"I only said that because I wanted to make you aware that a good blacksmith thinks of every material as precious, any material can show amazing capabilities if you worked on them hard enough! But not you! You are banned from entering my smithy!"
*WHAM*
Hoivra roared furiously, pointing at the charred remains of what was supposed to become the tin ingot in Viria's hand before he slammed the door returning inside.
"...told you... old drunkard scammed you out of the tickets. I will not help you get them back."
The skinny guard glanced at the door and then looked at the young man with an indifferent expression.
"Lesson learned. I will not be blinded by the fame of others anymore."
Viria shrugged his shoulders and responded doing his best to look troubled and defeated.
He might have been overdoing it with cautiousness, but nothing that happened to him in either of his lives had served as proof that he could just relax and let things happen.
The guard didn't bother him anymore so the young men left the area unbothered.
"Mr. Druu~! Two portions of your finest mole-rabbit bread on the go, please~!"
As Viria was returning to his shack he stepped into the small dirty locale that was hard to call a proper restaurant and called out right from the entrance as the wind carried the stench of mole-rabbit blood covering him inside.
"...what in the...?"
A few customers gasped in disbelief, staring at the young man as if he was crazy, but Viria didn't particularly care.
"...There must be something wrong with your head, boy..."
The owner of the place, the prisoner named Druu shook his head in disbelief but turned around and reached for the loaves of the mole-rabbit bone bread the moment that he saw two yellow bills in the young man's hand.
"I expect the hunt was... good...?"
Druu asked cautiously, watching the bloodstained young man put the bills on the counter and reach for the loaves of bread.
"Could be better... say – if I will provide you the bones, will I get the discount for the bread...?"
Viria shrugged and perked up after gulping his saliva at the sight of the gray pastry product.
"As long as I don't consider you a trusty person, don't even think about it, boy."
Druu declared without a second of hesitation, but he did smirk at the forwardness of the strange customer that showed up again in his place despite having nothing listed on his crime list.
"So it's a yes, but after a bit of time, understood! Have a nice day, mister!"
Viria wasn't discouraged by the refusal and left with a cheerful goodbye, not wanting to deal with any of the customers.
On his way back to his shack, the young man caught a glimpse of the three kids he hired working hard on transporting the monster parts – he smiled with satisfaction seeing that no one even try to bother them during the task.
With that out of the way, Viria walked down the street and holed up in his shack, blocking the way in with the loose door and sitting cross-legged preparing for meditation and cultivation training.
He put the two loaves of gray bread by his side on the blanket and cautiously took out first of the mole-rabbit monster cores that he got from the hunt.
He felt that he should be more cautious while using them, but the feeling of getting his body getting nourished by the spiritual energy of a monster was almost impossible to resist.
Therefore, he began the cultivation, focusing on the heat coming from the monster core sipping into his palms, and slowly making it circulate through his body.
Together with the core of the rare spawn, Viria found four monster cores, there was no need for some complicated calculations to figure out that without it, he would be left with the same amount of cores that he got the other day – the only difference being that he definitely killed a lot more monsters this time around.
His luck was still above average, but much worse than at the beginning.
Vira went through all the common monster cores and breathed out.
He gained a fistful of mole-rabbit core shards (trash) that he could use for augmenting his soul artifact later on, but he didn't feel like he raised a level.
The cultivation training wasn't supposed to be easy – the three basic brackets, low, middle, and high, each separated into low, middle, and high subgroups to which every single one had levels – or steps, as some called it - on its own.
How many though, depended on the individual cultivator.
It was something outside of the soul artifact grade and would also affect the cultivation speed – especially because the actual spiritual energy required to reach a higher bracket was always the same, the ease of training was predetermined by the number of steps.
Between one and ten, usually.
Just like with actual steps, it was better to have ten smaller steps for the ease of traveling than one giant one that was basically just another obstacle instead of aid.
A cultivator could always feel when he was about to reach another step as their spiritual energy and physical body would get stronger – it was a gradual and easier change for those with more steps and a massive jump for those with a lower number.
For example, Viria's younger brother was considered such a good candidate for the next heir not only because of his mythic grade soul artifact but also because he was determined to have seven steps between each bracket of spirit power.
But when it came to Viria...
...it was one...
The lowest number of steps and the most difficult hurdle to overcome.
Despite clearly remembering his brother climbing the first two steps of his cultivation after only using a single low-grade monster core and increasing his spiritual energy by a lot, Viria didn't feel a particular difference after using six cores.
...that was the painful disparity between the speed of cultivation between cultivators with vastly different grades of soul artifacts, and inborn predisposition...