Book 13: Chapter 42: Naked Will

Path of Dragons

The smooth, glassy surface was cold beneath Elijah’s feet, and yet, each step left blisters upon his soles. Corruption, thick and corrosive, tangled with his Mantle of Authority, writhing around the branches. The cloud was diffuse but ubiquitous, like a dense fog from which there was no escape.

Elijah plunged ahead, his mind focused inward while he forced his mantle as wide as possible. It stretched for dozens of feet in every direction, surrounding him in a halo of protection. And yet, it was not foolproof. It wavered beneath the strain, trembling more with every passing second. The very atmosphere attempted to tear it to pieces.

To counter that, Elijah funneled massive amounts of ethera into the structure. Keeping the flow steady strained his willpower to its limit, but he managed it all the same.

Elijah’s path followed a straight, flat line, but it felt like he was traveling up a massive incline. Each step came only after significant effort. It wasn’t physical in nature. Rather, the cloud of corrupted ethera clung to him, slowing his pace to a crawl.

But he kept going.

One step after another.

Soon enough, he’d gone a hundred feet. Then two hundred. A half mile. When he reached the halfway point across the Abyssal Moat, corrosive pus had begun to fall from the sky. Each drop sizzled when it hit, be its landing spot flesh or the glassy surface beneath Elijah’s feet.

His Mantle of Authority wavered under the weight of corruption, the tips of the branches turning to tatters. It unraveled, losing its structure and spraying dense flows of filtered ethera into the air. It accumulated in a cloud, the disparity between the corruption and clean energy creating lightning-like clashes. It was like Elijah stood in the center of a localized thunderstorm.

His mantle became a sieve. Or a leaky boat in the middle of a hurricane. Corruption seeped through, tearing into him with such potent corrosion that even his silver-tier body, forged in the abyss, began to degrade.

Not quickly, but Elijah knew it was only a matter of time before it was either corrupted or destroyed by the atmosphere.

Which was the entire point.

Cultivation, at its core, was about building something better. Whether it was his body, soul, mind, or core, that was invariably true. Some people simply added to what was already there. Others excised bits and pieces in an effort to rebuild them more efficiently.

Elijah preferred the more extreme option.

Tearing it all down and building it from scratch. Not only did it allow him to course correct – after all, he was making most of it up as he went, which meant that he made plenty of mistakes – but when successful, it was also the most effective. According to the guides he’d read, it was as stark a difference as getting a higher-grade class.

Sometimes even more.

For Elijah, who needed all the power he could get, it was the only option.

Or that was what he told himself. In reality, he simply wouldn’t settle for anything but his best. And that meant quite a lot of pain was in his future.

“What’s new?” he muttered to himself as he continued his trek. The second leg of his journey was even more difficult than the first, with thicker ethera, more potent corruption, and even more corrosion. He pushed forward without complaint, and eventually, he reached his destination.

The Cyst loomed only a hundred yards away. It pulsed rhythmically, sounding – and feeling – like nothing so much as the planet’s heartbeat. So close, Elijah could see that the geysers of pus were even larger than he’d imagined. Each column of viscous liquid was more than a hundred feet wide. The pus fell incessantly, coating everything in a vaguely reflective sheen of ochre-tinted mucus.

Elijah did his best to ignore it, but each drop felt like someone stabbing his bare skin with a molten knife. He’d long since employed Wild Resurgence, so the damage was quickly healed. But the pain remained.

Without further ado, Elijah dropped to the lotus position. Resting his forearms on his knees, he allowed his body to go slack, and he turned his focus almost entirely inward. All but one leaf concentrated on the expression of his soul.

And it was a mess.

The outward branches – his mantle – were broken and ragged, like a tree that had been mostly destroyed by a passing tornado. Inside, everything was still intact, though his channels quivered with the strain of forcing so much ethera through them. Like an overfilled hose left out in the sun. Eventually, it would burst.

Elijah was counting on it.

He just needed to guide the destruction, lest he be crippled by the damage.

For months, he’d been mapping his intended pattern. Once, he’d used the vascular systems of both plants and animals – with a good bit of inspiration from Nerthus – to form his system. This time, he would continue that theme, though he would incorporate the nervous and lymphatic systems as well.

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If his only goal was to reach the next stage of soul cultivation, he would have simply added the new features. In all likelihood, that would do the trick. Especially after he’d laid such a formidable foundation. Yet, Elijah knew it would be weaker.

On top of that, he’d come to recognize a host of mistakes made during his last bout of soul cultivation. None were particularly prominent, but after spending so long in the abyss, where the efficiency of his mantle was the difference between life and death, he’d come to recognize them quite intimately.

And the only way to fix those was to rebuild everything from scratch. Before he could do that, he had to break it all down. He’d known that from the very beginning, and he had a plan in place. Yet, he hesitated.

If he made one little mistake, he’d be crippled, the branches of his soul broken and tangled beyond all recognition. There was a reason most people spent years preparing for cultivation, and even then, they only did so under the supervision of someone more experienced.

Nobody just threw themselves into the most toxic place on the planet and hoped for the best. It was insane. It was tantamount to a death wish. No – worse than that. It was a good way to end up entirely incapable of channeling ethera. The line between success and disaster was incredibly thin, but Elijah intended to walk it all the same.

With that in mind, he watched as his mantle slowly degraded. More than a day passed before he reached his limit. He pushed past it, letting the corruption ravage his channels for a full hour before he finally retreated. The tent provided a slight relief, though the damage to his soul remained.

He only allowed himself to rest for a few hours before returning to his chosen cultivation spot and repeating the process. This time, he forced himself to remain for ten extra minutes before retreating. And those last few minutes felt like hours. Days, perhaps – each second filled with agony as the potent corruption rampaged through his soul.

But it held up surprisingly well.

Too well.

Originally, he’d hoped for symmetry, and he’d intended to go through nine cycles before embarking on the final phase of his plan. However, it quickly became very clear that he would need many more sessions before he reached the limit of what he could endure.

Perhaps he could have pushed ahead regardless. Indeed, that was almost certain. But Elijah would not settle for less than his absolute best effort. So, he continued to push himself. The sessions grew longer, while his rest phases became ever shorter. By the fifteenth cycle, he remained out there for a full six hours past what he’d previously considered the point of no return. By the thirtieth, it was an entire day.

During those brief periods of recovery, Elijah acknowledged his own surprise. His soul was both more potent and far more durable than he’d ever expected. That was both a good and bad characteristic.

Good, because the more he could endure before breaking, the better the results would be. Bad, because it meant that his cultivation session – even before entering the final phase – would last for weeks, rather than days. Maybe even months.

Elijah accepted that. He internalized the expectation and filed it away before continuing his progress.

Soon enough, the cycles began to blend together. He spent entire days laid completely bare to the corrosion. Without his silver-tier body, he would have long since succumbed to the abyssal taint. But now? It resisted it. Every cell within his body warred against it, robbing it of its corrupting power.

But even with that neutralized, the damage remained. It might’ve even been more potent.

It all became a blur of pain and routine, and all the while, Elijah continued to push himself a little harder. A little further with every passing cycle.

Dozens later, he finally reached the limit.

He couldn’t take any more, even though he tried. Time and time again until it was obvious that he’d reached the breaking point. When he retreated to the tent, his body was covered in blood, blisters, and pus. His soul was in tatters, barely holding together, and even his core trembled under the strain.

With this instance, he allowed himself to fully recover. He showered under the rain of Blessing of the Grove, and he even slept a bit. He ate. He drank filtered water. And he prepared himself for the trial to come.

Finally, after a single day of rest, he once again forged ahead – for what he hoped would be the final time.

The journey to his spot was markedly easier. He’d repeated the trek so many times that it almost felt routine. The damage was still there, and his soul continued to scream at him for repair. Yet, he’d become so inured to it that he could easily ignore the call.

At last, he reached his spot and fully opened himself to the corrosive influence of the excised world.

Elijah’s every muscle tensed as a flood of corruption surged through him. His already-fractured soul trembled under the wave, but it held. For six long days, it remained steadfast as his body blistered, and his flesh sloughed away.

He refused to acknowledge it. Nor did he quarantine it. Instead, he felt every second of agony, fully and without dilution. Even as his body and soul withered away, Elijah employed a single leaf to monitor the situation. The rest of his mind remained firmly fixated on his plan, cycling it over and over again so that when the time came, he could avoid any mistakes.

Some might have called it torture.

Elijah didn’t disagree. But there was satisfaction to it, too. The knowledge that there was a goal, a reason behind the madness – that separated it from meaningless torment. There was a point to the suffering.

He embraced that.

With every passing moment, his soul degraded. It fought back. It held its structure for far longer than he could have imagined. The calluses he’d built over the course of his time on Gorveth were much more durable than even he had known.

But they eventually gave way.

Like a mountain standing before a howling windstorm, it seemed monolithic. But bit by bit, grain by gain, it gave way to erosion. So it was with his soul until, at last, the final membrane dissolved.

The world narrowed into a singular point of pain. His mind screamed at him to heal, to shift into a more durable form, but he refused.

Ethera rushed through him, wild and uncontrolled. His core shook, and his body burst from within. Bits and pieces of him scattered across the landscape, only to be swept away by the incessant wind.

But Elijah’s spirit remained anchored to the imagery he’d created for his cultivation system. A massive tree – like a naked pillar – stood tall. Limbless, but with roots buried deep within the earth and within his very spirit, it stood firm. Stoic. Steadfast and indestructible.

Something tugged at him, dragging his consciousness away.

He refused to allow it.

Instead, the leaves of his mind, suspended from nothing and surrounding the ephemeral tree like a halo of emerald crystals, rustled. His trunk flexed. And his roots drank deep of the local ethera.

And all the while, he remained entirely focused on the task at hand.

It was time to rebuild his soul, better and stronger than ever before.