It wasn’t long until I reached the third step of my Knighthood, the Circulation stage which was… less fun than swinging a sword about.

  I had to meditate and circulate my internal energy.

  Sounds easy enough, right?

  Well, for a normal Manual, that could be the case.

  You had to simply learn how to circulate your internal energy, and then you’re gold. Granted, circulation was a tricky business. Without a Core, you couldn’t actually control your energy, which meant you had to use other means to start a circulation. That involved an uncomfortable poking session for most of the Manuals, but when it was The Undying, things changed… a little.

  I sat in the dark of my Rune Chamber, my body supported by a plump cushion underneath, the walls silent and steady around me. There was not a single sound. It was all silent here under the mansion.

  Taking long, rhythmic breaths, I focused on the presence of my internal energy channels. The sensation wasn’t dissimilar to having kidney stones. It wasn’t painful, of course, but you could feel the lump of these channels clearly in your body. To actually move the energy in them, however, I had to do more than just feel them.

  A Knight’s Manual wasn’t just a simple guide. It had its own set of rules and practices. To mold my body in accordance with The Undying, I had to force a circulation of my internal energy in a way that would leave mini fractures across my channels, much like how during the Refinement stage I basically fractured my channels to widen them through hard training and then had Mary prepare medicinal baths for me so that I could “heal” fast.

  This time, though, there would be no baths. I had to use my internal energy to heal the fractures on my channels.

  Mother told me this was the most crucial and hardest part of The Undying. Many a Knight would fail at this stage because they couldn’t locate those fractures. Simply circulating your internal energy and hoping some of it would spill into the fractures and heal them was not possible.

  It was the circulation of one’s energy that damaged the channels in the first place.

  Taking another breath, I clenched my stomach tight as I held that breath in. I felt one of the circular lumps in my stomach cramp with the motion, then I pushed my index finger’s tip into my belly button and twisted it around.

  One of the two internal energy channels in my stomach reacted to the motion, crooking in a way that pushed the energy inside of it further up across its reach. That energy then aggregated another channel that was in my head, which set a chain reaction that took hold of my whole body.

  Then came the pain.

  It was agony.

  I let out a raspy grunt, sweat pouring down my face. The room’s heat instantly doubled as I sat there, taking all the pain in while keeping my breaths in order. The energy within my channels turned, and twisted, and streamed about with wanton abandonment. I could feel their motion in the back of my teeth.

  For a few seconds, I let the internal energy batter my channels all it wanted.

  It was by the time my nails were about to dig deeper into my palms that I decided for a first try this was enough. I dragged myself, wincing, up to my feet, placed my right hand on the wall to steady my body. Fighting against the pain, I studied the boiling circulation of my internal energy through soul vision and saw the water-like liquid’s growing distress.

  Slowly, I planted my hands on the ground and pulled my legs up, trying, with teeth clenched, to steady my balance. To calm the internal energy chaos, which had splattered to all nine of my energy channels, I had to turn my body upside down and wait until the motion reversed and hopefully stopped the circulation.

  With that, I managed one of The Undying’s recovery positions and waited.

  Drops of sweat rolled painfully down my skin and into the ground, mixing into my tears to create a puddle of my own making. I had not expected the pain would be this excruciating, but it basically reset my whole mind, for which I was glad.

  When in pain, you couldn’t think of anything.

  There were no demons.

  There was nothing.

  I wished I could keep this longer.

  But soon enough, the circulation of my internal energy came to a stop. I felt the boiling waters settle to a manageable calm, then pushed my legs from the wall and put them down on the ground. Without lingering, I sat on the cushion and established the widely practiced meditative position, legs crossed and hands out in front.

  Then I tapped into my soul vision and, through it, saw the result of the destruction I forcefully caused by literally abusing myself.

  Uh…

  I guessed there really was a price if you wanted to become immortal. For The Undying, that price was blood, sweat, and tears.

  Now, I would have to use the same energy that wrecked my channels to patch the aftermath.

  How, do you ask?

  Simple.

  I had to locate the fractures and gather my internal energy into those, and wait.

  And wait, I did.

  It was a bloody morning.

  …..

  On top of my new meditative sessions, I had to manage the training regimen my Mother so kindly prepared for me. It wasn’t exactly getting easier since she would ramp up the difficulty the second I made progress. It was like climbing a wall that stretched higher and higher without an end in sight.

  During these “light” spars, I would get strict education about certain fighting styles that fit The Undying. These were decisively direct in nature and focused on cornering the opponent by pressuring them like there was no tomorrow. While many a Knight would learn how to deal with incoming attacks, I was getting lessons on how to incapacitate my foes through sheer aggression.

  This sounded clever. After all, the Undying kept renewing the body at a rate that no other Manual could match. So then, in a scenario in which you had an enemy of similar strength, a fight of attrition would undoubtedly favor The Undying no matter how long it lasted.

  It was painful, but pain could only so much affect one’s mentality. You got used to it. What I couldn’t do was that I simply couldn’t shed my feelings and focus on the opponent before me.

  There was no way I could stress this enough, but the second Mother decided to push me further in these sessions, I would lose my cool and try to match her jabs and pokes with equal measure. Problem was, while she kept a clear head and could instantly find my openings, I was like a maddened dog who cared less about its well-being and more about making a mess out of its opponent.

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  I wished I was a Celestial Knight like Mother. If that were the case, my anger would likely help me instead of turning me into a blind fool.

  “There are more than a couple of ways to manage a stubborn, angry goat,” Mother said as we separated after I sweated my cheeks off just to get my ass kicked once again. “The best one is to just let it crash into a wall. That’ll usually do the trick.”

  “Funny,” I huffed another breath, my palms sweaty and the back of my neck stinging dully from how hard I’d clenched my muscles during the spar. “I’m too weak. That’s why you can take me on without shedding a single drop of sweat. I’m not even a Bronze Knight yet.”

  Mother gave me a straight look, then sighed out a breath. “There’ll always be mountains looming higher than you. Times when excuses will be just that—useless words to make you feel a bit better about yourself. I admire your greed for more power, but you can’t cut any corners when walking the Path of Glory.”

  I wanted to tell her that there was no need for me to get out until… I don’t know, I became a Herald Knight or something? I could simply train myself to death until I managed to become someone with good enough credentials. Coupled with my runic talents, that sounded like a good plan to me.

  Deep in my mind, though, I knew this was me being way too naive. Cuddled from all around by different kinds of terrifying monsters, I’d started to see the world through a different lens. But then, that point of view was making me nervous and, I had to admit, kinda worthless. What kind of a man would I be if I constantly relied on my mother?

  No, screw that. I had to become my own person, somehow, but not in a way that would leave me alone in a desert much like how it happened in my old life. Boundaries, right? Gotta set them right rather than drawing a straight line that crossed anyone from my life.

  How do I do that, exactly?

  How could I clear my mind and focus on my goals when a simple poke was enough to set this inferiority complex in me on fire?

  I promised myself that I would think about that, but not now. My stomach growled from the morning rituals, and I needed some serious food to feel good about myself again.

  …..

  At night, I dragged my sore body to the Rune Chamber. Now that I was barred from taking medicinal baths every night, there was not a single part of my body that didn’t hurt from hard use. Worse yet, some of the little fractures in my internal channels were still in the process of getting repaired, which came with its own set of painful pulses and sudden cramps.

  But hey, at least I wasn’t trying blindly to heal my internal channels, right? Belfray had told me about the time he’d changed his own Manual, and how he struggled with the first chapter. I didn’t know how exactly that kind of thing worked, but it supposedly took him three years just to complete the Circulation stage.

  Granted, he’d already been a Celestial Knight when he attempted the change, which, while making some of the parts harder, had also put him in a better position to handle these difficulties than a seven-year-old’s first attempt at making a Knight out of himself.

  Too bad he didn’t have soul vision. That basically allowed me to spot every problematic dot in my internal channels without any effort.

  There was also the case of medicinal experts, of course, who could help with that sort of thing, but Belfray told me that it wasn’t practical at all. Keeping such an expert at your side for three years straight, day in and day out, wasn’t really possible since the amount of skill it took for an expert to keep an eye on such progress meant they were distinct individuals.

  Anyway, it was time to meditate and clear my head. To think about my own troubles and figure out a way to take them on.

  Instead, I pulled out a blank paper and took my ink pen.

  Working on runes was my jam.

  I first started with the second character of the runic alphabet, which looked like a cross between “B” and “X.” It was crooked and sort of twisted, but quite easy to learn once you got enough practice in.

  Why did I start with the second character, though?

  It was because today I’d be working with Grade 2 Runes.

  The logic behind those was simple. To inscribe a Grade 1 Rune, you’d start the string with the first character of the runic alphabet. You’d use the second character if you were going for a Grade 2 Rune and so on. That’d be the first step. The second was the number of strings. For each grade, you’d need an individual string of runic characters, aka sentences. This got complicated the higher you climbed.

  For example, when inscribing a Grade 1 Body Strengthening Rune you’d simply write in the runic alphabet the words “Bodily Strength” then power them with your soul energy. For a Grade 2 Body Strengthening Rune, however, you’d have to add the word “High” into the mix.

  In theory, a Grade 5 Body Strengthening Rune would go something like “Ultimate Super Advanced High Bodily Strength.” That’d give you about a 100% increase in your bodily strength, which to me was a good deal even though the naming convention was a little cringe.

  So there I was, working on perfecting my “High Bodily Strength,” aka Grade 2 Body Strengthening Rune, scribbling away the same sentence over and over again while trying to ensure the quality. A single twisted line could render the rune ineffective, or worse, useless, and this was when you were working on good paper. To actually make these Runes stick, you’d normally use magical leather of sorts, which, while quite efficient in storing soul energy, didn’t exactly offer you the smoothest surface.

  Therefore, practice was important.

  I poured my ever-growing soul energy reserves into these pages. I lost myself in the process. Time became irrelevant as I completed one paper after another, my mind too focused to bring about any baggage I’d carried from my first life before me.

  It was when I finished the stack of papers that something clicked in me. I leaned back into the chair, my arm and shoulder a little stiff, my legs aching from how I’d crossed them for hours. I looked at the result of my hard work and almost smiled, but that smile was long gone before it could flourish.

  Was this enough? Was I doing the right thing?

  For some reason, it didn’t feel like it.

  I shook my head and tried to gather myself. Then I rose and was about to go back to my room when I paused.

  There was someone else in the room.

  An old guy.

  “There’s nothing quite like watching a Runemaster at work,” he said, smiling down at me with what appeared to be genuine respect, his expression similar to how Belfray would react whenever he accompanied me into the room, but different enough that I could see something else in there.

  I couldn’t put a name on it, but it wasn’t anything as pure as joy or respect.

  “I’m ever your servant, Young Master. The name’s Radek,” the old man said. Against his gray beard and hair, he seemed somewhat younger than Belfray in the way he carried himself. “You wouldn’t know me, of course, since I’d often prefer the rest many a shadow offers across this world rather than the glorious lights of this mansion, but as occasion demands, my presence was recalled here for a purpose.”

  “I don’t know you,” I said, which felt stupid because the guy literally just introduced himself. “You’re one of Mother’s… guards?”

  “Guards?” Radek’s smile widened, then he cocked his head. “I suppose you could say that. I’ve been at her side as long as that foolish butler has been, but undoubtedly with more weight and a better record. I’ve been her Shield for the better part of her career.”

  “Shield?” I scowled.

  “A Heart Mage, as we like to refer to ourselves. I’ve had the pleasure of keeping her mind and heart safe from certain outside influences in the field, or during different missions. You would be surprised if you knew how many famous figures have been felled due to their lack of sensitive measures.”

  I froze. I knew these people. Or rather, people like this guy from the lessons I’d gotten from Belfray. We were not yet too deep into the Mages since he was taking a more general approach first, but I knew there were Mages out there who specialized in manipulating one’s emotions.

  First of all, these Mages were terrifying. According to Belfray, some scholars believed that becoming a Heart Mage was nearly as difficult as mastering soul energy. Some others disagreed and said the two couldn’t be more different, but that wasn’t the point.

  If I knew Mother and learned anything from my short life here in this giant world, then there was no way this guy was a little Mage. If he said he was a Heart Mage responsible for keeping the Butcher of the Dawn’s mind safe from other people, then he had to be strong.

  “I’m a Celestial Mage, indeed, Young Master.”

  Damn it, I knew it.

  This place was slowly becoming a house of monsters. Though, why was I surprised? Even the kitchen maids were at least Diamond Knights or higher. I shouldn’t expect less from Mother. There was basically nothing normal about her or the people around her.

  But it made me curious.

  While I could understand Belfray’s existence since he was a butler and a teacher both, the sudden appearance of a Celestial Heart Mage didn’t make much sense. Someone like him, as he’d said, had way more important things to do than to have a little chat with a seven-year-old.

  Perhaps he wanted to meet me? I was the “Young Master” after all. Yeah. That should be the case.

  “I’m Leo,” I said lamely, scratching the back of my head. “I think you knew that already…”

  “I did. It’s a pleasure meeting you, Young Master,” he said, his smile chipping away at my nervousness. “But I’m afraid I won’t be satisfied with just a meeting.”

  “Oh?” My eyebrows rose.

  “Why don’t you tell me more about yourself?” Radek asked eagerly. “It must’ve been rather tough for you to live in this mansion all by yourself, isn’t it? I know for a fact that being in the close proximity of such a generous number of brutes would surely leave a mark on me. It can’t be easy to adjust to these sudden changes, is it?”

  “It…” I swallowed. “It really is.”

  “Come.” Radek gestured with a hand toward the open door, which now looked questionable to me since there supposedly were only two keys. One for me, and one for Mother.

  She was the one who sent him here, then?

  Was this another probe? Another training, or a test I had to complete?

  “There are no tests here,” Radek said as though he could read my mind. “My Lady doesn’t know I have her key.”

  “You stole it?”

  “We’ll keep that a secret.” Radek brought his index finger up to his lips, then smiled widely.

  ……

  :3

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