Caizher entered the inner area and head directly to 'Strongest Weapon Shop'
Yeah, that is exactly the name that the little girl named her shop. It was domineering and arrogant! It draws a lot of unwanted attention but that little girl was actually very skillful in the art of weapon making and others cannot do anything about it
Caizher entered the shop and went on one of the attendants. "Where is Candice?" Caizher asked where the little girl is
"The boss is inside her workshop but she said that no one should disturb her even if the sky falls apart" the attendant said with a bit of nervousness. Caizher's mood is very unpredictable, one minute he would be full of smiles, but on the other one, he will turn into a battle maniac demon. The attendant doesn't want to be torn apart between Candice and Caizher
"Argh that brat!" Caizher grumbled and directly passed through the shop's counter and sat on one of the chairs while crossing his legs
The faces of the attendants around twitched. They always wondered how Caizher was able to do that. Also, the man's attitude is like those people who don't care about anything and will just do everything they want
As for Caizher, he was too lazy to go to his room first then return here. Might as well wait for here and take a 'nap'
Caizher slept but he didn't close the eyes he made on his human body to make people think he's still awake. Doing this will stop people from entertaining funny thoughts towards him. Besides, Caizher is confident in his senses, if there was any danger, he would sense it immediately and wake up
Few hours passed and the people wondered how he can continue sitting like that without doing anything. If not for Caizher's eyes being 'open' they would really think that he is sleeping
The shop was already bustling with a lot of people inside, but a door was suddenly flung open and a little girl came out while laughing loudly. This naturally attracted a lot of attention including Caizher who was woken up by that sound
"WAHAHAHA!! I SUCCEEDED AGAIN!!" Candice said proudly while holding a sword with a black handle. Candice put her face on the sheathed sword as if she is playing with a baby
Caizher passed through the counter again that creeped out the buyers in the shop. "Oh? Is that my sword? I thought you're going to make daggers for me?" Caizher asked while looking at the sheathed sword
"This sword is better than a dagger!" Candice boasted and handed the black sword to Caizher before grabbing a random sword from the shop
"Attack the sword on my hand!" Candice said and as Caizher believed in 'gender equality' he did what he was told. Since this little girl is actually already 20 years old, almost the same as Caizher, this won't be a child bullying
Caizher slashed the sword on his hand putting a bit of his strength on it. To everyone's surprise, the frail-looking girl accepted the sword attack without any change in her expression. It's like it was easy for her to defend from such strength
Caizher pouted as he thought this sword would be an extremely powerful one that can cut through steel as if it was just butter. "What? This all it got?" Caizher complained which made the little girl explode
"You idiot! Don't expect to encounter a sword that will cut through metal easily! Be realistic!" Candice shouted while puffing her chest in anger
"Look closely at the sword in my hand!" Caizher did as what he was told and was quite surprised to see a chipped area on the sword
"Heh... just how many sword strikes were needed to chip a sword like this? But now, you only did it on one strike!"
The people around flocked to the two in curiosity and was surprised that they really saw a chipped part on the sword. The attention they are getting was being enjoyed by Candice and she smiled arrogantly
"The number of materials you gave me for the past month was higher than I expected. Treat this sword as my gift and come back in a few days after I finished forging your daggers!" After saying it, the little girl entered her weapon making room again and locked the door to start another round of smithing
"Hmm with my task finish, I now have some free time. I should try to cultivate by using the Primordial Darkness Heretic Art" Caizher thought to himself and head back to his room
----
After entering his room, Caizher returned his body back to normal and the room was plunged into darkness
Caizher digested the information inside the manual and started cultivating in accordance with it. From what Caizher learned, the first three ranks of cultivation is called the 'Servant Rank' with three tiers
Just like what the name implied, people at this stage can only be servants their whole life as they are extremely weak. But of course, the earth only started having mana and maybe all those that can use mana is at the servant rank
Without any cultivation manual or anyone to guide them, the humans were grasping in the dark and still didn't know much how to cultivate. Maybe some even advanced in rank without them even knowing it
Caizher cultivated like how the manual stated but it was harder than he thought. As the darkness itself, Caizher can devour and integrate darkness but the process was not something easily done
His mind was drawn into a strange space with a locked door. According to the manual, depending on his rank, his mind can enter a darkness pool containing huge amounts of darkness inside
As he was just at the lowest rank, the darkness pool he can access is also of the lowest rank. However, entering the darkness pool is hard. The place was locked and Caizher needed to open it up by using his soul
As this is just the first darkness pool, after exhausting his soul a bit, the locked door finally opened. But on the next pools that Caizher wants to enter, the difficulty will rise a lot
Caizher's mind entered a world of pure darkness. It was the same place he met the eye, other things are absent on it and the only thing present in that world is darkness. The only difference between this darkness pool and where the eye brought him was the level of darkness
He can feel that this darkness pool is trillions of times inferior and smaller. It was only as big as his room in the base, but it still contained a lot of darkness that he needed
Using his mind, Caizher controlled a small part of the darkness pool to come towards him and the darkness entered the material world of earth
Caizher knew that this is his first time and didn't become arrogant. It was better to start on something small to judge his capability first
The darkness looks like a single strand of hair albeit it is a bit thicker. Caizher controlled it to enter his Divine Darkness Body and the real trouble starts
It was just an extremely small piece of darkness but when Caizher tried devouring it, the darkness resisted and destroyed a part of his body. Not only that, but his mind was being clouded by madness brought by that strand of darkness
Caizher controlled his darkness to wrapped on that rogue piece of darkness to subdue it. But the rogue one didn't stop resisting and from time to time his own darkness would be destroyed by it. As he needs to protect his mind from being corrupted, he wasn't able to give 100% control over his body
After a while, the darkness finally used up all of its power and dissipated into black colored lights. However, it didn't mean that Caizher was successful
The only thing he got was an exhausted mind and a smaller body. Caizher didn't get any benefits from it. Cultivating is really harder than he thought!
"Damn it! I thought I'm the darkness itself, why is it so hard to integrate darkness on my body?!" Caizher asked angrily
As the darkness itself, it is correct to assume that darkness will obey him easily. But it was the opposite! The darkness resisted a lot and only exhausted him. He will need some time to recover from this to be able to try again
Suddenly, Caizher remembered what the eye told him before. The eye said to "Defy the heavens"
Just what is the heavens? In some novels that is like the world's consciousness or something. Now that Caizher thinks of it, his cultivation manual is called 'Primordial Darkness Heretic Art'
There is the word heretic on it. Heretic and defy the heavens...
"Just what is the meaning of this?" Caizher asked himself before pushing the matter to the back of his mind for now and focused on recovering the damages he sustained
Caizher tried using his mana to lessen the time for him to recover to his original size. However, the strain on his soul is harder to recover. As of now, the only way he knows to recover from soul fatigue faster is to sleep. But even that will take a long time
Caizher condensed his body into a human shape again before laying his back on the bed to sleep. He planned on sleeping first to recover to his top condition before going out
Who knows what sort of people he will encounter outside? He wants to be always on his top condition in case something bad will happen. Caizher planned on finding some shops that might have some products that can help the soul recover from fatigue. Even though he doesn't know if he can use it
The soul might still be a mystery to humans now as it was only eleven months since the apocalypse started but who knows if they already discovered some information about it
What Caizher wants is medicine or anything that can help him recover from soul/mind fatigue faster. He might look over powerful now as he can easily kill enemies but he wasn't!
He only had an easier time, fighting enemies because he can sink his body on the ground and he has high physical immunity. However, other humans are now having more mana and even their mana control is becoming skillful
While Caizher was left figuring out how to properly control his body. If he doesn't have a year's experience on mana control before, he would be even weaker
That is why Caizher needs to start cultivating the Primordial Darkness Heretic Art!
-----
After recovering for a few hours, Caizher head out again. As he didn't stroll around the base that much, he still doesn't know where certain types of stores are located
Caizher used his usual plan and strolled around the area that has many people. He was waiting for a thief to think of him as prey and extort them of their money and information
However, too bad for him, he made quite a reputation for himself. No thief dared to try their luck on him making him feel quite helpless
When Caizher started losing hope, he suddenly saw familiar faces which made his eyes lit up
Caizher immediately heads on that group of people with smiles on his face. One of the men coincidentally looked in his direction and the man flinched, especially when seeing the smile on his face
The man was John the fierce fist that Caizher fought before. The man always avoided him after the fight and become scared of him. The fight also stripped away John's arrogance
The man becomes afraid that a person he thought of as weak was actually more powerful than him and kill him
John was with Sheena's team and the woman seeing Caizher happily walking towards them blushed a bit
"Did he finally notice how beautiful I am?" Sheena asked herself while playing with her silky black hair. "Hmph, don't think that I am easy to get!"
However, to Sheena's misfortune, Caizher was not walking towards them to talk to her
"Yo, John! Mind helping me for a bit?" Caizher asked with a sweet and innocent smile as if the two didn't have a disagreement before
"But if you mind then I can't do anything about it" Caizher was still smiling but his hand turned into sharp shape darkness that made John almost pee on his pants