章 82: The Grind (2)

"[Stick Regeneration]!"

Whoosh!

"Fenrir, hit me one more time!"

"Haah…got it, Master!"

Over ten minutes have passed since Aurus decided to level up his skills in preparation for his evolution to S-grade. The first skill that he decided to level up was [Stick Regeneration], remembering that it was an extremely important skill to his survival. It took him a few minutes of coercing Fenrir for Fenrir to give up and follow Aurus' whims of letting it hit him in order to level [Stick Regeneration] up.

Bang!

With one swipe of Fenrir's stubs, Aurus was sent flying for a few meters towards a nearby tree. Of course, Aurus would take Fenrir's attack head-on since it would damage him, but for some reason, he did not want to take collateral damage from his surroundings.

"[Spirit Barrier]."

Whoosh!

As only a few centimeters remained between him and the tree in front of him, a faint gray barrier covered Aurus' body, easily making an imprint of Aurus' body on the tree while him receiving no damage at all from the impact.

[Spirit Barrier] was a spell he obtained from the [Middle Spirit Spell Core] after it reached Level 10, thanks to him killing over 130 X-grades.

After a while, Aurus was able to budge himself out of the tree and land on the ground as a notification screen appeared in front of his field of vision.

Ding!

'Aurus has received 135 HP damage from [Fenrir].'

"Fenrir, could you attack lighter next time?" Aurus could not help but say as he activated [Stick Regeneration] a few times, bringing his HP back to max.

Ding!

Unsurprisingly, another notification screen appeared in front of Aurus' field of vision. Aurus glanced at the information on the screen for a bit, only to release a cheerful aura afterwards.

'[Stick Regeneration] has leveled up.'

'[Stick Regeneration] has reached the MAX level.'

'[Stick Regeneration] has met the necessary requirements and is ready to evolve.'

Just as Fenrir was about to reply to Aurus' plea, Aurus interrupted Fenrir before it could speak out, shouting out, "Finally! I can evolve my skill!"

Aurus glanced at Fenrir and pondered for a bit before saying, "You know what…never mind. Rather than making your attacks lighter, attack me with your strongest power!"

At this moment, Fenrir did not know whether it was going to follow the former or the latter due to confusion, but it was able to understand Aurus' wishes, releasing an affirmative aura as a reply, letting Aurus know that it understood.

Aurus nodded inwardly to Fenrir's non-verbal reply as he commanded inwardly, "Evolve [Stick Regeneration]."

Ding!

In an instant, a screen appeared in front of Aurus' field of vision, giving Aurus two possible skill evolution choices to [Stick Regeneration].

________

Please choose the skill that you want [Stick Regeneration] to evolve to:

[Branching Healing Aura]

[Branch Benevolence]

________

"Identify the two skills." Of course, since Aurus had no idea as to which one suited him better, he decided to check their details and decide from there.

Ding!

________

[Branching Healing Aura]

Grade: B (Mortal)

You are the conductor of nature and life, bringing vitality back to withered beings and souls. Because of that, you have the ability to radiate this vitality towards a certain extent, rejuvenating multiple beings at once, including yourself, within this radiated vitality.

>Radius of aura: 5 meters

>HP healed per second: 25 + (Attack stat * 0.1)

Duration: 1 minute

SP Cost: 50 SP

Cooldown: 5 minutes

________

[Branch Benevolence]

Grade: B (Mortal)

You are the conductor of life and nature, allowing others to regain their lost vitality with your touch. Thanks to the blessings of nature, you are able to rejuvenate beings or yourself in a faster time than before, allowing life to propagate for longer.

>HP healed: 50 + (Attack stat * 0.15)

SP Cost: 200 SP

Cooldown: 30 seconds

________

Just by the amount the skill healed at once made Aurus certain of his choices. Although the other skill would allow him to heal more HP over a certain amount of time, life and death hanged on an instant rather than a long amount of time.

Ding!

'Are you sure? Do you want to evolve [Stick Regeneration] to [Branch Benevolence]?'

"Yes." Aurus did not have an ounce of hesitation in this choice.

Ding!

'[Stick Regeneration] has been evolved to [Branch Benevolence].'

Seeing that the evolution was finally finished, Aurus could not help but radiate a cheerful aura as he looked at Fenrir. "Fenrir, don't you think it's time to go back?"

As he asked this, he looked at the sky, whose hue was already in the middle of orange and black, telling Aurus that night was almost close.

Fenrir released an affirmative aura as it replied, "I think so as well, Master. Although, I might have a feeling that you still yearn to grow stronger even after going back?"

"Haha." At that instant, the aura Aurus radiated grew more cheerful. "That's correct. Let's go then."

With a single thought, Fenrir disappeared from Aurus' point of view, its voice still heard inside Aurus' mind as a way to keep him company. After that, he activated [Tempest Levitation] and [Gale Hover] as a way to boost his movement skill, before heading back to the Tempest Branch Alliance's base of operations in a short amount of time with his greatly improved movement speed.

…

Although it was gradually turning to night, some beings preferred to traverse in the night rather than day. One of these beings was Chonk.

Currently, he was sprinting through the plains and forests of Tempest Cliff with ease as he had a certain place in mind, which had something to do with the improvement of his Tempering skill.

"After navigating the Tempest Cliff multiple times, I'm extremely sure that the core of this place is in there," Chonk could not help but say to himself as he continued to sprint.

Once an Inanimate becomes an Animate being, hunger, thirst, stamina, and other things that are common to Animates now come alive on said newly evolved Animate. At first, they would be unfamiliar to this, easily neglecting their body's needs and dying. But for some, they knew that these things, when fulfilled to their body's limit, would allow them to operate at a power greater than 100 percent. Not only that, these limits could even be heightened with the help of Tempering skills and normal training.

Thanks to this, the limits to Chonk's hunger, thirst, and so on, have been pushed to the high limits of what a normal Animate can reach due to his strong Tempering skill. Also, his other stats, may it be Strength, Agility, Defense, are also high due to his strong Tempering skill.

Since the Tempest Cliff as a whole was somewhat small, only spanning around 15 kilometers on its longest side, Chonk was able to reach the place he had in mind within an hour or so. This place was located near the far right end of the Tempest Cliff.

Chonk stopped in his tracks as he noticed that he was standing near the end of a high cliff, where on the other side of the cliff laid pointy rocks that could impale him without mercy. Nonetheless, Chonk did not feel fear from these rocks, but instead felt a sense of relief and excitement from seeing them.

"From what I've gathered through my spies, this is the right place."

He gradually went down the cliff, going through multiple detours in order to make sure he was not injured at all along the way. As he was getting closer and closer to the pointy rocks, he noticed that the Wind energy particles in his surroundings gradually became more and more condensed and intensified, letting him know that this was a place filled to the brim with Wind energy.

Only one place came to his mind within the Tempest Cliff when it came to dense Wind energy. 'This place truly is the core of the Tempest Cliff,' he thought.

A few minutes later, he was now on level with the pointy rocks…well, on the ground where the pointy rocks resided. These pointy rocks were over 10 meters tall. To a normal Animate, this was akin to a height of a normal three-story building.

He then tried to find the core of the Tempest Cliff, which was said to hold the most dense Wind energy in the area. Surprisingly, Chonk closed his eyes and relied on his innate sense of Wind energy, moving in the direction where the Wind energy gradually became more and more dense.

At times, he would get close to the pointy rocks and bump into them. At other times, he would jump on the pointy rocks and barely land safely on their tips as he continued to jump with his eyes closed.

In the end, he was able to find the most dense location, opening his eyes afterward to view an extremely large mass of Wind energy spiraling. It was a large tornado of Wind energy. If one were daring enough to enter it, they would definitely be crushed into pieces.

Of course, Chonk was not that stupid, making sure to keep his distance in order to not be pulled by the large mass of energy. Nonetheless, he was extremely excited as his tail wagged left to right at fast speeds.

"I finally found it, the core."

"I can finally cultivate my Tempering skill to the peak and ascend to a Rank 1 class!"