Dominance

The thoughts moved about in Ryu's head like lightning. It had been a while since he was guided by a master, and he didn't even believe that Fading Star's methods would work on most people, but they just clicked for him. 

This was the type of person he had always been. Though, in the past, he had thought that this was just the person he had been forced to be. 

When he Awakened in his second life he had completely given up secondary professions. He didn't look at formations, he didn't think about alchemy or anything of the sort, he didn't even paint or play the zither anymore, things that he still hadn't picked up again. 

He had once been a master at those things, but it had always been nothing more than a means to an end. He didn't want to be a useless man, or rather… he didn't want to be more useless than he already was. 

If he couldn't cultivate, he had to at least be able to do something, be something.