A month had passed since Noah had bought the items on his wish list and throughout that time he had trained nonstop. Thankfully, his mentor had allowed him to take such a long leave from class so he could dive so deeply into his training. And the current day was like the rest.
Noah gripped onto his sword as he dashed forward. Blood Essence seeped out and coated his legs as he ran, increasing his speed and allowing him dodge the multiple obstacles that appeared before him. And when an obstacle appeared too close, his Essence coated his body, teleporting him out of the way with Flicker. Surprisingly, the Blood Essence that coated his feet did not dissipate, allowing him to run across the wall he had appeared on. "Dual Circulation: Draconic Flicker."
Noah's Dual Circulation allowed him to utilize both the physical strengthening of Blood Essence and the long range power of Essence allowing him to double his battle prowess. But of course since there was no perfect attack pattern in the world, his use of Dual Circulation drained more energy than normally individually utilizing both energies. Still, he had something to lessen the burden of using the Dual Circulation technique.
His improved Flow Execution revealed itself as he redirected 40% of the Blood Essence and Essence used in the Dragon Steps and Flicker, reducing the amount he would have normally have to use for his next technique as he circulated both his energies. "Dual Circulation: Whirlwind Blade."
The transmigrator's hands turned into a blur as he slashed at the air multiple times and released numerous Essence slashes that scarred the wall of his training room before it mended itself.
"Phew." He released a breath and circulated his Essence alone as he tightened his grip on his sword before suddenly slashing at the air. "Spatial Edge, First Blade: Void Slash." There was no clear indication of his attack in the air, but the wall a few meters before him suddenly featured a long gash across it.
The training room responded to the attack by creating Essence projectiles that were launched at his stationary figure.
"Second Blade: Distortion." Noah assumed a parry stance while his silver Essence coated his risen sword, making the space surrounding the blade shiver while a wave like energies surged into the air, creating a distortion field around him that warped space and redirected the attacks that bore down on him.
The Half-dragon smiled, knowing that now he had Redirection to handle physical attacks and distortion to handle Essence based attacks. He then shifted his stance, circulating his Essence once more before striking forward. "Third Blade: Spatial Poisoning."
His strike seemed ordinary, causing a small gap in the wall but soon, the Essence contained in it burst forth, causing the wall to experience an event that seemed close to a corroding effect. The area surrounding the tear in the wall seemed to fall apart until he finally cut off the link between him and the Essence residue on the wall.
Unfortunately that was how far his advancement was into the Spatial Edge Art. The fourth move was, unfortunately, only available when his skin and muscles had been fully refined by his Essence, which could only happen if he advanced into the Adept Stage. He had also used the multiple resources he had bought to advance to the 8th Level of the Intermediate Stage.
He heaved a breath and sheathed his sword before placing it in his World ring. He then left his training room and headed for his cultivation room on the lower room, wishing to spend more time increasing his battle strength. But he was stopped by the ring of his home's bell.
Noah rose his brow, wondering why anyone would visit him while knowing that he was going through intensive training. He sighed, moving towards his front door and opening it to see Leonel. "What are you doing here?"
Leonel sighed in relief seeing his friend. "Finally! I seriously thought you died in there. You really are cutting it close, come let's go register for the competition!"
Noah's brows furrowed. "Competition?"
The latter stared at his friends face for a while before face palming as he confirmed that the transmigrator's confusion was genuine. "Fuck! You really don't know anything about it, do you?!"
"I don't understand what you're talking about."
"Urgh. I should have guessed this would happen. In two days, an inter-year competition ranging from Year 1 to 3 of the Academy, consisting of teams of 5. The prizes of anyone who reaches top 20 is quite rewarding. We don't need to aim for anything higher than that."
Noah frowned. Honestly he didn't want to leave his intensive training, but a glance at the little amount of Credit that remained in his account made him realize that he was going to run low on resources soon and the monthly Credits he received was not really enough to support him if he wished to dive into another long period of intensive training. He then sighed and nodded. "At this point I don't really have a choice. We don't have much hope though, most second years have already stepped a foot into the Adept Stage and even worse, the third years would have already established their Paths. If we meet any team like that in the early parts of the competition, we're really unlucky then."
Leonel smiled. "Everything's good as long as we're all gathered together. The four of us will definitely pass the screening process, the real competition begins then."
Noah nodded, wearing a jacket over his body and gesturing for his friend to lead the way. "How is the competition going to be arranged?"
"The academy wouldn't be so wicked to immediately place us and the seniors into fights. The first stage of the competition is token hunting. There are multiple tokens placed in the event's location and our job is to find as many as we can. This part will be easy since we have your eyes and Emery's stealth. The next stage is about weathering different calamities, we'll be placed in locations suffering extreme weather conditions, extreme enough to harm even Adept Stage Battlesoul masters if we're not careful enough."
"And then we fight the seniors."
"Yeah. But the first two stages will at least give us a head start."
"Okay." The transmigrator smiled, seeing as such a challenging event approached him. "I'm definitely interested now."