As it turned out, Nimh was wrong. Performing the forms, while circulating vital energy and enhancing his senses with mental energy was an exercise in distraction, pain and misery.

His enhanced senses felt every movement of his vital energy, including the micros tears the vital energy caused as his muscles contracted and retracted. That was manageable, except it wasn’t just his muscles, but every joint, tendon and bone echoed through his senses with gory detail.

Under the influence of the vital energy, his entire body was in a state of deterioration and repair. In the long run, his body would become stronger, more durable, and faster. But right now, it was a living hell of pain.

The wind caught his hair which he was now surprised to feel like an extension of his self. His skin trembled under the cool night breeze and every movement made his body feel like a thousand needles was stabbing into him.

Then, there was the noise. His enhanced hearing heard the world in crystal clear detail. Which at the top of a building, was the same as having storm billowing in his ears? Even when he pierced the thundering noise generated with every step, there were the sounds of the night.

The screams in the distance, the laughter, and the crying. The pleas for help.

He had needed to stop on multiple occasions to catch himself. He wanted to act, to hunt down the source of those screams for help, those cries of pain and misery and do what he could to fix them.

From his vantage point, despite the growing gloom, Nimh saw a man. He was leading a girl, a little younger than Keira into an alley. The girl had eyes devoid of life. A slave. A few minutes later, the man remerged the slave girl on his shoulder, clothes gone.

Every fibre of Nimh’s being urged him to dash down and kill the man. The girl did not deserve that fate. No one deserved that fate. But even according to the laws he had spent the majority of the day scribing, there was nothing wrong with what the man was doing. She was a slave, and there was nothing Nimh could do about it.

In fact, if he did kill the man, he would be breaking his own laws. Sure, they may not be publicly announced yet, but it was still wrong.

Nimh could only watch like a vengeful hound on a leash. He was like that when Keira joined him.

“I thought you were training.” She said, following where he was looking.

“I got distracted,” Nimh admitted. “I’ve been trying something new and it is hard to get a handle on.”

“Can I help?” she asked.

Nimh shook his head. “I’ll muddle through,” he pulled his eyes away from the scene. Another man had joined the first, the combined leer from the two men told Nimh all he had to know.

“You want to do something about it, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you?” she asked.

“Are they breaking a law?” he asked. “They are using a slave girl for the function the slave girl exists for. The manner they use her is up to the owner of her contract and so long as the owner has no problem with his slave being raped in an alley, then no one has a right to say anything against it. Am I wrong?”

“No,’ Keira admitted. “But that doesn’t make the situation right.”

“No,’ Nimh agreed. “It does not.”

“Will you be able to fix it?” she asked. “When you conquer this world, I mean. Can you abolish slavery completely?”

“I don’t know,” Nimh said honestly. “But I can damn well try.”

Together, they went down to the training room. Keira had failed to tap into her spirit, so Nimh spent the next hour guiding her through restricted vital energy flow. Her progress was quite impressive, performing the first nine forms with some accuracy.

When she finally exhausted herself again, she returned to her meditation, trying to tap into her spirit.

This time, Nimh did not go outside, instead, he returned to his own training. Restricting his vital energy flow to its lowest stage, he enhanced his sense of touch and began his forms with painful slowness. This was far less overwhelming, though still difficult.

Fighting through the pain and the distraction brought on by an enhanced sense of touch, Nimh made it to the seventieth form before his concentration broke. It was broken by Keira momentarily tapping into her spirit.

It had taken her almost two hours this time and though it was only an instant, it was a success. Letting himself rise out of his training stance, he turned and walked towards her as she lay spread-eagled on the ground, fists punching the ground.

“I did it!” she squealed, pure joy radiating from her.

Nimh politely clapped his hands. “Well done. You are almost at the starting point.”

That made her cut off her celebration, rolling into a seated position to glare at him. “You can’t let me have this small victory?” she asked annoyed.

Nimh smirked. “Not yet. Tap into it again, and this time, follow it.”

“What? How do I follow it?” she asked confused.

“You will understand when you do it. Now, back to it. If you can’t succeed by the time, I finish my forms it will be sparing next, and I will show you just how tough Sebastian Stain really was.”

That made Keira shiver as she started her meditation again, though Nimh heard her mutter a few curse words at his expense as she did. Ignoring them, Nimh went back to his training.

“That’s a bit rude,” Marcus said inside Nimh’s spirit. “She was super happy too you know.”

“And she’ll be happier when she actually unlocks her spirit well,” Nimh answered, turning his attention to his other student in the spiritual arts. “Have you succeeded yet?”

Turning his awareness inwards, he faced Marcus’ spirit. The spirit seed had grown, pushing the darkness back even further as more blue light reached out into the spirit well.

Marcus stared at him, disgustedly, pointing at the spiritual seed. “You’ve been refining that all this time, you know that right? It’s really distracting.”

Nimh did know that, as he had intentionally been feeding spiritual energy into the spiritual seed. It had been difficult at the beginning but for the instances where he hadn’t needed his spirit in combat, it only made sense to use it to fuel his spiritual seed development.

“I am aware,” Nimh said dryly. “Now, change your form.”

With a mutter, Marcus stretched out his translucent form of an arm before spinning it into a knot. Nimh stared, baffled by the man’s lack of creativity.

An instant later, Nimh’s spiritual form vanished, with eight oddly solid-looking swords of condensed spirit where he had stood. Marcus yelped and the swords flashed forward, dancing through the spirit well.

Intricate patterns flowed behind the swords, cutting through the black and blue surroundings. They spun and circled Marcus with a speed that Marcus could not follow, only feel.

“Nimh!” Marcus shouted. “Stop it. You’re freaking me out.”

The eight swords spun, flashed then collided, Nimh reforming in an instant. “This is something you can do. You are a spirit, Marcus. You have no solid form, which means you can form yourself into anything you dream up. Tying your own arm in a knot is not a smart use of your time.”

Marcus pouted. “It’s all I could think up.”

Nimh looked at the young man before sighing. “Fine, when I meditate next, I will give you more hands-on instruction. I didn’t think this would be so difficult for you.”

Marcus brightened. “When will that be?” he asked excitedly.

“I will let you know,” Nimh said evasively. “For now, try turning yourself into a sword. Or better yet, make a copy of yourself. Make the image solid in your mind and make it happen. It’s a feeling your will need to develop and that will be the hardest step.”

After giving Marcus some more tips, Nimh returned to his own training. Which was interrupted again by Keira. Before he had been at it for an hour, she shouted in joy again and Nimh could sense her spirit well had been activated.

Better yet, it was in good condition. Probably something to do with not having a spirit invader tear it asunder or forcefully invading it.

Nimh smiled, giving her another polite clap. “Now you can celebrate,” he encouraged, “you have taken your first true step as a spiritual arts practitioner. “Congratulations.”

Keira bounced to her feet, almost wrapping Nimh in a hug before she paused and stepped back, a slight blush on her cheeks. Nimh gave her a thoughtful look before patting her on the shoulder.

“When I first got control of my spirit well, my instructor took me out for ice cream. Do you have that here?” he asked.

She stared at him, a strange look on her face. “How old were you when you first tapped into your spirit well?” she asked.

“Six and a half,” Nimh admitted. “I was a bit of a late bloomer.”

She stared at him as if he had slapped her.

“If it makes you feel any better, was seven when I first tapped into my vital energy and physical well.”

“It doesn’t,” Keira said sourly.

Nimh suppressed a smile. “Well, at least you got there. Sebastian is a D Rank and even he hasn’t trained in the spiritual arts. Look on the bright side, right?”

She huffed, deflating somewhat. “Whatever, so what’s next?”

“Well, now you develop your well. You are almost ready to forge a primal root, which is good. And now, while you’re not training in the physical arts, you can develop your spiritual arts. For now, just funnel your spirit into the spirit seed in your spirit well. The stronger the seed, the more you can fortify the spirit well and the stronger the spirit well, the more spiritual energy you can utilise.”

“More training.” She said bitterly.

“You can take a break,” Nimh said. “It has been a long day.”

“I’m not tired,” She rebutted, “it’s just that it feels like all we do is train. Can’t we do something?”

Nimh raised an eyebrow. “And what is it you want to do?”

“I don’t know!” she said exasperatedly. “You’re training me up for something, but it feels like I’m progressing and doing nothing with that progress.”

That caught Nimh off guard. “You are progressing quickly,” Nimh admitted. “But your foundations are still basic. You are naturally talented, and you could shoot ahead with ease if you wanted. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you are your own master in that regard. But you want to use your abilities?”

“Yes. I know I fought some E Ranks but you could have beaten them easily. You said you had a plan for me, right? What is it? Tell me what you are training me up for because now I feel like I’m going in circles.”

“Well,” Nimh said calmly. “You certainly are not going round in circles. My plan for you is to drag you up to S Rank, and I want to drag a lot of Sebastian’s E Ranks up as far as they will go. That project that you told me about? I want you to complete it. I want you to be strong enough to complete it and protect it from anything, including me. And most of all, I want you to find some happiness.”

“What do you mean?” she asked dubiously.

Nimh smiled. “My plan for you is the same plan I have for everyone on this planet. I want to build a world where you and everyone else can live, free, happy and safe. I want to turn this world into a beacon for my people and start a new age of development. And most of all, I want you to live a life where you can truly find some happiness.”

“Why?” she asked, a slight hint of confusion in her voice.

“Because,” Nimh said with a sad smile. “It is what I want for my own child.”