Chapter 710: Detour (1/2)

The damage caused by their actions was not readily apparent, but Zac believed things would eventually reach a tipping point. Perhaps the Living Pulse would be gone by the time they were done unless someone stopped them. But ultimately, Zac didn't care too much. Messing with the Divine Grotto had provided another 8,000 Contribution Points, so their actions were clearly sanctioned by the System.

Zac sat in his private compartment, currently busy powering the purification array. Running the array for hours on end wasn’t too taxing, but it was boring. It was impossible to enter a meditative state when he constantly had to maintain the array, and there wasn’t much else to do either. He could only go over various missives on the Twilight Ocean to pass the time, but he had read them cover to cover over a dozen times by now.

He had pretty much memorized all the fixed locations in the missives, but more than half of the locations and dangers were new things that the System added between generations, and this was especially true for the Twilight Chasm. Being completely prepared was a fool's hope.

Finally, his time was up, and he took his hand away from the array. Zac felt life-attuned energies quickly spread through his chambers, but they were soon pushed away again as the air gained another death-aspected Dao instead of his Fragment of the Coffin. It was Yod who had started channeling the array, taking the next shift.

The purification couldn’t keep all the life energies away in the ship, especially not this close to the Life Pulse, but it did lessen the strain the others felt. As for Zac, his mental ocean was still far from saturated, and he’d be able to remain unaffected for a long time.

However, Zac had noticed that the speed his [Void Heart] had to work had increased by a noticeable margin, now beating once every five minutes compared to the once every ten back at the starting continent. That meant the energy density was roughly double now that they had entered the middle reaches of the Trial. He wasn't sure it would be able to deal with all the energy by the point they reached the inner parts of the ocean.

Zac took a deep breath, feeling that it was finally time. He had spent the past two weeks going over the insights he gained during his battle with Yanub Mettleleaf, trying to integrate his new stance with his insights into the Dao of the Axe.

He restored his mental energy with Soul Crystals for an hour before he took out two small boxes from his Spatial Ring, each of them containing a Dao Treasure. Zac stabilized his mind for a few more minutes before he ate the first one. A surge of energy entered his body, and it circulated a round through his pathways before it shot toward his mind.

The hidden node [Spiritual Void] immediately woke up and started absorbing the delectable energies, but Zac forcibly stilled it as he pushed the energies toward the avatar of himself. The avatar immediately stood up on top of his soul core, and he started swinging his copy of [Verun’s Bite] in a series of attacks.

Some of the swings were quick and unfathomable whereas others were powerful and overbearing like a battalion of heavy cavalry descending upon an unsuspecting enemy. Some felt like they contained world-ending force while empty, whereas others looked average but had the power to slay powerful generals.

This was the insight that Zac had started work toward for some time. He was walking down the path of war, and war was everchanging. His axe needed to be the same, especially now that he was forming two very different combat stances. Zac had found himself on the losing end against weaker enemies on multiple occasions, and it was usually because he used his weapon like a brute.

Certainly, the axe was ultimately not a weapon as versatile as the sword, but it didn’t mean it was simple. As he had started refining his paths, he realized there were endless variations and permutations to even a seemingly crude weapon as the axe. He wanted to shed his rigidity in favor of flexibility, to become as everchanging and unpredictable as the tides of war.

That didn’t mean he was heading toward a Dexterity-based fighting style from a Strength-based one. But one of the goals of a Strength-based Warrior should always be to constantly refine themselves and figure out how to make their strikes land. How to catch the wily rangers, how to find the weakness in the guardian’s armor, how to fell the undying ones in one fell blow.

Strength was the basis of victory and survival in his Evolutionary Stance, and without enough strength, his Inexorable Stance would be useless. Who would allow themselves to be restrained if they could simply power through and break his tempo like Yanub eventually did?

Scenes of his recent battles flashed by his hand, and a path was slowly forming. However, Zac frowned when he sensed his inspiration suddenly turn hollow, like he was just daydreaming rather than pondering his Dao. He immediately ate the second fruit, and he once more found himself immersed in the feeling of communicating with the heavens.

Finally, it felt like something blurred became focused, like something snapping into place. Zac opened his eyes a moment later, and a smile spread across his face as he opened his Dao Screen.

Fragment of the Axe (Peak): All attributes +40, Strength +1110, Dexterity +700, Endurance +30, Wisdom +130. Effectiveness of Strength +20%.

Zac looked at the result with a grin. It was a long time coming, but it didn’t make it less satisfying. His boost from gaining 8 levels back in the Twilight Harbor had been substantial, but it ultimately couldn’t compare to a Dao Breakthrough at his stage. A level provided roughly 350 attributes now that he was in the Middle E-grade, but a Dao evolution provided over 2,200 attribute points thanks to his massive multipliers.

It was also a welcome change to see the Fragment of the Axe add some extra Dexterity. He had essentially been forced to continuously pour his free points into Dexterity to scale it with his other attributes, but this would give him a breather to focus on either pushing his Strength to even greater heights or work on his survivability.

No one wanted to die, but Zac leaned toward putting points into Strength for a while. He still had two Dao Fragments waiting to be upgraded as soon as he got his hands on the Life-Death Pearls. Each of them would provide a big boost to his survivability, making it unnecessary to waste his free points there.

Zac opened his Ladder as well, but he sighed and closed the screen after seeing he hadn’t gained any Contribution Points for evolving the Dao Fragment. It was expected, but he had held out some hopes he’d at least get a consolation prize.

He closed his eyes again and started observing his Dao Avatar, but Zac only got a few minutes to get acquainted with the evolved Fragment before he heard a chime. He opened his eyes and shot a querying glance at the door leading out to the communal area. Someone was standing outside, and Zac got up with a grunt and crossed his living room.

It wasn’t too big, just forty square meters, but it would be considered an extremely luxurious suite on any cruiser back on earth. Catheya hadn’t prepared any furniture, so Zac had simply thrown out some random things he had lying around, making the interiors look a bit sparse and discordant.

Zac’s favorite feature was a “window” that covered half his outer wall. It was actually an array that connected to the patterns outside, and it gave Zac a grand view of the outsides. Sometimes it was just hazy waters, but at other times there were beautiful corals or schools of fish flashing by. Right now it was turned off though, as Zac didn’t want to be disturbed during his breakthrough.

“It’s you,” Zac said as he opened the outer door, and he wasn’t surprised to see that it was Catheya who had arrived. “Come in.”

“Congratulations are in order,” she smiled as she sat down at the table and activated the window array.

“Were you spying on me?” Zac said with a slight frown as he sat down opposite her.

“Hardly,” Catheya laughed as she took out a decanter of wine and two glasses. “I could feel your breakthrough through the door. A weapon-based fragment, no?”

“Axe,” Zac shrugged as he took a swig of the wine. “So, what brings you here?”

“What a boorish fellow. A beautiful girl comes to your chambers and you scrunch up your brows like you’ve been asked to lend money to a stranger,” she sighed. “We have been in this place almost a month now, and I was bored. Besides, you have an air of loneliness around you, I figured you could use the company.”

“That’s just how cultivation is,” Zac shrugged as he looked outside. “What are your plans after we’ve messed up the trial ground and snatched those pearls?”

“We’ll see,” Catheya slowly said. “Probably keep going a bit further and look for inheritances or Troves as we make our way toward neutral waters. Why, you want to travel with us?”

“Just making conversation,” Zac said, neither confirming nor denying. “How far are we from the next spot of our mission?”

“We're pretty close, but this one might take a few days,” Catheya said. ”It's deep underground.”