Chương 48: Chapter 47: New Cypher Art

The walk back from the dungeon to the guild was swift. He made sure to pick up a huge amount of mana crystals on his way back from the chicken dungeon too. After handing it all over to Miya and the now-grumpier old man, they began examining it while Nero went ahead and borrowed the guild kitchen with Miya's permission. There, he boiled all the harvested organs and ate them once they were done.

[You have acquired Strength Gene x24 (Primitive)] [You have acquired Luck Gene x3 (Primitive)] [You have acquired Dexterity Gene x13 (Primitive)] [You have acquired Constitution Gene x17 (Primitive)] He felt excitement well up inside him at the luck gene. Let's analyze and assimilate these later. The guild's kitchen certainly wasn't the best place to do these things, so he returned to the main hall and collected his money.

It came to seven gold crowns' worth of material that he'd sold them—a bit more than he'd expected. Guess that bag can fit a deceptively higher amount of materials, huh. He knew that dimensional bags were amazingly useful and could hold a lot of load, but not this much. According to his sect knowledge, the storage rings provided to official sect disciples had even more capacity than any dimensional bag sold out in the wild.

With the cash deposited on the card, he quickly returned to the sect and exchanged the money for seven spirit stones. He then went to the training grounds at the garden to start assimilating the genes. He'd gotten slightly lucky with that luck gene, though—he wondered if it was because that first goblin dungeon itself had been lucky, since being able to develop several pseudo-hobgoblins certainly wasn't common in E-rank dungeons.

As for the quantity of attribute genes, even though he'd wiped out a significant number of goblins back at Sylvia's village, he hadn't been able to take the gene talent of any of them. So naturally, his body hadn't adapted to their gene source.

"But even then, I wouldn't have gotten this many attribute genes from goblins alone if they were all one type." Good thing for him, he'd faced two different varieties of them—goblins more attuned to magic and goblins more attuned to physical prowess. This variety in attunement mattered, though it wasn't a huge factor. Killing two different species of monsters would've netted him far more attribute genes than what he'd gotten from a single species' varieties.

He eyed the beast soul section of the stats and found no beast soul gained. It felt odd, because he was certain red rats used to yield at least one beast soul from a dungeon.

"So why are my gains so small?" He wondered if it had something to do with a gene talent or Cypher Art they might have possessed, which increased their chances of yielding a beast soul. But even though he hadn't gotten any beast soul, looking at the section below that, he found five whole Primitive Gene fragments!

"Finally, some fragments." He felt relieved. Gene fragments—once a certain amount accumulated, usually ten, they would merge and transform into a full gene talent! They were the next most valuable thing after gene talent itself!

"Now, time to assimilate these!" He clenched his fists in excitement and got to assimilating them. As usual, the goblins came to him in their ridiculous fashion within his dream and handed him the inheritance. There was a sharp twist in his stomach, which quickly subsided as he woke and immediately reopened the status panel. Status Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Name: Nero Race: Human Core Stage: Dormant Base Attributes STR: 58 (+51) DEX: 28 (+21) CON: 36 (+26) SPE: 38 (+29) INT: 9 WIS: 11 CHA: 3 (+5) LUCK: 5 (+4) Assimilated Primitive Gene: (136/1000) Unassimilated Genes: Charisma x5 (Prehistoric), Intelligence x5 (Prehistoric), Strength x20 (Prehistoric) Gene Talent: Aura of Decay (Primitive), The Endless Path (Prehistoric) Beast Soul: Nascent Phoenix (Prehistoric) Gene Fragments: 5 He nodded furiously at the stats. His whole body felt refreshed and a lot lighter.

To test out his improved physique, he began practicing by bringing the training dummy over from the shed. After an hour of exertion, he still felt completely fine. His body wasn't even sweating much by the end. He also found out just how durable the seemingly normal training dummy was—it didn't even budge despite his fists slamming into it again and again. Fists that could usually crack stones apart.

"Makes sense, I suppose. These things are used by core holders, after all." And even though a lot of core holders didn't exclusively focus on acquiring genes, they still held a whole lot of them, mainly because they were rich. The only reason the two fools he'd beaten didn't have genes in any significant quantity could probably only be chalked up to their unwillingness or lack of understanding of how important genes and an improved physique really were.

According to Serie, the author, cultivators did tend to get overly fixated on advancing their cores, since that directly affected their standing within the sect hierarchy. And one could only give so much of their time to dungeon diving versus cultivation. Sleep was also a necessity for most copper-cored disciples, so they didn't have nearly enough time in the day to focus on both aspects well.

As a result, they tended to go all in on cultivation until their core advanced to silver, because then they could focus all their time on diving dungeons. In fact, most silver-cored inner disciples never tended to reside too long within the sect. They were usually out working either as Silverine Knights or adventurers. They didn't need much rest or food, so they could continuously focus on raising the power of their physiques.

Nero, on the other hand, was doing the exact opposite—focusing on raising both his physical stats and his core at the same time. Most people focused on one or the other.

"Well, that too gave me enough of an advantage to survive sect bullying," he said.

"I'd count that as a win." Setting that aside, he started practicing the second form of the Cypher Art Elder Zyran had shown him: The Transparent World.

"Recently, I've been feeling really close to acquiring it…" He focused on that feeling, that growing instinct, as he resumed his practice. The key was fine internal energy manipulation and external form refinement. He followed Elder Zyran's movements, the words he'd left him with, as he continued chasing the shadow of his moveset. After three straight hours of nonstop practice, sweat started seeping from his pores as he caught the barest glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. He chased it even harder.

His breath grew increasingly ragged, his body bathed in sweat from head to toe. He couldn't stop and rest, because he was certain he'd lose sight of that light the moment he did. It's now or never. Well, maybe not never, but certainly much later. And he didn't want to waste more time acquiring this one art. So he continued until the world around him started growing duller and dimmer. His vision blurred while his feet trembled from extreme exertion.

The hour had passed into six, and even his enhanced physique couldn't handle this level of continued strain anymore. So he called on Pristine Aura, forcefully enhancing his deteriorating stamina and strength. The side effects of this were certainly going to hit him like a truck later. But for now, he didn't care, as long as he got the art. The moveset kept flowing out of his body while his fists began to blur, getting faster and faster.

He felt his eyes grow increasingly colder instead of warm, as the world around him started to slow down, becoming more glaring, more detailed. A wide grin formed on his lips as his expression turned crazed. His heartbeat surpassed all levels of normalcy, pounding like the gunfire of those metallic machine guns he'd heard the Automatons wield. After another hour of lunacy, his body finally lost all sensation as he collapsed onto the ground. His world darkened rapidly; he was about to lose consciousness.

But his smile remained radiant. Because in this ever-darkening world of his, the gleam of comprehension shone like the blazing lights of heaven itself, overshadowing the shadows. As he lost consciousness, he heard the voice of the system—the very thing he'd been wishing to hear. [Acquiring the second form of the Cypher Art of the Phantom Path: Transparent World… successful!] [Cypher Art Transparent World has been added to the Gene Talent [The Endless Path]] ….

After several hours sprawled unconscious in the training facility, Nero finally woke up. His body still felt extremely exhausted, his steps tentative. He went over to the sect kitchen, grabbed a ton of food for himself, and returned to his house. He didn't bother showering despite being slathered in sand. Instead, he chose to regain his strength by overloading his stomach with food and water.

After guzzling down a boatload of chicken meat, soup, and bread, along with nearly several liters of water, until he felt like his stomach would burst, Nero laid back down on the bed, sand and all. Lazily, he reopened the Endless Path's progression panel. [The Gene Talent [The Endless Path] is influencing a merger between the Path of Phantom, Spectral Touch and Transparent World.] [Would you like to proceed with the merger?] Yes/No With a smile, Nero pressed "Yes."