Lightning Is the Only Way

After some hours of travel and leaving an incredibly long cut in the earth, Gravis finally arrived at his first destination. Gravis looked with narrowed eyes at the white castle in front of him.

It was the south-eastern branch of the Heaven Sect.

Gravis used his Spirit to inspect the building but noticed that his Spirit was blocked by something. "Of course, they wouldn't leave it undefended when everyone left for the headquarter," Gravis muttered. There had to be some excellent Formation Arrays protecting the branch.

"Well, if I can't get to your wealth the normal way, I hope you don't mind me being impolite," Gravis said with a smirk.

Yes, he was here to rob the Heaven Sect. It was Aion's branch, but that was unimportant. Aion knew that Heaven wouldn't live for much longer, so he probably wouldn't mind Gravis destroying this branch. The Heaven Sect was, after all, his enemy.

BZZZZZ!

Gravis' surroundings exploded with lightning. His whole body released lightning, and it circled around him violently. Gravis pointed at the white castle. "Go!" he shouted.

BANG!

All the lightning flew at the castle, yet some kind of barrier appeared in its way. The lightning exploded as it hit the barrier, but the barrier only shook. Gravis could see no cracks. When he saw this, he furrowed his brows. "Quite impressive," he commented.

Gravis then concentrated himself to ready a more powerful attack. This barrier was a good target to test the power of his attacks. Gravis summoned more lightning but didn't shoot it immediately. Instead, he gathered it together and compressed it. His control over lightning was superb, but it still took him around two seconds to compress a five-cubic meter amount of lightning into one spear.

Sweat started rolling down Gravis' forehead since compressing all this lightning took a lot of Spirit and concentration. Gravis grabbed the lightning spear. Normally, lightning, especially Destruction Lightning, would attack anything that it touched, including the user.

Other people at the Spirit Forming Realm wouldn't be able to grab a weapon out of lightning, even if they were lightning cultivators. Yet, since Gravis basically was lightning, the lightning didn't lash out at him. Gravis was lightning, and lightning was Gravis. Gravis leaned back and threw the spear with all his power!

BOOM!

A shockingly loud thunder boomed throughout the surrounding kilometers as the lightning spear hit the barrier. Many beasts fled in panic when they heard the thunder. The whole barrier shook violently, and some cracks appeared at the place where the lightning spear had hit.

Gravis watched this for a while with a smile. The cracks were slowly mending over time. "Interesting. The Formation Array can regenerate itself. There are probably a lot of Energy Stones keeping it going," he muttered in interest.

By now, Gravis was sure that no one had returned to this branch yet. If they had, they would probably panic and run, or maybe even attack him. Those spoiled Heavenborn have probably never been in such a situation, so who knew how they would react?

Gravis gripped his saber and pulled it out of the ground. "Let's see what you can do. I haven't been able to test your power yet," Gravis said with a smirk. The saber was a Spirit Weapon, which meant it could only show its true might if someone at the Spirit Forming Realm wielded it.

Gravis tried to inject it with lightning but noticed that it was already full. This surprised him slightly. "Huh, when did you get full? Oh, right!" Gravis remembered how that happened. When Gravis rode on his saber, he shot lightning to the front to make the saber move, and when the saber passed through, the lightning would get absorbed by the weapon and then saved.

Gravis checked the amount of saved lightning in the weapon and concluded that around 10% of his whole lightning was saved in the weapon. Since he didn't need to convert Energy into lightning, this would be equal to 20% of the Energy of someone who had broken through into the Spirit Forming Realm through the tenth level of Energy Gathering.

Yet, how many people reached the Spirit Forming Realm while going through the tenth level of Energy Gathering? Only Heavenborn or some supreme geniuses would have a strengthened dantian. Probably 95% or so of Spirit Forming Realm experts had reached the Spirit Forming Realm with the ninth level of Energy Gathering.

This meant that the 10% of Gravis' lightning inside the weapon signified a whole 40% of the entire Energy reserves of a regular Spirit Forming expert at the initial stage of Spirit Forming.

Previously, when Gravis had condensed the lightning spear, he had also used around 10% of his lightning. This would be a good comparison between a finely-controlled elemental attack and an attack with a Spirit Weapon.

Gravis injected his Spirit into his weapon and noticed that his Spirit was absorbed and fused with the lightning. The weapon absorbed around 20% of Gravis' Spirit until it stopped absorbing. "The lightning spear had also taken around 20% of my Spirit. Let's see how good this weapon is."

Gravis controlled the lightning inside the weapon and noticed that he had even finer control over it than over his lightning in his surroundings. "Probably because it fused with my Spirit," he muttered. He felt how he could make it do whatever he wanted. He could release it in a lightning bolt. He could also fuse it with a slash, which would create some kind of lightning shockwave.

Many applications appeared in Gravis' mind, and he grew excited. This fine control opened up a whole new way to fight. "It seems like the higher my realm reaches, the more applications I have for using my power," Gravis muttered with a smirk.

The more ways and kinds of attacks one had at their disposal, the more originality and experience it needed to use them effectively. Gravis had a lot of experience and always fought smartly. This whole new dimension of using his strength didn't intimidate him but made him excited.

"I could coat the edge of my saber with lightning, but then the whole Energy would be dispersed over a bigger surface. If I coat only the tip, the Energy would be concentrated on only one point. Problem is, sabers are not made for stabbing," Gravis muttered.

Suddenly, Gravis thought of something, and his eyes widened in surprise. "Is that why so many people of the Lightning Guild use spears?" he asked himself. The more he thought about that, the more sense it made. Was the Lightning Guild recommending spears to their disciples because they knew of the application of lightning with Spirit Weapons?

Gravis facepalmed. "Of course, they would. They have thousands of years of experience with how to use lightning. If I switched over to a spear now, I would need a long time to get used to it. Also, I like my saber more. Wow, I guess that's what I get for thinking I know more than the Lightning Sect," Gravis said with a helpless smile.

Gravis thought more about the weapons of the Lightning Guild and realized that a lot of the disciples also used swords. The difference between a saber and a traditional sword was that the saber only had one edge, basically making it a big knife. When someone stabbed with a saber, only one side of the tip would cut.

A traditional sword had two edges, which decreased its weight in a slash since the other side was sharpened down, yet the tip would cut with both edges. Gravis realized that a traditional sword would be nearly as good as a spear in stabbing when infusing it with lightning.

Gravis looked at his saber with one lifted eyebrow. "Huh, I guess the Lightning Sect and Guild know what they're doing," he muttered. Then, he shook his head. "I should make the best of my situation. There should be a way to use lightning just as well with a saber."

Gravis experimented more with the saber and realized that he could concentrate his lightning on a single point of the saber's edge. Like that, a slash from the saber would be just as devastating as stab with from spear.

Sadly, there were two issues with that.

First issue: Condensing the lightning on only one point of the saber's edge seemed to not be part of the saber's Formation Arrays. He had to condense it naturally, which used up another 5% of his Spirit.

Second issue: If he wanted to combine his physical attack with the lightning's explosion, he had to perfectly hit his target with the condensed point. Doing that on a stationary target was no issue, but if someone blocked his attack, the chances were very big that they would hit a point at the saber's edge that didn't have any lightning. Sure, Gravis could move the concentrated lightning, but at that point, his physical momentum was already halted, weakening the attack.

Gravis rubbed his chin in thought for a while and got several new ideas. "A disadvantage might become an advantage if used in the right circumstance," he said with a smile.

By now, the barrier had fully healed. Gravis didn't mind. He actually preferred that. Like this, he could test the Spirit Weapon's might even more accurately. "Let's start," he said.

Gravis concentrated the lightning in his saber on the point of its tip and charged at the barrier.