81 - Something To Be Proud Of

Over the next few days, I really push the limits of that statement, but she doesn’t mind at all. In fact, she’s more than happy to satisfy my curiosity, letting me follow tangents upon tangents. Specific information on the Tower is limited, even for her, so many of her stories end up unfortunately censored, but I still learn a lot. Most of what I learn is about what kinds of things are possible in the Tower, and with cultivation beyond 3 star.

Apparently, at 4 Star, short range teleportation becomes possible. Technically, it’s possible before then through clever use of restrictions and affinities, but at 4 star, all cultivators can learn how to do it, to some extent. At 5 star, it becomes trivial. So that’s something to look forward to, I guess.

According to her, there are also multiple ways to get through every Tower challenge. I’ve already witnessed that personally, but she confirms that this is a constant throughout the Tower. There is always another way. The challenges are tests of ingenuity as much as they are tests of ability. 

I ask her what she does in the thousands of years that she’s in hiding, and while the answer shouldn’t have been surprising, I was surprised anyway when I learned that she wasn’t actually in hiding. In fact, she was rarely actually on the 55th Floor where she claimed to be. Instead, much like the Wanderer, she traveled the Tower in disguise, meeting with old friends and acquaintances, visiting new places, messing with younger Climbers, and overall trying to have a good time. 

Most of what I learn, however, is useless. I don’t regret learning it, since I know now a lot about the woman who is likely my sister, but it’s not worth going over in detail. Well, not too much detail. There is one important detail, which is her name: Hanna. It’s a much more ordinary name than I was expecting, but it’s nice, and somehow feels fitting.

A nice bonus to spending time with her is that her food is much better than the bland food that appears in my room. It’s better than the food in the dorms too. It’s actually better than any food I’ve ever eaten. She tells me what a few of the dishes are, but most of them are made from animals and plants I’ve never heard of. One of those things though is called Cultivator's Coffee, which completely eliminates fatigue, meaning I don’t need to sleep as long as I drink it somewhat regularly. I don’t much like the taste of coffee, but this tastes all right, and the side effects are convenient.

It’s only after three or so days of this that we finally return to the topic of the Legacy. 

“Oh, the third challenge?” she asks “You’ve already passed it. The challenge is just seeing how you react to my arrival.”

“How do so many people who pass the first two challenges fail the final one then?”

“Because I don’t like them.”

“Oh.”

“And also because most people don’t respond well to the presence of an Ascendant. It’s a willpower thing. The ones who passed before were 2 of the 13 people who passed the first challenge by failing 10,000 times. Most of the others who passed that way flunked out during the interview section.”

“Huh.”

I guess that makes sense. If someone either defeats her or copies her techniques in the first challenge, that doesn’t show anything about their willpower, and the interview was mostly about behavior and honesty, so once again no willpower. If someone who passed the other challenges had the willpower, they would qualify, but I guess none have. It’s really interesting though, because it shows that she’s clearly looking for people with strong wills over people with high levels of ability.

“Even if you weren’t who you are, you would have passed, by the way,” she continues. “You stayed standing, didn’t grovel, and were bold enough in your responses to show that you weren’t a complete coward.”

“So that means I get your Legacy?”

“Frankly, it’s not really worth too much to you,” she says. “You already have half of it with the fire resonance. The other half is just personal cultivation help from me, but you also don’t really need that. I would have helped you reform your core, but your core is already perfect, and I can still give you a helpful cultivation technique, but I doubt it will be much better than what you already have. Cultivation techniques for 4 star and higher aren’t very compatible with anyone in the lower tiers, so it would just be an optimized 3 star technique, and yours should already be pretty close. Actually, let’s check that right now. Come sit down in front of me and start cultivating.”

“Okay.”

I sit in front of her and start cultivating. Cultivation is mostly just about drawing in the oum from the air around and circulating it in the body, but different techniques call for different methods of circulation. Some focus more on the arms or the legs, or the core, while some try to spread it evenly throughout. Some are gentle and flowing, while others are rapid and fierce. It really all depends on the person and what kinds of techniques they’re trying to learn. 

Mine is overall a fairly balanced technique. The oum spreads evenly throughout my body, and while it’s a little fast, it’s not to the point where the speed can define the technique. It’s something I settled on after a few lives of experimentation, and just as Hanna says, it’s quite optimized. I would never have been able to reach 3 star in the low oum concentration of Earth otherwise.

As I cultivate, her own oum enters my body and gently guides mine in a few places, smoothing out the flow in places I didn’t know it was getting choppy, and nudging it along in places I didn’t see that it was getting slow. As she said though, it doesn’t change the overall technique. It’s just some minor refinement.

“Better than I expected,” she comments when we finish. “And it suits you better than the technique I would have given you. Hopefully my changes help.”

“I can already feel the improvement,” I reply. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, but it still feels kind of anticlimactic,” she says with a hand on her chin. “All that work just to get something you already pretty much had.”

“Well, I got to talk to you.”

“True, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. I think I have an idea though.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll teach you one of my other techniques. A Life technique. I didn’t include any in the Legacy because that’s not really my legacy, but I did dive pretty deep into life techniques after I reached the top, and I’ve added a few new things.”

“You don’t have to if-”

“I want to,” she says, interrupting me. “And I’m going to teach it to you unless you turn it down.”

“Then I look forward to it.”

“Ah, but you might not like the name of this technique.”

“Why not? What is it?”

“Rebirth.”

***

After Bella returned to the desert, Vanessa spent nearly all her time in the administrative building with Organa. Apparently, when the angelic woman said “every waking hour,” she meant that 100% literally. Vanessa barely got time to meet with Kat and the others with how much work Organa gave her. She never complained though. This was exactly what she wanted. 

The first thing she did was absorb the pill that was effectively her signing bonus, and with Organa’s help, she managed to push all the way to Peak 1 star. Her cultivation was very unstable though, since she had pushed through two full minor realms in one go, so once she was done with that, she spent most of her time trying to get it under control. It was a tedious and annoying process, made more difficult by the fact that she was also supposed to be learning a couple basic Life and Connection techniques at the same time.

On the bright side, she was progressing more quickly than Organa thought she would. Apparently, the near-Ascendant didn’t realize that Vanessa was a medical student, and her assumptions about Vanessa’s knowledge of anatomy were very wrong. Vanessa still struggled to control her oum to efficiently heal, but it was an issue of her unstable foundation and inexperience, rather than her lack of knowledge.

Because of this, her training schedule had been adjusted, and rather than focusing on her Life affinity, most of her non-cultivation practice was spent on her Connection affinity instead. She had no experience with this at all, so progress was much slower, but they had at least settled on a direction for her to go.

Vanessa had always been someone who preferred to watch from the side, rather than being the person at the center of a commotion. It was why she was immediately drawn to the bow when they were selecting weapons for the Starter Quest. Organa decided to have her continue along that path with the bow, but with some improvements.

The first improvement was the bow itself. There were standard weapons available for purchase in the Quest Hall, and they had bows with draw weights going up high enough that even a Peak 2 star would struggle to use it, but they were very basic, and not the highest quality. Instead, Organa purchased a bow made of mammoth bones for her. It was taller and a bit heavier than she was used to, but nothing her newly enhanced body couldn’t handle

They also bought arrows made of the same bones, with heads made from some kind of forged metal that only existed in the Tower. Between the bow and the arrows, Vanessa didn’t really even need oum to be a threat to most cultivators. She only needed the bare minimum applied to her body to allow her to draw the string, and the resulting force would be enough to penetrate the defenses of all but the most defensively-minded cultivators below Late 2 star. 

In addition to that, she was attempting to apply some Connector techniques to the arrows as she launched them. Connectors were unfortunately a bit disadvantaged before they reached 2 star. Being able to control oum outside of their body was the hallmark of a 2 star cultivator, and was nearly impossible for 1 stars, and unfortunately, most connector techniques were centered around manipulating oum outside the body. Still, there were a few workarounds available, and the Hateps knew all of them.

What Vanessa was working on was sort of a pre-programmed set of commands she could trigger on her arrows. The way it was supposed to work was that she would inject a bit of oum with those preprogrammed commands into the arrow as she fired, and then without moving, she would use her oum to trigger the commands. The goal was to be able to relatively freely control the trajectory of her arrows by the tournament, but that was still a long way off.

In this current moment, she was working on an earlier stage of that goal. In front of her, about ten feet away, was a metal ball sitting on a chair. The ball was made of a metal with properties that allowed it to hold onto oum a bit longer than usual, making it perfect for their practice. She had injected it with a small amount of her own oum, which was slowly starting to crumble, but before it did, she glared at it and gave a strong mental command. Nothing happened. She tried again, and again, nothing happened.

“You need to feel the connection between yourself and your oum,” said Auriel.

Vanessa gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, sensing for her oum in the ball. She could feel it just fine, and she could feel that it was hers, but she had no idea how to “feel the connection,” as the young celestial explained. Unfortunately, Auriel was not quite as good with instructions as Organa, and even more unfortunately, Organa had actual work to do and couldn’t watch over Vanessa at all times, meaning the duty fell to Auriel… for some reason. Vanessa suspected that it was in hopes of getting the rising star of the Hateps an in with Bella.

Vanessa didn’t completely dislike it. Auriel was a bit spoiled, but was mostly pleasant company. She did seem to be genuinely trying to help. She just wasn’t very good at it.

“You’re not doing it right,” said Auriel.

“I noticed,” said Vanessa grumpily as her injected oum finally dissipated, no longer able to hold together.

“Here, watch me,” said Auriel, stepping up to the orb and filling it with her oum.

It was not the first time that Auriel had demonstrated it, but Vanessa still watched as closely as she could. Or rather, she closed her eyes and focused her oum sense on the process. She observed as Auriel filled the orb with oum, took a few steps away, then snapped her fingers and with a poof, the oum in the orb burst outward. It didn’t do any damage, but it was noticeably different from the sad dissipation that Vanessa’s oum had done.

“You need to feel your oum,” explained Auriel. “It’s like– hold on, let me think of how to explain it… Well think about it this way. That oum in the ball is still yours, right?”

“Right,” said Vanessa.

“Well, since it’s yours, it should still be under your command, right?”

“Not for a 1 star.”

“No, I could do this when I was a 1 star,” she said. “Hold on, I’m not explaining it right. Go inject your oum again.”

Vanessa did so, then took a step back.

“Okay, so that oum is yours, right?” said Auriel.

“Yeah…” said Vanessa.

“How do you know?”

“Well, I put it there.”

“Right, but imagine if you didn’t remember putting it there. Or imagine that I had three identical orbs and filled each with the same amount of oum and shuffled them around. How would you tell which one was yours?”

“Because… it just feels like mine?”

“Exactly. It feels like yours. That’s your oum, and you can still feel it. So why shouldn’t you be able to control it?”

“I’m not following,” said Vanessa. “I thought it was only possible once I got to 2 star.”

“It’s… Damn, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like a mental switch that you need to flip. Once you do, you’ll wonder how you ever failed to get it in the first place, and that’s what makes it so hard to explain. The main point though is that the oum in that orb is yours, and there’s a reason for it.”

Vanessa turned her attention back to the orb as her oum faltered and dispersed once again. With a frown, she filled it up again, and took a step back and closed her eyes. The oum was definitely hers. It felt like hers. But what did that mean? Why was it important. How could she control it?

Rather than mentally trying to make it go poof like Auriel’s, she instead focused on her oum, observing it. Why did it feel like hers? How did she know?

She compared her oum to the oum in the orb. It was identical, but it was also different from the oum in the air. What made it different? Well, it was purer and more concentrated for one. But more than that, it was also more controlled. Or maybe more orderly? Yeah, more orderly was a better term. The oum in the air was chaotic and free, while the oum in her body and in the orb was behaving like it had a drill instructor keeping it in line. But why?

Her oum dispersed again, and she opened her eyes and turned to Auriel.

“Can you show me again?”

This time, when the celestial did it, Vanessa focused on her instead of the orb. It was faint, but when she triggered the oum in the orb, she noticed that the oum in Auriel’s body also flickered slightly. 

“Again, please?”

This time, Vanessa observed the difference between Auriel’s oum and her own. They were both purer and more concentrated and more orderly, but they were still distinctly different. What made them different? Why weren’t they the same? 

She turned her shamelessness up to the maximum, and requested for Auriel to do the same thing over and over again. To her credit, the young celestial didn’t complain. She merely looked confused at what Vanessa was trying to do.

On the 20th attempt, something finally clicked in Vanessa’s mind. The difference between their oum was minute, but unmistakable. They both had similar levels of orderliness, but they were still different. Vanessa had already assumed it had something to do with the “oum signatures” that she had heard people talking about, but only now did she properly understand what that meant. She had previously thought it was something like a fingerprint, but she now saw it was more like a voice. A frequency, or a collection of specific frequencies in a specific pattern.

“I think I’ve got it.”

She eagerly moved toward the orb and filled it up again. This time, when she stepped back, rather than trying to force her willpower upon the oum in the orb, she focused more on the oum in her own body and the way it moved. Resonance was the key. She wasn’t commanding the oum in the orb. She was communicating with it. It still took a few seconds of fiddling, but soon, the oum in the orb went poof, just like it was supposed to.

“You did it!” said Auriel happily. 

“I did it!” said Vanessa, even happier.

“Great!” said Auriel. “Now that you can do that, we can get on with the rest of Organa’s training plan.”

Vanessa inwardly groaned, but followed Auriel to the desk. It had already been a long day, and it was about to get longer. The success invigorated her though, and she was more than ready for the next challenge.

Just you wait, Bella, she thought. I’m going to show you what I can do.