Andrew Robinson Leinbach
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Chapter 169: Cultivation
🕑 Added 2023-07-04 23:41:10 +0000 UTCMila
For the last four years, ever since they’d placed the specialized artifact Aalam made from Nana Xara’s design on one of Epecteos’s F rank planets, Mila had been able to telepathically communicate with Aalam, Diana, Isaiah, and her grandmother at will, and it had been a huge boost to her mood.
Almost every day, for at least half an hour, she’d use one of her minds to talk with Diana, the experience far less exasperating than talking with their master. And she could join in on their daily training with Epecteos through sharing Aalam’s senses.
Aalam himself didn’t talk to her much, however, having become mildly obsessed with studying the runic legacy left behind by Runemaster Alashan and the two puzzle books he had from Camoran the Spirit Smith, and Mila recognized he was trying to create some distance between them. They no longer chatted just for fun, pretty much only speaking when dealing with work, and, after the first couple years of this, Mila had accepted it. She still didn’t like it, feeling rather lonely and isolated as the only one in the group not on Earth, but she was pretty much doing the same thing to her grandmother, so she didn’t feel any right to complain.
One new good thing in her life, however, was her Sin Eater racial ability. Due to it letting her turn the types of karmic sin she didn’t need for upgrading her Advanced Devil’s Contract skill into the types of karmic merit required for the two skills she wanted to gain from the War of the Chosen, she no longer had to act like a saint and go out to heal people all the time. And this enabled her to go into isolated training inside the Violet Mountain Sect and practice with her other skills, including Law Infusion, the skill Aalam needed for advancing his Triforce Construction skill.
That skill she’d already managed to nearly master, so, when she met Aalam again, and if Aalam fully mastered Triforce Construction and the Soulcraft skill he’d likely merge in the next year or so, he’d be able to merge all three and she’d have an extra skill slot to play with.
“Alright, everyone,” Epecteos said one morning as the whole group on Earth gathered on the cargo ship in the middle of the Atlantic, everyone sitting on various cargo containers and Mila sharing Aalam’s senses so she could take part remotely, “You’ve been participating in the War of the Chosen for three years now and Diana’s informed me the Yin Yang Sage thinks we should have a talk about your paths to power now that you’ve experienced fighting against more and more talented E ranks.
“First, though, we should discuss cultivation at the various ranks of power, as once you reach C, B, and A rank your choices in your cultivation will start to be more important than your classes and races, at least according to my talks with the Yin Yang Sage through Diana.” He nodded his head toward Diana as thanks for being the bridge to allow him such a rare chance of talking with an A rank.
Epecteos, not having talked to Nana Xara directly, had a much higher opinion of her than either Mila or Diana.
“First, F rank is all about establishing your foundation. You practice the best cultivation technique you can get to as high a level as you can and that starts the creation of the building blocks which will be used at later ranks.
“You have all done well at this, much, much, much better than me. For Aalam, Isaiah, Diana, and Mila, you couldn’t possibly do better according to what we know. And, while Irena and Nitya’s foundations are not flawless, that can be easily fixed with resources you have already done well enough in the War of the Chosen to earn, so it isn’t an issue.
“E rank then is the stage of mortal shedding, where your soul and body become one, and there are two important tasks to accomplish at this rank. First, you have to gain better and better control of your energies. Good cultivation techniques like the ones you have will help, but, if you want to truly maximize your benefits from E rank, training every day is absolutely required.” He particularly looked at Aalam, who always reluctantly came for combat training even if he knew it helped him. Then he turned to look at everyone else. “Second then is fully integrating one of your skills with your soul and cultivation technique.
“What skill you choose here is very important. I, for example, chose my Telekinesis skill and, in retrospect, that was a bad decision. It helped boost Telekinesis greatly, allowing me much finer control. But I don’t have a high enough Spirit stat to make use of the extra power my version of Telekinesis can exhibit, and my Aura stat is so low that I can’t use Telekinesis at a high range, greatly reducing the skill’s practicality.
“So, you all will need to think about your choices of skill much more carefully.
“But we’ll get to that in a bit.
“First, D rank. D rank is known in the universe as the man heaven integration stage and it is where you start to open all 108 of your body’s acupoints, opening one at each level. Acupoints are the gateways between your body’s internal energy channels and the universe as a whole, so opening each acupoint greatly increases your resource regeneration. Then, depending on your cultivation technique and the order in which you open your acupoints, your internal energy channels will be altered, and the end result will be a specialized flow of energy in your soul which will greatly increase the effectiveness of one, some, or maybe even all of your stats.
“Finally, C rank, known as the core formation stage, is where you will start to form cores of power in your Core Containers, fed by your Mana Wells and Mental Forges. Depending on your cultivation technique, the skill you chose at E rank, and the specialized energy channel paths you set in D rank, these cores will provide you different effects, but their power will depend on your stats, the size of your soulstructures, and how well you’ve done in your cultivation up to that point.
“There are other effects at B and A rank, but they are different for everyone and thus can’t actually be planned for, so there is no point in even bothering.”
He turned to look at each of them. “Have you all thought about what skill you want to choose at E rank?”
“Yes.” Everyone assented for themselves except for Aalam, who assented for both himself and Mila, as he would be representing Mila during the discussion as she couldn’t remotely talk to Epecteos directly.
“Good.” Epecteos smiled. Then he turned to look at Nitya. “Nitya. Why don’t you explain your choice first?”
“Okay.” Nitya nodded. “After discussing with everyone, I’ve chosen my One With the Hurricane skill. It’s my main passive, boosting all my other skills. And, according to what we’ve learned, choosing passive skills generally results in cores which provide stable and always usable boosts, which is what I want for my build.”
Epecteos returned her nod and then turned to Irena. “Irena?”
“I’m similar to Nitya, choosing my main passive, One With the Four Elements. And for the same reasons.”
Epecteos nodded to her as well and then turned to Isaiah. “Isaiah?”
“Dragon Drive.” Isaiah looked a tad nervous, even though there was no reason to. “I was debating between it and Servant Knight, as both are active boosting skills with similar effects. But then Aalam asked me a very simple question, ‘Which skill do you use more?’, and I realized I use Dragon Drive much more often as the Knight skill line interferes with Aalam’s Prince uniqueness when his Territory isn’t large enough.
“Dragon Drive also has a larger effect than Servant Knight, even though it costs more energy due to the healing required to fix the damage it does to my body, and it has synergistic effects with several of my racial abilities. It will likely result in a core with more explosive power than if I had an actual passive skill, but that represents how I fight anyway, so it is the best choice for me.”
“Isaiah.” Epecteos looked his apprentice straight in the eyes, his voice and demeanor very serious. “You’re going to be terrifying in the future. I’m so glad I’m not your enemy.”
A huge smile almost instantly formed on Isaiah’s face and both Epecteos and Diana started smiling as well. Nitya and Irena seemed a tad jealous, their bodies not strong enough to handle an explosive type of boosting skill like Dragon Drive, which they otherwise would have chosen. And Aalam seemed not to be fully paying attention, already knowing everyone’s choices as they’d all consulted him over the last couple years.
Mila, meanwhile, off in another galaxy cluster, was thinking about how difficult Isaiah was to fight when she first met him, and was very much agreeing with Epecteos’s statement. Isaiah’s stats were still relatively low, but, when fighting in the soul net with the same stats, he was still the best out of all of them and, the more she learned about cultivation, the more certain she became that likely wouldn’t change.
She and Aalam weren’t primarily combatants, and Diana’s abilities made her more specialized for war than single combat.
Epecteos then turned to look at Diana. “What about you, Diana?”
“Balance of Dualism.” Diana’s eyes shone slightly with excitement. “It’s a passive skill which makes my body able to hold both yin and yang energies at the same time and is the silent cornerstone of my build. More important, however, it will be enhanced into a skill with even more effects by the time I reach C rank and will thus allow for some truly powerful cores.
“My specific case has no exact precedent, as yin yang summoners are incredibly uncommon, but no one who’s ever integrated with the Balance of Dualism skill has ever failed to become a true powerhouse at C rank.
“Mostly, though, this is due to the skill’s high prerequisites, meaning usually only those from major powers can learn it in the first place.”
Epecteos nodded, likely having expected the answer ever since he’d learned the Balance of Dualism skill was the first skill Diana had learned directly from Nana Xara. Then he turned to look at Aalam. “What about you Aalam? And what about Mila? Everyone else has chosen core passive or boosting skills, but neither of your builds have any true core skills.”
“I’m choosing the new skill I’m going to gain from merging Sensory Domain, Heavenly Spark Domain, and Ruler’s Raiment. The skill is only theoretical now, so I’ll probably get to name it myself, and I imagine the effects from it and the Heavenly Spark version of the Twelve Element Primal Code will create a powerful core variant.” Aalam seemed cheerful, his aura showing happiness. “My original plan was to choose Runescriber, but then I got the Prince uniqueness so this one is now a better choice.”
Mila decided to take a second to just absorb that with one of her extra minds. Aalam’s plan, since the end of the tutorial, was to first merge the Sensory Domain skill at F rank, something no one in the history of the universe had ever done, and then merge it with a very rare skill like Ruler’s Raiment and a virtually unheard of skill like Heavenly Spark Domain to create a skill which only theoretically might exist.
“Mila, on the other hand, is currently planning on choosing her Evil Eyes skill as its advancement path is kind of amazing and will become more and more useful as she ranks up. Though, like the rest of us, she might choose a different skill depending on what uniqueness she awakens to from the War of the Chosen’s rewards.”
Aalam was being overly optimistic, as the awakening of uniquenesses in the War of the Chosen either required a whole lot more points than they were likely to get or being a commander of the winning army at the end. But, if they did find a way of gaining new uniquenesses, he wasn’t wrong that it might alter their desired paths to power.
Aalam’s Prince uniqueness, for example, had altered his skill choices. Originally, he’d just wanted to keep Sensory Domain as a detection skill.
“Okay then.” Epecteos smiled at them all. “Let’s talk about your paths to power, and what types of resources we’ll need to make them possible.”
