Chapter 36 - Five-Elements Fenrir Scripture

Hello, dear readers! Here's chapter 36! Hope you'll enjoy it!

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The Highlands, New Jersey, USA.

Ben's P.O.V.

As her information came up, Kate looked a bit embarrassed but Ben quickly reminded her. "Don't worry too much about your current cultivation Level. Cross and Marco were just lucky to have their 'Supe genes' activated randomly. That's why their Rank is higher than yours. As for me, I was a Peak human before breaking through and May is in a special situation."

"What's your Level Cap'?" Marco asked curious. "Mid First Level Novice Rank." "So I'm stronger than you, Captain!" Cocking his eyebrow, the older man stared at him indifferently before declaring. "From your movements, I'd say it'd take me less than 30 seconds to knock you out." 

The other man was about to protest before he was cut off by Andrew's matter-of-fact voice. "Captain is right, Flint. We sparred for a few minutes on the docks yesterday and if it wasn't for my innate tough skin, I'd have been knocked out in the first attack." That made the other man speechless, which brought a small smile to the other's face before Ben claimed.

"That's why besides cultivation training, we'll also do combat training. And it's mandatory. Maybe you'll become stronger than me at one point, if you train yourself enough, Marco." Those words seemed to ignite the young man's motivation. "Alright, Cap! Let's get to training! I've got some butts to kick!"

The green-eyed man facepalmed at the man's childish antics, while Ben chose to ignore the outburst and the two women giggled softly. Shaking his head the older man instructed. "Since we're all aware of our own affinities, we'll go choose a cultivation technique." Right after his words resounded in everyone's ears, he started moving toward the Office Room, with the group following behind him.

Once inside the place, he explained to the three clueless people how the Holo-Computers worked. "Take your time to choose the right technique. It'd be bad if it didn't fit your characteristics." The three nodded before starting to browse the techniques available to them with the help of the semi-AI integrated into the computer.

While the others were busy, Ben and May sat together a bit further away and started to browse the list themselves. However, what surprised the middle-aged man was that the holographic display changed as soon as he was about to reach the Cultivation technique section.

Against his expectations, a message appeared in large font: 'An urgent message is available. Please wear the earbuds connected to this particular computer to listen to the content.' Feeling even more puzzled, the tall man grabbed the two pieces of tech plugged into the device and put them in his ears.

As soon as he did, the image of a young-looking bald man wearing a black eye patch that matched the color of his skin appeared before starting to speak. "Good morning, Captain Parker. My name is Nick Fury, but you probably know me as Director Fury from SHIELD." 'So, that's what the man looks like..." 

Despite having some of his curiosity alleviated, he still had doubts. "Just in case, this a pre-recorded message, so responding is useless, and frankly, stupid. Now to the reason of this particular message." With his curiosity stoked Ben put his entire focus on the man's next words. "I've got some reasons to think that SHIELD may not be as secure as it should be. Unfortunately, I'm being... hindered, if you will, by some annoying motherfucker that I won't name here."

Pausing for a second to seemingly gather his thoughts, Fury continued. "The result is that the list of people I can rely on is shrinking at light fucking speed, and you found yourself on it." Letting out a sigh of what seemed to be helplessness, the man added. "I'll be honest with you Parker, SHIELD has never been the cleanest organization. But recently..."

Shaking his head, he did not explain himself but instead declared. "Anyway, I've gotten you many resources, whether it be techniques, techs, knowledge, etc. Use it well, and only share it with the people you can 100% trust like your family, those new teammates of yours, Romanov and Barton. No one else. Especially not SHIELD agents. Only Low to Mid Level information is currently circulated in the organization and I firmly intend to let it stay that way. The rest is Avengers restricted."

Pausing for a few moments in thought, he added. "Be careful of who you trust. Appearances can be deceiving." As the last words resounded in his ears, the display changed back to a message in large font. 'Message deleted.' Before switching to the normal list display. For a while, Ben did nothing but ponder on the message that one of the highest 'ranked' in SHIELD sent him.

'Is it that bad?' He thought with a frown. 'It's true that the fact that a Level 8 agent like Rumlow can easily try to get rid of Nat and me without suffering any repercussion is telling...' His train of thought was suddenly disturbed because of a notification on his phone.

["The sniper's body disappeared on the way to the morgue. 'No lead' from the Agents there. Widow."] His frown deepened as the implication behind the message's content sunk into the man's mind. 'It's worse than I thought.' ["Copy that. Will talk later face to face. Come to our home for dinner. Tell Barton to come."] He sent back before shaking his head with a last thought. 'We'll plan later.'

Turning his attention back toward the computer, his eyes moved to the few files available. 'Cultivation scriptures, Spells, Body techniques, Mental techniques, General information, Professions...' Although the man felt attracted by all of them, he knew that he had to prioritize. Going for anything else than the Scriptures would be like putting the cart before the horse. In other words: Stupid.

His gaze thus moved toward the file named Cultivation Scriptures. 'Clicking' on it, a simple introduction about what scriptures meant, the differences between Levels of scriptures, how they usually work, etc. The explanation was lengthy, however, his recent near-photographic memories eased the difficulty of remembering everything.

After a while of rote memorization, the introduction ended with a sentence. 'For any additional information, please look into the file 'General Information'.' Letting out a sigh of relief after it ended, Ben muttered. "So, that's how it works... Cultivation seems really... Interesting..." He finished with a small smile on his face, while a feeling of excitement rose inside him.

Shaking his head slightly, he looked at all the scriptures available, sorting them out by Level first. Once he found the highest ones, he eliminated the ones that did not fit his affinities and ended up with only a few possibilities. Among the latter, only one seemed to click. 'Five-Elements Fenrir Scripture...'

It felt like it was made for him. 'The Gods, fearing the Divine Wolf's might, trapped him with godly chains. Many years later, the defiant animal used his Hope and Will to grow in strength and escape his bindings. This Scripture should only be followed by those of stout heart and iron will. The weak sheep have no place acting like wolves, their only fate being devoured by the true predators.'

Cocking his eyebrow, the man pondered for a moment about the introduction before continuing. 'This Scripture will guide you in the process of using your Hope and Will, directing the five Elements in your core to refine your body making it powerful enough to shatter the 6 Mortal Chains constituted by 9 Links until you liberate yourself from your Mortal condition, becoming a God.'

Ben was fascinated by the Scripture's potential, especially its effect. 'One's body to become the strongest, the Five Elements to dominate the Universe, and a Will so mighty that enemies will cower at the mere mention of your name.' "That's the one!" He muttered, utterly convinced. 'The explanation is a bit over-the-top, but what if it's true? In any case, the rest don't speak to me, so it'll be this one.'

Now that he decided, the man followed the instructions to learn the Novice Rank part of the scripture. From the introduction, it said that the Novice Rank was the introductory Cultivation Rank, making most scripture easy to understand, even for the High Level one. Now, easy was a relative term since it would still take some time for Ben to completely master the whole thing, but at least it was a lot easier than the following parts.

"One step at a time..." He muttered absentmindedly as his gaze was riveted on the display, doing his best to both remember and understand all the steps needed. Once he was sure to have remembered everything, the man closed his eyes and reviewed everything a few times again in his mind to make sure he could recall every single detail.

Feeling satisfied with the result, the man opened his eyes swiftly and looked toward the others who all seemed to have found their own technique. As something came to his mind, Ben checked out the 'Mortal Transcending Basic Technique', which was one of, if not the most effective technique to grow in the Mortal Transcending Rank. 

A quick review later and he memorized everything. There were some special movements used for guiding the Universal Energy into one's body to make it grow stronger. At that Rank, one could not feel the Universal Energy, and thus could not manually guide it. The result was that those moves were created to do it in the cultivator's place. It seemed to work on similar principles as Qi Gong, but since Ben was not an expert in that particular discipline, he was not entirely sure of that particular guess. 

In any case, the older man stood up calmly after having memorized everything and instructed. "When you're done with choosing your scripture, go to the Training Room to practice it. There's no need to choose combat techniques, spells, or anything else for now."

Everyone nodded, while Andrew and Flint stood up as well to follow him toward the Training Room. Throwing a glance toward the two women, who seemed to have more difficulties learning their own technique, the man realized that, unlike the men who all had mental upgrades due to their higher Rank, the girls were not as lucky.

He did not stop however since it would probably not take much longer for them to understand it. After all, the word 'basic' in the technique was not there just for show. A brief moment later, the men arrived in the other room, where they all sat cross-legged and closed their eyes.

Now that they had a way to get stronger, none of them wanted to waste time. Even Marco who liked to mess around, was unprecedentedly serious about cultivating. When Ben closed his eyes, the steps he had to follow came to his mind. 'First, Empty my mind.' He thought as his breath started to slow down more and more.

Once he reached the right state, the man tried to sense universal energy, which only took a few minutes of focus. It was vague at first, but after an unknown length of time, he could feel some sort of resonance around and particles of different colors started to quickly become 'visible' in his perception. 

The next step was to absorb them in his core through his energy channels, the latter located between his stomach and his genitals. That particular step took much longer than the first one. However, the more he practiced it, the easier and faster it became until it felt as natural as breathing to the new cultivator. Feeling satisfied about his progress, Ben did not stop, however, and went on to the next step.

In a paradoxical state of mental emptiness and focus, his will started to move the Five-elements energy present in his Core, following the prescribed pattern to slowly increase his cultivation Level. As his body soaked in the Energy, his mind's focus was split into picturing the Image of a Divine Wolf in chains growing stronger.

That was the difficulty of High-Level cultivation scriptures. Not only one had to split their focus into many directions, which was incredibly hard for most people, but the tasks demanded were similarly complicated. As for Ben, it was also astonishingly difficult at the beginning, but it seemed to become easier as time went by. How long went by as he started cultivating? The man had no idea and had no intention to pay it any mind.

Instead, he felt fascinated by the changes happening to his body, changes that he was able to feel as they were happening. It created a feeling of wonder and addiction that he never felt before. A passing thought suddenly appeared before disappearing swiftly. 'No wonder those cultivators could stay thousands of years in cultivation seclusion in those novels...'

That lasted until he felt someone softly touching his left shoulder, waking him up from that wondrous state. His eyes flickered open before his mind realized the identity of the person in front of him, her face adorned with some worries. "It's 7 p.m., honey..."