As the second month rolled in Augus started to notice the increased difficulty. His normal strikes weren’t cleansing as much impurities as before and those that did mostly split the impurities, rather than destroy them.
With Augus previous training he could keep up with the increase, he also noticed another curious interaction. At first he thought that as the impurities got harder he would eventually need to top off the tower multiple times in the day, but he discovered he wouldn’t need to. Or rather, he couldn’t, as what became the limiting factor in his cultivation wasn’t the electricity available but Augus own mental stamina.
Even though he now could control and cultivate with stronger, denser electricity tendrils. Each one he made took a toll on his focus that made it nonviable to keep his initial pace of starting a new cycle right after he ended one. A cycle consisting of extracting electricity, compressing it, funnel it through his body and then strike the impurities with it.
Now he needed a downtime every time he completed one to make sure his control of the electricity wouldn’t slip in the middle of any of this steps and cause serious internal damage. Even though he tempered and is tempering his body with electricity as he cultivates, an out of control discharge of that power would leave him unable to cultivate for at least a week if not longer.
And there wasn’t really a “solution” to this, as from what Augus investigated to increase one’s focus (mental stamina) they had to do similar exercises as Augus did with his cultivation. The logic was that one’s mental stamina is like a muscle, it needs to be strained until or close to failure in a short period of time multiple times a day to gradually increase it.
So, at least for the first week of the second month of training, Augus’s routine barely changed from an outside view, he arrived at his cultivation chamber, spent the day’s electricity in cultivation and then returned home.
By the second week this pattern changed as managed to make two cycle’s in a row before feeling spent, that meant that midway in his normal cultivation day Augus, for the first time, had to fully top off his tower with electricity to continue his cultivation. This new development proved itself right away as Augus started the week at 57% (a 6% increase from the start of the month) and ended it with a whopping 64%, though only a percentile of difference, the 60% mark involved a difficulty spike that only this change could facilitate.
Though it also brought into attention a new problem in the horizon, the potency of normal electricity would be insufficient sooner rather than later. Augus speculated that by the time he reached the 80% mark he would need to spend a day’s energy in a single cycle and Augus didn’t know if he could sustain that.
All the electricity he created for his cultivation was created by him using his spiritual energy after all and even though his improvements had increased his previous maximum capacity, filling his tower multiple times a day was beyond his current energy reserves. From his estimates, three to four times would be his limit as he could recuperate while resting from his cultivation cycles.
The only way to solve this would be to either provide or absorb lightning, and the second option was the only viable one if Augus considered his current capabilities. Though Augus could supply lightning to the tower, it would require all his spiritual energy reserves for a single cycle, and that was without tempering his body, which was ill advised according to his teacher’s advise.
This meant that Augus’s training depended on a stormy day to continue uninterrupted, if not he would need to dedicate who knows how many days to filling his tower with manually supplied lightning. And that wasn’t considering the practice he needed with lightning, he wouldn’t be able to handle it with the ease and control he had with normal electricity.
Considering this inevitable practice Augus decided on a change of pace, instead of spending all day cultivating he would leave at least two hours before returning home for lightning practice, as he would not need to create enough lightning for a cycle but for pure practice.
For today Augus went home and during dinner chatted with his parents about his cultivation.
“I had to fill the tower for the second time today.” They already knew the gist of his cultivation plan so he didn’t have to bother with explaining the details of it.
His mom commented, “That much energy better not be taking a toll on you.” Augus reassured her it wasn’t the case, a single refill wasn’t nearly enough to truly make a dent in his reserves at his current realm.
“Is there anything we can help you with?” Augus’s dad was looking for ways to help.
“I don’t think so, unless you have a way to summon lightning hidden away.” He said it all in a joking tone, it wasn’t his purpose for his parents to feel useless after all.
“I don’t, but I can get one from the factory where I work.”
Augus was dumbfounded, he didn’t see this coming. “Seriously? How?”
“There’s this talisman that only Experts Talisman inscribers can make that summons a lightning bolt by accumulating water and charging it electrically so that it naturally forms lightning. It’s usually a combat Talisman, as the lightning falls on the talisman, so it would be a bit expensive.”
This cooled Augus’s head, if it was made by an Expert Talisman inscriber how knew how expensive it would be. “So, how much does it cost?”
His dad frowned a little and answered. “We can pay it for you.” Even though this made Augus happy, as he wouldn’t need to pay it out of his own pocket, the feeling of his parents buying him stuff at his age left him embarrassed.
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“Dad, tell me, maybe I can pay it myself.” And Augus thought he could, until his father revealed the price tag.
“The buyers are usually Nascent soul cultivators or the military who can afford multiples at a time so they are sold by stacks of 6-9. Though they also sell them individually, for the cheap price of 65 cloudy spiritual crystals.”
This was the record revenue he had gotten from both his Worlds and it happened once, so no, Augus could definitely not afford it. Now less than ever as he was spending most of his revenue paying the rent of the land plot (18 cloudy spiritual crystals). His income wasn’t really stable so he had to leave some of his revenue untouched to make sure he would be able to pay the month’s rent on time.
“Are you sure we can spend that much on a single talisman?” Augus asked his mom, as his dad seemed determined to pay for the talisman on his behalf.
“Don’t worry dear, your dad is teasing you. He works there and his position isn’t really minor so he gets a 40% discount once a month for a talisman and he hasn’t bought a talisman this month. And even then, he still gets a 30% discount for minor orders the rest of the month.” She said all this so that Augus wouldn’t worry about their financial situation.
They weren’t swimming in money but as they both were quite important managers in their respective factories the talisman wouldn’t affect their daily life. The family didn’t have big spends nor they lived a luxurious life so they had quite the savings from years of work.
They would have payed the rent of the plot if Augus didn’t insist he could afford it without problem.
This stopped Augus’s protests as he realized he couldn’t convince his parents of not buying him the talisman. They wanted to and would pay for it as Augus was unable to do so and that, if Augus was honest, warmed his heart. For all his dad’s teasing he wanted to see Augus succeed in his cultivation journey and his mom’s ever present love wouldn’t see him stumped in solvable problems.
So, the next day, at dinner, Augus received the talisman from his dad where he promised to repay the money they spent on it, which despite his dad’s dismissal Augus vowed to repay. Because even if they wouldn’t really feel the dip they had to make on their finances, Augus felt he would be an ungrateful son if he couldn’t repay a favor from them.
With the talisman in hand Augus arrived at his tower and, after making sure there weren’t any people nearby for the moment, he activated the talisman he placed on top of his tower. After activating it he quickly descended the tower to see the talisman at work.
First it sent vaporized spiritual water to a cloud so that surrounding water would further accumulate. Second, it sent multiple short electrical currents until it the charged cloud took a dark gray color. Then, third and final, the talisman magnetized itself so that lightning would fall on it which happened two seconds after. Overall the process took about 10 seconds since activation, which would have been underwhelming if the lightning that followed wasn’t also charged with spiritual energy, product of it’s formation process, that made it that much stronger.
For Augus this meant stronger lightning to work with, which according to his current control of lightning, he would need hours to actually cultivate with.
As such Augus entered the now bright cultivation chamber, took a lotus position and extracted a tiny tendril of lightning, about half what he usually trained with. Despite the tiny amount the energy contained in it was so potent that it almost escaped control a few times before he got used to handling it. Instead of worrying, Augus was excited, as such potent energy meant faster, more efficient cultivation he would just need practice. And practice he had, from morning until lunch he spent training his control of lightning with his goal achieved, being able to compress lightning enough for cultivation and more. As he could now perform some simple tricks like with electricity, not the same complexity but it would do for the power he was aiming for.
With the sheer power contained in lightning a small tendril would perform as good as a condensed electricity strand.
As such Augus performed his first cycle with lightning very carefully, he moved the tendril at the pace of a slow grandma through his meridians until he reached his dantian. Here he precisely struck one of the few denser clusters of impurities and saw how they not only were destroyed but even some of the neighboring impurities were caught in the strike. If normal electricity was like a bullet then lightning was like an bomb, the target and it’s surroundings were destroyed. Though even this range of attack wasn’t wide enough to avoid the inevitable clustering of impurities, which might be lucky, as his ascent depended on a sufficient level of concentration of the impurities.
“This level of potency will certainly accelerate my pace.” Maybe because of the long periods of time cultivating alone, Augus had taken to talking to himself to organize his thoughts. It seemed to help as Augus got focused again to keep try another cycle, this time not of his Golden Core but of body tempering.
The logic was simple enough even someone like Augus, not a Fighter, could understand. Take potent energies and strike the body with them in increasing levels of strength while internal spiritual energy circulation would heal any damage. This increase could take from a day to weeks depending on the difference between the level of tempering and the level of potency from the energy. Considering Augus has already tempered his body with electricity, lightning would take more or less a week until his body grew resistant to it.
This didn’t mean Augus would never receive damage from lightning or electricity, but that the energy and strength would need to be at least 5 times his current level to inflict substantial damage. And that his body in general would be stronger, more resistant to general attacks, although less resistant to earth type attacks, as lighting is weak against earth according to elemental relationships.
The rest of the day Augus continued cultivating, both his dantian and his body until night fell and he finally stepped out of his cultivation chamber.
Excited, Augus went back to his house to tell the good news to his parents. But when Augus reached his home he found an stranger talking with his parents on the doorstep.
