The Curator
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Chapter 65: Path to Power
🕑 Added 2024-10-20 11:11:30 +0000 UTCThis sounded great. It looked like both manuals were fused into one. The description looked straightforward and would help him greatly in transforming eagly into a powerhouse. One step closer to godhood, he thought: slow but steady. All his forms would become very strong in a short time. When reaching E grade, he wanted to have every form at mythic rarity.
"One last thing: was the flight scroll too expensive to add?" Thalion asked curiously.
"This is the best option for you with your current credits. There is knowledge on flight in the scroll, and if you want to buy something about flying, you would have to buy a worse body tempering, which I wouldn’t advise," the voice answered.
That made sense; after all, the body tempering was way more important than flight lessons.
"There is one other thing, the eagle form was weak when I got it and almost has no mana regeneration. How can I upgrade my intelligence, or is the body tempering already helping with that?" Thalion asked the voice.
"A bit. Having a high affinity means that your skills cost less mana and become more powerful. Otherwise, you could go for soul tempering, or you could keep natural treasures in your body that replenish your mana reserves. Otherwise, you need to wait for the evolution," the voice explained.
"This wasn’t good. He had hoped that he could change something, but it seems that having a low race or class does narrow your possibilities a lot," Thalion thought. In the end it shouldn't matter. Was it the best action to buff eagly instead of taking a new form? Definitely not, but he liked eagly much more than his other option, and he wanted to make it as powerful as possible. It shouldn't slow his cultivation too much and would benefit him in the end.
"Do I need to temper my soul in every form?" he asked the voice. If that were the case, he would be in trouble. Body tempering already took a lot of time, and doing the same for his soul would be even more time-consuming. He was not sure he had enough time now with the special event and the confrontation with the undead coming closer.
"It depends, but you only have one soul core that you need to strengthen for all your forms. There is work you need to do for every single one of your forms, but it doesn't require many resources," the voice explained.
Those were good news. Next week, he would look for a soul tempering manual.
"Thank you for your help. See you next week," Thalion said after buying the Manual of the Tempest Beast.
When he was about to get teleported away, the voice said, "Don't forget my advice: your tutorial will get very dangerous very soon. Use this period of peace to advance as far as possible."
Thalion appeared back in his room. This was bad; when even the voice was warning him, he opened his new body tempering manual. He needed to get going.
Manual of the Tempest Beast: Wind and Lightning Body Tempering
This advanced body-tempering manual is designed for flying creatures that seek to harness the full power of the skies. It contains two distinct paths: The Wind’s Grace and The Lightning’s Fury, which, when mastered, merge into the ultimate transformation: The Tempest’s Wrath.
Part 1: The Wind’s Grace
This manual focuses on tempering the body through the gentle yet unrelenting power of the wind. By learning to become one with the air, the beast enhances its speed, agility, and control while flying.
Stage 1: Whispering Winds
The beast meditates while in flight, learning to feel the currents of the air and synchronize its movements. This builds flexibility in the wings and feathers, allowing for precise control during high-speed maneuvers.
Part 2: The Lightning’s Fury
The second manual focuses on harnessing raw lightning energy, tempering the body with the volatile power of storms to increase strength, reflexes, and offensive capability.
Stage 1: Thunderstrike Pulse
The beast absorbs ambient electrical energy from the air, learning to store it within its muscles. This gives it a slight electrical charge and increases its reflexes and reaction time.
The first stage of the wind's grace would teach him a lot more about flying than he had expected for the whole manual, while the Thunderstrike Pulse was very similar to what he was doing with the umbral predator. He hoped that the experience he already had in the area would allow him to speed his body tempering significantly. Both parts had three stages, and after completing both, he could start with the third part: the Tempest's Wrath.
Though he was worried, the first part with meditating while flying didn’t sound safe and was very difficult to accomplish. For the lightning part, he needed to find a storm. But how strong were the storms in this new world? Since he was in this world, it didn’t even rain. Maybe he could ask some mages to shoot him with some lightning.
He shouldn’t really take damage from the lightning. He could already absorb lightning due to the skills he got from the manta, and now with the improvement from the body tempering, it should be even better.
Thalion stood up and made his way to the alchemist shops in the city. He wondered what they could do with his materials. After the voice had mentioned them, it must be a lot.
<--
Steven exited the system shop with a new set of special jewelry and a body tempering that only followers of his god could buy. He had decided to focus on his improvement to stay ahead of Thorwald and ignored the orcs who were attacking Kael's base. He was delighted when he heard that Kael had managed to defeat the orcs on his own, which lifted a lot of pressure from his shoulders. He couldn't ignore the instructions of his god for long. It also strengthened his political position since Thorwald was spreading rumors that he was forcing everyone to fight against the orcs against their will. Since nothing of that had happened, it resulted in Thorwald losing support while he was gaining followers. He also had men who were spreading rumors about how bad Thorwald was as a leader since he lost twenty warriors against the umbral predator, while the beast was now so frightened of Steven that it wouldn't even attack his people.
This of course, was speculation, but since no one had seen the beast for some time, he would claim the reward of being the reason for the predator's absence.
He looked down at himself: his armor was upgraded, his lance was glowing with power, and he had learned so much about fighting humans and beasts from manuals provided by his god. In his eyes, he was almost the perfect warrior. Thorwald would have a very difficult time defeating him in a fight. The idiot still hadn't picked a flying skill, which should ensure Steven's escape if he lost.
Not that it would come to such a showdown anytime soon. They all needed to prepare for the future and for the next stage. He was very happy with his accomplishments and was now helping his most trusted followers to improve since he barely leveled against the beasts in this area. They were all slowly rising in levels but not fast enough, and he needed to get as many people into the next stage for the fight against the undead.
He needed to make a plan with the water princess and Kael, who were the biggest organized factions in the area his scouts had discovered.
Out of the 200,000 survivors, only 110,000 were left. Most were probably on the lower stages. In his camp, there were up to 1,400 survivors, the water princess had around 1,500 survivors, and Kael could have the most, depending on how much he had lost in the fight against the orc, with up to 2,000 people.
He hoped that it would be enough to defeat the undead. How many could they possibly have on the fourth stage? Where did they even come from? He rarely heard stories about vampires and none about any other kind of undead. The vampires, though, were strong and most likely already on the fourth stage, which would make them very dangerous with the undead gods helping them. The fourth stage would be very dangerous.
These were worries for the future. First, he had to arrange some meetings between him, Kael, and the princess. Steven was truly looking forward to what Thorwald would try since he hated Kael and that Thalion guy so much. Hopefully, he would mess up badly. After all, he was not the type who could hide his thoughts well.
