Chapter 10 - Limit Reached (1/2)

Krune was feeling helpless.

'My cores, my precious demon cores, gone, just like that.'

The more he looked at the Lizard Dragons the more gloomy he felt, he simply didn't have the heart to get rid of them, specially now that they seemed to like him so much, as a wisp, Krune had spent must of his time alone, sure he did know quite a few other wisps, he wasn't the only one trying to survive all the hunting after all, with time he bumped in quite a few of them who also had their on tricks to slip away from the pursues, but he never interacted much with them to start with.

In the end Krune could only go out to catch more demon cores, even if he does have a spiritual vein now, he won't risk damaging it because of the lack of spiritual energy, the next meridian is bound to be even more tyrannical than the last one when it comes to spiritual energy needed for creation.

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Time passed and soon another month went by, Krune had left the spiritual vein to hunt more demon beasts so that he could acquire more demon cores, the problem is that he found out that 6th stage demon cores are not of much help for him anymore, in this last month, he had tried to create his third meridian once more just for it to break apart, in the end, the majority of cores he got last month were 6th stage ones with only two being at the 7th stage, the third meridian absorbed those 6th cores like they were candies, when he noticed that he would be far from being able to form the third meridian, he immediately stopped the process so that he wouldn't damage the spirit vein.

Now he finally got a total of twenty 7th stage demon cores, if his calculation isn't wrong, he would need less than half of them to finish the process of the third meridian creation, maybe even have enough to form the fourth energy meridian.

As for the little Lizard Dragons, well, they can't be said to be little anymore, the biggest one was obviously the one who ate his 8th stage demon core, with all that energy it had finally achieved the 6th stage of the Qi Condensation, as for the others, three are at the 5th stage and while the youngest is at the peak of the 4th stage, they also had no need to care about food this last month, since every time Krune went hunting he would bring back the demon corpses which was more than enough to fill their bellies.

Krune started to worry how exactly will he leave this place, will it be okay to just leave them behind? But that worry didn't take long to disappear, the big brother of the group quickly became strong enough to fend for himself thanks to the help of the 8th stage demon core and would be able to protect the others until they mature too.

'It's finally time, I have more than enough demon cores to get the third meridian formed and might even be able to form the forth, I should get ready.'

He gave the big Lizard Dragon an order for them to stay away from him now, after achieving the 6th stage of the Qi Condensation, the intelligence of the Big Brother of the group had gone a step further, now it could understand simply commands and help take care of the younger ones.

Acknowledging the orders, it brought back the younger lizards and gave Krune enough space for him to work.

Gradually, the formation of the third meridian took form, Krune was getting familiar with the process and the formation was taking less time than before, after some time the third meridian was complete again.

As expected, it immediately started to absorb the spiritual energy of the surroundings and thanks to the spirit vein in the lake, it took quite some time to finally clean up all the spiritual energy, when Krune noticed that the light of the spiritual vein started to dim out, he took out his demon cores and started to feed the meridian one by one, fortunately, everything went just like Krune predicted, he used less than half of his twenty demon cores to finish the process, by the time he was going to use the 6th core, the formation of the third meridian was complete, the third meridian shone again just like the previous ones and the process was complete.

Krune let out s sigh of relief.

'Everything is back on track, if it wasn't because those guys...'

He gave the Lizard Dragons a glance but just sighed again.

'Whatever, what is gone is gone, what will be there if I keep thinking about it all the time, it's not like the demon core of that 8th stage Lizard Dragon will come out of no where, lets try and see if I can form my fourth meridian, after the spiritual energy of the cave comes back to normal I will see if it will be possible to make the fourth meridian sooner, I might as well go out and take a few more demon cores just in case.'

Two days later, the spiritual vein was bright as ever, the spiritual energy in the cave was also back to normal, Krune also took this last two days to cultivate and was able to reach the peak of the the 7th stage of Qi Condensation, his cultivation speed had increased yet again.

But there was one thing that Krune noticed, when he created his second meridian, his cultivation speed indeed became much faster, but it wasn't the double of the speed, now that he created the third one, although his cultivation speed got even faster, it was far from being three times the speed of a single meridian, the weird part if that if he used any of the three meridians alone, the cultivation speed would be the same for all of them, but when used all three together, their individual efficiency lowered.

After thinking about it, Krune came up with two hypotheses:

First: Because his cultivation is too low his energy core can't keep up with the high speed of spiritual energy absorption, so the higher his cultivation, the more energy he could take at once. At moment his energy core was still at the Qi Condensation level, when he breakthrough to the Foundation Establishment his energy core will be upgraded, that will allow it to absorb spiritual energy at a faster pace.

Second: The spiritual energy isn't enough, when all three worked together the spiritual energy around wasn't big enough for all three to work at max capability.

Thankfully the second hypotheses was quickly discarded out, when he thought about that, he simply took out his demon cores and tried to use them to speed up his cultivation, but the absorption rate was still the same.

This conclusion also made Krune understand one thing, every time he finished creating a new Spiritual Energy Meridian, his own core would be strengthened, that's because if according to the first idea, the stronger his cultivation realm, the more energy he can absorbs, but he hasn't achieved the Foundation Establishment stage yet, so his absorption rate speed could only have increase every time he created a new meridian was created, it could only mean that the meridians also helped in strengthen his core.