Vega looked over the word. "Do I need to go inside? What does it mean?" Afraid that the tome was dangerous. Vega stood there, observing the tome.
The tome shook again and glowed. It summoned another letter and put it together, filling the empty page. "Inside, now!"
Vega didn't have any choice. He knew that not going inside the cave still meant death for him because he was standing in the middle of the forest without his mana. Praying, he nodded to himself and took the tome, approaching the cave.
He stepped inside, the darkness enveloping him as he managed to go deeper and deeper into the cave. When the area around him was totally dark, Vega moved to the edge of the cave and used the surface as a guide. The surface felt cold, damp, and slimy. He didn't have powerful eyes that helped him see in the dark like the boar he had just killed.
The walk was long, and he felt an ominous feeling growing around him. Only the dripping water reached his ears while accompanying his walk. As usual, Vega hummed to avoid feeling the crippling sense of dread coming from staying in the dark.
Deeper inside the cave, he could feel the hair on his arms stand up when he sensed the ambient mana growing denser. Vega felt it, even with his power as an apprentice whose sense was still dull compared with an adept.
Finally, some light appeared on the edge of the total darkness around him. But the mana felt even purer, similar to the mana pool, when he meditated on the edge. It didn't stop there, and a slight fog started to cloud his vision. Even with several rocks shining and reflecting the light that grew brighter, he only saw several meters in front of him.
He looked down, hearing the crack under his feet, and realized he had stepped on several skeletons littered around in the cave.
The light grew brighter as it was reflected from several shiny rocks that became more frequent. A slight ripple of mana brushed his skin, making the hairs on his arms stand.
'What is this place?' Vega thought to himself. 'It's too similar. And why the academy didn't know anything about the cave like this The mana can help several apprentices grow stronger in a short time.'
Finally, he reached a large chamber deep within the cave. In the center, a pond's surface glowed with a soft, otherworldly light.
Vega approached the pond when the tome in his hand glowed brightly and turned hot. The energy from the tome grew stronger the closer he was to the pond. When he finally arrived at the edge of the pond, the tome shook and floated in the middle of the cave.
For a moment, he felt really afraid. His book normally seemed just like a regular book, aside from the way it gave him answers to his questions. But he never saw it glow brightly or move by itself. The tome glowed brighter, and I flipped the pages open. Its page is flickering with a glowing power, creating shimmering symbols in the air.
The symbols shot past Vega, who stood gawking at the magical tome. The symbols rearranged themselves, closing the room with a shiny yellow film around the mouth of the cave.
And then the turtle dove down inside the pool.
"NO!" Vega screamed, afraid that the pool had another creature lurking inside the milky liquid.
When the pool didn't bulge, he finally saw the edge of the milky liquid start to decrease little by little. His tome was absorbing the mana from the pool. Not letting the tome get its own benefit, Vega sat down in meditation. He activated the exercise, absorbing the pure mana around him. Because the cave was safe, he controlled the pure mana slowly across the seven sigils in his mind, changing the property of the pure mana into his own mana.
While Vega sat inside the cave replenishing his mana, the forest grew more dangerous at night.
The sun began to set, replaced by a glowing crescent moon in the sky. The stars are blinking, beckoning the night creatures to awaken and begin their days. The night grew alive with the sounds of crickets, bats, and night birds. The air was heavy with the scent of damp earth. Several buds shot from the ground, growing into a red flower with sharp teeth around them. When a cricket jumped closer, the flower elongated and swallowed the cricket whole.
####
Dion and Lian slashed their swords together, chasing the thief. The powerful slash created craters on the ground, but the thief jumped high, avoiding the swords, while opening his palm and summoning several spinning blades coated with a dangerous-looking purple liquid.
"Let's just stop here. You won't escape from either core formation or foundation establishment disciples. Give up, now!"
The thief laughed, "Hah! Dream on! We, the evil sect, used to have bloody fights. Don't think that your sword can reach me! Let's see how the power of my newly learned 'palm of darkness' corrodes your soul. Hehehe, I can then take your soul for feeding my corpse puppets."
"Humph." Lian reached his spirits and activated the dragon palm, making his hands glow purple and aiming at the thief's chest.
The thief blocked the palm, but the attack was too powerful, making him wince in pain.
Dion followed by throwing a flame talisman and mixing it with an entrapment talisman. But the thief activated his own spirit, creating shadows and slapping the talismans down. But the talismans exploded, creating a cloud of smoke around the thief. And for the last resource, the entrapment talisman activated, stopping the thief in his tracks.
The thief knew that he was surrounded, and with a slight motion, he activated his own life-severing talisman to get away from the entrapment before feeling a cold metal touch his neck. His head flew away from the body.
Knowing that the attack was successful, Lian put away his sword and patted down the thief, taking all of the hidden pouches from his body. He looked at his junior and nodded. "Rest here. We finish them off. Even evil disciples would die if we cut their heads."
Dion nodded, took a pill from his pouch, and sat down in meditation. Lian looked around and guarded his junior while he replenished his spirits. He knew he gambled correctly when taking Dion back to his master. With huge resources in mana, adepts easily overpower any practitioners. Even as a core formation master, he didn't think that his spirit resources could compare with his junior's mana.
After he finished meditation, Dion looked at his senior and asked warily, " Do you think we can go back to the sect?"
"I don't think so. Most of the lower practitioners realized that the core formation disciples were powerless against the combination of attacks, even from lower-level disciples. And most already started working together with the evil sects aiming to kill the nascent elder."
Dion nodded. The greedy nature of practitioners, mostly for profit, caused many disciples to act fast after understanding the fact. How about Vega? He hoped that the adepts fare better. With his understanding, the individualistic nature of adepts could be beneficial in keeping secrets.
Shaking his head, Lian didn't know how many of his friends under the elders had survived the ordeal. He remembered his master's sisters and hoped that, with the help of the elders from the adepts, they could gain their foothold back in the sect.
####
The mana swirled around Vega like a vortex. Even from the milky pool that started to grow shallow after being absorbed by the mysterious tome, the pure ambient mana inside the cave was enough for him to break through and become a high-level adept.
Even though the pain bombarded him all over his body, he couldn't stop the meditation process because his source had started the condensation process. The shimmering blue orb inside his belly had grown harder and harder. It was only a matter of time before the orb condensed fully and Vega could finally break through as a high-level adept.
The process of liquefying mana was the hardest process that any apprentice had to do before reaching the level of an adept. While the practitioners created different stages to explain the process easier, most of the apprentices didn't have the same information, failing to break through. But luckily, because their mindset still convinced them that the process was still easy as an apprentice, the numbers of apprentices reaching the high-level apprentice status were still higher than the number of practitioners who were also trying to break through to the foundation establishment stage.
Creating a foundation sounded more ominous compared with the high-level apprentice, making most of the practitioners fail to break through just because their minds thought the breakthrough was difficult. The only consolation was that the numbers of practitioners were higher than the number of adepts, even though their chances to break through were smaller. The statistics show there was still a similar number between the practitioners and the adepts, keeping the balance between the two factions stable.
Vega used his last control to change his mana source, which started to turn into liquid inside his belly. With his last push, he finished the process, reaching the level of high apprentice. With the last exhale, his source had turned into liquid, making it easier for him to access any spells. But unfortunately, the change was minimal without the correct three-dimensional models that all apprentices had to learn. Most will get stuck being unpolished high-apprentices and can only use their original spell models, which most only had physical effect. Because of his background as a sound-magic apprentice, Vega didn't have to wait long to reach the polished high-apprentice stage and gain the ability to attack souls.
The milky water in the pond had all been absorbed by the magic book, making the glow in the cave dim and replaced with only the glow from the glowing rocks around. Vega finally opened his eyes and suddenly closed his nose when the unpleasant smell reached his nose. When looking at his arms, he felt dizzy because his perspective had changed. His eyesight grew stronger until he could see the pores on his arms. From the pores, a slimy black substance oozed out, giving off a disgusting smell.
Feeling disgusted, he opened his water pouch and controlled the water to wash all the dirt off his arm. He found out that using his spell had definitely become easier, and based on its quality, he could even fight two male boars at once without sweating. While washing himself, he also felt lighter. He tried jumping, and his body felt like it was easier to jump, like he defied gravity. Unfortunately, when he tried running, his speed stayed the same, and he couldn't run as fast as Dion even with his advancement.
After Vega tried all the changes in his new body, he noticed something glowing brightly from the edge of his eyes. His tome lay in the craters that are now devoid of any milky substance like the cave had earlier. Fatigue overtook him, and he collapsed unconscious on the ground before reaching the tome.