Author's note: Kayden is not a good guy, he just has morals, at least until this moment, I finally reached the part where the real story begins
He only noticed this because he was needing a slightly larger amount of mana to reach the same limit as before, but without the support of the mana zone, each cycle lasted almost a full four hours.
As soon as the boy woke up, he went to the forest without even thinking twice. He still had some time before heading to the state championship. Again, the boy went through meticulous preparation.
He wasn't going to spend a week there again. This time, as he had time, he would just wake up early and come and then leave in the afternoon, when there was still some natural light for him to orient himself.
It didn't take long for the boy to find the same tree and enter the passage. The interior was exactly as he had left it last time.
"Wait a minute..." Kayden felt the density of the mana was different. The boy was extremely sensitive and noticed that, even though it was something tiny, there was still a slight increase.
This meant that this mere stone was more than a reservoir of mana, as it could recover. This increased its value by at least a few thousand times. This style of stone was extremely rare.
Kayden estimated that he could make a full recovery in about a year and a half or two, as the more he recovered, the faster er recovery became. Leaving that aside, the boy sat down and began cultivating.
This time, the cycle only took an hour to complete and Kayden barely used much of the mana from the stone, as this time everything was used and nothing was being thrown away like in his previous advance.
According to his estimates, he should be able to advance one more rank before the championship at this rate, but he would need to give up everything else, from fights in the ring to leisure activities.
It would be two months of just cultivating nonstop. For a few minutes, Kayden weighed on the scales what he should do. Without much difficulty, he chose to try and advance. His technique had reached a barrier that would take time for him to break and training with his team was secondary.
The boy sighed and returned home.
Almost two months later, Kayden was in the same tree where it all began. Finally, he managed to reach the threshold to force a breakthrough. The boy did not expect this seclusion to be so exhausting.
The loneliness and the extremely repetitive process were difficult to adapt to at first. Only halfway through the process did he manage to get used to it? After that, his speed increased considerably.
The absorption and digestion cycle had its time reduced to just 30 minutes. Kayden had become very good at just pulling out mana at will. He was almost like a fully functioning black hole.
"Alright, let's go." Kayden sighed and began the process of advancement, slowly gathering mana until his system was slowly overloaded. The process had to be done gradually.
This was so his veins and heart could suffer small ruptures and he could increase the strength of his base to support more mana than before.
Time began to pass similar to all his advances. His body was on fire from the inside and hurting like crazy. Small leaks of blood could be seen from several of its orifices.
"This shit again." Kayden felt endless hatred for whatever shit was trying to limit him again. It seemed that he always had to overcome a barrier that was simply there as a shackle of his genes.
Kayden knew that animals had this shackle in their genes, but he was a human and had never heard of it for his race. Sighing, the boy calmed down. This was one of the problems with his technique, but it was still worth continuing with it.
The boy was absorbing and repairing his foundation thousands of times. It had been more than an hour and he hadn't been able to overwhelm himself enough to move forward. Even so, he continued, as he did not feel that his imposed limit on nature was threatening to kill him.
At most, it was painful. After another thirty minutes, Kayden felt like he was about to break at any second. Trying his best, his body began to boil at an absurd level.
Even through the insane amount of pain, Kayden smiled. He was in the last stages of his advancement. Absorbing mana even more crazily, Kayden breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his core crack.
In a process that could only be described as magical, his heart began to crack at several points and automatically improved. His veins gained reinforcement, allowing more mana to course through them.
What took him hours to try to elevate nature, he did in seconds. But Kayden didn't care. The advance lasted a few more minutes under intense pain and then relief came.
Kayden began to test his body, even over a trace of pain. Compared to everything he had been through in his life, small pains didn't even tickle his conscience.
After a few minutes, the boy sat down on the floor satisfied. His body was roughly at the beginning of the ninth rank, bordering on intermediate. If he used transcendence, the boy estimated that he could pass the peak of the ninth rank.
Unfortunately, he wasn't in a position to test that now. Another thing was if he used the last level of transcendence. The boy got goosebumps just thinking about how strong he would become.
The most shocking fact was that he was only at the eighth rank. When he was at ninth, could he fight a mage? Kayden was delighted with this possibility.
"I'm still far away", that was the boy's thought when remembering Apollo. Even though he is exceptional, there are still others better than him. Therefore, the boy did not let his ego go to his head.
Before returning to the orphanage he burned all the black substances that came out of his body and using wind magic threw them out of the tree. It was better to clean it up before the goo stuck to the ground.
Kayden started to head back home, he only had three more days to prepare for the state championship, in that time he should consolidate his progress and train with his new strength so he could get used to the sudden change.