Chapter 16: First level

Chapter 16: Chapter 16: First level

"I’ll make dinner," Jason said, already shifting his weight off the couch. "Give us both something better than my usual disaster of a mood."

’Cooking. The universal cure for "my life fell apart today." Works maybe sixty percent of the time. The other forty percent you just burn the rice and feel worse.’

Novaria’s fingers stayed loosely curled where his hand had been a moment ago, like she hadn’t quite registered he was pulling away. Then her expression sharpened, some thought surfacing behind those pale eyes.

"The butler didn’t only come to deliver bad news," she said, voice flat in that way she had when she was reporting something rather than feeling it. "He was also sent to collect the monster core alongside the rest of it’s corpse. Standard compensation. Three thousand pounds."

Jason paused halfway to standing.

"Of course he was," he said out loud, tone even. "Efficient bastard. Multitasking his way through ruining our week."

He crossed the room, gathered the market bags he’d dropped on the counter earlier, and let go of her hand properly this time. The warmth of her fingers lingered against his palm for a second after contact ended, an odd little sensation he chose not to examine.

At the doorway, he stopped and glanced back.

’Might as well check something while I’m here.’

He willed Cursory Insight awake, feeling the ability stir behind his eyes like a lens sliding into focus.

[Cursory Insight activated.]

[Target: Novaria Veryon]

[Age: 22]

[Cultivation: First Level, meridians compromised]

[Physical Status: chronic essence blockage, partial. Lower body paralysis, non congenital.]

[Emotional State: guarded, fatigued, cautiously receptive.]

[Note: elevated trust threshold detected. Target’s disclosure toward Observer exceeds baseline due to accumulated rapport.]

Jason blinked.

’Elevated trust threshold. That’s the system’s polite way of saying she likes you more than she likes literally everyone else who’s ever looked at her, and somehow it delivers that line with the emotional warmth of a parking ticket.’

He didn’t let any of that show on his face. He just nodded once, like he was confirming something mundane, and turned toward the kitchen before she could ask what he was doing standing in the doorway like an idiot.

’Messier inside than she lets on. Noted. Never mentioned out loud, obviously, because I enjoy having limbs.’

The kitchen was cramped, but it was his kind of cramped. Everything within arm’s reach. Nothing decorative. Nothing wasted.

He unpacked the bags, laid the ingredients out, and pulled up the recipe compendium the system had gifted him after the soup incident, scanning past the entries until one caught his eye, something new added to the list since he’d last checked it.

[Recipe available: Verdant Marrow Stew]

[Effect: nourishes and clears minor meridian obstructions. Marginally accelerates essence circulation. Recommended for cultivators recovering from essence trauma.]

He got to work. Chopping, searing, layering spices he’d never used before but somehow knew the exact measurements for, courtesy of whatever benevolent, vaguely condescending force had decided he deserved a culinary upgrade along with everything else.

The pot went on low simmer. Steam curled toward the ceiling, and the smell, rich, earthy, faintly metallic from whatever mineral compound was baked into the recipe, filled the small kitchen.

Feeding Novaria took the better part of the next hour, not because the process was difficult, but because she ate slowly, intent on savouring every bite.

Jason didn’t rush her. He alternated between spoonfuls and idle, low effort commentary that required no response, which suited them both.

Halfway through the bowl, she paused.

"I feel warmer," she said, frowning slightly, like the sensation confused her. "Energetic. What was in this?"

"Found the recipe earlier," he said, which wasn’t a lie, exactly, even if the where he’d found it was doing a lot of quiet work. "Figured it might help. Good to know it’s not just seasoning."

Novaria studied him for a moment, something unreadable passing behind her eyes, then went back to eating.

"It’s helping," she said simply.

"Glad to hear it."

Watching her sit up a little straighter with every spoonful was worth every penny

By the time the bowl was empty, it was seven thirty, the window gone dim and blue with early evening. Novaria glanced toward the hallway, then back at him.

"Take me to bed."

Jason did not react.

’Internally, however.’

’She asked. She actually just... okay. Okay. Play it cool.’

"Sure," he said, voice perfectly level, betraying nothing of the small internal earthquake that request had caused. "Long day. Makes sense."

He lifted her the way he had the night before, except this time his arms didn’t strain, his breath didn’t catch, and the weight of her felt almost negligible against a body that had clearly upgraded itself sometime between yesterday and tonight.

He carried her to the bedroom, settled her under the covers with a care that had nothing to do with cultivation and everything to do with not wanting to be an idiot about it, and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders.

"Goodnight," he said.

"Goodnight," she murmured back, already half toward sleep.

Jason crossed to his usual spot near the foot of the bed, folded the spare blanket into shape against the wall, and settled down onto the floor.

’No time to waste. Strength first. Everything else can wait in line.’

He let his essence begin circulating along the pattern etched into his memory. The Heretical God Law. Lightning first, sharp and fast, threading through his meridians like static looking for a place to discharge. Then fire, slower, thicker, curling in behind it like smoke chasing a spark.

The ambient mana in the room responded almost immediately, drifting toward him in thin, near invisible currents.

’That’s fast.’

Faster than it used to be. Faster than anything he remembered from the handful of miserable, failed attempts he’d made as a child, back when his family had all but confirmed what they suspected. That he was a dud. An embarrassment. A waste of a bloodline slot.

’SS rank affinity does that, I guess. Mana practically tripping over itself trying to get to me. Like I’m the last slice of pizza at a party full of starving people.’

He let the thought simmer for a moment, half amused, half suspicious.

His clan elders had a term for that phenomenon. They called it being ’blessed by mana’

He shoved the thought aside and kept circulating, breath even, mind quiet in the specific way his mind only ever got quiet when he was doing something with actual stakes attached to it.

Time slipped without announcing itself.

Seven hours passed in near total stillness, the kind of focus that made the room around him feel distant and irrelevant. Lightning and fire wove through his meridians in tightening loops, gathering density, building pressure behind a threshold he could feel approaching the way you feel a storm before you see it.

Then, somewhere past two in the morning, the pressure spiked.

His mana absorption surged, the ambient currents in the room bending toward him with visible urgency now, thin threads of lightning crackling faintly along his skin. In his soul core, his dual affinity essence, fire and lightning, tangled together since the day he first awakened, began spiraling into a slow, deliberate cyclone.

Way sronger than the sixty percent he’d started the night with. Angrier, almost, like it had been waiting for a reason to finish the job.

"Jason?"

Her voice came from the bed, close, right above him, thin with sleep but alert underneath it.

’Right. Same room. No hiding a cyclone like this from someone lying three feet away.’

He wasn’t even trying to, that would’ve felt wrong to him

So he let her see it. All of it. The lightning crackling faintly along his skin, the fire coiling beneath it, the pressure building toward a threshold he was too close to stop and hide now even if he wanted to.

Novaria propped herself up on one elbow, looking down at him from the bed, hair messy, eyes narrowing with the particular sharpness of someone doing math in real time.

"Congratulations," she said, watching him from the edge of the bed. "On reaching the First Level. Again."

The cyclone in his core spun one final rotation, then settled, locking into place with a sensation like a key turning in a lock built out of lightning and fire.

[Breakthrough confirmed.]

[Cultivation: First Level, fully stabilized.]

[Barrier remnants: negligible.]

Jason exhaled slowly, feeling the last of the pressure drain out of his shoulders.

’Again. Yeah. Let’s hope this time it sticks around longer than the memory did.’

He opened his eyes to find Novaria still watching him from above, something quiet and unguarded sitting behind her expression now that the strain in his had eased.

"How does it feel?" she asked.

Jason considered the question seriously, for once, instead of reaching for the easy joke.

"Like I got something back," he said. "Not all of it. Not even close. But enough to remember what having it felt like."

Novaria didn’t answer right away. She just looked down at him, this stranger she’d been married to for two days, sitting cross legged on her bedroom floor at two in the morning with lightning still ghosting faintly under his skin, and something in her face settled into a decision she hadn’t quite voiced yet.

"Get some sleep," she said finally. "Before you fall asleep sitting up and I have to explain to the Association why my husband broke his neck cultivating on my bedroom floor."

Jason huffed a tired laugh. "Romantic."

"I try."

He shifted back against the wall, the last threads of his cyclone settling quietly into place, and let his eyes close, close enough to hear her breathing even out above him before sleep finally took him too.