The inside of Hasegawa's tent was more like a small apartment, with a carpeted floor, a Queen size bed, a small kitchen space, and a few decorative touches. I was less surprised than I might have been—plenty of Dive Games had spaces that were "bigger on the inside"--but I still had to laugh a little. My own apartment in the old world had only been slightly bigger. "This, uh, feedback thing that happens. It isn't destructive in nature, is it?"
Hasegawa laughed at that. "No, the core will simply disintegrate and the remaining Qi disperses into the air. The most that happens is an increase in the Qi density of the immediate environment for a while."
"All right then...I'll start with the weakest one." I took out the core from the Sabrefang and entered the cultivation state. By now, I could enter that state while not in a meditative position, or even while standing. Right away, I could tell what Hasegawa meant by the Qi from the core flooding into me. And just as quickly, I realized the connection between the between state of consciousness undertaken while cultivating, and the process of controlling the flow from the core. It was my consciousness that had to DO the controlling. By extending it to the core, I was able to will its Qi to "calm down" and stop stressing the core's structure while continuing to enter my body.
In this case, the core was weak and quite able to be controlled by my consciousness, though it tried to slip out a few times. In what didn't feel like very long, I finished absorbing the last of the roughly 500,000 Qi in the core, and it crumbled to dust.
When I looked up, Hasegawa actually clapped. "You've trained your Reaction, haven't you? From a very young age, I believe—your new younger body notwithstanding. Dive Gaming, was it? I'm guessing you had quite an evasive style."
I raised my eyebrows. That was a bit spookily accurate. "The numbers of the Nine Measures are not absolute," said Hasegawa, "rather, they are a measure of one's 'maximum possible' strength, or resolve, or what have you. Have you heard of the idea that even mortals from your world are sometimes capable of incredible feats of strength without bodybuilding in extreme situations? Or the idea that we only ever use a certain amount of our brainpower?"
I nodded. "Well, it's somewhat like that," he continued, "someone accustomed to using their strength will be able to actually produce strength closer to their indicated number than someone who doesn't exert themselves. You focused on honing your reaction time as a Dive Gamer, so you're able to react at a rating that reaches a higher percentage of your Reaction number than other cultivators. It always works best with such things that have been trained from an early age. And Reaction is extremely helpful with absorbing core Qi."
"It sounds like the Mind and Soul measures have a whole bunch of hidden functions."
Hasegawa nodded. "The Body measures too, though they're pretty easy to work out if you think about it. Second year technical studies will cover things like what I've told you in more detail. For now, let's see if you can adjust to the Second Stage core."
I nodded and got out the core from the Speartail Wolf. As Hasegawa indicated, it was a bit harder to control than the last, and it took longer to fully absorb, but I managed it.
I was about to get out the last, big core when Hasegawa interjected. "Hold on. Now that you've got this far there's something I should point out, since it's my fault you haven't been to the field shop yet. It has things for sale as well as buying monster parts, and among those there is a type of pill called an "Earth Absorption Pill" that makes it easier to absorb a core's Qi, effectively lowering the difficulty of absorbing a core of the same Realm as its Grade by one stage. If you swallow a Grade 4 Earth Absorption Pill before trying the Stage 4 core, the difficulty will be like absorbing a Stage 3 core. Absorbing a core that isn't above their own rank is at least possible for even unremarkable cultivators. In your case, I'd say it'd raise your success chance above 90%."
"And they're being sold now?"
Hasegawa nodded. "The summer camps exchange monster parts for special currency that students can trade for helpful items. The Earth Absorbing Pill is actually one of the lowest grade pills, so a single Rank 4 one shouldn't be out of your range."
"Thank you, I'll go and see about that now. Do you want me to come back after?"
"No, I've seen enough. I'm sure you want to get back out there as soon as you can."
"Actually, I need to recover from the Gazers for a while, but yeah I'd best get set up here at least for tonight."
"Uh, hold on." That brought me up short—Hasegawa didn't usually sound so hesitant. "You've taken how much mental damage and you still achieved two 100% core absorptions? On weaker cores, but still..."
"There's a few other former Dive Gamers in the year, I'm sure they'd be able to do the same."
"I'm not as sure about that," said Hasegawa, "other than maybe Kunlun Jong. As far as I'm aware, the others were 'gold farmers' for at least a decade or two longer than you were. They didn't have any league records coming into the Academy, either."
"Just how much research have you done on me?"
Hasegawa smirked. "And why shouldn't I? You're one of the Academy's top students, after all. Studying promising arrivals' backgrounds is important for us to learn where we may be able to draw more talent from in the future."
"I see..." Well, I actually didn't. Weren't people like Hasegawa supposed to be basically NPCs? Why did they even take that much of an interest in who we were before joining the PVE, let alone how they'd actually be able to find out that much about me? I was hardly going to tell him that, though.
Be patient, I told myself, I know you feel like there's some big secret here but it's not like they're going to up and just tell you. Best stop thinking about it and roll with it for a while.