Divine Beast Ascension

Chapter 86: Experimenting with Silver Essence

The lesson finally ended, leaving them with a new month to test which type of cultivator the students would want to become.

Like usual, the top three students all left for the cultivation chambers. Karos and Netra both hurried, trying to get as much time as possible.

Oli was also hurrying, but he had a different thought in mind.

Of all the things that Oli had to practice, there was one thing that Oli had never bothered trying to train. His strange, silver essence.

Though Oli was told that he wouldn’t be able to cultivate it without a cultivation technique, which they didn’t have, Oli still wanted to mess around with it. Curious to learn more about it after hearing about the existence of unique type essences, Oli wanted to know if his silver essence qualified as one of those.

He only set the timer for two hours, which meant that the school hours wouldn’t be over by the time he was done.

Then, Oli entered his soul jade.

.....

Oli had discovered that when he was inside the soul jade, even though he couldn’t see the outside world, the outside world would still affect the strength of the essences he felt. It wasn’t any stronger than usual unless he was in a special place like a cultivation formation.

After spending time concentrating, Oli did his best to find that silver essence again. It was much more difficult for him to find than either earth or dark essences. His guess was that his affinity for that silver essence was at least low, maybe even at the early stage.

An hour passed by in the soul jade and Oli finally felt something. He had finally found a sliver of that silver essence.

With such a small portion of the silver essence, it was very difficult for Oli to understand it.

Since he had already found that silver essence, Oli spent the rest of his cultivation time trying to understand what it was.

Sadly for Oli, it was much harder than he had anticipated.

Now certain that his affinity was in the early stage for the silver essence, Oli understood that it was going to be very time consuming to train it. And without a cultivation technique to guide him, it would take even longer.

He stopped investigating the silver essence when the timer went off, but he still understood little to nothing about it. The only thing Oli knew was that the other two types of essences he controlled were unable to affect the silver essence at all.

With the timer up, Oli stood up and stretched before he left the cultivation room. Then, he went downstairs, happy to find Vloz storing and sorting various scrolls and manuals.

“Vloz, can I ask you a few questions in my cultivation room?”

The leopard nodded and paused his sorting. “Of course, lead the way.”

Both of them went upstairs and entered Oli’s cultivation room, sealing it behind them. The first to talk was Oli. He got straight to the point.

“Vloz, I’m experimenting with that silver essence again. I’m curious about what it is and how strong it is compared to my other essences,” explained Oli. “Do you mind watching me cultivate and helping me better understand what it is?”

“Sure, but remember, don’t focus on something that you won’t be able to make stronger,” reminded Vloz.

He clearly remembered watching that small amount of silver essence overpower Oli’s other essences back in the magicite mine. Like Oli, he was also curious about what that essence might be.

Oli sat down and calmed his breathing. Letting the world around him disappear, the young ape started feeling for the silver essence once again.

It still took Oli an hour, but Vloz didn’t mind. Vloz was used to his own cultivation which would take days and weeks of nonstop meditation just to make the slightest of differences.

With the small amount of silver essence gathered around, Oli released some earth essence so Vloz could examine the effects.

Unsurprisingly, the silver essence dominated the earth essence. As the earth essence tried to fight the silver essence for supremacy, the earth essence crumbled away without being able to destroy any of the silver essence. No matter how much earth essence Oli pumped out, he still couldn’t affect the silver essence at all.

Next, Oli released dark essence.

The dark essence didn’t crumble away like the earth essence, but it wasn’t able to diminish the silver essence at all. It only managed to slip past the silver essence, unable to even make the small amount of essence move.

After that, Oli released both earth and dark essences in an attempt to overwhelm the silver essence. However, it didn’t quite go as planned.

That silver essence forced both of the wild essences to slow down, not letting either of them affect the silver essence in the slightest.

Two hours had passed now, one hour to find the silver essence and another to test it over and over again.

Oli finally opened his eyes, sweat covered his face and he was breathing heavily. “So, Vloz, what do you think?”

Tilting his head, Vloz still wasn’t sure what the silver essence was. “It’s power is incredible. I wish we had a cultivation technique for it, but sadly, one probably doesn’t exist. It might be a unique level essence type, but for now, you have no way to cultivate it.”

“Also, your affinity for this silver essence is very low. Without a cultivation technique, you won’t have much hope for increasing your affinity without wasting all your time just sensing it,” added Vloz. “At the moment, I don’t think it’s worth cultivating. If at some moment in your life you can find a method to train this, I think you should train this essence till you have perfect affinity with it.”

“But without a method, cultivating this is still pointless.”

“Yeah... That’s what I thought...” Oli sighed.

He wasn’t very happy with himself. Even Vloz thought it might be a unique level essence, which would be spectacular, especially because Oli already had both earth and dark essences! But even if he was gifted with an affinity for such a heaven-defying essence type, his affinity was far too poor for him to try and cultivate it without a technique to help him.

“Thanks, Vloz, I was thinking the same thing. It’s just too bad though...”

“Indeed, you would’ve easily surpassed your father with such a powerful essence type. But remember, the stronger a cultivator’s potential, the more caution he must take,” reminded Vloz. “Don’t show this to anyone else, not even that tiny fraction of silver essence you can grab now.”

“Having such an essence type could either lead to your rise in the world or your own downfall. Please, be extremely careful with that essence, Oli.” Vloz’s sharp gaze Oli chills, showing the young ape just how serious he was about the issue.

“Okay, okay. I won’t tell or show a soul,” agreed Oli.

“Good, now let me get back to my duties,” stated Vloz, undoing the room’s seal. “For now, all of your time should be focused on becoming a strong generalist, like your father. Your potential surpasses even his, so you must train hard.”

“Will do, Uncle Vloz!”

After Vloz disappeared, Oli resealed the door and set the timer for six more hours.

Though he wanted to train and cultivate that silver essence, Oli understood that it was pointless, at least at the current moment.

He had already made up his mind to search the world for a cultivation method. And if he couldn’t find one, Oli wondered if he could eventually make one.

Time passed and Oli was thoroughly examining the many properties of earth essence.

Soon, he came to a conclusion. If Oli was able to master the Infinite Compression art, then his earth essence affinity would become perfect and his abilities as a generalist would sky-rocket.

The only downside to that was that Oli couldn’t use the soul jade when practicing the Infinite Compression art. His body would combine the principles of the Infinite Torture and the Ravaging Earth techniques to break Oli’s physical body, not leaving a single part of his physique unrefined.

This would increase Oli’s natural, physical strength as well as his body’s affinity for earth essence.

In the future, Oli would explore the possibilities of using a similar method to increase his dark essence affinity. But for now, all his best plan of action was to use the Infinite Compression art.

He thought he would be prepared for it after completing the first level of the Infinite Torture technique, but Oli was misguided.

Mental torture and physical torture were completely different things and Oli was learning that the hard way. He managed to last three hours of the Infinite Compression technique with his new mental toughness, but his body collapsed after that.

When the timer went off three hours later, Oli was unable to get up and leave. In the end, he slept on the cold floor of the cultivation room.