Heth walked up to Drake and congratulated him saying,"Good job on defeating the snake, there were many times where I was sure you would fail, but you persevered throughout all of it."
Drake sat with his back on the snake's corpse, chugging a health potion and an effect debuff potion. Drake had various resistances to poison and burns, however powerful fire like the one the snake used still dealt him a powerful blow. Drake finished his bottles and asked Heth,"So, when do we do the second test and what is it?" Drake tried to remain respectful to Heth but he was extremely exhausted as his aura couldn't help him recover his stamina, as he used it all in the fight.
Heth laughed and said,"Right now actually!"
Drake's face froze on the spot and he looked at Heth with a pleading expression. Drake responded to Heth,"What are you-?" However, before Drake could ask his question a barrier erected around Drake and the snake corpse. The snake corpse, after being fully sealed within the barrier, lit itself on fire!
Heth called out to Drake,"Drake! This is the second test! The test of [Phoenix Blessing]! Survive within the barrier and flames as long as you can! I can promise you that you will see results!"
[System notification: Player has activated test 2 of (?)! Survive the [Phoenix Blessing] for as long as you can. [No time limit penalty]]
Drake watched as the snake corpse disappeared and was burned away in one smooth motion. Drake almost vomited when the heat wave hit him, collapsing to the ground in a second. Drake caught himself from falling onto the burning ground, his skin searing in the flames. Drake cried out in agony,"Ahh!! It burns!!"
Heth called out to him from outside the barrier once more,"Drake! My friend! The flames do not burn if you don't let them!"
General spoke up and said,"My lord, you have no aura to block, so follow his advice! Imagine the fire not burning you and instead giving you strength!"
Drake was struggling to focus and so he closed his eyes as the feeling of his skin melting continued. Drake thought to himself,'how am i supposed to do this? It hurts so much, I can't just pretend fire doesn't hurt dammit!"
Drake was fighting within himself, all the while his skin continued to suffer and his body began to destroy itself. Heth looked on with worry, he knew that the second test was a true mind game. You just got done defeating this powerful monster, you are exhausted and weary, and now you are suddenly engulfed in flames. When it happened to Heth the first time, he honestly felt like he had entered some unknown hell.
Drake thought to himself,'Stop, calm yourself, what is the information available? The developers wouldn't make a trap like this where the player would not have any chance. Maybe it was truly the same as imagining the fire didn't hurt, but that was not something I could do. Wait, what if I?"
Drake started to imagine, not that the fire didn't hurt, but that the energy within the fire was nurturing and refining his aura. Drake felt the pain from the fire still, but he could now feel the warmth of the fire moving into his body, slowly filling up his aura bank once more. Drake, now getting more accustomed to the fire, started to imagine the taoist energies described in Chinese history. Elements of heat or attack energy tended to carry what is known as Yang Energy. In most cases, it was regarded as being extremely violent and hard to tame, but if you could control it, your proficiency in inner energy would climb really fast.
So with this new Taoist outlook Drake could now feel his Aura pool he had been expanding as he was leveling up, steadily refilling and growing bigger at the same time. Drake was now fully standing up once more and he marveled at how the more he moved within the fire the more he seemed to grow. Drake looked at his hands as he stood in the raging inferno, silently standing in the center with the hottest flames.
Heth watched on Drake with fascination at first as he had watched Drake adapt to the fire slowly. Then Heth started to get scared as he could very plainly feel that Drake's inner energy was rapidly refilling and growing in volume at the same time. Right now Drake was only 20% full on energy but with the new size of his energy pool he is as strong as 70% beforehand. Heth watched on with baited breath, this was not what happened with him, so he was interested in seeing how this human did things.
Drake called his spear to his hand once more, feeling the weight of his aura growing by the second. Drake called out to General,"General, in this space of fire, would 'that' idea work?"
General almost instantly responded,"Yes my lord! It should work perfectly here!" Drake smiled and simply replied,"Good".
Drake activated his spear special gravity skill on the ground beneath himself, powering it up to 3 times the gravity instantly. Drake instantly collapsed to the ground once more but he knew now that he had cast the gravity field that his idea did indeed work. His spear, at some point in the creating process with Fern, adopted the unique trait of consuming his aura if he wished to use the chains or gravity ability for longer than the 5 or so seconds the skill would normally hold for. This meant that after he had trained with them, instead of 5 seconds of the chains skill, he could hold them for about 6 and half seconds. Using his aura as backup to make the skill last 1.5 seconds longer, and any pro will tell you even 0.4 of a second is like life and death in the higher ranks.
Drake spent another couple of minutes lying on the ground with his eyes closed, getting used to 3 times gravity and the flames combined.
[System notification: Player has understood the flames of the [Phoenix Blessing]. Player receives 200% more proficiency in techniques as long as player is within the fire]
[System notification: Player has used gravity magic on [Phoenix Blessing]. Proficiency multiplied by gravity multiplier. (x3)]
Drake smiled and slowly got up from the ground with painstaking effort. He thought to himself,"Two very big hurdles are about to become obsolete with this little move. Proficiency is intelligence dependent and Intelligence only increases with bloodlines, so I will have a very big head start with this! 200% multiplied by 3 is 600%!' Drake stood in the middle of the fire and gravity world he had created.
Drake took in a deep breath, pulling lots of Yang energy and filling a good majority of his still growing aura pool. He let out his bloody lightning aura, letting all of it out at once instead of holding it back and using it efficiently. Drake knew that as long as he trained in this hell that he created he would grow exponentially. Drake made a resolution and said,"General! We will train here for 20 hours! After which we turn back to the real world! Eco, while we are training, look into my brain to create a strategy for Loco's guild in the game and some choice stocks in the real world!"
The two of them responded."Yes my lord!" and "Yes, Master!".
==
[Welcome player Hammer to Adella online!]
Hammer spawned in a forest near a populated city and waited for his men to come and get him. He had sent some of his henchman to set up a guild in this game and he wanted to see with his own eyes how this world worked.
He noticed that a horse drawn carriage came and quickly pulled up beside him. Two men in black and brown peasant clothes got out and said,"Apologies for our unsightly appearance, we are still in the beginning processes of leveling and acquiring gold and skills. We of course left the best skills for the young master and have worked a deal with a NPC for the young master to gain an epic class."
Hammer scoffed and said,"Only an Epic? Well I guess that will have to do. Tell me are there any strong people in this world yet? Who do you two view as the 'the strongest'?"
The two men looked at each other and then back at Hammer, and finally one of them said,"Permission to speak sir?"
Hammer was a bit curious and immediately said,"Go ahead!"
The man on the right said,"It's Drake Silver, sir."
Hammer immediately stopped smiling and said,"What? You dare say that name in front of me?"
The man quickly composed himself and said,"Sir I am not lying, here let me show you how to pull up the forums within the game and you can see a video he just posted about 2 hours ago of him battling a field boss with his bare hands!"
Hammer let the man do so, as he needed to know how strong Drake was. He watched the video of Drake fighting a field boss known as [the unpierceable] and it looked like it would live up to its name but then Drake came out of nowhere and choked it to death after taking what people called a 'sacred fire'.
Hammer stood there with fury, and said to his men,"Scratch the epic class, find me at least a semi-legendary, now!" His men knew better than to argue with him and simply walked back to the cart to escort the young master to the guild. Hammer thought to himself in rage,'Drake Silver, I, Justin Holoman, will have proper recourse for your actions! You will suffer!'