Graduating from the basics
Coming downstairs again I can't help but stick close to Kestrel, this place still creeps me out. As curious as I am about what's behind those doors, I'm not to keen on getting a jump scare. Kestrel just walked to the first door across from the stairs. I guess the closer they are to the stairs the safer they are, still not gonna face check.
Behind this door was, you guessed it, another hall! I'm starting to think that there might be a bunch of halls behind some of these doors. This hall was much shorter and lead to a training room about the size of a baseball stadium. I've come to know that Kestrel has a lot of space under her house. Walking into the room I notice one weird thing.
"Empty?" I ask doubtfully. For a training hall, this place was way too empty, not even a speck of dust could be found. The guild training hall at least had something.
"What else could you need? To be honest training halls aren't even needed past basic level. For mages, they can't even cast one spell at a basic level other than conjuring up a useless clump of elements. The most someone could do at the basic level is burning someone's cloths or drenching someone in water. Warriors can at least do some damage to very low tier monsters but it needs to be at Intermediate to do fatal damage. So all training halls are only for basic training that's it. At most, there are different guilds for different professions like if one wants to be an alchemist learning the skill is enough but you need to buy recipes from the alchemist guild. Same for the other professions, places like that shop you found are rare. You could never find a place like that normally." Kestrel explained.
"I was thinking that there were different sects or bloodline clans where you go to learn special skills. Like the burning heaven flames or the star grasping palm, oh maybe the Heaven shaking fist. You know where everyone fights for resources and land?" I stop my self from going further, cause since awhile ago Kestrel has been giving me a strange face.
"Who has time to have these so-called sects? Humans barely have the time to fight each other, if we did the monsters would be more then happy to let us kill each other. We do have different families who fight for special resources, for special skills, yes but those are usually skills created by that families' ancestors to gain quick power. Like you Path of Fenrir, you need to either be a Fenrir or have a Fenrir soul. Even then if the soul isn't willing it will try to devour you, such things are very risky. So the vast majority of humans prefer the slow and steady way. You transfers will soon know that everything comes with a price. You are just lucky you didn't need to give up your humanity completely to gain that skill. Though you'll have no shoulder to cry on if you get devoured. Also, bloodline skills are only for monsters or demi-humans if you didn't have that outfit you couldn't use the Fenrir clans innate abilities."
Even if she said humans don't have the time to fight each other, I've read too many novels to know that everything isn't sunshine and rainbows. I was born rich so I know that with money and power you can do many things normal people couldn't, in fact before my parents died I didn't even spare more than a passing glance at those people who struggled to live on in the world. After they died even though I lost everything, I wasn't pushed to the brink of no return. I still had enough money to live out my days as long as I stuck to my usual schedule. I didn't even consider getting married to have kids. If not for being transmigrated to this world, I might have continued just living and waiting for death. This is also the reason I'm not all that enthusiastic about this war. I mean it's not like if I die the humans will lose. I'm just one of the few billions of people transferred here. Picking to cultivate chakra is because I found it more interesting than plain old mage or warrior. Everything else I just went with to try to increase my chances to make it work out. If not then whatever. Signing a soul contract with Kestrel was just to boost my chances. Which happened to be a good call If I do say so myself. I definitely would have died because of the stunts I pulled, those energy potions pulled me through. Even getting Fenrirs' Howl was a stroke of luck. I wonder how many years of luck I burned up?
While I was here doing my monologue, Kestrel had pulled out a table and arranged a bunch of different colored flasks on it. I start having a bad feeling.
"Now the real reason for this training hall is so we can get you past the so-called Qi Condensation in your skill. From what I can tell that's novice level, with your devour skill thus should only take you about 2 or 3 days. So what we're gonna do is test out a bunch of my potions I made and don't really know the full effect of. Don't worry, all of these potions have been confirmed non-toxic. They are just too much for normal things to handle and I can't just grab random people from the streets to test them on. So I was very happy when you signed on your own will to be my guinea pig. I even stocked up on ingredients to make a super hyper energy potion at that store. So you definitely won't die with such a strong potion fueling your innate." An innocent smile spread across her face as she talked especially the last part, I'm already having second thoughts.
'Maybe I should make a break for it.' No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, I see Kestrel pull a device from her pocket that had a bunch of buttons on it. After she pressed A few I heard many things happening behind the door we just came through. I couldn't even identify any of the sounds but one thing was for sure, they were anything but good.
"Don't worry no one will interfere with your training. I have enough food and water to last two weeks for one person and with the two of us, it will last a week easily. Though if your thirsty then you can drink from any of these potions. As for hygiene purposes, there's a false wall over there with a bathroom behind it. So let's begin immediately, before these few days are up, I guaranty all your stats will reach 100." She spoke while walking towards me with two potions in hand, one of them was a starry white color and the other was a bright green color. Sneaking a peek at the door then back to Kestrel I lick my dry lips and grit my teeth.
'This is what I signed up for. In the future, I'll get her back somehow.' Shaking off my hesitation I took both potions and swallowed both of them at the same time. These four days will haunt me for the rest of my life. Even when I'm fighting godlike beings in the far future, whenever I remember these few days I would find Kestrel to vent my frustrations on.
4 Days Later~
Waking up in my prison cell, no it should be a training room, I don't see Kestrel around. She's probably in the bathroom bathing. These 4 days have been a horror fest for me. Each one of her potions was a mystery box just waiting to be opened. The number of times I almost died easily exceeds 100 and that was only in the first 2 days. On the third day if not for one of her potions suddenly making my [chain breaker] automatically absorb it, pulling it all into my bones, making my bones began to crack with how much energy was in them. If not for my [Body regeneration] innate I would have kicked the bucket from my own innate skill. Because of this, I found out there was a limit to how much energy my body could hold. Not to mention that because of these heaven chains my Fenrir form was half as weak as my human form, so if I changed into it my bone would definitely explode if I didn't release the energy. Even though I have more than enough energy to break those chains now I kept it as is.
With my bones cracking and restoring it helps my [Big as a mountain, small as a house cat] skill quickly gain proficiency. Yesterday I got it to Intermediate, now I'm able to make myself bigger by 5 feet and smaller by 2 feet. If I was in my Fenrir form I'm not sure of how much I can change my self. I can't do that though, trying to make my self smaller means I need to compress my bones which in turn compresses the energy within them making my bones crack faster. Making my self bigger actually softens my bones for a bit to expand them, making the energy in my bones almost immediately explode out of the weakened prison. Although I could continue training my body this way, my Qi Condensation will reach Completion today and I wanna break my chains and through to foundation establishment at the same time.
It was a good thing that almost all of Kestrels' potions were temporary. Only one of them had a permanent effect and it was a weird one at that. At first, I didn't think anything had happened until I took a bathroom break. Turned out I gained a couple of inches. I told Kestrel about it and said that if she put it out on the market, she could become rich. After all back on earth, the number of growth pills I've seen on advertisements were quite a few and one where you could see immediate effects were nonexistent. Who knows how many men would jump on this potion willing to spend top dollar. When Kestrel heard this she said nothing, a few hours later to my horror I found out that my potion intake had increased. Complain all I wanted when she said that she would create a drug to reverse the effect of the other potion to the point that whoever drinks it might turn into a woman, I obediently shut up. Lucky for me one of her potions activated my innate so I was let off. Since she didn't dare make me drink another for fear that my innate would act up again. Think about it before I break through I take one more glance at my stats, I also remember the stats I had the last time I check my Fenrir form.
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Welcome back Luke~
Status*
Name: Luke
Soulbond: Kestrel
race: Human(Fenrir)
Age: 25
strength: 107
endurance: 140
Agility: 103
intelligence: 76
Chakra(Plant) 100% 98/98
Innate abilities: [body regeneration] beginner Intermediate 78.56
absorb true essence from the atmosphere
[Chain Breaker]99,999 Energy
innate affinity: [plant affinity] beginner Intermediate 14.67
{skill slots}
[Renegade Fenrir cultivation path]*
Qi Condensation: Completion 98%
[Appraisal] Beginner basic 56.43
[Chakra cloaking max]
[Plant manipulation] Beginner basic 89.54
[Fenrir transformation(adolescence)]
[]
[]
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Welcome back Luke~
Status*
Name: Luke
Soulbond: Kestrel
race: Fenrir (Human)
Age: 4 days
strength: 48
endurance: 65
Agility: 55
intelligence: 43
Chakra(Plant) 100% 90/90
Innate abilities: [body regeneration] beginner Intermediate 67.90
[Devour]
[Shackled](.5/4)
[Chain Breaker]99,999 Energy
innate affinity:[plant affinity] beginner Intermediate 10.78
{skill slots}
[Renegade Fenrir cultivation path]*
Qi Condensation: Completion 90%
[Human Transformation]
[Frenzy]
[Big as a mountain, small as a house cat] Peak basic 75.89
[]
[]
[]
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While I was looking over my status, I hear the hidden door open. Turning I see Kestrel coming out with water still dripping from her hair. Although I know she's much younger than me I still couldn't help blanking for a moment. After all, even if she isn't exactly supermodel beautiful, she has a mischievous air to her that either makes you wanna dominate her or be dominated by her. Even though she knows I'm looking at her, she ignores it and starts speaking.
"I don't see why you have to do both at the same time. You could always do one then the other the next day. It really is too much for you to be toying with your life like this. I mean not only do you want to use the energy in your bones to give a boost into foundation establishment, but you also wanna compress the energy to the maximum then let it explode out. Not to mention you wanna reach 100 thousand in the energy count before going on. Last time just getting it to 99 thousand almost immediately sent it out of control and you had to take 2 energy potions to keep it under control. Now you are taking my last 10 potions to use for your breakthrough. With as many potions as you drank someone could be reaching middle Junior level by now and on their way to the peak. 'Sigh' Its good thing I only needed these things to get you through Qi Condensation."
"Don't worry about it. Yesterday it was you your self that said that a peak adolescence Fenrir would be at peak Junior stage, but I'm not even fully in adolescence stage its self because of these chains. I'm stuck between newborn Fenrir and adolescent Fenrir. Although when I breakthrough I would only be at the Junior stage. I should be able to put a dent into the second tier chains with this much energy. My adolescence stage Fenrir will have a much higher peak of power. That way when I reach peak adolescence stage I should be at the senior level in power. By then I would have stored much much more energy in my innate then I have now. Those Heaven's chains are also the reason why I dare to compress my energy and add that last point. When I do unleash it all not only will it push me well into foundation establishment and not kill me those chains will happily take the brunt of the energy. Also, I think these chains are made from the divinity that the first Fenrir took. When I broke half the chain the first time I felt something in my bones heat up for a moment. I'm sure breaking these chains give me some sort of benefit besides slowing my growth." This I'm sure of because the first Fenrir only had one chain yet I have 4? He spent millions of years breaking it so it couldn't have been as weak as this. I'm sure this is a trail he set up.
"Whatever you say. I'm gonna watch outside in case you explode and send bits and pieces flying about the room. Good luck. Oh and don't worry about destroying the room. It can take Ten blows from a king tier human or monster. So the most I'll have to do is hose it down later." Those were the words of encouragement she left me before leaving the room. Not even 30 seconds after she left I suddenly see the wall near the door clear up and a window appears there. I can see Kestrel giving me her signature thumbs up and pulling out her trusty notebook and pen. Shaking my head to clear my thoughts I sit in the center of the room. The plan is simple
1. Get Qi Condensation to Completion
2. Chug all the super energy potions
3. Throw one last point of energy into [Chain Breaker]
4. Simultaneously transform into Fenrir form and activate [Big as a mountain, small as a house cat] to the maximum
5. Unleash [Chain Breaker]
6. Pray to the almighty (A/N: I Got you buddy!)
Well, I've only got one chance and I'm betting on two things. One of them is my good old innate and the other is the chains that are supposed to be doing the exact opposite of helping me. "Welp it's now or never!"