Misbegotten Memories

All three of them were successful in their bidding. Zara received only a single item, but it was level ten meat from a dolphin, preserved with salt and powdered core dust. Dorian received his heavenly flesh pill. The remainder went to Hector. That was two sets of bone and gelatin pills and two sets of cartilage and skin pills – one each at level six and one each at level seven. There was also a level seven pinnacle organ pill and a gold elixir.

After paying the clerks, they were escorted to a private room to receive their property.

The 'pills' were not even remotely how Hector pictured them. Instead of mass-produced, sterile pharmaceuticals, they looked like play dough a child had formed into 'snakes'. According to his companions, the consumer was supposed to pinch off small bits and roll it between their palms to turn it into a sphere prior to consuming.

While Hector downed his gold elixir, Zara began eating several pounds of heavily preserved sea mammal meat with a degree of determination Hector couldn't help but admire. She obviously did not enjoy the taste. Judging by the insulting stink filling their private room, it was a special kind of unpleasant. Dorian began his own meal of doughy pill as Zara questioned Hector.

"What happened with Platinum?"

He eyed Zara. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"I need to know. She is my main business partner."

"Oh." Hector winced. "She saw me here and paid the auction house to detain me."

"That isn't possible. The Emperor guarantees the safety of bidders."

Hector snorted. "I don't know what to tell you, Lord Zara. Other than you shouldn't trust what people say more than what people actually do." That was a lesson he'd do better to remember himself, he knew.

"Does she know we're associated?"

"I don't think so. But I doubt it will stay that way."

Zara stared at the untouched wooden boxes stacked in front of Hector, each containing another expensive resource. "She seized you at the auction in order to give you two hundred coins? I do not find that credible. Make the story make sense, Hector."

"You were suspicious I might have withheld something on my mission. You were right. I had a layer of my own. It was the only thing valuable enough to bargain for my life. Platinum has it now."

Zara stared at the table. "This is a mess. I should not have brought you here. I need to immediately distance myself from you. I'm truly sorry, Hector. You have to leave the auction now."

He gathered up his five boxes of pills and bowed to Zara. "Thank you for everything, Zara. I'm sorry for the headache." An official escorted Hector to the nearest exit from the auction building after he emerged from the private room alone. Then Hector traveled back to Union Central to his storage space in Tian Tower's basement level.

He left the three boxes of level seven pills and one of the level six pills in storage, taking just the box holding the bone and gelatin pill with him to his room. He pinched off a bit of the honey pill, rolled it between his palms, and ate it. The doughy resource was vaguely offensive in flavor and distinctly unpleasant in texture. It was like sticky play dough with hard lumps and pockets of slime.

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It didn't digest nearly as fast as the liquid based elixirs Hector was more familiar with. He managed to eat the entire length of the pill before it took effect. The dough sat heavy in his gut. When people spoke of the pills, he'd assumed they would be tiny capsules containing miracles. The reality seemed to be that much of their power came from the sheer mass they contained. A single pill was a meal capable of making him feel grotesquely bloated.

His energy reserves began to decrease as his body enhancement rose at a gentle pace. There was a ground-up core within the pill, so the enhancement was mostly energy neutral. He wanted to get the most possible out of this purchase, though, so he wasn't going to be miserly with his reserves.

Hector began actively enhancing his bones. He went through the typical procedure over the next twenty-four hours. Skull, femurs, pelvis, and so on. He prioritized the large bones, as usual, and saved the smaller ones for later. Towards the end of the day long session, as he was running low on his energy reserves, Hector discovered that the smallest of them were already passively enhanced to the peak. He was done with his skeleton.

Which meant he could pull the remaining energy from the pill into his soul. Hector switched from body enhancement to body cultivation for a few hours. When the pill lost its efficacy, he switched to his usual method of restoring energy while studying his gains.

Survey Results

Type: Xian

Level: 6

Body: 5.5

Mind: 5

Aura: 4

Domain: 3.6

Energy Reserves: 04%

Those weren't bad results from a single pill. Even taking into account that the pill was the size of a whole meal. Hector's skeleton was done and he sensed that his tendons had passively enhanced a large degree as well. He assumed the pill would do more for him, it was true, but without exception he always forgot one key fact when mentally calculating the benefits from resources: he was significantly larger in body mass than the typical cultivator. When people like Dorian gave him their estimations, they didn't adequately take his size into account. When Hector relied on Volithur's memories, he unintentionally did the same.

If he hadn't drawn his reserves down to almost nothing, Hector would grab the level six cartilage and skin pill from storage. That would certainly move him towards his goal. However, when he asked Esther about the timeline for the next foray into Aes, he learned she planned to leave in less than a month. There wasn't time for him to mess around if he wanted to join her.

He had to prioritize increasing his energy reserves.

Over the next several weeks, that was what he did. Hector spent time with his usual cultivation but also went into the dungeon for the purpose of mentally cultivating chaos. Back in his room, Hector drank the bottle of wine Zara provided for him to celebrate the retrieval of the Mother. He knew Riley wouldn't be interested in celebrating with him until he retrieved Darius. Which very well might never happen.

Riley had thrown herself into work at the cafe more intensely than ever. She didn't seem to enjoy it the way she once had, but it looked like she needed the distraction. Hector could understand that. She'd lost Darius already. Now Hector and Esther were due to leave soon. She had plenty of friends in her new life, but all the closest ones were about to be absent. Hector worried about her but couldn't see a way to address the issue in a meaningful way. He remained the primary cause of her pain and he didn't see any way to alleviate it without giving up on his plans to join the Reconquest.

Which he would not do. Hector didn't know if it was the pervasive Union Central propaganda finally taking root in his psyche or if his distaste for self-serving behavior on Tian had reached a critical mass, but he needed to do something meaningful with his life. He'd spent decades as a willing slave for a faceless corporation, dedicating the best years of his life to making sure trucks left the warehouse on time. After tasting true purpose in his quest to save Earth, he couldn't go back to obsessing over profits and budgets.

Humanity was in the midst of a war for survival. Maybe he didn't have what it took to play an important role in the conflict – not yet, at least – but he wouldn't sit on the sidelines when he could do something. Eden had been an appetizer for his militant aspirations. Aes would be the main course.

Despite the guilt plaguing him for his failures with Darius and Riley, Hector felt a rising sense of excitement at the thought of fighting the monsters again. It was contributing to the common good – in other words, what everyone should be doing.