Chapter 24

  More than two months passed quickly as they all fell into routines. Yin practiced, forging pure madra into attacks, creating starshots with his Falling Star madra, and both cloaks.

  Duong worked on weapons and armors. Ten, Montai and Kaido sparred, worked on their own techniques or went on missions from Talia. Of course, the dragon complained plenty about that.

  Zeurel spent a lot of time down in the city working with other healers after befriending Talia and getting her blessing. Secretary went back and forth a lot, cycling in the city, theorycrafting with Yin, actually crafting with Duong, joining excursions to gather things. She did it all.

  And lastly..

  ‘’Okay, the vats are working as they should. Come look at this script.’’ Yin stepped aside to let Ti Li see. ‘’This is the main activator for the cycling room, we can’t just leave it running or the blood will rot and it’s gonna take Zeurel to make this room livable again. So, touch of madra on this side activates everything.’’

  Yin pressed it and the lights all dimmed, leaving them in almost total darkness. Simultaneously the vats of blood in all four corners had their containment scripts deactivate, letting the energy out into the chamber.

  ‘’And-’’ Yin deactivated all the scripts making it possible to see again. ‘’The other side deactivates it.’’

  ‘’In an effort to further ensure that you do not leave the room activated, I have made it so the door will remain sealed until the room is deactivated.’’ Secretary informed, not looking up from a clipboard she’d had Duong make.

  Ti Li silently padded around the room taking it all in so Yin continued. ‘’You’ve managed to get up to jade in both cores so you’re the one who is going to supply the pure scales to power all this. The receptacle is outside, we’ll show you after. I’ve already put two in so they’ll last a week or two, then you’re going to have to put your own in.’’

  And then there was nothing left to say.

  ‘’You ready?’’

  She nodded and walked over to the activator script and the room darkened again at her touch. Yin and Secretary channeled their paths creating dim light for themselves to see by. Ti Li used it to find the pad in the center of the room to sit on.

  ‘’[Reiterating] Your path will optimally be made up from one point six parts blood to one point four parts shadow. The slight imbalance will skew the resulting madra to favor solidity over ethereality, while still leaving room to reverse. The Seras path will be suited to all four of the major disciplines.’’

  Secretary and Yin backed up to the door to affect the vital energies in the room less.

  Ti Li began the process by beginning to siphon the pure madra out of one core into the other.

  —

  To celebrate her successful ascension to pure low gold and Seras jade, Yin promised Ti Li that she could request anything she wanted of him.

  ‘’You’re breathing too loudly.’’

  Being brought along to steal a former king's stuff was very very low on Yin’s list of things he’d expected. But make no mistake, it was on the list.

  Yin did his best to even out his breaths and slow them enough to make no noise. Ti Li looked smug and waggled her hand. Good enough? Is that it? You little monster.

  She gestured and they both walked across a corridor slowly, Yin doing his best to walk the way Ti Li had shown him. The true gold guards that were walking only meters away from them none the wiser of their presence.

  Yin didn’t really keep track of how old he, or anyone, was. But if he remembered right Ti Li should be somewhere between eleven to thirteen.

  So how, just absolutely how was she so good at things like this. Not for the first time he thought she might be another reincarnator, or maybe even Reaper Ozzy himself in the wrong body. It was hard to believe that she was actually just an extremely talented kid when she did things like this.

  She gestured for him to stop and leaned against the wall, listening for something. ‘’Now.’’ She said at normal speaking volume all of a sudden, basically flashbanging Yin.

  Carelessly she stepped out and walked in the middle of the hallway down to the half dilapidated scripted door to the old treasury. Water seeped in through cracks in the blue walls and was siphoned out constantly from the floor. Their steps splashed as they reached the rotting wood and corroding metal.

  ‘’This is what I needed your help with.’’ Pointing to the array of fresher scripts around the door. Yin read the characters and started to mentally map out weak points and energy backflows. ‘’You have-’’

  ‘’Shut up.’’ Yin set one finger against a character and flooded it with pure madra, making the whole array start to light up. ‘’There, you see that, the uh, the one that looks like Kaido when Duong praises her. Yeah, pour some madra into it.’’

  She was still pouting but followed his directions. Soon the script overflowed and the lines dedicated to handling that activated, but since he kept pouring more madra in they were overloaded as well. The formation reached critical failure and a single character cracked, causing the whole array to shut down.

  Ti Li laid in on him with some very impressive, if light, high kicks. ‘’They’re going to notice that you stupid! Poopy! Moron!’’

  ‘’It’s fine, I can make it look like a rock cracked and that was the cause of the failure.’’ His response only made her face even more red.

  ‘’They. Are. Going. To. Check. The. Vault.’’

  Ah, he saw her logic there, of course they’d check to make sure nothing was missing when the array had gone down for a while. Yin accepted the punishment of a few more kicks and then urged her on. This was her heist, so she got to open the vault door.

  She had to use her pure cloak but she managed it eventually, revealing a room that stunk of mold.

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  What little was left in the slanted room, less vault, more office, was almost rotted to dust. A desk remained somewhat intact in the middle. The surrounding shelves and bookcases were rotted down to nearly nothing. A single item in the room remained pristine. A sheathed blade, half submerged in toxic looking water by the desk.

  Ti Li forged a hand of pure madra and used it to pick up the sword, pulling some cloth out of her robes to wipe it down. She suddenly froze, looking back down the hallway. Yin tried his best to be quiet for her. ‘’We need to go.’’

  Doing his best to match her movements, helping her pull the door back into place and slinking down the hall Yin barely drew a single full breath. She tugged on his pants, pulling him with her into another hallway.

  Footsteps. Multiple people walked down, soon splashing on the wet floor. ‘’Ah, of course it would.’’ Yin remembered that voice, that old script master. ‘’No matter, this is a good opportunity for me to improve it with what that child taught me. Bring a chisel for me.’’

  ‘’You’re not going to start working on it right away, cool your head old man. We can just go report this for now.’’

  ‘’Tch! These lazy, uncouth men I have to work with, you’re no good.’’

  ‘’Dad, respect has to go both ways.’’

  TI Li tugged on him more insistently, not letting Yin enjoy the drama. The escape was so much faster than the entry that it was almost disappointing. But being allowed to breathe normally was a blessing that Yin enjoyed enough to not complain.

  And maybe he was also holding back to let Ti Li enjoy herself a bit.

  —

  Secretary walked up to Yin’s cycling pavilion, holding something behind her clipboard. ‘’Yin.’’ She greeted him as usual.

  ‘’Secretary.’’ Yin ground out, still maintaining the torturous breathing technique. If he was judging the time right he was approaching four hours at this point.

  ‘’Eighty percent success rate.’’ She stated and showed him a flask of just ever so slightly pink tinged water. ‘’Odds increase to ninety nine plus if you cycle exactly according to Secretary’s instructions.’’

  ‘’Success rate of what?’’ Yin ground out, taking a breath that didn’t fill his lungs enough, only barely sufficient to keep him alive.

  ‘’By my calculations, and estimation of your experience- and Secretary will refrain from being exact since you do not like it when Secretary tells you too many numbers. A two point zero six zero zero three percent increase in mental faculties.’’

  Taking his next fifth of a breath Yin considered that with this oxygen deprived mind. That was big, like actually pretty massive for a potion brewed on a mountaintop with improvised equipment. ‘’That success rate, what happens to it if I make any mistakes?’’

  Secretary fidgeted with her clipboard, making some random illusions in the air of numbers and shapes. ‘’Success rate falls below ten percent upon mistaken cycling paths. Critical failure may result in damage to faculties.’’ Yin did his level best to keep breathing correctly. ‘’Secretary has great confidence in Yin.’’

  Yin relaxed, sprawling on the floor and taking deep breaths that made his head swim. ‘’Sorry, I’m giving you too hard a time here, I’m going crazy lemme sip that.’’ She swayed away from his reaching hand with precision.

  ‘’Please continue using that breathing technique during the process.’’ At his incredulous glare. ‘’Secretary believes the mental strain is a necessary component, similar to the making of an iron body.’’

  ‘’You’re using me as a test subject..’’

  ‘’Secretary cannot confirm or deny that statement.’’

  Having a staredown with a living computer was a losing bet, but Yin took it anyway.

  ‘’Secretary will return when Yin is feeling ready.’’

  ‘’Nope!’’ Yin shot up and stopped her from leaving, simply turning her around and letting her walk back into his pavilion. ‘’We can do it now, I’ll do it now.’’

  ‘’In that case please resume the breathing pattern.’’ Maybe it was only in his mind, but to Yin she sounded a bit annoyed.

  Following her instruction Yin sat again and began to tighten his core muscles and restricted himself to shallower breaths. Meanwhile Secretary conjured a screen and provided the audio for the little informative snippet she’d made herself. It was mostly a dry information dump about the process of making the potion and the ingredients she’d put in.

  While she continued to yap forever Yin tried to reign in his desire to stop the self harm he was using as a training aid. Starting again after stopping and having those blessedly full lungs for a short minute was like turning away from an oasis after walking for days without water in a desert.

  ‘’In conclusion; the brewing of the potion mimics several aspects of the requirements to gain the steel minded iron body. The following process, which is currently underway, will also work to enhance these results.’’ She let the screen go black and uncorked the little vial. ‘’Open wide. As they say.’’ Was all the warning Yin got before she forced the bottle into his mouth just as he’d exhaled.

  It tasted like berries, and then licorice, then like soil. It kept changing from taste to taste, somehow never unpleasant despite the odd things it seemed to mimic.

  His eyes were watering, and he couldn’t tell why.

  Secretary had an image of his body floating in front of him, a pool of liquid in the center of its chest. A funny coincidence, Yin also had that now. Butterflies swarmed his pavilion and stole the flames from his sconces.

  The image showed madra flows, and Yin copied them even though he couldn’t remember what they were doing. The stones he sat on wanted to wander away to be with their friends but he couldn’t move right now. The sky was weighing down on him much too heavy.

  The madra flows made cool loops around in the back of the images head, and Yin desperately followed along. He’d never ridden a skateboard in his previous life, but now he could sort of do it with his madra. There were skateboards all over the tree they sat in, he should have used those, why had he never thought of that?

  The pitch black figure called Secretary, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, by the way, turned the picture of Yin around and showed skateboards make butterfly loops in the small brain.

  He’d been doing that all along, this void creature was getting on his nerves.

  Things were paying attention to the songs of fire, copied by the stones on skateboards. Fluttering forever towards the kickflip mcnasty seventwenty.

  Secretary? I don’t feel so good?

  What?

  —

  ‘’Seegghrudary auhhhgh dunn feeee soo huud..’’ Yin drooled on the floor, somehow maintaining the restricted breathing technique while under the effects of dream augmented hallucinogens.

  ‘’Secretary said: ‘You have succeeded, the process is complete’.’’

  ‘’Wudh?’’

  Secretary thought about what to do now. Two months of work was finished, and the results would only be possible to measure later when Yin expelled the toxins. So, what to do?

  ->Request Ti Li for aid in procuring restricted documents

  ->Investigate Queen Talia

  ->Continue training to manipulate dream madra inside targets bodies

  ->Convince Zeurel to request payment in the form of materials related to alchemy

  ->Continue planning for the dream gathering array

  ->Initiate project Sub-Secretary 1

  ->Assist Duong in research of hunger madra weapons

  ->Study effects of hunger madra on Yin

  ->Study effects of hunger madra on Secretary

  ->Hunger

  ->Ignore previous prompts, beg Duong and Ti Li for pure scales

  Secretary dismissed all thought threads unrelated to procuring more pure scales.