A few days later, Dyon’s body was feeling much better. Well, physically that is. In terms of his emotions?… He wasn’t doing too well.
“WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING HERE?!” Dyon looked down at two children who held guilty expressions on their faces.
One was a little boy about seven or eight years old. The other was a small girl with pink hair of the lightest shade possible.
Ri stood beside Dyon, frowning as well. They were riding in a vessel pulled by Grimbold family beasts on their way to Lotus Tower. Since the gate would be stable for a few more days on their long journey, Dyon had decided it would be best to begin cultivating the Elvin Ancient family singularity techniques. But, when he flashed into his spatial ring, he immediately felt a connection he shouldn’t have… A connection to Little Black!
Right now, they stood by the empty orphanage Dyon had built within the ring. He had, of course, left all of the orphans in the Elvin Kingdom.
Dyon sighed, he didn’t want to get angry with his little brother and sister, but they really did something unforgivable this time. It was much too dangerous for them to be here, and the situation was much too complex for him to take them away now.
He immediately guessed that Little Black used their mental connection to enter the ring, but he was confused about how they pulled this off without him noticing. Did it have something to do with Little Lyla? ‘Fuck!’
Seeing the two children were on the verge of tears, Dyon finally broke away from his stern look.
“Okay, Okay. Don’t cry.” Dyon kneeled down, pulling the two of them in his arms. “You two still have to tell me why you did this.”
Little Lyla looked up at Dyon with watery eyes. She could tell that Dyon was really bothered by this, but she couldn’t explain the way she felt about things. Sometimes she just got urges, and something was telling her she had to come no matter what.
“Big Brother, it’s not Zaire’s fault. I asked him to take me. I can’t explain it, but you have to take me with you. There’s something very important I have to help you with.”
Dyon rubbed her small head, “Okay, but you have to promise to stay inside the ring, alright?”
In the end, Dyon could only accept this. Even Little Lyla couldn’t explain how she felt or how her abilities worked, how could he expect a tangible explanation? But, that didn’t mean he didn’t have a few guesses… most of which led back to the fact there was something different about the tower this time. And it was likely because someone had finally started playing the game properly…
**
Later that day, Dyon sat in the tent he had made within his spatial ring with Ri playing with Zaire and Lyla nearby.
In front of him sat three tomes, each with its own oddities and quirks, but all equally as ancient. These were, of course, the tomes of the Acacia, Mathilde, and Florence ancient families.
Dyon had already read through all three books. In fact, he had memorized them all the way through as well. The problem was deciding which one to start with. Although he had every intention of going through all three, right now what he needed was the most useful one.
‘All three of them are simply… Amazing.’
There was little to say in terms of the quality of the techniques. Even just thinking about their various possible applications would have any cultivation savvy individual drooling.
The Mathilde family was a warring family, quite similar to the Grimbold family. However, there was no doubt that their manifestations… there was simply no comparing the two.
The manifestation of the Mathilde family was known as the Asura’s Imperial Eye. It gave its wielder an immediate boost in combat power. This involved predicting the attacks of an opponent, seeing through their weakest points, and even executing psychic attacks that depended on one’s soul strength.
From just these points alone, Dyon could think of a myriad of applications. If he used the eye to see through attacks, he could pinpoint the best areas to utilize his celestial will in order to cripple attacks. This was something he thought he would need much more experience to do effectively within real battle situations, but, it seemed this manifestation would allow him to bypass the need for experience to a fairly large extent.
Then there was the idea of predicting the movements of an opponent. This was of course not something you would be able to do directly from the start of a battle in cases where the Asura Imperial Eye wasn’t cultivated to a powerful enough extent. In the beginning stages of the eye, a time period would be needed wherein the eye’s wielder would have to exchange enough rounds with their opponents before the eye could see through the opponent effectively.
However, once the eye reached a certain level, and the opponent was within the range of the wielder’s cultivation, then seeing through the opponent without even exchanging a single punch was very much possible.
That being said, maybe the most interesting part of the Asura Imperial Eye was its psychic attacks – attacks that directly correlated to killing intent…
Essentially, once one chose the path of the Asura Imperial Eye, you were going down another path of cultivation. A path that included killing and warring without end. A path you only took another step forward on when you killed.
‘Imagine that…’ Thought Dyon to himself, ‘You don’t only strengthen the imperial eye by increasing your own cultivation… The more you kill, the stronger it becomes too.’
Dyon was exactly right, for every person he killed, their animosity, hatred, and pain would become a part of his power. But, that wasn’t all. Maybe the most enigmatic thing about the Mathilde family manifestation was its ability to steal the will of those you killed.
For every genius Dyon crushed, their future goodwill would become his. For every young master he snuffed out of existence, their destiny would become his.
That was the way of the warrior. For every battle field you conquered, you became stronger, your legend grew, and your name spread.
And with every commander and general you killed, their glory, their success, their future – became yours.
That being said… Dyon still wasn’t convinced that the Mathilde Manifestation was the one he should begin with. Because, believe it or not, the other two lost out in no way.
The next tome Dyon read was the Florence family singularity technique. At first, he had thought its abilities were relatively straight forward. But, the more he thought about it, the more he shivered at the possible applications.
The technique itself was simple: cloning. However, this cloning was far beyond what a normal clone would entail. This technique allowed you to create doubles of yourself with, according to Dyon’s opinion, negligible handicaps.
The beginning stages of the technique were fairly tame. You had the ability to create a clone that matched up to 75% of yourself once every other day. This clone lasted a week. You could create two clones that were the equivalent of 50% of yourself a day, and these clones lasted two weeks. The last caveat was that you could create near limitless number of clones that were the equivalent of 10% of yourself. Just like the first two clone types, this was also capped by your soul power, but, because you could make hundreds at Dyon’s soul strength, he didn’t bother calculating the actual number.
It was clear from this alone, that the amount of soul strength needed to create clones that matched up to a larger and larger percentages of yourself, required exponentially increasing amounts of soul strength.
‘It seems that this technique also allows you to supplement it went outside sources… That way, you can increase the time the clone is sustained for.’
However, that was easier said than done. The technique itself was already heaven defying. To then find spiritual items able to improve it was a tall task. But… the thought of making the perfect clone was really tempting to Dyon.
That aside, although the idea behind the manifestation was simple, the things Dyon read about how the Florence family used it opened his eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.
Ri had once said that she had never seen humanoid manifestations before, but that was because the only ones ever to exist were destroyed with the disappearance of the Florence family. This was because creating clones was only one aspect of the Florence family singularity technique. The main ability of the technique was to create multiple humanoid manifestations!
By cultivating multiple manifestation, each tailored to a different will, the Florence family was able to boost their affinity in learning different wills. Because of this, the technique was split into hundreds of variations, each meant to cultivate another aspect or quirk of a will. For example, the Florence family sword will manifestation, although Dyon didn’t need it, essentially gave the same boosts to them that Dyon’s Weapon’s Hall gave him! The only limit to the Florence family was the talent of the wielders of the technique. Theoretically, you could master hundreds of manifestations over time and gain an affinity for every will in existence!
The only other thing that limited the Florence family was finding proper catalysts. Something that could range from killing an expert with the matching affinity, to stumbling upon an abyssal core, to absorbing blood essences to fuel the technique.
Dyon couldn’t help but laugh to himself, ‘How ridiculous is this… This isn’t even the most heaven defying aspect of the technique…’
In the Florence family history, it wasn’t unprecedented for their strongest elders to master tens of variations on their technique, in the end becoming masters of that many wills. However, this was hardly what made the Florence family the most impressive. They quite literally had the ability to speed up their cultivation exponentially simply by using their clones!
When one created clones of 75% or 50% or even 10%, they were able to be used for fighting, learning, or cultivating.
Clones at the 10% level didn’t have the ability cultivate because they didn’t retain enough talent to do so. However, clones of 50% and 75%, were very much able to do so.
Clones of the 75% level were the quickest in terms of cultivation, far outstripping those of the 50% level. As a result, they were the most efficient in terms of improving one’s cultivation. After a week, the clone would be reabsorbed, and their experience would become yours. But, the most poignant point was that your cultivation would increase by the amount theirs did!
As for 50% clones, their use, according to Dyon’s calculations, most efficiently lay in learning techniques and gaining experience in manipulating wills.
The only handicap, aside from the speed reduction in learning and cultivating of the clones, was the fact that what they could do, whether that be in cultivating or learning techniques, could not be related to the soul. Meaning, you couldn’t use the clones to cultivate a soul type technique or cultivate your soul in general.
To Dyon, this made sense. After all, melding together improvements into your body or energy was easy. However, the soul was a much more delicate construct. In addition, the technique itself was being sustained by soul type cultivation. Therefore, it didn’t make sense if you could power it with your soul while also powering up your soul.
The best part was that none of what Dyon had thought of even considered the applications the Florence Singularity technique would have in battle. Imagine having another, maybe even another two or three, minds connected perfectly with yourself in battle. The coordination would be immaculate. And what if you combined that with the Asura Imperial Eye? Staring down your opponent from multiple angles? What could possibly escape your attention in such a situation.
In addition, although you would experience the death of your clone as though you had died, you wouldn’t feel the pain. As long as you could leap over the mental hurdle of the feeling of death, your clone could be the perfect exploration equipment. Which was most likely the perfect use for a 10% clone.
In the end, the technique was ultimately broken down into two portions. The first was the manifestation. The ability to create humanoid manifestations with specified affinities that then boosted the user’s ability to use said wills.
The second, was the cloning ability. To essentially create clones that could speed up your body and energy cultivation, fight along side you, and learn techniques along side you as well!
However, what surprised Dyon even more, was that even with how amazing these two singularity techniques were… in the end, he knew he could still end up choosing the Acacia Family Singularity Technique.
It wasn’t that the Acacia Family Singularity Technique was so much better than the other two. It was only that in consideration of Dyon’s circumstances, their technique happened to be perfect for him.
When Dyon had first met Ri, she had told him that her father’s manifestation was mist. At first, Dyon had attached this to Uncle Acacia because he hadn’t been aware of her origins at the time.
But, something was wrong. Did Ri mean that the King had a mist type manifestation? But, according to his knowledge, King Acacia was the first of the Acacia family to awaken their original manifestation in millennia. Yet, the Acacia family technique wasn’t mist… It was a manifestation they called: The Tree of Life and Death.
When Dyon told Ri about this, she too was confused. According to her knowledge, her father’s manifestation was indeed mist. She hadn’t been lying to Dyon at the time. However, as they thought about it, they settled on another possibility. King Acacia had the Tree of Life and Death manifestation, but, chose to use illusory type techniques to hide it, to the point where only Sinaht Sigebryht was aware of its true form. And the more Dyon read about the technique, the more he realized just why someone would want to do that.
The Tree of Life and Death was the most useful ability to Dyon now for two reasons: healing factor and stamina.
The problem with Dyon’s devour technique was that it was only a short-range stamina booster, and it only did so for his soul – completely ignoring his body’s fatigue and the eventual energy cultivation fatigue he would have.
But, the Tree of Life and Death was different. Not only would it replenish his body and energy fatigue, it could do so at long range!
Imagine hundreds of roots spreading through the ground of a battlefield, wrapping themselves around unsuspecting victims and becoming the fuel for Dyon’s continued fighting. Yet, what made Dyon shake with agitation was the fact that the original weakness of the technique was that it couldn’t replenish the soul while it replenished your body and energy. Meaning, you were essentially trading your soul strength for body and energy strength. However, how could Dyon have this problem if he used Devour simultaneously? Both techniques completely and perfectly complimented each other!
The best part was that this wasn’t the end of the abilities of the Tree of Life and Death. Not only did it have the ability to steal energy and stamina from people, it could do so from the surroundings as well. Meaning, even in the absence of people susceptible to the roots of this manifestation, Dyon could pull energy from the air and earth at a much quicker rate than he would be able to normally.
This also had the added effects of making the Tree of Life and Death manifestation highly sensitive to concentrations of energy. Which may very well be useful in a myriad of applications. However, there was one thing that stood out to Dyon about this ability…
‘This means…’ Dyon’s eyes widened as a thought suddenly crossed him mind.
Being able to take energy from the air much quicker didn’t just apply for battle, it applied for cultivating as well! Meaning, if Dyon cultivated this singularity type technique, regardless of his talent for energy cultivating, he could increase his pace at absorbing energy exponentially by using the Tree! All he would have to do was lay energy stones around himself, and his rate of absorption would accelerate! Even without energy stones, his energy cultivation speed would be nearly unmatched!
‘What if I used clones at the same time…’ The possible combinations of these techniques were endless. It made Dyon almost not want to choose.
‘Fuck it.’ Dyon thought wildly. ‘I’m going to learn the Florence cloning technique first, create a 75% clone, then use it to cultivate the Mathilde family singularity technique. After I create the clone, I’ll use my main body to cultivate the Acacia family technique since it’s more important to me.’
The clone technique was only one aspect of the Florence family technique and as such would take a shorter time to learn than the entire technique would. In terms of the second aspect, he had already decided to use the Florence family technique to increase his affinity for certain things, and he knew the perfect catalysts.
Dyon planned to drain himself of the blood essence given to him by his master and her husband. Using them as a catalyst, he’d trade off the ability to increase his body strength further in order to gain perfect affinity the wills he was lacking in… Especially celestial and demonic will. Therefore, the remaining 69% of blood essence he hadn’t fully integrated, would go toward the Florence family technique. He would then rely on solely integrating the demon sage blood to body cultivate. After all, it was far more powerful than the demon qilin or celestial deer essence.
In addition, because he was only focusing on integrating one blood essence now, it would also go faster.
‘This works out perfect. I get to keep my bodily strength at the peak of the manifestation stage and still gain the benefits of my master and her husband’s affinities. Although… it will probably be painful removing the blood from myself despite it not being fully integrated…’
Suddenly Ri sat next to Dyon on the bed, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Did you make a decision?”
Dyon grinned, “I’m just going to do all three.”
Ri rolled her eyes, “I knew you’d end up doing that anyway. Remember to be careful, the techniques are powerful, but there’s a reason for that. They’re not easy to cultivate… What do you think about the Acacia family technique?”
Dyon paused for a moment, “It’s amazing. I didn’t even think about it before, but this technique benefits more than just the person using it. While it can improve my stamina and healing, I can technically divert the energy I absorb as well. Meaning, I could heal our entire army if take in enough energy.”
“It is pretty amazing…” She said absentmindedly, stroking the cover of the tome.
Dyon immediately knew what Ri was thinking about, so, he pulled her into his lap, holding her quietly and stroking her long blue-silver hair. “Your father is very powerful, little feu glace. It’s to the point where I doubt he left because he lost his mind.”
Ri nodded silently, letting Dyon comfort her. It was clear why she was bothered. They had figured out long ago that it was likely Ri’s father had this exact manifestation… So how could someone so powerful, with so many abilities, just disappear? Although Dyon didn’t want to say anything because it might only make it worse, it was likely King Acacia had left due to Ri’s mother.
A kitsune was a supreme level beast. In fact, it was a supreme level beast so powerful that it lorded over other supreme level beasts. How could the background of Ri’s mother be simple? It was likely King Acacia was fighting a difficult battle all by himself right now. And Ri wanted nothing more than to help him.
“When we find them, Ri. Because, trust me, we will. I’ll put my everything into bringing them both back. I want to carry half of your burden too.”
Ri smiled, kissing Dyon’s cheek. “Th – “
“Ah, ah, ah. I better never hear words like thank you from, ever! Okay?” Dyon playfully held his finger to Ri’s lips, silencing her as she giggled lightly.
“Okay. Let’s cultivate.”
Dyon nodded, turning to tomes.
It was good that they did this now… Because the gates were about to get even more unpredictable.