Chương 49: Chapter 48: Awakening Core

[Confirmed, Merging the path and its forms… Successful.] [Acquired Prehistoric Gene Talent: Phantom Essence]"A gene talent?" Nero asked dubiously. A gene talent, emerging from the merger of a Cypher Art path and its forms? That felt very unusual to him. From his understanding, which was still limited, Cypher Arts usually imitated the effects of a gene talent by aligning one's gene profile in such a way that it resembled that of a talent's genetic profile.

Except, while the genetic profile created within oneself upon acquiring a gene talent was permanent, the alignment caused by a Cypher Art that resembled the genetic profile of a gene talent was only temporary. And Nero, upon acquiring it, didn't get any sort of instinctual understanding from it like he usually tended to get from his other gene talents. After a good hour of mulling over the talent, Nero decided to just activate it to test it out.

Prehistoric gene talents tended to be weird as it was, and while they came with a good risk of sucking up a shit ton of his mana, he didn't believe a short burst of use would drain him dry. With a deep breath, Nero mentally activated the gene talent. And he felt nothing…

"What's happening? I'm not even getting the slightest hint of its capability? Also, the energy drain is almost miniscule…" He shook his head and focused harder on himself. He needed to catch any disturbance in his physical operation to notice its effects. Not all gene talents' effects tended to be obvious. After a good minute of focusing on every nerve movement, breath, and heartbeat, Nero finally started to notice the talent's effects.

His brain felt clearer the longer he kept it active, and his focus grew sharper and sharper. He stood up from his bed and repeated the movesets of the Cypher Art: Spectral Touch. Strangely enough, it came to him at astonishing speed—the energy pathways through which he needed to move the mana to cast the art aligned at near-blistering speed, something that hadn't been the case before. He found his own movements far more refined; he even noticed several flaws in his form while using the art.

It was like he'd gained the eyes of a master of the phantom path, while his body rapidly tried to catch up to his instincts and knowledge. After repeating the Cypher Art, Spectral Touch, just five times, Nero noticed a huge ten percent improvement in its usage and efficiency! He then did the same with Transparent World, and again, after only ten repetitions, its efficiency rose by ten percent! The speed of refinement in the second form's case was much slower than the first.

After completing the repetitions, Nero sat back on his bed for further contemplation.

"This slower speed of refinement makes sense, I suppose—the second Cypher Art is drastically more complicated to begin with." After testing both out, and contemplating further on the feeling and instinctual sharpness he tended to gain the longer it stayed active, Nero reached a rough conclusion about the talent's effects and specialty. It was a utility-type talent, similar to his other Prehistoric-ranked gene talent, [The Endless Path]. He went for a bath after completing the first round of assessment.

He planned on testing the talent out several more times over the coming days. For now, he just freshened up and went back to cultivating. There were only twelve days remaining before the end of the month, and he planned on awakening his core well before that. He refocused on absorbing the energy of the spirit stones. The energy of the spirit stones wasn't of one element or another—it was a more variant mix of all types of elemental energy.

His mana channels helped refine these energies into a purer form, and his aptitude dictated the speed and efficiency of this refinement. Those with Yellow-grade aptitude could barely reach the copper core even after a decade spent cultivating. A decade of time could naturally be shortened drastically by using more resources.

But normally, such disciples never got the chance to acquire that kind of resource, and were stuck laboring away at the sect, earning salaries, and using the minimum spirit stones they'd get from that to slowly refine their core. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. And in Nero's case, the earnings from the dungeon were drastically speeding up this otherwise slow process.

Time passed with the wind, as Nero sipped the last bits of elemental energy from his seventh spirit stone. He plopped back down on his bed.

"The absorption speed of elemental energy has drastically increased for me." He wondered whether that was the effect of leveling up the Meditation Technique. It was getting increasingly close to reaching the advanced stage too. After a few hours of sleep, Nero woke up and left for the garden. There, he spent approximately two hours doing maintenance work while simultaneously channeling the meditation technique. Once done, he left for the dungeons.

The process this time wasn't much different from before—he got himself some dungeon locations, swept through them within a few short hours, and on his way back, dropped by the Chicken Dungeon, handed it several live dungeon spawns he'd captured, took a good chunk of its mana crystals, and left. The live beast cores were mostly for the Phoenix Kins. He wanted them to feed on the cores while simultaneously supplying the dungeon core itself with the necessary souls.

That way, it would allow both the core and its spawns to keep growing.

"Today, I left them with ten live monsters."

"Hmm, if I can get myself a cart, I'd be able to supply the dungeon with twice the amount of live monsters." As for who'd pull the cart through the heavy snow, he'd have the dungeon core lend him a Phoenix Kin—they were large and muscular, nearly double the size of a standard horse. It should be easy work for them. He swiftly went to the guild and exchanged the materials for seven gold crowns, then exchanged those again at the sect's transaction desk for more spirit stones.

On the way back to the cottage, Nero grabbed some dinner from the sect kitchen. But before he entered the house, he felt a gaze on his shoulders. He turned to find Senior Inner Disciple Xiao overlooking the compound from the third story of the sect building. She wasn't particularly eyeing him or his cottage, but for a moment, he felt like she was. Ignoring the odd feeling, he swung open the door and went straight for the bathroom to take a shower. Once done, he ate some food before getting back to cultivating.

With two spirit stones in both hands, he sat in the lotus position. The energy of the elements flowed out in their mysterious wave, prickling through his very pores before entering his mana veins. From there, he guided them across his physique, using his own body as a cloth to sift out any impurities, before letting the refined energy settle at his lower dantian. He repeated this process until the first set of spirit stones was emptied. He pulled out the next set, then another.

With each spirit stone consumed, the rainbow-colored ball of energy within his lower dantian grew larger and ever more radiant. Time passed by quickly, and before long the 23rd day of the month had arrived. In between these days, he'd gathered an enormous ball of energy within his lower dantian.

"Today should finally be the day I awaken this thing." He thus quickly finished all his chores and got back to the cottage early. Sitting in the same lotus pose, Nero began to nourish his partially awakened beast core. He first started out by nourishing the whole of the lower dantian with elemental energy, as his abdomen warmed up. This was necessary to make the otherwise stagnant space more accommodating to change.

Otherwise, it would fiercely resist the core's awakening, which would waste more energy on the process than necessary. Once the overall nourishment of the lower dantian was done, he moved on to focusing the energy strictly on the dormant part of the core. To put it simply, the core was like an ancient stone that had become shrouded in moss. The moss was so thick that not even an inch of the stone's surface could be seen.

The process of awakening was essentially hitting the stone's surface with the energy of all elements, scraping off the thick, stagnant moss bit by bit. This was also where the aptitude math came into play—those with higher-grade aptitude had stronger wills, and could strike this moss far more fiercely, allowing them to awaken it with much less elemental energy than those of lower grade. Nero was facing a similar issue, although he'd expected his energy to be enough to fully awaken his core.

The more he hit it with elemental energy, scraping off every bit of moss keeping the core dormant, the more he understood his reality. Damn it, this won't be enough… He hardened his will and intent, the flowing energy of the elements turning into solid spears and swords under his guidance as they slammed into the dormant core again, and again. Several hours passed as sweat suffused his whole body. His breath came less frequently as his very being focused entirely on this one endeavor.

And once more than half his energy was drained, Nero paused his cultivation session and reevaluated his situation.

"I've made progress. I'm approximately seventy percent of the way there…" Except he didn't believe the rest of his energy would be enough to get him the full way. He tried thinking up some ways, recalling the book knowledge he'd acquired from the library. From the various pages etched into his memory, one piece of information about a single item surfaced.

"A thousand-year-old ginseng—I believe that can help amplify one's will temporarily." But that was a near-impossible thing for him to obtain. A thousand-year-old ginseng? That was only obtainable by inner court disciples—hell, unless one was a bookworm, they wouldn't even know such a thing existed. But the word amplification stuck with him, and his brain spun until an idea hit him.