In a world, where everyone that set on a path to immortality, was fighting for resources, to progress further. It could be beast meat to help the practitioner in the speed of his training or gold to keep a stable life and environment in which to develop.
As it was peaceful times and human number grew more and more in the recent years, the path to immortality was becoming increasingly ruthless and cruel. After all it was not wide enough for everybody to pass, and even then someone further ahead might set a roadblock or two to keep competition behind and have more space himself.
Everybody that was fighting for those resources felt the need to be cruel to his enemies, as they would be to him. Breathing space was a luxury.
Lucien thought a step further.
'If I want to be harsh to my enemies and not the other way around, I first have to be harsh on myself.'
'If I don't want someone to step on my body to go further on his path, I have to give it my all.'
'All Existence is after all an amazing supporter, but that is not an excuse for being lazy.'
Before the routine had started, Lucien asked him mom about beast meat, since it would help him with his training, and the answer was that every child of the emperor, before Rank 0, would receive 1kg of Rank 0 meat every day, no matter age or progress towards Rank 0.
At Rank 0 that increased to 1kg of Rank 1 meat every day.
'So that is how he encourages his children to improve.'
'Giving them more would probably spoil them, and for a child of this world that started training 1kg should be just enough.'
'For me it's at least 3 points per day, since I will be training to control my body and techniques, and that would require around 2 points, stats training might be harsher, but I don't need that for now.'
'I might have to stop absorbing things for now, since I'll be busy with training, even through now I'm an Iron Ghoul and I can absorb bigger things, about the size of a basketball.'
As the training started, Jack DawnStar, started with some light body training exercises. Lucien had really had time controlling what he was showing while going through the exercises.
'I guess this is also body control training.'
"You are actually pretty fit for a 3 year old. For a while we will stick to body training and body control with the DawnStar exercises, then we go into techniques as there is no point, if you can't control yourself."
'The DawnStar execises are nothing really special, just normal exercises. I wonder how shameless was the creator to put them in his manual, when even commoners knew about them.'
'I guess something improved over the ages is still better as a common exercise than some fancy crap the creator of DawnStar would come up with to make the technique more flashy and attractive.'
As time passes, Lucien was killing two birds with one stone, he was training his control and was getting better at it, and at the same time he was accumulating points from the meat.
Two years passed in the blink of an eye.
Lucien hit 1000 points before the first year was over, he looked for the price list on the Ghoul Path. He wanted to upgrade it, but with only one glance, he felt cold all over. It showed 10 times more than Rank 0, it was 10 000 existence points.
So for the moment he decided to balance himself by getting couple more Paths, even if it would be crazy even for a prince to pick more than 1 path in his childhood.
Since blood was still off limits he picked Darkness path for it's stat absorption ability, as he never knew if a change to use it would pop out.
It followed the same procedure as the Ghoul Path integration, but no pain, as it didn't really alter his human body.
-Lucien BloodMoon-
-Age: 4 years-
-Race: Human-
-Paths:
Iron Ghoul(Rank 0)
Darkness(Rank 0)-
-Strength: 5.00-
-Agility: 2.00-
-Vitality: 3.00-
-Soul: 5.00-
-Control over body movement: 40%-
'As expected it was a soul increase, with a slight agility boost.'
'It seem agility is weakened in sunlight back to what it was before the boost.'
'I can also hide my presence in the shadows, probably only Rank 1s can detect me.'
'I can absorb some stats from a defenseless life, if there is an opportunity I have to see how much I get.'
'I guess I don't get much more at Rank 0.'
'It seems the when I'm doing something with all my will into it, it get's turned into a stat to keep track of how far I am.'
He noticed the benefits of a stronger soul over the second year. He could control his body much better and training that aspect was faster. Technique training also sped up. He didn't get a chance to use the Darkness Absorption during the period of time, but got much better at hiding his presence.'
In two years of training, Lucien, who was now 5 years old, got perfect control over the Iron Ghoul strength, he could now take off a wing from a fly without killing it. And the techniques he trained were really basic, stabbing, slashing horizontally, slashing vertically and smashing with the side of the spearhead.
While with Jack, Lucien gradually started showing strength of an adult and slowed down when he got to 1.50 in all stats. He didn't want to exceed his brother too easily, after all he was deemed a once in a hundred year genius.
As he had 3.00 in Vitality, the need for rest after training was almost nonexistent, so he trained his control on at full power, out of sight, but still noticeable. Everybody though he was working extra hard and maybe even overdoing it, but Jack assured them he didn't have any injuries from training.
Lucien knew that once he got perfect control, even when his stats increased, he would just need to adjust for a bit and it would be fine.
-Lucien BloodMoon-
-Age: 5 years-
-Race: Human-
-Paths:
Iron Ghoul(Rank 0)
Darkness(Rank 0)-
-Strength: 5.00-
-Agility: 2.00-
-Vitality: 3.00-
-Soul: 5.00-
-Control over body movement: 99%-