Young sighed to himself before he got to his feet. The sun had fallen behind the horizon about an hour ago.
"Time to hunt." He said as he left the safety of the spring.
"Dammit. It's been a week since Spark went to sleep. And he was the one who said time was of the essence!" Young said to himself as he crawled out of the small tunnel leading away from the spring.
He lifted his hand and clenched his fist prompting lightning to spark up and encompass his fist.
"Time to get to work."
He dashed forth, materializing his Fulger Crystal Long-sword in one hand and the surging power of lightning in the other.
"I'm going all the way today!" He shouted as he lunged forth and slashed several nearby Cave Grubs, dispatching them in one blow with the power of Lightning Blade technique.
In response the Cave Grubs nearby took predictable action but it would not matter. Young brought forth his free hand and shouted "Arcing Lightning!".
The energy formed into a twisting beam which arced along the ground and extended itself, striking everything within its path. He slayed another three instantly and wounded several more before recalling his spear and hurling it at the largest grub of the group. The spear pierced the gaping mouth of the beast, causing it to spasm uncontrollably as acid dripped from it's gaping maw.
"Recall!" He shouted as his spear disappeared then reappeared in his hand. He switched it out yet again for his sword and continued to dash forward, slaying as many of the creatures as possible as quickly as he could. Such had been his training regimen for the past week. For some reason his enemies had grown increasingly more powerful and numerous. The cavern was now filled with lesser and greater Cave Grubs, but Young would not be dissuaded. The closer to the entrance he moved the more dense the population of foes would become, thus he was always forced to turn back halfway, or at the most sixty percent of the way.
After honing his abilities with Lightning affinity he managed to teach himself two techniques, based on the weapons he'd created.
"Arcing Lightning, and Sphere." Along with this he managed to become so adept at using Cloak that it was now effortless.
"Ksst!" A large ball of acid traveled towards him but he simply sparked up his fist and caused a massive surge of energy to dissipate it.
"I can do it, I've filled both my qi cores. I've got more than enough energy. I'll consider this my graduation if I can complete the cavern!"
He continued his relentless assault, undaunted by the numbers of his foes, largely due to the fact that he was spamming the use of his Fulger blade. By extending his range upwards of 6-9 meters Young was able to kill several grubs within a single strike. For the Greater Grubs he struck from a distance with the Fern Spear, using Spark Burst Technique if he had to.
Within just ten minutes he'd cleared half the cavern of grubs, but he noticed the number of grubs seemed especially dense today.
"Hmm. Time to try it out." Young thought to himself as he began to draw forth as much converted qi into his fist as he could safely control.
"This really can't even be called a technique, it's mostly just wildly releasing lightning but…"
He thrust his open palm forward as the blue energy there began to crackle and spiral outward in several streams of lightning. Unlike the Arcing Lightning which used the ground to move forward this lightning sparked outward through the air, burning and shocking anything within reach.
"Grrrah!" Young shouted as he forced even more power into the technique , causing it to run wild in the process. The resulting surge sent lightning energy outward upwards of fifteen meters, completely clearing the immediate area of Cave Grubs.
"I should use that more often..well if it didn't eat up so much qi. Over half of the energy in my qi core is gone."
The "energy" Young referred to was the qi core, a "compartment" within his soul sea that allowed him to convert and then store qi energy. In this way he could instantly access and use it to power his techniques during battle. He stumbled upon this revelation after reading and tinkering. The result was the realization that raising his cultivation rank allowed him two cores to store the energy. He filled one with his own lightning energy and the other with…
"Where the heck are all of these things coming from? I've killed at least a hundred so far, and there's still so many." Young remarked as he continued to swiftly cut through the groups of creatures. "Attack first! Don't give them time to react! Keep moving!" He repeated these three mantras as he pushed his body to the limit.
Finally, after another fifteen minutes of battle he realized why the cavern was so densely populated with Cave Grubs.
[100 Years Cave Grub
A cave grub that has survived for a hundred years. It's thick layer of fat insulates it from all but the most powerful of attacks. Its acid is potent enough to melt stone, metal and flesh.]
"No way." Young said as he took a step backwards. The creature was so large that it almost completely blocked the entrance to the cavern save for 2 meters on each side and four at the top of the cavern. It slowly inched forward, it's large red eyes fixed solely on Young now.
Its mouth was large enough to swallow one of his arms easily, in fact Young's eyes were immediately drawn to it as he noticed the alarming number of fang sized teeth and a thick green ooze dripping from it.
"That's so gross…"
The creature's body began to shake and as it did so several small, white blobs were flung in various directions. The blobs slowly began to take shape, becoming the lesser cave grubs Young was used to encountering. Over a dozen of the blobs took form and began to writhe, finally taking shape before they marched towards Young Jade without restraint.
"This might be a problem." He groaned as he took two steps backwards.