321 Never
Without Dyon realizing it, a month had passed.
His talent in energy cultivation was so poor that even in the densest energy pool he had ever been in, it still took him this long. When you coupled that with how demanding the inner world cultivation technique was, you would be hard-pressed to be surprised.
However, Dyon was truly disappointed in himself. Had Ri or Madeleine been here instead of him, they would have finished within a day… If that. Even the normal talents from Focus Academy would have taken a week at most. That was how dense the essence energy here was.
And yet, it took Dyon a month.
His heart couldn’t help but ache at the thought of him leaving Ri along for that long. And what about Madeleine, was she still fighting for the legacy?
Another problem was the fact that giving Alidor a month, plus even more time, to improve is aurora even further. That additional time might very well wipe out the advantage Dyon had gotten by consolidating his foundation.
‘Whatever. I want to beat you at your best.’ Dyon’s emotions steeled. He would allow himself to worry about his wives but worrying about how powerful an opponent would be just wasn’t within his personality.
“Old man are you there?”
Silence answered Dyon, causing him to furrow his eyebrows.
‘Grand teacher?’ Dyon projected out his mind to try and find the entity once again.
“Who are you calling old man? Should I shove you back in that trial world have your father teach you some more lessons?”
‘It’s a term of endearment in the mortal realm! I call my dad, old man all the time.’
“Hm, I’ll forgive you.
Truth be told, I thought it would take you years to comprehend and cultivate up to this point.”
‘I wouldn’t have cultivated so quickly if I didn’t have knowledge of human anatomy… And yet I was still this slow…’
The truth was that energy cultivation talent was about more than just sensing essence energy or its higher forms. It was also about having an understanding of your body and having a feel with what to do with that energy.
In fact, talent related to sensing energy was a bit redundant when the room you were in was so densely filled.
As such, much of the talent required in a room like this was focused on an understanding of your body and the instinct necessary to flow the energy to the correct places.
This was a talent that should have been provided by one’s meridians. Even in a closed state, they acted like checkpoints for foundational cultivation… However, Dyon didn’t have that.
As a result, he could only rely on his human world knowledge to fumble around with energy in his body. He had to first learn how to sense energy – a task made much easier by the room he was in. And then, he had to memorize a map of his body using the energy as an appendage.
It felt like… writing with your left hand or trying to do something you usually did with your hands, with your feet instead. Except, imagine that it was a limb that you had never had before…
And yet, none of this described the difficulty in following the inner world technique. Even with Dyon’s improved basics, seeing through to the right layers of the 3D array with nearly impossible. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“I see… Your human world is quite interesting. Are you prepared?”
Dyon took a deep breath. ‘Do you know how long it would take?’
“Think of it like your normal human world operations except on an abstract scale. It would probably take a few weeks to integrate properly, then up to two months to heal appropriately…”
‘But – ‘
“If you’re worried about your fiancée, it’s likely that you shouldn’t. Use your head to think instead of being so caught up in your emotions.”
A sudden realization hit Dyon as he pondered the meaning behind the old man’s words.
Without Alidor, any reinforcements would take a long time to move across the gates. Especially if they were a large force!
Lotus Tower had been close to Earth Tower, and yet it had still taken them a bit more than a week to reach it, and that was with having to deal with only one incident. And, the only reason there was only a single incident to deal with was because they had been moving from the very stable Earth Tower region.
However, the reinforcement of the basilisks would have a host more to deal with.
Without Alidor, they would need to move the normal way through the gates since Alidor had never planned on sending reinforcements to begin with – he had assumed he had an accurate gauge on Ri’s abilities and he thought Dyon was too weak.
This meant that those large armies would need to leave the stable space of Gautama Tower, then cut through their instability of their own tower, all before cutting through Rod and Looming Tower to reach Lotus Tower.
And, none of this accounted for the most unstable reason they’d have to traverse – Epistemic Tower.
It could very well take them months…
‘Grand teacher… Will I finish before the gates close?’
There was another thing Dyon had neglected. The reason why campaigns were fought in spurts was because the gates were closed off to the outside world for four months a year. Now that he thought about it, this was likely to recuperate from damage and accumulate energy. After all, the entirety of the gate was an array.
This was why the Elvin Kingdom was ‘late’ to the campaign and had also returned home ‘early’ from the previous ones. There were actual set times it was optimal to campaign.
That said, it was possible to remain in the gate during the time it was closed, it was just that it would be more dangerous – with the exception of Gautama and Earth Tower that is. Those two remained as stable pillars.
“Ai. You should finish with about two weeks to the end of the cycle… But, it is likely that those armies would have already reached your fiancée by then. So, you’d have to beat Alidor rather quickly if this is still what you want to do.”
Dyon’s eyes flashed. ‘I’m ready.’
The old man said nothing as Dyon’s senses were completely blocked.
“This’ll be a pain you’ve never experienced the likes of before…”