Zaki wiped his brow and returned the saber he had cleaned and restored to its owner before collecting another weapon from someone else and casting the [Shine] spell once more.

The information Dimitri gave the deserter gave Zaki and everyone else a heightened sense of dread and urgency, driving Zaki to do anything he could to boost his group's battle power.

So, for the last thirty minutes or so, Zaki has been casting the [Shine] spell on the deserters' weapons in order to repair and sharpen them in preparation for future confrontations.

He's only sharpened and mended ten weapons thus far, ranging from axes and daggers to swords and spearheads; it took three minutes on average to repair and sharpen a weapon, and half of Zaki's internal energy has already been expended.

It appears that Zaki will be unable to complete the repairs of all of the weapons of the group since he must take a break and replenish his internal energy reserves, and entirely depleting his internal energy reserves is not a smart idea in this environment.

So, after finishing up with the eleventh weapon, Zaki took a break.

"I'm out of internal energy; you'll have to wait until I recover some; I'll call you when I do."

The man appeared unhappy, but he made no protests and returned to rest with the others who were still waiting for their turn.

Zaki inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and began mentally going over his gains in the trials again. He continued to replay the battles he had in the sixth trial.

After a while, Zaki opened his eyes and realized something: after his mental strength reached the initial refining level, he was so absorbed by the trials' gains that he forgot about the Mystic stone in his body.

He had investigated it countless times in the last two weeks with his internal energy, but he had gained nothing, and it had no reaction.

Now it was different, he had mental energy that he could control like internal energy, and his mental strength had increased as well. Zaki had a feeling that he could now glean some of the stone's secrets with his mental strength as long as he made contact with it...which he did.

He manipulated his mental energy like a tendril and "touched" the stone with it and upon making contact Zaki felt a nuclear bomb go off in his head and he lost consciousness.

Knowledge...lots and lots of knowledge, it was so overwhelming that if Zaki hadn't reached the initial refinement realm he would-be brain dead in the best-case scenario, and his mental energy and in extension his head would have exploded in the worst-case scenario.

Even though the human leader only recorded "some" of his powerful or intriguing skills in stone, the sheer difference in power ensured that the human leader's "some" amount of skills was like an ocean of words, numbers, and symbols to a mortal like Zaki, an ocean that nearly drowned him.

Energy refining techniques.

Body refining techniques.

Mind-refining techniques.

Gene techniques.

Divination techniques.

And the most complicated of them all, the two equity techniques.

It took hours for Zaki to pull himself out of the "ocean" barely regaining consciousness while enduring a nasty headache.

It was eye-opening to say the least, especially the equity techniques and the note the human leader left regarding it.

Even though Zaki had only recently been introduced to the cultivation world, he knew what the "unique technique of the human race leader" meant, and that alone was enough to blow Zaki's mind.

Still feeling overwhelmed by the massive "pie" that fell from the sky, Zaki was in a daze for another thirty minutes or so until he was woken up By concerned looking Dimitri.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Are you all right, bro?"

"huh? Yeah, I'm alright; I was just thinking about something."

"umm, the whole checkpoints and fortress thing, I got all the info from travelers and adventurers in the tavern I used to work in, I might be wrong you know"

"You don't have to console me; I was really thinking about something and it was unrelated to the current situation."

"I see, anyway, now that we have another powerful guy in the group, our safety has increased significantly, so that's another reason not to worry too much about the battles ahead of us."

"I'm not worried...whatever man, do me a favor and call the guys who need their weapons repaired, my internal energy has recovered."

Seeing that anything he says will fall on deaf ears, Zaki opted to resume fixing while getting rid of Dimitri.

Zaki then began circulating his internal energy in his meridians along the now-familiar paths in order to cast the [Shine] spell once more.

While fixing the random weapons, Zaki was deep in thought, looking for any techniques in the inheritance that could help him in this position, and he discovered some that could.

Most of the techniques had a cultivation level perquisite and the only techniques that could help were cultivation techniques.

One of them is [Void Forge] a body refining technique.

And the other was [Genealogy] a gene liberation technique.

There were several gene liberation techniques in the inheritance but this was the best of the best among them.

The [Void Forge] was an extremely tyrannical technique that could reduce everything to the most elementary form of energy, which would then be refined into vital energy for bodily refinement.

Not to mention heaven and earth treasures or food, even simple things like wood from trees or sand from deserts can be crushed into energy by [Void Forge] yet, given Zaki's cultivation level, ingesting sand or wood is only asking for Death.

As for the Gene liberation techniques, according to the notes left regarding it, it's a technique made to imitate beasts with powerful bloodlines.

Beasts with powerful bloodlines can access their ancestor's instincts, techniques, experiences, and talents through the power of their blood, making them far more powerful than they actually were.

And gene liberation techniques do just that, other than the power it gives when cultivated, the cultivator can unlock or "liberate" some of their ancestor's talents hidden in their genes.

Zaki compared both techniques and decided to cultivate the [Void Forge] technique, not because [Genealogy] was weaker, but because his body tempering was in the 6th realm, and the power given by Genealogy is mostly physical at the start of the cultivation, making it useless in the short term, and [Void Forge] can help Zaki increase his already strong body tempering cultivation.

Having decided to cultivate the [Void Forge] Zaki quickly finished repairing another ten weapons and dismissed the remaining deserters, he then sat cross-legged and concentrated.

There were three things he hameditatiothe first was the special breathing pattern, the second was visualization and the third was the mantra.

Zaki regulated his breathing and visualized the image included in the [Void Forge] technique in his memories, and then repeated the weird-sounding mantra at a very low volume.

Mantra

(originally in Hinduism and Buddhism) a word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation.)

He did it for around half a minute until he sensed a change, he felt a burning sensation from his...stomach, he became hungry, very hungry, it was as if his stomach was digesting itself.

Zaki's concentration broke quickly under the pangs of pain from his stomach, making him frantically fumble his pockets in search of something to devour.

He quickly found some fruits in his pockets which he consumed in no time at all, but it did make a difference, while still hungry at least his stomach wasn't burning anymore.

The only thing that was left from his rations was the spirit fruit, he actually wanted to save this fruit for emergency purposes considering its secondary healing trait, but out of hunger, he decided to take a bite.

The medicinal energy of the fruit bite was quickly digested and circulated throughout Zaki's body, strengthening it. Zaki didn't feel his cultivation progress at all, he did feel his body get stronger, but his cultivation didn't budge.

It had seemed that [Void Forge] re-refined and pushed his cultivated 1-6 levels of body tempering closer to its limits.

Even though he didn't feel hungry anymore, Zaki decided to cut the fruit in half and eat the half with the bite mark on it.

Before running the [Void Forge] again to perfect his body tempering cultivation, Zaki used one of the basic spells that Alchemist Zhou Yuan taught him in the 7th trial.

The spell uses some of the energy of the injured spirit fruit to construct the fruit's skin on the damaged part.

When Zaki cast the magic on the pear-shaped fruit that had been split in half, a second skin developed on the cut section, giving the fruit the appearance of having been grown that way.

With each second that Zaki spent running the [Void Forge], his strength increased with the help of the energy of the spirit fruit, and his body subtly altered to become more resilient and flexible. His endurance, strength, and dexterity also all increased.

Clearly, using a proper cultivation technique is very important even In a simple realm that just needs nutrients to advance.

When the medicinal effects of the fruit had been absorbed, Zaki ceased using the [Void Forge] and opened his eyes to see the first rays of sunlight peering through the trees; it was dawn.

Even though Zaki didn't sleep at all, he felt more energetic than ever, the cultivation technique had provided him with more energy than he knew what to do with.

When he moved his body, his joints all popped, attracting the notice of the deserters nearby.

"Broke through?" Said Ansgar the unusually clean guy.

"Yea, something like that, what's up?"

"Interested in raiding an outpost?"

"What?"