Reaper of the Martial World

historical

Book 7: Chapter 171: Torment (1)

Dyon stood upon a gold formation, raining down hell upon the Demonic Gorge. By now, his use of Soul Aid had reached such a scary level that his already formerly overwhelming soul strength had only become all the more so.

Since he entered the marital world, Dyon’s favorite array to use had always been his Weapon’s Hell array. Even with his master banning him from using his weapon’s hall manifestation, the ability was still powerful beyond belief.

In the beginning, it was a mere 3^rd stage array, corresponding to the lower practitioner realm. However, Dyon made improvements to it until it shone a purple-gold and entered the 5^th stage, or the lower master realm.

After Dyon found the [Dao of Array Alchemy] within the Elvin Tombs, he learned that the versions of the weapon’s hell array he was using had several levels above to go. In the end, he was able to form a new version capable of destroying peak saints in a single strike, shedding its purple-gold color to transcend into the grandmaster realm.

However, it was also at that time that Dyon learned of the highest form of weapon’s hell: [Judgement]. It was also then that Dyon understood just where the name ‘weapon’s hell’ stemmed from.

Broken into nine levels, [Judgement] was akin to nine levels of hell, each new level delving into a more savage and depraved landscape. Within these nine levels of hell, the first punishment was [Carnage]!

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter was that Dyon was still too weak to evoke the true strength of even this first level. Although his divine sense was far vaster than even more high dao formation experts, his energy grade was lacking the umph that was necessary.

As things stood now, Dyon could wield the lowest form of moon soul qi. Although its quantity was vast, its quality was far below planet soul qi and leagues from star soul qi. As such, it was impossible to bring out the full strength of these techniques despite having such a vast soul qi reserve. It was also for this very reason that high grade heavenly treasures could hide from his detection and why he had to rely on Little Rain.

Up to now, the only way Dyon could use [Carnage] was by purposely introducing faults into the array. By making it imperfect, he lowered its requirements, but also significantly lowered its power. The issue here was that his methods were crude…. However, what if Dyon found a systematic way to lower these requirements? For example… By using the very technique he had just learned?

Dyon no longer had to stumble around or strain himself to the absolute limit. He had gained the equivalent of a heavenly formula. All he had to do was enter his requirements and an answer would be calculated for him.

[Soul Aid], at Dyon’s current level, had four options open to him. Weaken, strengthen, slow, and accelerate.

Every tier of Soul Aid provided what its creator termed as ‘Degrees of Freedom’. The higher tier you entered, the more degrees of freedom you’d gain. Since Dyon only had one part of this technique, he only had access to three tiers. But, within these three tiers, there were six degrees of freedom.

The first tier gave him access to weaken and strengthen. The second tier gave him slow and accelerate.

Weaken and strengthen were exactly what they sounded like. To a certain extent, Dyon was able to weaken a technique to a level he could use more comfortably, or strengthen one that had become too easy to use to the point of uselessness. As things stood now, he could control weaken to almost 500% and strengthen to about 5% for soul techniques. But, for non-soul related techniques, his degree of freedom was far weaker.

Essentially, Dyon can strengthen [Carnage] to 1.05 times its normal strength, or cut it to a fifth of its normal strength. However, although weaken lessened the energy requirements, unlike higher tiers of this technique, strengthening required more energy than usual.

Accelerate and slow were slightly more complex. Slow was another form of weakening, but in a very specific lane. It allowed a user to maintain the strength of a technique while lowering its energy use. But, the penalty suffered was the slowing of the technique. Simply put, one exchanged speed for lower energy usage.

Accelerate was another form of strengthening. In exchange for raising the energy requirement, one could increase the speed of a technique.

One could imagine how useful such abilities would be in battle, especially if layered. With Dyon’s split minds technique, he could calculate countless things at once on the battlefield and use these degrees of freedom with the utmost control. The demonic beasts below stood not a single chance against his enraged onslaught.

Even weakened to a fifth of its normal abilities, carnage was essentially an instant kill for lower celestial beasts and humans alike. The best part was that although he only weakened it to a fifth, the energy requirements had dropped to a tenth!

When Dyon realized this, he immediately layered the acceleration degree of freedom onto [Carnage]. Now, not only was [Carnage] almost twice as fast as it was in its peak form, its energy requirement was still only a fifth!

The blaze of red and gold spears lit up the skies, filling the Demonic Gorge with a river of blood.