92 The Silver Essence is...? (1/2)

With one last thing to test, Oli was determined.

Though he had low expectations for any success, Oli at least wanted to learn what his silver essence was. He thought that he should at least try and figure out that much, otherwise, how could he search for cultivation techniques or try and create one?

Before he did anything, Oli took out another two boulders. Then he sat down and started cultivating.

Like before, it took him an hour just to get a grasp of the essence.

Now that Oli had a faint amount of the essence around him, he opened his eye. He stared at the two boulders in front of him.

Slowly, Oli reached out and touched one of the boulders. He thought that by seeing how the essence interacted with the boulders, the essence type might become more obvious.

When he touched it, Oli was surprised to see that nothing was happening.

Determined to discover more about the essence, Oli took another hour to gather more. This time, he covered the boulder in it. Yet, still, Oli could see no changes in the boulder.

In anger and impatience, Oli shoved the boulder aside. Or, at least he tried to.

The boulder didn't budge, even with Oli's natural strength. It made no sense to Oli so he tried again, and again he failed to push the boulder aside.

Baffled, Oli pulled his hands back and pulled the essence on the boulder back to himself.

He tried to push the boulder again, but that time it moved like it normally would. In comparison, the boulder suddenly felt much lighter to Oli. He wasn't sure why, but the boulder was definitely lighter after bringing that extra essence back to himself and not covering the boulder.

To test this, Oli put some essence back around the boulder. Like before, the boulder wouldn't budge by any means.

Oli did this over and over, testing it with different amounts of essence. Sometimes he put more essence around the boulder than himself, which resulted in the boulder being even harder to move. Other times, Oli put a bit more essence around himself and found that he could move the boulder, albeit difficultly.

One time, Oli covered the boulder in all of the essence. When he tried that, there was no hope of pushing the boulder aside. With his full natural strength pushing against it, Oli could move it at a snail's pace.

It strange and unlike anything that Oli had expected.

Oli retracted the silver essence from the boulder and stared at it deeply. He let out a sigh as he pondered what to try next.

After a few minutes, Oli gathered some extra essence into his fist. Then, he lashed out toward the boulder, curious what effect the silver essence would have in an attack.

As he made contact, Oli went wide-eyed. His fist didn't slow down at all. When his fist connected with the boulder, it's momentum continued more than halfway through the boulder. The punch only stopped because Oli's arm was now fully extended and couldn't reach any further. It had gone through the boulder like a hot knife through butter.

This left Oli ver further perplexed. Without a clue what was going on, he relaxed and took a few minutes to think things over again.

Soon, he gave the boulder a weird look before he tried his next experiment.

Oli squatted down and picked up the boulder, which wasn't too difficult with his large Iron-body Gorilla frame.

Once it was held up against his chest, Oli poured his silver essence back over the boulder. Suddenly, Oli let out a strained grunt and dropped the boulder in surprise.

As the boulder hit the floor, shaking the entire room on impact, Oli smiled. That smile quickly turned to a chuckle. And that chuckle quickly turned into hysterical laughter.

He picked up the boulder again and found that this time it was more difficult. Oli had dropped the boulder due to its sudden weight gain, but as he thought, he could still carry it without too much struggle.

It took a few moments for Oli to regather himself and test his new hypothesis.

Walking to the still untouched boulder, Oli took some deep breaths to calm himself and refocus. He placed his hands on the boulder and started to put all of his silver essence around it.

But that wasn't enough. Oli took another hour to gather essence and cover the boulder in it all. But again, that still wasn't enough for Oli.

In the end, Oli spent another three hours gathering essence around the boulder. That meant that five hours' worth of essence was now surrounding the boulder. The silver essence was now a bit thicker than Oli's dark and earth essences normally were.

Soon, Oli heard some small cracks around him. He looked down and smiled. Suddenly, a large crack was heard, and the entire room rumbled.

Unable to handle the pressure, the floor started to give out under the boulder. It forced itself into the concrete, disrupting the formation while it did so.

As the formation vanished, Oli could feel that his connection with the silver essence weakened.

With that, Oli pulled back his essence and again laughed hysterically while staring at the boulder now lodged in the concrete floor.