Enlightenment

[Academia Nut]

CW: body horror, implied past sexual assault

[X] Take up Gosrick's invitation

When Yon had agreed to take the Sergeant Major up on his invitation, he had done so for eminently pragmatic reasons. He didn't dare turn down an invite from a superior. He wanted something of a guided tour of the region surrounding the training facility. He was interested in making connections with the people in charge.

He had not expected to be taken on a tour that was at once shockingly mundane and yet also felt like it was out of a lurid tale of depravity told to slander a rival noble family.

The first day away from the training facility had started off with descending down a long set of spiralling stairs that eventually opened up into a series of walkways along the ceiling of an absolutely massive chamber that was stuffed full of poorly slapped together buildings a dozen floors high. The stench of unwashed bodies was overwhelming, and Gosrick moved for the whole crew to get to a series of articulated carriages that ran along rails suspended from the ceiling.

Grinning at the half dozen disciples he had invited out with him and a number of his subordinates, the senior NCO explained, "Slave holdings. We're a bit overstuffed because we have to reserve one of the holds for training the conscripts. After sending the fodder through basic and winnowing them out we should be able to keep training up with just the regular facilities, so things won't stink so much.

Yon just nodded along with everyone else, but he could taste a hint of spiritual energy in the air that he hadn't noticed in this realm before. It was simultaneously invigorating but also required extra attention to digest properly. He wondered if anyone else was noticing, and after a moment he picked up subtle cues that Lin was having to hide not having a very good time. A moment's thought suggested that given his skills and background, Lin probably had a sensory expansion technique and the smell was getting to him.

Yon actually had the sudden realization that there was the possibility of swapping techniques. It wasn't really something done normally, but he had come to the conclusion that resources from the sect would be inconsistent, and that the Celestials had a wildly different system of cultivation. The weeks he had spent had made him realize that they had a much higher baseline for certain things, which was why they valued mortals and low level cultivators about equally. And really, it made sense, when a single mortal with a Celestial weapon could kill a low level cultivator with luck or surprise, and the Celestials had lots of weapons. The cost of training a single Outer Disciple could cover a dozen mortals, who would win every time by a wide margin.

And having seen the Envoy and his subordinates, Yon also knew that they had much higher level cultivators. They just didn't need larger masses of lower level disciples to train up to do necessary tasks when they had all sorts of sorceries that mortals could use that did the same thing. Of course few other disciples from the sect would see it the same way, but Yon could see why the Celestials could order the sect around so casually.

After a few minutes of travel along the carriage with the instructors chatting among each other about things the disciples had no context to appreciate, they arrived at the far end of the slave holding area. Here the massive urban slum terminated in a collection of ramshackle but better put together buildings that consumed the walls like glowstone covered barnacles. Armsmen walked along the station where the carriages let them off, nodding respectfully to Gosrick and those with him.

The air here was completely taken over with a riotous melange of perfumes and incense mixed together with the metallic tang of blood. The sounds had also changed from those of thousands of people packed together in close proximity and trying to survive through their misery. Now a dozen different strains of music fought with chants and cries.

"And here we are! Hold C Foreward, home of the Entertainment District! Unless you get invited to an Officer's Lounge, the best place to kick back and blow off steam. And while I might not have an invite to the Lounge, I do have all the best proprietors owing me favours, so in some ways that's even better," Gosrick bragged, while his buddies all grinned and smiled and were nudging each other over prior visits.

Rubbing his chin, Gosrick looked at the other instructors and asked mischievously, "Now, where should we take the recruits first?"

"The blood pits!" Kaisen began enthusiastically.

"The blood pits are for the middle!" Conradki retorted.

"Madame Silk!" Dirrin offered.

"Pfah! You'd spend the whole time there!" Kaisen said with a snort.

"Yeah, no the blood pits are after you've already had a drink or two in you, and Madame Silk is how you finish out a night after you've already got your blood pumping," Gosrick said, dampening both Kaisen and Dirrin's spirits. After a moment of humming he snapped his fingers and went, "Squealing Pig!"

That got a bunch of agreeable nods and thoughtful looks as all of the instructors present agreed that wasn't a bad option to start them off. So it was that they decided on which exit from the carriage station to exit from, the armsmen at the gates giving them barely a glance as they exited the secure area for the lords of this place and stepped into the place set aside for the slaves to entertain their masters.

The higher levels closer to the checkpoints were clearly of a higher class, but they took a broad, spiralling walkway further down into the warren of buildings. Tubular glowstones bent into writing and simplified images flashed with a riot of colours, proclaiming every manner of entertainment a mind could dream up. About halfway down the spiral they went through a tunnel structure that took them past an incredibly noisy structure covered in the sigils of the Storm Lord, its advertising declaring it as a place for the demonstration of martial prowess and betting on the outcomes. Combined with the longing look on Kaisen's face and how strong the smell of blood was, this was presumably the place he had called the 'blood pits'.

The other side of the tunnel brought them to another spiralling road, but this one went around a large open space that had grown into a dome around a sort of silo structure, clearly unable to attach onto it but wanting to remain close. This also allowed for dozens of business fronts to be seen at once, and from the advertising it was clear that they were peddling flesh as their primary entertainment. And while the crowds had already included streetwalkers, here all other mercantile sorts had disappeared in favour of those who were selling access to their bodies and those who were buying.

All of the disciples had to stop and gawk at one particular creature though. A dead eyed amalgam of flesh and steel, it was an unseemly display of every possible form of artificial sexual organ stuffed into a single body. It sat under a sign showing off the pricing for its services, with a miserable looking slave collared and chained nearby holding a hose. Most horrifically of all the thing's mouth was completely gone, replaced by a rubbery simulacra of a vulva.

"Now now recruits, we've got far better in store than that low-class public-use trash," Gosrick said dismissively. "Unless of course you're wondering what it is, in which case just always remember to never piss off the cogs. If you're lucky there's nothing left of you to feel anything when they're done. If not, well, you can tell when those ones are fresh by the way the eyes dart about, screaming without a mouth."

Training hadn't covered what a 'cog' was, but Yon definitely engraved the advice deep into his memory. There were afterlife hells that sounded worse, but he'd never thought it possible to subject someone to such tortures in life.

Somehow the experience got stranger as they moved into the brothel district, as there were numerous spontaneous cultivators on display. Normally a curiosity from mortals suffering overexposure to unusually high concentrations of spiritual essence, the poor wretches were usually dissected by the sects to try to learn more about the strange ways flesh could rearrange under unguided cultivation. The lucky ones might end up like Yon, deemed stable and useful enough to induct into a sect. Most ended up like every other servant in Yon's experimental group. Here though they were discarded slaves, showing off extra breasts and prehensile genitalia and stranger things to try to attract clients.

Gosrick lead them confidently past a guard at the doors of a place that advertised itself with glowing tubes that flashed on and off in sequence to give the impression of a scantily clad woman repeatedly 'impaling' herself on a pole. The only reason Yon couldn't use more explicit terms was because there was a deliberate attempt to blur violence and erotica in the presentation. Was the 'squealing' implied by the establishment's name pleasure or agony?

The interior of the building was a three storey cylinder, with a central bar that was wrapped within a spiraling staircase in the centre that extended over the central interior space. Walkways extended out from the central pillar to a variety of activity spaces. The first floor seemed dedicated to games of chance and dance floors where off-duty servants and armsmen gyrated to strange, bass-heavy music. The second floor had numerous circles of chairs and couches around elevated stages where scantily clad and outright naked men and women put on displays of acrobatic skill for enthusiastic audiences. The third floor had numerous mirrored windows reflecting the strobing lights of the rest of the place back out, no doubt concealing private rooms for more intimate activities.

Clapping his hands to get their attention even as the veterans left to do their own thing, Gosrick addressed the disciples and said, "Alright you lot! This is just where we get warmed up! Grab a few drinks, do a line of frenzy off a stripper's thigh, throw some dice, that sort of thing! In an hour or two we'll get out of here, loosened up and ready to see some skulls bashed in at the pits. Get your dicks wet if you want, but the quality guys and gals are for the end of the excursion, so don't go exhausting yourselves at the first stop."

He then slapped Yon on the back and said, "Except of course for our boy over here! Don't go breaking any of the whores, Piggy actually likes me!"

What does Yon get up to?
[ ] Write-in

 

[Academia Nut]

Tonight's Episode: The Writer's Barely-Disguised Fetish

[x] Plan Mellow
-[x] Ask the bartender for a drinks menu, and spend some real quality time reading it, looking for interesting things. Ask pertinent questions about what the drinks are, how they are made, where their ingredients come from, and so forth. Try to fit that all into your understanding of alchemy, if applicable. Try a few of the more interesting-sounding ones, using Iron Kettle Belly to both get the most benefit you can out of them and manage any negative side effects. Do not be afraid to decide that something "is not to your taste" if it seems like it's going to do thngs to you that you'd really rather not experience. Don't let yourself get significantly impaired.
-[x] Spend a bit of time watching dancers gyrate, far enough back that you won't harsh the buzz of any of the really frenzied onlookers. Relax a little. It's important not to screw things up, but this is an opportunity to relax, and your superior may take it poorly if you refuse to. If you can get into any interesting conversations with others who are similarly inclined, all to the better. Be amiable, and let them do most of the talking.

Yon was out of his depth here and really only had a vague idea of what to do. He just sort of watched what the instructors did before he approached the bar to order something. While not exactly a stammering pubescent, he still had a time trying to control where his eyes were roaming when the bartender approached.

It wasn't just that she was all but totally naked, it was that she was aggressive in proclaiming it from top to bottom. Her hair was cropped into short, spiky tufts that became almost arrows that pointed to the studs and rings that adorned her ears, eyebrows, lips, and cheeks. Abstract, branching and bladed tattoos curled away from the corners of her mouth to wrap around her neck. While some branches went down her back or wrapped around her arms, the ones that went across her front curled seductively around her breasts and plunged towards her groin in a way that forced the eye to follow. She was lithe, her breasts small but lifted up by chains that rain along the underside and connected to barbells that pierced her nipples, the tension held by rings that pierced her skin just above the collar bone. Her stomach was tight and flat, her primary tattoo flowing around the sides so that a Symbol of Diverging Unity with unequal arms could be drawn around her belly button. The only cloth on her was a loincloth that was held in place not by a belt but by piercings along the hips and waist.

Yon tried very much to not stumble over his words as he said, "I'll get something good for getting the night going."

The bartender looked him over a few times before she said, "One panzershrek coming right up."

Yon watched with interest as the woman went through an elaborate ritual preparing a drink. She got several bottles down from the shelves behind the bar, flipping them about in a way that both showed off her skill and made her jewellery flash in the light of the establishment, all towards the goal of mixing together a number of pungent smelling liquors. Eventually she plucked a small package off the shelf and popped it into her mouth, her cheeks and throat bulging strangely. Setting a tall glass on the bar in front of Yon, she pulled out a large metal spoon with elaborate slots running down its length, carefully balancing it on the rim of the glass. She smiled broadly before opening her mouth wider than should be possible and sliding out an anatomically improbable tongue, which of course had barbell piercings along its great length. Near the back the folds of the muscle took on a distinctly yonic cast, complete with what was definitely a clitoris, which of course had a ring adorning the hood. The object the woman had swallowed was revealed to be a little block of brown solid wrapped in paper, which she had skillfully unwrapped with her tongue. Adroitly she used the prehensile appendage to deposit the solid upon the spoon, before she started to dribble the liquor she had been mixing upon the block. Straightening up, she continued to pour but pulled out a lighter.

Whipping her tongue back into her mouth and throat, she grinned and said, "Hit," as she ignited the stream of liquor. The little brown lump quickly came apart between the alcohol pouring over it and the fire melting it. Once the material had dissolved away enough the bartender flicked the spoon away with an elaborate flourish while pouring a clear liquid into a shot glass.

With another grin she said, "Cook off" as she dropped the shot into the still burning drink, which erupted into a fireball. Once it had calmed down enough she pushed the still burning drink over to Yon. The smell was something else, vaguely herbal with an atrocious acrid tang mixed in.

Still, Yon just shrugged and downed the drink in one go, wiping away the burning liquor that adhered to his lips. The taste was atrocious, an almost random mix of herbal notes with an intensely bitter overnote and aftertaste, which was of course then set on fire. As a drink Yon was fairly certain the intent was to best the bravery of the drinker while also possibly seeing if they could survive a heart attack. For an alchemist like him though, he found a few things interesting as he processed it all.

One, the quality of their liquor distillery was quite good.

Two, the special ingredient was almost pure physical yang essence, even if it was lacking in spiritual essence. He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the Celestials had mastered exoteric alchemy to the point that mortals could benefit on a massive scale, even if they reserved their esoteric secrets for their own uses.

Three, there was slightly more spiritual energy than usual in this realm, and it was spread evenly throughout the drink. Given the speed of mixing, if it was any singular ingredient Yon should have detected the differences. While it was possible that all the ingredients were above baseline but very close to each other, it was far more likely that the act of mixing the drink constituted a Little Ritual - something that was repeated so many times over so many thousands of years that it carved a groove in reality and allowed a little bit of spiritual energy to leak through enacting it.

All in all, from an alchemist's perspective it had been a thoroughly enlightening experience.

The bartender just stared at him, blinking owlishly in stunned bemusement as if she was waiting for something, before she declared, "By the Gods, you're supposed to blow it out first! And you're either blessed by the Grandfather, the Prince, or both if you're not puking your guts out now!"

Ah. Right.

Just because militarily the Celestials found outer circle disciples about equal to mortals didn't mean that Yon wouldn't stand out with his abilities. Already a crowd was accumulating as the preparation of the drink had drawn attention and Yon's failure to keel over now made him the centre of attention, and the instructors were laughing in glee.

Now what Yon?
[ ] Spend the rest of the night trying to be invisible
[ ] Drinking contest!

AN: Going to try to write a couple of short updates like this in quick succession

 

[Academia Nut]

[X] Drinking contest!

There were times to back off, having realized a mistake had been made.

And then there were times when the only way out was through.

Yon needed only a fraction of a heartbeat to decide how to respond, before he shrugged and said, "Got anything with a bit more kick to it?"

Everyone watching exploded into cheers, and Yon soon found himself pulled into a new sort of ritual, wherein the objective was to see how many intoxicants his body could handle before he collapsed and/or died from excessive consumption. The roaring crowd appeared to be buying him the drinks that they thought would be most amusing, along with joining in to see if they could withstand the trials put before him. There was also copious betting.

Somewhere along the line a table and chair had been hauled over and Yon was sat down, the bartender coming over with a tray loaded with items. Grinning, she said, "Alright tough guy! First up is the Stacked Pole!"

There was another crowd cheer as a line of powder was carefully laid out in front of Yon, and then a quartet of shot glasses were filled with clear liquid and stacked atop each other. The bartender cheerfully informed him, "Here, you start by snorting a line of Canopan Battle Powder, then you shoot the first three shots as fast as you can without spilling. If you get to the fourth without spilling you shoot it too, otherwise we throw it in your face."

Shrugging, Yon plugged one nostril and snorted the powder, which he could tell was also almost pure yang, although it also had a different exoteric mechanism than what he had had before. He then started downing the shot glasses, which turned out to be filled with absolutely terrible liquor. Maybe 80 proof and filled with distillate impurities, it had to be deliberately made that way. For Yon, while his ability to process the liquid wasn't in doubt, his alchemist sensibilities were offended at the insult to good alcohol the shots represented.

The last shot changed things up by being something like a smooth 120 proof liquor mixed with spice that had been refined until it was essentially purified pain. Avoiding getting that in the eyes was a major incentive to not spill, even if it wasn't exactly pleasant on the tongue. The fact that he held it all down had the next concoction pushed in front of him as money exchanged hands among the masses watching.

A lesser man would probably be having problems after all the alcohol and stimulants Yon had just had in the past few minutes, but he was using esoteric internal alchemy to directly neutralize out the excess yang from the stimulants with the depressant yin of the alcohol. That left a mass of drained exoteric slush awash in his body, but he deepened his breathing like a smith pumping the bellows to increase the rate at which he burned off the slag.

By about the fifth concoction the bartender had realized that she was going to have to step up her game, and started to bring out stranger things than combinations of alcohol, stimulants, and hallucinogens. "Trench Foot" was abysmal quality wine that was probably still fermenting mixed with two cleaning solutions that were reacting to form a toxic gas. "Cordial Invite" was straight up just a shot of contact paralytic neurotoxin. "No Night Light" was a glowing green liquid that was mostly heavy metals and had a spiritual energy profile that Yon had never experienced before.

"Sandblaster" was where Yon had to actually hold up a hand to say that he was, in fact, running out of the capacity to deal. It was a mixture of acids that were boiling and actively eating away at the glass they were served in. Yon was barely able to keep his flesh and teeth from dissolving through direct reinforcement of his body with spiritual energy. The amount of focus required to keep from dying meant that he was having to put on hold processing everything else he had drunk, so he was actually now inebriated.

The bartender, Cinder - when had he learned that? - was rather close to him while he swayed from side to side slightly, sweating profusely in an attempt to cool down a body that was directly burning off all of the toxic chemicals it had ingested. In fact, he couldn't help but notice how close her crotch was to his face, and he felt compelled to comment, "You shmell nice."

Cinder ruffled his hair and said, "I should, I'm fuckin' drippin' after that show."

Yon briefly thought it might be nice if she shoved his face into her crotch, before he managed to order the jumble of thoughts not involved in processing the mass of poison in his gut, bloodstream, organs, and bladder. "Were… where? Where is, every- everybody?"

"The Sarge had the rest of them go on to the blood pits when it was clear that you weren't stopping after the first hour, and then he went to talk to Piggy after a bit, then said that the rest of the group will probably be at Madame Silk's by the time you hit your limit. Piggy'll make sure you get where you're going safe. Only idiots would mess with those clothes, and Piggy's boys'll handle the idiots," Cinder explained affectionately.

"Oh," Yon stated. "That'sh nice." He furrowed his brow for a bit before he asked, "Did I? Did I shay you smelled good?"

"You did! I think you smell good too, although I'm going to have to ask you to do some decon before I can suck you off. Pretty sure if you came in me I'd melt," Cinder said, grinning the entire time like a cat eyeing up a particularly fat bird.

Yon frowned, nodded, and said, "That's no good. Sh' no good."

Yon has lost somewhere between two and three hours to drinking. Where next?
[ ] Head straight to Madam Silk's for the rest of the group
[ ] Go to the blood pits to see if anyone is still there
[ ] Attempt to rally and see if there is anything else interesting at the Squealing Pig
[ ] Go home with Cinder

 

[Academia Nut]

[X] Go home with Cinder

Yon thought about things for a moment, impulses him pulling his brain this way and that as he tried to work out what was best to do. There was actually a part of his brain that was stone sober, but when the wasted part of his brain tried to query for help it got back a message that amounted to 'Do you want a decision or to live?'

Yon grabbed a nearby glass and belched into it, the remains of whatever sugars and other compounds within sizzling from the gases his body was expelling. Someone handed him a glass of water, and he realized that it had been Cinder somewhat belatedly. That was nice of her.

That decided it for him. He smiled and asked, "You wanna suck me off?"

She ran her fingers delicately across the line of his jaw and said, "Fuck yeah rock star! You've given me the most entertaining shift in years, and I want to experience what kind of motor you've got under the hood to keep running after all the shit you shoved in your tank."

She leaned in close to him a bit and let her tongue extend from her mouth to trail across the opposite side of his face from where she was holding him, rubbing her mouth clit across his nose before flicking the appendage back into her mouth so fast it almost made a whipcrack. She whispered into his ear, "Also, when you're slamming your cock into my mouth I'm getting off too, unlike lame ass bitches."

For a brief and dangerous moment Yon's mind flashed with the image of Lady Va's mouth open wide to take his cock all the way to its base. The image mingled with a pair of outcomes, one where she was choking on him for all of the times her antics had got him beat up, and another one where she was flush with pleasure, her pussy slick and twitching. He dismissed the imagery as being more trouble than they were worth, somewhat aided by the fact that his brain got hung up on trying to decide whether or not it was more proper and ladylike if she waxed porcelain smooth or if she maintained a carefully trimmed and styled patch of pubic hair. The trail of thought soon went to 'pubic bonsai' and he was able to drop the whole thing as absurd.

Yon was fairly certain that while this was going on he was wearing a stupid smile on his face, and thankfully Cinder seemed to understand that he was not exactly all there, since she straightened back up and announced, "However, before all of that we're going to have to get you cleaned up. Come on up big guy, we're going to need to flush some of what you drank out before you stick it in me. The Prince seems to like me, but not enough that I can go play in the Grandfather's Garden and expect to come out with a dick instead of cancer."

What an odd thing to say. Whatever else he had to think on got thrown out as he discovered that much of his sense of balance had been delegated to the chair he had been sitting in. He put more focus towards digestion, and also with all the water he was being given he put focus into just shoving as many toxins into his bladder as possible. He also cranked up his internal spiritual furnace since he had a steady supply of water.

He somewhat lost track of where he was while doing that, but eventually his attention was drawn back to the outer world by a tongue sliding across his ear. He was in some sort of shower area with his pants down, while Cinder was behind him with one hand under his shirt, the other holding his dick, and she was licking his ear while breathily whispering, "Just let it all out."

So Yon did, and he immediately felt better as he no longer had to devote an enormous amount of mental effort towards not literally melting into a pile of goo. The gain in mental acuity allowed him to comment, "Oh! That's why it's called No Night Light!"

Shaking and squeezing him playfully to get out the last drops of brightly green glowing liquid, Cinder said, "That is the joke, although pretty sure the only guys I've ever seen drink that stuff stopped pissing years ago. A shame the tiles are sizzling too, glow in the dark cum is so much fun to play with."

Yon had to process two things then. The first was that the tiles in the shower area did in fact seem to be bubbling slightly, although that might just be from the grout not having been cleaned in a while and the toxins reacting with the mildew rather than the ceramic itself being attacked. The second was that he had a very attractive and basically naked woman showing him affection while holding his penis in her hand.

"And we're off to the races!" Cinder cheerfully announced as Yon began to become erect from her attentions. "A full flush before the main event though."

She reached over and turned on the tap to the shower, washing the concentrated toxins down the drain and letting Yon drink from the spray. It wasn't particularly efficient to just flush so much without properly breaking it down and integrating it, but then again very little of what he had consumed had been properly prepared so there wasn't much loss in the end. If anything the big thing had been the practice he had picked up in using his Iron Kettle Belly techniques.

Actually, the biggest thing was that a woman was showing him the sort of attention he had been craving since puberty.

Even though he was now mostly free of intoxicants, everything became blurry after that as Cinder led him into a little room with a cot. He knew he frustrated her for a time with his endurance, before they switched things around and he impressed her with his endurance. By the time his memories began to become sorted again, they were both lying on a thin sheet on the floor, covered in sweat. Cinder was half asleep and playing with herself and the mess Yon had made between her thighs, while Yon was staring at the ceiling contemplatively.

There was a part of him that wanted Cinder, Va, and even his subordinate Yue to all be naked and kneeling before him, worshipping his body and the pleasure it brought. He dreamed of all their bellies swollen with children, breasts heavy and leaking milk. It was an alluring fantasy, but eventually he pushed it aside for reality. A question was eating at him.

"How was I?" Yon asked idly.

Cinder hummed for a moment before she said, "Honestly? It was obvious that you were a virgin before this, but you learn quick, are pretty agile, and I've fucked machines with less endurance. So you're solidly above average, and for the first time you're definitely up there."

"Thanks," Yon replied honestly, before he paused in thought and then added on, "And thanks for the honesty. I'm sure there are lots of men who wouldn't accept anything less than being told they were the best ever."

Cinder rolled over a bit to kiss Yon on the cheek. "You earned it. There's something sweet about you."

Even though she had started to play with his dick again, Yon focused on that statement instead and said, "I think we have similar backgrounds. I was a servant for years, and I've always been under the control of people more powerful than me."

Cinder purred at that before she said, "Yeah, thought so. You've moved up more than this little slave, but you're still a switch who knows how to bottom to avoid being beat down. Very sweet."

Continuing to play with him while they lay there, Cinder then added on, "Maybe too sweet. So you know, I had fun and I would like to see you again, but let me be clear. You're not that special, you're not The One, and Piggy gets annoyed if we show customers too much attention, or if guys like you start getting jealous. And when Piggy gets annoyed, people get hurt. Clear?"

"Crystal," Yon replied with full earnesty. This was like a weird mirror version of the talk Va had given him all those years ago.

"Good. And don't get any simpering, besotted ideas about trying to buy me from her. Bartending is a damn better job than whatever I would be doing as a soldier-boy's house-slave," Cinder explained as she began to slide herself atop Yon's sprawled form as her fingers roused him back to attention. "I'm pretty safe mixing drinks and working the stills."

Yon's brain stopped.

"You have access to the stills?" He demanded.

 

[Academia Nut]

Yon had a new pair of lovers: the thermometer and the chronometer. He already vaguely knew about stopwatches from his time in basic, but getting to really get to play around with the time measuring devices was something else.

Having watched him run around the "chem lab" for a time, Cinder finally stated, "You know, guys who get this excited about machines usually cut their dicks off to shove a toaster in the empty space."

Yon blinked at that statement, not quite sure what to do with that information, before he shrugged and said, "Obviously they don't need much yang. Anyway… Gods, I can already hear the elders decrying these things while demanding as many as they can get as fast as possible."

"Why? They're thermometers and stopwatches? Is your place really that primitive?" Cinder demanded to know.

"Apparently!" Yon replied. "Do you have any idea how much grunt work senior alchemists have to do because they're the only ones with the experience and senses to actually measure temperature and time accurately and precisely? Too much!"

Nothing else Yon had seen thus far had really impressed him that much, but those two devices in mass use made everything else just that much more intriguing. For one, while the alcohol stills were set up to maximize speed and yield, there were several other stations where quality control was clearly much more important. Rotgut production was a choice, not a necessity.

What Yon saw was potential, and also hints of an explanation.

"Where I'm from, we often divide alchemy up along two axes, with the four combinations being assigned to one of the four Gods, although that tends to cause even more fighting than the assignment of elements or elemental combinations because all divinities touch upon all aspects to some degree. Anyway, I see these setups and I see the ascendancy of the exoteric external - the material rather than the spiritual, and outside the body rather than the inside. That combination is often regarded of as being where the Storm Lord is dominant most often, which… hmmm… and exoteric internal is the Harvestfather…" Yon trailed off in his explanation as he considered the metaphysical implications of a society so drenched in exoteric mastery.

Cinder just looked at him blankly.

Yon waved his thoughts away and said, "Never mind, never mind. It's just… fascinating. Oh what I might do to be able to work with this equipment."

A voice emerged from outside the refinery space, feminine and sweet but strange in a way that defined description. It was not unpleasant, but it was also like a nail on slate in some ways, and as soon as it reached them Cinder immediately went ramrod straight and near deathly pale.

"Oh really, soldier boy?"

A door opened and Yon immediately had to activate his emergency 'an elder or old monster just stopped by' protocols, which mostly amounted to being able to immediately shut off all external emotional reactions to avoid staring while simultaneously gathering as much information as possible.

What marched through the doors was something Yon didn't think had been dreamed up in any of the lurid hells described in the ancient texts, even if it absolutely would have fit. An amalgam of flesh and metal that made the monstrosity he had seen hours earlier seem benign in comparison, its core may have once been human but it was hard to see if any humanity remained now. The being was at once a woman lounging upon a palanquin, and yet was so much more and so much less than that description suggested. The head remained mostly human, an immaculate beauty framed by short cut dark hair. Everything else about the being made this feature stand out and further the grotesque via incongruity, for beneath the head the body swelled out into absurdity.

To call the being fat was at once not incorrect, and yet also failed to encompass what it was, for everything was so out of proportion that it was impossible to say what it should be. Most shocking were the breasts, which were each easily the size of an adult, hanging from the chest and pooled like sacks before the thing. So huge were the breasts that the rest of the body was concealed, although the way things sat and shifted about suggested an overly broad torso atop an enormous gut. The arms were strangely distorted, too long and too short at once, and teased at the possibility that the excessive flesh might well contain excessive muscle concealed by a layer of fat. Then, almost comically, were the legs, which were withered things that would have utterly disappeared if the being were not positioned to show them off, the feet twisted into uselessly tiny hooves.

Were this creature carried in by slaves or even if it were floating inexplicably through the air that would be less shocking than its actual mode of ambulation. The palanquin that carried it in was a perverse fusion of flesh and metal, eighteen human-ish arms bearing the weight. Dozens of faces ringed the perimeter of the palanquin, their mouths replaced with brass metal grills that seemed to whisper at the edge of consciousness, while more faces gazed inward at the core. The being seemed to not wear anything, although there was a copious amount of silk for banners bearing the mark of the Lotus Prince, and the creature's flesh was so copious it was self-censoring for the most part.

"Piggy!" Cinder greeted with a noticeable nervousness to her voice, confirming Yon's strong suspicion of who was before him. "I was just entertaining tonight's guest star, who as it turns out is quite the connoisseur and wished to see where the magic happens."

Piggy's palanquin silently padded forward on the palms of its hands, some of them reaching out to cup Cinder's chin and cheek in pallid flesh and unyielding metal. "Oh of course you were my dear Cinder, of that I had no doubt."

Yon had met someone like this once, an inner disciple who had once been a servant and had taken decades to fight into his position. The man had been so very bitter and so very vicious towards those beneath him, revelling in what power he had even as he resented the fact that there were always more people over him and in some ways he had never escaped his bondage. Yon had just learned to accept his lot, while that inner disciple - and Piggy if Yon understood her from her appearance and the name she used - had taken it out on everyone in his power.

Wheeling about to face Yon, getting up in his face, Piggy said, "Such an interesting young man. Our good friend Sergeant Gosrick has a good eye, don't you think Cinder?"

"Very good eye, Piggy," Cinder stated reflexively.

Piggy patted his face with a cold, waxy hand and said, "You two behave in here now. Lots of delicate things, expensive things. Of course, for the right favours I might let you play a bit, if you're careful."

Ah. It wasn't entirely a threat about not breaking things, it was fishing for Yon to do things for her.

"A woman of your character must have men and women tripping over themselves to earn your smile, I'm not sure what one such as I could do," Yon replied back carefully, fishing himself for what it was that she might want.

"Oh, a good boy like you could do much. Talk to Cinder, talk to that treat Sergeant Gosrick, and they might give you some ideas," Piggy said, before the palanquin wheeled about. From behind, Yon could see that there were metal cables blended with the flesh of her spine and attached into the structure of the chair she was lounging against.

Turning her head over her shoulder, she told Cinder, "Since he seems like a good and responsible boy, if he wants to help you with your work down here he can. Just be careful." She then used one of her actual hands to stroke one of the faces pointed in her direction, which caused Cinder to gulp in fear.

Both Yon and Cinder were quiet for a long moment after Piggy had left before Cinder begged very quietly, "Don't leave."

"Okay," Yon whispered back.

Eventually the tension dropped enough that Cinder was able to say, "I know you can't come back at a whim any more than I can come visit, but Piggy sees you as an asset now. Make time for me or her or the Sarge or otherwise show that you're useful and therefore I'm useful."

The next day was a much more subdued affair. Cinder obviously didn't want to talk much about her boss, and eventually when the atmosphere got too dour she just downed a couple of pills to get herself into a mental state where she could relax. Yon indulged her like this until it was time to head back to the barracks.

There he found a frail looking old man named Wot waiting for him with a packet of documents and instructions to take Yon to his new quarters. Now that he was out of Basic he would get a private bunk, closet, and desk area attached to a common room with six other common group leaders, with attached common bunks for their slaves.

The info packet was stuff that he was mostly expecting from what they had been told before going on liberty, but he also discovered that there was an inventory of his things brought over from the sect. His alchemy texts, some of his personal supplies of ingredients, and his training manuals were all included. There was also a pair of Dreaming Lotus Elixirs supplied by the Sect, along with a few other resources. That was quite a bit more than he expected.

Flipping through the documents, he also saw his schedule for the next few weeks. There was going to be a whole bunch of breaking in the next batch of recruits along with leadership classes and some personal time.

Yon has 3 available actions from the following list. At least 1 must be Class or Training, and can have at most 1 Class
[ ] (Class) Leadership
[ ] (Class) Tactics
[ ] (Class) Marksmanship
[ ] (Class) Assault
[ ] (Class) Communications
[ ] (Class) Stealth and Infiltration
[ ] (Class) Sabotage

[ ] (Training) Marksmanship
[ ] (Training) Assault
[ ] (Training) Diamond Body
[ ] (Training) Special Weapons
[ ] (Training) Heavy Weapons

[ ] (Personal) Iron Kettle Belly
[ ] (Personal) Time with Cinder (minor still access)
[ ] (Personal) Negotiate with Piggy (attitude: slight interest)
[ ] (Personal) Schmooze with Gosrick
[ ] (Personal) Interact with Ta Lin and other sect members
[ ] (Personal) Quest: Synthetic Elixir Part 1

 

[Academia Nut]

[X] (Class) Tactics
[X] (Personal) Time with Cinder (minor still access)
[X] (Personal) Quest: Synthetic Elixir Part 1

Looking over the other courses that he was expected to take, Yon decided that if he was going to lead men into battle he should probably have more than a vague sense of what he should be doing, so he picked out the course on tactics to go along with his assigned leadership training. As for his free time, he debated how to use it for a bit before he settled on trying to see if he could figure out a synthesis route for the Dreaming Orchid Elixir using local materials. Reworking a recipe was a rather advanced form of alchemy, but he didn't have much better to do, and it would ensure that he would be maintaining contact with Cinder.

Fortunately he already had a few leads. He could mostly replace the Living Forge Blood with a temperature controlled heating system. It would lack some of the spiritual essence infusion, but he was already going to probably have to brute force the spiritual elements so it wasn't too much of a problem. He was fairly certain that the Sarcophagus Sphagnum would be similar, and there were a number of other minor steps and ingredients where he was mostly certain he could get the same or better results with the equipment and materials he had seen under the Squealing Pig. That meant that there were ultimately four major challenges.

The first and honestly most fundamental problem was an adequate source of spiritual energy. He would either have to find a local reagent that wasn't on lockdown by the Celestial leadership, or some way of imbuing it into mostly inert materials. Perhaps a ritual of some sort? It was going to take work no matter what, unless he found a particularly high potency replacement for the other problem elements. The Dreaming Orchid and Quicksilver Honey were a big problem, but through Cinder he had access to mundane but potent hallucinogens and high purity quicksilver. No, the trickiest bit would definitely be the Umbral Crescents, since he had no idea how to get a substitute. With contact with the sect he might be able to find a supply or obtain some spores to cultivate locally, but he wanted to figure out what could be obtained locally first before trying to import anything lest he end up in a bad spot.

Fortunately it turned out that Wot had been assigned to him because the old man was in fact a minor wizard at scheduling, so once Yon made his intentions clear the house-slave just handled figuring out how to optimize his free time. There wouldn't be much for the first few weeks as Yon and all the other sect NCOs were going to be running the rest of the conscripts through basic and he would have reading to do on leadership and tactics while the junior officers were also run through their version of basic.

The first day of training Yon had to non-fatally shoot one of his corporals. Technically a gut shot with a burner pistol would normally be fatal, but the insubordinate young master was a security disciple who had been on the cusp of moving into the inner circle of the sect but was slow on volunteering. As such, he had decided that Yon having authority over him was unacceptable. He then spent the rest of the day prodding the fool with his shock mace while putting the conscripts through their paces.

Interestingly it turned out that only the first volunteers had received the language implant, which Gosrick had explained was because the devices could only be used for a limited number of individuals before they needed to be repaired. It was easier, cheaper, and to some extent faster to only run NCOs through the devices rather than run everyone through the machines. Also, usually they lost about 25-40% of those shoved into them, so they would get the most conscripts to the battlefield if they only applied them to a few who could pass along language lessons and orders. The privates and corporals only needed to follow instructions.

Yon also got to find out what had been happening back at the sect while he had been in basic. As it turned out, everyone who had remained had gone around rounding up every able bodied mortal they could get their hands on. Those who were going in the first wave had fairly quickly been put to work separating mortals into 'militarily useful', 'labour', and 'hostage' categories, with the hostages mostly being brought along to keep the militarily useful in line while also being expected to do light labour. It sounded like those who were not conscripted were being sent elsewhere, possibly straight up sold off to another Celestial nation after being taken as tribute.

Yon wasn't sure what to make of all of this information, other than that he was glad he had gambled on volunteering. It sounded like the sect was gutting their economy and next two generations in order to fulfill the demands of the Envoy. If Yon had been able to stay behind then his position would have been very interesting indeed, but as it was the odds were against him staying so it was good he was here.

The initial notes on leadership were… honestly kind of uninspiring. It was all very basic, stuff like 'invoke the gods', 'foment frenzied hatred against the enemy', and 'being so powerful you inspire your subordinates to follow you', but there were also some interesting nuggets spread throughout the reading. Stuff like proper breathing technique for bellowing orders, and how to provide positive as well as negative reinforcement. Hopefully the actual in-person lessons were more useful than the printed material.

The tactical primer was far more useful though, showing that the 'suppressing fire' tactic Ta Lin had come up with was well known to the Celestials. Somewhat depressingly, 'use heavy weapons to suppress the enemy and loads of chaff to distract while slamming in actually valuable troops' was also a common tactic and it rather looked like that was what the mortals and low ranking disciples were for. Yon definitely did not want to be attached to any of the groups doing that. Then again, Ta Lin was going to be one of the people doing the suppression and he was on fairly good terms with Yon, so the politicking there should be relatively straightforward.

Three days into the new normal, a disembodied voice filled the chambers, announcing that everyone had to either be at their stations or confined to quarters within fifteen minutes. While it sounded important and had a time limit, it also didn't sound particularly urgent, and the schedule had an odd break where everyone was basically already back in quarters. As such, Yon was basically just sitting at his desk going over his notes when a second announcement arrived.

"One minute warning to transition. Transition in T-minus 58… 57… 56…"

Yon had no idea what exactly he was waiting for, but he still braced himself all the same as the seconds counted down. He could feel something almost buzzing in his teeth as the moment drew closer. When the countdown hit ten it felt like a great wind blew from nowhere, but to Yon's spiritual senses. It was spiritual energy of a purity and concentration that Yon didn't think possible, outside of the whispers about the cultivation chambers the elders and old monsters used.

For a second Yon thought he might go mad from the rush of energy, but then something wrapped around his senses like a thick blanket. He could feel a vast ocean of energy pressing on him, but like a hand wrapped in oilskin submerged in water it couldn't actually make direct contact. It was disorienting, although Yon managed to shrug it off after a moment. He could hear other sect members stumbling about in their rooms, and at least one person retching. Getting up to put his medical training to use, he heard another announcement to standby for assessment.

What comes next?
[ ] Everything calmed down quickly
[ ] Yon was swamped with medical duties
[ ] Absolute pandemonium

 

[Academia Nut]

[X] Yon was swamped with medical duties

The retching was continuing, so Yon went out into the common room, where the slaves were looking distinctly worried out by the way the disciples were clearly not handling the transition at all well. Yon went to check on the sergeant having the worst of it and quickly determined that the problem was that the 'smothering' sensation was interfering with his spiritual senses, which he had honed to improve his physical ones.

Given the number of hunters who had volunteered for the first wave, Yon suddenly realized that he was going to be extremely busy. Fortunately the majority of the Medical Pavilion disciples were close at hand, and he could make contact and help make sure all of their healers were active and available.

Yon lost days to the work, something he was honestly surprised they were allowed to get away with, but then again it appeared that the Celestials had gone to some effort to get all their conscripts and they weren't interested in losing the most valuable of them before they used them to fight. They probably wouldn't have cared if half the mortals were incapacitated, but nearly half the cultivators had something requiring medical attention.

By far the most common symptom was nausea and disorientation from spiritual senses being messed with, with maybe half the approximately two thousand sect disciples having difficulty regaining equilibrium on their own. Those cases were fairly low priority, even if the trainers were put off by the delay. After the first few hours the primary solution of getting someone to help focus on base cultivation techniques of breathing and sensing had propagated among the population that the bulk of the cases were sorted.

Much trickier and more dangerous came from those who were experiencing spiritual energy overload. This actually probably hit the outer disciples the worst, since mortals had a minimal capacity to interact with the energy, while more experienced cultivators had better tolerances and control. Although the more experienced and confident the cultivator, the more likely they were to do something stupid when presented with an enormous quantity of high quality spiritual energy.

Multiple young masters had crippled themselves, probably for life, trying to consume more energy than they were capable of handling. The lucky ones just burst their meridian networks, which was solvable with the right resources - that they would probably never get out here - but that would probably kill them going into battle from the mental strain a leaky network caused. The unlucky ones suffered considerably grimmer fates.

Thankfully the vast majority of casualties were the rest of excess energy getting stuck in the meridian network, usually around impurities and blockages. Thankfully basic cultivation techniques were also useful there, but if they were bad enough to be noticed they usually required medical intervention. At the sect there were medicines Yon could have prepared and administered, but he and the other medics were mostly forced to rely on acupuncture and pressure to facilitate clearing the networks. The fact that their spiritual senses were muffled by whatever spiritual barrier was in place made the task considerably more difficult, although Yon managed to just bulldoze through. The fact that the effects tended to have certain patterns meant that he fairly quickly started to figure out where to focus his senses, which made picking up the signs easier even as they were fainter.

While the vast majority of mortals were unaffected, there were also some problem cases that the powers-that-be actually let them take a look at because they were deemed interesting. The most common effect was spontaneous enlightenment, the energy flux having blasted open the gates of body, mind, and soul, with perhaps a hundred individuals affected - although only about a third actually had their minds remain intact from the sudden explosive opening of the senses. There was also significant spontaneous cultivation, which given what Yon had seen in the entertainment district if this 'transition' process occurred with much frequency certainly explained why it was basically ignored, although from the sounds of it the mortals the sect had collected were much more susceptible.

However, much to his surprise once Yon started to wrap up his ministrations and it looked like they would be able to get back to training for the most part, Gosrick told him that his service had been hired out by Piggy. That confused him until Gosrick explained that when Yon had passed along to Cinder a list of things he was looking for the madame had realized that his project had the potential to be immensely profitable for her and thus she was willing to invest some effort into keeping him interested in doing business with her.

Yon had rather mixed feelings about this, in that he liked Cinder well enough and hoped that she wasn't in danger. However, he hated the fact that he was basically being compelled to do this that took any actual personal feeling out of the situation and turned it into a crass transaction in which Cinder was a token. He hated it both because it reminded him too much of his own situation, and it could easily result in Cinder resenting him. Afterall, as much as he appreciated LAdy Va there were also times where he fantasized about doing horrific things to her over what she dragged him into. He didn't want to have sex with Cinder and wonder if in the back of her head she was dreaming about shoving her tongue down his throat until he choked to death.

All of those complex feeling got buried under duty and obligation and the fact he also genuinely didn't want Cinder hurt.

When he arrived at the Squealing Pig it was with a pair of non-sect corporals as escort. The environment was clearly subdued, the slaves bunkered down while the soldiers above them were preoccupied with other things. Somewhat fortunately for Yon's peace of mind Piggy herself didn't make an appearance, but an androgynous dancer lead Yon to Cinder's room. The bartender had removed all of her jewellery and was laying naked under a thin sheet upon her cot, looking pale and waxy.

"Hey there soldier-boy," Cinder said weakly through gritted teeth.

Yon dismissed his escorts to sit outside while kneeling next to Cinder, taking her wrist to feel her pulse,which was thin and reedy. "Hey. You look like shit. Want to tell me about it?"

The rough-and-tumble bartender chuckled and said, "Well, it started when we made the emp-jump, and I thought you'd knocked me up only for the punk to hit eject before the week was up. It's not going away though. Just… the worst cramps and bleeding, and I'm not powering through like I should."

"And this isn't like your normal menstrual cycle?" Yon asked as he made other diagnostic checks to her temperature and pupil reactions.

"I barely have one, a bit of spotting every two months, and my last one finished less than a week before we met, so this is way off schedule," Cinder stated. Yon was rather glad she was open about that, unlike some of the times he'd been blindsided when working as an apothecary. She then added on somewhat sarcastically, "Also, you tasted pretty clean, and don't seem to be bleeding out your dick."

"I'm going to begin palpating your abdomen, let me know if you feel anything unusual," Yon said even as a hypothesis began to form. There was a niggling part of him that was irritated that he was touching Cinder in such a clinical way and that much of his focus was actually upon his spiritual senses instead of the tight muscles of her stomach and the curve of her hips and pubis. That part actually ended up taken out back and beaten by his curiosity as his senses gathered up more information.

Soon enough he was frowning, and then he hung his head and said, "Well, I am mostly sure I know what happened, and it is actually sort of my fault."

"What the fuck did you do to me soldier boy?" Cinder asked, although there was only a little heat to the question.

Unrolling his medical kit to begin unpacking his acupuncture needles, Yon said, "So I couldn't have predicted this, but uh… well, all of my bodily parts are enriched in spiritual essence, including the fluids. There appears to have been an interaction during the transition."

Cinder's face went blank as she absorbed this information, before she sat up a little to incredulously demand of Yon, "You have magic-fucking-jizz and that's why my cooch is wreaked?"

Grimacing, Yon nodded and said, "That's… not inaccurate, even if what is going on is a bit… odder. You have what amounts to a mass of spiritual energy clogging your sacral meridians. Right now it's just sitting there, causing minor ongoing damage - and since I can hear the protest on your lips, this is minor in comparison to what it could be doing. I'm not sure why it's just sitting there, but fortunately I can clear it pretty easily."

Cinder processed this for a moment before she summarized, "So I've got a bunch of empy-juice up in me ripping me up. You'd figure I would grow a dick or something."

Tracing meridian lines with a finger as he mapped out his actions, Yon asked, "Do you want one?"

"A dick? I-" Cinder began to pause before she asked, "Would I keep my pussy? I've got two spare clits, but I'm not sure if I could make that leap."

"Maybe. I know the theory behind the process for more deliberate resculpting, but this would be less predictable," Yon replied.

Cinder was quiet again before she said, "Fuck it. Just fix this. If the Prince wants me to have a dick I'll have a dick, but otherwise I just want to be able to stand."

As he began to insert the first of the needles, Yon said, "So you know, this is going to hurt. A lot. I believe the terminology is 'like a motherfucker', and it'll cut through any painkillers."

"I can take pain," Cinder replied, and then when Yon handed her a leather and wood bit to bite down on she just went, "Kinky."

What Yon was about to do was something he'd never done before on a non-cultivator, but he had done three times in the past. The answer to spiritual energy sitting in the meridians without circulating was to flush it, but that required both other meridians to be clear and the 'pressure' distribution to be just right. Cinder hadn't put any conscious effort into managing her meridians, and had very low native energy circulation, so Yon was going to have to do this a little weird.

Using acupuncture needles he established a series of blocks around the majority of the stagnant energy, and then a series of bypasses further out. Using directed acupressure, he was able to get a tiny amount of the mass to break off and flow into the rest of her circulatory network. Cinder immediately seized up, all of her muscles going tense for a moment before they relaxed over a series of intense spasms that calmed down over a period of a few seconds.

"That's the prelude. Do you need a second?" Yon asked once it seemed that Cinder would actually be able to understand his words.

Eyes only partially focused and her teeth digging into the gag she had been given, Cinder gave a week thumbs up.

Yon pressed down on a specific location above Cinder's primary sacral meridian, pushing a bit of his own spiritual essence inwards, and then he removed one of the needles. The first process had essentially blasted clear a small section of her meridian network, giving room for the main mass of energy to start moving once pressure was applied. With the other blocks and bypasses in place, everything started moving all at once. The effect upon her meridians was something like a flash flood hitting a series of debris dams.

When she stopped thrashing about, Cinder just lay there, breathing for a time. Colour was already returning to her body, her veins faintly luminescent. When she eventually was able to spit out the gag, her tongue had changed further, now glowing blue in between supporting rib structures. Her belly button was now sporting an eye with a W shaped pupil that blinked a few times.

Packing his used needles in high proof alcohol for later thorough cleaning, Yon asked, "How are you feeling?"

"I think I came a few times. Can we do that again?" Cinder asked, slowly beginning to feel out the changes in her body.

"You need to heal up first," Yon replied. The experience did however remind him that there was a solution to his problem of needing materials with high spiritual essence to locally manufacture Elixir: cultivators.

The exchange of bodily fluids in sexual intercourse was considered to be an acceptable - if somewhat crass - method of exchange, usually done for dual cultivation purposes. Unfortunately there were only three bodily fluids that were good at carrying energy since they weren't 'waste' materials: semen, breast milk, and blood. These all had problems, with using cultivator blood being the biggest because once you started down that path soon enough you were betraying sect mates, ranting about Five-Elements Theory, and eventually you were an Anathemic Cultivator who thought metal and wood were elements, and that gold was the best metal.

No, no, if Yon wanted to use cultivators as the basis of spiritual energy, semen was probably the only acceptable material, and that would limit him to small batches for his own personal use. He would need a cultivating partner too because it was well known that you couldn't measure personal refinement like that without external contrast. That would take time that would eat up his free time for a while, and not for much energy. Unless…

"Were any others affected like you? I can't have been the only member of the sect to have been sleeping around while on liberty," Yon asked.

Slowly getting up, Cinder looked at him woozily before she said, "You'd have to ask Piggy about that. I've been out of it for days."

It occurred to Yon that, while it would require significant work for refinement, there were about two thousand mostly male cultivators who had a tendency to be reckless, horny, and not concern themselves with the messes they left behind. Of course, if it got out what he was doing, the social repercussions would be considerable.

Yon…
[ ] Kept exploring his options (SE Pt 1 Continues)
[ ] Studied personal refinement (SE Pt 1 yields Dual Cultivation Training)
[ ] Talked with Piggy (SE Pt 1 yields Negotiate With Piggy - White Gold)

 

[Academia Nut]

[X] Studied personal refinement (SE Pt 1 yields Dual Cultivation Training)

Yon considered his options for a moment, and eventually decided that his best bet would be to work out how to be as self-reliant as possible for this project. The irony of course was that he would need a partner to help develop his personal skills first, although he knew of someone who he could trust to do it with.

"You need to recover first, but the next time I'm free I'll come visit and teach you a few tricks so that doesn't happen again. I know to be careful, but not everyone from the sect who might fancy you will be," Yon said. It was both true but would obfuscate what he was actually doing if anyone was watching Cinder. "Now, I had better go check if Piggy wants me to check up on anyone else since she obviously cashed in a favour to get me here, and I had best make sure she gets the best value."

Somewhat thankfully Yon didn't actually have to meet with Piggy in this situation, although interestingly she had nothing else for him to do so he just went straight back to the barracks. He was behind on everything, but thankfully so was everyone else so it evened out. After reading through some of the leadership and tactical manuals he pulled out his own texts.

The thing about Dual Cultivation and what made it something that no one talked about in polite company but that everyone knew about was that it was easy. It was fundamentally an extension of the basic techniques that all cultivators had to master in order to be called cultivators. It was in fact so easy that it was profoundly easy to fuck up. Working as an outer disciple in the Medical Pavilion the primary job was helping other disciples recover from trying to take in too much spiritual energy, and it had to be at least weekly that two disciples came in at roughly the same time and were vague about what exactly had happened.

The part that snuck up on people the most was that properly done sex counted as a Little Ritual, so that often generated more spiritual energy than expected. The part that people got wrong the most was that bad sex made for bad dual cultivation. Doing it properly required two partners of roughly equal cultivation getting in sync with each other to create a virtuous cycle of harmonious internal and external energy exchange. Most young cultivators who thought it was a fun and quick path to power were just bad at sex. Most old cultivators tended to be extremely wary of those of equal cultivation unless they had a longstanding relationship of trust, which was why it was generally only something you heard about in married couples.

This was compounded by the fact that the energy profiles of men and women were unequal. The spiritual energy that attached to semen was very high, which had benefits and drawbacks, but since it was a dual process that meant that a woman consuming the seed of a man would obtain much more benefit than a man consuming the sexual secretions of a woman. Breastmilk was the natural counterpart, but that required either an actual pregnancy or special preparation, and the volumes and release rates were also so different as to make getting a proper cycling going extremely complex. The ideal state was actually to edge each other and to never actually reach orgasm during the cultivation session.

That last bit was in the sex education scrolls and Yon had had it confirmed working at the Medical Pavilion. Part of it was because stupid teenagers were less likely to hurt themselves if they tried and failed to do it like that, part of it was to discourage stupid men from trying to pressure woman cultivators because it very clearly laid out that if they were bad at it then the women they were coercing into having sex would very quickly be stronger than them.

It was one of the reasons that dual cultivation outside of marriage was seen as being so low class, because there was inevitably drama.

And that was just heterosexual pairings!

Homosexual dual cultivation was in many ways easier at a basic level, but it also had the added complication of wild yin-yang imbalances to deal with. Men and women cycling yin and yang between them could lead to imbalances if done wrong - see the tendency for low ranking female cultivators to break the bones of the men who thoughtlessly pushed them into dual cultivation - but the body and soul had natural methods to correct an opposing imbalance. Homosexual male dual cultivation produced extreme yang overabundance, which inevitably led to violent outbursts.

There was a reason that the Sacred Brotherhood from the Storm Sworn Sect were rightfully feared. The level of violence a band composed entirely of committed homosexual couples who were all dual cultivating to be almost pure yang, and then sworn to service to the Storm Lord, was legendary. The only thing keeping the centre were the adamant bonds of brotherhood and devoted lovers, and the death of one partner inevitably resulted in the death of the other shortly after - along with the probable incredibly messy death of whatever caused the death of the first partner.

Homosexual female dual cultivation ran into the problem of overabundance of yin, which could cause behavioural issues, but was more likely to cause essence stagnation, which was the exact opposite of what the process needed. There were ways to overcome the issue, but lurid rumours of girls' dorms being full of dual cultivation that their families wouldn't object to was just not physically viable.

All in all, dual cultivation was a technique like any other that required study, practice, and effort. That it also required a partner you could trust meant that the external requirements were steeper than average for most cultivators.

However, Yon only needed about half the process, it was just that controlling his essence in order to concentrate spiritual energy into a viable carrier fluid at the correct dosage was going to take him along the entire first step of the male side. And since Yon liked Cinder for a variety of reasons, if he focused on controlling energy density going low to high while also teaching her cultivation techniques that would protect her from spiritual energy poisoning then he would have both a practice partner and someone who he could check the actual results against.

Because some bright lad tried it every couple of months, no, eating your own semen wouldn't get you anywhere. Your body registered it as itself and thus you needed much more advanced essence respiration techniques to yield anything useful. You had to process it externally first, but it wasn't a material that lent itself to high yields and you needed some skill to get anything valuable out of it. There were easier ways to get extra spiritual energy… at the sect.

In another person though it would respire like any other energy dense material, and if you had good spiritual senses - like say from being trained in meridian tracing - then you could determine the spiritual energy present and thus know what you were doing right or wrong.

Very useful, and since Cinder was already a spontaneous cultivator she would very likely survive the process. Actually, if anything, teaching her cultivation techniques would increase her survival odds. She was picking up deviations very quickly and it was likely only going to get worse with so many cultivators around.

All of that was for another day though. Yon wasn't going to even attempt any of this until… whatever was going on ended. The language shoved into his head had limits and what the higher ups had tried to explain had run into those limits. Fortunately it seemed like this was a temporary condition.

It almost sounded like they were entombed within the bowels of some enormous ship that was sailing across a sea of raw spiritual energy!

Somewhat surprisingly to everyone, they only had a few more days under the smothering pressure before there was another announcement to stand by and then everything returned to normal. Or somewhat more normal, since once the pressure abated two things stood out. One was that Yon's spiritual senses felt sharper, his medical duties while under the wrapping effect forcing them to grow in response. The second was that his spiritual senses felt like the world was more… hollow. Yes, hollow was the best word. Like he had stepped from a crowded hall to a mostly empty one, where the buzz of noise was replaced with awkward echoes.

How strange.

This however meant that it was time to get back to training, with the higher ups pushing to make up for lost time. Fortunately the ones who needed the physical training the most - the mortals - had been doing that while the cultivators got sorted out. It also meant that Yon got to go visit Cinder again surprisingly quickly, since as a provisional staff sergeant he got an extra break in compensation for all the extra work he had to do.

Cinder was more than a little confused by how he had her doing breathing and meditation techniques while covered in acupuncture needles while he made notes on the stills under the Squealing Pig. Then he face fucked her while focusing on only allowing the tiniest drop of spiritual energy to enter his seed, then removed blocking needles to allow the energy to crash through her meridians.

As Cinder lay panting on the ground, the eyes on her head closed while her belly eye rolled about unfocused, her legs bucking, she eventually managed to reel in her tongue and say, "Okay, fuck it, I can do edging for that!"

Yon knew from experience and examining her spiritual response that "that" had been extraordinarily painful, but it seemed that worship of the Lotus Prince among the Celestials held that pain was simply a sensation like any other that was to be enjoyed. The Lotus Eye sect taught that pain was something that could be transcended through enlightenment, and that joy came from that enlightenment itself.

Weird. Maybe the theology was different between the mortals and those with more esoteric knowledge.

Finally though, after two weeks since the start of the new training session, Yon was given instructions to head for a particular amphitheatre to begin in person tactical training. He was rather unsurprised to see Ta Lin there.

He was totally surprised to see Amep of all people there, wearing the insignia of a junior officer.

Then again, the inner disciple had lost out enormously in his exchange with Yon, so he had either volunteered to try to recoup face, or been sold off as someone who had become disposable right before the sect had to make hard choices of who to keep and who to send away.

Their eyes locked and Yon knew that there would be trouble. He would personally keep things professional, but Amep absolutely had a grudge, and possibly resentment over the fact that Yon's insignia said that he had volunteered and been promoted, even if Yon was a common leader and Amep was a noble leader.

Yon's secondary attitude towards Amep is…
[ ] Catty
[ ] Competitive
[ ] Indifferent
[ ] Manipulative

 

[Academia Nut]

[X] Indifferent

Yon considered being a catty bitch to rile Amep up. He considered manipulating him. He considered using the affront Amep must feel as a motivator for self improvement.

Ultimately though, the best approach was to just ignore the inner disciple as best he could within an otherwise professional approach. So Yon let his eyes slide right across Amep, refusing to give anything other than the briefest of acknowledgements, any more attention than Yon was giving everyone else.

It was an effort of will to keep a smirk from creeping into his expression as he caught the twitch Amep's eye gave. He would watch his back, but sometimes the best way to slap a person's face was to refuse to acknowledge that they had face in the first place.

And that should have been it. Maybe Amep would say or do something disparaging towards Yon in class, but it would probably be something that came off duty or potentially on the battlefield, but unless Amep wanted to make a fool of himself nothing significant would come in the moment.

That should have been it.

Only right as Yon was turning away, he felt something brush across his spiritual senses. A spirit, a minor thing in ethereal form passing unusually close to the mortal realms. Nothing significant, but like every other cultivator Yon immediately muted his presence to avoid disturbing the being in its appointed task.

Every cultivator except one.

Bone deep certainty reached Yon before his conscious mind could process what was about to happen, and he was screaming a warning even as he dove for cover.It was a moment so significant it rippled backward in time a few heartbeats, for those with the senses to feel it.

A moment of outrage that could not be expressed to the world.

A sudden need to squash emotion to avoid perturbing an unexpected visitor.

Seething resentment was not concealed, but crushed, and frustrations and embarrassment became despair so acute it became a spiritual beacon. Amep couldn't even be angry properly because he needed to be composed around a spirit, and thus he failed in his composure.

The spirit took interest, and in that moment Amep's despair resonated enough with its essence that it could synchronize with his meridians. There were many ways that could go, but Yon could already feel the consequences incoming with his spiritual senses.

One moment Amep was fine.

A heartbeat later his left eye twitched.

A heartbeat later the classroom was covered in putrefied viscera.

Yon managed to get to cover in time thanks to his fortuitous premonition, but he could see a hole corroding in the desk he was behind. Sticking his head out, he saw that those closest to Amep had had most of at least one side of their body exposed to such rapid decay that their skin was falling off. At least one disciple was dead outright, their body turning into a rapidly spreading puddle of black corpse-juice, but two others seemed to have techniques to slow the decomposition process down and survive with half their skin missing.

"Get it off! Get it off!" Yon shouted in warning as he vaulted over a desk to render aid. Disciples were shucking contaminated clothing, and one inner disciple had a breathing technique that allowed her to exhale flames to begin burning off the contamination on surfaces.

Yon almost had to stop again as he felt that the spirit was still present, but it quickly drifted away from the boundary of the veil, its curiosity and possibly hunger sated. Spiritual invasion of a cultivator's meridians was always something to worry about, but usually the spirits around the sect were only roused to interfere with mortals if someone got their attention via some ritual. Meridian detonation was usually a horror story told to junior cultivators about what might happen if they tried to consume too much energy at once, not something Yon thought he would ever actually see.

Thankfully those who had been standing closest to Amep had been other officers and thus were inner disciples. They had been exposed to massive doses of Harvestfather aligned essence, but their cultivation was strong enough that they could cycle and respire it to restore balance. Yon began to apply emergency acupressure to help better manage the damage and force essence away from parts of the body and soul that couldn't handle it well to areas that were perfect for breaking it down or kicking it from the body.

"WHAT IN THE BLOODY BRASS BALLS!" Someone screamed, causing the disciples to divert attention to the officer who had just opened the door. People froze mid-action as they considered what to do next.

A chunk of ceiling directly above where Amep had been standing collapsed, a chunk of rot blackened skull clattering down amidst oily resin and rust. At some point someone started pointing at the blast markings radiating out from where Amep had been, and Yon actually found that he had wordlessly done it too.

The officer blinked and then said to one of the NCOs trailing him, "Get a fucking decon team down here." He then turned to the group and said, "You're all either going in the chem showers or you're bunking in Grandfather's Temple from now on!" After a round of "Sir, yes sir!" he added on in exasperation, "Continue cleaning up and helping the wounded. Fucking-" He trailed off into mumbling curses as he aboutfaced and stormed off.

It looked like class was cancelled for the day.

 

[Academia Nut]

As it turned out, one of the rewards for competence was getting stuck in quarantine for a month.

Okay, that wasn't entirely fair. Yes, Yon lost out on a fair amount of time he had hoped to use for other projects and for networking with others, but he had gained the gratitude and a personal relationship with the two inner circle members he had been assigned to provide medical care for.

Ryu Hashin was a third son of his clan's heir-line scion, which put him fifth in line theoretically and never in line outside of disaster practically. He had the political connections to be a core disciple, but at only sixteen he had still been young enough that being an inner disciple had been more useful for his growth. With the Ego Death of their ancestor, he had volunteered as an inner disciple to help regain his clan's standing. Ryu was part of the Hunting Division, but he was more of an academic in that he enjoyed dissecting and cataloguing beasts, and generally had a scholar's air about him. He had been in the tactics class because he saw combat as something of an intellectual puzzle and wanted to know more about moving soldiers around to achieve his ends.

Tvar Oli was another inner disciple, but where the Ruy were a notable clan with a lineage that included old monsters and even the Ascended, the Tvar were more recent and their most notable members were elders in branch sects. That meant that he was actually a few years older than Yon, and had been essentially voluntold to join as part of the sect's tithe to the Celestials. He was in the Artisan Annex and had done significant work with spirit bronze casting, which meant that he had little carryover expertise, so he was trying desperately to be the best possible officer he could by piling on extra classes.

Both had been talking with Amep since they had been in adjacent cliques at the Sect. Amep's failure to secure a dessicator quickly had actually impaired a project a mutual sponsor had been working on, although fortunately Amep hadn't actually let anyone know who had got in his way and Yon wasn't breathing a word of that. Somewhat fortunately, both inner disciples had seen Amep as being a bit too desperate to pump up his personal rather than clan value and thus were not particularly broken up by his violent end despite past associations. As for Yon personally, they mostly just took the fact that he was their medic while in quarantine as a given, but close proximity and the application of emergency care certainly gave a generally better all around improvement in their attitude.

They also weren't doing nothing while in quarantine. The Celestials would send them study materials, and they all had enchanted slates that used correspondence magic to pass messages back and forth. This meant that they did a lot of tactical and leadership study in between sessions of meditation and physical conditioning. Ryu also took every opportunity to practice wargames with Yon and Tvar, using a wide variety of tools and knickknacks in their out of the way hall to simulate various battles according to the Celestials.

While there were legitimate training purposes, Yon did have to admit that Ryu saw the whole affair as being something of a pure game, and he was a bit of a childish bitch about the whole thing. Tvar had the social standing to push back if Ryu got too annoying, but Yon just kind of had to go along with things. Yon of course couldn't obviously throw a game, and there were a few times where Ryu was clearly experimenting with something and thus decided that a loss was an acceptable outcome. Most of the time though Yon had to try not to be too clever lest the younger noble get upset at him for rising above his station.

There were two times where this didn't work that Ryu at least had the good graces to not throw an absolute fit over, although that was mostly because the cause of the results were somewhat absurd. The first was one time when the random numbers used to simulate the unpredictability and fickleness of fate on the battlefield spat out a sequence of truly ridiculously good numbers for Yon and garbage for Ryu. Had then been actual dice fists probably would have been thrown, but they had all assumed that they could all manipulate dice throws and had asked for something more secure. While the numbers stabilized shortly after, that initial spate put Ryu in a bad spot where recovery would have required Yon to blatantly throw the game.

The second incident was subtler but no less absurd in totality. In that scenario Yon had just thrown the most simple and basic tactics at Ryu, intending to lose to Ryu's forces like typical, but the game had simply not cooperated with either of them. Neither had particularly good or bad luck with the rolls, it was just that Ryu's advances kept bouncing off Yon's units and Yon kept being in a situation where the most obvious move was clearly also the best one and he would have insulted Ryu if he did anything else.

Ryu had been fuming by the end of the whole thing, but no one in the quarantine room could point to anything Yon had done that had been particularly clever, or anyway the scenario as devised should have given him some sort of starting advantage. He'd just kind of won in the most boring way possible, which hadn't made any sense to any of the three men in the room. It had just sort of happened.

Although after a few more weeks of going over lessons in tactics and leadership, as well as losing the vast majority of the wargames he played, Yon was starting to get a feeling for the way the Celestials did things. They did things by using vast numbers of mortals to haul large amounts of equipment in such a way that they could concentrate extraordinary levels of violence on points and then pounded them like a miner driving stakes in order to split a stone. It wasn't clever or elegant, but it worked.

Then again there had been this one match where suddenly everything had clicked for Ryu and his units began to practically dance across the battlefield, and Yon had pulled out all of his own stops just to try to keep up with the sublime ballet of simulated violence and to extend the experience. He had actually enjoyed rather than accepted his loss in that game, and the next few matches had seen both players frustrated that they couldn't replicate that magic before they returned to their typical routine.

Near the end of their isolation they received not educational or historical material, but actual updates as to their overall objective. As was obvious, the Celestials were preparing for a great conflict, but the depth of the preparation was more extensive than anything Yon had imagined.

It seemed that they were on a giant ship capable of sailing a spiritual sea, able to move between realms of existence. Their ultimate objective was still out of the scope of the material, but spiritual realms apparently had tides and currents and shoals that made the ease of their navigation differ with place and time. The realm their sect had been from was part of a particular current known as the King's Processional, so named for its relative ease and stability while also taking a particularly long route through the local branches of the World, passing through or close to most major features.

Their first stop would have them remind a local lord of their allegiances through a show of force, which would give the conscripts a chance to experience deployment and a taste of combat in the manner of the Celestials. They would be met up by the second wave of conscripts from the sects set to leave at the six month mark, and then the blooded veterans would be merged with the green conscripts to teach them on the way to the next stop. This overall process of either picking up recruits and supplies from loyal worlds or experience in battle from reminding lazy and wayward rulers seemed intended to repeat at least a half dozen times along the Processional before they actually were ready for the actual campaign.

The majority of the information provided was on their first stop.

The First Stop
[ ] Seka, the Phoenix Realm; another realm of sects and cultivators
[ ] Oublie, the Eternal Deeps; a strange place dominated by thousands of pocket spirit realms
[ ] Eclipse, the Twilight March; where the sun never sets nor rises

AN: This one fought me, so have a simple bridging chapter