Misbegotten Memories

Chapter 277

He informed Zara of his return after cleaning up from his long walk.  She decided on the spot that they would leave in two days and went to make arrangements for their trade goods with Wayne.

Wayne.  Hector ground his teeth as he searched for Darius.  He found the eunuch staring out a window in the third floor lounge.  “We leave for Tian in two days.  Be ready one hour after dawn.”

“You returned from Aes a lot sooner than I expected.”

“Sooner than I expected as well.  Anyway, do you need anything for the trip?”

Darius shrugged.  “I will be ready.”

“Do you want to grab food?”

“I am not hungry,” Darius said.

Hector sighed at the rejection and went down to the ground floor to see what the cafe had available.  He exited the elevator to discover a significant portion of the floor space before the counter taken up by wooden boxes which were being stuffed with biological contents.  Wayne gave directions while several employees wearing respirators performed the packing.

The entire thing stunk enough that Hector lost any desire for food.

“What is this?”

“Fertilizer,” Wayne said.  The chemist flashed a smile at Hector and came over to explain in more detail.  “We received a lot of fish from Tian.  So much that we had to lease cold storage off site.  I’ve had my associates processing the fish all this time.  The big ones are turned into fillets for direct consumption.  Small ones are pressed for the oil.  Scales and bones are boiled for broth.  Leftovers get turned into fertilizer.  Also I have been extracting the urea from the blood – that’s a major part of the unpleasant smell.

“The original idea was to sell the fertilizer to farmers in Zing.  They rated my product quite highly, actually.  They just didn’t have the budget to pay what we think it’s worth.  So Zara is writing off the entire thing and letting her retinue benefit from trading it.  I’m not supposed to take advantage of the situation, but if you would happen to have too many root vegetables after your trip… consider selling some to the cafe.”

Hector looked around at the boxes being packed to avoid making eye contact.  To all appearances, Wayne didn’t even realize the two of them were romantic rivals.  Given the chemist’s straightforward social mannerisms, Hector didn’t think this could possibly be some kind of clever maneuver.  Either Wayne didn’t know about the temporarily paused courtship of Hector or the man didn’t even realize Zara liked him.  Hell, it could be both of those things.  Wayne was the oblivious type.

It was hard to hold a grudge against an innocent man.  If Hector had to guess about what was happening, he’d bet that all Wayne did was make himself useful and get excited when talking to Zara.  The nerdy chemist wasn’t at fault here.  If anything, Hector had failed to respect Zara’s ultimatum.  Apparently he still had some work to do on that particular virtue.

What bugged him the most about the situation was how different Wayne was from him.  All the things he thought best about himself were completely absent from the chemist.  The guy was out of shape, his cultivation was weak, he didn’t have so much as a hint of bravery, and never went out of his way to serve the greater good.  He was such an ordinary specimen, remarkable only due to being positioned to take advantage of a scientific education and the amenities of Promise City to process goods from Tian.

A million people could do that job better than Wayne.  Most of them would have zero interest, of course.  Only Xian cared about maximizing the benefits of resources and it seemed unlikely that many of the few Xian on Union Central had a background in scientific fields.

Yet if Hector was being beaten by such a person… what did that say about him?  He’d been patting himself on the back a lot lately, proud of his progress.  Maybe those improvements were overstated in his own mind.  His insight having a moral component didn’t mean he was always in the right.  At its heart, his insight was just about how intentions could be encoded into reality.  It basically mapped specific mental states onto a spatial field to create something akin to a texture of meaning.

It seemed that he needed to resume his self-improvement efforts.  Unfortunately, he didn’t think his previous method of cultivating virtue fit any longer.  He’d rewired his brain over time to the point that he felt a powerful compulsion to do what he thought morally right.  It grew overwhelming before he gained his insight and enough clarity to grant himself permission to prioritize.

The greatest flaw he saw in himself now was being unwilling to entertain views different from his own.  Zara had lost interest in him because when she asked for romance he dug in his heels at what seemed to him like a childish request for grand gestures.  That wasn’t how she’d seen it, though.  Zara had lost much over the years – a child, her place in the Shaocheth household, an ally in the Lord Platinum, and even her estate and the privileges that came with being a Lord.  Was it so unreasonable for her to want a partner to make her feel special?

He hadn’t considered things from her point of view before dismissing her request as unreasonable.  That self-centered perspective was something he would need to overcome.  It wasn’t selfishness, exactly.  More a certainty in the truth of his own understanding.  There was value in conviction, but he needed to make room for consideration.  And not just because he was losing out to a guy like Wayne in the courtship arena.  In the end, his journey to become a better person was rooted in the desire to be worthy of the parents he’d lost too soon.

Once Hector forced himself to engage in small talk with Wayne and compliment the man for his achievements, he returned to his room to practice the Sweaty Fire Technique.  Fueled by his frustrations, he managed to hold it for close to a full hour.  That burned enough energy that he bought a bottle of Tian wine from a neighbor to assist with his restoration efforts.

The combination of alcohol and externality cultivation helped him restore his reserves to a reasonable amount.  He practiced the Reverse Priming Technique several times the next day since it was a net neutral exercise in regards to energy usage.  During the evening hours, he went into the dungeon to do some chaos cultivation with his domain and mind.

The result of all his efforts brought him to a reasonable level of readiness for the mission.

Survey Results

Type:  Xian

Level:  7

Body:  6.4

Mind:  6.7

Aura:  5.2

Domain:  6.1

Energy Reserves:  76%

Looking over his statistics, Hector couldn’t help but stress over his aura.  It was almost a full point below every other aperture.  The main source of anxiety, ironically, was the fact that he had the means to rapidly improve his aura.  All he had to do was use the Sandwich Technique about eight more times to get to six.  Then, assuming the math held true, another sixty times to get to the peak of his level seven soul….

That would be akin to shattering a mundane hand with a hammer sixty-eight times.  You could probably dredge up the resolve to do it a couple of times.  Soon enough, you’d begin to hold back and flinch in anticipation of the agony to come.  According to what he’d heard, even slightly backing off on the intensity of the technique drastically lowered its effectiveness without softening the aftermath nearly so much.

The only conclusion Hector could reach was that he had to practice the Sandwich Technique many more times, even if he grew nauseous at the thought.  He’d have to steel his nerves somehow before attempting it again.  Maybe getting properly drunk would give him sufficient courage.

Hector forced such thoughts out of his head as he arrived on the first floor on the morning of their departure.  He found Isabel and Darius already there, the two awkwardly standing together without speaking.  “No Dorian and Mei yet?”  It wasn’t the best ice breaker, but someone had to get the conversation going.

Isabel rolled her eyes.  “The comfort and security of Union Central smothered whatever motivation those two still had for advancement.  I would not be surprised if they decided to skip this Bentley trip.”

“I thought the root vegetables were supposed to be amazing resources.”  As the words left his mouth, Hector reflected that it was quite an unusual sentence to speak.

“That depends on the quality of product you can afford,” Isabel said.

Hector took a moment to find more subtle and indirect wording for his next question.  “I had the impression that the fertilizer was valuable.”

Isabel’s face packed a vast degree of skepticism into a single brow raise.  “It’s fertilizer.”

Apparently the maiden was not a true believer in the scheme cooked up by Zara and Wayne.  Hector didn’t know how much faith to place in her opinion on mercantile matters.  It seemed likely that a Lord who had spent over a century as a porter should have a better handle on what things sold for, but he also had to take into account the fact that people tended to tell Lords exactly what they wanted to hear.  Hector thought it similar to how celebrities or ultra wealthy people on Earth became out of touch with reality.  Only it would be worse, wouldn’t it?  Lords were dictators within their territory, their will held in check only by the Assembly of Lords, a deliberative body of which they were all members.

Dorian and Mei arrived while Hector still pondered the odds that they were being sent on a pointless mission.  The two lovers appeared annoyed to be there, whispering sarcasm between each other about the great opportunity they weren’t allowed to pass on.  Hector wasn’t sure if they spoke loudly enough to be overheard on purpose or if the slight language barrier between the two meant that every conversation they had required volume for over-enunciation.

Everyone fell silent as a potent source of cosmic energy descended from the upper levels of the building along the path of the elevator shaft.  Zara was on her way to them.  Without conscious intention, Hector found himself standing straighter and bringing his shoulders back.  He almost slouched on purpose after that, embarrassed to catch himself preening.  Calling out the physical differences between himself and Wayne wasn’t necessary – if Zara cared about fitness to any degree, then she had most certainly already spotted the contrast of ripped versus flabby.

The doors opened to reveal Zara.  “Let's get started,” she said.  Wayne taught them how to non-destructively open the wooden boxes to retrieve samples for interested parties, then wished them luck.

“Hector, follow close behind me with the passengers.  I’m going to drop the cargo and leave immediately.  Though the nation of Cush is technically outside of the range patrolled by the Ancestor, I would rather not spend any time in his proximity.”  Zara summoned her sphere and began packing boxes with her cables.

Despite the concerns he had, Hector managed to follow Zara through the primordial without fail.  His easy success surprised him a bit.  Had he eclipsed Volithur as a porter without realizing it?  Hector had never imagined that any of his senses would prove superior, yet facts seemed to indicate otherwise.  His externality sense lacked precision, it was true, but Volithur had never moved beyond rough guesswork when traveling places he didn’t know intimately.

Come to think of it, the touch sense of Hector’s domain might be more sensitive than that of his deceased counterpart at this point.  It really was only the mental sense of Volithur that had been noteworthy.  Volithur had used his mental sense to calibrate his touch sense, resulting in rapid initial improvements.  But after several years, Hector might have surpassed his counterpart in everything other than his mental sense.

They arrived on the side of a busy city street.  Hector opened his sphere to see boxes rapidly being ejected from Zara’s sphere.  Her cables lowered them gently enough to prevent any breaks, but she wasn’t messing around.  As soon as her cargo was out, Zara squeezed the weld shut and her sphere shrank out of existence.

Dorian sighed.  “Let’s find someone who speaks Amaratti.  We’ll need a guide to get across the lake to Bentley.”

Hector turned his attention to the press of bodies in the street and blinked.  Almost every person he saw had dark skin.  “Oh.  The dark continent.”  Much as Zing was analogous to East Asia, the dark continent was analogous to Africa.