Aimless Ascension

My clothes were soaking wet halfway to where Saarya was taking me. It was way downer in the mine, even deeper than where I had to mine every day.

Well, my resistance to heat had risen to a qualitative degree since I started practising Qi, but not to the point where I would survive even where the most potent fire crystals were mined. I feared I could be half-cooked if I stayed here for a few hours.

Thankfully, Saarya took me to the area that had already been mined. Since the fire crystals were extracted already, the heat there was at a bearable level.

We simply walked for about an hour and then finally the high lady was satisfied with the place for me to go through the advancement.

"Sit down," Saarya said, pointing to one corner. "And calm yourself."

I did as I was told, sat down and calmed myself, getting into meditation. While Saarya did something else, I was close-eyed for a time to notice how she did it, but I found a twisted runic pattern in symmetric form all around me, glowing in a faint purple light.

"This will last for about five minutes, and will help you accumulate energy a lot quicker," Saarya said as she leapt into the middle of the script forms to stand behind me. "Now you can begin. The process will be extremely painful for you. Of course, nothing like the physiological stabbing, it will be a different kind of pain."

I narrowed my eyes, understanding.

However, her next words caught me off guard. "You give up, you die."

"So how long does it take for one to advance successfully?" I asked, swallowing a breath.

"It depends," Saarya answered. "Although for most people, it is between half an hour to a couple of an hour. However, in your case, we have to complete it within 10 minutes, or the chances of you failing will rise."

I would like to ask for explanations about that, but that would pull me out of the vibe I got. Besides, the script form Saarya laid would vanish after a few minutes. It was painstakingly hard to lay them as her strength was suppressed and dwindling even to this day.

So after I got her permission, I began drawing in raw energy from the surroundings. On my good days, it took me a couple of minutes to get started, but today, with the script formation in place, it barely took me any time to pull the energy towards me.

Not to mention, the amount of energy was a lot as well. Easily doubled my usual practice.

I simply cycled the energy through my body and my core energy pool. Saarya had explained the way to breakthrough on the way. It was pretty simple in theory and seemed to be the same in practice as well.

Where was the excruciating pain Saarya was talking about? There was no pain whatsoever. My body was simply warming up as I accumulated energy.

The way to breakthrough was a bit different from the regular accumulation of Qi. In simpler words, the practitioner has to overflow his body with more energy than his body could handle and cycle at a tremendous speed until he reaches a point where his body supposedly goes through a fast metamorphosis process.

What should have taken months of rigorous training happens in that short metamorphosis, altering the practitioner's body to hold the energy he had accumulated. In the first advancement metamorphosis, the muscles, blood vessels, skin, and almost everything save for the bones went through a qualitative change.

And that process was the most painful.

I hadn't even started to feel the vibe of a breakthrough yet.

Well, if it was the pain I was looking for, I got it after the second minute passed. The cause behind the pain was simply the sheer amount of energy that was introduced to my body.

It was a few times more than what I was used to and almost four times what I could handle on my own. I had to grit my teeth to keep them on the steady path, as the energy caused havoc inside me.

It felt like my inside was tearing up slowly and the more time passed, the more the tear expanded, along with my agony.

I hadn't got the vibe of a breakthrough yet, and it was already feeling like an impossible dream to me. The pain was so much that it was expanding the time in my head.

What was worse was that more energy was still coming into my body, as if pulled by some invisible hand.

Before I knew it, berserk energy overflowed to cause Qi deviation, and only then I first got the vibe of a breakthrough.

It was like a door to the next thing. I could barely see it, but could get to it, not when I was literally burning with excruciating pain.

"Cycle faster," Saarya's voice came into my mind as I felt a soothing hand on my head. In the next moment, a lot of my pain went away as if by magic.

And it was by magic. Saarya used her means to block the pain from affecting my mind. She had only taken away the feeling of pain, not the damage the overwhelming amount of energy was doing to my body.

Also, she only took away a large portion of my pain, not all of it. I might forget the existence of my body if she blocked everything from affecting me. After all, the pain was a reminder of what was wrong with the body.

I was completely awake after most of my pain was taken away from me. I focused back on the chaos reigning inside my channel and established my claim over them. It wasn't easy, not at all, with the amount of energy I had accumulated.

"Push all the energy to your left hand," a voice said to me. It felt like Saarya's voice, but more like a screech.

Before I could decide anything about myself, the energy was already draining towards my left palm, towards the weird mark in my palm.

Then I entered a completely different realm of existence.