Chapter 32: Asceticism Journey (5) — 11 Months
A/N: Another chapter as we come closer to the end of the Asceticism Journey subarc.
Happy reading :D
[11 months later]
I stared at the chimeras before me, their grotesque bodies still something I was unable to get used to. Still, that didn't prevent me from getting sentimental. After nearly a year of using them as training dummies, it seemed, as improbable as it was with their terrifying appearances, that I had grown attached to them.
"Alright, boys, let's do this."
Dressed in torn rags, I held a glowing orb that glowed a solid orange like my core in my hand as I began circulating mana throughout my body.
Sending a surge of mana into the orb, I lowered my sense of gravity. I ignited Elegy, a clean light-yellow spear revealing itself.
I chucked the orb, and before it touched the ground, a pair of translucent light-yellow ears and a tail had materialized.
—CRREEEAAAKK
With an ear-raping sound, the 6 cage doors screeched open, different chimeric mana beasts slowly prodding out.
I pointed the spear at them and roared with a grin.
"Come at me!"
—ROAAAAA
With deafening roars, the largest of the chimeras charged at me. It was a six-legged beast, each pair of legs coming from a different creature. It was as large as a building standing on its feet and…
—FWOOOSH
…Yeah, it could breathe fire.
But not to worry, I've fought this guy over 50 times now.
The light-yellow spear changed form into a blade. A massive blade. Stretching at least 20 meters, I swung the weightless sword down, splitting the fire in half. The fire that could melt any normal metal diverged and crashed against the cavern's walls and ceiling.
However, a flying-type chimera took this as a chance and swooped in, successfully grabbing me by my shoulder.
"Urghk!"
The sharp claws hurt, but it was a pain I was used to.
Seamlessly changing the form of the giant sword into a dagger, I sliced at the chimera's leg. Slicing through like butter, I was freed from its grasp and plummeted down into the open jaws of a crocodile-like chimera.
I spun midair and changed the weapon into a spear.
Responding to the mana I pumped into it, the weapon grew in length at a frightening speed, easily piercing the mouth of Crocky, as I've come to call it.
Despite their mostly easily pierceable skin, chimeras had rapid regeneration because they didn't need food but just survived off mana, making them mostly mana. Plus, since today was execution day, I needed to wrap this up quickly.
I changed my grip and used my body weight and downward momentum to swing down, causing the sharp bottom end of the spear to flick up, slicing through the chimera's head. I quickly changed its form and let the kinetic energy take me back down to the ground…
…Not.
Unwilling to waste even a second, I changed Elegy's shape into a normal-sized sword and spun, bringing it with me in a circular arc.
With a light-yellow trail, the blade easily sliced through the head of a wolf-type chimera, and I deftly landed on the ground, rolling. Altering the properties, I used the centrifugal force of my landing to spin in a circle, kicking up dust. Using the mana stored within my tail, Elegy's light-yellow blade stretched to become like a bladed whip* with a trail of light-yellow light following it. Slicing through the gathered wolf chimeras, I managed to completely eradicate them in one fell swoop.
Two cages.
"!"
At that moment, a shadow fell over me through the dust cloud. Instinct activated, warning me of danger, and I used a new application of Flash Thunder.
Using it to go vertically.
—KRAKOOOM
The roar of thunder rang out as I shot into the sky like a rocket, the speed, and power reinforced by Reinforced Mana.
—KKRRSHHHHHH!!
As soon as I vaulted myself into the sky, the shadow, which was the gorilla-type chimera's arm, crashed into the ground, splintering the already ruptured floor.
In the air, my tail, despite the heavy taxation of mana, grew, something that was attributed to my rapid absorption or what I've come to call, Gluttony.
Taking Elegy in both my hands, I rotated the two ends in opposite directions allowing me to split the conduit apart.
Looking at the Lovecraft version of King Kong dead in the eyes, of which he had 69, I skillfully landed on his arm. With each of the halves of Elegy in my hands, two light-yellow blades made of Reinforced Mana formed and dug into the skin of the chimera.
"Raaargh!!"
With a ferocious roar, I dashed up the massive limb, greenish blood spewing from the rifts created by my twin blades.
Making it up to the shoulder in mere seconds, I spun, letting my mana swords tear and dig up flesh, sending a helix of the green, viscous liquid into the air.
The chimera roared in response as I combined the two pieces again and sent enough mana into it to create a spear with a diameter of at least 5 meters.
"HAH!"
Flipping off the gorilla's arm, I threw the weightless spear into the behemoth's face, instantly killing it.
—BOOM
The creature helplessly fell onto the ground.
That's three cages…!
Before I could finish my thought, Instinct warned me of yet another danger. I spun to see the flying tail of the largest chimera, Godzilla, as I've come to call it, come straight at me.
Aerial Steps.
Flash Thunder.
—BOOM
Creating a platform of mana, I activated Flash Thunder and blasted off, evading the tail.
"Ahk!"
Still, some of the grime on the tail flew off and hit my face.
I landed on the cave's wall and quickly wiped it off, my eyes glaring at Godzilla.
"Oh, you're so dead…!"
But my childish smile betrayed my threatening words.
Meteor Crash.
—KRABOOOM
With another roar of thunder, the wall under my feet fractured and cratered as I flashed like a lightning bolt, speeding forward like an actual meteor.
The path of my movement was drawn by familiar trails of mana as if even the mystical power had a hard time keeping up with my speed.
Bursting through the titan's neck, I landed on the floor and pivoted, my hair that reached my mid-back swinging. Stepping back lightly, I watched the mighty titan of a chimera come crashing down, fully decapitated.
Green rain splashed on the ground as the blood rode the wind currents generated by my crusade straight through the monster's neck.
Four cages.
As I stood in the middle of the colosseum-sized space, I gathered myself.
The only chimeras left were the pterodactyl-types in the sky and the crab type.
The giant crab with spider legs and various limbs attached to its body was a bit of a coward, so the priority was the pterodactyls.
I lifted my arm, extending it as I pointed my palm at the sky. The silvery-white ring on my thumb beginning to glow.
Immediately, whisps of light-yellow colored mana flew into the air and formed weapons. Swords, axes, spears, daggers, halberds, sabers, staffs, clubs, hammers, guandao, etc. Any kind of weapon I could possibly think of appeared.
"Fly!"
Armory Release — Flurry.
With a cry, I hopped forward like a javelin thrower and swung my arm down. In response, the hail of weapons flew through the air at breakneck speeds, more being continuously generated at a constant rate.
The screeching of the pterodactyls could be heard as they were shot out of the sky. Some of the flying weapons entirely missed, but others struck a pterodactyl while others struck two, piercing them.
Soon enough, the world became silent, and I stopped creating the weapons.
…5 cages.
"Ha, ha, haaa…"
I clutched my head and staggered. Using Reinforced Mana for this long was taking its toll. Though I could use a lot of it now due to Materialization…
I glanced back at the light-yellow tail that had grown to an impressive size.
…It was still mentally taxing. I felt lightheaded, but I needed to finish the job.
I raised my arm up and pointed it at the crab.
"…One hit."
Raising my arm higher to make it look like I was holding something above my head, I began conjuring.
I needed to create Reinforced Mana to cut through the crab's outer layer, so I compressed more mana. This made me feel queasier, but it was worth it. Soon enough, I had masses of mana above the crab.
"Haap!"
With a spirited shout, I swung my arm down.
Skyfall.
While it may have looked like I was throwing nothing, following the arc of my throw, the mass of light-yellow mana in the air flew down.
The crab, which seemed to have been frozen in fear, finally noticed the rain of pillar-spears and desperately tried to scuttle away. Unfortunately, it was too late.
The pale yellow hail crashed into the crab's carapace, crushing it and killing it.
Seeing that I had achieved victory, I heaved in and out some air before letting myself collapse, evidence of Materialization disappearing into wisps of mana.
"Oh man… my back…"
Huffing, I stared at the cave's ceiling.
Six cages.
I sighed and turned over to look at the cave ceiling, thinking back on how exactly I got here.
**
After that night, when I passed out, I awoke… healed.
It was the strangest thing. But no matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn't come up with an explanation. I wracked my head, trying to figure out what had caused the phenomenon, but no matter what, the gap in my memory from my sleep was unmoving.
Still, that didn't mean I spent my time stressing over it.
Although I was suspicious over the whole matter, my body was perfectly back to normal. That meant just one thing: training!
…
Anyways, I began seriously training after that. I spent my days outside of the cave, training and working my ass off, trying different weapons, and getting used to a different fighting style, one where my mana usage was no longer as constrained.
I couldn't be too careless, but thanks to Materialization, I could use a lot more mana than before.
The danger of crossing the event horizon was still present as I could still close them too much. Materialization only partially solved the issue of my lacking mana pool. The tail was a battery that needed to be filled to be useful, and if I exhausted it, my acupoints would need to close to speed up Gluttony. Plus, though I wasn't sure since I never tried it due to its danger, I felt there was a limit as to how much the tail could hold.
In any case, I worked on Reinforced Mana as well as conjuring. Sure, it was boring, but it gave me purpose. I discovered a few more techniques, such as Armory Release (creating mana weapons), and managed to figure Reinforced Mana out.
After around 4 months of this (this was around when I finally managed to create Reinforced Mana), however, I couldn't handle the boredom.
Before, it was like school. I went out there at the same time every day, met the same people, and worked. But out here, it was doing self-study… endlessly.
No human interaction, no nothing.
Just me, myself, and I against the world.
…It was boring as hell.
So, I did the only logical thing any normal person would do. I went back to the cave.
There, I found the chimeras still alive. In fact, they looked the exact same as they did 4 months ago. It was suspicious, but I decided to let it go then. After some exploration, I discovered a bookshelf and desk. There were different books with different titles.
For example, one of them was "Research Log #47," while another was "Journal #39."
The research logs were boring, filled only with dense knowledge on mana beast anatomy and other diagrams and explanations that I couldn't make heads or tails of.
What was interesting was the journals.
The guy seemed to be a scientist of some sort, and he served a person he exclusively referred to as "Lord." He didn't use any other name and always used the word, never using pronouns. In any case, he was dispatched to the forest to experiment with different mana beasts to create chimeras, and he explained how he had started with a squirrel and a bird.
By mixing the two, he managed to create a hunk of flesh.
He described how he was initially met with countless failures, being unable to bring anything to life. It wasn't until much later that he discovered that the chimeras didn't necessarily need to be fully conscious.
He then started leaving referrals to the research notes but again, I couldn't make any sense out of it. Anyways, the rest of the journals were… concerning.
It revealed the man's steadiness, sure, but around journal 34, he rapidly started descending into madness. After a massive failure, the countless failures that had constantly been piling onto him must have made him break.
He seemed like an intelligent scholar, eagerly studying his passion until this point. But after he passed his breaking point, he went full mad scientist, reducing him into the form I saw before I killed him.
In any case, delving into his personal life, I had realized that the chimeras didn't have wills of their own. They were controlled.
I had then walked over to the corpse of the grey man.
It was then I noticed two oddly shaped lumps in his pocket. After reaching in and probably touching maggots or something equally disgusting, I manage to fish out a pair of orbs.
After some hands-on experimentation, these orbs controlled the chimera by communicating basic preset commands (which were written in Research Log #53) and opened and closed the doors for the cages.
I also discovered 3 strange rune-like things** running down his back. Although I couldn't be sure as they looked like and felt like an interesting choice of tattoos, I had a mysterious suspicion that they were something else. Unfortunately, his journals nor his research notes ever mentioned these things.
As for the wavy earth spell, I soon realized that the spell was fired from a magic stone, the same way that emitters could plant spells into a gem.
It was dead after usage, but it was interesting to see how this guy had managed to create something at the forefront of mana engineering with such a high-class spell. Regretfully, the other mana stones were empty with no spells, and I couldn't fit anything into them either.
Anyways, I think it was around then when I had the crazy idea of using these chimeras behind cages that the grey guy, whose name was Sarunam, called his "precious babies" as training dummies.
And like that, 7 months passed as I endlessly battled against each of the chimeras, pushing the frontiers of my abilities.
**
Feeling that I had rested enough, I hopped back onto my feet.
"…Guess I should leave."
I was exhausted, and I still hadn't gotten used to the smell. It was a wonder how that Sarunam managed to hold out here for over a decade. Stepping through the doorway, I stared at the books I had left outside. I had a feeling that I should take them. Though I could leave them and just have others bring them back later…
I decided to just take the most important book.
"Research Log #67."
67 was Sarunam's final research log. It contained his final success. The Research Logs before were just his trial and error. This one held his success, and the rest of his work was practically useless without it.
"Wish I had my dimension ring right now~"
Oh yeah, as for the ring on my finger, it was something I pulled off Sarunam. Though I didn't fully trust it yet, I decided to use it for the time being since it worked as an excellent conduit. I mean, I could kill A rank mana beasts with this.
At least, that was my estimate of the chimeras' power.
They were a far cry from S rank though some may be AA rank, with the rest being A rank and below.
"…"
My thoughts gradually began to slow and eventually cut off completely as I stepped outside.
I covered my eyes from the glaring light.
I hadn't really gone out much. Just for the occasional hunt, which was almost always at night, so it felt like I was seeing a whole new world again.
Feeling that my eyes finally adjusted to the new conditions, I took away my hand and soaked in the scenery.
The emerald, green world enlightened by the sunlight shining through the dense leafy canopy above and brushing my skin with warmth. The occasional chirping of birds and the summer insects screeching entered my ears.
Smiling in a cheery mood, I began dashing through the forest as deftly as an elf, my path illuminated by the dazzling sun.
*I was copying Gildedguy's stretchy sword.
**He's supposed to have a Regalia, the highest rank of Alacryan rune. I'm not sure if that's what it's supposed to look like but it is what it is.
A/N: Next chapter is the finale of this arc. After that will be the rest of the time skip and the final part of Arc 2... I think.
It's a bit erratic with the time jumping and all that, but I hope everything makes sense. Drop any questions if you're confused from either this chapter or the last chapter.
Thanks for reading!
Rua
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone