Path of Dragons-Chapter 16Book 9: : Body Forging

Carmen hung from the ceiling, the chains cutting into her wrists as her assistants slammed their hammers into her flesh. She felt the blows – of course she did – but she couldn’t let them affect her. Instead, she focused inward on her ethera, pushing outward with every fiber of her will.

It barely moved.

That was expected. She’d experienced it before. But with every hammer blow that struck her flesh came a pulse of foreign ethera. Her body reacted to it, and her own energy surged to repel it. In that way, her form was saturated.

She wanted it to go faster though. She needed to be better – like Elijah, who seemed to take cultivation for granted. Carmen had heard his stories, and initially, she’d thought she would progress just as easily. She’d learned differently the second she’d started her own journey of cultivation.

None of it came easily. In fact, it was like pulling her own teeth with a pair of plyers. Difficult and painful.

But it was the price she needed to pay for progression. Her constitution and abilities like Resist Fire could only go so far in protecting her from the increasingly hot flames with which she was forced to work. She’d been burned more than once, and that was despite having protective gear. She needed to be more durable.

It didn’t stop there, though. Even if she managed to take the first step in body cultivation – which was closer than she’d ever expected so soon after she’d started – she needed to immediately jump to other aspects of cultivation. Her soul needed to advance so she could handle more ethera, and she needed a mind upgrade so she could regenerate energy more quickly. But most of all, she needed a proper core, and one that represented her path.

Others had already taken that step, and she’d seen an immediate change in their capabilities. Everything those people did was just better.

Carmen wanted – no, she needed – that, but she wouldn’t cut corners. She wanted to do things right, at least as prescribed by the guides she’d read. That meant starting with body, moving to the soul, upgrading her mind, and then working on her core. It was a long and arduous process, but she was committed to seeing it through.

With that in mind, she focused entirely on the flow of ethera through her body. The session continued until her entire form was black and blue, and even then, she refused to let up.

Not until she felt her ethera surging of its own accord.

“It’s happening,” she croaked from between gritted teeth. “Get out.”

Her assistants wasted no time in vacating the cultivation room. Carmen could feel the heat building all around her as she tried to control the ethera in her body. It suffused every cell, practically consuming them with every passing second. At some point, she lost track of where her flesh ended and where the raging torrents of energy began.

She tried to control it. She bent every ounce of her considerable will to the task, but eventually, it proved useless. At some point, all she could do was endure – which she did, albeit not without a few screams along the way.

Then, suddenly, the ethera all rushed out of her, forming a metallic cocoon that enveloped and soothed her. That only lasted a brief second before it solidified, locking her in a sarcophagus of hardened steel. She couldn’t breathe, but then again, she didn’t need to, either.

The cocoon gave her everything she needed.

At some point, the heat began to build. Only a trickle at first, but soon enough, it was hot enough that, by all rights, the cocoon should have melted. It held firm, turning from silvery to red in the space of minutes. Carmen tried to scream as she was burned alive, but she was entirely incapable of moving. Helpless, she felt her body break down.

Only her consciousness remained.

Dissociated from her body, she still wasn’t immune to the pain as she reformed. If she’d been capable of thinking straight, she would have acknowledged that the chrysalis was a necessary and expected part of the process. However, as she experienced it, she could think of nothing but the pain it caused.

Then, suddenly, it stopped.

Ethera and metal rushed into her newly formed body. She screamed – not in pain, but rather, in shock – as she drank it in. It only lasted a few moments before she fell to the ground. The chains were gone. The room glowed red with immense heat, and the glyphs on the dragonstone walls flickered with intense energy.

Carmen saw none of it, though.

Instead, she curled into the fetal position, her knees clutched to her chest as she wept. Echoes of intense pain tore through her in one wave after another. She had no idea if the agony was real, imagined, or simply a series of memories. But in that moment, it did not matter. She felt it all the same.

Gradually, the intensity of those pulses slowly faded until, at last, they disappeared entirely. Only then did Carmen receive the expected notification:

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Congratulations! You have cultivated a Body of Wood.

She let out a long, trembling sigh.

Her tears evaporated the moment they trickled down her cheeks, but she barely felt the heat. She unfurled her naked body, then stretched her hand out before her. Aside from the lack of bruises, it looked no different than normal.

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But it certainly felt different.

She curled her fingers into a fist, feeling the power in even that simple of a movement.

Finally, she’d begun her journey of cultivation. She had spent years of her life working toward creating the right circumstances – including investing more time and money into the Forge of Creation than she wanted to think about – and even then, it had not been easy.

The fact that Elijah had managed so much success in cultivation was absolutely baffling. The man had his faults – and plenty of them – but he seemed uniquely talented when it came to self-improvement. Some of that was obviously from his environment. Living in the grove and using items like his soap definitely made it easier.

Yet, Carmen couldn’t imagine that many other people would have been nearly as successful in his place. Certainly, she would not have been.

But that was okay. Everyone progressed at their own pace. Just because it was more difficult for her didn’t mean it wasn’t a goal worth pursuing. In fact, in Carmen’s mind, it just made it more appealing.

“I think I’ve got problems,” she muttered to herself. Her voice was strong and clear, indicative of her newfound power.

She climbed to her feet and looked around. The cultivation chamber had already begun to cool, but it was still like an oven. So, she remained in place for thirty more minutes before she dared to break the seal by opening the door. Hot air flowed into the hall where it waged an unwinnable war against the Forge of Creation’s climate control.

One of her assistants stood nearby. Brian. That was his name, even if he was a little too new for her to always remember it. He averted his eyes from her nudity, and Carmen felt the beginnings of a blush color her cheeks. It was one thing to remain naked while she was cultivating. That felt almost like going in for a medical procedure. But standing naked in the middle of a hall was far different, and both she and her assistant felt it.

Fortunately, he had a robe ready for her to don, which she accepted gratefully before draping it over her shoulders. Once she was adequately covered, she asked, “How long was I out?”

“Two days,” Brian said.

“Damn.”

“It worked though, right?”

“Like a charm. I now have a Body of Wood.” freewёbnoνel.com

He frowned. “Oh. I was expecting something…I don’t know…metal, maybe. I saw that chrysalis.”

“The stage names are the same for everyone,” Carmen explained. “The way they present are different, though. For me, with this method, it should make me more resistant to blunt force while increasing my natural fire resistance. Everything else – like strength – is improved as well, but this method is built for smithing. There are others you can use if you don’t want to specialize, though.”

He shook his head. “I want to be the best Blacksmith I can be. If this is what it takes, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Carmen nodded in approval, though she could see from his expression that he would likely rethink that philosophy at some point in the future. In fact, she questioned how many people could endure one beating after another as she had, all to be slightly better at smithing.

Not many.

But that was the point, really. True excellence required sacrifice. It was not easy. Otherwise, everyone would do it.

With that in mind, Carmen returned to her smithy within the Forge of Creation. She’d fully intended to head home and take a break in the grove, but after her advancement to the Body of Wood stage, she felt an almost manic surge of energy. She was more awake than ever.

What’s more, she could feel things she’d never felt before. Her senses had been dialed up to unreal levels. She could taste the cold in the air, and she could focus on the most minute details. As she did, she saw a thousand different mistakes they’d made in the construction of the Forge of Creation. They were tiny. Barely consequential. But Carmen knew that they added up to a large decrease in power.

She resisted the urge to dwell on that. For now, the Forge of Creation was a finished product. Certainly, they would remodel it sometime in the future, but at this point the potential gains just weren’t worth the time and effort.

Even so, those miniscule imperfections certainly rankled on her pride.

It was even worse when she finally reached her forge, which was her pride and joy. Glaring weaknesses were obvious, especially when it came to the tools she’d forged. Once again, she pushed aside the urge to remake them. That was not a good use of her time.

Instead, she stepped into her office, where she quickly donned a new set of clothes. Idly, she realized that the garments were a little tighter than normal. Had her muscles grown? Were her shoulders wider? It was hard to say if that was because she’d forced herself to eat better over the previous few weeks or if it was just an effect of her efforts in cultivating her body.

Once she was dressed, she turned her attention to the chalkboard where she had been designing her next project. The spearhead wasn’t meant to be a complex piece, though there was power in simplicity. More importantly, the less complex design would allow her to focus on getting the most out of her materials. A necessity if she wanted a viable product.

Of slightly better quality was the wood she meant to use on the shafts. Those would come from Elijah’s grove – with Nerthus having grown them specifically for her use – and be carved to her exacting specifications. Ignon had seemed giddy at the prospect, and Carmen felt confident that he would give it the attention it deserved.

She shifted her focus to the other side of the chalkboard, where she’d placed the designs for the armor. It was also fairly simple, though by necessity, it was more complicated than a simple spear. In a lot of ways, it resembled the scale design she’d used in her previous attempts at mass armament, but she’d made a lot of subtle changes that would hopefully result in a much higher-grade product.

The most impactful difference lay in the enchantments, though. The string of glyphs at the top of the chalkboard was, in a word, the most complicated thing she’d ever assembled. Even written in chalk, and without regard to their aesthetics, they were beautiful. More importantly, they held a few wisps of power.

Once they were etched more permanently on the armor and spears she wanted to create, they would practically crackle with energy.

For a long time, Carmen just stared at the designs. Then, at last, the high she’d felt in the wake of upgrading her body began to fade. So, she retreated from the Forge of Creation and, for the first time in weeks, returned to the grove. She barely even noticed the children next to the ancestral tree. They all listened with rapt attention to Nerthus, who was in the middle of a lecture.

Carmen couldn’t help but smile at that.

However, she didn’t have the energy to investigate further. Instead, she headed into the treehouse where she didn’t even bother showering before falling into her bed of moss. She fell asleep in seconds, though her last thought was of her upcoming project.