Path to the Apocalypse

Victoria spent the next two hours answering Horace's questions about Earth. He seemed weirdly fascinated with the internet and the fact that they had an online culture, which was probably good since that was actually the one Victoria was the most knowledgeable about. In particular, they talked a lot about memes. "I'm not sure I get this 'pepe' concept." Horace frowned.

Victoria shrugged. "Honestly, I don't really get it either. It's just this dumb frog in different poses that people send each other. Like emojis, but weird."

"Emojis?" Horace asked.

"Emoticons." Victoria elaborated. "Little generic representations of emotional states. They started as text, where something like a colon and a parenthesis would make a smiley face, but then people made these little yellow faces that actually had the expressions on them and it just kinda blew up from there."

Horace blinked at her. "What's a colon and a parenthesis?"

"Dot dot swoosh." Victoria replied, drawing in the air. "Dot dot is the colon, swoosh is the parenthesis. They're extra forms of punctuation beyond the period, question mark, and exclamation point."

"And what do they mean outside of these 'emoticons'?" Horace continued.

Victoria frowned. "That's-" Suddenly there was a ping from the candle as the pin fell out, and Victoria let out a relieved sigh. "That's time, so we can talk about it next week. Now it's your turn to teach me."

"But-" Horace began, before Victoria cut him off with a look and he sighed. "Very well. Let's start with what you already know. You have both Essence and Spirit, yes?" Victoria nodded. "Good. Have you formed your Essence armor?" Victoria nodded again, rolling her eyes. That was literally the first thing she learned how to do! It was like asking if she knew how to make Spirit threads. "Alright, show me." Horace gestured for her to get up and demonstrate. Victoria frowned slightly, but did as he asked, getting up and letting out her Essence, slowly getting it moving in the complex pattern described by her Rune. "Okay stop." Horace interjected before she could finish. "It looks like your Rune provided a decently complex pattern, which is good, but you're forming it all wrong. You're leaving entire sections unguarded as you set up! The first thing you have to do when your armor forms is get it to swirl, then add in a current going the opposite direction, then start adding complexity. A mediocre defense is better than no defense at all. Start again from the beginning."

Victoria frowned, but did as he said, restarting by getting her essence to flow in one direction, then the other, before starting to add in complexity. Horace began pacing around her as she did, making a few comments, such as telling her to focus on her heart and head first, before moving on to her torso and limbs. It took a minute or so before Victoria had the whole thing going. "Okay, done."

Horace reached out to poke the armor, nodding. "This is a good pattern. Feels almost solid." He commented. "However, your formation speed is atrocious! Have you practiced it at all?!? You need to be able to form your armor in under ten seconds, minimum, and be able to get a basic defense up almost instantly! No enemy is just going to sit and wait while you take your sweet time getting your defenses up. By the time you're done, the fight will already be over, and you'll be dead!"

Victoria paused for a moment, a bit stunned. Horace was actually yelling at her… she didn't know he had it in him. She nodded. "So, practice it over and over until I can form it without even thinking, got it. What's next?"

Horace blinked, a bit put off by the fact she'd just agreed. "I- I don't think you understand how important this-"

"No, no, I got it." Victoria assured him. "But I'm not wasting time that could be used to learn practicing. Unless you have some tricks I can use to help me get faster, I can practice later."

Horace considered her words for a moment, before nodding. "My only suggestion would be to start small, then expand. Make each step second nature before moving onto the next." Victoria nodded in understanding. "Now, do you have any other Essence skills?"

"No." Victoria shook her head.

Horace frowned. "Are you sure? No way to form an Essence weapon? To make yourself more flexible? To alter your center of balance?"

Victoria frowned back, shaking her head again. "Nothing like that… though, I haven't focused too much on my Essence Rune recently. I've been more focused on my Spirit Rune."

Horace's frown deepened. "You have both?"

Victoria raised an eyebrow at him. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Usually people don't like to assimilate too many Runes at once. It's better to focus on one at a time, without getting distracted." Horace replied. "Splitting your focus may allow you to take in more information, but it lacks depth, only giving you a superficial understanding, which- Ah! Right, you don't know about Rune Advancement! You see, when you fully comprehend a Rune, if you wait for an epiphany-"

"Dude, I know about Rune Advancement. That's why I have both an Essence and Spirit Rune. They advanced." Victoria rolled her eyes.

Horace froze. "You- you know about Rune Advancement? But- how?!?"

"I was comprehending a Rune, and it Advanced?" Victoria replied, raising an eyebrow at him. "It isn't that complicated."

Horace's expression twisted at the thought of how many struggling disciples would throttle her for that statement while reevaluating what level Victoria was at. If she could Advance her Runes so easily… he shook his head. It just made the fact that she was only a dual-core that much more tragic. Unless… Horace paused. If she truly was this gifted… if he gave her enough training… would there still be a chance? He gave her a look that mixed calculating and hopeful into one. "Do you think- would you be interested in learning Qi skills?"

Victoria gave him a look, before shaking her head. "This kingdom doesn't take kindly to those who excel. Even if I had a Qi Rune, I would have to hide it, because if I didn't, the King would feel threatened, and either kill me or force me to marry into his family. So I have no interest in Qi skills until I enter a sect, at which point I will be outside the King's influence."

"But at the rate you're progressing, if you don't Acquire a Qi Rune… you're already at risk of missing any opportunity you may have! Even if I did my best to teach you… I'm not sure it would be enough. You have to learn now!" Horace explained with an almost pleading look in his eye.

Victoria shook her head. "Qi skills are off the table. Do you have anything more to teach me about Essence or should we move to Spirit?"

"No, you have to listen to me!" Horace exclaimed. "If you don't Acquire a Qi Rune, you'll be stuck in the Circulatory realm! If you want to advance, you need all three Rune types!"

"And that is my decision!" Victoria snapped sharply, glaring at him. "A Qi Rune would be a problem for me! If that cripples my future, so be it. At least I'll have a future."

"But-" Horace began again.

"No, buts!" Victoria stopped him. "You will respect my choices, or we are done here."

Horace's mouth closed with a click as he gritted his teeth, before nodding stiffly. He wanted to say he could protect her from some stupid king, but he didn't think she would listen at this point. He once again cursed this stupid, backwards region internally, before moving on. "Fine. Let's focus on Essence for now. Essence is all about the body and your control over it. Ways to treat your skin and bones to make them more durable, to massage your joints to make them more flexible, to encourage muscle growth, to enhance your senses… anything that has a physical basis is touched by Essence, though the more detailed you get, the more difficult it is to accomplish without the guidance of a Rune. For now, let's focus on something simple: body strengthening. Start by infusing the area you wish to strengthen with as much Essence you can. I would Suggest starting with something small, like a finger."

Victoria nodded, putting as much Essence as she could into the pointer finger on her left hand. It felt weird, almost like her finger was pressurized. "Okay, now what?"

"Do you remember your pattern for your armor?" Horace asked and Victoria nodded hesitantly. "Slowly begin to move the Essence in your finger in that pattern."

Victoria narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, before turning back to her finger and doing as he said, carefully getting the pattern moving in her finger. At first it just felt a little weird, but as the speed picked up, her finger began to burn! The faster it went, the worse it got, until Victoria was gritting her teeth in pain.

"There are better patterns to use for this, but they're complicated and not better enough to be worth the effort." Horace began to explain as Victoria struggled. "As the Essence moves, it damages you, while its infusion heals you. This cycle of destruction and restoration increases your body's resistance to damage. It's most effective on skin and bones, but every area of your body benefits from the process. The more Essence you can pack into an area, the better. Though… avoid using it on your head or heart, at least until you have a lot more Essence. If you can't heal those areas fast enough…"

"Yeah, that sounds like a good way to get dead." Victoria grumbled absently, keeping her focus on her finger. The damage was slowly starting to outpace the healing, her skin starting to peel under the force of the Essence's movement.

"Don't push too hard." Horace warned. "You don't want the damage to outpace your healing. You want to find the balance, where the two are in equilibrium."

Victoria nodded, letting the Essence slow down, her finger slowly healing as she kept the movement at a slow burn, getting somewhat used to the pain, or at least, getting used to ignoring it. They spent a bit longer on body strengthening, Horace emphasizing a few more dangers, which pretty much amounted to not destroying anything you need to live, before moving on to flexibility training, which went hand in hand with body strengthening. Body strengthening made your body tougher, but that meant it was harder to stretch as well. Thankfully flexibility training was fairly simple as well, if no less painful. Again, you had to flood the area you were focusing on with Essence, and then… Well, you had to stretch. Not to the point of burning, but to the point of pain. "Is every Essence exercise just breaking your body so it heals right?" Victoria growled after getting her shoulder stretched so hard it popped out of the socket.

Horace shook his head. "Only to start. The more advanced techniques require visualization. However, if you don't have the focus and perseverance to do it right, you can end up worse than you started. Thankfully, that's exactly what the early exercises teach you: to persevere and maintain focus through pain."

Victoria sighed. "Right. So what's the next torture in line?"

Horace shook his head. "No torture this time, though it will require you to strengthen your legs. When Essence moves, it gives itself weight. So, if you condense your Essence in your legs and begin to move it, your center of gravity moves down with it."

Victoria nodded. "So essentially body strengthening, but not."

"Right, you don't want to move it to the point of pain, just enough to help you balance." Horace explained.

The rest of the time was spent on little tricks like that. No revolutionary uses of Essence, just better ways to make use of it and learning about its properties. Namely, the property of intent. Intent was a feature of all three types of energy, which came naturally from Runes. Whenever she did something beyond the basic function of the energy, it came from intent. Through intent, Essence Cultivators could make their bodies as hard as iron, or as flexible as rubber, but according to Horace, developing an intent outside a Rune was difficult to say the least. Runes naturally adjusted your perspective to view your energy in a certain way, like she was already viewing her Spirit as an extra sensory organ through her Study Rune. She believed that if she did this, she could see out her Spirit, and if she did this, she could hear out her Spirit, and so on, and because she believed it, it was true.

Victoria frowned at Horace. "So you're saying that all I have to do is believe that swirling my Essence in a certain way will make my body tougher, and it'll be true?"

Horace hesitated. "Not quite. Belief is certainly a large part of the process, but you also need to structure your energy in a way that can carry that belief. For example, with this sensory skill you have, if you simply believe you can see out your Spirit, you may get something back, but not much. However, if you give this belief structure by making an eye, the view becomes much clearer. The more detail you give the eyes, the more basis you give your belief, the better the results."

Victoria's frown deepened, finding the idea… not confusing, but too- too- simplistic? You just believe that something could happen, and then find a reason why it would happen, right? Why did Horace make it sound so difficult? She held up her hand, putting her Essence into it, considering the idea of turning her skin to iron. Through her design space, she knew what iron was, how it was composed… straight turning her skin into iron wouldn't be good though. Not flexible enough. She just needed her skin to be harder… or rather, her Essence needed to be harder. It needed to be like iron in her skin. Victoria focused on her understanding of iron, willing her Essence to condense, to harden, to make her hand like iron. Slowly her hand began to take on a metallic sheen. "Huh… that didn't seem so hard?" She commented, turning to a dumbstruck Horace.

"You- you just-" He stammered, staring at her hand, before turning to her, his expression hardening. "You need to learn Qi skills. Your talent can't be allowed to stall out at the end of the Circulatory realm!"

Victoria rolled her eyes, pulling her Essence back as her hand turned back to normal. "It isn't talent, it just isn't that hard to get. I know iron because of my Spirit skills, so I just took that understanding and put it into my Essence."

"But that's what's so impressive!" Horace exclaimed. "You can't simply push intent into your energy! You have to develop it, teach the energy the intent you want it to have! And you- your energy accepted your intent almost instantly!"

Victoria raised an eyebrow at him. "You have to teach your energy?"

Horace nodded. "Like when you comprehend a Rune. Intent flows through it, influencing you and subsequently your energy. Without the Rune, you have to infuse the intent into your energy yourself, which takes time- usually takes time…" Horace trailed off. "You- you seem to have a gift for influencing energy. One that could take you further than you could imagine, if you'd just Acquire a Qi Rune!"

Victoria paused. A gift for influencing energy? That… made sense? She practically was energy! Though after that out of body experience, maybe she should drop the practically… she simply was energy. Did that help her with her cultivation? Probably? Not important at the moment. "I've made my position on Qi clear. Stop pushing." She retorted, glaring at Horace.

Horace gritted his teeth. "But your future-"

Victoria rolled her eyes, turning to leave. "Yeah, we're done here. I'm not putting up with this crap over and over."

"Wait!" Horace exclaimed.

"We can try again next week." Victoria added, with a small wave over her shoulder. "Maybe you'll remember what is and what isn't yours to worry about by then."