Augustus laid in bed and cycled mana into the many points of pain on his body. As he thought back on the day of sparring, he compared Jonas’s initial poor attitude, to the fun the boy seemed to have beating on Gust.

The boy hated fighting and his scrawny appearance was evidence to that truth. Most of the students were in great shape from their days of constant work, as well as their cultivation. But not Jonas. Standing guard didn’t build much muscle, apparently, but Gust wondered why Jonas was always stuck with that position.

For the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care. Gust felt ashamed that he had lost so easily for the entire day. Just when he started building confidence in his abilities, it all drained away.

Gust waited for the crescent moon to come out and tried to estimate how long he would need to wait for it to be full. In his world, a full moon occurred every thirty days, or once a month.

Here, though, they had 121-day months, and only ten of them. If the year was a little over three times longer than normal, then it stood to reason that the full moons would follow a similar ratio, and occur every 100 days. As the moon was only half full, he guessed there would be around fifty days before he could use the second cultivation method his father’s soul sliver taught him: the Wolf Star Howling Body.

This method would transform his body in a very different way from his regular cultivation, but Gust had little understanding of it. He wondered how long it would take to reach the first level of completion and considered practicing even without the full moon.

The Wolf Star Howling Body depended on yin mana, however. Pure mana wouldn’t be as compatible. Even if it still worked, it would be less potent and might even stunt Gust’s progress permanently.

As much as it frustrated him, Gust knew he had to be patient. If he was going to be as powerful as he needed to be, he had to take the right steps, no matter how long it took.

A realization struck his mind while he laid in bed staring at the maroon galaxy dominating his night-time vision, and it brought his spirits up.

Saith said time was different on every layer. If this layer’s year was more than three times longer than Gust’s world’s year, did that mean the next layer’s year held more than three thousand days? And the next, nine thousand, and the next…

If this was true, Gust could finally let go of one of his deepest regrets.

Nearly every night, Gust thought of his mother and what she was doing; how she was handling his disappearance.

When he learned his father was over four thousand years old, Gust worried his journey would take just as long, but now he was realizing that those four thousand years might be even longer than he thought. How many days did those four thousand years have? Were they all even the same? Gust knew his father spent much time in the various layers, so how old was he truly?

That was a mystery for another time, but the revelation it brought Gust was this: he might have enough time, after all. Enough time to train for thousands of years, or at least what felt like years to him, and then return home before his mother died of old age.

The difficulty Gust had accepting his father’s quest came from the fear that he was abandoning his family. He told himself they would die anyway if he didn’t fight the Patrons, but it didn’t help.

If time truly flowed slower with every descending layer, Gust might be able to see his mother’s face again when this was all over. Returning to her and explaining why he’d been gone for so long pushed Gust to work harder the next day even more than his fear of the all-powerful Patrons.

Shen arrived with the morning and Gust slept in to enjoy it. When he first appeared in this world, the lack of air conditioning made sleep a high task, but now his increased cultivation kept his body comfortable. The maroon galaxy was a distraction, but not nearly as bad as laying in a pool of his own sweat.

After showering, Gust walked out to the edge of the clearing around his house and found the pile of debris he used for the game he made up. The circular target he’d cleared in the forest was covered in dried leaves, but that wasn’t what he was interested in.

Instead, he picked through the pile to find the thinnest twigs and gathered them together. Then he sat down.

Over and over, Gust lifted twigs into the air with his Mage Hand and tried to draw his name in a patch of dirt he cleared out before himself. It was a half-hour before he could hold the twigs delicately enough to avoid snapping them, but he still pressed them too hard against the earth. When each twig broke, Gust tried using the remnants until they were too small, then gathered those in a different pile.

Whenever boredom set in, Gust took those smaller pieces and returned to his old game. Except, now, he threw them with his Mage Hand.

Gust sat still and focused hard as he scooped each bit of wood into the air. His aim in this fashion was even worse than normal, but Gust was able to use this game to refine his touch. When he returned to writing with the twigs, he noticed a small improvement.

After a few hours of practice, his stomach was growling and his mana reserves were low. Gust knew he could use his old cultivation method and sit where the mana gathered near his home, but now he had a better option.

First, Gust collected his breakfast from Theo at the chore house. He stopped to glance at the mission board, but Gust wanted to be sure he could protect himself before taking on any more responsibility.

Herb collection might seem simple, but Locke was right: What if he encountered a wolf, or an enemy cultivator? Gust sighed and tried to ignore the list of rewards next to each mission, lest they provide too much temptation.

The young Demon ate near the entrance to his father’s house while he observed the area with a slightly opened mana sense. Gust’s connection to the Subtle Blade meant its sword mana didn’t harm him as he moved through it, but it was still the densest field of mana he’d ever seen. His mana sense perceived a large cloud of silver energy blocking his father’s home from view completely. If Gust opened his mana sense any further, he knew pain would follow.

When he finished eating, Gust walked to the furthest edge of this cloud and sat down just outside it. He fell into the position for Demon Blades in the Void but hesitated before closing his eyes to cultivate.

Gust remembered the intense, sharp pain he’d felt the first time he tried cultivating this sword mana. It erupted all over his body and left him feeling like he’d been sent through a woodchipper.

There were two reasons for this, Gust knew. One was simply that the sword mana was too dense, but the more important detail was that he used a mismatched cultivation method. The basic method he learned from the Fallen Leaf school specialized in pure mana, so it did nothing to counteract the sword mana’s effects.

As his eyes drifted shut, and he inhaled his first breath, Gust hoped this new method would make all the difference. After the first few seconds passed, Gust almost smiled. There was no pain, but there was also no silver mana. Instead, only the light blue variety entered his body.

If he’d left his mana sense open, Gust would have seen small tendrils of silver breaking away from the cloud. They formed small vortexes whose points grew toward him. When the first touched his forehead, Gust nearly lost concentration as he saw that first bit of sword mana enter his body.

It didn’t hurt, but it made Gust extremely uneasy. He could still sense the sharpness this mana held. He wasn’t immune to it any more than a sheath was immune to being cut and his pores were like sheaths for the sword mana. If he moved in any closer, it would be like forcing a sword into a sheath to small for it. Gust’s pores would slice or burst, and his pathways would follow.

This was why he chose to start not only on the edge of the cloud, but just beyond it. Still, as the tendrils of silver smoke grew and more landed on his body, Gust felt a familiar pain growing in the areas these tendrils touched.

It was the same pain he felt when he tried cultivating in his father’s bedroom, albeit a much smaller version.

When the pain grew unbearable, Gust stopped and focused on cycling this new mana into his soul. In doing so, he noticed that he needed to surround the sword mana with far more pure mana while the two mingled in his pathways, or the pain would return. It was a delicate balance, but he found it eventually and led all the sword mana into his soul, just outside the maroon core.

Gust watched his core with utter fascination. It was like a dark red planet surrounded by a silver atmosphere. He didn’t dare push anything into that core, but Gust let the sword mana gather and rest in the center of his soul while the pure mana filled his pathways and diffused throughout the rest of the space.

The last time he saw Saith, the soul sliver told Gust not to return for a month. Gust wanted to use that time wisely and return with more sword mana in his soul than Saith would have thought possible.

With that thought in mind, Gust moved a few inches closer to his father’s old home. It was only a minor difference. He wasn’t even certain anything would change.

Until he started cultivating.

Gust’s teeth ground together as he felt needles digging into every inch of his skin. That same feeling followed the mana as it flowed through his pathways, leaving them feeling raw and weak, but he kept cultivating.

Several minutes passed and tears began leaking from Gust’s eyes. His breathing grew rapid and the muscles in his arms shook violently. He only gave up when his posture deteriorated to the point that his Demon Blades in the Void method was barely working anymore. No more than a trickle of mana entered his pores, but the pain kept getting worse.

Even when he stopped, Gust didn’t want to move. His skin felt like it was covered in invisible splinters and even the smallest bit of motion would make them rub against each other. He winced as he rose to his feet and spread his mana thin throughout his body, desperately trying to heal himself faster.

When he finally headed home, Gust stared at the crescent moon the entire way.

There were so many things Gust simply couldn’t do yet. He couldn’t go home, couldn’t read his father’s journal, couldn’t cast his father’s spells, couldn’t even use one of his cultivation methods until the full moon.

But if he could cultivate Demon Blades in the Void even one percent faster by enduring this pain every day… he would do it.