[Welcome to the system, please name your personal a.s.sistant]"Dave"
[Select a personality]
"Something interesting."
[Severe mood swings selected.]
"What have I done?!"
A few seconds after Eldrid"s mental ranting ended the a.s.sistant started talking.
[h.e.l.lo master! Welcome to the system network! Do you want me to tell you the first realm of cultivation?]
"Yes"
>Rain realm
Mana gathering: Gather mana through the spirit until it forms a gas
Mana mist: Expand the amount of gaseous mana until it forms a mist
Mana cloud: Expand the mist till it forms a cloud
Mana condensation: The mana cloud will "rain" forming liquid mana
Mana pool expansion: Expand your mana pool to as large as your spirit can handle.
[After the Rain stage comes the real beginning of cultivation, the spirit metal stage]
"Why didn"t you give me info on that?"
[You don"t need to know yet.]
"Fair enough. So how do I start cultivating?"
[First try using your soul like when you summoned your spirit to try feeling mana]
Eldrid"s soul could feel the mana, but was unable to move it.
[Talk to your spirit, it will help you cultivate.]
Eldrid began using his soul to feel his spirit, and tried telling it how he wanted to gather mana to cultivate.
The spirit understood his intentions, and began forming a vortex, the mana in the entire courtyard surrounding the shrine submitted and voluntarily moved into the vortex, which was a portal between Eldrid"s soul and the world around him.
This Caused Malthael shock once again, as the submission the mana itself showed was a feat that was normally only an ascended person would be able to achieve.
However their was too much for Eldrid"s soul to handle all at once, so his spirit dispersed the mana that wasn"t split between them.
Eldrid"s soul rapidly grew as mana poured into it, breaking through stage after stage.
[Mana gathering reached]
[Mana mist reached]
[Mana cloud reached]
[System stopping cultivation due to risk of damaging the soul.]
Suddenly his spirit told all the mana to stop, as it could feel (like the system) that any more would pose far too much risk.
"Boy, what realm have you reached?"
"The mana cloud stage."
"SO FAST?!" Malthael though to himself.
"Boy, summon your spirit."
Eldrid did so, and he noticed the "energy blade" on his sword, was many times brighter than before. Threads of mana could visibly be seen entering into the blade.
Malthael laughed, causing Eldrid to display a confused expression.
"Boy, normal spirits have to use the wielder"s energy to stay in their summoned states, but yours does not. The mana around it voluntarily supplies it with this energy. You have a large advantage over other spirit wielders especially in drawn out fights."
Malthael then led him to a courtyard full of training dummies and constructs, archery targets, weights, and medicinal vats.
"Test your strength on a cloud stage construct."
"How?"
Malthael realized that he had, once again, forgot that Eldrid was severely lacking in common knowledge. So he just activated it for him.
The construct was 6"0", made of a brown metal, and looked like a human statue with lots of strange energy connections at it"s joints.
Eldrid dashed forward, spirit in hand... and sliced the construct in half at a joint. The top and bottom halves fell to the ground with a thud.
Malthael was, at this point, numb to Eldrid"s surprises.
"Let"s see how you fair against one by pure swordplay, stop your spirit from using the energy blade."
Eldrid willed it to do as instructed, and it complied. However he could feel the spirit wasn"t happy about it.
While Eldrid did that Malthael sneakily replaced the construct with a beginning stage mana pool construct.
Eldrid one again charged the construct, but this time he struggled with it.
Eldrid had greater talent for a slashing sword style than the stabbing sword style from fencing, however he hadn"t received proper training in either. He had just created his own fencing style based off the instructions given, however it was much more suitable for slashing.
The construct picked up a sword made of some black material, and charged Eldrid. Eldrid responded by parrying the blade and slashing at it"s arm joint, but the sword quickly knocked his own blade.
Eldrid began to enter a state of fury, and he began to slash out with wild and unpredictable slashing.
Malthael was able to see that Eldrid was managing to grasp on some profound style that he was slowly developing.
The unpredictable slashes were actually part of some mysterious pattern that even Malthael was unable to understand due to their primal and ancient nature.
Eldrid"s sword began to vibrate with excitement, sensing the primal style he was displaying, it too gave off a primal aura, and the aura"s of the two seemed to fuse.
With a roar Eldrid began to speed up, his blurred figure was only able to be followed by the construct due to it"s domain ability, however it was unable to block every slash.
Many slashes managed to hit it"s armored body, however the joints were well covered, until Eldrid went all out, and used all his strength to knock the sword from the construct"s hand.
The next second every major joint had been split apart by Eldrid, leaving a very apathetic Malthael, surprised, as the construct was far beyond the normal ability of a mana cloud cultivator.