Last Three Life Locks

The last three life locks weren't even known to most people in the Alephora continent, and after Minos learned of them, he started to understand why.

Unlike the initial Nine Life Locks, the last three didn't offer the conventional boost to strength, instead each serving a different purpose.

The 10th life lock was also referred to as the Mind Lock. Once you breakthrough this, your thoughts will become much faster, allowing one to think and react at a faster pace.

It worked similarly to the Soul Rune Ascension Minos had, but naturally it was far inferior, but still, combined with Minos's already improved thinking speed and split souls, he'll become even more monsterish.

The 11th life lock was Mending Lock. This lock, once broken, will not only grant 100 years of extra life, but will also tremendously boost regeneration speeds, allowing small cuts and wounds to heal almost instantly.

Finally, the 12th life lock, called the Limit Lock, destroyed a user's limits. Once broken, one will gain access to an ability called the Limitless State. In this state, the person's body temporarily removes all limiters, allowing their power to surge ten times.

Of course, since the human body isn't meant to take that much power, this technique will slowly kill its user if they overuse it with no rest time. This will lead to a reduction of lifespan, and even death if pushed too far.

Even though Minos knew the 12th life lock was dangerous, it was still the one he was most excited about. While the risk of death was scary, the 10x strength boost wasn't something any cultivator could refuse.

As Minos's thoughts came to an end, so did his run. He had tested out his new limits, so it was time to go back and check in on Rubella.

With his greatly improved speed, Minos took no time at all to get back to the cave. Rubella was fully concentrated on drawing talisman strokes, much to Minos's satisfaction.

Since Rubella was currently distracted with her own work, Minos could get busy with the talisman book Rendo had given him. There were plenty of new talisman's inside that Minos wanted to master.

With Minos's incredible intelligence and his twin souls, he could learn and master any skill at an incredible pace.

He easily memorized all the new knowledge he had on hand before getting to work properly mastering this new wisdom.

He wanted to ingrain this information deep into his body, such that he could complete a task without even having to think of it.

Only then can one say they have truly mastered a skill, when they become so comfortable, it forms an instinct.

Using mortal paper, he began jotting down the different types of new talismans. He'd also train his individual strokes.

One has to know that strokes constantly change depending on which other strokes you're conjoining them with, but even then, one must understand a stroke before they can go ahead with altering it, so learning the basics was critical.

Of course, Minos himself had mostly skipped this step back in the day. He didn't really have the resources nor knowledge to invest time into his fundamentals.

But as he learned more about the craft, he started to understand the nuances, and now he was planning on investing time on mastering the strokes.

The cave soon went quiet as Minos and Rubella became fully invested in their studies. Minos couldn't help but slightly fall into a state of enlightenment as he constantly went over the hundreds of different strokes in the Talisman Stroke Guide.

He couldn't help but realize that letters and strokes were fundamentally the same thing. Both were languages used to communicate, only the things they were attempting to speak with were different.

Minos couldn't help but ponder if it was possible to take the strokes and convert them into an audio, would it then not be possible to quite literally speak to the heavens, and have it act on behalf of your words?

As he thought that, he couldn't help but feel his connection with the heavens slightly tightened, the Embryonic Rune on his forehead started to slightly puslate.

As Minos thought deeper, its pulses got stronger and stronger, and soon it seemed to explode into two. Another rune had separated from it, joining the first one in revolving around the Embryonic Rune in the center.

His soul underwent another metamorphosis at this time, getting stronger, and just like the Embryonic Rune, Minos's soul also split, revealing a new split-soul.

His original two souls had been upgraded to three, and his thinking speed became even faster. He could now have three threads of thoughts happen at the same time, which made his study even easier.

Minos took a minute to meditate, properly understanding these new changes. His three souls were all thinking in their own direction. One was still pondering about strokes, the second was testing how much this upgrade improved his thinking speed, and the final one was empty, fully feeling the changes of this evolution.

If one thought of the three souls as individual beings, they'd be wrong. Fundamentally, they are all Minos, controlled by Minos, and extensions of Minos.

To put it in simple terms, one would never say that a person's arm or leg is independent from them, rather their arms and legs are an extension of them, under their control.

The split souls are the same way, however even more intimate than an extension, they are Minos, which of course was an incredibly strange feeling for someone who had never felt such a thing before.

The first time Minos split his soul, he couldn't help but feel incredibly strange. It was like he was in two places at once, each doing their own things, but ultimately under the control of the same source.

Akin to an ant queen commanding her soldiers, but infinitely more intimate. Minos also realized that there was still a strange force that seemed to transcend his soul, the unifying force that spread amongst and controlled all his split souls.

He couldn't help but think of the Atman the strange-man had told him about. He said the Atman was the most fundamental part of a person's soul, and in the truest sense, was them.

Minos had a feeling that this unifying force was his Atman, and rather than being split like his souls, it instead got stronger, spreading even further to cover these new souls.

Minos theorized that this in itself was another critical part of the Soul Rune Ascension, the strengthening of the Atman.

Of course at the current stage, this enhancement offered no real benefits to Minos, but he had a feeling that it would play a key-role in the future.

Letting out a deep breath, Minos calmed his thoughts and got back to his training. What came in the future was still unknown, so it was still more important to focus on the present.

Back to the thought of converting strokes into audio, Minos had a feeling that such a thing was completely possible, but how to go about doing it was the problem.

The problem with converting writing to noise, is that unless one already knows what noise a certain character is meant to make, it's impossible to make any guesses.

If one didn't know an A made an A sound, then they'd be clueless as to what noise to make when they saw the letter on a piece of paper.

While Minos could constantly make noise until he found that that resonated with the universe, it would be an impossible task.

But such an act would take an incredible amount of time and effort to pay off, at least years if not decades.

For such a large world, Minos had no doubt such a language already existed, so he decided against investing time into such a hefty project. It would be a much better use of his time to just find this knowledge and learn it.

…

Time passed as Minos and Rubella continued their studies. Minos would occasionally come over to check on Rubella's progress, and while it naturally couldn't compare to Minos, she was still improving rapidly.

Minos estimated that it would only take a few weeks for Rubella to make her first successful talisman, which was quite incredible all things considered.

On average, a normally talented talisman maker will take a few years to make their first talisman, whereas geniuses may take a few months.

Rubella could already be fully classified as a genius, and not just a regular genius, rather a genius among geniuses.

What Minos was classified as, was hard to put into words. Rather than a genius, it was more fair to say he was a monster. Others would just feel despair if they attempted to compare themselves, so it was better to just not include him in the equation.

"Master, how long until I can make talismans?" Rubella couldn't help but ask as Minos watched over her.

"Soon, as long as you keep your current pace, I'd say you can make a talisman within two weeks. Of course, if you start slacking, that time will multiply." Minos said, adding a slight warning at the end.

"Don't worry master, I will never slack!" Rubella said with enthusiasm.

Minos was happy to see this, even if one was the most demonically talented person across the endless vastness of the cosmos, if they didn't have the ambition or patience to properly learn, they would just end up being a nobody.

To say effort was more important than talent was of course a lie made up to fool the vast majority of poorly talented cultivators, however it was still true in a sense.

But ultimately, effort can be learned and mastered, whereas talent is inborn. A genius who tries hard can leave their names forever etched in the legend of cultivation, but a regular person would be hard pressed to even leave their names lightly scribbled on.

However above all else, Minos ultimately agreed with the inheritance master, with luck being the most essential. If a pig fell into all the right chances, then he too would end up becoming a Demonic Beast Ancestor.

As he thought about this, he couldn't help but think back on Venix. A big reason he invested so much effort in him was because he could always feel this transcendental luck in Venix's essence.

It was this reason Minos chose the same door as Venix, he could instinctively feel that in terms of luck, he would lose hard. In fact, he had a feeling that the only reason he had lived up until the final two doors was because he was leeching off of Venix's luck, otherwise he may have been the first one to die.