"..time reverted back by four seconds." Said Alis with a casual tone.
Daniel couldn't help but feel a little surprised by Alis's words. What else could have bent the world's omnipresent law of time during the tournament but his system's passive ability 'Second Chance'? It would be too big of a coincidence to be believable.
Forcing a smile to appear on his face, Daniel said with a jubilant voice "That's amazing!.. Maybe i'll find someone who can teach me time essence there."
"Sure.. But be careful.. A single touch by any other cultivator, and you're screwed. Even after months, the news of a dual cultivator appearing hasn't reached us yet.. So I wouldn't expect a kind welcome if they were to discover your secret." Said Heimart with a matter-of-fact tone.
"Don't worry about me. Why do you think I am studying spatial essence for?" Said Daniel with a confident tone. He then looked at Ligart and said "Try to touch me."
After a moment of confusion, Ligart approached Daniel and tried to put one of his hands on him. The very moment his hand was supposed to touch Daniel, the shape of space around him started to change.
His hand was only a few millimeters away from Daniel's body, and yet pushing his hand past those few millimeters seemed impossible.
To ligart, the feeling was that of moving his hand into empty space, but what was really happening was that Daniel had bent the very space that surrounded his body. No matter how one moved within the space he controlled, they could never move in the direction of Daniel's body.
It was like trying to catch a wet bar of soap with wet hands.
Unfortunately, this method was only useful for preventing people from accidentally touching him. On the other hand, it would be completely useless in case of a fight, or in case someone really tried to get a hold of him.. as he would need to overpower the other person's ki and spiritual essence within the bent space, in order to force them to submit to the space's bent laws.
If he wanted, he could prevent Alis and the rest from touching him ever again. The only person who could manage to do find a way around this layer of protection, would be the blond young man, as his ki was similar to Daniel's in both density and power.
After a few missed attempt, Ligart gave up and went back to help Heimart with moving the surprisingly heavy drawer.
Daniel left the room and went to check the only part of the castle he had blocked with the help of the formation.
That room was, of course, the Clear Mage's childhood bedroom. The reason he had blocked it was to prevent anyone from reading, copying or memorizing the cultivation path written clearly on the wall.
As for any other room, the walls and floor were covered in dried blood. The only difference between this room and the others, was the this room didn't have many furniture inside, and instead of bones of teenagers and young men and women, it had bones of dead children.
Since the moment Daniel had reset the formation, the bones had restarted their usual decay. The reason why the bones hadn't turned into dust yet was because, at least according to Daniel's assumption, the Clear Mage had sealed the castle and removed any natural element that could deteriorate the inside of the castle.
The reason for that, was probably to prevent the writings on the wall to be damaged by the elements like wind, humidity, and heat.
Now in full control of the castle, Daniel tried once again to set the wall on fire.
With a simple wave of his hand, a thin veil of orange flames expanded through the entire surface of the wall. Two minutes later, when the flame had finally extinguished, only a large patch of black could be seen covering the wall and leaving no trace of the cultivation method.
Daniel lifted the block on the room and left for his next stop. The renovated library.
After a few minutes of walking, Daniel found himself in a long corridor with three doors per side. All the doors on the left side were the entrances of the library of spiritual arts and magic tomes, while the rooms on the right side were the entrances to the library of martial arts and skills.
Daniel entered the library of spiritual arts and tomes, and inside it, he saw the new and elegant sets of bookcases that covered the walls of both floors, and the middle of the room's floor.
Between the two bookcases in the middle of the first floor, was a long table surrounded by comfortable chairs. A set of stairs brought to the second floor, where there was no floor. Only a meter and a half large corridor with a handrail to the side that circled the entire room.
Despite the small number of windows, the room was illuminated magically. It almost looked like the bright rays of the sun penetrated the walls and shone brightly on every corner of the library.
Daniel took a slow walk towards the semi-empty bookshelves, and only stopped after reaching the section marked as 'Handicraft'.
He remembered to have seen most of these books. They were mostly the books he and the rest had recovered from within the many spatial containers inside the castle. The others, had been bought by Alis and the others as essentials manuals that any decent library should have.
Amongst them, was the book which Daniel was looking for. On the cover, a clear writing spelled 'Differences and Creation of Essence Orbs and Spheres'
Daniel took the book and sat quietly in one of the many comfortable chairs around the library.
It didn't take long for Daniel to memorize the entire book and its three main concepts.
The first concept, was the difference between essence orb and essence spheres, of which Daniel was already aware of thanks to his encounter with both types of artifacts.
To put it simply, an essence orb was a simple container in which the manifestation of a specific essence, or mix of essences was stored. It could be used for demonstrative purposes along with the help of a specific formation.
Extremely different from it, were essence spheres. Essence spheres were created by condensing a large amount of essence and binding it to an essence treasure of the same property.
The method of creating these artifacts was what Daniel was really interested in.
In order to create an elemental sphere, Daniel needed to have an essence treasure with the same properties of the essence he wanted to create a sphere of, and a few other items.
For example, in order to create a metal sphere, Daniel needed various types of rare and common metals to add to the treasure in order to ease the process of binding.
Fortunately, two of the three spheres which Daniel was interested in making, happened to be the two easiest spheres to produce. Specifically, wind and water, of which he already owned the treasures of and of which had a deep comprehension of.
The method of creation of an essence sphere was completely different. One did not need any sort of object, except for an orb that contained a simple pocket dimension, which when activated would switch a set space with the space contained inside the pocket dimension.
The set space was isolated and prepared for easy shifting in the formation that would activate the orb. In Daniel's case, the formation that had activated the lightning orb when he had entered the first testing room for spiritual cultivators, was the altar placed right underneath the rotating pyramid of essence orbs.
Daniel did not have any orb which he could use to create an essence orb, so he decided to attempt creating two different essence spheres instead.
He opened his hand, and inside a small coral appeared out of nowhere.
An experienced spiritual cultivator would immediately recognized this piece of coral as a high level treasure of water essence. If not for the fact that it was an item commonly found on the bottom of the sea, the thick water essence that it emanated would betray it as a water treasure right away.
Daniel possessed a good ninety percent of comprehension of water, wind, and lightning essences. For him it wasn't hard to use his spiritual essence to simulate most variation of water that existed.
The only problem was caused by his limited amount of spiritual essence.
Creating an essence treasure required speed and precision. Daniel didn't lack precision, as his comprehension was atof an impressive level, what he lacked was the speed that usually only an higher cultivation level could grant.
No matter how talented Daniel was, he still had a limited amount of spiritual essence within his body.. And in order to produce an essence sphere, he needed a constant and deep source of it.
Fortunately, this wasn't a real problem for him, since thanks to his karmic system, he could produce ki way faster than usual, and use it to replace the consumed spiritual essence.
Daniel put the book back in its place and left the library. He then headed towards the room where he had been tested the first time by the Clear Mage.
Just like Heimart had said, the formation had been replicated in the original space of the castle, and now worked just like the version the Clear Mage had installed within the fictitious space.
Daniel sat right in front of the altar, and started to slowly push his spiritual essence around the piece of coral. He then turned it into a water essence which encompassed the treasure completely.
Layer after layer of water essence morphed around the treasure into different compositions.
The deepest layer was made of cold, and dark water. Inside which only high ranked abyssal monsters would live. The second one, was made out of a thick and resistant layer of ice, through which nothing could be seen clearly.
The third layer was made of a calm and gentle surface of water, similar to the shore of a beach.. it swayed back and forth in a slow and repetitive motion.
The fourth and last layer was a mist which lingered on the surface of the calm water. Half of it was made of scorching vapor, while the other half was a cold mixture of water particles and small ice crystals.
The objects needed to aid the binding of a specific essence to its treasure, were the various types of the essence itself.
Just like an earth sphere would require plants and dirt to aid in the binding, a water sphere required ice, vapor, water and mist.
Daniel was now ready to condense the water essence inside the small watery world. He started to fill the small room with as much spiritual essence as he could, before turning it into water essence and moving it towards the essence sphere.
It was like feeding a flame from inside. Every bit of essence forced inside the sphere would automatically disregard Daniel's previous control, and become part of the essence sphere.
It took Daniel a full day, and the astonishing amount of five thousand karma points to finally complete the creation of the water sphere.
It was very similar to the one the Silver Alchemist had lent him, but with the difference that this sphere was created by his own comprehension, and therefore, it could not help him increase his comprehension of water essence.
The only reason he had created this essence orb, was as a first step to create an effective training ground for Spiritual Cultivators. Creating a water essence sphere at first, was only so that he could aid Roley in increasing his comprehension of water essence.
After all, Roley was the only other spiritual cultivator beside him, and like him, he was adept in the use of water essence.
Daniel's main goal for this training room, was to fill it with spheres made out of a perfect comprehension for each type of essence.
Until recently, Daniel's thoughts had been much simpler. He wanted to live an easy life with his sister.
What changed his way of thinking, was the gift that the karmic system had given him.. The ability to dream bigger.
Excited about his uncertain future, Daniel stored the water sphere within a box and placed it inside one of his rings.
The very next moment, a feather appeared in his hand.
