be now.

  Zeurel joined her master and helped to prepare needles full of poison to make the process as fast as possible. Yin forced himself not to hyperventilate or make any noises that were too pathetic to recover from.

  Emriss winked back into the room, having disappeared momentarily. The fact she was there at all was a huge waste of time for the monarch but Yin was very grateful for it.

  ‘’Everything is prepared.’’ Zeurels master said like an executioner. Yin considered trying to make a break for it.

  They positioned themselves around him, ready to do their part, only waiting for Yin to make the first move. The bottle in front of him contained a sort of weak spiritual solvent, it would help to speed things up even more.

  He gripped the neck of the bottle and breathed. Seconds passed glacially, and his world narrowed until it was only him and the bottle.

  He drank it.

  The liquid was sweet, but stung at his tongue and throat as it went down. When it hit his stomach the stinging sensation began to sweep through him. ‘’Now.’’ He heard someone say. And then needles were stuck into his arms and then legs. ‘’Cycle Yin.’’ They demanded urgently, and he did.

  The poison mixed with the spiritual liquid and the burning became a dozen times worse. It spread through him like a wildfire, every nerve alight, and it was only the start. He felt like he was swelling, becoming porous like a sponge as his flesh was devoured, but he had to keep going. It entered his organs, and Yin felt like he was truly dying, he wasn’t even sure what position his body was in anymore.

  There was poison in his spine, his heart, even his brain. Someone was speaking. He had to do something. But he couldn’t remember.

  It was in his soul, the glowing cores, fit to burst with all the energy they contained. Break them?

  Yes.

  Break them.

  They exploded, and an ocean flooded through him, finally washing him away into the abyss.

  —

  Yin woke up in his room to Secretary wrapping itself around his forehead. He felt good, better than ever, but his soul cores felt tiny and diffuse. He wanted to get back to work right away.

  But before that he noticed something on his bedside table. Boxes and cards. The first one he grabbed was from Montai, a simple ‘Gratz Bro’ inexpertly scrawled in english. Honestly Yin was impressed the bird had managed it at all with that beak of his. In a script covered box was a sacred fruit, Yin could feel the power coursing through it. He put it back. ‘’Secretary, we’re gonna learn how to make boxes like this later.’’ The spirit turned into a purple hand that made the good old ‘ok’ sign.

  Next one was from Zeurel, a card with a cartoony little rendition of the goat with hearts floating around her. No text though. Checking the tall box he found a bottle inside, labeled as ‘Goat Muck. Brewed By Zeurel’. He put it back and closed the box, she would explain what the hell it was when he got his hands on her later.

  Next were some cards from Margo and his other teachers, well wishes and congratulations. And to go with them was a densely engraved slate of stone. A dream tablet. Pulling it into his lap he carefully sent a tendril of his madra into it, and felt it interact with the script. Madra returned from the tablet into his mind and suddenly he was standing in a blank white room.

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  In front of him stood a humanoid puppet. It sank into a combat stance, and then one by one slowly went through strikes, blocks, kicks, sweeps. All sorts of martial arts. Yin felt a smile try to split his face in half.

  So it was time for his real training arc to begin.

  But that wasn’t all, one last letter had been hiding under the dream tablet. From Emriss, Yin scoffed at the disrespect of hiding the Monarch's things like that. He would have done a spit take if he’d had anything in his mouth. Maybe that was what Zeurel had been hoping for.

  Emriss had prepared a cultivation room for him, made specifically for his path of Ramiel. Two point three parts light, one point two parts fire and one part force.

  Yin trembled, he couldn’t wait to start.

  The trembling wasn’t going away, he rushed to the bathroom and ended up spending a few hours there, purging the residual poison from his body.

  —

  The timeout let Yin cool his head a bit and he decided that before he threw himself head first into training he’d take the time to check in with his friends first.

  Starting with the one he hadn’t seen in months.

  He’d asked around a bit but going to a remnant processing facility was probably the last place he’d thought Duong would be.

  The first room inside a seemingly naturally grown warehouse was something like an exotic prison. A rainbow of different creatures, animals and plants alike, contained in scripted cells. It was almost completely silent, the scripts sure put in work at this place. ‘’Secretary, try to memorize the scripts you can see on the cells.’’ The little spirit didn’t listen, peeking out from under his hair at the dangerous things.

  Further inside he found Duong, looking twice the size he’d been the last time Yin had seen him. His soul as well was much stronger, already jade. The boy had worked hard the entire time out of sight of his friends. He still hadn’t split his soul though.

  He was working on a black remnant, Yin could feel death from it even from so far away. When he came close enough he noticed that Duong was actually using a pure cloak technique.

  ‘’Sup man.’’ Yin greeted him casually, hands in his pockets. Duong looked up, confused for a second until he recognized him. Standing from where he’d crouched he turned up to be a head taller than Yin. ‘’You look like you’re doing well.’’

  ‘’Yeah, it’s uh, been a while.’’ Duong said awkwardly, fiddling with a steel scissor idly. ‘’Did you need something?’’

  Yin shifted his weight and tried to look even more casual, not letting the awkwardness get to him. ‘’Naw, you know, just checking in, you doing good? Better than, y’know, last time?’’

  Duong started to look a little shifty as well. ‘’Ah, yeah. I’m, y’know, working.’’ He gestured to the workshop and the remnant he was cutting up. ‘’Turns out I’m kinda good at soulsmithing, so, yeah.’’

  Yin hummed in agreement, and then stood there looking for words. ‘’Well, uhh, good to see you again man. We should- all of us, we should meet up every now and then. Hang out and watch a movie or something, talk about stuff.’’

  Duong tapped his fingers against his leg, glaring at the remnant he was working on. His lips pressed together and then he spoke a bit more agitated. ‘’They don’t like me. Montai and especially Zeurel. They’re not all that subtle about it.’’

  Yin nodded, denying the obvious would achieve nothing. ‘’Yeah, but I think that’s because you were kind of a downer back then, right?’’ The taller boy frowned at him in disbelief. ‘’You seem a lot less, uh, pressed now. Maybe if you came along sometime you could talk it out with them.’’

  He sighed deeply, body losing some tightness. ‘’I don’t know, maybe if- what is that? You have something in your hair.’’

  Yin brushed his hair back. ‘’This is my dream spirit Secretary, it’s making pretty good progress. Secretary, this is Duong, he’s a reincarnator like me.’’ Secretary went formless and made a little tendril hand to wave at him.

  ‘’Huh.’’ Duong looked pensive for a moment. ‘’I guess you got a spirit and I got designs, I’m gonna use this thing to make a sort scalpel for a drudge.’’ He toed the dark half real corpse. ‘’I’ll think about it, I wanna keep working.’’

  Yin took the dismissal for what it was and left with a casual goodbye.

  —

  Yin wasted much of the rest of his day looking for Montai, but it turned out after dinner that he’d left to do some training with others of his species. His grandfather, an underlord, had come into contact with one of Emriss’ people and requested a meeting.

  With only one left to talk to he simply went to Zeurels room and kicked the door open. Finding the goat wearing clothes. They stared at each other, Zeurel shocked and Yin mad beyond belief.

  ‘’You bitch.’’

  ‘’No! They’re just a gift!’’

  ‘’I should have known.. NO! Keep them on.’’ Zeurel stopped trying to rip her pants off. ‘’How long?’’

  She smiled wryly. ‘’Yin, I lived for ten years with my kind before they let me stay here full time, and we never wore clothes. Do you have any idea how hard it is to put clothes on again after ten years? It’s hard Yin! To abandon the freedom, to WRAP myself up in BONDS and LIMITING myself. I hate it!’’

  ‘’If you don’t drop the performance I’m gonna pour out that Goat Muck crap you gave me.’’

  ‘’Ok wait!’’ Zeurel held her hands out as if trying to calm a skittish animal, slowly stepping over to Yin. ‘’That stuff was super hard to brew, you can’t just get rid of it. It’s an old Seviatig potion that sort of acts like a super crappy Diamond Veins elixir. The tiiiniest boost to your channels durability.’’

  ‘’Oh, good.’’ Yin was surprised she could get something that good for him. He let her come close enough to start petting him as if he were an angry little dog. ‘’So the clothes? You’re not a full time streaker?’’

  ‘’Streaker! Listen Yin I wasn’t kidding, clothes suck after not wearing any for so long. This is training alright, I’m getting used to wearing them again and it’s taking some time. Doing it in my room where I don’t have to move around in them so much is helping.’’

  Yin sighed and sat on her bed.. wait?

  He’d relaxed too much and she’d taken the chance to guide him into her trap. It would be dangerous if this continued. He tried to get up but Zeurel was faster and pushed him in. ‘’If you take your clothes off I’m going to get violent.’’

  She glared right back at him. ‘’Fine.’’

  Yin didn’t like the sound of that, time to bring the big guns out. ‘’I talked to Duong today.’’ Zeurel sank into her pillow with a heavy sigh. ‘’He’s looking good, more relaxed, handling puberty better and everything.’’

  She looked at him oddly. ‘’Puberty?’’

  ‘’Yeah, that’s kinda how I tagged it back when we all met. Y’know, he was all testy and insecure. He’s practicing soulsmithing now and it’s going well for him.’’

  ‘’I’ve known him for four years and it took him three to stop calling me ‘Goat’.’’ Zeurel told him, her usual cheery demeanor gone. ‘’He got Montai’s name down no problem, but I was ‘Goat’. And he got way angrier when I was around after I hit gold.’’

  Yin thought it over, letting Secretary float off into what looked like Cherie’s little enclosure. ‘’So, maybe he brought some sexism or autism with him when he was reborn. But-’’

  ‘’No buts, I want him to apologize to me on his own and if he won’t I don’t want to see him again.’’

  ‘’He is one thousand procent not ever going to think that he owes you an apology for that if I don’t tell him.’’ Zeurel glared with one eye for a moment before relenting and nodding.

  ‘’Fine, can we talk about something else?’’ She asked.

  ‘’Sure, have anything on your mind?’’

  ‘’Yeah, are we together?’’ Yin squinted at her. ‘’Like, are we a couple? I think we should be.’’

  ‘’I think we can talk about that when we’re both adults again physically.’’ Yin said firmly, considering getting out of the bed, the situation really was as dangerous as he’d thought.

  ‘’You like me.’’ She said and grinned at whatever she saw on his face. ‘’I knew it.’’

  They lay in somewhat comfortable silence for a while.

  ‘’Wanna kiss?’’

  ‘’Good night Zeurel!’’ Yin fled.