Chapter 2: Chapter 2
"You seem awfully lively today, anything good happened lately?"
"No aunty, everything is going normal I just feel something good is going to happen soon"
That's the conversation that happened almost every morning between Adrien and the inn's owner wife, while they made the food which would be served as breakfast. Both the owner of the inn and his wife knew Adrien since he was 14 years old when he came to stay at the inn and ended working there for the last 4 years or so.
He decided not to tell them about his success in training for now, at least until he made sure was in order and he had completed the first invocation of his Vital Summon. After all these years they both felt like a part of his family and he wanted to surprise them, it might seem in a little bad taste but he was sure they would be happy for him.
After making the food for the breakfast it was time for the orders, sometimes people came and ordered food for taking out and/or traveling. The general store sold dried food, but those were always last resort when traveling since it was pretty tasteless food. Of course, some people preferred to just hunt something and make a dinner out of it, however, it is never a bad idea to be prepared for any eventuality.
"Hey Genna, can you handle things alone? that way Adrien can serve the food"
"Sure, I'm fine here so he can go"
The day was a busy one while serving the food and taking orders he could see many different people. Some were the regular customers that had to work since the first ray of dawn and didn't have time to make their own food, others were travelers and traders that went from town to town doing business but the ones he was always interested are those that looked like mercenaries or hunters and in very rare cases the ones that looked like Tower Students.
The Towers were the different schools made to train Summoners and Summons, you did not become a powerful nor a successful summoner just because you formed your core and invoked your vital summon. There were many things in need to become part of the best summoners, you needed technique manuals, training manuals, fighting strategies and also experience. Not to mention the knowledge to fully utilize all of the above mentioned.
All the towers had their uniforms unique to them, only a real student could get a hold of one and if you are discovered impersonating one then you could be punished in many ways, even death. The Towers were not the only way to acquire all those things, the army, for example, had their own techniques and training unique to each kingdom and the reveal of these would be considered as treason.
Today there was apparently a couple of students, they sat in one of the tables talking and pointing at one map. Filled with curiosity he approached and asked for their order.
"So, we need to go this way and then we might find the extermination target"
"I don't know why the school placed such a high reward for this assignment, we might have gotten a huge jackpot"
"Maybe, but don't let your guard down, we might be Level 4 summoners but that's nothing in comparison with our seniors"
"Excuse me, are you going to place an order?"
They were not surprised by the sudden intrusion, but even so, they retrieved the map and stopped their talk. Placing a regular order they resumed talking about minor gossips and stuff so Adrien left. He would be lying if he said he was not curious about that "extermination target" they mentioned, but some things are better unknown.
The day went by with no problem and soon the mid-day madness came, a lot of orders came by and went very rapidly. The afternoon was very quiet and then, a busy dinner time, at approximately 9 pm the work day ended and he was able to take a minor shower with a simple wet cloth before going to his room.
Once in there, it was time to continue what he left in the morning. Inspecting his core he found that despite him, not training, the core had essence inside. To understand the significance of this, it's important to know the significance of the essence being inside of the core.
After forming the core the person finds himself in a stage before rank 1, this is usually called the Transparent stage. At this time the person can do little more than invoke his vital summon, however, both will have a very low combat capability by themselves. To advance in Stage to be a 1st Ranked summoner, it is necessary to have more training and even more important to have a Training Technique.
Each Training Technique is a method of absorbing or assimilating the Magic Essence in the area and transforming it into the Elemental Essence which the core is most attuned to, This process varies in both speed and quality depending on the technique. Speed refers to the amount of essence a technique absorbs in a certain amount of time, and quality depends on the amount of colorless essence converted into elemental essence.
Let's say for example if a Human-Rank technique absorbs 1 point of colorless essence per minute, a Heaven-Rank technique will take the same amount of time to absorb 10 points. Quality wise, a Human-Rank technique would take 10 points of colorless essence into 1 point of a certain elemental essence after 10 min, a Heaven-Rank technique will change colorless and elemental essence in a 1 per 1 ratio every 10 min.
At this moment inside Adrien's core, there was a certain amount of wind elemental essence inside his core, Adrien was pretty sure that he hadn't cultivated in the whole day to have even the tiniest amount of essence inside his core. This was a great mystery, so he stood there examining the core and noticed that essence was being accumulated at a very slow rate.
Surprised by this he went through the small chest at the bottom of his bed, looking for the small training manual his mother left him, once he found it old memories came to him.
&
It was a memory of him sitting in a room with his mother, she was sick and he was taking care of her, she kept apologizing to him and he kept calming her down.
"I'm so sorry for not going to be with you in the future"
"Its okay mom Everything is going to be fine, soon you will get better"
*cough, cough*
She coughed blood and he helped her drink medicine for the pain and medicine to replace the blood she was loosing, after that he fed her some soup while talking to her.
"Mom! drink this, come on it's good for you"
"Thank you, son, there's something I wanted to give you on your birthday"
"Sshh mom, just rest. you can give it to me later"
"No, it is very important. look inside the drawer on the desk"
"Only if you finish the soup, come on you are halfway there"
Nodding to him, she finished the food and then urged him one more time, he went to the desk and found what she was talking about. It was a booklet with little more than forty pages, the cover was blue colored leather and there was a water drop painted on the front and below it, the words Soothing Waves inscribed in some kind of green ink.
"This is a Training Technique that my father, your grandfather gave me when I formed my core. I hope it becomes of use to you, one day"
"Thanks, mom, I really appreciate this but you could have given it to me later, now you just need to get better, okay?"
After that he continued to take care of her until she fell asleep, then he started training and concentrated on forming his core.
&
Shaking his head for focus, he concentrated on the booklet in his hands. It looked exactly as when he first got it, he already knew most of the content of the book but the latest parts talked about the speed of cultivation, the book itself was a Mid-Level Earth-Rank technique of the Water Element. The training techniques aside from Element were divided into Human, Earth and Heaven Rank, at the same time each one was divided into Low, Mid and High Level.
A Mid-Earth Training Technique is considered rare and its price, if found in an Auction, would be very high, for someone to have one and not belong to any organization its quite a rarity. This in itself meant that his mother's family was very influential, even more so considering that in the present any cultivation technique of High-Earth Rank to High-Heaven Rank would be strictly managed by the Empire, Towers, and those extremely powerful Families. If a technique of such levels appeared in the market, they would make use of any methods in order to stop them from becoming too widely spread.
Looking at the part of the manual that described the benefits of the technique and the speed of refinement in comparison to others, taking into consideration that he spent at least 14 hours helping around in the inn, considering the speed of the absorption its almost as if he spent the whole day practicing a Mid-Human Technique.
You should not dismiss the result as something useless since he actually got the same essence most people get, with no effort into training at all. Something he felt curious about was that he got only wind essence and not water, every person with more than one affinity often focus on one, however, if you train and maintain a balance between all the elements then you can use techniques from each element.
The difficulty of keeping your core balanced is not just calculating the amount of essence per element based on affinity, but maintaining that balance until the moment of advancement to the next rank. If you focus only on a single element, after advancing more than one rank the core will start to restrict the entrance to the other element, after advancing 3 ranks the other element becomes partially rejected and it's extremely hard to train in it, with 5 ranks the affinity for that element becomes almost null.
Seeing this he felt both overjoyed and confused, why only one element? and, would this mean that he can get twice the result with half the effort?
After that, he read the training part of the booklet one more time to clear up his memory of it. It took less than half an hour to finish that, he sat cross-legged on the floor and started training while the information was fresh on his mind. Due to the grade of the technique, the rate of absorption speed and rate of conversion was miles apart compared to the natural refinement his core had done in the whole day.
2 hours went by, the balance of both elements was completed and he felt very happy with his progress so far. He also noticed that after finishing this cultivation round, he was extremely tired. This was another less known difference between the ranks of the training techniques, The higher the grade then the higher the requirements when it comes to concentration and stamina.
After a little stretching he decided it was time to see his summon, he was excited and at the same time a little worried. All the Vital Summons grew in strength with their summoners, however, their nature and shape changed from one to another to the point that there was no way to guess how would they look until summoned.
Focusing on his core he found the mist that represented his accumulated essence, past that in the middle of the core itself was the grimoire floating just like the first time he saw it.
&
Inside the forest, at the northeast of the city, anyone could sense that something was wrong. Despite the hour being so late in the night the deeper you entered, the quieter everything became. It doesn't matter if it were the insects or the nocturnal animals that populated the forest in the night, all the inhabitants were extremely quiet as to not disturb someone… or something.
Two figures could be seen traversing the forest, undisturbed by the macabre silence that encompassed the area. The faces of both figures were the same as the pair of students that were in the inn this morning, their outfits were completely different thou. Instead of the Tower Cloak that they wore in the morning, they both had a combination of metal and leather armors in addition to one having a sword on his belt and the other had a pair of knives.
One of them stopped the other and said in a low voice:
"Are you sure this is the right way? we've been walking for a while and found nothing"
"That's precisely why I think this is the right way!! don't be a whiner"
A sudden rustle of leaves broke the silence in the forest, both of them went on high alert and unsheathed their weapons. A small circle with scriptures appeared in front of both, from each circle another figure materialized.
The first one was a wolf 2 meters tall and almost twice long from head to tail, each claw glowed red like hot metal and its eyes shone gold. The other figure was an earthen colored two-headed snake with sharp dagger-like fangs on each mouth and at least 4 meters long. Both creatures assumed menacing stances and seemed both excited and worried about the ensuing fight.
After a few seconds, a screech tore the atmosphere apart, and figures appeared from the forest surrounding both summoners and their invoked companions. There were at least two dozen new shadows in the area and they all seemed to be looking for a fight, at that point the students knew the identities of their enemies; Giant Praying Mantises, each one menacingly moving their two scythe-shaped frontal limbs and making weird sounds, signifying the inevitable start of a fight.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
NorthWind
NorthWind Just like Before. I appreciate any helpful comments and advice, If it is about a correction to be made it will also be well received
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