Chapter 74 – Turning Point

Adam believed he had some strength – he had the clear advantage of his AI companions saving him at every turn. He even had felt that some things relating to his success were almost preordained as he had been so darned lucky. Also, being in someone else’s vision as a pivotal being that would help in the overthrow of the Elios system (IakesI) – would do something to anyone’s ego.

This just compounded the fact that his lack of success and progress so far was down to his failings and his alone. He had been given an awesome skill set but had achieved diddly squat with it so far.

And this would just not do – what was the point of following paths already accessible to others? It did not matter how strong he got if others had already started on this path thousands of years before him. Sure his PD could speed things up, a lot but no doubt beings not that much further ahead in cultivation would also have access to such things.

No, he needed a new game plan and for that, he needed a new mindset.

So he decided it was time for a change in his way of going about things.

Previously his AI counterparts and deem acclimatization to be too dangerous a skill for Adam to use without severe restrictions and oversight by them. But now Echo could as he called it ‘Reboot’ Adam – he didn’t see those restrictions as still necessary.

Libby was not happy when Adam broached the subject with her but agreed it was a possibility with the proviso that Echo managed to include some safeguards. Adam didn’t want to go against Libby if it could be helped even though it turned out that Echo seemed to now be the boss where the AI was concerned. But he didn’t really care as this meant it might actually happen as Echo, appeared to be even more driven than Libby and was totally into turning Adam into some kind of walking fortress.

And so Echo worked on the latest updates for Adam – to give him a system restore that could be renewed fast enough to take place a few nanoseconds before Adam needed a “Reboot” meaning he would have no gaps in memory leading to immediate and catastrophic death in a fight – as he would otherwise be caught with his pants down not knowing what the hell was going on otherwise.

This had not mattered previously as his attacker had been an inanimate object – aka the crimson pill.

With Trey, Meca, and Hubba’s combined help they also upgraded his sensory machinery – which actually needed upgrading on their end anyway since he reached the 9th layer of the tempered body.

This meant that he had not exactly a spidey sense but a highly accurate detector for any incoming attack.

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Adam just sat and had another session of cultivation – he would spend five hours or so at a time cultivating and had now accumulated the equivalent of one month of cultivation in the outside world. He didn’t want to go on before the AIs had completed his upgrades.

And so it was that after approximately six hours in the physical world and Echo and the others had run a million tests that Libby agreed to reinstate Adam’s old abilities, including the previously taboo acclimatize.

Adam felt the tension leave muscles he hadn’t realized he’d been tensing as the ability activated – bathing him in a cool serenity.

Immediately, Adam slipped back into his spiritual space to check the effects of acclimatize, in a practical way through meditation. His first test appeared successful as he went straight through to Earthly Yuan’s first stage without one single break or headache – in a sixteen-hour session.

He then took more of the required elixirs and went back into meditation and in only 7 more hours reached the first Seal of symbol mastery. However, he did not recognize the seal from the many days spent reading books on the topic. He was a bit deflated that it was not one of the more favorable ones that he had coveted when reading.

Adam opened his eyes and looked around the chamber, then almost immediately closed his eyes again wanting to test out the effects obtaining breaking the 1st seal.

As with cultivation, this was just the beginning but as with all things the big things come at the beginning. And sure enough, after meditating for only about ten minutes he found himself entering the astral plane - allowing him to look down at his physical body in the cavern.

This was quite a useful stealth skill in itself Adam felt as he went further and further away from his physical body. And he didn’t have the normal worry of a Seal master – having someone assassinate them while their body was left defenseless.

He went around the corridors of the subterranean city – realizing the drawback of this first stage – it was slow, and no teleporting or gating was allowed.

Still, it would be useful for up-close stealth, right?

Going round the city made him think that he could check out the inner chamber again and that dark vortex, one more time. Maybe he could enter it, without dying too many times, and get to whatever lay on the other side?

Getting back to his physical body could be done like teleporting he was relieved to find.

He went to the central room with the swirling vortex again and this time tried using his astral form to go up to the ceiling. Libby had warned him that doing this was not the best of ideas as he could have his soul torn apart and even Echo could not fix that.

But he managed to ameliorate her by promising to only stick his little pinky in the dark energy to see what happened.

The swirling black energies seemed almost unmoving close-up but when he did poke at it he felt a slight prickling. What happened next was that a tendril of the energy wrapped around his finger and started making its way up his forearm. At this point, he drew back, as the pain was intensifying, acclimatization meant he wasn’t scared per se but he wasn’t stupid either after Libby’s dire warnings. What the hell was it?

Teleporting back into his body from the astral plane, he saw rivulets of dark smoke now multiplying, worryingly, coming down from the vortex.

He watched for a moment, then as the room started to fill he thought it better to retreat back as if it was an attack on the soul level it was best for him to leave and he could see why Elios had wanted this place sealed off.

Adam then stood outside the mysterious inner room that had been unable to open before, thinking he’d have a quick peek around this area too.