Reforged from Ruin [Eldritch Xianxia Cultivation]

Over the course of experimentation, comprehension of a new fact of life has dawned.

Raika is really fucking bad at runes. And formations. And arrays. And rituals.

She's creative enough for them! She's competent enough at coming up with ideas for them! But when it comes to actually executing? Well… it's fair to say that her original "curse" never would've worked without Li Shu's help.

It's less a matter of skill and more a matter of perspective. When it comes to the act of inscribing them, she's got more advantages than most, capable of controlling her body near-perfectly and able to process the work she's doing through multiple layers of consciousness along the way. She's fairly certain she could trace runes so small and so complex they're nearly invisible to a mortal's eye, and squint-worthy for a cultivator or otherwise enhanced being.

But for some reason, there's just a sort of… disconnect. It's not… it's not not a language, but it's different. The instinctive understanding that she has with combat, the way that feeling out her Body and what it needs just sort of clicks, it's missing when it comes to the equations and formulae of ritualized magics. Even with Dao, which she explicitly cheats with, there's an experiential element- the act of feeling it out, letting it form from her or consume parts of her for resources, ties naturally into comprehension, at least of a type.

But it turns out that despite all her growing and all her competence, she's finally found her one true weakness.

Raika is not particularly good at math.

That doesn't mean that she hasn't managed to blow some stuff up with it.

She stares at the hole burned into the pale white wall of the training yard she's standing in, grumbling at how small it is.

The massive skeleton she's sitting on sits perfectly inert in agreement with her frustration, and she gives it a pat of appreciation for being so reasonable.

"Considering you've only just started learning-"

"It's still not nearly fast or strong enough, and it's not an issue of time, it's an issue of talent. I've got a half-dozen brains burning through the back of my skull trying to figure this out, and all we're doing is getting faster at it."

"Which is still a hell of an accomplishment," Li Shu says, patting Raika on the shoulder. "The standards you're setting are completely beyond what's reasonable, and you know that. It takes formation-crafting geniuses decades to figure out the underlying rules of each system, nevermind understand them. You're crafting arrays faster than anyone who doesn't have a Domain, and you're doing it basically invisibly."

"Which makes it a valuable skill for taking down slow and weak enemies, of which we have very few."

Dink bounces a bit off of her collarbone, echoing through the keratin and biometals she has in it.

"Ugh, not you too!"

"You should listen to it," Li Shu says, taking a seat on another nearby skeleton. "I've yet to see Dink be wrong about anything."

Raika rolls her eyes. "Oh sure, take the side of the sassy inanimate object over your best friend and research subject. Truly I am beset on all sides by betrayers."

"Better than to be surrounded by sycophants."

Raika shudders at the thought, the movement making the empty fabric of her left sleeve flutter a bit. "Alright, no need to dig it in deeper. You're right."

"Exactly. You're being too hard on yourself. Even if you only understand the very basics of formation-crafting, you're still going to be in a great position feeding that information back to yourself."

She grumbles, trying not to sound like she's whining and failing miserably. With a sigh, she stares at the wall of pale stone before them, dozens upon dozens of circular holes burned into it and marking their surroundings with soot.

The fifty-foot wall is half-black with soot now, and she can still trace the minute trails that she's painted with the worms. They're getting better at listening, partially with Beetle's help- a mix of pheromones, body languages, and the ever-so-minute amounts of Qi she can use in this form enough to give out instructions. She can only control them to the range of fifty, maybe sixty feet, and turns out, the very same properties that make them so good at dissolving flesh into Qi-rich food makes them good conduits for shaping runes and formulae. Without access to her bioshifting, it's a decent alternative, and, as Li Shu mentioned, means she can form arrays faster than almost anyone without dedicated artifacts or techniques.

Getting them away from the arrays as they activate has been the hardest part, honestly. They squeal when they burn, and they don't deserve that, even if it wasn't deeply uncomfortable for them to die under her command.

Raika sighs, standing up. The centi-croc rises up at the movement, its eyes wide- and then huffs when it realizes that it's not getting any treats, and shuffles back down among the bones.

And there are so, so many bones.

The ground clacks under her feet as she walks, fused ribcages and spines making spiral figures in the shape of their training yard. Yet again, their clear favoritism towards Jin has shown its colors, and all they needed to do was ask- in hours, they were provided with a hell of a training aid.

The yard is perched on the back of a six-legged corpse-giant, human arms scaled up massively to support a body shaped a bit like a headless caterpillar. Its interior has dozens of chambers, saturated with Death energy and burning with Qi and transmuted forms of it. Its back has dozens of walls, maze-like open-air chambers, and training dummies that could not more clearly be mummified (and sometimes cocooned?) human bodies. It's large enough to support literally dozens of Death practitioners, or members of the Clergy, as they're referred to. Laboratories, reservoirs, backup corpses and more, all of them ready for use.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

And yet… all she had to do was ask, and here it is, delivered to their manor. Anything, it would seem, to keep them from needing to leave the place they've been assigned- and, of course, anything for their Blessed Mortal.

Raika touches the wall, tracing the lines of characters she's carved into it and tracking how they deepen or change the flame-circles that each set leads to. She tracks the alchemical characters for transmutation, fuel, transmission, and fire, over and over, checking their density, depth, minute differences in each one.

A million-million potential variations, and always, the simple fact that she doesn't know how to interpret them. Not entirely.

"If anything, on a technical level, I'd say you're pretty close to what I can pull off," Li Shu says, looking up from one of her notebooks, covered in tiny, neat scrawls. "I can't pull off arrays as fast as you can, nor in any real quantities. I can't multitask half so well, even with how my Sacrifice works."

"Yeah, and that's an inherent advantage I have. Quantity is a quality all its own, sure, but you can just sort of… get this. It takes me ten tries to get the formula right in the first place, but you can just string symbols together at a glance."

She curtsies while sitting. "I don't, really. It's still a lot like a puzzle, you know? You put a potency rune too close to an outlet rune, and it explodes, but if you turn it the right angle, flip it, add the right lines, all of a sudden it multiplies the effect instead. Doesn't work for a different outlet rune, though, or if the placement changes, but the pattern is still there."

"A puzzle, huh? So…. what's the trick?"

Li Shu shrugs. "Different for every one. Especially different if you switch styles, which is a qhole other mess. You have to sort of… translate between them, I guess?"

"I still don't get what the difference is. I get that the different signals add different contexts, have different nuances, but at the end of the day, it's sort of all one thing, isn't it? Shape the Qi in the right way, watch it go?"

"Sure, the same way that all cultivation is drinking in Qi and watching it cycle."

Raika blinks, turning back to look at Li Shu. "...Really? Actually? Every language is like its own cultivation style?"

"Well… no, not really. I mean… it can be?"

Raika sighs, leaning forward until she bumps her forehead into the wall. "Uuuuugh. Big Sis Li Shu, heeeelp."

Her friend laughs, shaking her head at the whine in Raika's voice. "I'll try, alright? It's… there is a sort of unified theory to it, but it's sort of vague. You remember the differences between formations and arrays, right?"

"Mmh. Formations are more natural, don't need the same rigid amount of precision, and can even form in nature. They're directed Qi flows, reliant on natural treasures and concepts to form patterns that lead into cycles, which generate effects. Arrays don't need natural treasures or Qi sources, though they benefit from them- by guiding Qi into closer, more precise carvings and symbols, the energy responds to Intent and different, more alchemical reactions. So basically, arrays are just more precise formations that don't need external resources to feed on, and can work off whatever's around."

"Sort of. You're mostly right- formations are like patterns in nature, using patterns of fractals, waves, cycles, and flows to generate effects, pulling from connected resources. Arrays, in turn, use more human patterns, and thus can fit more conscious direction, but still use some of the same functions of formations. The same, but not, like the difference between the wind whistling and a person. Set up the right stones in the right conditions, you can make the wind whistle, but you can also just shape the air yourself more directly.

"Rituals, then, are another side-evolution from the others. All of them deal in concepts, but while arrays and formations also deal in physiks, materials, and Qi, rituals deal in just concepts. So technically, the way your skin blocks Qi is a ritual and an array- we used formulae and Qi to shape the effect we wanted, that effect being removing the concept of Qi-absorption from your skin."

Raika sighs, sending out a fresh wave of worms onto the wall to start a new set of formulae. They squirm out of her body and off the ground, and she drip-feeds some drops of her blood to the more tired members of her menagerie.

"Alright. So it all just ties back to Qi, Intent, and concepts, then?"

"Sure, but that's like saying that all energies tie back to movement. Technically true, and good insight in the right conditions, but not really useful."

Raika sighs again, the exhale stronger this time.

"You can't just drop 'oh it's technically true that all energy is movement' and not give me any follow-up."

"Oh! It's a… well, it's a property of physiks. At the tiniest level, with minimal amounts of Qi, all transmutation and energy is sort of the movement of different pieces of things, jumping back and forth. Certain parts jump a certain way, into certain patterns, and it has certain effects."

"Ok. Frustratingly vague, but sure, I'll factor that into my belief system."

"It's not a belief system! Or… it is, kind of? Qi makes things… fuzzy. You go from baseline rules to contextual rules, and it gets more complicated from there."

"Sure. So rituals, formations, arrays, different aspects, same thing. Make patterns, tie things into the patterns, stuff happens. So why. Is. It. So. Fucking. Complicated."

Li Shu laughs, the sound bright in the dank air atop the corpse-hall. "Seriously? Most of the shit you do is so complicated it's blinding. I could literally spend a decade studying just how you've modified your body and the ways it works. You told me yourself, this Church isn't inclined to move except how they want to move, right? Having a few months to learn some mechanics isn't the end of the world."

She's right. Raika knows she's right. It's entirely reasonable to just sit back, play the long game, train herself in something that doesn't come naturally while she figures out how to play the Church's game.

…

It's the logical choice. Sort of.

…

Ugh.

Yeah. No way that's how this goes.

With a thought, she sends a request through the link to the rest of her.

She gets a reply back from herself almost immediately.

Agreement.

She feels a brief moment of nausea as her guts rearrange themselves, opening up room for the neural matter that flows into her torso and grows up and back out of her skull. It takes just a few seconds for the braids of neural tissue flowing from her head to multiply in size, going from dangling near her upper back to going nearly to her calves.

"Li Shu?"

She hears her friend sigh, so quiet that she's fairly sure it wasn't meant to be heard. Her healer and advisor smells, for just a moment, of a note of concern- and then it's gone, masked by the scent of keratin and surgical materials.

"Yes, Raika?"

"Show me every rune you know. I need to start memorizing."

"Weren't you just telling me that you need to learn this properly, and cultivate the talent for it?"

She shakes her head, feeling the long dreadlocks of warm thought-muscle tickle her back.

"You know what's better than talent? Hard work. I've got a few dozen brain's worth of thinking, and I am going to think at this thing so hard."