We settled in quickly over the next week. The meals weren't as crazy intense as the first, but it was the first time most of us had received balanced nutrition for more than a day or two. Alessa looked less like a waif that was about to blow away in the breeze and grew into her curves, which led to her turning more than a few heads as she walked around in a custom tailored robe that Gran had made for her.

I may have played dress up with Liam at his expense, having sect members try different outfits on him to see which 'worked the best' – which totally didn't turn into a bunch of groupies squeeing over how cute he was in each one as we tried more and more extravagant clothes on.

Absolutely not that, honest.

A group of people had been practicing cultivation under Brother Cháo. Surprisingly, my whole family was attempting their hand at it. Viktor and István also participated, both listening closely. I noticed that Brother Cháo was paying particular attention to Viktor, which made sense. István's control was impeccable, and making friends with the guy who didn't need special powers to smush you into paste was just common sense.

The Circle itself had expanded with the addition of a building. It was out in a corner of existing area, in a formerly unused stand of trees. From the top floor, you could see the Main Hall's imposing structure.

I knew, because that was my room. They'd given me the entire damn floor, which had full facilities. I had no idea what to do with myself, but I definitely was getting used to the baths. It was a weird feeling to feel clean on the regular - the water they drew and heated for them was so clear you could see the bottom of the tub, which was deep enough to cover me to my neck, or more if I didn't sit up straight.

The weirdest part of the whole thing was that I had a dedicated inner disciple assigned to me. They'd picked the same girl I'd had wash me before, which helped make things less awkward, although she was still on my case about how thin I looked.

Which reminded me, I'd had a misunderstanding about how the roles worked. So Brother Cháo? He was actually promoted to a Senior Disciple. Apparently this was below what was called a Core disciple.

Probably.

I was a little foggy on the whole arrangement. There were a lot of moving parts.

And calling people 'Brother' or 'Senior' or 'Junior' was relative to the speaker. Which is why people kept attempting to correct me or be humble when I called them brother or even junior, as 'Senior' and 'Junior' were in relation to a generation of disciples… Kind of like grades in school.

Except a Senior Disciple was its own thing.

Probably.

Turns out that being held up on a pedestal by the Founder/Ancient One/Celistar as her benefactor had put me in such rarified air that even calling people my junior was accidentally elevating their positions. My attendant had been promoted from what was called an 'outer' disciple to being an 'inner' one just on the basis of how I'd addressed her off-hand. Whoops.

I am totally going to screw this up, aren't I?

There was a central meeting area of the building they'd set aside for us. I spent some time there during each day, time I had to set aside to visit with different people - mostly Celistar, to be honest. Most of the sect was still too scared to talk with me, not that I minded.

The meeting area was conveniently located in the floor directly below mine. They'd built the building in such a way that visitors could bypass the lower floors using an external stairway to access it directly, the door from which István was currently standing at. I'd felt him already, a skill I was honing during this time by meditating on one of many fluffy pillows.

They'd actually tried to station guards at the bottom of the stairs, before I lifted both of them off the ground and pointed out that anything that got that far into the Sect was something I'd have to deal with anyway. I was getting pretty good at the 'spooky action at a distance' thing, if I was honest. I did it often in my capacity as 'Benefactor' to keep up the airs I'd been putting on. I will say all the extra practice was helping immensely in honing my control, as I found it much easier to do normal things like circulate my Streams quickly and suppress my aura.

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Probably best not to mention how I'd maybe kind of occasionally used my aura control as a party trick to scare the shit out of random disciples by appearing behind them without warning. There was a rumor going around that Alessa had mentioned offhand to Gran but refused to clarify to me when I entered the room regarding this… as if doing so made me less curious.

Anyway.

I left my meditation pose and looked up at the man himself.

"Mind if I come in, oh Venerable?" István said at this, knocking on the door and doing a stage bow. Steeve raised her head at the new voice, but stayed where she was, napping in a puddle of warm sunlight. István handed her a treat, a new tactic in his longstanding battle to persuade her into being a lab assistant. Her nose twitched and this latest offering vanished off to join the others, in whichever alternate snack dimension they wound up in. István treated that as a sign of success, evidently.

"Sure, István, so long as you knock that honorific nonsense off." I replied, trying not to sprain an ocular muscle rolling my eyes at him.

"I suppose that could be arranged," he said with a grin. I'd sent my attendant downstairs as usual earlier in the day, claiming that she needed her own time as well. She always seemed put out by that, as if hanging around my boring self all day was the best thing ever.

Probably another cultural thing I was getting wrong, but it wasn't like anyone could tell me what to do, so they could get stuffed if they didn't like it. I needed my space. Keeping this mask of 'Venerable' on all the time was exhausting.

István didn't wait for me to fully collect my thoughts before launching into what he'd come to say, as expected. He'd probably have exploded if he waited to long.

"The craftsmen who work here never cease to amaze, I have learned so much from them." He told me, sitting down near my door and pulling a long brush out of nowhere, in his usual mysterious manner. He set to work crafting a seal far more complex than the ones he previously used, effortlessly incorporating the new runes similar to those I'd seen on the gate into it. His perfect penmanship (brushmanship?) was rendering them far more efficiently than I had imagined was possible. How the heck did he pick it up so fast?

"This one," he said, popping me out of my thoughts while pointing at a specific one with a little hat and flecks that looked like air being sucked in, "draws on ambient Nebula and feeds this one," he pointed to another, "Which acts like a storage medium. "Then if you actuate it with your Nebula," he did just that and the room went silent like the world had shut off, "You get a perfect 'privacy curtain' that seals out all sound, unless the one trying to listen in has more Nebula than the one who activated it."

"Wow," I said, still feeling like my ears had popped. He pushed against it with his energy and it effect wore off over the next several seconds.

"Glad you are gaining benefit from everything," I said, almost slipping into my 'Venerable' voice and cadence, only just catching myself. It was becoming such a habit that I felt like it was permanently changing the core me somehow.

Guess I'd need to sass up my interactions a bit, before I got all senile or something.

"Not all of us sit around and get pampered like you, Venerable," István replied with a smile, attempting to defeat my sass offensive by cutting me off at the pass and beating me to the punch. That's my job! You can't take it!

"It's a sacrifice I am willing to make for all of you," I gave my riposte, grinning. I reached out with my Nebula and enabled the seal on remotely, making him lift an eyebrow at the precision I had gained. "You could have woken up first and gotten all the benefits, but you picked the wrong time to sleep in," I teased, as I flicked it back off.

"I'll take your wisdom to heart." He said with a smirk, retreating back out of the room, probably to go study a different trade entirely. Apparently he went directly from cultivation practice to meet with each individual discipline in rotation. It made me wonder when he had time to eat and other such things.

Hmmm.

"Qīwù…" I intoned, using a trick Celistar had taught me, putting Nebula into my voice to make it carry through obstacles.

It must have worked, as I heard quiet but quick running steps as my attendant – whose full name was Sūn Qīwù – appeared. I'd taken to calling her 'Junior Qīwù' originally, but was strongly cautioned against it by the girl herself, in line with what I'd learned about honorifics.

Celistar had suggested 'Xiǎo Qīwù' as a replacement, adding something that apparently meant 'little', as in 'little one'. I suppose it made more sense for an Ancient One such as herself to use such a name… but it felt so ridiculously awkward to say to a girl who was probably around my age that I just couldn't do it, so I stuck with her given name.

Which was, oddly enough, the second part. This place was too damn weird for me.

Did I mention that Celistar was apparently many thousands of years old? Yeah, because she was. Mind. Blown. Gran was a young pup by comparison.

"Venerable, how may I help?"

"Pl… See to it that István is assigned an assistant, someone interested in the trades with a sharp eye. Have this assistant pay special attention to making sure he's eating correctly.", I said narrowly remembering to cut off the first word before it was really audible.

In addition to everything else, I'd also been told not to use 'please'.

Which was kind of like telling me I didn't need to breathe, since Gran had done everything short of beat manners into us since we were old enough to walk. I was about ready to go back to fighting weird whip monsters while a huge, world-rending void bore down on me.

Seemed easier than all this.

"I will see it done," she said, bowing respectfully before turning to leave. I waited until I heard her steps disappear down the hallway before plopping over backwards onto my fluffy pillow throne.

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