"It's not gonna be anything complicated at first." Viran moved towards the center of the room. "First thing you need to learn is footwork. Let me tell you, you're not gonna want to clash against any monsters head-on even after you've opened a few spiritual veins, so the best way to avoid getting yourself killed is by dodging their attacks."

 

"What about against another person?" Red asked.

 

"In your case, it's still best that you don't get scraped by anything. You're still just a kid, so don't expect to be able to overpower a fully grown adult just yet." The man continued. "What I'm going to teach you are the basics of hand-to-hand combat that we get to learn at the army... Or, well, something like it anyway. Most of these teachings go out the window when you are fighting against giant monsters whose mandibles are bigger than your head, but the principle of the matter still stands."

 

Viran entered into some kind of combat stance, with his left foot forward and his knees slightly bent, gripping the knife in his right hand.

 

"Every move when you are fighting starts with your feet. Whether you're about to attack and need to push off the ground for momentum or when you need to avoid getting yourself killed, it all starts from the base of your stance."

 

Viran displayed as much with some demonstrations. With a slight impulse from his back foot, the man seemed to push himself farther than someone could normally jump, clearing almost the entire room in one go. Afterwards, he dived back, perfectly returning to his starting position.

 

"Even if you have started to open your spiritual veins, the importance of footwork doesn't diminish. Most of the basics are interchangeable between offense and defense, but for your own sake and so you don't end up with any other broken ribs we're going to focus on dodging right now." Viran relaxed his stance, turning back to stare at Red, as a slight smile came over his face. "Now, I'm not a good mentor by any means, kid. Never had to teach any 10-year old how to fight and I very much subscribe to the idea that experience is the best teacher... Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

 

At that question, Viran ran his thumb slowly over the knife's edge.

 

The boy couldn't help but feel that something bad was about to happen.

 

...

 

A few minutes later, Red felt like he was about to collapse from exhaustion before Viran finally told him their training session was done. His breathing was labored and painful from his injuries, and the boy had new bruises all over his body to add to his collection.

 

Suffice it to say, but the training felt more like a one-sided beating. Red knew that even if he was in better condition he still wouldn't have been able to last much longer against Viran's unrelenting attacks. Every blow carried monstrous strength and perfect precision behind it, and Red felt like the man could see through his every move. Not to mention that he was clearly holding back, pulling his blows at the last second just enough so they wouldn't crack any bones. They still hurt of course, but thankfully the man had never used the sharp side of the knife in his attacks either.

 

The boy had to use every fiber of his being just to stay afloat in their sparring session, and after it was over he couldn't really say whether he had learned anything. Sitting on the ground, all the adrenaline left his body, sweat covering his entire being, and the pain that he had been able to ignore returned. At that point, Red felt like he had just fought another centipede and couldn't gather an ounce of strength in his body.

 

"Here, catch." Viran called to him.

 

He only saw a small circular object flying towards him. Red made no effort to catch it in mid-air, letting it clack against his chest. Grabbing it off the floor with his right hand, he brought it up to his eyes and saw it was some kind of wooden container with a top lid, which emitted a strange smell.

 

"It's paste." The man responded, noticing Red's inquisitive gaze. "I managed to make it using some monster body parts after some experimentation. Apply it to your ribs every day and you should be good in a week."

 

"Really?" He felt skeptical about it. Even small injuries took a very long time to heal down here and in some cases may even become infected and lead to death. Red felt like a paste that could make what would take a month to heal be done instead in one week was too good to be true.

 

"No need to doubt me, this is truly nothing compared to what I could cook up on the surface." The man seemed to be a bit offended. "If I had the materials and equipment to make proper spiritual medicine then your cracked ribs would heal in less than a day."

 

Red didn't push the matter, simply storing the small box in his pouch.

 

"What now?" The boy asked. Although he felt spent already, the training session had barely been going on for 5 minutes.

 

"Right, I suppose I need to clarify some things about spiritual veins." Viran walked over to the seat, plopping himself down as he stared at the picture on the wall. "I told you before that you needed to open 112 acupoints split between twelve veins to allow spiritual energy to flow freely through your body, but... That's not entirely true."

 

"What do you mean?" Red's face remained emotionless but he felt alarmed inside. He didn't know why Viran would need to lie about something like this.

 

"Well, it's hard to explain without first going into depth about this matter." The man pointed towards the drawing on the wall. "Do you see what it says?" He asked.

 

"I can't read."

 

"...Right." He continued. "Basically the function of opening the spiritual veins is to allow the spiritual energy to flow freely through your body, as you might know, but only doing that doesn't allow you to accomplish the most important thing. That is, you can't manipulate spiritual energy with your veins alone..."

 

Red had gathered as much from his practice. He could gather and stimulate the spiritual energy with his spiritual veins, forcing them into opening his acupoints, but he couldn't exert any finer control over it. He had guessed that perhaps when all spiritual veins and acupoints were opened then one would be able to manipulate that energy, but it seems like this wasn't the case.

 

"Opening these acupoints is merely one of the first steps in controlling spiritual energy and not even the most important one. Even a peasant with no talent could open quite a few spiritual veins during their whole life if they got their hands on a method to do it, but that's the easy part, the hard part..." He pointed towards the center of the big figure, where the huge circle was located. "Is opening that. The Spiritual Sea."

 

Red tried to connect the name to the characters he saw written on the wall next to that circle. His eyes narrowed in doubt.

 

"You mean to say that something that big is in our bodies?" The sphere seemed to occupy a large area in the center of the figure's body, after all.

 

"...No, it's not that big, well at least not entirely." Viran seemed stumped in trying to explain the concept to Red. "The Spiritual Sea is an organ in the human body that every person has, but in normal situations, it is not fully formed, existing in a half-real half-illusory state. The specifics about what it is are not important. You should focus on what it does, which is enabling a person to manipulate and store spiritual energy in their bodies. Opening the Spiritual Sea is the hardest obstacle keeping millions of ordinary people from truly elevating themselves..." Viran's eyes seemed to become unfocused for a second before he continued.

 

"You see, spiritual energy is a wonderful thing. It both affects and is affected by its surroundings, taking shapes and doing things that are extraordinary in nature, but wielding it is not an easy task. From ancient times humans studied it and discovered the tools necessary within themselves to control that energy, which was the spiritual sea and the spiritual veins. But you see, they had the means but not the method. They could store that energy but how would they transform it and use it? It would simply remain static once you absorbed it into your spiritual sea, and expelling it out of your body wouldn't necessarily result in anything magical..." Viran trailed off, looking at Red as if waiting for something.

 

"...This is where the acupoints and spiritual veins come in?" He made an informed guess.

 

"Exactly." The man smiled. "When they controlled that spiritual energy and cycled it through their spiritual veins and acupoints they noticed that it would change ever so slightly in properties. Running it through different patterns and paths would result in different kinds of transformations. It was this discovery that allowed the development of all Spiritual Arts in human history, powerful techniques that allowed normal people to truly rise beyond the ordinary, but that's something you will only need to concern yourself when and if you ever manage to open your Spiritual Sea.

 

"The experts noticed by then that to wield the most simple of Spiritual Arts you need to have opened all twelve of your spiritual veins and the 99 basic acupoints contained in them..."

 

"99?" Red asked, his brows furrowed.

 

"Indeed, but that's just the bare minimum. The human body itself is a magical wonder, kid, and even today no one dares claim to know all its secrets. Those same people noticed that there were other special acupoints hidden within the spiritual veins and opening them would allow for even more wondrous transformations and manipulations of spiritual energy. At that point, even stronger Spiritual Arts could be performed and one would be able to reach higher peaks of strength. Most of these special acupoints, however, required unique methods and resources to open, unlike the regular ones. In fact, some of these particular acupoints didn't even exist in some people, and those that did carry them were sought after to be trained as great talents."

 

"So, the method for opening the acupoints in my spiritual veins you taught me is a special one?" A normal person would be elated when considering that possibility, but Red was far from letting himself be happy. The man had told him again and again that his talent was mediocre, so how could opening these special acupoints be anything simple.

 

"More or less, but you don't need to do anything hard, merely practicing down here is enough to meet all the conditions for opening them." Viran got up and walked to the picture on the wall, pointing at 13 dots spread throughout the figure's body. Adding that on top of the 99 standard ones, the result was 112 acupoints. "...Although I must tell you, this is merely something I've developed in the last few months after being thrown here, it's entirely possible that further down the line, other acupoints may also need to be opened to form a perfect cycle. But with these." He grabbed one of the moonstones on the table, the soft green light reflecting against his face. "It shouldn't be a problem."

 

This was a lot of information for Red to digest. It obviously felt like more was left unsaid by the man, but at the very least it proved one thing to Red. By revealing this much, Viran was seeking some sort of honest collaboration.

 

"And what kind of Spiritual Arts do these special acupoints allow me to practice?" Red asked the question that had been on his mind since he had heard about these special acupoints.

 

"What kind? Ha! None that I know of, but it will allow you to do something much better." Viran smiled. "It will allow you to escape this place alive."