"That was easier than I thought." In his palm were 6 small orbs. These were the seeds that the flowers would bloom from after proper cultivation.
"For water, fire and light I can understand, maybe even metal as I am kinda familiar with it. But I wasn't expecting it to work for Regeneration and Body strengthening."
The seeds were in the various colors that one would expect, but the regeneration one was green and the body strengthening was a silvery white.
"I guess that makes sense, if Itroth can create flowers from other cultivation methods, techniques and spells, then there is no reason it can't work for the two of them."
One of the reasons that the hundred flowers cultivation method is so powerful is that through it, one can cultivate as many cultivation methods as they choose, were as others could only do 2-3 on average and 4 if they are lucky.
As long as you are advanced enough in it, there is no limitation to how many different types of flowers one could form, and just like anything else a cultivation method can have a flower form after it.
"That being said, if I started with an already grown flower then I can skip this process." He looked around him and saw that there were a lot of mana roses. "I don't know what would happen if I make a flower out of those flowers, but there are so many that even if it is a total waste I wouldn't be wasting much."
He opened his hand and in it appeared one of the glass like roses. He formed a shell of pure mana around it that quickly became opaque and started to shrink.
"I still can't believe how easy this is, Itroth must have truly been a genius."
After the orb shrunk down to about half the size of the seeds a beam mana shot out of his forehead and wrapped around it. The small orb absorbed the light until it grew into another seed, this one being a transparent blue.
The combination of the mana shell and the mana beam was the foundation of the hundred flowers cultivation method. The mana shell isolates the target and the mana beam converts it into a form that is usable by the hundred flowers cultivation method, namely a seed.
When forming the 6 other seeds he used the skill version, except for light as he didn't have a skill for that. The mana shell formed around him and shrunk through his body as if it wasn't there. The small orb then shot out of his chest and absorbed the mana beam, turning into seeds.
"I thought I felt something leave me when it did that, but I wasn't expecting this." He looked at his stat screen and saw that under skills nothing was stated. It was evident that they were absorbed in the process of forming the seeds, luckily for him he was still able to mimic the effects of the skills absorbed and he didn't even use skills in the first place.
The newest seed suddenly started to grow and soon it was reverted back to its original state, but this time it wasn't releasing mana into the air around it, but directly into his body.
Just one of these flowers wasn't doing much for him, but he was able to form as many of the same type of flower as he wanted.
"If I can get enough of these then I will always be topped up on mana, which is timely. If I understand correctly, when forcefully growing these seeds they will absorb a lot of mana from my body, which means that I can't just throw them into the mana ocean."
He dismissed the mana rose and teleported back to the main platform.
"I intend to make many of these flowers in particular, I can manage with two or three of the others but this one is too useful."
After storing away anything that he may have still had on the main platform and carefully moving away the 3 bodies, he started to rapidly create seeds of the mana rose and plant them into the ground. Unlike the first one which was made from an already grown flower, these had to grow up independently.
He planted them in rows and immediately fed them with mana, which they happily accepted. Just the 20 or so flowers were absorbing so much that his mana which he previously thought to be bottomless after countless hours of absorbing it from the new world was draining fast. His distinct markings appeared and he had to drop everything and calm himself down.
If it was any one else then they wouldn't have done something like this, but his circumstances were unique. Firstly he had all the time in the world to form these many flowers, they wouldn't provide any benefits until they were fully grown and making so many would leave him vulnerable.
He couldn't move until they were fully formed, but thankfully he didn't have to worry about being attacked. He was in his soul sea and if someone managed to force their way in at this point, his last worries would be about interrupting the process and destroying the seeds.
Secondly, because of the unique way his body stored mana and how quickly he could absorb it from the environment, especially since he was focusing on making it as fast as possible, he didn't have any problems supplying this many flowers with mana. His mana was draining fast, but after calming down he was absorbing enough to cultivate 5 more without breaking the bank, which is exactly what he did. With a total of 25 flowers his expenditure matched his gains and he broke even, not gaining mana but not losing it either.
And lastly he was trying to quickly gain experience. At the height of his power it would have taken Itroth a single glance and almost no mana to create these 25 flowers and grow them to maturity. The fact that Ray was struggling so much showed the gap in their experience, and he was using a brute force method to close that gap.
After sitting still and doing nothing but feed the flowers for 5 hours, they finally bloomed. With these 26 flowers his passive rate of absorption shot through the roof, and if he focused on it he would go from empty to full in only half an hour. That might seem like a long time but his mana capacity is constantly growing, if it was a lake before then now it was comparable to a small ocean.
It was to the point that the bottleneck in filling up wasn't his rate of absorption, but the concentration of mana surrounding him. Even in his soul sea where the mana was so dense that it formed clouds high above him he couldn't recklessly absorb it, otherwise he would go through it's reserves very quickly.
"Since I am so low, I might as well try this. I might not need to do it in the future, but just in case I need to do so later I don't want to be completely lost."
He closed his eyes and focused on the way the mana flowed in his blood stream, and following the hundred flowers cultivation method he extracted some of it and started to circulate it through the rest of his body, before returning to his heart. Doing this left a little bit of it in his body and not only increased his capacity, even if by a little bit, but it flowed more smoothly and subsequently led to his control increasing.
At the end of the day the hundred flowers cultivation method was still a cultivation method, meaning that besides the potential for great power its main purpose is to increase mana capacity.
But the way that it did it was somewhat unique, it depended on developing something called a 'heart of mana' into something called 'One with mana'. While other cultivation methods rely on a mana core or the more advanced but nearly impossible to form mana pool, the hundred flowers cultivation method and most of the other cultivation methods that Itroth had created over the years depended on a mutation in his body he had from birth.
This mutation was called the heart of mana and only appears once every few hundred generations. It allowed someone to circulate mana through their bloodstream and absorb it passively through their skin faster than others could ever hope to achieve.
Ray found it oddly similar to flow and after a bit of proper research he found that it wasn't just similar, it was the exact same thing!