The new day welcomed Theo by way of the sun's warm rays seeping through the wooden shutters of the room he rented, pulling him out of the abyss of his dreams and forcing him straight back to reality.
'It's morning already?'
Theo sluggishly blinked his eyes a few times before wiping the sleep-oils from his face.
The long sleep that he had, a concession the state of his body forced upon him, left him much more tired than a short nap would. Not only that, it was a massive waste of his time… but one that allowed his body to properly regain its strength.
'Given what's in store for me, from now on, I can't really afford to ignore the state of my body. Not anymore.'
This was the main difference between Theo's old and new lives.
Back in his original lifetime, he knew he was fucked from the very moment he first learned about his limits. And from the very moment he conceived his long-winded plan to overcome those very limits, he knew he would never see to live beyond early thirties.
It was this knowledge that allowed him to push his body to the limits, breaking all the rules of healthy life and conditioning himself to die to a heart attack before reaching forty… All because he never had any plans to live in his broken body for that long.
Now, however, the situation had changed. And while Theo's cultivation made his body much more resilient than it would be otherwise…
'It's quite ironic, isn't it?' Theo thought as he rose up from the bed and took his time to put on his robes. 'On one hand, cultivation makes people much stronger than they should be. On the other hand, however, by actually making use of this increased endurance, one would only make further growth harder for themselves.'
By ignoring the needs of one's body, one would have to compensate for its shortcomings by absorbing more of the spiritual energy and working all the harder on building their cultivation. Which is why the toughest people around were also the ones who took the best possible care of their flesh, stopping at nothing to hone their bodies to their absolutely perfect form.
After all, only in this way could they lower the difficulty of their cultivation, a task that continued to grow harder and harder as one climbed through its ranks.
"Yaaaawn!"
Stretching his hands out to the side, Theo followed his old habits and moved over to the window before pushing its wooden shutters open, allowing some fresh air into the room… Or so he would, if not for the walls of his room having so many cracks and holes, the air within never grew stale to begin with.
Still, whether it was but a projection of his imagination or not, the first breath of the outside air acted like the cup of a strong coffee on the young man, giving him the strength to cast away the morning drowsiness. And with his sluggishness gone, Theo stretched his arms out before starting a full stretching routine.
Today was going to be even harder, busier, and longer than yesterday, even when taking into account the whole mess with Lady Tia of the Serene ducal household.
'At the very least, I've got to clarify the meaning behind her wording from back then,' Theo thought, moving with his thoughts to the still-fresh memory of when Tia effectively forced him to accept her as his disciple.
And, according to their deal, the first lesson would happen right here, in just a few moments, making the best use of the time they had before the caravan Kremy organized would pick the cargo and hurriedly deliver it to the Slevian sect.
'Well, seeing how far she went with her cultivation at such a young age, she should be bright enough to catch on to the magic foundations quite quickly, shouldn't she?' Theo thought, only to then grit his teeth as he had no other choice but to face the issue that he already noticed yesterday when the reality of his days going forward became clear.
'What kind of magic should I teach her?'
There was the option of just going all out and turning her into a proper, modern mage, perfectly able to manifest glyphs the same way Theo did. A path made harder by the fact that her developed cultivation would make any changes to her inner state increasingly harder to implement than they would be to a total newbie.
'Still, seeing how I can do it without any prior training, though,' Theo thought, as he summoned a simple spark of fire before watching how it gracefully danced between his fingers, only to then slam his fist closed—extinguishing the flame in the process. 'She should be able to do it. The question is, how stupid would I have to be to teach her the same kind of magic that I mastered?'
Theo shook his head before moving away from the window and opting to rest his back against the wall beside it instead.
'I could try to teach her the old-time magic. Not only is it far simpler than the modern one, it's ultimately the kind of magic ancients used to reach levels no one else did in ages,' Theo continued to grind the gears of his mind. 'Then, there's the hybrid option…'
A school of magic most mages, Theo included, disregarded as an ugly child of the old, arcana-based theory and the modern, glyph-based one. The one and only school of magic that borrowed the strengths out of both of its parent disciplines to make the whole process much easier than it should be, at the price of greatly limited potential in it.
Still, for someone born in the world where only cultivation existed…
'With as much mana as she has to spare, who is there to say she wouldn't become an absolute monster with the hybrid magic theory?'
Theo closed his eyes and rapidly pulled his head to the back, all the way to the point where the back of his skull struck against the wall hard enough for the man to feel a tinge of pain, quite the feat given the natural endurance of a cultivator of a fifth rank like him.
And before he could make any real choice, a sound of knocking came from the other side of the door to his room, followed by Tia that just invited herself inside without any care for manners or ceremony.
"I'm here, master!" she chirped happily while carrying a tray filled with foods, pots, and various herbs in it, all arranged in accordance with the note Theo left her with. "And I've brought everything that you wanted!"
The eagerness in her voice managed to soften Theo's heart for a moment, bringing his mental back to when he first discovered the wonders of magic himself, only to then drag him over to the memory when he first taught magic to a fellow, passionate cadet.
And, riding on the wave of this very nostalgia, Theo breathed out a long sigh, accepting the fact that for how much he hated to admit it, he had made his choice long ago.
"Good," he spoke before reaching out with his hand and pointing at a small bedside table, the only piece of furniture in the inn's room besides the small bed and the solid coffer for the guests to store their private items at while away. "Put the tray away."
Tia, despite being of a social status high enough to make the lord of the town welcome her with his forehead pressed against the cobblestone of his courtyard, followed Theo's orders without even a hint of protest. Yet, as soon as she freed her hands from the tray she brought over, a new set of directives came.
"Good," Theo spoke, only to move his hand over to the middle of the free space in the rustic room, "now, kneel here and strip."