Chapter 639: To Eat (2/2)
Small streams of lightning swirled about in his hands, but he seemed to be having problems. The small beams seemed powerful enough to turn a hegemon into ash, but the mysterious man’s control over them seemed somewhat lacking. The arcs were wild and untamed, and it looked like he was trying to impose order on them.
Time passed and the hooded man eventually waved and dissipated the small lightning bolts. He didn’t seem ready to give up though, but rather made a pulling motion toward the endlessly vast river of lightning, and a small thread of extremely pure lightning was dragged out from its depths.
Just like with the sun, the mysterious man took the lightning into his body, and crackling arcs powerful enough to turn Zac to nothingness lit up the surroundings for a while until the chaos subsided. It looked like it had been quite arduous for the man to absorbed the high-grade lightning, but he eventually stirred and once more summoned the small arcs in his hands.
Zac didn’t understand what he was up to, but he realized something. Weren’t the bolts moving a bit smoother compared to before?
The two kept soaring through the lightning-infested part of the cosmos and the man kept up a cycle of rest, absorption, and experimentation, slowly improving his control over the small arcs. But a sudden thump made the vision just freeze before it slowly distorted.
Zac’s own heart beat an extra time out of worry, as this looked very different from when the visions upon opening his hidden nodes ended. Space shuddered like it tried to resist what was happening, but it soon cracked into a million pieces like a mirror.
To eat was to live.
The taste of the ten-legged critter was rancid and it gave him the runs, but Karz looked at it like it was a treasure. He pushed his thumb into the soft spot right beneath its head, and it stopped moving after a short frantic struggle. Karz took a deep breath and started munching away, only occasionally stopping to keep himself from throwing up.
Energy-rich critters like these were rare, and he couldn’t waste a speck of it if he wanted a chance to ever get out of this place. Karz sat under the cover of what probably was once some sort of vessel as he gazed up at the sky, the only sound of him forcibly biting through the shell and sinewy meat.
One day he would get up there.
A huge mountain floated in the sky, surrounded by an everchanging shroud of mysterious ether. Sometimes grand vessels would emerge from it for a few seconds before they turned into streaks of light. Just looking at it made every part of Karz’s body twitch with hunger for some reason, like it held the most delicious things in the world.
Old Vek said it was a sect, a place where important people went to become stronger. Karz didn’t understand the allure at first, but apparently, your life got better the stronger you were. You didn’t have to eat things that almost made you puke or that made you see terrifying visions at night, and you didn’t have to fear getting swept up in the refinement light like Old Vek finally was a year ago.
In fact, the treasure land he and the others scavenged for sustenance was actually just a garbage pile according to Old Vek, and everything he ate was just discarded scraps. So, Karz needed to eat to get stronger, so that one day he could live up there. His stomach was cramping up from the poisonous beetle, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the first ones he ate.
More importantly, that odd warmth spread all over his body, the warmth that Old Vek believed to be related to those in the sky. The ability to cultivate. Neither of them could know for sure, but it looked like not everyone had that gift since no one else in this garbage mountain ever seemed to understand what he was talking about.
The bug was a good first catch of the day, but he couldn’t stop here. Today was the great cleanse, and nothing new would arrive for days. He scurried between the already searched mounds as he rushed toward the center. It was a risk, but the competition wasn’t as fierce in there since the cleanse could always start early.
A weak shimmering suddenly caught his eye, and Karz’s eyes lit up as he rushed forward. It was definitely a cultivator stone, this one shining in an alluring red. It was broken and had lost almost all of its light, but it was still better than most things that could be found in this place.
Karz quickly took out a bowl and pestle from his backpack, and he quickly started hitting the crystal, turning it into red crystalline sand. A wave of heat spread in the area, and Karz quickly took off his shirt, knowing that the effect would soon dissipate. His thin torso was covered in sores and scars, but Karz wasn’t worried. Most people died from illness after getting these kinds of sores, but Karz got better extremely fast.
Old Vek had always believed it was because he had a blessed body, one meant for cultivation. What were some mortal afflictions to such a marvelous thing? Karz poured a bit of refiltered oil into the bowl, turning the sand into a paste that he spread all over his body. Smearing the compound into his wound hurt extremely bad, but Karz gritted his teeth as he covered his whole body in a thin layer.
A small flame of heat swept through his limbs after a few minutes, and the compound eventually dried and turned into clay that fell off his body. Karz nodded in satisfaction and put on his clothes again and resumed his search. He soon found another treasure whose energy was absorbed as well, and he kept going from mound to mound, using over a dozen methods to absorb all kinds of things, each method perfected after tens of painful experiments.
Karz didn’t know if the garbage piles were getting better or if he was getting luckier, but he was finding more and more good things as of late. One day of scavenging almost provided as much loot as a whole week before. Part of it was definitely because his body was becoming stronger from the constant absorption, but strength was almost only useful in this place when used to fight off competitors.
And when running for one’s life.
A fluctuation in the air told Karz it was time to go, and he sped back toward the edge of the garbage-filled platform as quickly as his feet could carry him. He spotted both treasures and critters on his way back, but he followed Old Vek’s old scavenger rules and ignored them all.
He finally reached the edge of the platform and jumped off, his lungs working like bellows by this point. However, he didn’t immediately return to his burrow, but he rather stayed for a few minutes until the weird signs on the platform lit up, and the whole garbage heap turned into a sea of mesmerizing fire.
This was the power of the ‘Cultivators’. They were not only able to make the garbage appear out of nowhere, but they were also able to incinerate kilometers of it in an instant. In a few days, there would only be ash left behind, which would be collected by the stonemen and used where the Cultivators grew their high-quality food.
Karz looked at the spectacle for a while longer before he started his trek back. The trip took an hour until he reached the inconspicuous stones in the middle of the forest, and he made three rounds to make sure no one had come close. Only then did he open the hidden hatch beneath one of the smaller stones and crawled inside.
The world turned pitch-black as Karz closed the entrance to his sanctuary. He grasped around in the darkness for a few seconds until he found what he was looking for, a small crystal ball with a small crack on its bottom. It was the greatest item that Old Vek had found over his long 40 years of scavenging, and he had bequeathed it to Karz when he saw his potential.
Karz concentrated for a few seconds, and the ball suddenly lit up. It provided even more warmth and red light today, no doubt thanks to the cultivator stone he found before. Old Vek had said that only those who could make the ball light up had a chance to be accepted in the sect, but the more light it gave off the better ones’ chances were.
The light right now was barely enough to illuminate the small shell, a far cry from the burning sun that Karz imagined himself releasing when he one day finally climbed up to that mountain. But it was also a lot better compared to just a few months ago.
The more he ate, the more perfect he would become.