Hector focused on increasing his energy levels for three weeks, then after that ran the dungeon once a week. He kept to the easy run through the ravine. Though he didn't form a team, he no longer made his runs alone. Within the community of delvers, he was the infamous Stalwart Xian who destroyed unstoppable behemoths and casually shrugged off miasma poisoning. Every time he went inside, his fellow delvers flocked to him.

He made sure to bring those people out alive, even when it cost him energy he needed for his body enhancement. Those plans were moving forward again as he continued his efforts to enhance his skull. Sadly, he didn't have enough credits to save up for Riley's freedom and buy resources for himself at the same time.

The focus on cultivation – of all kinds – had a positive effect other than keeping his energy reserves from dropping too low. His aura statistic had finally risen above the twos.

Survey Results

Type: Xian

Level: 5

Body: 4

Mind: 3.9

Aura: 3

Domain: 2.7

Energy Reserves: 63%

The mind statistic was close to being a round number as well, which made him want to invest some time in the mental strengthening technique. The smartest thing to do would be to dedicate himself to improving his domain. That was both his weakest area and his only offensive tool. Not a great combination for a dungeon delver.

Overall, his statistics weren't good. He was in the habit of evaluating them from the perspective of someone at level four, which hadn't applied to him for over half a year. He wanted all of his apertures above four as soon as possible. He wasn't new to Union Central any longer, and he certainly was not the desperate unenhanced weakling trotting the multiverse looking for people to help on Earth. No excuses existed for him to be satisfied with his meager improvements up to the current date.

Hector resumed training his domain. It was a costly endeavor, so he was limited in how long he could dedicate to it every day. He did only an hour but sought ways to better stimulate himself. If this was a muscle underdeveloped relative to the rest of his body, Hector would be looking for exercises that isolated it and provided novel stimulus.

So instead of simply using his domain for that hour, Hector experimented with different training modalities. One of those was maximum effort – basically lifting as much weight as possible with a force cable. None of the weight machines in the gym offered enough resistance, so he researched other options online.

Which took him to the neighborhood known as Orisha Town where he could pay for a day pass to an outdoor Titan gym. Their weights were made of solid tungsten and ranged in size. There were dumbbells that were heavy enough to give Hector's body an actual workout. There were also what looked like giant ball bearings that could be used like an Atlas Stone, providing you were unusually large in your body proportions.

Those giant bearings were exactly what he needed to stress his cables with maximum effort lifts. An hour of that not only burned energy fast, but also made his domain aperture ache like it had been torn into pieces. So bad did the initial sessions feel that he could only do it once every three days. It took a month before he could improve that to every other day.

That wasn't the only training stimulus he used on his domain. Hector also did his own version of high intensity interval training. His method was to do the most intensive task of kinetic manipulation repeatedly – rapid cable formation. During exercise sessions at a public park, he would throw pebbles into the air and then catch them.

The limitation he imposed on himself was what made the exercise so challenging: he wasn't allowed to start forming a cable until the pebble had already been thrown. So Hector threw with his arm, formed a cable to catch and re-throw. Then dissolved that cable and made a new one for the catch. Repeat until exhaustion.

Exhaustion came quicker than even he expected. Two minutes was hard. Three minutes was intense. Four minutes was impossible. That was frustrating, but ultimately to his benefit. The more easily he could reach exhaustion, the easier it would be to get his training in. The high intensity intervals made his domain become sluggish for days afterwards.

Fortunately, Hector had other training modalities figured out. In addition to lifting heavy and forming cables rapidly, he also practiced extending his domain as far as he could. It was almost like a stretching routine. Then there was the skill based training exercise he developed. He practiced whipping as hard as possible with his domain.

That exercise was easy at first, since he could use the volume of cracking his cable as a proxy for impact intensity. At some point, it became loud enough to terrify bystanders. He figured it was only a matter of time before the System started fining him for disturbing the peace. Instead of losing money that way, Hector took air taxis out of Promise City altogether to a nearby forest.

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At his new training ground, Hector practiced by felling trees and gouging rocks. The cumulative effect of training his maximum lift, rapid repeat cable formation, domain volume, and the skill of whipping was that he authored some strikes that made him feel a sense of awe in his own abilities. Apparently the System agreed with his assessments.

Survey Results

Type: Xian

Level: 5

Body: 4

Mind: 3.9

Aura: 3

Domain: 2.9

Energy Reserves: 55%

A point two increase in domain over two months wasn't bad at all. He was so close to being entirely out of the twos with his statistics. Though who knew what the condition of his realm externality was. The System couldn't detect it to provide a statistic. If Hector had to bet, he would say his realm was firmly in the 'pathetic' category. He hadn't even trained it since the surge because he struggled to flex that aperture when his reserves were below full capacity.

There was so much to do, so much that he needed to improve. It seemed overwhelming at times. Then again… he had at least another century of life. What else was he going to do but train?

The answer to that was run dungeons. He needed the credits. And he liked seeing what his improved domain could do to the monsters. As great as the benefits seemed while he trained, Hector was forced to admit that a good portion of the beasts he encountered within the dungeon were significantly beyond his strength. He was still no better than a weak soldier by the standards of Tian.

Union Central had some powerhouses on it, but the average person never rose beyond level four. Hector being considered a force to be reckoned with was more a statement of the world's lack than it was a testament to his talent. Living on an unempowered world certainly made it a challenge for him to stay humble. Especially given his newfound fame among the delvers. They called him 'Stalwart' as a sobriquet, like he was a Xian Lord or an Arahant Sage.

Finally, Hector scraped together enough funds to make good on his promise to Riley.

He made sure to be there in person when he transferred a hundred thousand credits. That knocked him back down to a thirty thousand balance, but the money was flowing easy from the dungeon now. Having followers join him on his runs required him to expend more energy to defend them, but a larger group ensured he had plenty of people to aid in offense if necessary. It was slightly worse energy efficiency exchanged for greatly increased safety.

Riley had been unsure of how to process her freedom. She first worried he might stop visiting. Then she stressed over how the other girls would react to her escape from debt. Even the prospect of eating outside food that once so excited her caused stress. She had never used the System to pay for anything, only tapped the confirm button when the house increased her debt. And the panic on her face when she realized that she could run out of credits made Hector wonder if he'd actually done the girl a favor.

She had no concept of budgeting. A simple exhortation to 'watch she doesn't spend more credits than she earns' made her think that a single trip to a restaurant might bankrupt her. Talking about it further only seemed to make her more anxious, so Hector promised that they would do an outing to find places she could visit every day without getting in trouble. Until then she would just keep doing everything the same as usual.

The relief Riley experienced upon being placed back inside her metaphorical cage deeply bothered Hector. She was institutionalized just as thoroughly as any long term inmate on Earth. Like a wild animal raised in captivity, she would need to be thoroughly rehabilitated to survive on her own. Which was beyond the scope of his original intentions with her, but the alternative was knowing the girl would either end up back in debt again or live like she'd never escaped it.

It was like leaving Jen behind on Earth all over again. Hector still woke up sometimes wondering if he should stop by to make sure his wife hadn't forgotten to pay property taxes or given some scammer access to the brokerage account. First his wife and now this surrogate daughter. Would he spend his entire existence trying to teach financial responsibility to unwilling students?

The next day, Hector paid to take Riley on an outing and the two of them visited several nearby eateries. Hector started the lesson by discussing the basics of cash flow, but rapidly pivoted to setting guidelines on what places were on the allowed list. The buffet that served casseroles of cheap, artificial Jinn food for a flat entry fee made the cut. The coffee shop that served pastries did not.

Because a short list of allowed options seemed to be what Riley wanted, Hector whitelisted five dining options. The buffet, a cafeteria whose per item prices were suspiciously low, a vegan Alfar restaurant that mostly served fruit, a takeout soup restaurant, and a place that stuffed pita pockets with stewed meats. They were all affordable enough for Riley to eat three times a day and still pay less than she did for food at the brothel. He wasn't sure if that would be sufficiently thrifty because Riley didn't even know how much income she brought in normally.

She'd considered her debt beyond her control in the past, so she never bothered tracking her income. That seemed insane to Hector, but he had led a charmed existence in comparison. All of the considerable hard work he did was built upon a solid foundation provided to him by caring, middle-class parents. When you had the right guidance and opportunities, success was simply a matter of carrying through with what you knew was right.

They found a spot to cultivate in peace for a few hours, then Hector returned Riley home with an instruction to track her income for the next week. Returning to his own home, Hector drew up a plan for his near future. He wanted to speed up the development of his domain.

By his analysis, there were two things holding him back from making faster progress. The first was the natural recovery time from performing the various domain exercises he devised. That couldn't be ignored, but Hector knew that his training plan could be better arranged if not for the second factor. Which was the fact that he didn't have enough cosmic energy to train more often. Ironic, given his ability to cultivate chaos. The investments required were simply that high.

The answer to his problem was obvious. He needed wine from Tian. It was eighty thousand credits for a case of nine bottles. So he needed more dungeon time to increase his funds to where he could afford that cost. Plus enough for one more of the psychedelic honey pills. Those things had done an amazing job for him so far and mental strengthening was by far the fastest thing to level up.

He just needed to do a few quick dungeon runs.

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