Warmth

When Thirteen felt his back meet the bark of a nearby tree, he slowly slid down to sit against it, his eyes still glued to the limp man who remained seated, void of life.

The sound of his own heartbeat grew louder with every second. Thirteen's senses began to blur as he heard what sounded like his friends speaking.

His chest began to hurt, and his breath became aggressively ragged, like he could find no oxygen in the air. Clenching his chest, Thirteen closed his eyes and shut out his senses, slowly bringing his breathing under control, he began to meditate.

Gradually… slowly… as he became detached from the reality around him, his body and mind calmed down, and his thoughts stilled.

"–een"

"Thirteen!"

He woke with a start.

As his eyes opened, all of his senses returned to him. Forty-five was crouched in front of him with a pale face, a hand on his shoulder.

His sense of smell too, returned. The stench of the nearby monster corpse, the smell of iron from the dead man across from him.

Without warning, Thirteen leaned to the side and ejected what remained of his breakfast, an acidic taste in his mouth as he coughed relentlessly.

"Come on, we need to go." He heard Forty-five say softly.

Leaning against the tree, Thirteen stood and with a deep breath, tried to clear his head.

He saw Twelve, awake and standing now. His face was as pale as could be, and he was covered in sweat. The arrow remained embedded in him, but Thirty-five supported him and began to walk back to the estate, taking his brother back for help.

When Thirteen looked at Nine, he saw the boy gingerly searching the body of the scarred man with shaky hands.

"W-what are you doing?" Thirteen asked louder than expected, shocked at his brother's actions.

"Looking for proof." Nine said, his body trembling at the somewhat accusatory tone of the question.

A second later, Nine revealed the scarred man's bare arm, the chain mail and gambeson moved aside. On the tanned skin of the man's arm was a marking.

"A... Tattoo?" Thirteen asked, with a distinct feeling he had seen this particular marking before.

It was a shield with two lines cut through it.

"They've worked with the Shieldsplitter company before. They're mercenaries." Nine stated.

The Shieldsplitter company was not a small one, but neither could they be considered a major mercenary group. Very little was taught to the eighth generation about companies of this size, usually just their name and heraldry.

Thirteen didn't much care at this moment, instead he retrieved both his greatsword and longsword, leaving the dagger in the man's throat, as he walked after Thirty-nine and Twelve.

'If I keep Twelve stable with regular transfers of lifeforce, we should be able to make it out of here' Thirteen thought. He began to think about other things, potential dangers in the woods, how long it would take to reach the estate, how severe Twelve's injury may or may not be, anything he could to not think about the man that lay dead back there.

Then, he looked at Thirty-nine. 'He seems fine.' Thirteen noticed. 'He killed the other man, but he doesn't seem to mind at all. Is it so different? When it happens in battle.' Taking a long, deep breath of fresh air, Thirteen mentally slapped himself. 'If he can do it, you can. People die. It was their fault for attacking.' he told himself.

After they had walked for a while, Nine spoke up. "Thirteen, keep an eye on the surroundings. It's not unusual for mercenaries to do this kind of work on the side, but we don't know if it was just the two or if there are others in the woods."

This startled Thirteen. 'Right! I hadn't even thought of that.' Activating lifesight, Thirteen's blue eyes gave a light glow as he watched the surroundings.

——

The journey back to the estate took longer than expected due to the slow pace of the wounded Twelve, but they still managed to make it back by the afternoon.

As they approached one of the eastern entrances to the sprawling Clarke Estate, the group saw multiple adults waiting for them. Among them, Nicholas stood with a straight back, evaluating the children, while two medics rushed towards Twelve to take him with them.

"Welcome back." Nicholas said plainly.

"Nine and Forty-five, you will remain here to debrief me. Thirty-nine, follow your brother. Thirteen… Get some sleep."

Thirteen didn't have the energy to argue, and continued walking, only to stop for a minute as he looked at the stoic Nicholas silently.

"Anything to say, 8-13?" Nicholas asked impatiently.

"...no sir."

As he walked towards the dorms, an ominous feeling creeped into the back of Thirteen's mind.

Turning once more to look back at Nine, he saw his intuitive friend speaking with a stone cold expression to Nicholas, one he didn't show often.

At this moment, the scarred man's words returned to Thirteen's mind: 'Oh… So that's it.' he had mumbled.

Shaking off the bad feeling that creeped into his heart, Thirteen returned to his dorm, shutting the door behind him.

When he was alone with a moment of peace and quiet, Thirteen didn't let himself dwell on what happened, nor did he entertain dark conspiracies in his mind. He simply sat on the ground and began to cultivate.

Many months had past since he completed his blood refinement. Currently, Thirteen had completed his organ, muscle, and bone refinements as well, leaving only the skin to refine until he completed the first whole realm of body cultivation.

The first realm, most commonly known as the Fundamental Realm was the same for almost everyone. For body refiners, it meant completing the five refinements of the Fundamental Body Refinement manual. For qi cultivators, it meant completing the two awakenings and three condensations of the Fundamental Qi Refinement manual.

To most people, these two manuals were not optional. They are the oldest, most well-founded methods of early cultivation that set the groundwork to allow all other subsequent methods.

For body refiners, it would transform the body into something open, capable of refining external power, and ensuring that the body in question would not collapse when cultivated.

For qi refiners, it awoke and refined everything necessary for them to sense and cultivate the spiritual path. That included awakening meridians, pathways for Qi within the body, as well as the dantian, the core of their Qi circuit and the home of their cultivation. It also allows qi cultivators to refine their Qi into a mist and then liquid, until finally, they open a Qi spring within their dantian, capable of regenerating Qi on it's own, without the need to absorb from the surroundings.

It was after the Fundamental realm was completed that things got interesting. If the Fundamental realm had one orthodox method for each school, then everything after that varied greatly based on the cultivation method employed.

There is a general outline that most arts follow, but the methods used and the type of cultivation gained will always differ. For this reason, each realm is named vaguely, based on the aspect most arts cultivate in that realm.

For example, in body cultivation, the second realm is called Energy Accumulation, because it typically involves a simple accumulation of external energy to be used in the art's later realms.

On the other hand, the second realm of qi cultivation is called Spiritual Awakening, because it often necessitates the awakening of spiritual senses and the ability to open one's mind to the natural laws of the world, or more simply, the dao.

Currently, Thirteen performed a variety of stretches with his eyes closed. He would hold each position for tens of minutes, allowing the qi he absorbed to refine his hot, stretched skin, before changing pose once more.

He had to do something similar when refining his muscles, to better ensure that every part of his muscles would be refined equally.

When he was done, Thirteen lay down in his bed.

He had meant to only rest for a moment and relax, but without realizing, he had fallen asleep quite quickly.

His sleep wasn't peaceful. He had a horrific dream in which he had accidentally killed the scarred man, and, because of that, had to 'process' him as he did the Deadwood Serpent. He had to, or he wouldn't be allowed back. He would never see his friends again, Ten, Nine, Four, and Forty-five.

Waking up in a start, Thirteen found himself covered in cold sweat. Moving to the washroom, he cleared his head and cleaned his body before getting changed. Nine wasn't in the dorm, which meant it wasn't night yet. With any luck, he didn't miss dinner.

When Thirteen left his dorm and approached the dining hall, he noticed it was a lot rowdier than usual. Entering through the large doorway, Thirteen's eyes searched around for a moment before he found his friends, every one of them sitting at a table.

It was Ten that spotted him first, giving a big smile in his direction, followed by Four who gave him an understanding look and a nod.

Without warning, Thirteen felt his shoulders drop lower than he knew they could go, as for the first time in a long while, he felt truly warm.