The transition from 'I feel nothing' to 'uh oh' happened quite abruptly. Hector had been staring at the ceiling of his capsule in boredom when he decided to shift onto his side. The motion made him momentarily imagine himself as a massive ship at sea that foolishly decided to flop onto its side. Hector stared at the mattress beside him, wondering if he had turned into the Titanic. He briefly wondered if all the people knew that the infamous iceberg was innocent. He'd been the one to capsize the boat because he foolishly thought he was in bed.

Then the wall of his capsule caught his attention and he forgot about being an ocean liner. The cheap plastic wasn't white as he always assumed. It was more like an off-white or eggshell or one of those crazy names people invented for paint colors. And… were colors even real? People said things like red and blue, but really it was all just a spectrum. Whoa. Colors were a social construct.

A social construct that had begun to shift about and fragment into pretty fractals. Hector lost himself for a time as he journeyed through a landscape of random imagery and moments from memory. He relived giving his wedding vows to Jen, feeling sad knowing that things wouldn't work out between them. He placed flowers at the site of his brother's car crash with his mother. He woke up with the dog Jasmine panting in his face. His dad died in the hospital. It was a kaleidoscope of his life, isolated moments relived one after another.

It soon descended into a numb buzzing in his brain. Hector vaguely recalled what he was trying to do and pushed cosmic energy towards his mind from his soul. The energy was already in his physical brain and suddenly Hector was playing the 'twin touch' game that Volithur used to hone his natural talent at sensing.

He didn't have that natural talent, it was true. At the moment, though, he had something that was better in a strange way. The brain and mind intersected. The body aperture and mind aperture never quite touched as they operated on different principles, but they were in close proximity. And at this moment, the magic honey pill formed a bridge for the energy to cross over.

So Hector pushed from his body aperture and pulled from his mind aperture. The cosmic energy jumped the gap and settled into his mind. He felt his thoughts clear as he moved the energy. Much of the fuzz and the wildness faded away as he reinforced his mind.

Many hours later, Hector realized that it was morning. The pill had been exhausted for some time and his mindless movement of energy was only the normal mental strengthening technique. He had been doing that for quite some time. And he'd emptied his energy reserves in the process.

Survey Results

Type: Xian

Level: 5

Body: 4

Mind: 3.6

Aura: 2.8

Domain: 2.6

Energy Reserves: 01%

A point six increase in his mind was quite something. It was the largest jump he'd ever seen in any of his statistics. Sadly, he didn't have the System to show him numerical increases back when he drank the platinum plasma elixir. That almost outweighed his disappointment that his body enhancement showed no increase whatsoever. He knew that the relative mass of the skull to the body as a whole was small, so it wasn't a surprise. It still stung a bit.

He went to the restaurant and ordered an expensive tea along with breakfast. He dumped in the tea powder and sugar mixture from his opened body pack and stirred it in. The flavor of the resulting beverage was a bit too strong, but not terrible. Energy returned to his soul at a steady trickle as his body metabolized the sugar and caffeine.

Hector scooped a spoonful of fat from the jar onto his eggs and sprinkled a bit of yeast and salt. Then he braced himself for nastiness as he began to eat. Ironic disappointment greeted the first bite. It didn't taste terrible. It was fine. Which begged the question… why did the Marshal make Volithur eat the fat raw instead of on top of a warm food that it could melt into?

He stored away the rest of the fat and yeast and salt for later. There was enough remaining for him to jazz up his eggs again the following day. Following the meal, Hector went about his typical schedule of cultivation. The difference was that the body enhancement resources stole his gains even faster than his saturating soul stole them. He ended the day empty, which the System politely rounded up to one percent.

The next day was the same. He didn't even bother with his skull since the resources spread out to encompass his entire body at a very low level. It was the much-maligned flood method of body enhancement. Just push energy to the entire body and eventually it would fill up. The cold forged method more efficiently used resources while also allowing people to prioritize areas that would provide more benefit.

Another day passed and Hector opened up another kit to use the tea mixture and green juice. Its power all went towards his skull, moving the needle ever so slightly for that one piece of anatomy. The System still saw no improvements to report yet. Hector soldiered on every day until all the tea mixtures and green juices were gone. He was concentrating on his skull and didn't use the other items from the body pack yet.

Indeed, he didn't have time to continue with body enhancement at all. He'd continually drained his soul reserves just to get his skull halfway to peak level five. Doubling the durability of a single bone wasn't game changing. Bones just had to be done before the rest. It was bones, then tendons, then circulation, then respiration, then digestion, then the muscles he wanted stronger.

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Facing the reality of performing the enhancements, Hector found himself grateful to the Lord General for gifting him the elixir. That was a complicated emotion, feeling grateful to a man he so fervently hated. He couldn't deny what a benefit it had been for him. His current level of performance would be utterly impossible without his body enhancement. And it happened simply by chugging down the contents of a single vial. That was ignoring the fact that a man's entire cultivation legacy created the contents.

So Hector returned to his efforts to fill his soul reserves.

It took him a month of concerted effort to reach capacity. During that time, Hector did little other than cultivate. Whether it was by chaos in his capsule, aura on the rooftop, or mental on the circumnavigating train, Hector devoted himself to the process. The initially overpowering greed of his saturating soul declined a bit over time and it stole less of his gains.

Which meant that Hector could consume the rest of his body enhancement kits. He did so for several days in a row and cultivated like crazy to match the drain it placed on his reserves. When the resources were entirely consumed, he still had seventy percent of his reserves. The System, stubborn as always, claimed his body was still at a flat four.

They were two months into the three month grace period. Hector would soon need to enter the dungeon again. He'd spoken with Conrad a couple of times, and the man was willing to let his friends join them. Conrad had been out several times since their first outing, of course. The Jinn had a network of people he teamed up with for delves and was always looking to expand his contacts.

The trio of swordsmen hadn't been seen for quite some time and Rodrick assumed they were no longer around. None of their group felt bothered by that. They didn't need to be looking over their shoulders all the time.

At breakfast one day, Rodrick joined him. "Hey, Hector. What do you say about going out on the town?"

"Sure. Are you thinking of a movie or back to the mall?"

Rodrick waved the question away. "Can you make yourself free after dinner today?"

"That's not a problem. I'm just cultivating. Though if we're busy after dinner I have to do my virtues in the morning."

A shake of the head was the only response to that. Rodrick didn't know what to make of Hector's embrace of humility and charity. On the one hand, the man agreed those were good traits in a person. On the other, he thought a dedication to doing a set amount of good deeds every day was eccentric in the extreme.

Hector shifted around his schedule and then met Rodrick in the lobby at their planned time. "So where are we going?"

His friend scratched his head. "You'll see. Just promise not to judge?"

That seemed concerning. "How expensive is this?"

"Medium to high? Less than you spend on cultivation stuff."

That seemed expensive for an activity Hector wasn't sure he wanted to do, but he hesitated to back out on Rodrick. The two of them hadn't seen much of each other lately, largely due to Hector's ambitious schedule. Besides, he could use a break from serious matters.

They got in a taxi and Rodrick gave an address. The driver's cheek twitched with a repressed smile that Hector caught. Then they were on their way. Hector sat in his seat beside his increasingly nervous friend, wondering just what he had signed up for.

At their destination, the driver wished them a fun time as he drove off laughing. Rodrick had gone beet red and stood awkwardly outside a skyscraper that was wider than typical for the city. Hector looked through its ground floor windows and saw what was obviously a bar. A very large bar stretching the length of the first floor.

"So… we're drinking?"

"Among other things."

"Rod. Are you going to explain what's happening? You are acting weird as hell, buddy."

"You never promised you wouldn't judge me, Hector."

Humility. Charity. "I promise not to judge you, Rod."

"It's been a while for me. I had a sweetie when I was in the Coalition Army. Nothing serious. She wasn't even the girl I really wanted. Honestly, I don't think it was even exclusive on her end. That didn't matter. Women were thin on the ground, you know?"

Hector looked back towards the giant bar. "So you're looking for female companionship?" That didn't seem like such an embarrassing admission to Hector. He regularly caught Rodrick staring at Zelda when he thought she wasn't aware. Did Rod take his shot finally and fail, leading him to seek a hookup at a bar noted for its nightlife?

"Yes," Rodrick finally muttered.

"Let's go inside, then."

"Thanks, Hector. I really appreciate it. I don't know if I could do this by myself."

Hector had never played the part of a wing man before. He was the guy friends called to move furniture. It felt odd embarking on such a role at this late stage of his life. Though it wasn't a late stage any longer. Hector might not look like a kid, but he might as well be when you considered his increased life expectancy. At level four in his body enhancement, he should have over a century of life left in him.

While they walked towards the building, Hector tried to assemble what he knew of playing a wing man from cultural osmosis. He vaguely recalled details from shows his wife had watched and he caught bits and pieces of. Likely his role would be to introduce Rodrick to women he was interested in and then make sure the conversation didn't stall out. That seemed reasonable.

Rodrick tensed up as they passed through the doors. The music inside was turned up loud enough that it was hard to hear the conversation of anyone not in close proximity. Hector turned to complain about that, hoping his friend had a secondary location in mind. After all, how could they succeed in their mission if they couldn't hold a conversation? His words died as he noticed the wide-eyed stare from his friend.

Hector followed the gaze to the women hanging around the bar wearing only lingerie. He saw a placard posted with rates for various services. And then he smacked his own forehead.

"You took me to a damn whorehouse?"

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