As Kate bit down on his hand, Lake hurriedly tried to remove his hand from her mouth but it was too late.
Clink!
Kate’s eyes widened as she felt her teeth rattle, almost shattering as she felt like she was biting down on steel and not the hand of a human.
"Are his hands made of steel?! My teeth feel like they’re about to break!"
Kate scread internally, however, regardless of how much her teeth hurt, she continued to bite down on the steel-like palm in her mouth as it was the only thing preventing her from screaming out.
Right now, she would rather die than scream out in front of Lake.
"We’re both the sa age, right? Why is the difference between us so big?! I’m starting to doubt if we’re even a part of the sa species!"
As Kate bit down on his hand, Lake quickly realized what she was trying to do. At the sa ti, he also sighed helplessly.
After upgrading Steel Body to the max level, his entire body had beco as strong and as hard as steel. In fact, Lake was more surprised that Kate’s teeth didn’t shatter when she bit down on his palm.
After seeing Kate struggling under the pain, Lake decided to stop wasting more ti and continued to push the mana through her body, opening flow path after flow path letting explosion after explosion echo out from the inside of her body as she trembled under the constant pain.
As her body shook under the force of Lake forcing her flow paths open Kate thought to herself that if it wasn’t for the fact that she could feel the mana in her body flowing faster and faster, constantly recovering her stamina and revitalizing her body, she really would have passed out from the pain.
Ti slowed to a crawl as Kate experienced both the pleasure and pain of having her flow path forcefully opened up. Each second felt like an eternity under the pressure of Lake’s mana manipulation and by the ti it was done, the stars in the sky had already co out.
Collapsing to the floor, Kate felt a familiar feeling of exhaustion envelop her as she breathed heavily.
As she laid on the floor, Kate closed her eyes as she tried to sense the mana flowing through the new flow path.
Kate could only sense a thin line of mana flowing through her ridians now that the volu of her flow paths had been increased so drastically. However, when she looked closely at the flowing mana, she was shocked to find that it was flowing more than twenty tis faster than before!
"Take the ti to rest and familiarize yourself with the new flow path. After a few minutes we’ll continue with the modifications."
"There’s still more to go?!"
Hearing Lake’s words, Kate shouted out in slight horror.
After Lake had finished the modification, Kate felt that her training speed had increased by more than ten tis. If nothing goes wrong in the future, she should be able to reach at least the peak of Martial Apprentice within the next year at the current speed!
Kate was really amazed by Lake’s thod but at the sa ti she was slightly disappointed. After all, her technique didn’t just involve the use of mana but also the astral energy of the celestial bodies.
Because of this, even if the speed of her mana had increased by so much, her actual speed was still slower than if she was practicing a pure mana technique.
However, even then, Kate was more than satisfied with the current level of her training speed yet Lake still wanted to continue?! Does that an that she could go even faster in the future?
When Kate thought of this, she imdiately decided.
"No matter what happens today, I need to recruit him to my guild in the future!"
...
After resting for a few minutes, Kate was able to move again and got up. Normally it would have taken her more than a few hours to recover this much but thanks to the increased mana flow, her recovery was much faster than normal.
"What’s next?" Kate asked Lake as she slowly sat back up.
"The next part depends on you. For us to continue I’m going to need to know what the second energy you’re absorbing is. Based on that I can continue the modification, but I guess that energy involves your family’s secrets."
Kate’s eyes shrank a little as she fell into deep thought upon hearing Lake’s words.
"That’s why I’m only going to ask you once. Do you trust ?"
This ti Kate took a long ti to reply.
Lake stayed silent as he waited for Kate to answer his question.
The reason why he asked this was due to the secondary requirent of the quest. Besides raising the Martial Masters and Warriors, Lake also had to make sure that each one he raised was considered his ally.
That’s why, before he chose to continue the modification of Kate’s technique, Lake needed Kate to agree. If she doesn’t, then Lake would only be wasting his ti by continuing.
After a few minutes, Kate finally spoke after a sigh.
"Fine, I’ll trust you this ti but you must swear never to reveal what I’m about to tell you. If you speak out about the secrets of my family, even if you did help , I won’t be able to stop my father from chasing you down. After all, you know how valuable a mana circulation technique is to a martial arts family like mine."
Listening to Kate’s words, Lake smiled slightly as he nodded his head.
"I swear I won’t speak out about it. I guess we can be considered allies now, right?"
"Allies, huh? I guess that’s the best way to describe this relationship as I’m definitely not friendly enough with you to be considered friends."
As Kate spoke, Lake heard a system notification in his head. Opening the system to take a glance, Lake saw a little change in the system window.
[1 ally has been acquired. Detected that the ally hasn’t t the level requirent of the system. Please work hard to advance the ally to et the requirents as soon as possible!]
[Allies - 0/150 (1 ally waiting to be advanced)]
Seeing that Kate was now considered an ally, Lake felt relieved. This way he has already made so progress for the quest so at least the first day wouldn’t be considered wasted.
After hearing Lake’s agreent, Kate sighed as she began to explain about her technique.
As she spoke, Lake pretended to nod along in agreent and even ask a few questions every now and then.
He already knew everything about her technique but he couldn’t afford to reveal that as he would have no way to explain how unless he revealed his ability to read fates, which was sothing Lake would never do, even if it killed him.
After all, if people knew that he could see through their entire lives and know all of their secrets, Lake felt that a lot of them would want him dead to keep their nasty pasts hidden.
After Kate finished speaking, Lake pretended to be in deep thought for a few minutes as he mulled over the basic details of the technique in his head.
The Stellar Fusion Technique was fairly simple but also a little complex. It worked by absorbing the mana in the air and fusing it with the astral energy of the stars. The astral energy is absorbed under the light of the celestial bodies using a seemingly ancient ditation technique acquired from Kate’s ancestors.
This ditation technique was originally a ntal exercise used to increase one’s focus and energy levels before the Disaster.
With the addition of mana in the world after the Disaster, Kate’s father and grandfather were able to modify the technique to a level where it was one of the most powerful mana circulation techniques the continent has ever seen.
"Alright, I think I have an idea of how the technique works but I’m going to need you to practice it for to get a proper feel for it."
Hearing Lake’s words, Kate nodded as she sat back down.
Since she had already told Lake about the technique, there was no point in holding back now. If he truly could increase the speed of her cultivation to an even higher level, she felt that should she tell her father, he would be grateful to Lake for the huge favor he did for his daughter instead of harboring anger towards him.
As Kate slowly sank into thought, she began to enter a rhythmic breathing state as she began to clear her mind of distracting thoughts, focusing on the mantra of the diation technique.
Illuminated by the light of the night sky, Lake could see a visible shift in the light around Kate with his Magic Eye as it slowly moved around her, flowing towards the crown of her head.
Soon, the light entered her body. As it started flowing through her, Lake silently moved behind Kate, gently placing a hand on her back.
Kate didn’t seem to notice when Lake did this as she appeared to be in a deep ditative state.
Letting his mana flow through her once more, Lake focused on the changes happening inside Kate’s body.
Looking closely, he could see the mana flowing through her body at incredible speeds through the new flow paths. Looking towards the flow path near Kate’s head, Lake could see the astral energy enter her body.
The astral energy was a pure, translucent white stream that had an astounding amount of power radiating from it. Looking at the energy slowly flowing through her body, Lake saw the astral energy travel through the ridian system, slowly going down towards the core of her body where most of the stabilized mana had been absorbed.
When the two energies ca in contact with each other, Lake saw a clash of blue and white as the two energies suddenly engaged in a fierce battle within Kate’s body.
The two energies were like dragons, clashing against one another in a tempestuous struggle as the mana pressured the astral energy, trying to disperse it while the astral energy fought back, trying to find a place within the ridian system.
After a few minutes, the battle between the two energies eventually ca to an end as the astral energy finally blended into the mana within Kate’s body, turning into a blue stream of energy with shimring light flowing through it, looking like a stream of galaxies in the night sky.
When Kate finally combined the two energies, around fifteen minutes had passed and she could sense that the astral mana within her body had increased by a small amount.
Sensing this small change, Kate was extrely excited. Normally it would have taken her an hour or so to complete the sa transformation of mana and astral energy, but under the effects of the increased mana flow, the transformation was able to be completed much faster.
The best part was that the pain and uncomfortable feeling from the two energies clashing was greatly reduced under the suppression of the mana, allowing for the astral energy to be absorbed faster and smoother without as much resistance compared to before.
However, Kate could feel that a little bit of the absorbed astral energy was dissipated during the transformation, resulting in the process not being fully efficient but Kate was already satisfied with this result.
When she opened her eyes to look around, she found Lake sitting behind her with a palm on her back.
After a few seconds, Lake opened his eyes.
"I’ve already gotten a sense of the technique. Next, try it once more and allow my mana to guide the mana in your core."
"Alright." Kate didn’t waste words and directly agreed. At this point, she’d be a fool if she didn’t take advantage of Lake’s assistance.
Starting up the ditation technique again, Kate started absorbing the astral energy from the night sky.
The energy continued to be absorbed until it slowly crawled towards Kate’s core. After a while, it was about to clash again with the mana.
Unfortunately, Lake’s skill only related to mana so he wasn’t able to think of a way to speed up the absorption of astral energy.
However, on the flip side, his proficiency with mana allowed him to be extrely familiar with all of its prosperities, and even ways to manipulate them.
Using his mana, he guided the stored mana in Kate’s body that was about to clash with the astral energy to form a small pattern of several anticlockwise rotating spirals.
The astral energy that was about to clash in a fierce battle against the mana, imdiately stopped and was pulled apart into separate threads, each thread flowing into a different spiral, before mixing together harmoniously.
Looking at the speedy transformation of the two energies, Lake knew he had succeeded. When his Arcane Knowledge Skill had reached level 2, Lake had learned about a unique property of mana known as reverse rotation.
This property worked as its na stated, whenever mana rotates in an anticlockwise direction, its properties reverse, becoming docile instead of aggressive, allowing for the mixture of the two energies to proceed smoothly.
It was an incredibly simple concept that Lake honestly thought should have been common knowledge to any martial artist practicing multi-energy absorption techniques, especially a family of martial artists such as the Blackheart Family who developed such a powerful technique with such contradictory energies, but to be fair to them, Lake knew that his Arcane Knowledge skill, especially at it’s high level, would far outclass the other residents of the Grey Dragon Continent due to them having much less ti to interact with mana than the System who would have compiled all the world’s knowledge into Lake’s head.
If Lake had to put it into perspective, it was like the people of the Grey Dragon Continent only had proper access to mana for a hundred years. In those hundred years, the first fifty or so were spent integrating it into the martial arts of the world, while the next thirty years were spent advancing the martial arts with only the last twenty years spent actually studying mana and learning of its properties.
On the other hand, Lake’s maxed level Arcane Knowledge skill was equivalent to thousands of years of research and experints conducted and cramd into his head. Sothing that could be considered simple to Lake may have taken tens of years for humanity to get a grasp on.
After less than a minute, both energies had been successfully combined in each spiral turning into astral mana.
With Lake’s guidance, he slowed down the speed of rotation of each spiral before allowing them to return to its original form.
Once it did, each spiral slowly combined back together forming a stream of astral mana that quickly assimilated into Kate’s flow path.
However, once the energy combined back together, a strange phenonon occurred without Lake’s interference, catching him off guard.
The astral mana flowing through Kate’s body slowly started to speed up, flowing faster and faster as the nearby mana in the surrounding rushed towards her body.
Noticing the sudden shift in the surroundings, Lake focused his attention on the inside of Kate’s body, where the astral mana had blood into what Lake could only describe as a small universe in her core.
The mana acting as the blank space of the night sky with the translucent, white astral energy taking the place of stars, shining brightly in the whirlpool of magic.
While Lake was looking at the sudden phenonon in amazent, he suddenly saw a few white specs within the small universe light up, forming a unique formation using the small universe as its canvas.
When the formation was fully ford, a bright light flashed within Kate’s core as Lake felt his mana get cut off from her body.
Boom!
With a loud bang, Lake felt a wave of energy crash into his body as he flew more than ten ters backwards before quickly stabilizing himself and landing on the ground.
Looking at the mana and astral energy rushing towards Kate’s body like a storm, Lake suddenly had a bold thought.
"Awakening?"
User Comments
0 comments from readers