Cultivation Through Artifacts

Chapter 42: Beast Soul and Essence

Since the first book, Khal has finished reading, hours had passed and he ended up looking over tons of books.

Right at the moment, close to 30 books were lying all around him here and there, showing just how absorbed he was in the books he had read.

Even those few students who have entered the library just to get a piece of information looked at him with confused eyes, looking at him like some kind of fool.

The reason was that in this world reading was not popular at all. It could be said those who read were idiots and a waste of time.

Books only existed to give others knowledge about secret Arts or skills that people didn’t know about and real knowledge came from life or death battles.

Those kinds of books that Khal had read, were the typical books that no one laid their hands on for ages. They were there only to collect dust because their context held either boring or extremely basic knowledge.

That is why everyone who saw Khal reading such basic and boring books looked not only confused but even their mockery and disgust could be seen in their eyes.

In Cultivators’ eyes, those who did not know even basic knowledge like those books provided and needed their help to learn at such an age were nothing more but trash.

“Just what could he hope to find in those kinds of books? Don’t tell me he just simply wasting his time learning basic knowledge, instead of cultivating?”

“I do not have a guess at all, but if you ask me, it seems he is truly learning. What a trash.”

People glanced at Khal from time to time, trying to find out his intention. But because none of them had an idea what he was trying to do, all of them ended up snorting with disdain and left the library.

Naturally, Khal knew what others thought about him, but he didn’t really care about them at all.

He knew that the knowledge he was currently comprehending in this world was basic, but if he wanted to know everything he needed to do this.

Other people’s negative thoughts about him would not change a thing at all. He cared about himself and just only himself while ignoring everyone and everything else that was meaningless.

Caring about useless things like what others thought about him would not lead him anywhere, but broadening his knowledge about this world would.

After a few more hours of reading without resting, Khal finally leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes.

So far, he learned so many things that he felt mentally extremely exhausted.

Just imagine yourself sitting in school in one place for hours and concentrating on a math class with everything you had.

That would drain your brain dry for sure, if not driving you crazy.

As Khal was sitting in the chair for several minutes without moving, he started to reorganize his thoughts.

So far, he has learned almost everything he wanted to know about this world. Especially about the First Realm, the Realm of Haven.

He discovered that the First Realm for humanity, in reality, was like a kindergarten if he could say that.

Just like how kids learn the basics of math and language arts in kindergarten, here, humans learn the basics of cultivation too.

From the way how to use Beast Essence to strengthen one’s Talent, until the point how can one use different kinds of powers, skills, and tricks that were not coming from one’s Talent, humans learn everything important that will be essential in the Second Realm.

For example, Khal has learned that killing creatures out in the wild, had a low probability of chance to drop Beast Souls which could and will be very useful in the Realm of Cultivation.

And after knowing what these Beast Souls use was, Khal’s curiosity became a level greater.

Maybe after hearing the name Beast Soul made one think that it was the creature’s soul, but that statement was very wrong.

Beast Souls were not souls, but fractions of the creature’s body that held Beast’s power that has been slain.

If one was lucky enough to kill a creature and obtain its Beast Soul, one earns the chance to consume the Beast Soul, acquiring a unique ability.

However, a lot of people think that obtaining a Beast Soul means receiving a power that was like a second Talent, but that declaration was false.

While Talents could become stronger through Beast Essence, until then Beast Souls couldn’t. They remained on the same Stage when the creature was before it has been killed.

But even after learning about this, for Khal, the most useful information was about the Cultivation Stages.

He discovered that for one to reach the next Cultivation Stage, one needed a specific amount of Beast Essence, which differed on each Cultivation Stage.

Currently he, or to be more precise his Heaven’s Eyes, were on the First Cultivation Stage, called as the Vessel Stage.

For him to reach the Second Cultivation Stage with his Talent, he needed exactly 50 Beast Essence. Just only after surpassing that amount will he be able to break into the Second Cultivation Stage.

However, things, unfortunately, didn’t mean he needed to simply kill 50 creatures and consume their Essence, because that was not enough at all.

The books stated that creatures were categorized into Stages just as well as human cultivators.

Depending on the Stage the creature was in, the number of Essence humans could consume from them differed too.

For example, a First Stage Beast after killing could give an amount of Beast Essence between 1 and 10, while a Second Stage Beast provided between 1 and 15.

And what was even worse, that the amount a Cultivator obtained was random too.

If one was lucky enough, after killing a Second Stage Beast, one could get 15 Beast Essence in one go, but if not, they ended up only with 1.

To put it simply, the amount of Beast Essence was able to get all depended on one’s luck.

Also, if one surpassed a Stage, one’s Cultivation Tattoo would grow too, showing which Stage that individual was currently in.

“Now that I think about it, do I even have any Cultivation Tattoo?”, thought Khal and opened his eyes.

He could clearly remember, that one could only get a Cultivation Tattoo when one successfully obtained a Talent in the Altar.

But because he was unable to receive any, it meant he was unable to get any Cultivation Tattoo either.

Glancing at his wrist and shoulder, then with the help of his Talent checking his neck to see if he had any at all, Khal sighed and shook his head.

“Just as I thought. I have none.”

Not so surprisingly, Khal had no Cultivation Tattoo on his body at all, which made him wonder.

“Will there be any consequences that I have no Cultivation Tattoo?”, thought Khal a bit worriedly, but in the end still shrugged.

“Well, not like it matters now, right. So let’s just put this matter to the side for the time being, shall we?”

As he thought about this, suddenly he started to yawn, making him ponder just what time could it be now.

Turning his head to the side, Khal glanced at the huge old-looking clock in the distance on the wall and his eyes snapped wide open.

“It’s already this late?! Just how long has it been I have started reading?”

Watching as the time was way past 11, almost close to midnight, Khal looked around and stayed silent.

“I was so mesmerized in my own world that I didn’t notice at all that I have been the only one who remained here.”

After thinking for a bit, Khal sighed and thought, “Well, let’s call it a day then.”

With that, Khal stood up and after stretching his sore body parts for a good while, he started to pick up the books from ground and table one by one.

After placing them back from where he took them down, Khal didn’t hesitate and took his key out.

“I’m so sleepy. I definitely need some sleep.”, mumbled Khal quietly with a big yawn and with a gentle motion opened the space before him to his ‘room’ and vanished into the opened gap.