Turning on the water, I stood up and let the gunk wash off of me. After having gone through the process a couple times already, I was happy that this time around I wasn't wearing clothes. My dad had already bitched at me for throwing away two sets of perfectly good clothes. I pointed out that mom is a princess and he's gotta be rich, but recently he'd been teaching me some things. One session of learning pain points, which apparently I have to experience in order to learn how to use them, was enough for me to shut my mouth and stop complaining.
Anyway, I was pretty happy with myself as I finished washing all the crap off. "God, I can't wait to be done with body refining." I was talking to myself as I got dressed. Leaving private bathing area, I forgot to turn on the clean up formation. About halfway down the hallway, I heard a retching noise behind me and I saw a new kid leaving the bathroom looking green. Taking pity on him I said, "Just tell the formation to clean it up, you get used to it after a while."
The look of pure disgust on his face actually made me pretty happy. Remembering when Beth, Connor, and Rick had all broken through at the same time while we'd been in a trapped environment... Well, misery loves company.
"How'd you do?" I heard Beth talking to Rick from around the corner in front of me.
"Just barely passed, what was it with that third test? Those questions where insane! I mean, I know we read those books in the learning space so we literally can't forget them but we don't have any practical knowledge of the information. How are we supposed to know how to activate a fricking formation flag properly?"
I frowned as I got closer to them thinking, 'Activating a formation flag is easy, you just have to do the math to find the right place to put the flag down and turn it on. Hell, many of them you can just activate without even bothering to find the perfect place.'
"Yeah!" Beth was looking sulky as she said, "Those questions about enchanting were just stupid! We're heartforce cultivators, what business do we have knowing how to enchant? It's just a waste of our time!"
"Oh, so who is going to enchant all of your gear?" I asked Beth as I turned the corner to find the two of them waiting for Connor to get out of the test.
"Matt!" Beth said happily, seeing my questioning look she said, "He finally accepted an apprenticeship from the College Arcane and is training to be an enchanter!"
"Thank god, I thought you were going to say I should be the enchanter." I said, breathing out in relief.
Connor, Gunthur, Matt, and Sarah all left the testing rooms not long after that, coming to find us. "Everyone pass?" I asked, looking at them.
"Yep!" They all said, though Matt looked down.
Sarah said, "He failed the weapon's portion, but mindscapes get a free pass on that so he still passed."
Matt looked grumpy at the thought, but got over it quickly saying, "Have you guys heard about the dungeons yet?"
"What dungeons?" Gunthur asked
"Shade sent out a message this morning, apparently there's a new type of monster called the corrupted. They're really stupid and easy to attract, but also incredibly dangerous if left alone, so Shade set up dungeons that attract corrupted to them and lock them in. An incredibly powerful formation limits the strength of all beings in the dungeons to a maximum level so that cultivators can enter it with an idea of how strong they need to be. The lowest of them is apparently at the 6th level of Body Refining, and the portal to enter it is in Shade City!"
Looking at Rick and Sarah, I asked Matt, "Do you know what kind of corrupted or how many of them will be in there?"
"Nope, I just know that the one at Shade City only allows 5 people to enter at a time. I can't wait till we hit 6th level of Body Refining, I've already heard that the rewards are incredible, although it's nearly impossible to clear."
"We should definitely fight there as much as possible." I said, my face grim. I noticed that several of the others had matching expressions, "Having experience dealing with corrupted's will definitely come in handy."
"Yeah," Gunthur said, his face dark, "It will."
Thankfully, the grim atmosphere passed quickly as Beth said, "Alright, I'm out of here! I picked up my first mission to clear a goblin nest last night!" Grabbing Connor by his arm, she pulled him away from the group roughly.
"Hey, why are you grabbing me?" Connor complained.
"Duh, you're my chauffeur. You better get me home before noon or you'll wake up one day without your Mr. Happy!"
"Seriously man," I said, turning back to Matt, "What do you see in her?"
Before I could get into it with him, Rick was walking by saying, "You coming Sam? I've got shit to do too, I finally made it to that monastery last night. Now I've just got to figure out how to get inside it."
---- line break ----
An hour later I was home, and after eating I decided it was time to get started. Laying down on my bed, I closed my eyes a too familiar classroom appearing in front of me.
*Ding*
*Mission Rewards Received*
*You may choose from any intermediate staff techniques available in the shop*
Navigating over to the shop, I figured I should get this over with quickly so I could return to Storm's Refuge and start doing some research.
Opening up the shop, I typed in intermediate staff technique and my jaw dropped at the sheer number of possibilities. I decided to narrow it down, imputing my affinities and basic level staff as a requirement. The thousands of entries were immediately narrowed... to hundreds of them. Figuring that the most expensive ones would be better, I ordered it by price and nearly died of a heart attack.
"$10,000,000 for an intermediate staff technique?!?!"
I clicked on it because I just had to know.
*Sun Wu Kong's Staff - Intermediate level technique*
*Requirements: Unknown*
*Description: Technique that the legendary monkey king once practiced. No one else has ever been able to successfully practice it, but it remains a treasure because the monkey king once stated that he'd immediately take anyone who practiced the technique successfully as a personal disciple.'*
"Holy shit!" I was tempted to buy it just to give it a chance, but then I remembered all the other shit I had to learn. 'I bet that it requires a heartforce cultivator too, the risk's just too great.'
Scanning down the list, several techniques cost more than a million dollars, but they were all associated with some great sect or family clan. In order to get the higher level manuals you either had to join them, or give them your first born. Also, many of them had harsh requirements and time investments that where just impractical for me. I needed a serviceable defensive technique to help me stay alive, not some legendary technique that'd wind up getting me killed because I didn't have the time to train my true strengths.
Quickly scrolling past the outrageously expensive ones, I started to run into some more promising ones like. 'Intermediate Staff' the next most generic staff technique. 'Freezing rivers' a water element technique that focused on ice. 'Invulnerable Defense' seemed perfect, but I realized that higher levels of the technique required Earth Elemental affinity. I was surprised when I came across 'Storm Staff' which belonged to Storm's Refuge. I skipped that because I could learn it for free whenever I wanted too. I kept looking, trying to find something that called out to me, finally I found it in a technique I never expected, but after thinking about it seemed perfect for me.
*Defense of the Light - Intermediate level defensive staff technique (part of a series)*
*Requirements: low level affinity with the light element; mindscape.*
*Description: Created by a mindscape cultivator, it pursues the maximum level of defensive power. Trained to its peak, a user of this technique can create a temporary barrier of light that is nearly unbreakable by same realm powers. Note: This technique trained to the peak has the additional advantage of increasing the users affinity to the Light Element by one grade.*
I'd originally planned on getting a Water technique because they are usually better at defensive abilities than Air which is more balanced, or Lightning which focuses on pure destructive speed, but the abilities of this technique just blew me away. Not only could I create another barrier, I could also raise my elemental affinities!
After double checking that I hadn't missed anything better, I hit buy. It cost $100,000 so without the reward from the school, I could never have afforded it. Well, I could probably get Storm's Refuge to buy it for me, but I'm trying not to rely to much on them.
Instead of a manual, I received a ticket.
*Ding*
*Gained Summoning Ticket: Summons Image of Master ******* to teach the Defense of the Light technique to you, only usable in training hall.*
"I really didn't want to go back to that place ever again" I said to myself as I gazed at the ticket forlornly. "Oh well, might as well get this over with."
Using my menu, I navigated over to the training hall and tore the ticket summoning my new teacher.
A blurry image of a woman appeared in my training hall, and she started talking immediately. "I'm here to train you how to use the intermediate level of Defense of the Light. I'll teach you until you reach a basic proficiency, and then give you a training schedule for mastering the technique. After mastering it, you can take a test to see if you qualify to move on to the next level of the technique. However, you'll have to purchase the next level yourself."
"Defense of the Light is a unique weapons skill in that it rely's more on using a staff as a vehicle to more easily move Elemental Energy than on using any fancy techniques. In fact, all of the moves used in this weapons skill are the most basic pure defense techniques that every staff user learns in their basic training. However, what's different is how you move your energy through the staff, as well as the amount you're able to move...." She went on to explain the entire technique too me, and then began training.
"I'm assuming that you've mastered the basic staff fighting technique." She accessed my training halls settings and installed an add-on. Over a few seconds of buffering, a new room was created. Entering it, it was about 20 feet by 20 feet with a small circle in the middle. "You're not allowed to leave that circle. There's a formation in this room that will launch attacks of all kinds, elements, abilities, shapes, sizes... you get the gist of it."
"Using only basic defensive staff techniques and the unique method of utilizing light elemental essence you are to stand in that circle until you don't get hit by anything for at least half an hour. Then, you turn off the lights and start the training all over again. If you manage to last to the end, so long as you're holding a staff in your hand no matter how you are attacked you'll create a barrier before it hits you. Unless of course the person or thing attacking you exceeds your realm, in that case you're out of luck." Then, before I even began training the image of Master ******* disappeared into nothingness. Shrugging, I decided to try it out.
"ARGHHHHHHH!!!"
"DAMN THAT HURTS!!!"
"WHY THE FUCK DID I PICK THIS TECHNIQUE!"
...