Standing before the entrance of the Dojo, Elizabeth was just about to leave without a word to anyone else. From her back she could hear Sun say "Hey! Would you like me to walk you back home? Letting you wander in this darkness just doesn"t sit right with me...""Mhmm..." Elizabeth seemed to have forgotten what her current form looked like to the outside world, and now that Sun had mentioned it… It really would be a bad look for a young maiden to roam the streets of the night alone in helpless solitarity. But then again, If she really pushed herself it would be pretty ridiculous to find someone capable of matching her pace when running away.
She shook her head and said "Goodbye..." before taking off like a rocket. It was inconceivable, when one considered that she had been training in the dojo from dawn, but more inconceivable would be fact that she was on a quest for G.o.ds; thus everything "inconceivable" from now on, should just be taken with a grain of salt.
The journey home became as uneventful as she imagined, as no one and nothing managed to bar her path. Given the lack of traffic at that late hour of the night, Elizabeth also didn"t need to stop as many times going back to her house as she did in the morning. This resulted in her getting back home in just 35 minutes.
Upon arriving back home, Elizabeth had yet to feel any hunger, but she was pretty tired from all the training her body had been put through. Thus, she took another shower and turned to her bed for some much needed sleep.
The next morning, at exactly six in the morning something seemed to spark within Elizabeth"s mind, as she woke up feeling all types of lazy positive sensations jolt across her body. She got out of her bed and made yet another simple breakfast, acquiring yet another point of experience towards her cooking skill, before reviewing her gains from the previous day through a Status check.
[Status
Name: Elizabeth Ultimatia
Level: 0 (1)
s.e.x: Female
Status Points Available (0)
Strength: 10 → 12.05
Endurance: 11.4 → 13.5
Speed: 21.8 → 21.85
Defense: 10 → 12.05
Intelligence: 20
Luck: 10
Inner Strength 198/198]
In all honesty, Elizabeth was stunned by her progress. As she recalled, she had only been training for around three and a half hours, in her pursuit of increasing Stat points. If she had spent the whole day training as she did yesterday, for the full 12 or so hours she spent at the dojo, she would probably be inching towards stats appropriate for Level 2 or 3!
In any case, Elizabeth fully understood the importance of "losing" eight or so hours, as that was the time in which she was developing her skill in the essence of Muay Thai. She knew fully well how much of an impact getting the Muay Thai skill before falling into a Stat development training meant, as now she would be more efficient; being able to train in both things at once!
Elizabeth looked at the (1) next to her Level counter and sighed, knowing it was time to begin her first "breakthrough" as the Temporal Meditation technique called it. At the moment, all she had were the Stats corresponding to that of someone who should be level 1, but in truth her foundation was still about as developed as someone without a hint of cultivation. The breakthrough, as her cultivation manual put it, would effectively make use of the Stats she had built up to make a tangible and physical improvement.
Elizabeth finished her breakfast before moving out to the bathroom. After much consideration, and a lot of cursing, she had decided to conduct her breakthrough in the tub while fully nude. One reason being that she needn"t a comfortable position when making a breakthrough, unlike when she was cultivating Inner Strength. But the other, more important reason, was that these breakthroughs in cultivation, especially in the early levels were bound to leave her dirty beyond reason.
She had yet to experience breakthroughs first hand, but according to the Temporal Meditation Manual "One should expect to expel upwards of ten to fifty times the amount of natural impurities bred from the foul air of the mortal world upon achieving a breakthrough." Normal cultivation had led her to scrub and scrub away at her stained skin for hours, so this breakthrough might prove to be worthy of a quarantine should she attempt it in her room.
Furthermore, while her past instances in Inner Strength Cultivation might have dirtied her clothes a bit, going through with a breakthrough, might ruin them beyond a chance of redemption through a trip to the laundry machine…
With the matter decided, Elizabeth set up a bath in a vain attempt to decrease the amount of impurities that would come out and stick to her. She stepped into the crystal clear waters of the bath and sat back down into that now familiar lotus position before the breakthrough event began.
In the tub, after gaining a sizable amount of confidence and focus, Elizabeth drew from the source of her Inner Strength, an ambiguous area around her navel, and with a guiding hand in the form of her will, the Inner Strength she had acc.u.mulated began to disperse all around her body. As the Inner Strength dispersed from her energy source, it found its way throughout her body and into the outermost layer of her flesh; her skin.
There, because of her improvements to her various physical stats, enough room had been excavated for the energy to bore through and a.s.similate. 100 Inner Strength units and 12 points in each of the various physical stats were the stipulated requirements of the leveling system Elizabeth knew about for reaching Level 1. What she didn"t know though, was that those exact requirements were what was necessary to build the perfect foundation in the first 20% of the Mortal Stage.
She was only allowed to breakthrough when she had the best possible foundation and she didn"t even know it! Alas, what she did know was of the horrible smell that now threatened to cause her a blackout. As she looked down upon completing her first breakthrough, the pleasurable feeling of empowerment was but an afterthought as a more critical issue arose from her observations…
[Breakthrough! Level 0 → Level 1
*New) Rank: Mortal 20%]
Elizabeth stood up and looked at the vector black water below her and could not comprehend how it became that way in the short ten or so minutes she had spent focused on her breakthrough. Even after setting up a bath and doing her best to minimize the damage of those "excreted impurities," it didn"t seem to matter as she was still covered from head to toe, in tar-like oily gunk.
The pitiful la.s.s could only sigh her problems away as she uncorked the tub"s sealant and let that putrid waste which previously used to be bath water, flow out. She started yet another scrub-tacular shower session before feeling much better; and much cleaner!
Her breakthrough had gone "just as planned" but there was still no time to celebrate. She had only become level 1 while the deadline wanted her to reach level 5, and there were only 4 days remaining! Elizabeth could only wallow in her accomplishment for a quick moment before having to stop to continue her training lest she miss her deadline.
In truth, she was pretty much guaranteed to make the deadline, as the Mortal Stage would only have its Stat requirement increase by 2 per level, while Inner Strength would increase by 100 per level. By the time she was ready to reach Level 5, all she needed was 500 Inner Strength and 20 points in all Stats.
The Dojo didn"t open for another couple hours, so instead of jumping the gun with regards to physical training, Elizabeth opted to meditate once more. Only this time, she didn"t meditate for cultivation of Inner Strength. Rather, she tried expanding her range of perception; aka increase Intelligence.
She first recovered the 100 Inner Strength she used up in the breakthrough, before changing up the mantras that she chanted through her meditation and incorporating the Inner Strength Conversion Skill. Before she knew it, time stopped existing as she fell to another round of meditation and her Inner Strength began a sort of autophagy; consuming itself to increase the stat that generate its existence in the first place.
Elizabeth woke up exactly two hours later, with 120 less Inner Strength, as she had set up a little timer with the utilization of the time mantras of Temporal Meditation. She looked at her Intelligence Stat through a status check and sure enough, it had increase by 1.2 points.
"Heh… This could get very broken, very quickly, if I exploit it correctly..." She couldn"t help but imagine a time where she would enter a cultivation loop of increasing Intelligence then immediately switch to increasing Inner Strength capacity. If only she could find a way to increase the rate with which her Inner Strength was expended to gain stats… Then and only then would all h.e.l.l break loose as she set out to have infinite Inner Strength.
Elizabeth stopped with her futile fantasies as she stood up once more and raised herself clean again. She hadn"t really generated any gunk or sweat by increase her Intelligence, but just sitting around for hours in the bathtub felt wrong. So after a quick rinse, she put on her clothes and left for the dojo.