Truthful Transmigration

Formal missives were sent out throughout the alliance, informing everyone to prepare properly for the tournament. Along with that he gave a general description of the strength of the Sky Islands, including their approximate numbers of Consolidated Soul Phase cultivators and of course mentioning their four Ascending Soul Phase cultivators.

The general disdain for continentals had put John at risk of death, but it had also served him by the Island Masters remaining confident in their power. He might have learned quite a bit about their strength, but there was little he could actually do with that knowledge. Even though the continent had more Ascending Soul cultivators, they didn’t have anyone in the mid or late phase. On equal footing, John thought they would pull ahead- but if the continental forces tried to assault the Sky Islands, they wouldn’t even be close to equal footing. At best they could bring only a small portion of their strength, and even though they would be able to transport all of their Ascending Soul Phase cultivators, dealing with Sitora and Abritt would be… difficult.

If a battle happened immediately, perhaps they would have the advantage with Morana’s crippling injury. But John didn’t even want such a confrontation. While he sensed the Sky Islands had several individuals on the threshold of the Ascending Soul Phase, he didn’t think that waiting would be detrimental to the continent. After all, the two dangerous Island Masters had been training for a very long time. There was little chance of them suddenly growing in power. Sitora might break through to the late Ascending Soul Phase, but if Abritt improved her single rank wouldn’t make or break anything.

Ultimately, John was betting that the continent could grow stronger, faster. Also that it was possible to avoid a real war. The Sky Islands hadn’t been pushing for such before, and while John’s approach might have brought the continent to the forefront of their minds he anticipated they would wait until the tournament. The possibility of sparking trouble had already been discussed before he went, and it had been deemed an acceptable risk.

-----

While he couldn’t afford to monopolize the time of the ‘club’, they were the best training partners for each other as they were currently the only Ascending Soul Phase cultivators available, not counting the two guardian beasts. Meeting together for one month out of the year was what they committed to, and Astrein was their location of choice. It was centrally located, and as fair of a battleground as they could manage. It did advantage John, but they also had the ability to imbue the training grounds with whatever element was necessary to change things up.

John exchanged blows with Renato, not that he would actually let his friend hit him. Usually, that spelled the end for him. Even with a dominant fire element, the impact of Renato’s blows was difficult to resist. Nor was it sensible for him to even try. Instead of facing his opponent’s best condition, he should seek out weaknesses.

Currently, John was doing his best to replicate Sky Island cultivators. That included flying around, making it difficult for Renato to reach him. Not that it took his friend long enough to replicate a grounding move. He was pure earth element, after all, and good at what he did. Currently, Renato was their best bet for defeating the Sky Islands. While they also cultivated earth, Renato’s focus would likely overcome their skill, and then he simply had to consider the dominant element remaining.

They weren’t taking his victory for granted, however. “You’re gonna have to be faster than that,” John said. “Yeah, I doubt you’d get blown away by Abritt but I don’t even know what her true attacks are like. Something might break through your guard.”

“Break through?” Renato shook his head. “Not likely. Slip past? Potentially. If she is sufficiently fast, a focused dagger strike or some such might pierce a critical point.”

“She is a full four ranks ahead, though,” John reminded him. “It’s possible she can overpower you, even at an elemental disadvantage.”

Renato nodded. He had simply been stating his weaknesses as he thought most probable. He never considered himself invincible to begin with, even against someone of the optimal element for him.

Renato was John’s first bet. He’d take outside odds on Steve or Yustina, the former because he was just like that and Yustina because she had great skill. Both still had a partial elemental advantage. Deirdre… no offense to her, simply being an unfamiliar element wouldn’t be enough. It would be difficult for her to overcome the gap. Plus, she had to advance to the Ascending Soul Phase first, though she was pretty much guaranteed to reach that point within a few years. As much as anyone could be, at least.

John didn’t place his odds of victory against Abritt terribly high. Not as he currently was. But he was serious that by the end of nine years he intended to be strong enough. Still, he couldn’t really say his cycle of elements was better than a solid earth cultivator for that particular application. He did have the advantage of direct experience with Abritt, however, and he’d read as deeply into her technique as he was able before he lost. If it came down to a battle between them, she would regret how long she took to take him down, even if using her full power immediately would have been shameful.

-----

“Daaaad!” John actually quite missed hearing one of his children call for him… but he didn’t even live near any of them anymore. Still, they knew where to find him. This time, it was Ursel.

“What?” John asked as Ursel stomped into the room. Her heavy footfalls were natural for her, now.

Ursel took out a clump of metal. “This isn’t working.” She tossed it forward, and it cracked tiles beneath it. “Oops.”

John shook his head. “You should be more careful. And yes, I’m going to make you fix that.” Fortunately, as an earth cultivator she could seamlessly repair such things. No doubt she had to do it frequently, at least around people with the ability to keep her in line. She wasn’t exactly troublesome anymore, but she didn’t always have a good grasp of how sturdy things were. “So what’s the issue?”

“This,” she gestured to the lump of metal. “It just… it’s terrible. I need you to help me make something better.”

“Trying to reforge your Mountain Steel armor?” John asked. From what he understood, it had been beaten and battered throughout her various adventures, until it finally gave out. Obviously that would have been a bigger issue if Ursel herself weren’t durable enough to continue onward, but things had turned out alright.

“Nah, no offense to master Renato but Mountain Steel isn’t good enough now,” Ursel said. “I want to make Continent level stuff!”

That would be something the equivalent of the Ascending Soul Phase. It made sense, he supposed, because it would be a bit silly to recreate something she’d already outgrown… but it wasn’t that simple. “Shouldn’t that be a job for Renato? He’s the right one.”

“He says he won’t,” Ursel grumbled. “I think he can’t, but maybe he just needs the time to make some for himself or something. But either way…” Ursel set her foot on the lump of metal. “Mine always comes out looking like this!”

“You’re supposed to shape it into armor,” John grinned. “You know what armor looks like?”

“I do!” Ursel grumbled. She sullenly reached a hand into her bag and pulled out a large silvery ingot. Then she flattened it with her hands, a surge of earth elemental spiritual energy flowing through it. In that instant, she made something approximately resembling a breastplate. “It’s really easy when it’s made from soft stuff like this. But I can’t get fire the right temperature. I think this,” she kicked the lump of metal on the ground, “Is also full of impurities too.”

“Good impurities or bad ones?” John asked. After all, steel was less pure than iron, containing just the right amount of carbon.

“I don’t know!” Ursel waved her arms around. “Nobody even has manuals for this stuff! Master Renato had to come up with his own technique for forging Mountain Steel to begin with, since he was part of the first generation of Consolidated Soul Phase cultivators here.”

John sighed, reaching down to pick up the slag. As expected, it took more than casual effort to lift it. He had to use spiritual energy to fortify himself. “It’s not like I know what to do with this either. I don’t have any experience with forging or anything. At best, I know a little about alchemy.”

There were other people who specialized in such things. John didn’t think himself so special as to excel in every field he touched without effort. And there simply wasn’t enough time to get good at everything.

“You use fire in alchemy, right?” Ursel asked.

“Well, usually yes,” John agreed.

“And you purify and change the properties of stuff, so it’s basically the same. Come on!”

-----

It was not ‘basically the same’. John was willing to invest his time for his daughter, but if that was the case he wanted to do something. Not just melt the same metal over and over.

“It needs more of the thing!” Ursel said as she tried to hammer semi-molten metal into a vaguely usable shape. “We need to make it hard but not too brittle!”

Ursel was terrible at explaining what needed to be done. If John wasn’t an Ascending Soul Phase cultivator, he might have not even had a sense of what it needed. He had nearly as much experience with earth as with darkness, but that didn’t mean he was going to be as proficient as a mono-element cultivator. He could sense all sorts of way to transform the metal as he helped bolster the forge with his fire element, but he didn’t know if any of them were good.

A hammer came down, and the slab of metal split in half. “Argh! Again?”

John shook his head. “We might need different materials to begin with. And repeatedly trying to forge the same stuff might have screwed things up in ways we can’t detect.”

Ursel ground her teeth. “This is the best metal literally anywhere! I’m sure it can be transformed to Continent Steel… somehow.”

“Maybe,” John agreed. “But while I’m confident we could make Mountain Steel together with the techniques Renato put together, we’re wandering around blind here. I don’t think we-”

“We can do it!” Ursel said. “We have to!”

John understood obsessions, but sometimes the time wasn’t right. Still… “It’ll be difficult for just the two of us. If Renato won’t help, we need an experienced smith. And maybe Raul will be able to help. He’ll understand more about purity than us.”

Raul had completed a cycle of core elements, and he’d always been decent at elemental balances.

“Do you have a smith better than me?” Ursel asked.

John shrugged. With her ability to strengthen and shape the material, she could make up for a lack of experience. And clearly she had some of that, seemingly having worked on her current project for some time. “None convenient. But I’m sure we can find one.”

“We’d have to bring them in from far away or whatever,” Ursel said. “And we wouldn’t know them. I don’t know if I’d trust armor from someone weird. That Raul guy is okay, though. Let’s ask him.”

And so they recruited Raul. It took several attempts for Raul to get what they were going for, given that Ursel could hardly explain it and even John just barely got anything, aside from ‘even more unbreakable than Mountain Steel’. Frankly, John was surprised Ursel’s armor had managed to get damaged. Wouldn’t she have had to be fighting things stronger than the Consolidated Soul Phase? Though maybe she just let them batter on her armor for a long time, he couldn’t put it past her.

“... I do believe you’re overemphasizing the earth element,” Raul finally said.

“It’s made out of metal!” Ursel said. “It’s gonna still be made out of metal. I’m not enchanting it with anything, so what else would it have?”

“When it’s complete? Nothing,” Raul agreed. “But the process might need other elements, yeah? You use fire to forge it. Perhaps we should take greater account of air and water. That might help with the… tempering?”

“Hmm. I don’t get any of that. You two will have to figure it out,” Ursel said. “Tell me if I need to stop hitting things or whatever.”

Personally, John felt he’d done a decent job with the other elements. Air was fed to the forge to fuel the flames, and water was used to quench the metal. But he had to admit that perhaps there was more to do there. Still, was he just supposed to intuit what was right? He didn’t think they wanted an equal balance of elements, but it certainly needed to end up in a stable configuration. Unfortunately, even with new ideas they weren’t able to make anything up to Ursel’s standards.

She looked down at the metal in front of her. “Hmm. I’m gonna go find a technique book. I’ll be back.”

And just like that she was off. John of course thought to ask where she would find one better than what Renato had made, and when she would be back. But of course, he figured Ursel didn’t actually know the answer to either of those questions at the moment. That was just the way she was.

If he was lucky, she might return with a proper smith. Or maybe he could convince Renato. It wasn’t crazy for him to want her to do the work herself, but he might be able to guide them.

John thought Ursel would be back in a year, maybe two on the outside. Instead, it took her six.