Impure Source

Laying down on his soft bed, he started talking to the system.

‘Can you estimate when I’ll be able to break through the first shell? I know the destruction source should take about three more months with constant vials supply, but I do not know about the others.’

<The other three primary sources should take one more month after that.>

<The perception source will probably take one month or even faster, but it’s currently imbalanced. You need more negative energy. >

<Lust source has shown no progress due to lack of Yin energy.>

‘Didn’t the morning incident grant me some negative energy?’

<Yes, but the constant influx of positive energy is making it hard to achieve a balance.>

‘I guess I can only make some trouble. I also have to get some stable source of yin energy. Maya is slowly coming about, but I don’t want to push it since I don’t want her to just be a random fling. I guess I can only make do on the outside…’

Since now he still had to put some things in order here, he couldn’t really roam the city. Having nothing to do while he was waiting for Hollie to arrive, he started browsing more clothes from the system and creating them.

Hollie only showed up late in the evening and, by that time, he had to make even a dresser to hold all the clothes. He made a few sets for himself and even two more for Maya since he wanted to see how they would look on her.

Once he heard a knock on the door, Seth placed a blue t-shirt he just made inside the closet and opened the door. Hollie was there, face filled with excitement as she pushed the book towards him.

“Thank you.”

Seth smiled and burned the book down, much to Hollie’s distress.

“Why did you do that?”

“It’s safer in my head.” Said Seth with a chuckle before inviting her in. Hollie looked around the room after she entered, but didn’t seem to care that much about the furniture as she asked: “How are we doing it?”

“Take a seat on the bed. I want to look at your source.”

Hollie nodded and sat on the bed, finally showing a change in expression. Pressing her hand on the mattress, she muttered with an impressed look: “So soft…” but didn’t get any deeper into the subject.

Seth sat next to her and asked: “Where is your source?”

“Heart.” Replied Hollie instantly. Seth expected this already since most people would either choose the heart or head for a place to create their source.

“Can you turn around? I want to check it.”

Hollie turned around, and she even lifted her blouse, revealing her frail, pure white back with no trace of shame.

Seth placed his hand on her back and started working with the system to see the state of her source.

<Corrupted air source. Impurities contained inside the air source at 24%. Recommended cleansing before further breakthroughs. >

‘Damn, how did she corrupt her source to such a degree?’

<Because of extremely faulty theory during source creation.>

Seth sighed and said: “Your source contains impurities. You can probably still breakthrough like this, but it would be better to cleanse it or it would only cause more trouble for you in the future.”

Hollie turned around with a confused look on her face and asked: “Impurities? Cleanse? Can you please explain?”

Seth nodded and said: “When you created your source, your theory was quite faulty and you ended up mixing some other energies with the air energy. Luckily, they didn’t create any adverse reaction or your source would have blown up, but it’s still better to remove them to avoid any future trouble. This also lowers the maximum amount of air energy you can store inside your source.”

Hollie frowned, she herself having no idea about this, and asked: “How can I add more energy? I only have an affinity for air energy.”

“Do you know what affinities are?” seeing her shake her head, Seth continued: “The different energies are all mixed. Affinity to a certain type of energy means that type of energy would get attracted to your body while also circulating easier throughout it. But that doesn’t mean that the other energies around you are repelled.”

“That’s where the theory comes into play. We use the theory to only attract the energy we want. Since your theory was quite faulty, it meant that those energies were also absorbed inside the source, basically polluting it.”

“Doesn’t that mean you can also use energies without having an affinity for them?”

Seth smiled and lifted his hand. It took about two awkward minutes until, to Hollie’s stupor, a small air tornado formed in his palm.

“If you know the theory, yes. You can even use energies from nature to a certain degree, but cultivating them is not worth it. Everything would go too slow since those other energies would not gather towards you.”

Hollie kept staring at the small tornado with amazement for an entire minute. Breaking out of her stupor, she asked: “How can I purify my source?”. She understood what Seth was trying to explain now.

“Usually, if one wants to purify their source, they would have to go through a lengthy process of studying the impure energies inside. Once they can control and separate them from the primary energy, they must correct the errors in their knowledge of the main element. Once both those parts are done, just removing the impure energies while filling your source to the brim and keeping it like that would slowly fix the problem.”

“How long?”

“Hmm, depends on the number of impure energies and the corruption of the shells. In your case, it should be done in about 10 years.”

Hollie nodded and said: “You said usually. Do you have some other way?”

“Yes, using my destruction energy, I can slowly destroy the energies inside your source, as well as the corruption of the source itself. You will also need to fix the errors in theory, but it will be a lot quicker. Also, this will be a lot more painful as well.”

Hollie nodded and said with no trace of hesitation: “Let’s do that.”

“Alright. First, tell me the theory on which you created your source and I’ll correct and explain it to you.”

They spent the entire night going through barely half of the theory and, in the morning, they heard a small knock on the door.

Knowing it was Maya, Seth opened the door and let her in. Maya was all smiles, wearing the outfit Seth has made for her, and wanted to say something, only for the words to freeze at the top of her tongue when she spotted Hollie sitting on the bed.

Shaking her head, she said: “Morning, Seth. Morning Hollie. What are you doing here so early in the morning?”

Hollie was about to say something but then closed her mouth as well, remembering she shouldn’t mention what she was doing there.

Seth chuckled at them and closed the door before saying: “I’m helping her breakthrough, just as I did you. I hope you can both keep it a secret.”

Maya nodded, feeling slightly relieved they were not doing something else, but then she remembered the night she broke through and her cheeks reddened involuntarily.

Hollie, on the other hand, looked Maya up and down and asked: “You broke through as well?”

“Yes, Seth helped me. Well, I’m leaving you two alone.” Said Maya as she started walking towards the door. Seth came with her and, when they reached the door, Maya brought her head closer to his ear and whispered: “I can’t believe you took advantage of miss bookworm as well.”

Seth smiled wryly and said goodbye to Maya before walking back inside.

Seeing the look in Hollie’s eyes, Seth knew she heard everything.

‘Maya, what would whispering do in front of an air ascended? You silly girl.’ Said Seth to himself before acting like he saw nothing and told Hollie: “We should head to class. We’ll meet right after in my office and continue.”

Hollie also mentioned nothing about Maya’s words and agreed. Taking two vials with him, he followed Hollie to the study hall.

The morning of the day went as usual, with Seth giving Rebecca the vial he promised her and answering whatever questions his students had before going to his office to relax. Once noon came, Hollie came to his office as well, and they continued where they left off all the way until the evening when they were finally done with all the theory.

Hollie looked quite exhausted as she asked: “I never imagined I could be so wrong… thank you, Seth.”

“You’re very welcome, but it’s not over yet.”, said Seth with a quick nod.

“Alright. What next?”

“We’ll need you to use all the water energy inside your source first. With your revised knowledge, it should not be a problem. This would assure nothing goes wrong when I use destruction energy on your source.”

Hollie nodded with a serious expression and asked: “What are the chances of this succeeding?”. She didn’t know of this procedure before, but she could imagine the risks of having another person’s energy entering your source, more so when it was destruction energy.

“It’s over 90%, but you don’t have to move too much during the process. I need to be very precise with the use of destruction energy and your moving would reduce the chance by a lot.”

Hollie nodded and said: “Alright. For what reason did I keep living until now if I were to back down for a 10% chance I would die? Let’s go outside the city. It will take a long time for me to empty my source inside.”

Seth agreed and Hollie flew them both out of the city. After flying to a relatively remote mountain quite some distance from the city, Hollie said: “Stay close. I’m starting.”

Once Seth was safely by her side, Hollie started releasing all the air energy inside her source.

A typhoon soon covered the entire mountain range, blowing away rocks, trees, and all the animals that lived there. If her entire energy were to be released inside the city, the entire city would probably crumble to pieces.

Five minutes later, Hollie was panting on the ground, her entire source devoid of energy. The only place around the entire mountain that still looked okay was a one-meter radius around Seth and Hollie. The eye of the storm.

“I’m done.” Said Hollie while still panting for breath.

Seth nodded and moved to her back. Lifting his hand, he placed it right behind her heart and said: “I’m going to start soon. Make sure you reject all the air energy gathering towards your source. Also, I’ll tell you again; the pain you’re going to feel isn’t like something you’ve ever felt before. Once I start the procedure, I won’t be able to stop without your source exploding, so you have to hang on.”

“Understood.” Replied Hollie as she closed her eyes and crossed her arms in front of her chest. She also grabbed hold of her arms to squeeze into them once the pain became too unbearable.

‘System, this cannot fail. Allow me to see her source directly in real time. Run a simulation on how it should look after cleansing. Give me the structural information for every type of energy forming its shells. Get information on every type of energy present there from the records and superimpose it on my vision in real-time as well.’

His vision kept changing with each order. He could see a semi-transparent, round vortex surrounded by six constantly rotating circles, the shells.

Inside the center of the vortex, where the air energy was compressed and stored, there were only some specks of different colors floating randomly. Those were the impurities he had to remove. There were also some different colored indentations on all the surrounding shells.

Taking a deep breath, Seth said: “I am going to start Hollie.”