Monster Cultivation

Every time Drew slept, he had strange vivid memories—memories of his future. From the beginning to... many centuries ahead.

He wasn't sure what it was about, how it happened, or even why. At first, he thought he was crazy, but over time, it seemed the memories were true.

There was a knock at the front door. "Drew Eclipse? Do you have this month's rent?"

Drew lifted his bed and retrieved all the white marbles he had hidden there, resting them on the worn carpet. He then got up, opened the door, and handed them to the old man.

The old man was dressed in a simple white shirt and long white pants. Jiman and two other men were the owners of this group house, a place for abandoned children and orphans to live.

The kids often shared the same room, forced to fit together like sardines in a tin. However, one could rent a room—although it was of terrible quality, it was still far better than having no personal space.

Jiman grabbed the money from Drew's hands. He inspected the marbles, making sure they weren't counterfeit, then left.

Drew wasn't worried about giving him his last marble. Today, he turned 13, the age at which the clan forced every child to take the talent test to see if they had the potential to become a Core weaver.

Once he got enrolled in the school, he would be provided with supplies and resources. No longer would he have to do odd and dirty jobs to survive or be forced to live here.

Despite having knowledge from 800 years, he didn’t have enough information to make him rich as a normal person—not in this small village, at least. There were things to exploit, yes, but not enough.

He wasn't hungry or very skinny; he just lived carefully, counting every marble he had.

Jiman screamed for every 13-year-old to get ready for the special ceremony, but Drew didn’t really care.

After all, Jiman was a bitter old man who had no expectations of rejects like them.

Drew didn't bother putting on his best clothes for the ceremony. He left the house alone, dressed as he had woken up, and made his way to the ceremony temple.

Perhaps he should have bathed first, but he had done that four hours ago, before he went to sleep.

At the moment, he was exhausted. What had he even stayed up late doing? Absolutely nothing—just staring at the ceiling.

Since having memories of the future, he had desperately waited for the day he would be allowed to cultivate again. He knew methods to unlock his Ferna core, but he either didn’t like the risks or lacked the resources for them.

The easiest method was the one done at the ceremony. The second easiest involved making him think he was going to die.

As Drew walked on the stone ground, he passed small brown wooden houses, making his way to the tall concrete building at the corner of the settlement.

There were also many kids, both boys and girls, walking toward it. About 100 of them were 13 years old. There were some older ones—most likely parents, friends, and siblings of the 13-year-olds—who were coming to show support.

After all, ceremony day was a holiday for everyone, including the third-class servants, who only had breaks when they weren't assigned a task for the day, week, or month.

Drew figured it was for every single person in the village to know who would be the new generation of Core weavers

While most kids grouped together or walked with their parents, Drew was by himself, and no one paid attention to him.

He was 13, yet he had no friends. He had no desire for them; they were too childish. It wasn't their fault; it was the fault of his memories. They were vivid to the point that it felt like he experienced everything he dreamed.

He supposed he felt lonely. But that loneliness was common for him. In his future, he traveled the world with a few friends, but they all desired different goals, so they separated to pursue those ambitions.

Life didn’t work the way they wanted. Many were killed by beasts or other people, perhaps tricked, betrayed, or hunted for glory. Such things were common.

So, Future Drew decided to live a solitary life, interacting only with his pets and monsters. In such a world, the only way to be safe was to be stronger than your potential enemies.

Thus, he strived for the peak of power so that he would never feel fear again, and in that pursuit of strength, he became powerful—the third strongest. But his conclusion was never revealed. Drew wasn’t aware of how he would die.

It was funny, but not in a humorous way. More in a way that would cause present Drew to randomly start punching a wall in anger. It was so infuriating that he could scream for days.

Drew entered the temple. Inside, there were many green, red, and blue vines on the walls. Only the floor was clear of vines; instead, there were white tiles that remained spotless no matter how many times they were walked on.

Everyone came to a halt. Ahead of them, on huge boulders, were the clan wisemen(there were women included), and on the tallest boulder was the clan patriarch, Juivel. His hair was grey, and his face was lined with scars and wrinkles. He looked like a man who had only a decade left to live.

On the side of the boulders were the 'heads'—the presidents of specific departments. Facing the crowd on the ground were the two school instructors.

The children were excited, chattering and whispering among each other, wondering about the strength of one another.

An old lady raised her voice, "Good day, everyone. I'm glad you all made it here today. This is a very important moment for us."

Drew scoffed. It wasn't like he had a choice. Core weavers were valuable soldiers and geopolitical pawns, so training them from childhood was taken very seriously.

The old lady continued, "I'm Maroon, and this young lady here is Berry," she referred to a 30 year old woman with brown hair beside her. "We'll begin the ceremony now."

Berry said, “Please form two lines and come to us in an orderly fashion so we can see if you have a cultivatable Ferna core.”

Everyone had a Ferna core, but not everyone’s core could be cultivated.

Drew joined the first line, though he wasn’t sure why. It didn’t matter; he already knew his outcome.

His core was medium scale—forgettable, but good enough to be a pawn for the clan. There would be a few high-scale cores among the group.

He struggled to remember whether there were two or three of them. Remembering such minute details wasn’t Drew's strong suit.

His future memories were like a movie beyond his control. He couldn't pause, skip forward, rewind. So he only remembered details that stood out to him or those he really tried hard to.

Berry touched the first kid’s stomach with a vine. The vines on the walls responded, twitching before crawling around the boy’s feet—and then stopping.

The vines retreated to the walls. This kid’s Ferna core was so weak that the vines, which thrived in Ferna-rich areas, rejected him.

Berry told the boy, “I’m sorry, you can’t cultivate.”

The boy looked shocked. A few adults in the crowd cast shadows of concern across their faces—his parents and probably his older brother.

The boy didn’t take the rejection well. “No, no! Try again! There was a mistake! My dad said I would become a Core weaver. I can cultivate!”

Growing up, he had been fed hope—hope that he would elevate his family’s position in society. Even if the family weren’t Core Weavers, they would be treated better once they mentioned having one among them.

The guards stepped in, taking the crying boy and removing him from the line. He kicked and screamed, gathering even more shame.

Drew understood the boy’s pain. If fate had dealt him the same hand, he would have thrown a tantrum too.

He smiled to himself. Luckily, fate didn’t hate him that much.

For the next student, the vines crawled up to his knee, then squeezed tightly. A few weak vines reached up to his stomach, but the rest on his knee didn’t grow any higher.

He had a bottom-scale core, the lowest kind. The wisemen didn’t react much. This pattern continued.

There were a few children everyone expected to have high-scale cores—four of them. Two belonged to the clan patriarch, while the other two were from powerful families.

The twins of the Juivel clan were next. The boy went first—Rei, who had completely black hair, opposite of his sister, who inherited their mother’s snow-white hair.

Their mother, Hannah, sat on a boulder nearby, watching. Despite her white hair, she looked no older than thirty and didn’t belong to a notable family. Yet her beauty exceeded all.

The vines from the wall attached themselves to Rei, quickly crawling up his body until they reached the base of his neck.

Juivel smiled, along with all the wisemen and instructors. Many of them were faking their reactions.

Juivel wasn’t well-liked in the clan because he was too lenient regarding external affairs, making neighboring villages think the clan was weak. Most importantly, he had married a woman of no status.

Drew was sure the four most influential wisemen were hoping the boy would turn out to be a dud, believing the children would be as soft and cowardly as their father.

Milla, Juivel’s daughter, was next. The vines reached her shoulders. She also had a high-scale core, just not as powerful as her brother’s.

Everyone on the boulder smiled—everyone except Hannah, whose expression remained unchanged.

Many of the following students showed no reaction from the vines, and then there were those with low and medium-scale cores. About three had bottom-scale cores; they were as rare as high-scale cores.

Finally, it was Drew's turn.

Berry poked Drew's stomach with a vine. A sharp pain shot through the center of his stomach, followed by a weird sensation that spread to every inch of his body.

The vine Berry used created a micro-opening in his core, and the vines on the wall sensed the sudden Ferna—new Ferna. They wanted to taste it.

The vines wrapped around him like snakes, starting to grow along his leg. The tight sensation forced the micro-opening in his core wider, as the vines sought as much Ferna as possible.

They kept rising, stopping just at his navel.

Many were surprised—not in a gasping way, but genuinely astonished. Medium scale wasn’t special; it was the most common.

Drew was just a poor-looking kid. Even if a medium scale core was the most common. On average sixty-five percent of the time, kids didn’t have cultivatable cores, so they assumed he would be like those.

In his alternate future, he had felt disappointment. In that alternate timeline, he didn't rent and lived in a room with 12 other kids, enduring horrid treatment. He had thought fate would reward him for enduring such abuse.

I suppose it did, he had thought. Being a Core weaver was good. He had just expected too much. He wanted a top-scale core. Only one in a thousand had a high-scale core.

Drew made his way to the back.

Kids who didn’t even have cultivatable cores looked at him with envy, perhaps thinking, Why did he get lucky and not us?

Drew made eye contact with the kids and adults who stared at him, giving them a thumbs up. He had no reason for it; he just felt like it.

Then, for twenty kids straight, there was no one with cultivatable cores. This greatly disappointed those in power.

About four months ago, they lost around thirty Core weavers in a battle against a slave uprising in their largest territory, so they needed replacements as quickly as possible.

The atmosphere grew gloomy. They had little hope for the last kid—a boy holding a teddy bear in his dirty hands, with blonde hair.

He was smiling, excited. Some adults whispered, showing empathy, believing he was going to be heartbroken.

Drew sat on the ground, watching. He had treated almost everyone with indifference, but upon seeing this boy, he couldn’t help but frown.

The vines latched onto the kid, Shawn, with far greater speed than they had for anyone before, shocking everyone. The vines crawled up to the point where they reached his hairline.

The first top-scale core in the Warerla region in two centuries—a region composed of seven clans.