章 7: Refining
After being imparted the techniques, the celebration lasted until noon. The servants brought various foods and drinks, some of which were from other areas in the City. When the celebration ended, Solen returned to his bedroom and began reading the technique his father gave him.
The book only had a few words on every page and mostly showed pictures. On the first page, it showed a man in a meditative posture with red particles floating around him. Words on the page explained that you first had to sense the fire energy in the air around you before you could start cultivating.
The second and third page had the image of the man breathing the energy in and creating a crimson 'star' in the center of his chest. This 'star' was explained to be the core where you store the fire energy you cultivate. The energy pool inside the 'star' is very small from the beginning and would be slow to cultivate. The moment the star is formed is when the person reaches the Stone Step.
The core had six minor expansions and two major expansions to its energy pool. It was theorized that when one ascended to the Mythril Step, they would have a minor expansion as they weren't ascending to a new minor stage.
As Solen looked through the book, time pass extremely quickly. It was night by the time he was done reading the book and a look of exhaustion was on his face. It was very much like reading a textbook for him and was a mentally tiring labor.
"Well, I might as well start attempting to sense these fire particles. The book said that it should last at most… three days? I hope so!" Solen immediately entered a meditative posture and closed his eyes. His bodily awareness vanished as he focused on finding these fire particles.
Although reading the beast skin book was extremely exhausting to him, Solen was looking forward to cultivating. He wanted to see what this world had to offer in power. When he was a child, he was often amazed by fantasy stories where characters had the might akin to a demigod. Therefore, he was going to try his best to become powerful in this world to protect himself and his family.
Time unknowingly passed as he meditated silently. His awareness was spread across the room as he attempted to sense the fire particles. Alas, it seemed that the fire particles didn't want to appear on this night as he could not sense a single one.
This meditation also seemed to strain his mind unlike what the usual meditation was supposed to do. Meditation was supposed to relax your mind as opposed to what Solen was currently feeling. "I guess it is time for a rest. I'll go to sleep and continue my attempts tomorrow morning."
After sighing to himself in defeat, he went to his bed and instantaneously fell asleep. This meditation was far more straining than what he could have thought previously as it also allowed him to fall asleep so quickly.
The next morning, Solen could be seen doing the same thing in his room as the previous night. He really wanted to achieve sensing the energy as soon as possible. Solen even refused to exit his bedroom to eat breakfast in order to sense the elemental particles.
Deep within his meditation, he couldn't hear or smell anything outside of his mind. It was as if he had closed off his mind to increase his chances to find these particles. Fortunately, after two hours passed he was finally able to see his first red particle. Slowly, more and more particles reluctantly revealed themselves to Solen.
"Hahaha! I've finally done it!" Solen shouted out in elation. This took a large amount of persistence for him to sense the elusive particles. Thankfully, he didn't take as long as three days otherwise he would have felt a large blow to his confidence.
The room was filled with a very sparse amount of fire particles, causing a sigh of disappointment to escape from Solen's mouth. He was expecting a grand amount of these particles which was adverse to the current situation. In fact, he was somewhat sad seeing the number of fire particles floating around inside the room.
"Now, to begin the next step would be 'breathing' in these fire particles and start constructing the core." He slowly closed his eyes again and began to beckon a single fire particle at a time. At this time, he was afraid of 'overeating' and causing something bad to happen to his body.
"Agh!" After breathing in the first fire particle, Solen could feel a burning feeling in his muscles and his body was rapidly heating up. Solen felt as if he was sitting in a furnace at this moment in time. His skin turned red under the influence of the red particle. In response, Solen could only grit his teeth and let this fire particle refine his body.
After a few more minutes, the boiling heat reached its climax. Solen felt as if his skin was going to begin melting under the intense heat. Thankfully, it was just a feeling and didn't come into fruition. Otherwise, who knew what would have happened.
After the fire particle's harsh energy was fully 'consumed', it made its way into the center of Solen's chest. He couldn't feel a single bit of heat from this tamed fire particle after it stationed itself in the center of his chest.
"Damn! Couldn't that book have warned me that this would happen! I bet dad purposely left that part out after copying his book!" Solen was slightly incensed that there was a lack of warning in the book.
"Who knows what would have happened if I took more than one particle in at that time…" Solen was slightly afraid of what could have happened if he wasn't cautious at first. He was grateful that he didn't make such a mistake.
Grumble!
"Ah! So hungry! I feel like I could eat a horse!" Solen was immediately surprise attacked by his stomach. Even consuming a single fire particle sapped his energy so greatly, he had to wonder how hungry he would get in the future.
Knock! Knock!
Just as Solen was about to leave his room, he heard a well-timed knock on his door. He thought to himself: "I wonder what it could be?"
"Young Master, Lady Alice has asked us to deliver you your breakfast." A servants voice echoed from outside the room. A heavy scent of meat drifted inside the room from the cracks in the door. The scent of cooked meat caused Solen's hunger to rise, making him more and more impatient to eat.
"Ah, come in!" Solen shouted impatiently. His hunger was starting to get the best of him after smelling the delicious food that awaited him. As if on cue, the door was opened and a line of servants from outside brought in various plates of food.
Even though Solen was nearly blinded by his hunger, he wondered how he was supposed to eat all this food. The servants were bringing in a vast amount of food that could probably feed a peasant family for a week. The servant seemed to notice the questioning look and responded immediately.
"Lady Alice said that Young Masters are going to be cultivating all day and has ordered us to cook large amounts of Barbaric Beast meat." The servant said while a hint of envy could be seen in his eyes.
Ordinary peasants weren't able to receive this kind of treatment unless they were powerful enough to hunt these beasts. Very low amounts of peasants even cultivated since they had to worry about their jobs more often than not.
"Ah, I see. You may leave after placing the food on my table." Solen immediately began digging into the first plate that arrived on his table. There was a noticeable lack of elegance as he stuffed his throat full of meat.
He felt energy rapidly returning to his body after finishing a single plate of food. By the time he looked up from his plate, he noticed that the servants had long since left while a large amount of food was piled on his table.
"Guess this is going to be a long day…" Solen thought to himself as a large smile appeared on his face. The warmth in his heart increased as well, not due to the fire particles, but due to the love that his mother showed him. It seemed that she and his father experienced the hunger as well, but they didn't have enough food to eat.
After finishing his food, Solen could feel that his strength had increased a lot. The last time Solen tested his strength, he could already lift over 20kg. It seemed that the humans of this world had a naturally immense physical strength. Even without any weight training, any adult human of this world could easily defeat a bodybuilder from Earth. Now that he experienced the fire refining his body, he could feel that his strength could have possibly increased by a fourth just then.
週次パワーステータス
-- 推薦
ランキング 
-- 推薦
チケット