Sif was exhausted. His entire being felt sore and the only thing he could hear was the hammering rhythmic beat of his heart. He kept breathing deeply, letting himself to rest on the ground for a few dozen minutes before feeling capable of getting back on his feet.
"Well... it could have been gone way worst..." he laughed.
The formation around him still burned with large black flames, making it impossible to leave its perimeter without having to walk through the wall of dark fire.
"The worst rune calibration..." Murmured the young man scratching his head, ashamed of his work.
It was true that the blood of the Bloodshed Bat contained more energy than what was needed for the ritual. He used fresh blood from a bronze ranked beast after all.
However, the array should have stopped itself the moment he formed his core. The fact that it still allowed the blood to burn meant that some part of the thing wasn't working properly.
Shaking his head with a half smile the young man sat on the floor, ignoring the burning flames that moved violently around him.
'Let's see what we got here...'
A sliver of Willpower started to move around, checking the thing that he had worked so hard to create: a brand new dantian.
It stood alone, a little dark sphere spinning on itself in his lower waist. On its smooth surface, there were the depictions of three Bloodshed Bat cubs.
The willpower of the youth ran across the three images. 'Hmm... I don't see any problem with the Guardians... '.
Guardians were something typical of Summoner's Cultivation.
Instead of slowly building up a cultivation base absorbing elemental energy like other cultivators, summoners used the souls to directly craft a dantian. The stronger was the beast used, stronger was the cultivation base of the summoner.
This was both the blessing and curse of the Path of Summoners. On one hand, anyone with enough wealth could become a strong summoner. On the other hand, advancing to the advanced stages of the Path required stronger and stronger beasts.
Once reached a certain level, no amount of wealth would be enough to purchase a stronger beast. Plus, one's soul had to be strong enough to sustain the beast used in the construction of the little spheric core.
This was one of the reasons why Sif didn't use the grown-up Bloodsheed Bat to form his core. Well, in truth the main reason was that he didn't know how to create a formation for a One Guardian Core. However, even if he knew how, he wouldn't have tried to do it either way.
He knew that he wasn't strong enough to sustain that level of power. The three cubs were already his limit.
"Well, the dantian itself seems fine... however it's void..."
The youth pushed his investigation deeper, penetrating in the small sphere and finding himself inside the thing.
It was almost completely void, except for an azure mass at the center of the void. He could see a strong dark green light coming right from the middle of the blue energy.
'That's my Willpower... surrounded by my shapeless soul.'
The void around the youth's soul was where he could store energy and the control matrix of his familiars. The first could be used for a variety of things, including powering techniques and treasures. The second was used to control a single familiar.
'It's not much, but at least is better than nothing' Sif retracted his will. He opened his eyes: the wall of fire was still there, blocking him.
The young man sighed. It would take a while to burn up all the power contained inside the blood. He gave a look around the cave that was now lit by the black flame:.
Juil was still on the floor, unmoving. Not far from him was a bloody mess of what once should have been Tong. Luna had done an exemplary job on the poor man.
Finally, the dark eyes of the youth found the little white cub, sitting next to the cadaver of her mother. A couple of meters away, also the last cub was sitting near the lower body of the large bat.
"Well, I guess I can start with accumulating some energy..."
He was trapped inside the formation, at least he had to do something useful. He closed down his eyes again and started breathing in and out following a very precise method.
Strands of green energy started emerging from the air around him, moving inside his body and immediately being absorbed inside his dantian. He kept doing the same thing for at least two hours, until the walls of fire around him started to weaken considerably.
'It should be time...'
Sif opened his eyes, ejecting a beam of green energy from his entire being. He stretched his limbs, and sighed softly. This place was absurdly lacking in Earth Energy.
'My Earth Perseverance is a top-ranked Mortal Cultivation Method, and even so it can only put togheter this miser amount of energy?'
He could feel his dantian: only a fifth of the whole thing had been filled. It was quite disappointing.
However, he wasn't that surprised either. He knew that the Ashen Grotto was a quite strange place: the cave formations were filled with Life Energy and cultivating any other type of power was difficult.
The young man looked at the fire around him: it was still burning, but it was way less violent than before. It would probably die off in another couple of hours.
"Nope, not going to wait..." Sif walked started to walk forwards. When he was less than less than feet from the flames, three little bat figures trembled in the air around him, filled with a pale green light. The flames started being pushed aside, making Sif pass unharmed
Now that he had some energy inside him, the Three Guardian Core would naturally form an Energy Shield around him. It wasn't a very strong one, but it enabled him to resist attack weaker than a low bronze level. Obviously, although the energy shield was incredibly useful, it used up a part of energy reserves. The more damage he took, the more energy he would lose.
Sif marched in the dimly lighted cave towards the little white bat. "Well, I guess I can start with the second binding process..."
The young man had already bound Luna, but at the same time, he didn't form a solid connection with the creature. If he moved too far from her, the beast would stop listening to him. To consolidate the connection he had to form a matrix and seal it in his dantian, a process that was generally referred to as "second binding". If a firs binding took a few days, a second binding could take entire weeks and even months!
He looked at the small cub in front of him and then moved his gaze on himself. He was a mess. He was still wearing his work uniform, even if the violet fabric had been irreversibly ruined by the Bloodshed Bat's blood.
'Yeah, I need to change this disgusting thing first...' Murmured the youth, starting to lose the violet clothes that was wearing. His entire outfit was completely drenched in bat's blood. He couldn't go around like this!
In a few breaths, he was standing but naked in the semi-darkness. He looked around, searching for Juil and finding him in a couple of seconds.
'"I'm going to need those clothes, buddy..." he said, moving towards the man that lay on the ground around thirty meters from him.
Now that Sif didn't have to keep suppressed the three bat cubs, his Willpower had recovered considerably. If he wanted to, he could feel things in a range of 60 meters more or less.
He could immediately notice that the man had no pulse at all.
"Died?"
Sif arrived in front of Juil, noticing a strong smell of piss coming from the middle-aged man. The youth's face darkened. He had completely forgotten that this useless being had already sullied his clothes. He wanted to kick the middle age man on the ground, but he avoided doing so. The moron was still a rank 3 fighter, his body was hard as rocks.
"Did you really had to piss yourself?" The naked youth was suddenly in a very bad mood. His eyes shined with a dangerous green light.
No answer.
His lower mouth trembling, the youth pointed at the man on the floor. "Do you really think that this pathetic body technique can make me believe that you died? I can literally sense your soul, moron."
The "dead" Juil, suddenly trembled. His eyes opened, filled with existential dread. "Master Sif, please!" He didn't want to die! Not like Tong! Never like Tong!
"I have a couple of questions for you" smile gently the naked youth.
...
Blue was putting the last piece of Life Ash on the fire, to keep it alive. She looked nervously toward a certain tunnel, between the many that departed from the cave she was in.
They were so late. What was keeping them for so long?
She moved her hand over the cauldron where a light soup had already gone cold for the fifth time. Her eyes betrayed a strong craving. She was hungry!
"You should just pour yourself a bowl" a gentle voice echoed in the air, coming from the cave that the woman was keeping an eye on.
This..' the eyes of the grey-robed woman widened in surprise. The voice that she was hearing wasn't the voice of one of the two middle-aged men. How was it even possible? She knew the character of the two very well! They lured the youth to kill him! How was possible that he was still alive?
Yet, from the tunnel emerged that same exact youth that she had seen follow willingly Tong and Juil towards his death. Except that he was completely naked.
Even more strangely he held a furry black bat cub from its neck and was followed by another smaller white bat cub. The young man smiled at her from distance, moving towards the fire.
"But before that, you should prepare one for me..."