The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 474 - A Philosophy Rooted Deeply In Excess: Cultivator
At sixty-three years old, the orphaned Uvraneht had stabilized in the high Primalist Echelons and established a small reputation as a traveling physician in her corner of the world. She moved from city to city, treating those who could pay... and occasionally passing through smaller villages to treat those who couldn’t. When she first restocked her medical supplies and had some ’excess’. During one trespassing entry into a Guild library at one of these cities, she found techniques related to Reforge that allowed her to extend the number of stops between cities.
Now, in the empty stretches of travel where cultivation itself was often the only companion, she would sit alone when resting and farm her own body. Combining the use of her Acid Element and physical energy to stimulate production of the compounds she needed for everyday medical practice. The entire experience was spent preventing her body from tearing itself apart under the strain of serving as an overcharged chemical factory.
Hours of meditation at night to extract what would take weeks to harvest naturally through travel, discovery, or plant farming - all condensed into viscous solutions she stored in crystal vials. Acidic compounds must cultivators with any need bought from dedicated chemists at high prices, she simply made from her own... excess. Such as Hyaluronic acid which could be harvested from her own tear ducts and used for making a viscous lubricant that could theoretically be used for inserting a prosthetic eye - or for joint treatments on the elderly.
It was tiring. Sometimes even nauseating if she slipped her control slightly, with certain acids leaking into her system. But it was surplus she could afford to spend without greatly slowing down her personal accumulation of energies. Though her spirit definitely was leading the other two at this point in her life, because of this sort of behavior... and because of how often she used illusions to maintain a hidden identity.
"Our bodies are a renewable resource if you treat it properly."
That year she had offered the base technique to an artistically talented Wood Element cultivator she had been traveling with. He had remarkable energy control and a knack for memorizing plant-based medicine, but while he used that knowledge on occasion, he was no more of an altruist than she was. Still, she showed him how to adapt the method and demonstrated the circulation pattern that would keep the growth overflows from growing out of control with her ’Projection’ Astralism.
Lying about her exact Aspects was not something new to Elua er Goltbred, Uvraneht had been doing so since she learned she could cultivate at all. There was no tactical benefit to *admitting* you had a Tongue Physique when your enemies might suspect you could have something that better counters them in combat. And while occasionally there were cultivators like this man who was less arrogant, less might makes right, anything she told him could get out to others.
And he mastered it within a week, one of her first ’disciples’. She was pleased with his progress... until she noticed he stopped using it immediately. When she asked, he would not quite meet her eyes. But he did answer with a transparent discomfort in his spirit.
"The technique works perfectly. I just... I’d rather not."
"Why? Buying some of these things is less efficient."
"I know. But the idea of... using myself that way. It feels wrong. Like I’m just... like livestock producing resources. It’s not respectable."
Uvraneht only stared at him after that. She had spent dozens of hours teaching him and had used her own secrets and insights she had developed through years of refining this technique. All of it given out of a sense of having the leeway to do so - the sort of ’excess’ that stuck from what her father had taught her... though colored more by her personal whim. And suddenly, despite having been shown how and what she used it for - he was uncomfortable.
’I do not understand.’
"I appreciate what you’ve taught me. Truly. The techniques that lead to it alone have been invaluable. But the method of using it this way... I think it says something about you... that you’re comfortable with it."
He didn’t elaborate on what he meant - and it didn’t matter to the Acid cultivator in the first place. His opinion wasn’t going to affect her past or future choices. And his disdain of being viewed as livestock didn’t bother her, because she grew up knowing how important such creatures were. The man she’d spent a month and a half with politely and professionally parted ways at the next city.
Uvraneht continued her travels alone. Thinking about the very few people she had met over her life who gave constantly, even when it cost them dearly. Many cultivators called them foolish and logically she agreed. But mortals praised them. Called them noble. Sang songs about their sacrifices while working fields.
And at times she wondered about the difference. She offered knowledge of healing and materials she could spare, always carefully calculated, and was often still met with suspicion that forced her to trick or double talk her way into helping the person who seemed to need it. There was an unspoken implication in their eyes, spirit, and sometimes words they were careful not to say... that her clinical approach to helping meant she didn’t really care.
They were right. She didn’t feel any warm glow from philanthropy. The altruists destroyed themselves for strangers and Uvraneht knew she would never do that. They were those who gave from their deepest core while she let generosity only spin from her margins. And people could tell.
She helped when she could afford it and walked away when she couldn’t. Because there were always others waiting in the wings in need. It was never ending and the logical decision was to let nature take its course. But every time she dipped toward stopping entirely, she remembered how no one had helped her parents. That she could have done so if she just had the knowledge.
So the Illusionist continued giving, slowly more and more, until finally she’d given too much just to see if that would change something in her. And had to walk away from medicine entirely. For many centuries. But she did realize something from that. The people she was drawn to often gave more than they should.
Giving her excess to them... giving everything to them might balance things out.
⟠ ⟠ ⟠
Nearly two-thousand years into her existence as a Defier approaching Demi-god, Uvraneht stood in a hidden workshop that would have made kingdoms jealous. Every tool she could know to want and examples of every resource she’d heard of within reach. But she was using the space to cultivate, not craft. Perfecting the physical energy catalyzing technique that her last partner had dismissed as unnecessary.
He was ’only’ a Breacher and had died a decade before, after a long time of waving of her suggestions to focus on certain areas as being ’fine as it is’. The mathematics of cultivator limitations had caught up to him. Someone who had been content with ’good enough’ in too many areas for too long. He may have not even made it to the age he had without her other help in the first place.
The technique would not have helped save him unless he had it the moment she met the scholar. She was clear-eyed about that - and yet she was back in this place perfecting it anyway. That is, after her... less than pleasant years of loss. Denial and bargaining were brief, for her, but ’anger’ and ’depression’ tended to mix into one surprisingly cyclical fuel. A state that may have given the Acid cultivator a few more infamy points throughout a few Astral Exclave cities.
Uvraneht had spent the last ear filling journals with variations that may work incrementally better as starting points for different base Physiques. With notes referencing the Upper Realm cultivator’s understanding of genetics and subtle Aspect interactions. She wasn’t foolish enough to think perfecting it would retroactively change the past. Or make her push harder next time if the next person she fell in love with wanted to take life slow and as things came.
But *if* she fell in love again she wanted to be able to explain it perfectly. As immediately as she could. If someone she loved that loved her back still shrugged off the inefficiencies that would eventually compound into their demise, it would never be because she did not tell them everything she knew. That was what motivated her spirit as the scratch of her pen recorded line after line. As the cry of her iridescent avian companion wanting a dinner it couldn’t find screamed out, far above the balcony.
’Lazy bird, you know how to hunt on your own. So needy.’
If the excess she had to give was not enough, she just needed to find a way to make it more than others could ever need. If that meant achieving the eternity of Divinity by ascending at the end of her path, then she would aim for it. But she wasn’t sure that aiming was enough. And in a quiet moment, while stroking the plumes of the raptor after it had devoured the prey she’d led it to...
For the smallest moment, Uvraneht wondered if her dispassionate outlook on life even deserved to make a Mandate in the first place.
A speck of doubt that quietly ate at her through the next couple thousand years of her travels in the cosmos and up until her death.
Doubt that was burned away by the bright gem that was her next and last beloved, serving as a prism to reality in the life she lived... once she was reincarnated.
