Contain. Contain.

The dungeon's life energy flowed around the small girl, undisturbed. Blood energy ceased inner circulation through her veins, restrained in the heart. The cold was surrounding her, pricking the skin with invisible needles. It bore on the nerves, compelling her to suppress the chilliness and twitches. Rocks were hard, tight with no place to bend, stretch, settle down. As it always happens, she only wanted to toss and turn more because of cramps.

Great patience was required to sit and do nothing.

Alice was cultivating precisely this kind of patience.

Breath in. Breath out.

Stubbornness and annoyance were fighting over her mind with such obstinacy the girl had to hold her own hand at every moment.

Breath in... breath out.

Pauses were becoming longer and longer, every next gulp of air smaller and smaller. Though it wasn't as much as the mastery of meditation growing steady but trivial fatigue taking over.

Slower. Weaker.

How long had passed: minutes, hours? The girl wasn't sure. Inevitably, the heartbeats followed faint lullaby. After a while, head-to-toes itching waned. Later, the skin numbed. Even hunger – oh, hunger! – growlingly retreated. With her body temperature dropped, Alice was like a lizard or bear hibernating during winter.

Only she was awake and tension of muscles and bones had never vanished.

"..."

Every person is aware of their body conditions to some extent, and Alice wasn't an exception. Just like when silence had allowed her to hear the tiniest sounds echoing through her flesh and skeleton, stillness brought a different kind of awareness.

Alice felt every inch of skin, underlying layers of muscles, tendons and even the smallest bones interconnecting together. Nerves and cartilage, lungs and stomach, even teeth and brain: it was like touch, only superior to touch for it was three-dimensional, and the girl could cast this new sense anywhere inside her own body.

This is my perception skill, she realized. Not some life vision that would hurt her eyes, but this relatively simple ability that interacted with Absolute Body Control so nicely.

 

I shall call it Absolute Body Awareness then. It would be as corky... not.

 

Dreamily Alice opened the gates for blood energy circulation. Nine drops fell into the tips of her fingers with lively obedience, the girl paid them no further heed. Instead, she closely sensed traces of essence coursing through her system on their own. Little by little, energy was entering her weary members. Any warming up the girl suppressed immediately. Too fast absorption she subdued equally strict.

Alice observed. Learned. The tortoise speed suited her needs well enough. Between agility, strength, and endurance the girl wanted to study the latter. That is why she focused most of her attention on the bones.

Unidentifiable lapse of time later energy in the girl's heart exhausted itself somewhat. Alice nodded inwardly, uncertain yet eager to try and grabbed a prepared magic stone. Raw energy surged. The active mind acted in the lethargic body,

Obey!

Taking the strictest stand of will possible, Alice stiffed the inflow, trying to direct it in her limbs. Ultimately, the girl failed: her heart seemed to be that deeper hole water wanted to fill first. Unlike her last cultivation sessions before the ant heist, this time Alice not only didn't restrict blood energy rebound for the body strengthening, she even encouraged it.

One magic core didn't increase her blood integration much, nor two more and the girl stopped to ponder. Since my control sucks... Even fails were working out for her blood integration, therefore Alice felt free to experiment with different approaches. She took a new gem and focused, now trying to separate a string of energy from the flow.

Success!

It was a single leaf from a branch, yet Alice still rejoiced like a kid. While the beast in her chest was digesting its meal, the girl hurriedly pushed this hair-thick string onto the familiar path. When it made a full circle, she felt weak resistance.

Go in!..

Under her insistence, raw life energy infused with the bones and Alice heard minuscule cracks with her inner ear.

Works, but it's rough. It's me rough or..?

There wasn't any actual damage as of yet, so Alice took the next stone...

Stiffened, she, when felt the ground's subtle vibrations. Already a bit trained, the girl held her breath and heartbeats back, turned into a frozen statue. Moist air had long made her vet and any heat traces had been destroyed by cool water stream. Alice was both in her most vulnerable and hidden state.

A snake – and that was one, the girl by now knew their kind sickeningly well – was slithering unhurriedly just outside the girl's hidden place. It didn't seem to have a clear goal in its reptile thoughts while Alice acted completely aloof, free of both despair and simple worry. A mask that cracked slightly as...

Are you serious?

...the little wretch settled down in the water.

 

Plop. Plop. Drops were falling down, not bored at all. Unlike Alice.

What now? She asked herself for God knows what time. The snake might be a designated watcher for this area or it might simply like fresh underground spring, either way, the reptile didn't seem to leave any soon.

The girl was pleasantly surprised to discover traces of blood energy replacing most oxygen quite well, but it was the only bright side in her situation. This energy source was not bottomless and she was not cultivating, even passively. Most depressing, even though Alice preferred to keep the snake alive and kicking, she didn't have a reliable way to kill it off from her enclosed spot besides blood blast anyway.

Blood blast was a tad too loud weapon for stealth-mode.

Alice peered into the darkness. The little snake was like a passing breeze, completely unimportant on its own. The girl mostly wondered how much bigger and dangerous monsters were faring. Were they still fighting or the dungeon forcefully called a truce? How many hounds were up there, searching for intruders, and how well were working their figurative noses, if at all?

Questions, question. A bright drop of blood levitated from the fingertip, Alice was feeling it with the same clarity as her own body now. The drop seeped into a water stream, cooled down first, then moved up, outside of the girl's niche. She positioned it right above the snake and closed her eyes.

 

Little by little, Alice pulled out energy from the fifth magic core and pushed all of it into her heart. An arbitrary mark was achieved and crossed off from the girl's imaginary planner: 98%. She paid a bit more attention to the outside world, of course; the snake had been frolicking in the area all along.

Alice spat on it in her mind. I have ten stones, some shards, and the tiger core. Should be enough.

Although, John spoke something of cultivation barriers...

It seemed days had passed from their talk. Maybe it was days, Alice had no idea. The blood integration process was pretty straightforward: the girl depended on the inflow of life energy to replace all blood in the heart with blood essence, that simple. The bloodstream, in turn, was washing out traces of this blood essence to strengthen her body. Plus several drops she was controlling directly.

What step was awaiting her after her heart had been full, Alice wasn't sure.

Her hands grabbed a magic core as she put this matter aside.

Second core... third... fourth... 99%

Fifth... sixth... seventh... eighth...

Suddenly, the life energy refused to go in the girl's heart and went into her veins instead. Alice almost twitched and 'listened' her roommate snake. It wasn't bothered: it looked like she held fluctuations back well enough.

After a short contemplation, Alice resumed the energy absorption from the ninth magic core. Added in every shard she had while at it. Her veins ended up having around magic stones worth of energy in them and her heart had a tiny bit of normal blood. The feeling bothered the girl a lot. It was wrong.

Barriers, breakthroughs, barriers, breakthroughs...

Thoughtfully, Alice directed the flow of energy (easy without a competitor) into this pristine land. It did nothing. With a tiny frown, the girl raised the concentration, then more and more... until she naturally bumped into a limit of her own ability. The girl was a rookie in this.

Oh, come on. Hm?

Leviathan's heart contained an ocean of pure blood essence. Alice's in comparison could fill a puddle, with a little dirty spot. Extremely dirty, as she 'looked' closer. Pitch-black. The girl wondered did it stink or not? The feeling of wrongness intensified.

On the bright side, concentrated life energy was transforming this black spot with very tiny steps. Would it take weeks or months to complete the process? What did even count as the end result?

I can refine my heart, can enhance by attributes, can leave the energy circulation be and see where it goes.

An option that felt right, an option that promised clear benefits, an option that followed the natural order.

Great.

Alice saw falsehood from a mile.