Ethan was feeling a little tipsy, alright, very tipsy, but decided against his better judgment, to walk to the Cultivation Chambers anyway. It was fairly late at night, and he wasn’t expecting anyone except for the sleepy, overly bored attendant.
He wanted to check in on the chambers, opened the doors and then bumped into David Vivan.
“Ouch.” Ethan rubbed his head, the bump made him feel a little floaty. “Sorry dude, wasn’t expecting anyone here-”
David rubbed his own head briefly. “I’m fine.”
“What’s the hero doing here so late?” Ethan slurred, his thoughts and tongue unfiltered. It was a mistake to come here. He clearly wasn’t in the right mind to use it.
David’s eyes widened, and pulled Ethan into one of the cultivation chambers and shut the door. “What did you just say?”
Ethan, overly drunk and high, slurred. “You. What are you doing here at this hour?”
“No, that’s not the exact word that you said. Repeat it.”
His head hurt, and he had no memory. “I’m sorry, man, I’ve drank too much, and I don’t really remember what I said word for word. I asked you what you were doing, right?”
David still eyed him suspiciously. “You called me something, repeat it.”
“I can’t remember what I called you. Was it dude? If I said something offensive, I’m sorry!”
The hero remained frustrated, but then decided to let him go. “You. Watch it. I have my eye on you.”
“Got it, boss! Did I call you boss?” Ethan said, the world felt like it was spinning. “I need to go back to my room, I’m not in shape to use this... this... room.”
David watched as Ethan opened the door and somehow managed to drowsily walk back to the District 4 Residential district. It was a good thing none of the nobles decided to jump him today.
***
Week 2, Day 4
When Ethan woke up, the sun had already started to bake his skin. “Fuck me, I slept for so long?”
“Was wondering when you’d make it up!” Andrew, Jovan and Basil were having some kind of lunch and breakfast bundle when he finally made his way to the canteen.
“Goddess-dammit.” Ethan cursed. “I drank too much.”
“We all did. Alia actually vomited in the park.”
“She did?”
“Yeah. One of her blockmates helped her back to her room. She puked quite a bit.”
“Fuck. Should’ve helped her out.”
“Last night, you didn’t look any better than her.”
Ethan still felt a little hazy, “I think I can’t do a rift today. Maybe not in the afternoon. I’m gonna just... uh... chill.” The other three dudes gave him an understanding nod. “We probably shouldn’t do this often. Or only when there are no rifts.”
Andrew nodded, similarly feeling a little woozy. “Totally explains why they hold parties during the rift-closures.”
He decided to walk to the Cultivation Chambers again, and spend his 10GP on pushing his cultivation core to the 2nd realm, but just before that, he looked back at his friends. “Do you guys know whether there are any drawbacks to uh... uhm, raising the realm for a common-grade core?”
“Not really. It’s just a waste of effort, that’s all, since you’ll eventually toss the common-grade for a better grade, and start from scratch again.”
“Ah. Good.”
The cultivation chambers were fairly empty, most of them were rushing to make the most of the rifts. Again, Ethan realised they missed that part of the strategy. By using rifts and earning GP, they could use it to cultivate their core during the rift closures.
Yet, he needed a 2nd realm, even if just to have his Summons around a bit more. He sat and felt the shadow energies in the chamber accumulate within his body, and pushed it into the core.
The first four hours he kept stuffing the core with more shadow-energy. It was about the end of the 2nd session that he began to feel something happen in his soul.
It was a strange, but really keen sensation. He knew that the core was filled to the brim. He pushed the shadow energies in anyway, and felt his entire body burn in pain.
“Fuuuuuuuh!” He endured the pain, and the core in his heart glowed. His soul frame cracked, as he pumped the shadow energies into the core. The core glowed, and the soul frame expanded. He remembered that he needed to push, and kept pushing.
It felt like an eternity, but it was done.
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***
[Ethan Blacktree]
[Core: Common-Grade Core of Shadow Swords]
[Core Cultivation : 1st Stage - Second realm] (realm up!)
[Skill Frame : Skills slots available 4/8]
[Common- Shadow Steps - Level 9] (+1)
[Common- Body Enhancement - Level 12] (+3)
[Rare- Sword Unity - Level 3] (+1)
[Common- Shadow Copy - Level 6] (+2)
[Storage]
[Common - Stab of Darkness - Level 1]
A shadow-powered attack
[Common - Illusion Blade - Level 1]
Splits your swords into illusionary attacks. Enemies may be able to see through your multiple illusionary swords. Illusionary blades deal no damage
[Rare - Vanished Shadow - Level 1]
Temporarily transform into a shadow moving through the floor. You can be attacked when in shadow-form, and you take exceptional damage from light element magic, and extra damage from other types of magic damage.
[Rare - Natural Camouflage - Level 1] (new)
You become harder to spot naturally, and this ability can be toggled on or off. Does not consume energy
[Common - Shadow Daggers - Level 1] (new)
Throws shadow daggers at your targets. Range and damage increases with level.
[Common - Shadow Step Illusions - Level 1] (new)
When activating shadow steps, some of your steps leave residual shadows that confuses your opponents. At higher levels, these illusions can deal a bit of damage.
Yet, that wasn’t the most important point. He realized it was still important to improve his personal strength. His core was the power source of the summons.
[Summon Master abilities updated as energy level increased - You now have enough energy to summon two characters at the same time. Each Summon can last for 7 hours per day]
If the core powered his ability to summon, what if he had a dragon-grade core? There had to be some difference, just from shifting to higher grades.
***
“You look pleased.” Alia smiled, and Ethan noticed a similar smile on her. He didn’t even realize she was outside of the cultivation rooms.
“I got to the 2nd realm.”
“Why, me too. I got there this morning.” Alia nodded knowingly. “We’ll get there faster than those with rare-grades, because they need more energy. After this, we should really focus on grinding for a rare-grade.”
“Why not straight to a titan grade?”
“The power increase from common to rare grade should allow us to take harder rifts, and earn more GP.” That may be true, but if he could get Zaram to farm for a Titan-grade, he could get there faster.
No. He needed someone else to farm for it, secretly.
“Hmm, true. How’d you know I was here?”
“I only needed to look in three places. The library, the canteen, or here. Well, actually, Andrew told me.”
“Oh.” Ethan rubbed his head.
“Do you feel better?”
“Yeah. I do. Those eight hours really help clear- Let me go to the washroom for a minute.” Ethan had to pee, and a short while later. “Sorry, thanks for waiting. I’m feeling better.”
“Wanna take a level 1 rift? Something... less stressful, just to earn some GP, and hopefully crystals or minerals? We’ll need some funds if we wanna travel around for those two weeks. I also really wanna test out how different the 2nd realm is.”
“That’s a good point. I did tell the guys I wasn’t planning to do anything though...”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll tell them I dragged you along.” Alia laughed. “I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“Ah alright!”
The level 1 rift they encountered, strangely, happened to be a rerun of their very first giant-cat rift. “Oh, this again.” Alia seemed fairly amused. She felt stronger, faster, and with her 2nd realm strength, she only needed one hit to cut through the monster cats. Ethan too, and he was amazed at the strength he now had.
“Now I totally get why everyone thinks Zaram’s in the 2nd realm.” Ethan muttered what was on his mind absentmindedly, as he admired his own strength. It was as if he was 30 to 40% faster and stronger.
“Wait. Zaram’s in the first realm?”
“Uh... I’m... uh. It’s a secret, alright. He’s got like... some special training or some shit.”
“Whoah. He’s gonna be a beast if he ever gets to the 2nd realm!”
“I guess.”
They cruised through the rift, and collected the crystal at the very same place. Alia, of course, was a lot more chatty.
“You know, I sometimes wonder whether what the tower’s artificially creating rifts is considered blasphemy. They say rifts are the creations of the Middle Three.”
“Middle Tree?”
“The Middle Three gods. You visit the five goddesses all the time, like the old tales?” She briefly recounted a paragraph from the Origins of the World, according to legends. The Middle Three were the unworshipped, they formed the structural features of their world. They represented everything ‘neutral’ in the world, that covered the land, the monsters, and the rifts.
“I’ve never heard of that.” Ethan made a note to do some mythology research. Things from ancient myths tend to resurface in a story involving heroes.
It was time to face the boss again, but before that, Alia turned and looked at Ethan. “Did you choose your new skills? I noticed you didn’t use anything new.”
“Oh you noticed.” The young man blushed a little. “I actually wanted to just uh... take some time to think about it.”
“You don’t have to, at least, not at our level. You can swap one skill, once a day. So for us 2nd realm commons, we need just 8 days to fully change all our skills. It’s not like we have that many skills, anyway. It's also better to just try out the skill. You never know which skill actually performs better than your imagination.”
The boss was the same striped cat, and Ethan noticed his slashes and cuts weakened the monster considerably. It didn’t even take long for both of them to kill it and collect the core.
“You could do this solo.” Ethan laughed.
“You too. But after challenging rifts with large parties, I really can’t imagine doing it myself ever. It’s much nicer to have someone watch you back.”
Ethan nodded. “That is a good point. It must be tough not having someone to talk to!”
“Hey!” Alia’s contented smile turned into a scowl.
“Alright, that’s it for today.” The attendant said after clearing their GP and gold. “Just to remind you freshmen, the Tower will be open for another three more days and we’ll close for the rift generators to recharge for two weeks.”
“Got it.”