I had to admit that I was impressed: I hadn’t expected this backwards civilization to be capable of such forensics, but then again I knew next to nothing about tracking… so maybe it wasn’t as mysterious as I thought. And while the Master of Earth obviously wasn’t thrilled about what had happened, he understood it and was making several things clear: That he was on my side, and that I needed to be extremely careful from now on.

After the shock of the meeting started to wear off I felt rather elated, more at home at Academy than I had expected possible. Maybe my roommates weren’t ideal, and sure Sylko was a pain in the ass, but Tetra was alright, Master Jaduk had basically told me he has my back, and Alder had been dealt such a blow I doubted he would be capable of plotting mischief any time soon.

I found myself smiling as I returned to my room, nodding at Idonea (who ignored me) and Mei (who simply stared at me) as I walked over to my bed… which caused Idonea to snap at me, and I ruefully rolled my eyes as I turned around and started cleaning up after her again. In a way it was like being a parent, except I had never wanted to punch my child in the face before. But the last thing I needed right now was more attention drawn to me, especially after Master Jaduk had made clear that nobles from The City were looking into the death of the three House Flameward soldiers.

-------------------------

Wolfram sent after I told him what had happened.

I sent back.

Sent Wolfram,

That had been exactly what I was thinking, but I wanted to get Wolfram’s opinion before I told him mine. I sent with a shrug,

He sent, waiting for only a moment before answering his own question. He included an image of an ancient looking leather-bound book.

I asked him.

their curse words?> Wolfram sent along with a sense of confusion.

I was nonplussed for a moment before I replied, I sent with a laugh,

Wolfram laughed in reply,

I didn’t think that was correct usage of the curse word, but we were way off topic again. I sent with a sense of excitement.

There was a pause before Wolfram started sending me a whole stream of good old fashioned Earth swearwords. He was seriously pissed about something, and I was getting a bit worried when he finally sent something coherent.

He sent rather eloquently. I almost laughed despite my shock. Why would the warning pop up for that?

I pondered it or a moment, but decided that enough was enough. Mom would be soooooo mad if she heard me talking like this. The ‘beast’ attacks we constantly suffered had made the very name of what they are into a curse that was so vile it was hard to explain.

Wolfram laughed again, sending a sense of fading annoyance mixed with rising amusement,

Wow… that one was way too much, and I needed a moment more to recover. I sent a mental windmill high-five to Wolfram, and we spent the next few minutes sending the vilest variations of curse words we could think of.

I needed to get this back on track, and I was immensely curious about the Cultivation Technique.

And that’s when everything changed.

Warning: Your Cultivation Base has become unstable. Further information available in The System.

Well, crap… that didn’t sound good.

--------------------------

I told Wolfram about the message, which probably shouldn’t have been that surprising considering the warning message we ignored, and we started to discuss what it meant. Then I had a question about the Cultivation Technique he had just sent me (which I had only just started making sense of) and suddenly the stupid warning message popped up again.

*Warning, this message will be harmful to Mark. Would you like to proceed?*

It felt strange seeing the name Mark again, but even stranger was the presence of the warning itself. Wolfram had sent me these damn images himself, how the heck could they harm him?

I was completely baffled, as was Wolfram when I told him, but he decided that we had to move past these messages at some point. So I sent my question, ignoring the warning, and Wolfram told me he got a message about damaged cultivation too.

Wolfram sent.

I could only agree, but after further experimentation we found that no warnings popped up no now, no matter what we sent.

I sent.

Wolfram replied with a sense of confusion.

What in the… operating system?

I was starting to get a VERY bad feeling about this… we were obviously speaking about completely different things.

Wolfram was silent for a moment,

I sent.

Sent Wolfram along with a sense of worry and rising panic.

Something was drastically wrong about this whole conversation, and I felt an odd sense of danger starting to rise up around me. I sent.

Wolfram was again silent for a moment, and when he replied I could still sense his worry.

I felt the same way, completely baffled about what he meant by ‘base code’. I knew GUI stood for Graphic User Interface, but I didn’t see why you would need one… or why it would take years even if you did.

We decided to leave that topic alone for now, focusing on the Cultivation Technique he had gotten from his tutors. It was… pretty crappy, to be honest.

I sent,

Sent Wolfram.

That was starting to get into dangerous territory again, so I decided to ignore it. From what I could see, the way this Cultivation Technique worked was by repeating a verbal formula for months or years along with specific physical activities and postures… I could see some sense in it, as it was kind of like an EXTREMELY slow version of what I did – although this method didn’t allow for any creativity, and seemed like it would produce cultivators who all had exactly the same powers.

Added to that, there was no meditation done just before (or during) sleep… meaning that they only way they could gain power from the universe would be when awake and practicing. That would literally take up all of your free time… nobody could practice this technique and still hold a job, or gather enough food to eat. I was starting to see a possible reason why the nobility so harshly restricted these Cultivation Techniques: If everyone was busy practicing them there would be nobody getting any work done, or growing any food!

I replied,

sent Wolfram,

I didn’t even want to ask for clarification. I was already pretty confused, and I didn’t want to make it any worse. That sense of danger had returned, and I felt an odd shaking sensation that ran right through my soul-form when I started trying to figure out what Wolfram was talking about.

I asked Wolfram,

he sent,

I had a feeling that the only reason he was feeling alright was because I hadn’t tried to explain the way I cultivated in nearly as much detail as he had, and he was assuming I was just programming things differently than he was. If I told him I had a character sheet he would probably freak right out.