Jake's Story, ch 24

Apocalypse Cultivation!  Yay!

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While he was meditating, Jake reflected on where his cultivation level actually was now.  His teacher had refused to explain the entire potential of cultivation to him in the past, only telling him what he judged would be the extent of his abilities.  Actually beyond that.

Things had obviously changed since then.

Orthodox cultivation started at the Initiate level, when a wannabe immortal would start on the path of the dao.  This beginner stage would require opening up the body’s meridians, feeling natural energy, and learning to cycle it.  Jake’s teacher had told him that in the cultivation world, most practitioners would start off in a sect, and this stage would include learning sect rules.

Creating a dantian would turn most Initiates into Trainees.

After an Initiate became a Trainee, they would begin working on Body Refinement.  Body Refinement was divided into three stages, Copper, Silver, and Gold.  Copper stage related to blood, Silver was flesh, and Gold was bones.  Each stage had ten ranks.

In Jake’s first life, he’d reached the Seventh rank of Copper.  He judged himself to currently be in the first rank of Silver.

Back when he’d been a zombie with a dantian, he’d been in the First rank of Copper.  When he’d worked towards evolving, and eventually took the plunge, he’d skipped all the way to Silver!  His advancement could still be compared to natural energy cultivation, but obviously did not work in quite the same way.

His body had improved differently, instead of expelling all of his impurities, he’d actually become something else.  That had to be the case. He’d basically skipped an entire stage of Body Refinement.  And since he hadn’t felt any pain or any other signs of progression that humans normally felt, it was possible he just hadn’t even been aware of his body changing.

He did consider that part of the lack of pain might have been because he was a zombie before.  That was not a cheery thought if he were ever thinking about evolving again.  And it seemed in order for him to achieve higher levels now, he needed access to some dark power or source of corruption to refine and rebuild himself during the process.

Weird.

His teacher had only told him about what comes after Body Refinement before, after creating a complete Reforged body.  The next level of cultivation was Foundation Pillars, with a total of three Pillars before the next stage.

Jake didn’t know what came next after that, though.  His teacher had told him that if he’d ever managed to create the first of his Foundation Pillars, he would have been a B rank adventurer on Earth, able to join teams with some of the elite...barely.

Of course, now that Jake was doing things differently this time around, he wasn’t sure what his limits were anymore.

The surrounding sinister energy wasn’t quite right for him to cultivate, but it was thick.  He hadn’t experienced anything like this since being struck on Ahriman’s hell.  He could directly begin refining the energy now, but it was still inefficient.  Luckily, the air was so thick with power that it was definitely at least worth the effort.

Jake began channeling the energy, refining it, squeezing the pure essence out of it, drop by drop, adding to his dantian.  He used the first cycling technique his master had taught him, but it wasn’t very effective with such dense, soupy energy.  The place he was in felt steeped with bestial energy.

Using the Heavenly Four Winds Purification technique worked better, but it wasn’t really a good match, either.  This technique was really better to refine the chi he already had, not gather, purify, and assimilate.

He briefly considered trying the Heavenly Dragon Defiance technique, but he instinctively knew that he was still not ready for it yet.

Cultivating the monstrous energy was faster than it had been before in hell, but was still slow going.  Jake paused his efforts, coming out of his trance-like state and thought about the vampire monster core he still had in his storage ring.

Thinking about it, he realized that monster cores functioned for him similarly to the “medicinal pills,” that his teacher had talked about in his first life.  One of the major differences seemed to be in rarity.  Medicinal pills were created by skilled alchemists in the cultivation world.  Monster cores could be found anywhere monsters existed, or “demons beasts,” in the cultivation world.

His path of cultivation was much more complex than orthodox cultivators now, though.  Instead of one, linear direction, it felt like his options were three dimensional, especially considering how he could use the Heavenly Four Winds Purification technique to deepen his potential.

He thought about this further.  Orthodox cultivation had one path.  A Daoist’s advancement could go deeper or be more shoddy, but that was a matter of effort, quality...and talent.  Jake’s advancement happened on three dimensions, now.  He might never truly know what the greatest heights possible were for himself, and even scratching the surface would be almost impossible.  This world, or pocket dimension had very thick monstrous energy, but actually using it, converting it in any meaningful amount would take forever.  For Jake to move forward now in general was going to be very resource intensive.  Monster cores were not as expensive as medicinal pills in the cultivation world that his teacher had mentioned, but he had already felt waning effectiveness from zombie cores earlier.

It was all various mysterious, and Jake knew he had a lot to learn...if he could survive.  But one thing was for sure--hoarding resources wouldn’t do him much good if he died.

With that in mind, he took his vampire monster core out of his storage ring and only hesitated a moment before swallowing the energy.  Even though it hadn’t been a very high level stone, he could immediately tell it was still going to require his full attention.  He immediately emptied his mind, calmed his spirit, and began cultivating to control it.

The raging energy ran through his improved meridians and blood, his blood actually strengthening his energy channels, helping to control the energy and guide it from chakra to chakra.  This was the advantage of having a Silver rank body now.

He worked tirelessly, cycling his chi, slowly destroying, reforming, and purifying the energy running rampant through his body before injecting it directly into his muscles, his skin, and then finally filtering it down into his dantian.  His body began to grow more refined.  Power gathered in his cells like they’d found a new home.

Three days later, or at least three earth days later, he finally reached the second rank of Silver.  This time he was paying close attention to any changes.  If he’d been alive, cultivating natural energy, reaching the next stage of Body Refinement would have come with pain and a refreshing feeling, a reawakening.  His body might have expelled some impurities, too, a lesser reaction that most orthodox cultivators went through between stages.  But Jake didn’t experience any of that.  Instead, he could just feel a bit more energy, and his body felt...tougher, faster, like everything operated more smoothly.

It was hard to describe.

Jake knew he’d feel different throughout the process if he were still human.  Ultimately, he couldn’t change anything, so he decided to focus on the benefits.  And one major benefit was how fast he could advance now.

If only he had about a million monster cores, everything would be gravy.

He stood up and stretched.  It’d hopefully been long enough for the vampires to lose any wariness they might have had from the one almost noticing him.  And cultivating any higher than he had just attained would take a very, very long time using only the energy of this world.

The break had been necessary.  But now he’d spent enough time cultivating, meditating, and thinking. It was time to do some more recon.

***

For the next two days, Jake snuck around his new environment.  He discovered a number of things.

For one, the light level remained consistent, never changing.  It was just barely enough to harm the vampires over time.  Each swamp area contained between rocky ridges really did all have one giant each.

As he roamed around, Jake found pieces of bones at the top of some ridges.  He couldn’t be sure, but he thought they were old remains of vampires.  It was interesting, and he figured maybe some time in the past the different groups of vampires in each swamp had fought amongst each other.

The vampires themselves all differed from swamp to swamp, too.  For instance, the ones Jake had seen up close were dirty and bestial, but another group of them seemed to keep relatively clean.  Instead of a mere hole in the ground, that group had larger burrows made at an angle with steps carved out of the dirt.  One of the burrows seemed to have been destroyed recently.  They had probably been too slow retreating after bleeding their giant for food.  Jake assumed they were digging out another set of stairs to replace it.

He didn’t dare get too close to the vampires’ burrows again, but he did spend some time watching them, trying to learn their patterns.

All of the vampires seemed to have similar habits.  They bled their giant every couple of days, and based on what Jake had seen, most of them had large underground tunnel complexes.  Each group of vampires had several dozen members.

One swamp had a huge hole dug in the scrubland, probably the giant there trying to get to the vampires to kill them.  It obviously hadn’t worked.  Their holes went too deep, and the giant’s physiology just wasn’t built for digging.

The swamps must all be sitting on top of dense clay or something, otherwise Jake had no idea how the vampires could have such deep and presumably complex tunnel systems.  But he’d already figured that this world, or holding area was artificial, so anything was possible.

After a few more days of observation, Jake began to get a much better grasp of his surroundings and feel a little bit more relaxed.  The vampires didn’t really check their surroundings much, so he only had to really hide when they were active to drain a giant, and that didn’t take very long.  They only ever sent out about a dozen at a time for this task.

It seemed all the vampires had their own little stomping grounds, and at some point in the past they might have fought over territory, or maybe explored and been repelled.  There was only one mystery that Jake was still not sure about, and that was why they didn’t live in the caves in the rocky ridges.  Choosing to live in the dirt when there were perfectly serviceable caves nearby didn’t make a lot of sense.

Jake was actually thinking about this one day as he walked around the ridge near one of the swamps when his instincts screamed a warning at him.  He didn’t stop to think.  With the ease of years of practice, Jake flash stepped forward and spun.  He almost lost his balance as a tremendous crash shook the ground behind him.

A boulder had slammed into the rocky shelf where Jake had just been standing, and pieces of stone shot out from the impact.  Sharp pieces of broken rock whirred through the air, accompanied by stinky mud.

It didn’t take Jake long to figure out what had happened.  He turned and ran, heading for the ridge.  As he sprinted, he glanced to the side where the giant was fishing around in the swamp for another huge projectile.  Its beady little eyes were fixed on him.  A vampire head briefly popped up from a distant burrow and the monster looked around in response to the commotion.  She spotted Jake.

Shit, shit, shit! he thought.  At least one tribe of vampires knew for sure that he existed now.  Hopefully they would just mistake him for a neighboring vampire.  He could only hope.  Having the element of surprise had been his greatest ally so far.

Jake wasn’t sure how long it would take the giant to find another projectile, but he didn’t stick around to find out.  The power and accuracy of the beast’s throw had been extremely surprising.  He supposed now he knew why the vampires lived in the dirt.

But he discovered another reason the vampires stayed in the dirt about half a day later when he heard a scratching noise outside his cave.  Jake had been meditating after cultivating the surrounding energy as best he could, a necessary use of time since he didn’t have anything to eat shadow ghoul-style.

He always stayed alert to the world around him, so the noise alerted him.  After he spun his cultivation base, he opened his senses, using his life-detection ability.  The surroundings suppressed his life-sense as usual.  Despite that, he caught the edges of something powerful hanging outside his cave.  He couldn’t see it completely clearly in his mind’s eye, but he caught the impression of wings, and a large, lithe body.  It was not a vampire, and it was about to come rushing in.

Jake phased and flash stepped, the combination allowing him to make maximum use of his phased time.  He was able to barely make it to the bolt hole he’d discovered.

The little hideout wasn’t much more than a closet-sized hollow in the rock.  He’d discovered it after training his phase and flash step abilities together, looking for something exactly like this, a hiding place.  Of course, running out of phase time while being surrounded by solid rock was something that would most likely destroy him, but Jake had never pushed it too far.  He only ever went into the rock and out again, with plenty of time to spare.  And he’d gotten lucky.

It was uncomfortably hot, and if he’d been a human he would have suffocated in moments.  Jake was still not entirely sure exactly how his physiology worked.  Sometimes if he wasn’t doing anything and not really thinking too hard, he noticed that he just stopped breathing.  But when he exerted himself, he’d definitely breathe.

Just to be safe, the moment he arrived in his hiding spot, he began meditating, then cultivating.  Everything slowed down inside his body, and he entered a state close to suspended animation.  While he slowly, painstakingly converted and refined the surrounding energy for his own use, he was able to ignore his surroundings.

He could still perfectly keep track of passing time, though.  When half a day had passed, he phased and flash stepped back out to the rocky ridge, but not directly into his old cave.  Instead, he popped out about two hundred yards away and crept forward, senses wide open.  Now that he knew the giants were dangerous, he kept a wary eye on this one too, but it stayed safely digging around in the swamp.  Jake’s attention snapped forward again.  If whatever it was that had been about to invade his temporary home was still there, he wanted to “see” it before it saw him.

But nothing was there.

He slowly inspected his normal den and discovered claw marks on the floor, but nothing too impressive.  It was only when he saw the little crack in the wall that he normally crawled through to get to his normal meditation space that he paused.

Something had definitely been there and investigated.  There were very clear claw marks on the wall here.  A strange miasma, or vestiges of a powerful aura lingered.

It was unsettling to know that there was something else to worry about now, some sort of flying, stealthy predator.  Whatever it was likely came from the edge of the swamp areas.  Jake had explored as far as he could, a total of nine swamps, and at the edges was just a big, crimson barrier.

It must have come from beyond the barrier.

Knowing that something else was out there in the perpetual twilight, something that Jake felt instinctive fear of was...not good.  On the other hand, it helped further explain why all the vampire groups stayed in their own swamps and avoided the caves.  Being close to the giants probably actually gave them some degree of protection from whatever the hell had just come calling.

It’d taken a while, but Jake felt like he finally had a decent handle on his surroundings now.  He hadn’t forgotten the trial.  Killing a giant would neither be simple nor easy, and there were definitely other dangers.  Making it back the extraction rock after killing a giant without getting torn to shreds was obviously part of the challenge.

Taking the time to scope everything out had been the right decision.  Cultivating and absorbing his last monster core had been a good call.

The situation was grim, and definitely wouldn’t be easy to overcome, but Jake had a plan.