664 10/11 3:21 (Autumn, Day, Terrar)
Sider, in the meanwhile, was currently in the process of meditating within a cave, far away from any traces of civilization, taking in Energy, converted into Qi by her weapon for her to absorb.
And the reason behind such location was entirely caused by the amount of Qi stored within her body, more specifically the fact that by this point she was to the limit of the Qi that she could contain within her Meridians and Dantians both, being just a single tenth-of-a-step away from reaching the Peak Step of the FoundationEstablishment Stage.
As Qi entered her body it was being condensed in a liquid-like state that, drop after drop, fell within her Meridians, flowing through her whole body and gradually starting to fill her, straining her and at the same time further refining the whole that was her.
The channels forming throughout her spiritual body that allowed passage to her Qi finally reached their end point, spreading entirely from the tips of her hair down to the fingers of her feet, solidifying into a biological structure that allowed and guided her Qi.
Sweat flowed freely from her body, bringing with it Impurities in the form of minuscule drops of black sludge that stained the ground around her body, marking her arrival to the Peak ofFoundation Establishment.
The dark-skinned one immediately stopped in her meditation, breathing heavily and just feeling her body, trying to and immediately being able to feel the differences from right before.
Beyond just a slight increase in her characteristics, physicaly, mentaly and magically alike, and an increase in the amount of Qi she passively had access to, the most important change was the ease of her ability to use said Qi.
Through her will alone, she ordered her flow of Qi in her right hand to stop, command that was immediately followed, her Meridians closing down all comunications between the two physical parts, shifting so that they were able to form two mostly-independent Systems inside of her body instead.
Soon she ordered her Qi to leave her hand and rejoin the rest of her body and it obeyed, her Meridians changing further to allow the one way flow of her Qi.
As a result her hand, while still maintaining the full benefits of her Cultivation, was now completely privy of all traces of Qi, except for that which was forming her Foundation in the first place while the rest of her body was now straining to contain more Qi that it was made to deal with, leaving the equivalent of hairline fractures on the surfaces of her Meridians.
Sider stopped, continuing to breathe heavily but reopening the connection between her two Circulatory Systems, relieving the pressure of her Qi enough that her Vital Energy could start repairing the Damage without having the Qi interfering with this process, a gradual way for her to start adapting and increase the toughness of her Meridians themselves.
Once satisfied with the changes on the rest of her body, she started to do the opposite, channeling the Qi in her right wrist to her hand alone until its Meridians matched exactly the refinement of left hand.
Symmetry was after all key in the way that her family was taught how to Cultivate and she would not let something like that get in the way of her progress.
And so she returned to her experiments, straining and then healing her Meridians to reinforce them all over her body, concentrating her efforts especially in the center of her chest, slowly accumulating more and more Qi, using that formerly-a-Wendigo Drake that she slayed as additional data on how exactly a Core would function and look like.
Opening up and linking together the Meridians that she choose within her chest, transforming them from the Qi-equivalent of veins to a vaguely-spherical organ, filling it entirely by more Qi that it could handle, starting an even more intense cycle of strain and recovery than the one affecting the rest of her body, trying to ammass enough of it in an high enough density that it would eventually solidify, forming a Core.
Satisfied of her progress after a couple more hours of this cycle of straining and healing, she decided to stop for today, standing back up and moving to leave the cave and returning to the hotel room that she booked in a nearby city, well aware that continuous efforts without any chance of letting her spirit rest would be quite detrimental.
Especially considering how she would remain in this city only a couple of days more before moving towards the capital of Terrar, after all she had a tournament to reach and a prize to win and less than three months to do it all.
The only traces remaining of her presence being the black mud that was slowly dissolving in the air and the corpses of various Monsters that previously occupied the cave.
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664 10/11 6:12 (Autumn, Day, Unknown Location, Unknown Dungeon)
Multiple different images flashed in the air, a group showing various anatomical profiles belonging to a countless number of Beings, most of them Monsters that fell under their control, either because they were created by one of their Dungeons or because they fell under one of her Dungeons' allegiance.
Others came from People that died, or at least lost body parts, within one of their Dungeons.
Some more screens directly showed their many Dungeons, more specifically scenes of battles, to try and figure out both as many possible weaknesses and inefficiencies in their body functions as possible.
Satisfied at the moment, they briefly turned their gaze towards the three Dragonoids that were formerly Sealed for their biological Alterations, watching as they were currently adapting to their changes and new abilities, Qi erupting into waves of power, flowing through their body and weapons.
Not the Fake-Qi that the Drake was able to recreate but real, legitimate Qi that they were able to recreate thanks to their very subtle examination on that Poison Cultivator.
And not only was it Qi but differently from that Werewolf Cultivator that used Unaligned or Neutral Qi or even the Poison Qi that he used and was imbuing into that golden cocoon, but was instead Miasmic Qi, a variant ideal for Monsters.
Satisfied of their progress, they once more turned their attention away to the Poison Cultivator, studying their would-be-eventual-betrayer, a mocking sharp grin would have formed on their lips had they any.
Through their newly-gained sensors for Qi, they felt that he had finally exhausted the grand majority of his poisonous Qi, leaving not a single drop within his Meridians, swaying in place and barely being able to stand up.
Meanwhile the cocoon itself was pulsing rapidly, glowing and dimming in a rapid acceleration, their gaze passing right through the layers of Energy-dense silk to view the inside, more specifically the semi-liquid mass that was coalescing together.
"What an auspicious event." They would have smiled if they had any face at all, watching the slowly being born, or rather reborn considering how the resulting Soul was the combination of the small pieces that belonged to the Monsters that were previously in the Dungeon itself, the shards melding together in a slowly growing new whole.
"I am sorry, oh, poisonous one. You are not naive but instead you are both ignorant and arrogant. I was able to modify three Dragonoids so that they can freely use Qi. That Werewolf is obviously a Cultivator and not only that but it is also obvious that she came from a long line of Cultivators. From my observation, it is clear that there is a way you could have stabilized yourself by accepting and working with the Laws of this World.
"Yet you not only are stubbornly rejecting this World entirely but you are also planning on taking advantage of my freely offered help to betray me. What a disappointment that you are." The death sentence clear in their tone before they calmed back down, briefly observing the records from their various spies before concentrating on the most important manner of observation.
Their screens minimized but left present just in case of an emergency, leaving way for the much bigger one, the one holding the Ancestor in their crystal coffin, more specifically concentrating on the flaws in the Sealed crystals, slight imperfections even smaller than a cell that they were only able to percieve thanks to using many cell-sized Monsters.
And so they stretched their senses into the Vampiric Being, trying to feel the flaws of the complex Seal, working them together to gradually widen those weak spots, eroding the integrity of the Seal.
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