Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 85 - Further Training (Patreon)

Elijah sat on the rock, staring at his arm as the skin bubbled, sloughed away, then reformed.  The cycle only took a couple of seconds, but it sent waves of pain radiating throughout his entire body. 

That was not a new development.

After months of training his body to endure the caustically thick atmosphere, he was well accustomed to such agony.  He was still incapable of shunting it into its own leaf, though.  When he tried that, it quickly overwhelmed the facet and leaped to another.  And another after that.  On and on it went until his entire mind was mired in torture.

The answer to that problem wasn’t stricter quarantine.  Rather, the solution lay in the concept of surrender.  Not giving up.  Never that.  Instead, Elijah had no choice but to give in to the reality that he could not escape the pain.  Once he did that, he was free to do what he needed to do.

For the most part.

The pain was still present, but he didn’t allow it to affect him.  Instead, he simply endured it, largely because he had no choice.  However, one thing had become increasingly clear as he’d trekked toward the core.

Well, two things.

In retrospect, one should have been fairly obvious.  The core was much further away than suggested by his original assessment.  From the outside edge to the inner, which butted against the core itself, the final ring was the size of a continent.  And given that the pain tended to prevent him from moving faster than a walk, he had a long way to go before he achieved his goal of reaching the core.

The second issue was even more troublesome than a little extra time investment.

He wasn’t ready.

That became obvious within a few miles of leaving the palace behind.  Despite all the work he’d put in, the fact was that his body encapsulated more than simple endurance.  It was like he’d somehow forgotten that the concept incorporated strength and dexterity as well as constitution. 

Now, he had a choice before him.

He could keep going, pushing forward until he reached the core.  It would take some time to stagger inward, but he felt confident that he could eventually make it.  Then, he could engage with his plan to reach the gold-tier of body cultivation. 

It wouldn’t be perfect, though.

What’s more, Elijah felt certain that if he continued to lay the groundwork for his eventual jump, he could soon express the full scope of his power, even in the dense and caustic atmosphere of the final ring. 

It was like taking a step back to better prepare, rather than forge ahead without a proper foundation.  When he thought of it that way, the decision became obvious.  So, with a sigh that burned his lungs, he turned around and returned the way he’d come.

Thankfully, he’d only made it a few miles away before the realization hit him, so his return to the familiar palace didn’t take as long as he’d initially feared.  He couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d begun to stagnate, though.  He could feel the progress he had made, and there was concrete evidence in the increase to his constitution attribute.  Still, the feeling of backsliding remained prevalent.

He pushed those thoughts away, and once he found himself within the protective confines of the Silvara gate’s aura, he redeployed his tent.  Before he got started on the next phase of his preparations, he took a shower.  With the aid of his soap, he washed the impurities away and readied his mind for the slog that would come with the next step.

Elijah spent the next hour or so detailing a training regimen. 

The initial problem was that, while he could sit still and endure the caustic atmosphere quite easily, moving introduced a new problem.  So, his solution to that issue was to train his body to function in that hostile environment. 

The next few hours were spent dragging increasingly heavy boulders into place.  After that, he defined a long track so he could run.  And finally, he created a small clearing where he intended to do calisthenics, yoga, and shadow fighting.

Once he had it all set up, Elijah wasted no time before getting started.

And he was immediately disappointed.  There was a marked difference between sitting still and enduring the destructive ethera and doing so while actively training.  The previous months hadn’t been wasted, though.  If he’d tried his training regimen in the very beginning, he never could have accomplished anything.

Now, he could barely express a tenth of his strength or speed.

But Elijah was nothing if not stubborn, and he refused to let that be his story.  So, he pushed himself as hard as he could, hefting his boulders, sprinting around the palace, and using Mano’s axe while sparring with nonexistent opponents. 

Elijah also incorporated his other forms into the mix.  In general, they were better suited to the environment, largely because they all came with significant increases to his attributes.  But they still couldn’t endure it without pain. 

Predictably, the Shape of the Reaver enjoyed the easiest acclimation.  The Avatar of Storms was only a little behind, with the Shape of the World Serpent coming next.  Shape of Withering was the second-to-last, with the Shape of the Primordial Deep bringing up the rear.  That would change if Elijah used The World is an Ocean, but he regarded that as cheating. 

The oddity among them was Shape of Embers.  Ostensibly, it remained in the middle of the pack, but its status as his oldest form was clear.  Elijah had some difficulty describing the issue, but he suspected that it was at the edge of what it could handle.  If he used it any closer to the core, its status would plummet to the bottom of the list.

Never before had it been so clear that a shape had become somewhat outdated.  Sure, the Shape of Embers could still inflict massive damage.  More, if he infused its attached abilities with his soul.  By anyone’s measure, it was the most destructive of his forms. 

Yet, that capability masked the reality that it needed an upgrade.

Hopefully, that would come sooner rather than later, though Elijah suspected he wouldn’t get the opportunity to choose an evolution until he reached the peak of the demigod stage.

To do that, he needed to reach gold-tier body.

And he had a lot of work to do before he could make that attempt. 

So, he poured himself into the task, and with a fervor that would’ve shocked most sane people.  Through it all, Elijah thought about Birk.  Or more specifically, about how hard the old drake pushed him during his training.  Elijah also considered Mano’s indomitable attitude. 

He thought of everyone who’d ever helped him train, including old coaches from his youth.  But mostly, he tapped into his own spirit, channeling that indefatigable attitude that had seen him through so much.  Part of it was inherent.  Some of it had been built, layer by layer, from his past experiences.  Finally, there was that indefinable something at the core of his personality, that extra ingredient that had always set him apart from most normal people.

It had been in evidence in his youth, when, despite lacking overwhelming physical tools, he’d established himself as a young boxer of note.  It had pushed him through his time in academia, resulting in his doctorate.  And mostly, it had seen him through those first years after the World Tree’s touch, when survival had been his chief struggle.

At the end of the day, that was what made Elijah special.  Sure, he had an incredibly powerful attunement. Talent in cultivation like no one else he’d met.  And he believed himself to be a fairly intelligent person.  However, what truly set him apart was his ability to lock down and keep forging ahead.

Most people didn’t have that.  And even if they did, they eventually found their limits.  Maybe Elijah would as well, but he had yet to glimpse the end of his commitment.

He rode that for days at a time.  His training sessions stretched on for hours and hours.  Then days.  Weeks.  Months.  Elijah never wavered.  Despite the dread in his heart, he never hesitated to rouse himself from his pallet and go back to it.  And most importantly, as he trained, he maintained complete focus.

It was easy to mindlessly move forward.  Doing so with intention was what separated the elite from everyone else. 

Elijah had never set out to be one of the multi-verse’s elite, but at some point, that was the path he had taken.  He had the tools.  He had the foundation of his peerless Legacy.  His training regimen required him to put it all together and leverage his advantages into real, verifiable progress.

The first few weeks were the toughest, at least from a mental perspective.  By definition, finding his limits would never be easy, and that didn’t change as the weeks went on.  However, that first stretch predated the flow state that characterized the months that followed.

But that came with an issue all its own.

It was so easy to fall into a groove, to mindlessly move forward.  So, Elijah was forced to continuously remind himself to remain on guard for that trap.  When he found himself slipping, he took action, pushing himself harder and faster than ever before.

And like that, years passed.

Never was the shift in perception of time more obvious than when Elijah realized that he’d been at it for almost half a decade.  In that time, he added more than a hundred points in both strength and dexterity.  Even his regeneration attribute had climbed by fifty-two points, and that was without gaining a single level.

His body had transformed as well.  His muscles grew, both in terms of mass as well as definition.  What little body fat he possessed faded to almost nothing.  And during the few breaks that lasted long enough for the pain to fade, Elijah realized that he could move more smoothly than ever before.

It almost felt like he’d already tiered up to gold. 

The biggest difference came from ethera saturation, though.  Often, he’d noted that his other forms were magical, and to varying degrees.  For instance, the Shape of the World Serpent was almost entirely dependent on ethera to function.  Sure, it had biological muscles, but its every movement came with a surge of ethera.  To a lesser extent, the same could be said of his dragon form.  And his other shapes came with similar, but weaker, connections to magic.

Or maybe a stronger connection to biology.

Elijah wasn’t certain how to characterize it.  However, his human form had always been his most dependent on the biology he had spent a lifetime studying.  Yet, after those four-and-a-half years, that had begun to change.  His flesh acted like a sponge, absorbing ethera so thoroughly that it had become something else entirely. 

That provided some invisible benefit that was difficult to quantify but even more difficult to deny.  He knew it wasn’t very efficient, though.

For a while after the attribute increases faded to a trickle, and then to nothing, Elijah continued on.  He felt as if he was on the verge of something even more impactful, crossing a threshold that he could barely even sense.

Only when he began to approach it did he recognize the truth.

That was gold-tier.

Inadvertently, he had been working toward it the whole time.  And all it would take was a little more effort to push himself over the edge.

Elijah refused.

Instead, he backed away, returning to his tent to recover for the final leg of his journey.  He’d set out to reach the core, and that was precisely what he intended to do. 

Failure wasn’t an option. 

But before he resumed his journey, Elijah removed his Arcane Loop and his Antlers of the Wild Revenant.  Then, he cancelled all his buffs.  Once he had, he took a long look at his status:

Sitting in his tent, Elijah let out a sigh.  He’d actually gained a level at some point – either from killing beasts on his way to the final ring or from his ongoing efforts with Fungee.  In addition, he’d gained a hundred-and-eleven points to strength, one-fourteen to dexterity, one-ninety-three to constitution, twenty-four to ethera, and fifty-seven to regeneration. 

The influx had pushed his attributes higher than he’d ever expected.

But the silver designation under body cultivation glared at him like an enemy to be defeated.  And after five years of steady work, he finally felt ready to engage said foe.