“Today the four of you advance to second tempering.” Wald said as he paced in front of them. They were gathered in the normal courtyard, and eagerness was written on all of their faces. Wald was taking the lead on this, because he was finally back to full health, and Lita wanted him to start stepping forward in their training. She said they were technically his responsibility, and he would learn from the experience as well. She kept an eye to add when needed, but he was in charge for now.

“The first four stages are special. The rest beyond will increase your power to levels you can’t imagine yet, but the first four set the stage and the direction for that power. Integration exists to bring your body up to a minimum standard while starting your essence towards the same goal, and core refinement finishes that. The next two do something similar. The first again primarily targets your body with essence being secondary, and the second reverses them again. But these two are different in one key way. They set the ratios your body and essence will use, and they lock them. Before now, you were told that you could push your essence in various directions, but that balance was a good idea if you could manage it. That was true for your stage of advancement. But now you have to choose for the rest of your cultivation journey, and balance, while possible and far from bad, is usually not recommended. Even if it’s only slightly specialized, techniques act as multipliers, and if your base attributes are lower, the techniques won’t do as much for you as potential opponents. And having to master and use three different techniques for three different physical or essence attributes that need a boost to compete is… a lot of extra effort. Also, it’s important to note the limit we’ve mentioned for how much the body can improve in each stage and why essence attributes grow more quickly overall, and your base physical attributes help with this. They don’t make you gain more attributes in each stage, but they reduce the chance you will overtax your body with the gains you get from infusion if your base ability is stronger to withstand it. This is also why we pushed you to your physical limits so much. Because once you advance to second tempering, your body will be locked from degrading outside techniques or wounds that need healing. Congratulations, after today exercise is now a thing of the past unless you enjoy it. Don’t think this means that arduous practice of skills and techniques is gone, though. Practice is still practice, and learning is still learning. But, back to the topic, there is a maximum that a body can improve without essence infusion adding on, and we wanted to find those limits for you. Each individual is different, and Beastkin often have higher limits in one or more attributes, but everyone has limits and we pushed you as close to yours as we could.” Wald lectured.

The four exchanged glances, and Kaser was the first to ask, “So did we all actually reach all of the limits?”

Wald shook his hand in a maybe gesture and continued, “As near as we can tell. None of you has raised a single point in any of the physical attributes in over two weeks despite constant exercise. This is a good indication that you are either at your limits, or incredibly close. What we can say with confidence is that if you didn’t, you are missing at most one or two points and that it would take months or years of training just for those, which simply isn’t an efficient use of your time. While, yes, later additions act as multipliers to your base, and so squeezing out every point is important, which is why we spend so long pushing when they are still obviously growing, pushing for months or years to determine that you are already at your limits is wasting time when that same period could add much more significant gains by simply progressing your cultivation.”

The four nodded. They definitely all wanted to grab as much power as they could, but potentially years more of strenuous exercise only to find out that there was nothing more to gain was something they’d be glad to avoid.

Wald went on, “So, you know how this goes. Start with the record orb. Then we’ll explain what you need to do.”

The four lined up and caused one great flash after another. Dornah caused an icy white with hints of blue, Emara’s was similar but the blue was dominant and darker, like her lightning, Vath’s was yellow, and Kaser’s was yellow with tiny hints of green.

Vath paused to pull up his cataloger and look at his results:

Name:

Vath

Cultivation Stage:

Core Refinement- 100%

Organizations:

Sect of the Shining Void

Essence Balance:

Perfect

Core:

Void (100%) - 10/10 Layers

Strength:

51 (~30)

Potency:

62 (~52 [40+12])

Speed:

48 (~30)

Flow:

50 (~40)

Durability:

50 (~30)

Resilience:

50 (~40)

Affinities:

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Void - 96/100

Bloodline:

Empty Wolf (Close) - Early Awakening

Techniques:

Cultivation:

Empire’s General Method (Mastered)

Sect of the Shining Void General Method (Mastered)

Balanced Shining Void Method (Mastered)

Offensive:

Void Beam (Mastered)

Hybrid:

Void Form (Mastered)

He was happy with how far he’d come. His limits landed about where he’d expected for his physical attributes as well. Strength had always been what came naturally to him, followed by durability. He was happy to see that speed wasn’t too far behind, though. And his essence was getting quite potent; even his rather basic void beam hit incredibly hard with that much potency behind it. In spars, Dornah could handle being hit, though he didn’t like it, and Kaser could dodge for hours like it was nothing, but Emara had to scramble to avoid it every time he used it. He’d clipped her once, and a healer had immediately paused the match to help her. She was fine, and wasn’t mad at him, but he still felt a bit bad about that one.

Wald and Lita looked over the results one last time and nodded, and then Wald started up again, “Alright. This advancement is much different than the last. There is no holding on as long as you can. There are ten parts to second tempering as well, but it is not possible to do them all at the front as with core formation. What you need to do to finish second tempering is to inscribe an infusion on the outside of each layer of your core, and then infuse your body with cultivation as in the integration stage, but in the exact ratios that you inscribed into your core layer. To advance into second tempering, all that is required is to inscribe the innermost layer. Then you will go about cultivating as normal. Do not attempt to inscribe another layer before the infusion of the previous is finished. That goes for today, and for the rest of the stage. You will unbalance your core and body to unimaginable levels. It might prevent you from progressing, it might physically cripple you, and it might kill you. By the same measure, only inscribe the outside of each layer. The inside is for the next stage which focuses on the essence attributes, and if you put physical inscriptions there you will at minimum prevent that stage from being completed past whatever layer you put it on. Now, the shapes are simple. There are three that correspond to which attribute you are referring to, and three that correspond to a number. There is also a single symbol to separate the three to ensure they are not mixed together. We will go over them in a moment. What you need to do once we discuss the ratio you will use is to simply use your essence to grind away slightly at the innermost layer of the core until the ratio is there. The three barriers as they are called should be used to partition it into roughly three parts, and then the symbols for an attribute and a number are put one each into those three partitions. There is wiggle room for the sizes being uneven. What matters is that they are completely separate, that the numbers and symbols are accurate to what you want, and that the symbols are drawn well. They are not difficult, but this is one part of the reason we worked so hard on your essence control. More than one cultivator has messed up at this stage and had to arduously fill in the core and re-inscribe from the beginning. It is possible, but it is incredibly difficult, painful, and time-consuming. So pay close attention as we go over them. We will have you practice the symbols with your essence in the air until we are sure you have them memorized. Now, let’s discuss the ratios you will use, and then we’ll start the memorization.”

What followed was an hour of discussion on their future plans. Wald and Lita had ideas for all of them, but were genuinely open to the four choosing their own path. They gave advice and pointed out things that should be considered, but it was clear that the decision wasn’t up to them.

Vath only changed the ratio slightly. He’d initially wanted a lot more speed than his teachers had laid out, pointing out that while it wasn’t his focus, he didn’t want to be so much slower than Kaser absent technique, since they would be working together, and even Emara was slightly faster than him now. Wald had countered by pointing out that Dornah was part of their group too, and while he wasn’t slow, he would never be nearly as quick as the other three. Wald had compromised by upping the speed slightly from their idea, but not nearly as far as he’d originally planned. They had twenty points in attributes per layer, and the ratio he ended up with was eight parts strength, seven parts durability, and five parts speed. This stage would also apparently be where the attributes would begin to explode into the monstrous capabilities powerful cultivators were known for by the general population. That ratio would be fully completed for each layer in addition to ten points per essence attribute per layer. Two hundred points in physical attributes and one hundred in essence by the time the stage was done. The numbers boggled Vath’s mind. He had just over three hundred attribute points total between his base capabilities, his affinity, and two previous stages; but he’d double all of that in one stage? He couldn’t wait to see what that was like, let alone what later stages would accomplish.

After the numbers were nailed down, they spent over two hours making symbols in the air until Wald and Lita were satisfied, and then they sat down to begin. They wouldn’t need baths this time, because thankfully there were no more impurities to be cleansed. Lita sat in front of them, and her eyes began to glow almost purple. They’d explained that she could see their cores this way, and she would be watching for mistakes to correct them as they went.

Vath closed his eyes and began. And it was… surprisingly easy. The symbols were simple, the grinding process caused no pain, and his essence control was far above what was required for this thanks to the intense practice he’d honed it with over nearly two months. Apparently, the four of them were simply overqualified for this advancement, which he supposed made sense given how long they’d delayed it to draw out every reasonable scrap of power before progressing. The process wasn’t quick, and he kept his attention focused intently to avoid mistakes through carelessness, but less than two hours later, they had all opened their eyes without Lita speaking up to correct them once.

“Wonderful.” she said with a wide smile, “If only all our students worked this hard. You did very well. Now, we’ll have to modify your cultivation method to match your ratio, and then you simply cultivate until you feel something lock in place - you’ll know it when you feel it - and then we will do this again for the second layer. Please don’t do the next inscription without me watching, but at this point I have full confidence you can manage it if it becomes necessary for some reason.”

Vath immediately pulled up his cataloger and found that one field had changed slightly.

Essence Balance:

Integration/Core Formation: Perfect

1st Layer Ratio: 8-5-7

He imagined that it would change more as the layers were added, but he hoped it would consolidate at some point or it would get ridiculous. Apart from that, nothing had changed. Not even his attributes. He knew that would happen once he finished the first layer, but it was still slightly disappointing to have no real increase from going up a stage after what core formation had done for him. Then again, it hadn’t taken a full day of painful stubborn focus either, so maybe it was fair.

They had celebrated just the night before for their birthdays, so they didn’t go quite so far that day, but a nice lunch was still had with four exuberant youths and two patient but proud teachers. They were released for the rest of the day to enjoy themselves, and they ended up at the arena again. They were simply enjoying the matches and performances, when suddenly, Kaser spoke up with a wild grin.

“Hey. We’re second tempering now, and have decent essence control. We’re allowed to join the matches. It looks fun, so I’m gonna try my hand at it. Who’s coming with me?”