Jasper groaned.
Yeah.
This was going to be a headache.
An hour passed.
To Jasper, it felt like an eternity sitting in his own filth, staring at the yellow gunk that kept oozing from his skin and pooling on the floor.
His clothes stuck to him, stiff and reeking of something between burnt oil and old socks.
Finally, he called out, voice hoarse.
“Master Leon?!”
No answer.
Jasper gritted his teeth.
Louder.
“Master Leon!”
The door slid open a crack.
Leon’s head peeked in, nose wrinkled.
“Yeah? You dead in there?”
Jasper pointed down at himself, miserable.
“I’m finished. But look at me. My clothes… they’re soaked in that yellow crap. I smell awful. I need a change of clothes and a shower. Now.”
Leon sniffed the air, then recoiled slightly.
“Yeah. You’re right. You smell terrible.”
Jasper groaned.
“So give me something! Where’s the shower?”
Leon pointed a finger behind him.
“Look behind you. Press the red button.”
Jasper turned.
Sure enough, there was a red button set into the stone wall he hadn’t noticed before.
He pressed it.
The room shuddered.
The walls shifted, stone grinding against stone.
The toilet and drain sank into the floor, and panels slid aside.
In seconds, the cramped cleansing room reshaped itself into a small shower room.
Steam vents hissed to life overhead.
Next to the shower stall was something else—a tall metal cylinder with a slot on top, glowing faintly with heat.
Jasper stared at it.
“What the hell is that?”
“That,” Leon said through the door, “is an incinerator. Fancy word for a glorified garbage furnace. Toss the clothes you’re wearing in there. They’re ruined, and I’m not letting that biohazard walk around the guildhouse.”
Jasper looked down at himself, then at the cylinder.
“Already waiting in the shower stall,” Leon said.
“Don’t be shy. Take a long, relaxing shower. You earned it. And trust me, you’ll want to get every trace of that stuff off you before it sets.”
Jasper hesitated for half a second, then stripped off the stiff, stinking clothes and dropped them into the incinerator slot.
The cylinder flared, and the clothes vanished in a flash of heat, not even leaving ash.
He stepped into the shower.
Hot water hit him, and for the first time since the portal opened, he felt normal.
The yellow residue slid off easily, washing down the drain in swirls of sickly gold.
The heat loosened muscles he didn’t know were tense.
His head cleared more with every minute.
Outside, Leon’s voice drifted in, lazy and amused.
“Don’t fall asleep in there. I’ve got breathing techniques waiting, and I’m not letting you waste my time.”
Jasper let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
“Yeah, yeah. Give me five minutes, Master Leon.”
For now, the only thing that mattered was standing under the hot water and pretending, just for a moment, that his life hadn’t been flipped upside down.
The hot water ran for a full thirty minutes.
Jasper didn’t move from under it.
The heat peeled off the last of the yellow gunk, washed away the ache, the stink, the exhaustion.
When he finally shut it off, he felt lighter than he had in years.
He dried off and dressed in the clothes laid out for him: *boxer, vest, then the red and black tracksuit*.
The tracksuit was slightly heavy.
Not enough to slow him down, but enough that he noticed it.
Like the fabric itself was training him just by existing on his skin.
He stepped out into the hall.
Leon was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded like he’d been meditating the whole time.
He took one look at Jasper, sniffed the air deliberately, then grinned.
“You don’t smell like sewage anymore,” Leon said.
“You now smell like a decent human being.”
Jasper rolled his eyes.
“Thanks. I think.”
“Come on,” Leon said, pushing off the wall.
“Training doesn’t happen in hallways.”
They walked out of the guildhouse and into a clearing surrounded by tall trees.
Quiet.
Open.
The air here felt different — cleaner, heavier, like it had more to it than normal air.
Leon stopped in the middle of the field and turned to Jasper.
“Sit. Cross-legged. Start meditating.”
Jasper frowned but obeyed, lowering himself to the grass. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
The tracksuit’s weight pressed down just enough to make him sit up straight without thinking about it.
Leon crouched in front of him and placed two pills in his palm.
One was pale gray.
The other was dull bronze.
“The gray one is for *Rat Stage Level 1*,” Leon said.
“It’ll awaken your senses to energy. The bronze one is to stabilize it. You take them fifteen minutes apart. Don’t rush it.”
Jasper stared at them.
“And if I mess up?”
“Then we would have to start over and I am sure you don’t want to do this again.”
Jasper shattered at the thought then popped the gray pill first.
Bitter, metallic taste.
A second later, warmth spread through his gut, faint but real.
Like a thread of something he’d never noticed before.
Leon sat down across from him and started talking, voice calm, even.
“Listen while you cycle. This is the *Beast Zodiac Cultivation System*. Rat to Tiger. Every stage has the same structure: Level 1 to Level 5, then a bottleneck, then a Lightning Tribulation. Pass it, you move to the next stage. Fail, you get kicked back to Peak of the same stage and try again.”
He counted off on his fingers.
“*Rat Stage* — Foundation. Level 1 is Awakening. That’s what you’re doing now. Level 2 is circulation. Level 3 is stable foundation. Level 4 is strengthened body and flow control. Level 5 is Rat Peak.”
“*Pig Stage* — Stability. Body strengthens, endurance improves.”
“*Rabbit Stage* — Agility. Speed, reflexes, perception evolve.”
“*Goat Stage* — Endurance. Durability and persistence.”
“*Rooster Stage* — Awareness. Perception and precision increase.”
“*Dog Stage* — Balance. Offense and defense.”
“*Monkey Stage* — Adaptation. Cunning, unpredictable movement.”
“*Horse Stage* — Speed Explosion. Raw speed and burst power.”
“*Snake Stage* — Precision and Control.”
“*Ox Stage* — Strength. Raw physical power.”
“*Tiger Stage* — Apex Mortal. Peak of mortal beast cultivation.”
Leon paused, letting it sink in.
“After Tiger comes Dragon, but that’s beyond you right now. And beyond that is the Post-Dragon system — Void Shattering, Immortal, True Immortal, all the way to Apex God. No levels there. Just bottleneck accumulation and tribulation.”
Jasper kept his eyes closed, focusing on the faint warmth in his gut.
It was responding to his breathing, slow and sluggish, but it was _there_.
“Fifteen minutes,” Leon said.
“When it stabilizes, you take the bronze pill. That’s your first real step. Don’t fall asleep on me.”
Jasper didn’t answer.
He just breathed.
For the first time since this whole thing started, he felt like he was actually starting.