Chapter 6: Affinities and Cultivation

“So, you put your hands on the orb. And then it measures your elemental affinities.”

My dad looked from Shaar, to me, and then to Shaar again, standing on the other side of a meter tall pedestal with a clear crystalline orb on top that had been moved into the center of his throne room.

Adam Adamas, Shaar’s father, was standing next to him, wearing a black battle robe and towering over my father like he towered over everyone, his steel gray eyes showing nervousness while the raindrop shaped white holy mark in the middle of his forehead glowed ever so slightly, causing his new messy white hair to shine as well. And he was watching Shaar look at the orb like he looked at any magitech he’d never seen before, with a keen interest bordering on obsession.

The room was mostly made of marble, with marble floors and marble columns along the edges, leaving a wide open space leading up to a marble throne, which was far more comfortable to sit on than it looked. There were green and gold tapestries on the room’s walls, showing the history of the Sisipha Kingdom. And, unlike normal, there was no one else in the room other than the four of us.

“Do you want to go first, Kyla?” Dad reached down and rubbed my hair.

“No.” Far more nervous than I really should have been, I looked up at dad and then at Mr. Adamas for help.

Help, however, was not something either was going to give me.

“Well, you’re going first anyway.” Dad walked around the pedestal and then reached down to my hands before moving them to touch the orb. And the orb started to glow orange with a very high level of luminescence, a level that stayed as the orb’s light turned blue, then brown, and then yellow. This was then followed by the orb maintaining the same luminescence while testing for the other eight elements as well. Gray for metal, azure for lightning, white for light, black for darkness, green for life, purple for destruction, silver for space, and gold for time.

“What does it mean?” My heart beating fast, I looked at the orb that then shifted to showing a mix of all twelve colors at once with a feeling of awe.

“It means that, as expected, your elemental affinities for all elements are above what the orb can measure.” Shaar took another step closer to the orb as he answered my question instead of one of our fathers, a big smile on his face as his mind likely continued to think about how the thing worked. “So, given this orb can measure up to tier 10, the immortal tier, it means you have the affinities needed to raise any beast with immortal tier potential, and maybe even higher. So, as long as you don’t die or make any major mistakes with your cultivation, you have a high chance of becoming an immortal in the future.”

I looked up at my father, my rather big eyes growing wider. “Is that good?”

“Good?” Dad laughed as he reached down to mess up my hair more. “Kyla, that’s better than anyone in this kingdom other than myself and Adam. More important, it means you wouldn’t be in any danger from the high talent of the beast your mom’s family prepared for you.”

The process of self cultivation for an adept involved multiple steps, and the first step was binding the egg of a soul beast, causing the egg to merge into an adept’s soul for incubation. Once this was done, the adept would reach the first tier of cultivation, the Body Forging Realm, and awaken the qi of their body, their lifeforce as a form of energy they could manipulate at will. And, following the process outlined in a cultivation technique, they would then use that qi to reforge their body to better handle the forces of the universe.

Once their body was reforged, they would then reach the second tier of cultivation, the Energy Gathering Realm, and awaken their ability to sense mana, magical energy in its true natural form. Using a process from their cultivation technique, they would then forge an energy reservoir inside their souls to house their mana and a special subspatial dimension within their reservoir to house their soul beast once it hatched.

When their soul beast’s subspatial dimension was finished, they would then step into the third tier of cultivation, the Spirit Forming Realm, and awaken to the power of psyforce, the energy of one’s mind made manifest. Their control over mana and qi would increase drastically, and they would use that control to improve the quality of both their body and their mana reservoir.

Finally, when all that was done, they’d be ready to bind another soul beast egg and step into the fourth tier of cultivation, the Unity Realm, where they’d gain the ability to convert mana to qi and psyforce, qi to psyforce and mana, and psyforce to mana and qi. At this tier, they’d finally become someone of importance, above 99% of the population, and they’d have enough power to start a minor clan of their own in one of the world’s minor cities.

A prerequisite to rising up to any tier, however, was having a soul beast—even an unborn one—with power at that tier, so binding with soul beasts of high talent was incredibly important.

Take Shaar’s father, for example. Adam Adamas had talent matching my parents and Shaar’s mother, but he was born to two normal citizens of another of the northern isles. His first soul beast had been a very normal Azure Swallow, a beast of the wind element, an element he did not have high affinities for. But, due to his ridiculously high affinity for the light element, along with resources he managed to gather, he’d been able to evolve his Azure Swallow, a beast that could normally only rise up to the third tier, into a Holy Azure Swallow, a beast with fifth tier potential. And this allowed him to reach the peak of the third tier and bind a more powerful Iron Knight Shrew, a beast with fifth tier potential, which he then managed to evolve into a Paladin Shrew, a beast with seventh tier potential, after he became the apprentice of an immortal.

Binding with a soul beast of a given element would raise an adept’s affinity with that element, but an adept’s affinity with an element would also raise the soul beast’s affinities as well. It was a case of mutual empowerment.

But, at the same time, if an adept bonded with a soul beast egg of a soul beast with talent that was too high, or of a race that required too much energy or other specific conditions, problems would arise. In the best case, the egg would just never hatch and the adept would become stuck in their cultivation, unable to advance. In the worst, the adept’s energy would be drained completely and they would die, the egg possibly hatching on its own and becoming a wild soul beast.

So, for an adept, having high affinities was very important. With high affinities matching the element of a soul beast, the soul beast would be born with higher talent than it would in the wild, its own affinity enhanced by its master’s. And, if the master of a soul beast had high affinity for elements other than the soul beast’s own, it would be much easier for the soul beast to evolve into a new race with an additional element.

Most soul beasts only had one element, but, of the 144 soul beasts on the Supreme Beast Index, the list of the widely accepted most talented soul beasts in the world, only one had only a single element, and that beast was ranked 142nd.

Soul beasts with more elements were almost always more powerful, and they in turn made their adepts more powerful, so having a high affinity in multiple elements was always useful.

And having high affinities in all elements, like was normal for the members of the Elysian Empire’s royal family, was unfair.

Elemental affinities, along with the special traits adepts would awaken to with each soul beast they bonded, were the main indicators of an adept’s talent. And, though my father and I didn’t know it at the time, I had very, very high average elemental affinities, something that would create problems in the future.

“Shaar, why don’t you try next.” Mr. Adamas spoke out, looking down at his excited son with a look of pride on his face.

And Shaar moved forward and touched the orb, which had become clear again.

The orange color of fire affinity appeared again, but it was much weaker than when I touched it. And when the blue of water affinity replaced it, the luminescence decreased even further.

“Fire, tier six. Water, tier four.” The expression on my father’s face grew a bit worried as he spoke the words, matching the expression on Mr. Adamas’s face as well.

Shaar, however, just continued to look interested in how the orb was working.

The luminescence then increased as the brown of earth affinity appeared. “Earth, tier seven.”

And then it decreased as the yellow of wind affinity replaced it. “Wind, tier five.”

When the gray of metal appeared, however, the luminescence grew to the same brightness as when I was touching the orb, and it then stayed at that level for the azure of lightning, the white of light, and the black of darkness.

It reduced slightly for the green of life and the purple of destruction, however, showing tier eight for both the life and destruction elements. And then it increased back to the maximum luminescence for the silver of space and the gold of time.

When all the colors started to mix in the orb, the colors weren’t balanced like when I was touching it, and six of the colors—representing the elements of fire, water, earth, wind, life, and destruction—completely disappeared. The gray for metal and the azure for lightning both took up only about 5% of the orb’s volume each, while the white of light and the black of darkness, the elements Shaar’s father and mother respectively specialized in, each took up around 15%, Shaar’s affinities for the two matching those of his parents. But the silver of space and the gold of time each took up around 30%, and this surprised my father and Shaar’s, both men breaking out into wide smiles.

I didn’t really understand it at the time, but Shaar’s affinities for light and darkness matched my own, while his affinities for metal and lightning were close, yet his affinities for the elements of space and time were unmatched. And it was only because of this that he managed to survive what happened next.