We fly away from Valor City, finding the nearest rogue dungeon, and I dungeon walk us to another rogue dungeon near the border of Sector 2 and Raven's territory.
The massive crater in the desert, stretching hundreds of kilometers wide and deep, comes into view as we fly over.
My aura is controlled behind my barrier, but Maria's radiates out around her for a few hundred meters even in her resting state as we continue to fly away from all civilization.
Once we're far enough away, in the center of the crater, I speak up.
"This is far enough. Let's see what you can do."
Maria nods, allowing her shared conceal skill to dissipate while pulling out her silver blood-bonded sword.
As she activates her Superior Ice Summoning and releases her aura by going into attack mode, she points her sword forward at me and replies.
"I'm testing my raw power first, to see what my natural strength has grown to. Then we can increase from there."
I nod and put my hands up in a defensive stance.
"Good idea. Don't hold back."
The instant these words leave my mouth, a pulse of cold yellow energy fills the air, and she ice-walks forward faster than I've ever witnessed her move before.
In response, I grin and raise a hand to block the incoming sword vibrating with dense yellow threads and royal blue soul energy.
The air around her body bends, and I feel gravity become stronger as she comes near, but I'm able to defend against her strike with ease.
I catch the sword without changing my expression, but the shockwave it produces sends ripples of energy off into the open desert, making an echoing cracking noise in the silence.
Maria expected this result and uses her free hand to power up a close-range attack while simultaneously activating her greater form.
Her aura increases in intensity multiple times, while the yellow threads of divine light surging from her core tether with the Royal Blue Ice Goddess form that expands, sending a growing icy fist toward me.
With ease again, I block this incoming strike with my other hand while releasing the growing greater form of her sword.
Another echoing crack reverberates throughout the endless crater below, and our sparring match begins.
–
I don't fight back, only blocking her blows at the last moment before impact so she can get used to this immense increase in power.
At first, her attacks are rather slow, but with a power increase like this, I don't blame her cautious style.
While she was able to farm in the labyrinth for a few hours with Abby as an orange core, those mana manifestations are nowhere near powerful enough for her to go all out.
The last real battle Maria has been in was when the A-Class hunters attacked the Crimson City, and even then, her opponent hardly put up a fight.
She's grown hundreds of times stronger since then, and with every strike I block, I can feel her confidence growing and her endless base of power and battle instincts getting used to the divine threads tethering with her movements and Soul Energy.
Dozens of exchanges, echoing and sending out blue and yellow waves of light, turn into hundreds.
Down below in the dark crater, the floor becomes coated with ice as her larger-than-life greater form goes all out.
Every few minutes, I release consolidated mana from the artificial mountains into the air, so she can continue to absorb it all to battle at full strength. My past battle with Raven stripped this air dry of natural mana. Doing so reminds me how rigid and unnatural my own movements were before facing the bronze dragon and her when I first awakened my True Core.
The jump from never fighting with divine energy to now going all out with a yellow core must feel the same.
I had a full month to practice and get used to it in the divine construct. Plus, an intense battle with Raven to get used to my power at full throttle. So now that I am here with Maria in a similar situation, I want to give her the same opportunity to grow.
"I think you're warmed up enough. Get ready, I'm going on the offensive."
Maria's greater form holds its blade with both hands now, preparing for whatever I have to throw at her.
I grin and activate my mana manipulation skill along with one of my True Core's traits to create the manifestation of three monsters that come to mind. The first is a replica of a dragon, while another looks like a similar-sized serpent, and the last is an enormous cyclops holding a club the size of her greater form's sword.
"The dragon for battle iq and a well rounded opponent, the serpent to test your agility and speed, and the cyclops will have absurdly high defenses and raw strength. I want you to kill each one five times."
In the next moment, I imbue yellow divine threads into each of the mana manifestations, each at the strength of a yellow-cored lizard that I faced inside the divine construct.
They all pulse with yellow light, creating gravity fields of their own, and move forward as I fly back, and Maria jumps into the mock fight.
In less than a second, each of my manifestations is easily sliced through.
I grin, "That's one." Then, I increase the threads I imbue into each manifestation to double that of the strongest yellow-cored lizard I faced.
Another two seconds pass, and the dragon's fake divine flames are easily deflected and sliced in two, while the serpent attacking her from behind is shattered to pieces with the follow-through strike.
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As Maria turns to block the incoming club of the massive cyclops manifestation, finally, there is a moment of resistance when their weapons meet.
An echoing clang ripples through the empty desert, but once Maria's concentration of divine threads from the other two previous attackers floods back into her sword, the club cracks and is overpowered by her as well.
The cyclops is frozen and shattered in a single strike.
"That's two..." I yell out while regenerating the manifestations and upping their thread count again by an even more exponential degree, now similar to the core density of Angelica, the weakest member of the Order I managed to see for a few minutes in central headquarters.
The aura in the air shifts as three wells of gravity far stronger than before make dents in reality around us, and I can feel Maria's mood shift as well.
Her eyes focus on the serpent first, as it is the fastest and is coming straight her way.
Another echoing crack ripples through the air as Maria's blade collides with the serpent's fangs.
I watch her core pulse multiple times as they're locked in place in the air, digging deep to push out more and more blue soul energy, and her yellow thread squeezes it tighter and tighter to create a stronger reality-bending attack.
The serpent is cut clean through as her greater form twists its body in the air to dodge the incoming flames of the dragon.
Then, an ice-step through the sky leads to their clash, strategically soaring further away from the cyclops.
A few exchanges take place this time, as it isn't an instant kill, but with every collision of sword and divine flames, I see the same phenomena taking place where Maria's divine core and Soul Energy core pulse in unison.
At first, it looks like she's consciously doing so, but as she kills the dragon and faces the cyclops, doing it all over again with dozens of exchanges, I watch it become more of a second nature instinctive move.
For split seconds, at the apex of her attacks, it's like she's amplifying her attack power and divine thread count by multiple times out of thin air.
If I wasn't seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it...
I activate my all-seeing eye to look at it closer, but before I do, she makes her final strike on the cyclops, finishing this round and yelling out loud to me in a focused, battle-hungry tone.
"That's three. Bring on the next one!"
This time, when I regenerate the mana manifestations, I pool enough divine energy into each of them to make them of equal strength as Mr. Freeman. This is a strength that, when I first awakened my yellow, even after training in the construct, I wasn't able to defeat.
As the gravity wells form, and the aura in this large battlefield in the air shifts again, it seems clear that Maria most likely won't be able to handle them either.
Even so, I want to see how far she gets, so I send the serpent her way with the strength of a mid-tier yellow core.
The same phenomena occur milliseconds before they collide, and it feels as though raw strength is summoned from seemingly nowhere, rippling through her sword and colliding with the snake's fangs.
It sends shockwaves throughout the desert that may actually ripple far enough into the Dark Continent that some small villages feel it if their perception is high enough.
I hold the dragon and cyclops back as Maria goes all out, sending dozens of attacks per second at the snake, despite me not holding back at all.
I made this manifestation to have the weakest attacks, however, I did give it the fastest reflexes and attack speed; yet the ice goddess' eyes track it with exact precision, and every time it appears as though I'll have to end the fight early, the pulse from her cores allows her just enough time to swing her sword to block or strike back.
It takes over five minutes for her to slowly chip away at the serpent's artificial defenses and freeze the mana within the manifestation solid, but to my amazement, it shatters, and she's the victor in the end.
To simulate a real battle, I don't give her any time to rest, and send in the dragon next.
Its pure speed isn't as quick, but its attack power is much stronger and more violent, while its defenses are almost twice as strong as the serpent.
More and more pulses of light ripple through the air, but after ten whole minutes and 200 exchanges, the dragon manifestation doesn't break, and I can tell Maria is starting to become fatigued as well.
I was half expecting this mysterious pulsing phenomena in Maria's cores to continue to grow in power, allowing her to grow at an infinite rate; however, it has seemed to find its match.
The Ice Goddess is in a flow state of sorts, miraculously fighting a being tens of times stronger than herself, but it is clear this is her maximum output.
There are cracks in its armored dragon scales, and if this fight went on for another 20 minutes, I believe she could come out on top, but she would definitely not be unscathed by the end of it.
This is a spar, not a war. I want to save going all out for when it is absolutely necessary, and we have a lot more training to do today as well.
I freeze the dragon in mid-air, halting it from attacking while sending a message through her telepathy link with me.
She shatters the dragon into icy shards while it goes through.
"That's enough. We found your max... You can handle fighting multiple low-level yellow cores with ease, and mid-level yellow cores one-on-one if you go all out, but that isn't going to be enough. Activate the [Authority] Perk on my Rising Emperor's Domain, it's time you use all of the resources available to you."
Maria looks straight at me in her Ice Goddess form, a little disappointed that she couldn't finish that battle naturally since I cut it short, but she understands that it was building up unnecessary fatigue when we're just testing her abilities.
Plus, ripples of excitement coming off her body can't be hidden when she opens up her status to select the new option I've granted her.
I watch her select 1% of all stats and mana control on 5,224,890 links of loyalty, and witness the base stats in her status screen all grow by millions in a matter of seconds.
Her full set of blood-bonded gear multiplies these new base stats by thousands, and her stats read numbers far higher than anything mine ever did, even while taking 15%, because back then, I only had a few thousand links to pull from.
Still, with my experience inside Redgrave's divine flames, despite using this borrowed power, I'm unsure how much it will really help.
Divine energy is far more powerful than pure mana-based stats alone, however I believe without a strong base of stats and mana control divine energy in a weak hunter would be rather pointless.
For example, multiplying the raw power of an unawakened human by any amount wouldn't be very effective. Then again, this is still just a theory, I haven't tried it yet.
The only divine energy holders I've seen have high stats and mana or qi controls already.
It tethers to the user's system and becomes stronger the more threads one obtains, but I'm unsure how much of this absurd power comes from stats and how much comes from the Divine Energy.
Just like when I first awakened Qi and Soul Energy, I learned that enough pure mana can overpower this greater energy form.
Another example would be when Maria and Abby defeated red cores when they weren't awakened, but that feels like far less of a jump than a newly awakened yellow compared to the full power of a True Core.
I'm about to see what difference an immense boost in stats really has.
---
A bright blue explosion of light erupts from Maria's greater form the instant her stats increase by an absurd degree.
With my all-seeing eye active, I watch the yellow threads in her core chase the newly granted energy output, tethering to this increased mana control and aura, while she flies forward to attack the cyclops on standby.
I smirk and get it ready for battle, holding up its club to take the attack head-on.
This manifestation's threads are far denser and based on defense than the other two. Slowly whittling away at this beast is what would work best, as its speed and agility are lacking.
However, when Maria's sword collides with the club, there is no resistance at all...
It phases through like air, freezing the mana present instantly and slicing the mid-level yellow core in half with no effort at all.
As it dissolves, she turns toward me with yellow threads still catching up to turn her Blue Ice Goddess' greater form yellow, and I can feel immense power, excitement, and eagerness to have a real fight exploding from her aura.
Then, I send a message through her telepathy link again.
"Alright, one more round..."
I summon the serpent back into existence and give it the True Core Strength of the bronze dragon I faced above this very crater.
Then, I imbue the True Core Strength of Raven herself into the dragon's form.
Lastly, instead of summoning the cyclops again, I stand behind the two manifestations I send toward Maria and let out the full power of my own core, taking down the purple barrier's suppression, and pulling out my Flame Emperor's Sword.