Ygdris was seated on his throne mid-meditation when Elizabeth, who led Yrre and Sun behind her, entered to give word of their departure. As a veteran cultivator at the peak of the Core Formation Stage, Ygdris knew before Elizabeth had even left her room that she had completed her subsequent breakthroughs. Yet he couldn"t help but zealously smile and laugh as he praised her, "You actually took less than a week to leap past an entire Stage of Cultivation and even breakthrough a Realm Boundary. How wonderful!""Mhmm," Elizabeth gave him a curt nod before introducing the members of her party that would join her in the expedition to the Ancient Redvile Temple. Yrre would find hardly any trouble fitting in as her Shapeshifting abilities were particularly useful, but the same could not be said for Sun. Though Ygdris didn"t hold any grudge against him and acknowledged him simply because Elizabeth vouched for him, the rest of the Agrian Empire probably wouldn"t take the presence of the human with such good grace.
"So, you plan on flying to the Ancient Temple. You could always use my teleportation arrays, you know?" Ygdris offered.
Still, Elizabeth didn"t mind the small bit of downtime she would waste in flying. It made for a good excuse to find where her new speed limits lay, anyway. She casually presented him with an excuse, "Thanks for the offer, but I"d rather not waste your resources needlessly. Flexing my muscles and finding my limits through a short flight would also be much appreciated, right about now…" Though she wasn"t a pract.i.tioner of formations arrays, she had read up on them. She didn"t know what the cost of operating a teleportation array was, but surely it wasn"t anything to scoff at; even for a Core Formation expert at the peak for their Stage.
"Do as you wish," Ygdris didn"t press the issue, but he did add, "But, since you"re going to challenge a Danger Zone, why don"t you go with Ygny and his group?" As he waved for an attendant to call for this foreign group, he explained, "You already know Ygny, my son. I mentioned him to you during our first meeting, but I never added that the boy"s a thrill-seeker." He sighed, almost depressingly so as he said, "He"s one of the few people both lucky and crazy enough to visit and come out of all the Danger Zones on Endrin, so as a guide, he should be among the best for this sort of thing…"
"I see," Elizabeth"s eyes narrowed. She wasn"t particularly keen on traveling with strangers, especially those she couldn"t trust, but it would be an overall positive addition to her party if she had a competent guide. After all, even if she did know where she could find the Ancient Redvile Temple, she had never visited the place personally. Nevermind the Danger Zones, she hadn"t experienced much of what Endrin as a planet had to offer either. Moreover, she wasn"t going on a vacation, she was visiting a Danger Zone — a place fraught with death and, well… danger, which even Spirit Realm Pract.i.tioners had to be wary of.
As she collected her thoughts, the entrance to the throne room opened and four new figures came upon her sight. Quickly enough these four strangers gathered by Elizabeth"s side and introduced themselves.
"A pleasure to finally meet you, Shaman Priestess Elizabeth. I"m Ygny." A tall man who bore a striking resemblance to the Monster King, albeit with less p.r.o.nounced human features, bowed before Elizabeth. At this time, the fabled Shaman Priestess was struggling to contain an amused expression from the irony of the Monster King"s paradox. As the leader of the Agrian Empire, the ruler of the beast-men or demihumans, he was t.i.tularly called the Monster King. Yet, his appearance was the most human for thousands of miles in all directions. Even his son looked more intimidating with his tiger-like mane and partial tattoos running throughout his body.
After Ygny, a tigress of a woman bowed and introduced herself, "My name is Jiuu, Ygny"s consort. I look forward to a.s.sisting your group, Shaman Priestess."
With Jiuu taking a step back the last two members of Ygny"s party stepped up at once and introduced themselves without missing a beat. "I"m called Kirun," A lanky leopard-person with spotted blue and black fur introduced, before his nigh-identical female counterpart with seemingly identical fur — though hued pink instead of blue — quickly added, "and I"m Kirou!"
"We hope to a.s.sist the Shaman Priestess in acquiring glory!" They both shouted in what Elizabeth believed to be a practiced manner.
"Mhmm…" The long-since transformed half-wolf Elizabeth nodded in mild content as she stole a glance at the group"s Status. Ygny was the most impressive of the bunch, though Elizabeth already guessed it would be like this considering his social standing and background. He had an impressive cultivation at the Intermediate Phase of his Foundation Collapse Stage cultivation base; a Level 38 powerhouse.
His consort and the rest of their group were not too far off as Level 37 Early Phase Foundation Collapse Stage Cultivators, but Elizabeth could guess their combat prowess wasn"t even close; Ygny alone could probably steamroll the other three without question. The reason simply boiled down to his efforts while in the Transcendent Foundation Stage.
From what Elizabeth could tell, he had acquired a Nascent Foundation before breakthrough to the Foundation Collapse Stage. He had a total of fifty-some odd spiritual pillars that had been refined halfway through the path to Core Formation. His companions, on the other hand, had a comparatively poorer foundation with between 35-40 spiritual pillars; they simply couldn"t compare, even on the same Phase.
"You can all call me Elizabeth," Elizabeth flatly stated before she asked, "So when can we leave?" She was internally dying to see just how ridiculous the increase was in her abilities.
"Right away, if you wish!" Ygny replied seriously.
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"Alright then, to the Ancient Redvile Temple~"
…
The flight across Agrian Territory to the site of the Ancient Temple was… intense to say the least. Elizabeth explained her wish to test the limits of her speed thus a hypersonic flight became the baseline for their flight while en route. However, as Elizabeth slowly started cranking up the power output and then started incorporating method after method to bolster her speed, even Ygny felt beads of sweat drop down his face when confronted with her insanity.
His limit as a Beginner Transcendent Foundation Stage Cultivator wasn"t even a fifth of what Elizabeth put on display even when she simply relied on her True Qi. If she had only stopped there, perhaps Ygny and the rest of his party, that wasn"t used to her miracles, would have accepted things as just a difference in talent. But after the potential of her True Qi alone peaked, Elizabeth added Gravity Reduction, Spatial Solidification, Spatial Contraction, Time Augmentations…
Without drawing her saber or activating her Chaos Seals — her two greatest trump cards when it came to enhancing her speed — even Sun was finding it hard to keep up and he was a Cultivator of Pure Yang; of the Path of Extreme Physicality! His Spatial Affinity was higher than Elizabeth and could withstand the pressure of him running at full speed, yet despite that fact, Elizabeth was marginally faster. At this point they were comparable to average cultivators at the Foundation Collapse Stage; those that had the talent to make it that far, but not enough to continue; Cultivators with 10-24 Spiritual Pillars.
Alas, it would be a while before Elizabeth found the limits of her speed as she wouldn"t forgo Sun for something so petty. Their current pace was already staggering enough at several dozen times the speed of sound, with the Ancient Redvile Temple under an hour away. Thus, the group of seven cruised at their current pace at around 10,000 feet in the skies.
As they flew, Ygny couldn"t help but send a sound transmission Elizabeth"s way. His curiosity towards a certain Djinn simply couldn"t be contained, thus he asked, "Say… Elizabeth, your friend seems to be at the beginning of the Saint Stage, right?" It was already absurd that Elizabeth as a Beginner Phase Transcendent Foundation Stage Cultivator could fly this fast. For a human like Sun to be just as fast as the once in a generation talent, the Shaman Priestess, was nigh-incomprehensible. But a Saint? A Pract.i.tioner in the Mortal Realm?! That was enough to shatter those with weak wills.
Rather intuitively, Elizabeth figured out the method to send sound transmissions herself as she felt Ygny"s Spiritual Sense connect to her. So after gathering a wisp of her own Spiritual Sense, she managed a stable enough connection to Ygny to say, "She"s… special." This was the only way to communicate at their unG.o.dly traveling speeds. With the winds they faced, any verbal communication would be drowned out. Moreover, since they were traveling well over Mach speed, they would never be able to hear anything, anyway.
Elizabeth naturally couldn"t just blurt out the truth about Yrre"s circ.u.mstances to any random pa.s.serby. In just sharing that kind of information, all sorts of dangers could arise. She simply told a half-truth in, "She"s actually my teacher. For certain reason"s she"ll always lower her cultivation to five phases below mine, but in almost all cases, she"s stronger than me. Even I don"t know the true depth of her cultivation base." She understood Yrre was a Level 79 Void Soul Stage Djinn, but that high a boundary was incomprehensible to her at the moment.
Ygny chucked to himself before he returned a reply, "Teacher? Mhmm… I guess it"s true that the longer you cultivate and the stronger you get, the more eccentric your personality becomes."
"Right…" Elizabeth promptly stopped her thoughts of how his words rang true to what she had seen from her sponsor G.o.ddess, as she could virtually feel Persephone peering through the void right at her. Chills ran down her spine as she humorlessly tried to placate her invariably eccentric sponsor G.o.ddess by saying, "Heh, this idiot doesn"t know what he"s talking about…" Eerie silence was all she received in the end, so for the rest of the flight Elizabeth donned a somber look.