Hugh opened his eyes, not knowing how much time had passed. He knew that he was very hungry, but that was nothing new.

  Feeling a mix of satiety in his muscles with hunger from his stomach was still a relatively new feeling to him though. It was the same as when he practiced his breathing while stuck in the room inside the auction house.

  By now, Hugh knew that it meant he was done for a while. From what he had gathered so far, he was pretty much finished until after he slept next.

  Figuring this to be the case again, Hugh got up and stretched his slightly aching muscles before looking around the house to find Heron and some food.

  After leaving the training room, Hugh went directly to the front room and found Heron just lying on a long bench with pillows.

  Hugh said, “How long has it been?”

  Heron jumped in surprise at the unexpected voice as he was lost in thought.

  After calming himself, Heron said,“ Jeez kid. It’s not polite to sneak up on people like that.”

  Hugh didn’t know what else he should have done since he was still at the entrance where the hall met the front room when he spoke.

  Luckily, Heron kept talking, “It’s been a day. Take it you’ve made progress?”

  Hugh nodded now that Heron was looking in his direction and said, “Yeah, though I can’t tell if it matters if I am in that room or not.”

  Heron said, “Who knows how long you would’ve been if you weren’t in that room. Are you almost there?”

  Hugh said, “No. I’ve done as much as I feel like I can right now. I have to rest or get some sleep before I can do it again. I’m very hungry though.”

  Heron frowned. He didn’t like how vague Hugh was with his answer so he asked, “How long do you think it’ll be before you are at Condensation?”

  About to go into the kitchen to get some food, Hugh paused to think. Hesitantly, he said, “It took me about three weeks the first time to get to Mist? I think I am in Mist?”

  Heron asked, “Are you in Mist?”

  Heron mumbled to himself right after. Is he in Mist? He has to be at least Mist or the teleportation would’ve messed him up more. Yeah. And supposedly each stage takes twice as long so a month and a half until he reaches condensation then. Alright. I just need to hang out until then and….

  Hugh saw Heron began mumbling to himself and he was too hungry to really care after not eating for a day, so he turned and walked to the kitchen.

  Looking around, he found some bread and didn’t bother with anything else, just ripping it into smaller pieces before shoving it in his mouth. Intermittently drinking some water between bites, he continued for a while before he felt a little better.

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  When he was done, Hugh went back to the front room to find Heron still lying on the bench, no longer mumbling.

  He didn’t really have anything to say and he was curious about the floor in the training room, so he returned to it to try and make sense of what it was.

  The days dragged on like this until almost a month had gone by and Hugh's meditation time shortened every day.

  Today he finished in just under an hour and the sensation he got reminded him about what happened last time.

  He felt like he could move on if he just did, something. The only problem was that he still wasn’t exactly sure what he had to do.

  It was because of that, he spent most of his time on the seemingly fruitless endeavor to figure out how the training room worked.

  After all this time Hugh felt no closer than when he came here trying to figure out the floor. The only progress he made was having memorized it entirely. He no longer needed to go to the training room to look at it and just tried to understand by his memory now while lying in his room. Heron wasn’t any help either as he seemed to just exist, not really doing anything except complain about being a captive and not having anything to drink.

  Of course, it didn’t take long for Hugh to figure out he just wanted alcohol, but there wasn’t anything he could do except what he was already doing.

  Another three weeks passed and Hugh felt that all progress had stopped. No matter how long he sat in the training room, he felt like he couldn’t take in any more of the surrounding energy and keep it.

  It wasn’t for lack of trying, or that no energy was taken in, but any excess just seemed to bleed out of him and escape back into his surroundings. The small mist-like mass of energy he found in his center seemed full, refusing to consume any more energy.

  Hugh knew that the next stage was called condensation and had thought it over again and again on how to move on. He was frustrated being a step away and yet so far.

  Getting up, Hugh walked into the front room to find Heron lying in his normal position, wallowing in the boredom he so proclaimed as his only pass-time.

  “I’m almost there.”

  Hugh didn’t get a response at first so he wondered if Heron was asleep. Just when he was about to go lay on his bed again, Heron started talking.

  “How much longer?”

  Hugh thought for a moment before saying, “I can’t take in any more energy and I can’t figure out how to move from Mist into Condensation.”

  Heron sat up quickly and looked at Hugh.

  “You can’t figure it out?”

  Hugh nodded.

  “It’s simple. Just gather a whole bunch and shove it into the center of whatever is holding the energy.”

  Hugh stood, flabbergasted. He had not tried that. He had obviously tried adding more to it, but it was always at a steady rate.

  Hugh asked, “Is that it? How do you know this?”

  Heron said, “Do you really think I wouldn’t know that, especially after trying to do it myself for so many years? It’s common knowledge. I can’t believe you didn’t know that. Even if you were stuck in the middle of nowhere, it’s not like nobody knew what cultivation was.”

  Hugh thanked Heron as he began on one of his long monologues Hugh came to know him for. They were mildly entertaining at first, but they got old fast when the content began repeating itself over and over, complaining about the situation.

  Hugh returned to the training room and sat back down, calming his mind before he began his rhythmic breathing once again. This time focusing on holding the extra energy he gathered with each breath apart from his mist-like core as he went.

  Slowly but surely, he built it up, feeling like he was trying to build another blob of energy inside himself.

  As the hours passed, he felt like it was a good enough amount and attempted to shove it against his core.

  Eyes wide, Hugh felt something new as he sucked in a breath. His body lightly trembled as all the energy he gathered pushed inside at once, and this time it didn’t leave.

  He sat there trying to feel what was going on, but all he knew was that it was progress, even if he didn’t know how much yet, he was just glad to be moving forward again.

  Days began to pass once again and each day Hugh would sit for roughly 12 hours and gather energy to push into his mist energy center all at once at the end. Two and a half weeks later, Hugh ran out of the room at a speed faster than before as he almost hit a wall.

  “I’m in Condensation!”