“Okay, I can’t do this.” Nest opened his eyes and pushed himself up from the ground. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just close my eyes and shut everything out.”

  “Chill out,” Skav replied, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “Nobody can move energy well at first. It took me weeks to actually get it right.”

  “The moving energy part is easy,” Nest replied. “I’ve already been cycling spirit energy to the back of my neck like you told me; I just get too restless. My hands are shaking and I need something to occupy myself.”

  “What?” Skav scoffed. “There’s no way you figured out how to manipulate spirit energy already, let alone bringing it to your spirit.”

  Nest was confused why that was what the human was hung up on. All he had done was follow Joe’s instructions.

  It was all about visualization. Picture your mind reaching out into the aura and trying to pull power into your body. Once that power enters, collect it near the base of the skull where your neck starts.

  Give the spirit time to purify the energy and once it feels like the power is at capacity, visualize it merging with the uninfused cells around it. As those cells slowly infuse, the spirit grows and capacity grows with it.

  It seemed inefficient, and Nest had spent the last hour playing with the energy, trying to make the process better. He was treating the tainted energy like wood to carve and visualized all the taint being stripped away like bark. He had tried changing that visualization up once it came time to infuse his cells. He tried visualizing the cells themselves as wood and the spirit energy as a finish to be applied.

  His visualization ended up falling apart the second he tried to change it.

  Eventually, he decided to consider the spirit energy as lacquer he needed to prep, before applying it to the cells, which he was thinking of as wood.

  Nest tried explaining that to Skav who simply looked at Joe and Rachel at a loss of words, red with embarrassment.

  “Dwarves.” Rachel shrugged, expecting Nest to be a quick learner. The way dwarves were connected to spirit energy was far beyond what a mundane human could understand. “If you’re figuring things out that quickly, you need to know the proper order of doing things.” She walked over and started pointing to Skav’s neck. “Starting at the neck, infuse the nerves upwards.” She pointed at Skav’s head. He didn’t seem pleased to be used as a visual aid. “After that, take your time infusing the brain and eyes. In terms of cultivation, they are considered one organ. As you go through that process and eventually finish it, you will be D-Rank One. Until you can properly gauge the quality of spirit energy, you can use your internal organs as a tool to estimate your rank. The brain is considered ten percent, so D One.” She held up a hand with one finger extended and started counting organs off. “After that, you’ll start working down to your lunges, stomach, liver, kidney, heart, digestive system and even the nerves themselves. Those eight make up what people consider the first eight levels of D-Rank. After that, just fill in the gaps. Bones and minor organs, stuff like that.”

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  “So, once all my organs are infused with spirit energy, I’ll be in the C-Ranks?” Nest asked.

  Rachel shook her head. “Not quite. That only puts you at D-Rank Ten, or one-hundred percent internally infused. After that, to reach the C-Ranks, you have to start the process of infusing flesh. Skin and muscle. You can’t do those at the same time because the power needed to infuse flesh would rip mundane organs apart in the process. Plus once you infuse all of your organs, that will bring you closer to the power needed to infuse flesh.”

  “I assume you can’t infuse flesh as easily because the spirit energy isn’t held in a closed system the same way?” Nest asked. “Unlike my brain where I can start on one side and move across, I’ll likely need to improve the quality of my muscles and skin as a whole, otherwise the power discrepancy would tear the after flesh? That means I’d be extending beyond my spirit which requires way more effort?”

  “You are a quick learner,” Joe joined the conversation. “How do you know so much?”

  Nest considered it for a moment. He knew as much as he did because his mother and the monks had certain techniques that would allow them to channel energy from a beast core through the spirit energy that had naturally accumulated in their bodies to briefly empower strikes. That brief release of power would leave their bodies broken, so they were only meant for emergencies and held as a clan secret. “Just seemed like the logical conclusion.” Nest shrugged. “I’m guessing the B-Ranks are aura, but what does that mean for the A-Ranks?”

  Joe continued, “You’re right about the aura, but the A-Ranks are a well guarded secret. A secret that many would kill over.” His nod was enough to tell Nest to tread carefully.

  “Understood,” the dwarf replied. “So how about the restlessness?” He’d almost forgotten what had started the conversation in the first place. “How do you stay still and cultivate like you do?”

  Joe shook his head. “I’d say it’s a learned skill, but the fact of the matter is that not everyone can learn every skill. We’re all different and have different strengths.” The gnome thought about the question for a long moment. “Since you seem to have as much control as you do, try cultivating while doing something else. Nothing strenuous, just something you’d do to idly pass the time.”

  Nest considered for a moment, then pulled out his carving knife. Looking around, he found some suitable wood to work with and took a seat. He considered working with the soul wood that had been gifted to him by the hidden tree, but decided to keep that close to his chest.

  As he looked the new piece of oak over, he allowed a portion of his mind to drift into cultivation.

  He started breaking away pieces of bark and loosely hanging wood.

  Before long, his mind was elsewhere, and shavings fell to the ground in front of him.