Almond reacted quickly after crashing into the barrier and teleported ten meters behind Garo before turning into humanoid lightning while his sword electromagnetised and floated beside him.
‘This old man has the same stats as me!’ Almond realized this after taking the kick and seeing through the principle behind it. This old man had suppressed his stats to be on the same number as his!
‘But take this!’
*Zap!*
Just as Almond was a meter away from Garo, Garo turned to him like a ghost with his mouth open, but Almond teleported instantly as he knew Garo would be able to react, arriving to his left, his sword slicing at Garo’s head.
However, Garo scattered like a mirage and his voice rang from behind Almond.
“Not bad.”
*Brzzzzzz*
Almond was hit by a powerful and condensed wave of sound that oscillated from Garo’s mouth, instantly scattering Almond’s lightning body as he had no path due to no ionized air, and oscillated waves broke him down while pushing him back like a Giga super sonic giant hand’s slap.
*Boom!*
Almond struck the barrier with a pool of blood splattering around him, all bone broken, all organs punctured.
His mind was buzzing, and his consciousness was rattled, not to mention that his vitality hit bottom as his entire body was damaged right down to cells…and he was seeing death.
Darkness enveloped him, and his function ceased before he could think of doing anything, but only for one second as suddenly, a warm stream of energy filled him, made his pain vanish, and healed his wounds.
“That was a good match, kid. Come back after studying and reaching peak mortal, and we’ll have some real fun “
Almond opened his eyes and saw Garo standing before him with a smile.
But he couldn’t remain awake any longer and fainted.
…
An hour later, Almond woke up inside the special room in the academy, sleeping on the couch.
“Good morning.”
Almond got up and sighed. “How long was I sleeping?” Experience exclusive tales on My Virtual Library Empire
“An hour. That last attack of Garo was nasty, but you forced him to do that because of your attack. Not bad. I would like you to awaken space elemental mastery fast, but we have to take things step by step since you are here.”
“Wait, so is my combat evaluation over?” Almond asked in doubt.
“Yep, it’s over. Now, you may address me as Big D.”
“…”
The cat’s eyes narrowed, “I am serious.”
“Okay, Big D,” Almond flatly replied with a nod.
“Prana Sea,” Big D said while licking his paws and side-glancing at Almond. “I suppose you want to form it first.”
Almond’s eyes glinted in response.
“Sit down cross-legged and send your consciousness into your soul sea.”
Almond did as told.
“You see your soul avatar sitting in the middle, right? Send your consciousness inside it.”
‘Interesting,’ Almond’s eyes shone as the world he perceived changed. His soul avatar moved and flew around as his consciousness merged with it.
From here, he could see everything happening outside. It was as if he suddenly had two concurrently active brains.
“Once you can learn to split your consciousness, and send one into your soul avatar, you can even move your body and do everything instead of just accessing your body’s function while stationed like now.”
‘So Soul Avatar is basically a Soul Body like the physical body.’
“Yep. And your Prana sea can only be formed in your soul body. This means that from now on, development in Soul is necessary to increase your capabilities of Prana.”
‘Awesome,’ Almond’s soul body grinned. ‘So, what do I need to do to form Prana Sea?’
“Absorb Prana. Now you are in your soul body, so absorb prana through it instead of your physical body.”
Almond did as told and Prana gushed into his soul body like a torrent.
Previously white-sih, the soul body turned dreamy golden, fully filled with Prana to the brim!
But then as if a natural reaction, something started happening without Almond doing anything.
“Prana naturally reacts to Soul, and this is the result you get from it.”
‘T-This…’ Almond could see Prana changing his soul body!
The soul sea, which was more like a small pond, churned and moved with a natural command from his soul without his input, mixing with Prana inside his soul body.
Soon, a disk whirlpool formed within his soul body, hazy golden and faintly glowing.
“Prana turns liquified here, so you can have it in a larger quantity and also better use it for your abilities. Congrats, your Prana Sea is formed.”
“This is 10,000 Prana!” Almond’s eyes shone. “It’s a lot, but my soul sea is empty now…”
“Of course. You can absorb outside Prana to refill, but it requires soul energy consumption. Your soul energy’s sole purpose is to refine the prana into liquid and store it in the Prana sea.”
Almond understood. “My Soul Sea has a value of 10, I saw it in my status. I suppose this is related to the limit of my Prana sea.”
“Yep. If you want to increase your Prana Sea’s capacity, you need to increase your soul sea and to do that, you need to make your soul powerful via the training of Soul Art.”
“There are different ranks of Soul Arts and different varieties of them. You will be given standard Soul Art of this academy, but you can buy better ones with Academy Points later.”
“For now, you must want to learn about the new stats, I suppose.”
Almond’s eyes brightened, “Yes! I want to know about them in detail, and I also want to know the complete power structure because I know after fighting Elder Garo that there’s more to abilities and shit than you told me.”
Big D meawed lazily and floated towards the mirror. “Come here, let’s start.”
[Almond]
-Lifeform Rank: Mortal
-Ability Power: F
-Prana Sea: 10
-Soul Sea: 10
-Stats:
— Body Constitution: 20
— Mental Constitution: 40
— Soul Constitution: 10
— Arcane Constitution: —
“Lifeform rank. It’s the rank of your body, mind, and soul as one bound by Arcane. You are at mortal rank in this regard, and the peak of mortal rank is 1000 points in those four stats.”
“1000?” Almond frowned. “1000 in Body Constituion is basically 10,000 in Strength, Health, and Stamina, right? That’s way higher than Mythical-rank’s limit in layer one…”
“The first layer’s Grimworld Tutorials, eh?” Big D snorted. “They put limits, but they also help you. Mana can also empower your body directly, hence you can use Mana techniques, not to mention tons of skills. But there should be people who know how to design training to increase their stats. That’s a must to clear Grimworld’s Tutorial because simply stats from leveling won’t help.”
“True,” Almond nodded.
“Some individuals also become exceptional, like you,” Big D grinned. “But you are not exceptional here yet. You have to work hard to set new exceptions here.”
“That I will,” Almond grinned. “But I am returning after 15 days, so it’s no problem.”
“Huh?” Big D’s face suddenly showed confusion.
“Huh?” Almond blinked, his face still smiling.
“Huh?” Big D narrowed his eyes. “Who said you are leaving after fifteen days?”
“Huh?” Almond blinked, his smile breaking. “I…That, Madam Ruby, told me…I need to survive for fifteen days here and then I can leave…”
“You can’t go to the first layer now. Grimworld won’t allow that.”
“Stop joking,” Almond laughed and suddenly turned somber. “Please tell me it’s a joke.”
“Why would I joke about that,” Big D rolled his eyes and slapped Almond’s face with his tail. “You are never going back to the first layer now, even if you use the same method you used to come here.”
“Seeker Keymaker, right? It won’t make a key leading back to the first layer.”
*Thakaa..Smash*
Almond flipped the table with a shout, shattering it.
“No fucking way!”
*Slap*
A slap struck his cheek, forcing him to look at the cat.
“Calm down. I can understand what you’re feeling right now. You have people you care about below, and they need you, right?”
Almond’s eyes were red.
“But don’t worry, that little lass Ruby didn’t lie to you. You can’t go there, sure. But…you can send a clone there, which can use all of your powers, but they would be restricted by Grimworld based on the top 100 highest-ranked adventurers of your world.”
Almond plopped like a balloon, and his eyes regained hope, “I-I can do that?!”
“If you can learn a clone ability, sure.”
“I will learn it,” Almond clenched his fist.
“Then you are going to have to work hard a lot, so now, let’s get back to the main topic.”
“Focus back at the mirror.”
Almond nodded.
“Ability Power is how much upper limit potency you can bring out of your Prana.”
After saying that, Big D sat down on Almond’s shoulder and pointed at the mirror. “Release your strongest attack into the mirror, using 1000 Prana.”
Almond did as told, unleashing Arbitrary Viper: Golden Edge of 1000 Prana cost.
The lightning-edgy snake vanished into the mirror and it didn’t even budge.
Bit magical ripples formed in the mirror briefly before words appeared.
Ability Power: D+
“Not bad. And know that this didn’t measure the attack power of your ability, but how much potency you brought out of your Prana with your ability or rather, your magic sequence of this attack.”
“Oh, so it’s like…my pure technical skill measurement, eh?” Almond blinked. “Ability Power…”
“That also includes the benefits of your assets,” Big D glanced at him. “Each ability has a different ability power to it. This one has a D+, but your other abilities must have different ones. For instance, use that maw attack.”
Almond quickly used it.
Arbitrary Wyrm: Sand Fang.
Ability Power: D
“Interesting…”