When he thought of how much work he needed to do to advance to rank 2, he also thought to himself with a smirk, "Fortunately, I have 100 energy stones to help me, and I can always come back for more."
With that said, he focused wholeheartedly on refining the energy chambers within Fenrir. He picked one of the two and decided to focus on it. He wanted to get this one to the peak of rank 1 first before moving to the other one.
The energy within his energy well and the other chamber was siphoned to help nourish this single energy chamber. When he ran out of energy, he took out the energy stones and began extracting the energy within them to cultivate.
The energy stone felt brittle in his hand. He felt as if he could crush it easily, and it did crack when he applied pressure on it.
He stopped short of crushing the stone so as not to waste. After all, the energy stone might be free, but every little bit of it counts towards his cultivation, and his cultivation is of supreme importance.
As he extracted the energy from the energy stones, he realized that each one contained about 100 units of energy. He also saw that once an energy stone had lost its useful energy, it would crumble into crystal dust in his hands.
Thanks to the energy stones, he was able to maintain the whirlpool in the energy chamber throughout the cultivation session and didn't let it stop once. This increased the efficiency of the energy refining far more than intermittent refining.
And since he was getting the energy he needed for cultivation from outside his body, his body didn't become tired during the prolonged cultivation session. Unfortunately, nothing could make up for the intense focus needed to cultivate.
After just one hour of cultivation, he had to stop and call it a day. But before he went to sleep, he used the Power Identification Ability to check his progress.
The Power Identification Ability showed that he had made 2% progress in one hour of cultivation. This was about the same amount of progress that he made earlier in the day when he spent 8 hours cultivating.
This made Loki shake his head and say, "So I wasted most of my day."
He was surprised by the comparison of the progress that he made between the 8-hour cultivation session and the 1-hour one. But after making some more calculations, he realized that he had underestimated the effect of cultivating with energy stones.
He thought to himself in awe, "If I can maintain this speed and do it twice in a day, I will be able to reach the middle of rank 1 in 25 days. What astonishing speed."
In order to achieve this much progress in one hour, he had used up 16 energy stones. This meant that he would need a total of 800 energy stones in order to maintain this speed.
800 energy stones didn't feel like a lot to him after knowing that the price of a cloudy date, which can instantly help him advance, is 2,000 energy stones. This comparison makes spending 800 energy stones seem cheap.
But when he thought of how much time a cloudy date could save him, he said, "Cultivating without energy stones should require one and a half days or 45 days, while cultivating with energy stones only requires 25 days, saving me 20 days. These 20 days extra are bought with 800 energy stones."
"On the other hand, I can save 45 days of cultivation by spending 2,000 energy stones. So 800 energy stones might be cheap in terms of money, but it is expensive in terms of time."
At the end of his deliberation, he said, "If I had the money, I would prefer to spend the 2,000 energy stones and save the 45 days. Fortunately, I have the time to do what I want."
He sighed in relief to himself there at the end of his introspection. He had to sigh because he thought of how 800 energy stones and 25 days of cultivation are only for one energy chamber.
His source of relief is that he already has a way to earn the money he needs to shorten his cultivation. So he felt relaxed about the ordeal he needed to go through to reach the peak of rank 1.
With his mind settled, he went to bed. But before he closed his eyes, he remembered that he had seen that his skill had improved. Apparently, his skill had improved from 10% to 30%.
According to what he knows of the skill parameter, it is how well he can control his internal energy and Metacs. He has some inclination as to why his skill has improved, seeing as he has done only one thing to his energy well since he began this timeline, but he isn't too sure about his guess.
However, he didn't think too much about it because the improvement of his skill was a good thing, and because he was too mentally tired and sleepy to think too deeply about anything else. So he went to sleep.
-----
When he woke up the following morning, he washed up, ate his meal, and went to class as usual. Muni spent one hour answering questions about cultivation before he moved on to another topic.
Muni looked at Slav and said, "It seems our young master has advanced to the middle of rank 1 with just one day of cultivation."
Slav smiled and said smugly, "I actually advanced to the peak of rank 1. Cultivation is for suckers."
Muni's eyes twitched, but he remained calm as he said, "I see. Anyway, congratulations."
Slav waved his hand nonchalantly and made no attempt to be humble as he said, "It was nothing."
Loki's eye twitched when he saw this, and he gritted his teeth as he thought to himself in anger, "Of course it's nothing, you spoiled brat. If you had at least worked on the 6,000 energy stones that you used to buy the cloudy date, your breakthrough might have been worth something. But you didn't work for anything, so you can't value it."