The repercussions of the city-wide faction war never became clearer than when Guardian Cipactli passed on the order to get ready for a potential evacuation to the eighth floor's Lower Temple.
And with the situation continuing to deteriorate further every hour, it was understandable why he did so.
If it weren't for the endless stream of refugees flocking to us for security, I strongly believed we would have already been on our way to the eighth floor.
It wasn't exactly our fault that we weren't able to ensure our own safety due to a lack of manpower, after all.
Well, at least that could be remedied by enlisting more and more individuals into our makeshift militia, said individuals being willing or not being irrelevant.
Fortunately, one week into this grisly assignment, things started to calm down.
Or, at least, they did on the lower floors.
From the face Guardian Cipactli pulled whenever he received one of the rare reports coming from the upper floors, it wasn't looking like the factions worth their weight in Essence sand were anywhere near finished with their inconsequential vendetta.
Once things calmed down on the fourth floor, as if nothing had happened, factions who had either publicly or privately taken part in the reshuffling of power down there began showing up around the Lower Temple to retrieve family members, friends, and associates.
In just four days, the Lower Temple went from being submerged in refugees to reverting to its previous state as half a public infirmary for the downtrodden, and half a place of guidance for those whose [Ambition]s had been awakened by the latest event.
Seeing kids with hard eyes wearing rags step into the Temple to receive my and other Seekers' guidance really put things into perspective.
For them, this was how their Path could best develop.
For the Faith, this was how they reaped the benefits from their charitable image, being given a first look and recruitment opportunity at any would-be talent.
And that was without counting the kids whose entire families had been taken by the whims of the world, leaving them alone and primed to be assimilated into the Faith as an individual whose loyalty would continue to perpetuate the [Cycle] of the Faith standing at the top in terms of charitable reputation.
A positive societal feedback [Cycle] was what such a scheme was called in academic books.
Beholding it unfold before my eyes, I truly came to appreciate how many benefits the Faith passively earned.
There was no way I would miss out on its equivalent for my own [Faith].
Not that I had any tangible way of actually pulling such a thing through, as the Path of [Faith] wasn't exactly one suitable for children...
So... more thinking was required.
This whole [Faith] thing was truthfully consuming increasingly more of my time as I continued to ponder its ins and outs.
Not that it was a bad thing, as it turned out to only further increase my interest in it.
The last week and a half had made me blow past my daily Essence development quota over and over again, after all, and there were no logistics documents or books to read down here.
I could only inspire so many people to form the [Faith] Aspect in my honor, and after that, it was on me to pioneer my own [Faith] [Cultivation], a [Cultivation] that explicitly did not rely on me.
It was horizon-broadening to consider all the novel ways I had to accomplish something like that...
Concerning Guardian Elric, there wasn't really anything more I could do for him other than sacrifice more of my daily [Cultivation] practice in favor of upping my [Will] healing sessions, further stabilizing him while setting him on an insignificant and irrelevant path to [Recovery].
Regenerating organs—the priority here, as without them he would slowly wither and die regardless of his [Recovery] Aspect—would take a colossal amount of healing.
An amount I couldn't deliver, and would fail to deliver without years of him becoming my exclusive patient.
It was good [Will] healing [Cultivation], though.
It was also good preparation for the day I got one of my wings ripped off my back.
Because ultimately, proper [Will]-induced [Regeneration] was not merely a matter of recreating flesh.
Every structure needed to be restored with functional purpose and physical systemic integration in mind.
Blood vessels had to reconnect cleanly enough to sustain uninterrupted circulation without leakage or pressure imbalance.
Nerve pathways needed to be reestablished with sufficient precision for signals to propagate correctly.
Tissues had to regenerate in compatible layers and densities capable of enduring long-term strain rather than collapsing into malformed growth.
And organs themselves were catastrophically complex things.
A lung was not simply a sack of flesh, but an intricate exchange network balancing airflow, pressure, circulation, and microscopic transfer surfaces.
A heart required perfectly coordinated musculature and conductive pathways capable of maintaining a stable rhythm under stress.
Even the likes of livers and kidneys demanded absurdly delicate internal organization to properly process toxins, nutrients, and waste without slowly poisoning the body they sustained.
Trying to brute-force [Regeneration] through [Will] alone without proper understanding was one of the fastest ways to create something biologically alive yet fundamentally dysfunctional.
All to say...
[Life] was an incredibly complex [Harmony] expressed through flesh, blood, organs, nerves, circulation, and countless interdependent biological processes maintained in precarious [Balance].
And all the books on healing I read hadn't even come close to deciphering all the mysteries of biology I needed to solve to feel confident regenerating new organs and limbs.
Hence, for now, if I were to ever lose a wing or a limb, I would be stuck with the most energy-consuming method I used back when I just formed the [Will] Aspect in the wake of my body being broken into a thousand pieces.
[Will]ing things back to how they were, without allowing my shallow understanding of [Life] to taint the resulting [Regeneration].
Straightforward.
Stupid.
Unsustainable in the long-term.
And as always, knowledge was the answer.
Though this time, not even all the books in the sanctuary of the Prime Temple of this city could hope to suffice to achieve such an exalted level of healing ability through [Will] alone.
That was one of the many reasons why [Will]-based healing was rarely treated seriously within the medical field.
The first Aspect genuinely regarded as the mark of a true healer, one opening the door to virtually any faction, was instead the [Vitality] Aspect.
The same [Vitality] Aspect that I already knew I would form one day if I continued to walk my Path.
It was simply where my [Guided] [Cultivation] was taking me.
But that was ultimately a matter for years in the future.
At present, my [Will]-based healing capabilities were nowhere near sufficient to support efficient organ [Regeneration], remaining largely limited to treating flesh wounds, stabilizing trauma, and repairing fractured bones.
Relatively simple things.
Two weeks into this assignment, things finally appeared to stabilize on the scale of the city itself, and it didn't take more than this for Guardian Cipactli to order us to pack and begin our journey back towards the Prime Temple.
Except, as we were taking fifty-odd kids along with us, this time we would do so the slow and steady way.
I nearly asked to return on my own, but a short communion with my Essence reminded me I should rather employ this opportunity to carry out any activities that did not involve developing my Essence.
Activities such as being the main source of [Inspiration] for impressionable children, writing the draft of my biography, or meditating on various facets of high order concepts with scarce prospect of producing any actual [Insight]s.
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The children's pace being what it was, I also got to fully witness the devastation brought by the recent events.
Whole areas turned into rubble.
People looking at each other with more distrust and fear than before.
Hunger.
Despair.
No floor had been left untouched, and for my [Awareness] to perceive bloody remains was hardly a rare occurrence.
By the time we reached the fifty-fourth floor, we had met up with three Sentinel teams undergoing similar assignments to us, though the number of children they were escorting varied from a handful to an entire flock of a hundred.
The Faith may not have partaken in the events that saw those kids lose their families, but it was prepared to benefit from the reshuffling of power just like any other faction that could.
Because in the end, charitable and benevolent as the Faith might be, it remained a part of Civilization.
And Civilization, bluntly, did not care about what happened, so long as its endless web of interest held strong and true.
Both for the best, and for the worst...
Sighting the Prime Temple, distinctly unblemished by the currents of [Chaos] that wreaked havoc through the rest of the city, I exhaled a breath of mixed relief and... enthusiasm, my [Awareness] was telling me.
For all this little assignment had thrown my Essence development schedule off course, it had been an overall very beneficial endeavor.
If I hadn't been dispatched there, Guardian Elric would have most certainly been dead, after all.
And that was without mentioning how it forced me to start spending my idle time on something I had begun to suspect held the potential to truly make an actual difference to my Path, beyond sourcing [Insight]s from the shallow void of prospects that was simple [Meditation].
After all, who could truly resist the appeal of a [Faith] whose object of worship was readily available to answer prayers and questions for more than half the day, every day?
Having pioneered all these [Insight]s during this trip, I waited until we reached the premises of the Prime Temple, where I was, expectedly, told to accompany the injured to the infirmary.
Once there, we were welcomed by many fully occupied rooms and probably all the healers the Faith could muster walking around, accompanied by groups of aides, informing us without a need for words of what the situation was.
We found one of the chief healers, got told where to go, received our own group of aides, and then we were off to offer our healing capabilities to the service of the greater good.
And after making a full tour of the infirmary, saying that there wouldn't be enough patients for me to dedicate my whole daily Essence development quota to my [Will] [Cultivation] for the foreseeable future would have been a severe understatement.
The infirmary was buried down to its neck in patients.
If Essence overdevelopment hadn't been a thing, I could have gotten so many [Will] healing [Exertion]s out of it...
Once all the wounded were settled and I had expended what little was needed to get me down to a quarter of my energy reserve, I headed back to my secret quarters, away from noise, from people, from responsibility.
On the way, I habitually communed with my Essence, and my mind filled with disappointment when I all but confirmed my Essence could in no way support more than a couple of weeks of...
Not even protracted [Will] [Cultivation], actually.
Its [Harmony] was already threatened enough as it stood following two weeks of overdoing my daily Essence development.
I was not [Will]ing to risk it any further without significant justifications.
After changing into a fresh, cleaner bodysuit, I briefly entertained the idea of carrying out some minor exhaustion resistance [Cultivation], but [Guided] ultimately instilled some sense back into my frustrated and marginally sleep-deprived mind.
Being in a hurry when it came to optimizing my [Cultivation] served no purpose.
[Guided] was plenty capable of doing that on its own.
As I drifted toward sleep, I reluctantly accepted for the umpteenth time that if I really wished to hurry my progress up within the constraint of not endangering my Essence further, there was but one well-trodden approach to employ.
The [Insight]-heavy approach of devising increasingly specialized and unconventional [Exertion]s.
Ones that could not be found in books.
Ones refined to direct my Essence development with near-total precision.
Ones designed to ensure not even the slightest trace of unwanted development emerged from them.
It would not, and could not, solve the fundamental underlying limitation that was Essence overdevelopment itself...
But it was what it was.
Progress.
One [Insight] at a time, until they bloomed into [Comprehension], and who knew what in the future...
Meditating on that, I fell asleep with the [Clarity] that while tomorrow might not allow me to take even a single small step forward on my Path, it would undoubtedly prepare the conditions for that step to eventually occur.
And that was all I needed and wanted.
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
While I was poring over a series of particularly dense yet apparently very important documents—at least judging by how insistently [Guided] compelled me to take notes—the sound of approaching footsteps began echoing loudly through my section of the repository.
Footsteps that were, sound-wise, getting louder with each one.
They were distinct enough that I turned toward the final corner the individual needed to round before the owner of those footsteps even stepped into view.
The figure of Knight Thalor, wearing a casual metal-thread training suit, shortly revealed itself, and even while her eyes honed in on me the instant her line of sight opened, she didn't break her stride until she arrived right at the base of the shelf I built my booknest on top of.
"Knight Thalor," I greeted her first.
"Initiate Solaena." She returned my greetings, then stated the reason for her presence. "Want to come along?"
"I do like efficient information communication, but the context needs to be established first," I reasoned. "Do I want to come along on what? A rescue operation in the Red Sand Realm? A patrol in the most infamous parts of the city?"
"Faction destruction," she answered in her beloved succinct way.
I paused, my planned follow-up questions coming far too short for such an impressive answer that prompted, in turn, impressive considerations.
"Will you... perform a lot of [Aura] stuff? I need some serious displays to start seriously considering whether I want to research it in the future."
Knight Thalor appeared to ponder for a second, then nodded. "Once we return, I'll show you what a loss of [Control] does."
"I don't know what that is, but I'll hold you to your words. Do we leave now? What's my role?"
"Just in case," she said, her ambiguity unable to go higher.
"I can't read minds yet, but I assume that means I need to go put on my Sentinel gear?"
She nodded.
"Alright."
Leaving my booknest as it presently was, I took off towards the armory, not bothering to ask where we should meet up.
Half an hour later, I exited the armory all set and ready, and Knight Thalor was there, waiting for me.
This time, though, she had already put back on the unassuming armor made of ultra-fine metal-thread fabric, the one she wore when we first met.
And of course, she was still without any weapon that my [Perception]-turned-[Awareness] permitted me to perceive.
"I didn't get to see you fight during our short stunt in the Red Sand Realm, so I'm curious. Is unarmed [Aura] combat your thing? Are you some sort of [Aura] martial artist?" I asked as I landed on her left shoulder.
"You'll see."
"I guess an assignment that can be abridged to faction destruction does imply some healthy amount of violence," I reasoned.
Without physically feeling the slightest bump and only the slightest acceleration, Knight Thalor strode onwards, the perfect cadence I remembered shortly manifesting anew.
Just like that, we started zooming through corridors in a way not so dissimilar from flying, unimpeded by people or turns, as if the path itself bent to allow passage.
"When you said I was to be there 'just in case', did you perchance mean that my primary purpose would be to act as your emergency healer should things go down catastrophically? Of course, I mean catastrophically, as in you being swallowed by a huge explosion. Any chance that could happen?"
"No."
"Oh, good. And employing [Aura] for sustained defensive purposes is still as much of an aberration as before, right?"
"Yup."
"Perfect, then." I bobbed my head. "Well, I hope you're given the opportunity to demonstrate how you defend yourself against a detonation that would otherwise reduce your internals to pulp. Because if it has anything to do with [Aura], then I'll..."
As the opportunity to speak freely with an Essence Entity who firmly stepped beyond her emergence phase, during which one had to form and synthesize a functioning system of Aspects that worked towards materializing their Path, was so rare, I made the most of the opportunity.
I had already asked her lots of questions the first time the chance presented itself, but now that months had passed and I had the time to study up on all her—and those of similar Essence development—previous answers, I had even more questions.
Whether she specialized early or late.
How she dealt with high order concepts.
What provided her with the most [Insight]s.
How she leveraged those same [Insight]s.
How she steered her Path through periods of slow or stopped growth.
What it felt like to enter the awakening phase of her Essence development, where reliance on established [Knowledge] became more and more lacking as her Path and Aspects became increasingly personal.
Somewhere on the forty-fifth floor, my [Comprehension] of the topic clearly impressed her sufficiently for her to start sparing me some of her in-depth experiences, including glimpses of why she was advising me so against [Aura].
"...who can guarantee I'll always be in control? A single slip up is all it would take for my entire body to be shredded, and unlike [Vitality]..."
In the end, it always came back to the Two Laws Essence Doctrine.
She was bound to lose control of her [Aura] one day, just like her Essence was bound to be corrupted once more.
And as exceptional as I, my Path, my Aspects, my Origin Aspect, might be...
I would not be an exception.
One day, my Essence would be corrupted.
Thus, [Aura], [Ideal] as it might present itself for my offensive needs, was not an answer.
At best, it was a momentary stop before I synthesized it into something that had a statistical zero percent probability of impairing me, even if I completely lost control of my own Essence.
Upon receiving this fragment of [Wisdom], faced with its soundness and coherence, I resolved not to forget it regardless of where my future choices might ultimately lead my Path.
Eventually, when we reached the thirty-fourth floor, just before stepping into what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary warehouse sector, I experienced yet another abrupt instance of being launched into the air without warning.
After stabilizing myself and making a mental note to explicitly mention my aversion to that particular maneuver—assuming there would even be a next time—I observed Knight Thalor confidently slip into the narrow passage separating one vast warehouse from the next.
I followed from above, shrouding myself as thoroughly as possible in [Darkness] and [Secrecy].
Then, as suddenly as this entire affair had begun, an ambusher sprang at Knight Thalor while she was, by all appearances, minding her own business and not at all heading for what could possibly be this ambusher's faction.
In that instant, I witnessed my first practical employment of [Aura] in active combat.
"Witnessed" was perhaps too generous a term, however.
It was less observation and more the attacker’s head ceasing to be attached to its body, followed by Knight Thalor continuing onward as though nothing of consequence had occurred.
Not a single finger lifted.
Not a stride broken.
Not a glance sent.
Well, if she hoped to dissuade me from pursuing [Aura] as my main offensive method...
She was failing.
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