Cultivation

Caelia's eyes cracked open. Today was the day. She'd written Selene asking to meet and after months of rejection, the twins were going to be reunited today. If her twin had made her wait any longer, perhaps her legacy would have been lost entirely.

The elderly woman pushed herself off the bed weakly, sitting still for a while to allow the dizziness to pass before using her cane to help her stand. Her body had been ravaged by both time and the forbidden experiments she'd participated in. She barely had the energy to stand most days, but thankfully the academy had relieved her of her duties.

It was strange. Most of the staff never reached old age at all. They either died young, retired as a cripple, or were let go. When she was younger she'd assumed it was all thanks to her family, the Dragon Clan. But as she grew older, she felt there was always something a little off about that. The price they would have to pay to appease an Archmage would be quite high.

Maybe at one point she was naive enough to believe it was familial love, back when Selene still visited. It became clear after she stopped that the clan had never valued her. She'd even begun to think that there might have been a plot against her life, but what did it matter now? Even if her family were to have her chopped up and turned into monster feed, she would have croaked in a few weeks anyways.

She was old now. Whatever their plot was, if there even was one, it would happen today. Even if it did, Caelia no longer cared. From the start she'd never had a chance of becoming a Mage. Given that, it was fair how quickly the rest of the clan turned on her. Everyone but Selene.

But now even Selene ignored her. That too, was fair. She'd heard whispers that Selene Veyrin of the Dragon Clan was preparing to ascend to Archmage this year, and would soon grant the Dragon Clan's long held wish of controlling a Sixth Generation Archmage.

Most of the great clans lucky enough to count an Archmage among their retainers only had Fourth Generation Archmages, the lowest standard of Archmages. Although Sixth Generation was still far below the pinnacle of the magic world, a Legacy this powerful had never fallen into the hands of a great clan before.

All of this was thanks to Selene catching the eye of the academy headmaster. Somehow she had convinced that powerful Ninth Generation Archmage to give up some of his less valuable Legacies. Perhaps his favor was really all there was to her comfortable life at the academy? Even if it sounded absurd, it made more sense than some kind of conspiracy against a powerless old cripple.

Caelia made her way slowly through the enormous castle towards the cafeteria. Even if she no longer had to work, the academy wasn't so kind as to provide her with any care. Simply letting her live here was already almost unimaginable.

Caelia's meal was rote and uneventful. She'd lost her sense of taste long ago, and age took whatever remained. No matter what it was, food tasted like wet sand.

Once she was done she headed back to her room to meditate.

Even if it was completely meaningless, she had never skipped a single day's cultivation. After becoming a Tier I Apprentice her progress had completely stalled, and even after decades she felt no closer to the next level.

Even so, she set herself up on the bed, sitting cross legged and began meditating. For most people, reaching a meditative state but she'd been able to do so before even enrolling at the academy. That was the very last time anyone had ever considered her worth anything. Even if Selene pitied her, it wasn't the same as respect.

Even at her advanced age, Caelia was able to enter a meditative state. In this state she was able to view the true state of her body. The world was formed from three layers: matter, energy, and soul. Usually you couldn't see anything other than normal reality, but the path of cultivation required you to be able to.

So, during the Golden Era, thousands of meditation techniques were developed, split into Knights Visualization Techniques and Mages Runic Formulas. Although they differed somewhat in their end result, the general process was the same.

Inside the meditative state Caelia's vision expanded, allowing her to see beyond the veil of the world. To see its true state.

Her body had changed now, showing three overlapping versions of herself superimposed over her normal body. Each one was attached to a different point on her body. Her Mana Body was much larger than the other three, but appeared almost insubstantial. It was connected to a point in the center of her chest, her Mana Heart. As an Apprentice, each beat of her Mana Heart spread power through her decrepit body.

The next was her Aura Body. Compared to her Mana Body it was much smaller, and had the same insubstantial feeling. It was connected to her body through the Aura Seed in her pelvis. Normally, one would quickly improve from a Squire to a Knight Apprentice by converting the Aura Seed into an Aura Core, but since she was crippled, Caelia could only give up on that course of action.

It was especially infuriating since she came from a great clan. With Dragon blood flowing through her veins it would have been trivial for her to become a Knight without even putting in much effort, just like her sister.

The last one was what she had come to call her Alchemy Body. Although it was just as small as her Aura Body, it was significantly denser than either of the other two. Her Alchemy Body was connected to her brain. As of now it was just an Alchemy Seed, a name she had chosen based off of convention, and she had yet to develop ways to strengthen it to the next level.

The denser any of the three spirit bodies was, the more powerful it was, and the faster one would be able to cultivate. At the same time, when one spirit body was strengthened, it would overshadow the other. This meant that for most people, becoming both a Mage and a Knight was nearly impossible if they didn't begin cultivating both disciplines at the same time. Worse still, they needed to train both equally or they might lose the ability to sense the other.

Caelia suspected this was why the Alchemy Body had gone undiscovered for so long. Most people used potions to forcibly stimulate their Aura or Mana Body when they began cultivating in order to sense it during meditation, turning the Alchemy Body invisible. After that, they would begin cultivating and further diminish the visibility of the Alchemy Body. By the time one became an Apprentice in either discipline, the path of Alchemy would be lost forever.

Even Caelia had only sensed her Alchemy Body after almost sixty years of cultivation. Since her Aura and Mana Bodies never strengthened themselves when she cultivated, her Alchemy Body did instead, even if the technique wasn't meant to. This was what allowed her to discover it, and she had needed almost ten years to develop a way to create an Alchemy Seed which allowed her to utilize the power of her Alchemy Body.

She hadn't discovered the true purpose for the mysterious energy it produced, but she suspected it had something to do with manipulating matter, the same way that Aura manipulated souls and Mana manipulated energy.

Of course, this manipulated was completely different from just shaping matter with one's hands, or even the more advanced chemistry techniques that people used to create alloys. What she could do was far more fundamental. She could edit the very nature of matter... which more or less amounted to just shaping it with her mind at her current level of strength. But she was sure it would become much more powerful!

What had she been capable of as an Initial Acolyte? Powering machines that were, frankly, easier to power by hand. It wasn't until she was an official Acolyte that she was capable of doing anything that a mundane person couldn't. She was currently at the Alchemist equivalent of Initial Acolyte, which she had decided to call Initial Assistant, so surely more impressive abilities would be possible once she reached the next level.

Well. She would never reach it. But as long as she could pass this research to her sister, perhaps she would find a way forwards on the path of Alchemy. Although it would be hard for her to sense her Alchemy Body, knowing what to look for was half the battle.

Shaking those thoughts from her mind, Caelia refocused on her meditation. In the next moment, she constructed a three dimensional rune in her mind, then merged it with her Mana Body. With a low rumble, she felt her Mana Body draw energy from her Void Soul. This energy allowed her to "reach out" and grasp mana particles. The one she focused on at this moment was a light mana particle.

Although her crippled Mana Body was a massive hindrance to her cultivation, without a Void Soul cultivation wasn't hard, it was impossible. Only with the energy from a void soul was is possible to power a spirit body. Without it, even if you had one as powerful as Selene, it would be useless.

Caelia guided the light mana particle into her mana body and slotted it into the rune she'd conjured. In reality, it was a complex formula that would allow her to convert the mana particle to pure energy that matched the wavelength of her own. Otherwise, it would be impossible for her to assimilate that energy into her Mana Heart.

The process itself was slow. Each particle took several hours to convert, and even though her Mana Body was vast enough to hold several runes at once, and her Void Soul was boundless, providing endless energy, it didn't change how weak her Mana Body actually was. For a normal person, it would take at most an hour to convert a mana particle, and geniuses like her sister had only needed half that the first time she'd meditated and even less as she grew.

Caelia on the other hand hadn't gotten any faster than the day she first set foot on the path of cultivation. The only consolation was that her Void Soul was powerful enough to sustain her Mana Body for the several hours it took to convert a mana particle. Most people could only power their Mana Body for three hours a day. Caelia could cultivate for eight. Unfortunately she needed nearly all eight just to convert a single mana particle.

When she was finished with her cultivation for the day. Caelia took a nap. When she was younger she might have been able to go to the library in order to conduct research into how to make progress as an Alchemist, but now she was too tired to do anything at all.

When she woke up it was dark once more. Vegrin Academy was built in an area of the world that experienced exceptionally long nights. One's Void Soul was slightly more powerful at night, so many on the path of the Mage would live with a flipped schedule. The academy was built her to facilitate that.

Unfortunately for Caelia, even if cultivating at night gave her an extra twenty percent efficiency, it wasn't enough to complete an additional cycle. As such, she had stopped living on an inverted schedule long ago.

With a huff, she once more pushed herself off the bed, taking several long second to do so. The day she would die was close. She wouldn't be surprised if this was her last time waking up.

Her sister would be here soon. She had some business with the headmaster and had agreed to talk with her afterwards. As long as the nascent path of Alchemy wasn't cut short, she could die happy and fulfilled. Even if no one ever knew her name, she would be the creator of an entirely new path of cultivation!