4 New start
Their new gifted house was much better than their previous one. It had a small garden with beautiful flowers and even a lake for washing themselves so they could take a bath. Inside the house, they had a small shelf with relevant records about the cultivation and the essence-gathering process.
Opal still couldn't believe that it is not a dream. She took Mormo, put him on her lap, just to look at him. For Mormo's whole life she had to work, she never had any time to look after him. Now she doesn't have to work for the clan anymore, she can put all her thought into Mormo. No one will abuse her or her son anymore. She knew that her condition was gifted to her by her son. She never gave him anything but only miserable experiences and still, he set her free.
She was never considered a human, her worst fear was to pass this destiny to her son. Her mind went blank, all the other stuff doesn't even matter to her anymore, all she wanted to do is to protect her son. On her lap inside her embrace, Mormo opened a big and thick book. In his past life he was a programmer, they say that if you will ever stop learning you are out of the game, for him the length of this book meant nothing. He can memorize it and understand the major part rather quickly, to be honest, most of his past life has been spent near the computer screen reading new papers and looking for loopholes in big systems.
They lived like that for a week, Opal didn't let the servant clean or make food for Mormo, every part of his life should be taken care of by her. Mormo, except for eating and sleeping, just read his book. His mother nagged him every hour or so to go and play with her or to go and have some fun around the clan. She didn't want him to pressure himself too much, but eventually, she gave up and just sat near him, trying to understand the book with him. Because she never cultivated or even studied anything, she was bad at it. Her thinking process was slow compared to Mormo's, so he had to understand the content and then explain it to his mother. At first, his mother got depressed because of it, but because she felt inferior to others all her life it was easy for her to accept it.
Mormo was disappointed, how bad is the education on this continent is?? How can it be that this book is so big and contain so many words, but had so small amount of information? How many times did they explain the same thing over and over again? Did they bring me a book made for idiots, or is it the edition for the children? He wanted to stop the reading process long ago, but he couldn't bring himself to stop, he needed to know everything before he starts the training process.
The summary of the book was something like that:
There are lots of different gods, every god gives some kind of power that matches your inner personality. Gods spread their essence in the world, by collecting the essence and storing it in your body you can control it and with its help manipulate nature. When you use the essence, it will run wild in your body. At other times, when the essence is not used, it must be stored in a specific location inside your body, this part can be chosen by the user, but the organ that store the power will function worse than it has been in the past. If the power that has been stored in your body is lost, you just need to collect it again. The god levels indicate what is the capacity of the essence inside your body. If this organ will be destroyed, you will never be able to cultivate it again. Fortunately, the exterior of the organ will be much stronger thanks to the essence inside of it.
Mormo got confused about something, according to the book there are different gods, but he couldn't find any difference between their essence. Maybe the people of this world just don't understand it. Or can it be that all essence are the same? If there is a difference, why the essence-gathering process is the same for everyone?
…
After he thought about it for a long time, he couldn't find anything. To be honest, he researched it for so long not only for himself. As a hacker, he wanted to find the loophole which will help his mother to get her recognition and collect her own essence.
"It will give me nothing to just sit and think about it, let's try to collect some essence ... but first I need to decide about the part of the body that will store my essence, isn't it easy?? I will just choose my skin, even if it got damaged, the skin would repair itself fast and the capacity of the skin is enormous. The book recommended storing the essence in the small intestine, do I look like someone who wants to stay all day long inside the toilet? As the capacity of the essence grew, your organ functionality grew weaker. But it's not like old people have any problem with their skin, right? And let's not forget that as the essence build-up, my skin will be tougher! And I didn't even start to think about how hard it is for someone else to destroy all my skin" Mormo thought. He wasn't too informed about the human body, but he totally liked his reasoning.
He adjusts himself on his mother's knees, closed his eyes, and started to breathe irregularly. The key is basically to breathe very fast until there is too much oxygen in your lung and then start to breathe as slowly as you can until you are feeling suffocation. After Mormo repeated this process for 10 minutes, he started to sweat all over, he felt like he is about to faint but then he managed to feel something, as tiny as dust. He tried to pull it over to him. He concentrated all his mind on this little spark of dust, and it started to move slowly toward Mormo, his heartbeat was so fast that even Opal could hear it clearly. It entered through his mouth into his lungs and then to his blood vessel. The book said that at least two cycles are required before you can insert the essence into your selected organ, more cycles will make the essence more adjustable to your body. Mormo was too tired for that, after exactly 2 cycles, maybe a little bit less, he pushed the dust to his skin, and as it entered the skin, he opened his eyes and stopped his weird breathing.
His mother looked at him anxiously, "Are you fine? Anything hurt? You are all sweaty, let mother help you wash yourself". Today she didn't want to let him train anymore, but after he show her his "cute" face and beg for her to keep his training while saying that without her help he probably will never manage to cultivate in his life, eventually, she let him continue.
One dust every 10-15 minutes or so and then 30 minutes break, partly because he needed it and mainly because his mother freaked out and didn't stop nagging him. He couldn't feel anything different from his skin. Maybe he is doing something wrong? Well, the book says that it will take some time before any effect takes place. As a programmer, he could work for 16 hours a day for months, and as a human being, how could he not be fascinated by the concept of "magic"?
His mother accompanies him for the next month, they didn't talk much just sit near each other breathing the same air. She looked at him and pray that this time will never stop. Their new father didn't appear again after he take Opal as his wife. No ceremony or any kind of meeting. Opal was for him something like a potential treasure.
After another month of painstaking training, Mormo was sitting on his mother's legs, when the next dust entered his skin after performing 5 full cycles, his skin grew hot. It was like his whole body was at war against itself. He felt like he was swimming in a very hot pool.
He knows that he is entering his first god level. He didn't want anyone to see it. When he entered his first level people can look at his power and determine which god gave him his recognition. If it will be a weak one Mormo and his mother's future will turn upside down again. He put his hand inside his mouth and took a bite. He screamed a soundless scream inside his mind. Blood was flowing from his hand. He thought "shit, my skin has been damaged!!" but no essence left his body. "Maybe it needed to be damaged to some extent before essence starts to leave the organ?" and then the pain grew much more unbearable. He was about to shout, but he talked about it with his mother and told her that in that critical time she must make sure no sound will leave his mouth no matter what.
She did to him what others did to her when they wanted to keep her quiet. She pushed all of her hand into his throat. People did it to he so many times that for her it wasn't that big of a deal, and she understood that if someone will find out about his achievement, immediately they will check which god recognized Mormo, the best that could happen to them out of it will be that Mormo and his mother will just keep their new status. They could only lose from discovering which god recognizes her son.
She hated herself for being so useless and that her son sacrificed so much for her. One hand was in his throat while the other hugged him. She stayed like that for a while until he stopped his trembling and passed out.
