I made a big deal out of looking down at my sweat-soaked shirt, then back at her.
“Easy?” I took an exaggerated gasp of air. “This looks easy?”
She snorted and shoved me. “It’s a good practice to get into in case you’re ever stranded somewhere without Miasma. Preparing for that possibility is very Metal of you.”
“Well, it feels like I’m dying over here, so it must be pretty Death of me, too.”
The sunset was glaring over the city skyline by the time we made it back to the Soulchamber gates. After a look at the identification on our HUDs, the hooligans standing guard let us in.
Instead of heading straight back to the guest housing pagoda, Kest hooked her arm through mine, and we took a detour along the paved path that wove in and out of the landscaped jungle on the mansion grounds. Plants with huge prehistoric leaves surrounded us, muffling the traffic sounds from the city and blocking view of anything but greenery.
Kest flicked her long black hair over her shoulder.
“Naph’s supposed to pick us up in an hour,” she said.
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. I’d been purposely trying not to think about her leaving this whole time.
“So...” She pulled me to a stop and slid her arms around my waist. My pulse ratcheted up to jackhammer gear. “...why haven’t you suggested that we try resonant cultivating yet? Don’t you want to?”
That surprised a laugh out of me. “Making out is something you have to bring up. I’m not allowed to.”
“Why not? If we want the extra Spirit, then it only stands to reason that we should be resonant cultivating. It’s the most efficient use of our time before I have to leave.”
“Because I’m a guy. The second I say we should make out, I’m a douchebag.” I hooked my fingers together behind her back and shrugged. “Besides, I’m not that interested in how much it increases my Spirit. I like it for other reasons.”
Kest rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “You’re never going to become a top-tier cultivator with that attitude.”
I tried to look joke-serious so how actual-serious this was getting wouldn’t show.
“Maybe if I had more practice, I’d see how logical and efficient resonant cultivation is. Right now I’m skeptical.”
“You goof.” She grabbed the back of my neck and stretched up onto her toes to kiss me, but couldn’t quite make it, so I met her halfway.
For a long time, there was nothing but a storm of Metal and Death.
Fallout
KEST HADN’T BEEN KIDDING about convincing me how useful resonant cultivation was. Afterward, she insisted on checking our Spirit reserves so I could see a quantifiable difference. Since I would’ve done basically anything she asked right then, I sat back against the base of a tree and pulled up my stats on the cracked screen of my Winchester.
Name: Grady Andrew Hake
Spirit: Death
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 179 lbs
Age: 18 Ryuan years (Current Location), 14.6 Universal years
Blood Type: O
Credits: 212.5
Spirit Reserve: 39,897
“Holy cow.” It wasn’t the overloaded amount of Spirit I had now that got my attention, though. It was my local age and height. Not only was I considered eighteen on this planet instead of my Earth age of sixteen, but I’d shot up two inches. “The gravity on this planet doesn’t affect my height, does it?”
“It shouldn’t by that much,” Kest said, reading over my shoulder. “I thought you looked taller. Do humans your age keep growing?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” But I wasn’t going to complain about it either way. My dad and Gramps were both over six feet tall, but while I was still alive, it was starting to look like I was going to stay smaller like my mom. Maybe the Hake genes were finally kicking in. That could explain away some of the constant hunger pains.
Kest shook her head. “I keep forgetting about the added weight from the Lunar Scythe covering your skeleton. You still look like someone built you out of leftover steel cable and scrap metal. By rights, that shouldn’t be physically possible with your body also containing almost thirty pounds of extra material. Mass doesn’t just disappear. That goes against the laws of physics.”
“Yikes, I hope they don’t take me to the jail of physics.”
She ignored the lame joke.
“Your Spirit reserve is through the roof,” she said. Then she smirked up at me. “For you, anyway.”
“All right, what’s yours, Miss Superiority?”
With a smug grin, she held out her HUD.
Name: Iye Skal Irakest
Spirit: Metal
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 108 lbs
Age: 18.3 Ryuan years (Current Location), 14.9 Universal years
Blood Type: AB
Credits: 4,111.98
Spirit Reserve: 319,526
My eyebrows jumped toward my hairline. “Okay, I take that back, you deserve to act superior. Your Spirit reserve can kick my Spirit reserve’s butt.”
“I was only around two eighty-nine before we resonant cultivated,” she said. She frowned down at her screen. “I’ve been keeping an eye on it lately. According to the numbers, I should be getting close to a Ten breakthrough.”
“You have to reach a specific amount of Spirit to advance?” Warcry and Rali were the only people I’d ever talked to about it, and they hadn’t mentioned numbers once.
Kest chewed on her bottom lip. “I’ve never read any trustworthy sites that mention numbers, but it’s got to be a quantity thing. Otherwise, what good would it do to get more Spirit?”
“Then how do you know you’re getting close?”
“People on the hyperweb usually say they feel an overwhelming pressure building up in their Spirit sea, like it’s going to rip them apart. Or sometimes the exact opposite, like they’re going to implode.” She leaned back against the tree next to me. “Rali said when it happened to him, he was facing down two different paths and he had to decide which one to walk, Warm Heart or Cold Heart. But we were both keeping a close eye on his numbers back then, and he was in the three hundred thousand range when he advanced.”
Meaning she
