Heaven's Greatest Professor

"So if you can organise a meeting between us, it would be great."

Agnes shook her head. "It’s impossible," she said. "Securing the Sceptre is the only contact I got from my master since I was indentured into the military."

The Warden frowned. Her master might not care about Agnes, but they do seem to care about the Sceptre. And why wouldn’t they, considering its functions? Like all subspaces, a soul domain requires a dimension lever.

Actually, dimension levers might be a by-product of a soul domain, where a Transcendent had to form the lever to ensure the soul domain didn’t become uncontrollable to them.

Even his own soul domain was growing beyond his control. There were some aspects he simply couldn’t control. He might be the spiritual father of the space, but he couldn’t control how far his influence grew. Yet.

"They probably have no idea if I even managed to secure the Sceptre," Agnes said after a while. "And have not contacted me to know if I succeeded or not."

"Well, as far as most people were concerned, the forsaken had the clear advantage in the subspace," Gale grinned. "It is unlikely someone got the better of them."

Agnes met his smile. "If the Sceptre is useful to you, keep it," she said. "But make sure nobody learns about its presence with you. At least not until you are completely Transcendent."

Gale was about to nod. "What about your master?"

Agnes’ eyes glowed with coldness. "You do not need to worry about that," she said, clenching her teeth. "All my life I wanted to sever myself from their influence. The Sceptre was the repayment I needed to give them to ensure they never involve me in their game."

"Then?"

She shook her head. "Knowing them, I can say with absolute certainty that they would never let go of a useful tool." She bit her lips and sat down under the siphoning formation. Gale clasped her shoulders, trying to comfort her. "As long as I’m useless to their game, they would throw me away like just another chess piece..."

"Are you fine with that, though?" he asked, rubbing her shoulders.

Agnes shrugged. "Can I begin now?"

Gale let out a breath and nodded. He flexed his fingers as the formation surrounded her before forming a connection. "The control is within you," he said. "You can choose when to begin and when to rest. However, I did code the timeout according to the plan."

Agnes nodded.

"It’s a two-hour session now," he said. "You can begin with the 0.02% intensity."

Agnes began, and the formation shimmered with brighter golden light. Wisps of pure dark essence threaded out from the core and flowed into her body. Agnes’ shoulder jerked. She set her posture to move into the flow stage of meditation.

"Remember, the formation can restrict the corrupt will to a high degree, but it’s not absolute," Gale reminded. "Eventually, you have to fight it out."

She nodded and closed her eyes. Even if she tried now, the intensity wouldn’t increase over the 0.02% set in the formation. Ultimately, his plan was to raise it to 0.15% intensity, which should be more than enough to advance to Gold rank, with enough room to work on her combat arts.

As it was the first session, the Warden remained in the chamber to watch over the proceedings. The eroding effect of the dark essence on the formation was minuscule, so little that the Restoration formation was repairing it back to full health in no time. Of course, it wouldn’t be the same when the intensity was higher.

The two hours passed quickly for Agnes, though she remained sitting in the meditative stage even when the connection ended and the formation retracted.

Five minutes later, she finally opened her eyes. Gale was in front of her.

"Done already?" she furrowed her brows. "It wasn’t even as intense as the core of the moonspawn which I absorbed in the inheritance ground."

"Obviously," Gale affirmed. "The core probably has a few folds higher intensity, plus no filtering of the corrupt will. The formation practically restricted 90% of the corruption."

Agnes sucked in a deep breath as she jumped to her feet. "So two hours down," she asked, "I need to spend two hours outside to come back here?"

Gale nodded. "Before that," he drew his palm to ask hers.

"I thought you said you’ll check on once every second day?" she raised an eyebrow and laughed, though she gave her palm.

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"That was when I’m busy, and you’ll need a thorough check," he said. "Right now, it will only need a couple of minutes at best..." He raised an eyebrow. "Even less inside the soul domain."

It took him less than half a minute. Probably would have taken less if he hadn’t been too careful.

"I cannot check my status screen," Agnes said. "Mental command doesn’t work here. Or any kind of command."

"All outside influence is restricted here," Gale said. "Although I plan on establishing something like the system interface here, without the influence of the other system."

Agnes frowned, and then a look of horror appeared on her face. "Hey, Gale," she said, her voice dry, "what are the chances the outside world is a soul domain of a very powerful being?"

"Now that you say it out loud..." Gale closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. "Okay, let’s not assume anything yet..."

"But you do see the chance of it being possible?"

"I cannot discount it," he said, letting out a breath. "But believe me when I say this: the laws of the outside world are a lot more distinct than this place. It is somewhat volatile on the frontlines, similar to a soul domain, but that doesn’t prove anything."

"Yeah, let’s not discuss the flailing of life when I just began to take hold of my life," she chuckled. "I feel like I should spar... Can you give me some more minutes?"

"Let’s get outside first," he smiled and touched her shoulder.

****

Agnes blinked and came back to the outside world. Unlike before, Jenni didn’t express her surprise. For that matter, she didn’t even glance towards her. She was seated at the table, engraving runes on a thick piece of cotton clothing, while Dawn was sitting on the ground, doing something very peculiar with cotton.

The elf was looking at the work with wide eyes that shimmered in silver light, thoroughly invested in learning the...

Cotton combining art? she thought and chided herself. A name like that was something Jenni would come up with. Well, that was what it seemed to her eyes. Dawn was taking a large quantity of cotton, infusing it with her essence and intent, and concentrating on smaller pieces of clothing.

"Cultivation is a versatile art," Gale commented as he stood up from his meditative spot. "Anyway, you can be fascinated with it later... Are you still in the sparring mood?"

Agnes gave the three-woman crew a last look before nodding at him.

"Let’s begin then," he said and flew up above the lake. "We’ll spar here, in case we damage the natural landscape."

The [Wings of Darkness] manifested behind her as she shot towards him. The elf had noticed them and acknowledged with a curt nod, still invested in the Cotton Cultivation Art.

Agnes too did not pay any attention to her anymore and got invested in sparring. Unfortunately for her, Gale had become an unattainable opponent for her. Before, she could contend with him on par while having a good advantage in her sword arts, but now, none of her specialities mattered anymore. Not against him.

He had defeated her in all of them, and most likely without even trying.

This is so unfair, she wanted to complain, but this was how the world worked. She didn’t stop the spar even though it was thoroughly balanced against her.

"How much power are you using?" she asked after a quarter of an hour.

Gale looked at her with a foolish gaze. "I cannot say, I have not had the chance to know my limit yet," he said.

"Then how far is your limit?"

This time he looked as though she was dumb. "Cannot say, I have not reached my limit yet."

"I guess your celestial awakening hadn’t changed your pompous ass," she snorted.

They continued to spar again until she was thoroughly exhausted. It barely took half an hour, and she hadn’t landed a single blow on him; that was how much Gale outclassed her.

"Your intent has changed," she remarked after they stopped.

"I’d say it matured as I found my Way," Gale commented, throwing a drink at her. "It is more of a baleful cleansing power now." He rubbed his chin. "Huh, it’s actually perfect for janitorial work."

"Well, you can clean all the toilets you want. I’m going to meditate," Agnes said as she sat down, cross-legged, getting back to the banks. The others were still invested in their work.

Before she moved into meditation, she finally checked on her status page to glimpse at the changes. Her Strength had grown by 2.5 actual points, followed by 1.7 in Dexterity, 0.9 in Spirit, and 0.8 in Perception.

Agnes was stunned to find the improvement in Spirit. A 0.9-point increase in just two hours of the session was mind-blowing, considering Spirit was the most difficult attribute to improve. All that too in just 0.02 intensity.

Her physical attributes were already moving closer to 200 points, while Spirit stood at the low 190s.

Agnes clenched her fists. "Wake me up when the two hours are up."

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