Kaden didn’t really care how he looked, but still he decided it would be a good idea to wash away the blood. He rinsed away most of the blood to make himself slightly less noticeable.
He had plans. First of all, he should buy things he needs. The inspection method to see whatever changes were happening in his core and body. His core was already advanced and he wanted to make it grow into high beast core as soon as possible. At that time, he would not be a common weakling anymore. World would open up to him. This meant that he should buy another advanced dire beast core.
Still, it wasn’t too long since he consumed the previous one and he felt like he couldn’t yet take another. With all the mana he had gained, he felt his core was still progressing. That would have to stop first, but once it did, he could eat another.
He also would go back to the arena to fight as on as he felt there was things to learn. The price to pay was at best meager. He could also ignore Sidon with his so called ‘debt’ being settled. He wondered, if Sidon, still pissed, would arrange troubles for him or would he maintain the integrity of his arena. That was something he would see soon enough.
Kaden frowned as he realized he was again looking like a bum with all his ragged and dirty clothes. They had been cut up and bloodied. What to do? Could it be that there is exists magic that can make clothes durable? Or clothes that are extremely tough to begin with? At any rate, he expected such things to be expensive so he decided to leave such matters to future.
With that in mind, Kaden bought new clothes once stores opened. He got some weird looks for being dirty, but at least this time they didn’t scream due to him being covered in blood.
Once Kaden stepped into the Stefinos’s temple once again, this time a merchant priest quickly appeared in front of him and offered him information being sold regarding various criminal organization on lower and higher layers and even outside of Corand. It seems the priests had been informed who Kaden was and they were not attempting to sell him things.
For a moment Kaden wondered, if these priests had information on the bounties that the guards did not give out. He guessed that it was indeed so. Yet, while he planned on continuing hunting bounties, it needed to be pushed aside for the time being.
He ignored the merchant priests and bought only what he came for. Another advanced dire beast core and the higher level self inspection skill.
Similarly to rest of the more advanced matters related to magic cultivation, the new inspection method had similar problems with its price. Yet, they were significantly cheaper compared to, say, advanced mana system. Still, Kaden gave a slight sigh noticing significant portion of his available money had already been used despite him just gaining it and thinking it was a lot. Truly, things he bought were expensive and he realized he would have to find another way once he advanced to Formation stage or became a high beast. He had already given look at those materials and they were beyond him unless he became really rich, which was unlikely.
As for the inspection skills, Kaden had already known a long time there were many different kinds of self inspection skills. Personal inspect skills were cheapest and was the exact type that Kaden bought. There existed ones that allowed inspecting items, other people better than normally, formation related ones and even matters Kaden didn’t understand well such as inspection of ambient mana, auras, space and such things.
Yet, he didn’t care much of such specific things. He only needed personal one to see what was happening to him. He had his own path to tread upon and no one else would be able to follow that same path. This meant that no one could help him either. Not that he would trust anyone to accept help.
Once Kaden left the temple behind, he immediately went out of sight to some hidden corner. It seemed like a place where nearby establishments dumped their trash. He didn’t really care where to do such thing as learning the new inspection skill. Right now, Kaden could be said to be homeless person, but he didn’t mind. He had lived lengthy time in a cave after all. If he really felt like he needed a place to stay, he could always stay at an inn or something. It seemed like waste of money, though.
The inspect skill itself was clearly far more advanced than the one he had previously. That trash skill he had used since Dashire was nearly entirely obsolete. He had been basically using it in ways that it probably had not been intended to be used to barely see things. The new one was simple magic spell, a magic skill. It already required some effort to use unlike the previous one that even a child could use.
It did not take long for Kaden to understand the idea and was able to cast it succesfully.
Kaden was almost shocked of the clarity in comparison. The price had been worth it. There was no longer ‘fog’ or anything to distort his sight. It was like looking through crystal clear water! Kaden’s core, which had basically seemed to him before a chunk of solid matter with a glowing ball inside it, was now radiant, clear, yet slightly unevenly surfaced shard. The glowing ball of energy within it no longer blocked sight and he could see the ball being almost like a vortex of liquid like energy flowing endlessly.
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He could even see his core still “grow”. The mana he had consumed in various ways was in the core. Since Kaden had reached advanced dire beast stage and his core was at its current limits, that mana had nowhere to go. He could see it being slowly condensing closer to the surface of his core. This was extremely slow process, but it seemed like his core was becoming more dense! Size itself was barely increasing at all. Thinking of this, Kaden assumed once his core was dense enough, it should be able to contain more mana and become a high beast core!
Since his cultivation path was unusual, he also carefully inspected himself throughoutly for problems, but he found none. Kaden rejoiced and assumed, whatever he was doing, was the right way! He still remembered when he reached Channel Opening. He had almost died! Such problems were things he truly wanted to avoid. What, if next time something similar happened, it was not a matter of some slight adjustment?
Knowing about the matter of balance, he was prepared to act on it. He also believed that it was only one time event when he connected to outside mana. As far as he could see whenever he used mana the core, despite it being higher grade than his channels, they worked in unison. His channels were tough so, unless the difference became extremely large, it should not matter. He had not noticed any signs of reaching some kind of dangerous limit occuring. Nor had he seen any cracks or wear on the channels as he inspected them.
Kaden felt very prepared at this point. He had checked himself throughoutly and done his best to predict any future dangers. He had not detected any problems! It was time to start thinking of the next step.
Since he had been able to adjust his mana system already quite a while ago, he had some plans to create himself a personal mana system. A true one. He wanted to get rid of his current one that he couldn’t use properly, even if he wanted to.
This would be his next goal. He had already looked through parts of his current mana system that he did not use or need. Also things he thought were necessary and how to make better use of them. Still, the ideas he had so far to its actual structure was relatively basic and needed more work.
His core was progressing well, but his human style cultivation not. Yet, that was the exact kind of mana cultivation he needed to keep up. That allowed him to mingle among the people that had no right to live and just needed to die. No one could ever know the truth about him so he had to appear entirely normal human!
He had devoured lot of things and eaten cores and quite a bit of time had passed, but still the channels were at mid stage since most of that mana went to core. If the channels were going to progress the same way as when reaching mid stage, getting filled up and then extra mana spilling into the walls of his channels strengthening them, he could see this should be happening soon again. Another thing his new inspection skill allowed him to see.
Core seemed to just take priority whenever mana entered into him and it was definitely easier to cultivate. Still, this shouldn’t be a critical problem.
In Kaden’s opinion, strength was the most important thing, so he still wanted to advance to High Beast stage and then worry about getting to Formation stage. He would just have to kill anyone he showed strength beyond limits of Channel Opening.
Whatever other plans he had were secondary at this point.
Having decided his path of for the foreseeable future, Kaden started to cultivate. This continued for a few days and he moved nowhere from the trashpile corner. Only some of the business owners nearby that came to drop of their trash complained to Kaden a bit, but stopped once they received harsh stare from him.
Once the activity he had observed in his core had stopped, he also felt like he could consume the core he bought. As expected, the effect he had previously observed increased in intensity, but still Kaden expected it would not be enough.
“I will still need to go find more bounties to kill”, Kaden sighed to himself thinking of the resource problem.
Only reason Kaden had been so quick so far with his cultivation, was because he had been lucky to acquire money to splurge on cultivation materials. In the wild, a beast would have to kill and gather all these materials by themselves and that would often be fatal such as killing another beast for their core. A human would have to very similarly compete with others. Kaden guessed this usually proved fatal too. Humans and beast were not that different.
Kaden even had a human style mana system to slowly but surely increase his power that beasts did not have. Even if it was inefficient, it was still something extra. All that and the fact that Kaden had spent so much money that most people would never get at his level. Yet still he needed more and more in the future.
If it was easy to become a High Beast or a Formation stage mana cultivator, there would be far more of them. The amount of resources needed pointed that most people would simply get stuck somewhere along the way.
“I can always start killing people”, Kaden surmised. “If these bounties wont work then I can always go somewhere else. Even returning to the forest is acceptable. There I can freely hunt.”
Kaden didn’t feel stuck yet and he was not sure, if such a thing was even possible. He would die in attempt to grow than sit down and give up. Money would get him to next stage on both human and beast path, but then he would likely need to take greater risks.
With his determination, he continued for a few more days, until the latest core was truly absorbed. It was time to test his strength once again. Sidon’s arena would work. He wanted to see just what kind of opponent pissed Sidon would give him. Perhaps if there was something Kaden valued equal to having strength was freedom. In Kaden’s opinion, the two created each other. Strength would allow freedom and freedom would allow your strength to grow.
Still, there were a problems with Sidon, so Kaden felt wary! The man was strongest person who knew anything about him. He was not stupid! Whatever lies Kaden had spouted, Sidon might be able to make his own deductions about him. He did not want to completely burn bridges yet. It would be dangerous, if Sidon really wanted to mess with him. Kaden felt he had been rather tactful so, despite his worries, he felt he had not passed Sidon’s limits.
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t even directly threaten to kill him so it should be okay”, Kaden thought to himself.
With this in mind Kaden decided to go have a look at the arena and test his strength. While his core had not really grown in size or the ball of energy changed in any way, it had still become more dense. He was sure it was slightly stronger than before. Perhaps one could call him a Limit Dire Beast.