212 6 months: Paul and Mark (2/2)

Paul felt like he was drenched in cold water after hearing that. He paled and said: ”Survive the wrath of the sea, huh? Well…”

”Fuck…”

***

*Bzzt* *Crash* *Boom*

”Grr…”

In the sloped road towards the mountain peak, Mark uttered a low growl as he allowed lightning to flow through his body.

There was a crazed expression on his face. His clothes were in tatters, his hair was dishelved, his body trembled in pain. If anyone saw him like this, they would think that he's not from a noble household but rather a homeless man.

He grounded his teeth as he struggled to digest the remnants of lightning on his body. He had long since lost count on how many times he tortured himself to get used to this pain but it never worked.

Unlike Paul, Mark only received a single task. And that is to reach top of the Myriad Lightning Peak.

Mark understood that he had no chance of evading these lightning bolts, even before he started walking towards the mountain. His speed is no faster than lightning to begin with, so he's left with no other choice. He had to endure these lightning strikes.

That being said, the thought was simple but the experience was horrible.

Mark wanted to die during the first few days. His body was constantly charred with lightning yet he hasn't even been able to take at least 10 steps onto the mountain. He was in so much pain that he nearly broke down. But before he lost consciousness. A figure of an ancient snake appeared in his mind and hissed at him. Suddenly, he felt the lightning remnants took some sort of a unique path inside his energy channels. He entered a strange state in cultivation and upon waking up, he felt stronger. His Body Path and Energy Path even experienced some sort of a breakthrough. What's more is that, the following lightning strike that struck him felt less painful.

Mark found the reason behind this scenario. This was the blessing of the Primal Lightning Serpent.

He recalled asking Raven about his Spirit Entity before and he remembered him saying that it gives him a high affinity towards lightning. When he said affinity, he thought that this will only work against Lightning-based attacks, not actual Lightning, yet here it is.

During this six months, Mark advanced so much that regular lightning doesn't hurt him anymore, in fact it became his tonic as he traversed this mountain.

As for the Green and Violet Lightning Bolts, they posed more challenge but Mark eventually conquered them. In a sense, this kinds of lightning only posses a higher voltage compared to the regular ones. He only need to be struck at least a dozen times for each color and he was good to go. Additionally, he could do some amazing things, such as redirecting the lightning or producing his own version. This was a great boon for him since he knew that not just anyone could withstand these kinds of lightning like he could.

Now for the Red Lightning that exists halfway through the mountain. Those were the ones he was dealing with right now and it had been a tough struggle for him. What sets the Red Lightning different from the rest is that it has another effect aside from the staggering voltage it contains.

Each Red Lightning Bolt, contained a dense amount of bloodlust that constantly tried to erode his consciousness.

It would've been fine it was just a high voltage but nope. Now he had to deal with not only enduring the lightning remnants on his body but also the bloodlust that wanted to corrupt him. He had to guard his consciousness repeatedly to resist and it's rather taxing to do two difficult tasks at once.

There were multiple times where the bloodlust broke his defenses, causing his eyes to go red and rouse an evil intent from his body. However, Mark fought it will all he had. He absolutely couldn't allow to be corrupted by a mere side effect.

He managed to endure five rounds of Red Lightning strikes, but he was mentally exhausted. He wanted to retreat towards the base of the mountain so that he could rest but his feet refused to move. Mark was too exhausted to continue, his heart pounded in nervousness since he knew that he had little to no time before he got struck by another one. But he couldn't move.

”Am I really going to die here?” Mark voiced helplessly as he saw the red lightning condensing above him.

Just as despair started to grip his heart. His mood turned sharp, his unwillingness soared to the maximum and it invoked a slumbering beast inside of him.

A silhouette of a large serpent rose behind him. It glared at the red lightning, seemingly provoking it to strike down. At it did, the serpent opened it's jaws wide and swallowed the lightning.

Mark's eyes flew wide open. His body shivered not in pain but in excitement. His charred skin started to scab away and his exhaustion melted along with the wind. His eyes brightened up as he hurriedly sprinted down the mountain.