Riley would have agreed to absolutely anything to get a regular client who didn't abuse her, Hector was sure. He felt like he'd taken advantage of her desperation even though he was trying to work for her benefit. "Let's start with aura cultivation. Do you know what that is?"

"Aura is the blocking," she said.

"Right, your aura can be a barrier around your body. But it can also be used to pull cosmic energy from the environment into your soul. It's the best way to cultivate on unempowered worlds. It's also required once you get above level four on Tian unless you have access to expensive elixirs."

Riley looked like she was about to have a panic attack.

"What's wrong?"

She pointed to her temple. "I don't know about these things, Hector."

"That's why I'm teaching you."

"I'm not sure about this. Can you just be a regular regular?"

"No, Riley. You're a Xian. That means you have to grow strong. That's what our kind does. I'm going to pay for an hour every day to help you. Just do your best to learn, and I'll do my best to teach. Now, the method of aura cultivation we're training is called priming and pumping. The priming part is because you push a little bit of cosmic energy into your aura to power it up. Next, you expand your aura in a passive state. That means you let your aura be loose and wobbly. Then when it is as far from your body as you can push it, turn your aura hard and pull it close to your body. You'll suck in the energy through your soul aperture."

She stared at him.

"It's not as hard as it sounds. You just need to practice it a few thousand times and it will start feeling natural. Plus your aura gets stronger when you exercise it like this. That will help you block better." His tone dropped slightly with the last sentence. He had questions in his mind he didn't dare ask for fear that she might answer. What would he do if he learned the identity of one of her spicy clients? Best not to find out that answer.

For the remainder of the hour, Hector worked with Riley. She had no more natural talent than Volithur. Fortunately, she had a better teacher than Master Ulysses. Hector donated some of his energy to the room by spraying a couple spurts from his domain. That made it easier for Riley to have her first successes.

Riley didn't respond in any way he knew how to interpret. She applied herself to the lesson more out of fear of losing a revenue stream than any sort of hope and went non-reactive to praise. What a student he'd taken it upon himself to educate. Yet it was the right kind of thing to do. Giving out money to strangers in a park might be a good deed, but it wasn't the kind that resonated with who he was. Changing someone's life by sacrificing time and cosmic energy was.

And then their time was up. The light in the room flickered a five minute warning, then again at one minute. Then it dimmed to half intensity when their session ended and the door automatically unlocked. Riley saw him down the elevator, asking if he would be back the next day.

"Of course. Do you prefer evenings like this?"

"Come when you like. I can sense you from anywhere in the building."

He emerged into the main bar area and saw Rodrick break into a huge grin. "I knew it!"

Humility. Hector nodded to the door. "Ready to head out?"

"Who was brave enough to go with a scary Xian?"

"They employ one of my own kind here."

Rodrick whistled a jaunty tune as they caught a taxi back to their hotel. Hector stared out the window, caught up in his plans. This new wrinkle made everything he wanted to do harder. Helping Riley would cost him in both time and money. And why was he throwing himself into this endeavor? Because of righteous indignation over the fact that she faced the same bigotry as him but lacked the strength to fight back against it? Did he have a hero complex or something? There had definitely been a hint of that when he rescued Jen from the situation with her stepfather.

However questionable his decision, Hector had already given his word. Too late to go back on it now. He enacted his first idea on how to proceed immediately by going to the health bar of the spa. It took some persuasion on his part, but he convinced the worker to let him have blood boiling elixir in the vial instead of pouring it into a glass. The worker was worried Hector wouldn't like it because they added mundane sugar when they served it.

The next day, Hector abbreviated his cultivation schedule. He spent less time awake in his capsule before breakfast, less time on the outskirts of the dungeon complex, and less time on the rooftop. Then he ate an early dinner and cultivated chaos on his taxi ride to the brothel. He ignored the driver's knowing smirk, then walked into the building without cringing.

He ordered a wine from the bartender this time and hardly started the beverage before Riley arrived. She offered her hand and he accepted, wondering all the while why the ladies of the establishment escorted their clients like that. Maybe it was to create an illusion of intimacy? That made him feel more sympathy for lonely clients than he wanted to, so he stopped thinking about it.

The door to their room locked, beginning their session. "Teaching or bed stuff?"

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"Did you master aura cultivation and reach level five already?"

Confusion. "No?"

"Then I guess I have more to teach you." He pulled out the vial and gave it a good shake. "This is blood boiling elixir. It's tea powder, ginger powder, and citrus juice mixed with water. It's a reasonable resource for someone at your level."

She stared at him, so he had to mime popping the cork and drinking. After a few moments, she did so, taking it all at once like a shot. Then he had her resume her aura cultivation. Once more, he placed a few spurts of cosmic energy into the air to improve her rate of return. It was almost like working as the attendant of a cosmic chamber.

Riley worked diligently, though he got the sense that she was doing it to earn her money more than out of some belief that she'd improve her life by growing stronger. When the light flickered to indicate there was only five minutes left in their session, Hector studied her soul. Her reserves were about ten percent. That was a little above what she'd started with.

Because her reserves hadn't decreased since the previous day, Hector suspected her soul was already saturated up to the second level. They could advance her level if she collected enough cosmic energy. What would that do for her, though? She was a hollow spear without body enhancement. Everyone of note who ever commented on Volithur's training made a point to admonish him for chasing advancement instead of true strength. While Riley might not need to prepare for combat, she was a regular victim of abuse. She needed to become more durable. So he would have her cultivate up to fifty percent reserves and begin body enhancement.

The alteration to his schedule quickly became normal. It didn't actually slow his cultivation speed much. Only a few hours were removed from his day and he'd been over-training anyway. He established a routine for his interactions with Riley that stopped her doe-eyed requests to move to a more typical business arrangement. He began each session with a quick review of what they covered in their previous meeting, then asked about her solo practice. Riley would lie to him about training for several hours on her own, he'd pretend to believe her, and then they would move onto aura cultivation.

Once a week he brought a blood boiling elixir. In only twelve days, Riley had enough reserves for the next phase. Grimacing at the price tag, Hector bought a body pack from the Xian shopkeeper and brought it to the brothel. The bartender frowned at the box but didn't say anything. One of the bouncers approached as if to object and then backed off when Hector swiveled to give him a hard look. If people were going to assume he was a dangerous savage, he might as well take advantage of their bigotry.

In the room, Riley frowned at the box. "Is that another gift?"

"It's resources for body enhancement."

She stood awkwardly while he opened it and spread the contents over the bed. He pulled out a spoon and one of his canteens. The yeast and salt mix went into the canteen along with the mix of tea powder and sugar. The spoon went into the jar of fat. He set the vial of green juice onto the side table. "It's going to taste bad, but all of this stuff will help your body grow stronger."

He had a whole pep talk prepared, but Riley took the spoon and ate the jar of fat without complaint. Then she turned to the canteen and drained that in a few minutes. Finally, she opened the green juice and took a sip. That finally got a response. She made a very serious expression as she worked her way through the entire vial. It was a far more stoic reaction than either Hector or Volithur ever had. He felt his manhood somewhat challenged by her ability to overlook the unpalatable nature of the resources.

"I like the blood boiling one better," she said.

"Don't make up your mind before you see the results." He guided her through the process of pushing energy from her soul into her body. Explaining the intricacies of the cold forged method was a complete non starter given her unserious approach to training, so he simply had her follow the more intuitive flood method, inefficiencies be damned. Her soul reserves dwindled to about five percent before he had her stop.

At his request, Riley checked her statistics through the System. "Point seven body!"

"Is that an improvement?"

"It was always point six, ever since they sold me to the house."

They didn't have time to do any aura cultivation, so Hector had to leave Riley knowing that the lingering effects of the fat and salt and yeast would rob the rest of her energy reserves. He didn't know what to think of her body increasing by a tenth of a level. She was still below one in her body, so it required drastically less energy to see results than later levels. Those requirements were a hundred and twenty times less than someone pushing to the peak of level five like Hector was. Another thing in her favor… she was a tiny thing. Hector carried little spare fat on his frame, but he was quite brawny. He probably wasn't double her body weight, but making such a claim wouldn't be all that far off. Low body mass would definitely make her job easier.

As for Hector, he was back to his own efforts at body enhancement. He used no resources, simply pressed energy from his soul into his skull bones. That let him control his expenditure rate so that he never went below ninety percent of his reserve capacity. Their next delve was soon and Hector intended to have plenty of energy to spare this time.

He brought a blood boiling elixir the next day to help Riley recover what she'd lost. After running her through aura cultivation for most of the hour, he transferred five hundred credits to her, which caused Riley's brows to rise. "You're giving me money, too?"

"That's for tomorrow. I am going into the dungeon, so I won't stop by."

"Everyone says delving is really dangerous."

"Don't worry about me, Riley. I'm pretty good at fighting."

"I'm not worried."

"Oh? Good."

"I see some of the movies when they go to home release."

He didn't quite see how that was relevant. "That's nice."

"Yeah. The house barely charges us to watch the weekend movie. There is always the tough guy who survives the fights. That's you."

And suddenly he understood her point. A movie convention of Union Central was that when war campaigns were depicted, a gritty, knowledgeable veteran always made it through to the end. It was the stock character who proved that not everyone died when they went to fight monsters. Hector had never thought about the movie trope in any depth, yet now he saw it as the obvious piece of propaganda that it was.

He'd never have identified it as anything more than a lazy media trope if not for the absolute certainty Riley placed in that belief. He could positively identify government messaging by the fruit it bore in the more impressionable members of the population. Potential recruits had to be convinced that the right person could always come out on top, so they baked it into the culture.

He bid his student goodbye and returned to his hotel to rest up for the next day.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.