Seeking the Answer

As an arena was being chosen in the real world and the teams were preparing to fight, Lance was finding the PP machine more and more revolting.

It had been 7 months. Each day, the sun would rise up. After a night of meditation, Lance would fresh up and walk onto the dojo. He would plan method after method, idea after idea. He would go through his memories with a fine comb. He would sometimes even pull out his hair due to frustration.

The isolation had started to creep up on him. Having only himself for company each day was starting to drive him nuts. Although he had not been a very social person back on earth, there had never been a time when he was completely isolated from all living beings, that too for such a huge amount of time.

He had even resorted to naming the gloves and talking to them. Ben, George, Delilah and Georgina were their names, and they delighted in trying to make him spit out these organs.

"Damn Delilah, that was a hard one!"

"Whoa there Ben, don't kill me please..."

"Come on George, the behind is off limits!"

"Georgina, I already told you! Don't even try to take advantage of my backside when I'm not looking!"

Curses like these could be constantly heard during the testing hour.

The Castellan and the others could only look on from outside and hope that Lance would get over this soon. This was something that each and every initiate had to face at some point or the other: the horror of having no one but yourself as a companion.

The path of cultivation was long and very tiring. Along the path, friends and family might come and go. The only constant was the self. The sooner one accepted this and found ways to overcome the loneliness, the better their chances of reaching higher peaks in cultivation.

This did not mean at all that one should forsake all such comforts. There were some lucky people who managed to find the perfect life partner who could cultivate with them step by step. The problem was that cases like these were rare. Others had a clique of friends who they shared their deepest feelings with. Regardless, at least until one could reach a stage where they have the power to govern their own life, loneliness was something that had to be overcome.

The biggest consolation for Lance was that his cultivation was constantly growing. There were visible signs of complete solidification despite the fraction of energy constantly being funneled away by the wishroot.

Day by day, Lance could feel his mental state deteriorating. Some days, he even found it difficult to get out of bed. The temptation to skip mediation and just sleep for once was also very strong.

Each time these temptations came, one image conjured itself up in Lance's mind. A group of people, ready to die for their country.

Other than this, his constant dream of wanting to fly and grow powerful kept him going. He himself did not know that the latter reason was also a very strong wish in him.

6 months passed in this fashion. From the beginning of the 7th month, even these had started to lose effect.Each day was more grueling than the last as Lance struggled not to give up. He kept remembering his masters pride filled words, his friends trusting faces and his ancestors lecherous comments(the last one was remembered fondly as it made him laugh).

On one such day, Lance was taking a regular laze state break when something just told him not to come out even though the 20 minutes were up. "Whats the harm?", thought Lance as he listened to that voice and continued to be in the trance, mind drifting for more than an hour. He had recently also increased his lunch and dinner time, so he had no resistance to increasing the break time too.

Miraculously, Lance woke up refreshed. It felt like it had only been yesterday that he had entered the dojo. He felt as if he had been carrying an ever increasing weight all these days and it was now finally gone.

Even sleep had not had this effect. Lance had skipped cultivation one day and had a full night's sleep, to check if it would help. The result was an utter failure. There was no perceptible change in his mental state and he was even less refreshed than when he had had a full night of cultivation.

With just an hour now though, his mind felt as if it had been born anew. He had even forgotten how it felt to have clear thoughts and distinct motivation. He shivered as he realized how close he had been to giving up.

Now, knowing what to do, Lance left an hour daily for this now very important task. The results were remarkable. In the last month, he had made more breakthroughs in finding the answer than the whole of the 7 months combined.

Until now, he had not activated the wishroot at all due to the disastrous circumstances he had been warned about. But, Lance knew that the answer lay with the wishroot itself. The key, as the Castellan had said, was to use the minimum threshold.

Lance finally believed he had found the way to do just that.