Chương 492: Chapter 461: Getting Stronger

"And have you slept well?" Ratgul grinned after Thalion had lain in the grass for almost a day.

"Yes, I'm ready. Where do we start?" Thalion asked. Nothing remained of his exhaustion, and he was eager to push his body before activating the evolution. Besides that, Ratgul was right about delaying his evolution until after this training session. It also sparked Thalion's greed. Why should he be happy with barely getting a divine evolution? A strong divine class should have an extra kick, and after all, he had to show the Primordial Bloodseed what he was capable of.

"First, you discard the forms you picked up in the trial so we can focus on your main forms. Then you need to share in which directions you want your forms to move. Your human form has a high blood affinity and a horrible fire affinity. The eagle has decent storm affinity and a bit of ice affinity. The Crippled Eclipsari is a being of darkness, but it is currently mixed with a relatively weak path of malice. The Tidecaller Serpent has average water affinity.

"I think for most forms it is very simple what we will do next. I will give you the best natural treasures I have for this grade that will allow you to push your body tempering to new heights. The only form I'm not certain about is the eagle. What do you want to evolve into?" Since their first interaction, Thalion had been very happy with how things were going. If every god was this helpful in giving guidance, it wasn't surprising why the Chosen were so strong.

"I actually want to become it a dragon one day," Thalion said with a grin, which made Ratgul chuckle.

"Ra, ra, ra. What else? Well, don't worry. I will make sure you are set on the right path. A dragon will be too much right now, but I think a wyvern is possible. The thing with creatures that evolve into wyverns from another creature is that even when they succeed, their form is often weaker compared to the natural line of evolution. It's often not a complete transition either—for example, they might still have feathery wings or something like that.

"Normally, a successful transition to a wyvern happens when evolving to D grade at the earliest. Like I said before, don't worry about it—you're going to make it in E grade.

"Now there is still the question of your affinities. There are storm dragons and there are ice dragons. To combine both concepts into one dragon is something I haven't heard of before—and I hunted quite a lot of them in the good old days. In theory, you could use lightning to apply the ice more effectively. Users of the ice affinity often lack the power to penetrate defenses, which leads to longer fights. You could apply the ice affinity to the storm, basically fusing both concepts.

"Lightning is very fast and has high power output, making it easier to penetrate defenses, and it always spreads through the target when it hits. If that effect is used to also apply the freezing effect, it might become very powerful. What do you think of that?" Ratgul had been talking for quite a while, but Thalion wouldn't have dared to interrupt the more-than-helpful god.

"It sounds perfect. In fact, the ice affinity was kind of forced upon me," Thalion said eagerly.

"Getting an affinity by accident? Ra, ra, ra. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get an affinity and to be able to temper it?" the god laughed out loud.

"Eh… I guess not?" Thalion said, at a loss for words.

"Ra, ra, ra, then let me enlighten you. Either you are born with an affinity, or you need very special items, dangerous rituals, or rare skills." Now that Thalion thought about it, he must have gotten the fire affinity when using the item of Kael's god together with the blood plant, which also gave him the blood affinity. Eagly must have been born with the wind affinity, and the lightning affinity he got through the passive skill of the manta. Otherwise, those were the affinities his forms had been born with.

Interesting. For the future, this meant that getting more of those passive skills to gain resistance to multiple affinities could be very beneficial.

"Okay, that's funny. I just thought you needed to learn a technique to do it," Thalion chuckled.

"Yeah, that's something you also need on top—but without having the affinity, it doesn't do anything," Ratgul said before getting more serious.

"Good. Then let's get started." With a wave, they were teleported into a room that overlooked several chambers. One was filled with blood, one with red crystals and fire burning at the sides, and so on. There was a chamber for every affinity, and one Thalion guessed was for combat training.

"So this will be your training ground for the week. You need to hurry. I haven't done something like this before as a reward, and even though you should be able to stay for years, it might happen that at some point the system throws you out," Ratgul explained, pointing at the many chambers before Thalion. The weeks that followed passed quickly as Thalion hopped from chamber to chamber. Ratgul and Thalion also began to eat together, and it was always some delicious meat from a beast he had slain.

Those feasts weren't only delicious but also made him stronger. At least that was how it felt, and it seemed to be what Ratgul believed as well. He also told Thalion that the other gods back when he was alive had thought he had gone crazy. It seemed there was no return for those gods who joined the system. Most of the time, they got the offer right before the killing blow landed—or they simply went insane and no longer wanted to live.

Those chambers were perfect, and Thalion increased his affinities in rapid succession. Around Eagly, frost began to build on the ground from his aura alone, and this was something reflected across all his forms. The darkness of the Eclipsari became far more concentrated than Thalion had ever thought possible. His human form radiated heat, while his essence-blood brimmed with dormant power. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

There was also another quite important detail he had missed. Since he didn't check his status screen that often, he noticed after a blood cultivation session that his human race had actually reached divine rarity. It seemed that the evolution of the Sanguis Impera had also upgraded his body. No wonder he felt so much stronger as a human. This was, of course, a source of great joy, and Ratgul just kept laughing for minutes when Thalion told him. Afterwards, they had a celebratory feast.

With the passing weeks, Ratgul also trained him in combat. He didn't just do it for the Eclipsari but also with the sword and all his other forms. Saranya had a very high opinion of the god after she accepted that he knew more about the sword than she did. It seemed the god had seen her all along and had only held himself back because he found it funny how the sword constantly lectured Thalion. Then came the day when Ratgul offered him his skills. They entered another chamber that had a few crystals in it.

"Okay, this is very important. Many of the skills I cannot share with you simply because there are no weak versions of them. I have been a beast, which means I didn't have that many skills in general. I think the ones I have will work very well with the Crippled Eclipsari and your other forms, but there is a downside.

"These skills have power, and I am actually reluctant to advise you to take all of them. Everything you do influences your evolution, and my skills will have a very strong influence. It could lead to every form in your evolution having a lionhead. In my opinion, you shouldn't take too many so your path doesn't get twisted.

"The claw and bite skills shouldn't be necessary for someone like you anyway, and with your evolution you will get good skills of divine rarity yourself.

"Before leaving this place, I will personally give you my title, Hunter of All. It is just a straight-up buff in power that lets you track down prey by instinct, no matter how well they obscure themselves.

"As for my passive skills, I would advise you to take Belly of the Beast for the Crippled Eclipsari. It will increase the amount of stats you gain from those you feast upon with the skill and make the digestion process a lot faster.

"You should also take my movement skill for the Crippled Eclipsari. It will allow you to dash very quickly in a direction when you have ground under your feet. Since you don't have any movement skills for that form, this is a necessity. Technically, you can also use it in your human form, but you already have two there, and a third is overkill in my opinion.

"You are, of course, free to take a look and choose more skills, but I think this is the best way that doesn't limit your future." Thalion wouldn't have needed such an explanation. By this time, he trusted Ratgul almost blindly. If the god said it might have a negative effect, then he would listen. He was still interested in the skills. Ratgul must have been a melee fighter, relying on extreme speed paired with high durability and offensive capabilities.

He had a passive skill that made him stronger the longer a fight lasted, which might also have been interesting for Thalion. But Ratgul said the increase in power wasn't that significant before godhood and that by then Thalion could create a similar skill himself. Those passive skills would also have a far greater effect on his evolution compared to the other skills. After checking the skills carefully, he went with what Ratgul had advised.

All the skills were of divine rarity, which was really cool in Thalion's opinion. The movement skill, called Quick Dash, was incredible. In the training fights against Ratgul, he now had so many more possibilities, and the god encouraged him to test them all. Time passed as the two continued training between body tempering sessions. When it came to those early tempering methods, Ratgul seemed to know them all.

Not only did Thalion have an expert advising him, but he also had access to the absolute best natural treasures. Even the fire and ice crystals he had found in the system event paled in comparison. The darkness surrounding the Crippled Eclipsari extended easily three times its previous range when Thalion unleashed his aura and this level of progress applied to all his forms. Those power-ups alone had to result in a far better class. But there was one more thing Ratgul wanted to do.

After half a year, the body tempering slowed down significantly as Thalion approached the limits of what was possible as an F grade. Ratgul said it was time to stop. He mentioned that Thalion could push further, but the time required compared to the results wouldn't be worth it when he could focus on better things—which, in Ratgul's opinion, were skill upgrades. And so Thalion found himself in a chamber blasting the opposite wall with a jet stream of fire while the god commented on his technique.

This reminded Thalion a bit of the training session with Syals—only now he actually understood how it worked, and they made multiple upgrades to the skill in a single day. Within a month, all his skills had reached celestial level, which was a giant achievement. Ratgul mentioned that even the Chosen in the trial likely didn't have skills of such quality. Yet they did far more than just upgrade his skills. Thalion also began to learn to cast them without activating the skill through control alone.

Ratgul laughed a lot when explaining the basics on how it worked. This was very important for Thalion future, when he was able to leave the system and look for another outsider. His training began to slow down significantly, as there were no more areas where he could improve drastically compared to when he first arrived. This led to Thalion practicing three things: blood control, water control, and testing out the new skills of the Primordial Bloodseed.

Until now, Thalion had fully focused on his blood control while the plant had tested its own skills in the meantime. Besides that, the vines looked different and packed far more power, not much else had changed. There was just one particularly interesting ability. The Primordial Bloodseed had a much easier time manipulating the blood of others—even when there was no direct connection. And then there was the Blood Beam.

It formed a flower that began to glow as you enchanted it with power, then released a dark red-golden beam that surpassed everything Thalion had seen so far when it came to blowing things apart. The downside was that Thalion's F grade body couldn't handle more than one beam. Afterwards, he would lie on the ground with most of his resources spent. He also no longer had the individual skills of the Sanguis Impera. Instead, there was only "Primordial Bloodseed (Divine)."

Thalion guessed it was a passive skill that allowed him to do everything the Primordial Bloodseed could. While improving his blood control, Thalion also did something he hadn't done since the Golden Palace. He manipulated his blood to move faster and punch harder. In the recent fights, it hadn't been necessary since he had movement skills that did the job—but Thalion finally wanted to perfect it and use it in future battles all the time. So far, he hadn't done it because it was very time-consuming.

Yet as time passed, progress slowed down drastically in every aspect. There were simply limits as an F grade, and breaking them required a lot of time. Then one day, a voice shook Thalion out of his focus.

"Huh. The young grow up so fast, don't they, Ratgul?" A human-sized rock elemental had appeared beside Ratgul, together with an elf.

"Indeed they do. The others have already left—just this one I can't get rid of. Thalion, these are R-87 and Lyrian. They are, like me, in charge of a few system trials. In fact, the second trial for you newbies is from Lyrian, and the third is made by R-87," Ratgul introduced the newcomers.

"Nice to meet you. Just out of curiosity… what are the next trials about?" Thalion asked sheepishly. You had to take a chance like that when you got one, right?