34 Double Breakthrough

Eleven people are searching the cavern for anything that can lead to where or what they need to do after entering the cavern. After the group arrived they soon discovered that there are no doors, gates, levers, or anything that signifies a passageway to another section of this mysterious cave, besides the one they entered through of course.

The group discovered that the cavern is exactly six hundred and sixty-six yards in diameter. The bricks that stack underneath the purple flames stack six high underneath the flames before they stop. The bricks spread six wide before the design on them changes. One set of the six by six bricks have the drawing of a snake, the next would have a phoenix, then a deer, and so on until all six of the animals that are on the altar were repeated six times.

"Six. Six. Six. The number of the best." Arbor thought to himself. After shifting threw his memories, he remembers a folklore that he had read back on earth.

Arbor started to recite this story to the triplets, Sozoth, Leo and the rest. A demon creature that has the body of a spider, the head of lion, the wings of a phoenix, the horns of a deer, a serpent tail, the claws of an eagle as its fore feat, and the pincers of a scorpion.

In this tall tale, this creature started off by terrorizing small villages over the lands. It used a different body part to elude those searching for it. One town would get poisoned to death and then the next town would be squeezed in half at the waist. After five years' worth of massacres, the pattern of how the people were being killed was figured out. In sixes, people were killed by a different part of the beast.

"I have also heard of this before. One part you missed is that each time it kills, it grows slightly stronger by absorbing the essence from its victims. They figured this out during the investigation as no blood could be found near any of the corpses. This happened around five hundred years ago. No trace of the best has been seen or heard of since then. After coming here and experiencing this place, I have a bad feeling." Dax responded to Arbors tale.

"Are these realms where were all of our fantasy stories come from? Just how many of them are true? Asgard? Buddhas? Olympus? The only way to find out is to survive and grow stronger." A simple thought ran through Arbors head.

"You see, I'm not the only one that wants to leave now!" Grary stated with excitement. After saying this he quickly located Ithaa to make sure that she does not get the drop on him. He only found Ithaa's eyes full of disgust and hatred.

"I- I think that I want to proceed further in. That is, if we figure out how to." Gror hesitantly said. Dax, Ithaa, Leo, and even Sozoth all raised their eyebrows as they looked Gror. Ithaa's expression moved from surprise to genuine happiness as a smile shown on her face.

Grik, on the other hand, is supporting an indifferent look. His chin is resting in his hand as his eyes sifted back and forth rapidly across the ground. He seems to be in deep thought and absent-minded simultaneously.

The mercenary group continued to talk about who was up for continuing deeper into the forest for a moment before Leo got frustrated with them. "Grary, you are going. Do not forget that you can't leave this place. If you try to skip out of here, I will force you to stay here and tag along. You can choose the hard way or my way."

"The hard way or your way?" Grary asked.

"The hard way is you come with under Ithaa's watch. As for my way little guy…" Leo's voice faded off as he started to laugh. Grary's body shivered and his eyes shifted away as he met the menacing look of Leo.

"I think you all are getting ahead of yourselves. We first need to find out the secrets behind this altar and where that shriek that keeps sounding comes from." Arbor interrupted the mercenary's conversation.

"I think that we all could use a little rest. So, if you would all please, relax. Its been a stressful couple of days on all of us and we need to be mentally prepared for what comes next. I'm going to get some rest, decide amongst yourselves who is on guard duty." Arbor added on as he made his way towards the side of the cavern with Eos.

Arbor fished out the last couple of spirit pills for Eos from his space ring before he sat down in a full lotus position. Arbor placed his staff across his lap as he started to nurture the staff with his essence. As soon as the essence entered the staff it started to glimmer with a dim golden glow. As each second passed, the intensity of the light increased as well. Hours passed and the light took up a quarter of the cavern, grabbing the attention of those who were awake. The light pulsed three time before it finally dimmed down and receded. Those who noticed the light became curious about why Arbor's staff was glowing and what makes it so special. They all kept their thoughts to themselves and went about their own business.

"Ahh, finally…my staff has made it to the transcendent level. I should look for the right opportunity to make my own breakthrough. Or should I do it right now? I do not know enough about cultivation to know if environments can have an affect or not. Although I planned to have this breakthrough happen naturally, the circumstances call for something different as I don't know is up ahead." Thoughts of complication filled Arbor's head as he debated on whether he should forcefully breakthrough to the kaholo realm or not. In the end, Arbor decided that it is more sensible to breakthrough, as his ability to protect not only his life but those around would improve drastically.

Arbor sat in the full lotus position and focused his mind on the essence rushing through his meridians before he put his attention on the grey, lifeless dantain in his body. From the information on breaking through to the kaholo realm in his memory, he knows that the first step he needs to do is build up the quantity of the essence in his body until his meridians were on the verge of exploding. Arbor started to just this as he opened the pores on his body and let the outside essence seep into his meridians. Unknown to Arbor, a sliver of essence contaminated by death slid into his meridians also.

The second step is to take all of that essence and send it into the lifeless dantain and bring it to life, and this is what Arbor started to do until a barrier around his dantain stopped the essence. At the same time the essence crashed into the barrier the small book in Arbors soul flipped open and to a page filed with countless words. The words slowly disappeared as they turned into a beam of light and penetrated Arbor's brain.

"Huh? Another new skill? Essence Refinement auxiliary skill? Able to make the essence denser, thus amplifying and battle skills the practitioner user and use a fraction less of essence for each skill. The downfall is the user will have to refine any essence that newly enters the body….Ok so when I recuperate any used essence I will have to refine it after absorbing it. I suppose this will do something special to my dantain as this came from that book and I can't try to break through. Probably some assurance thing to make sure I cultivate the right way." Arbor mused as he familiarized himself with his new skill.

Five minutes passed by before Arbor made his first attempt at refining his essence. His first attempt ended in failure as nothing happened besides his essence just rotating a couple times and stopping. His next seven attempts also ended in failure. On the eight attempt each speck of essence in his meridians shrunk down to half their size and merged with one speck of essence next to it, regaining its original size. In laymen's terms, all the essence in his body is the same size but holds double the power. In addition, the essence in Arbors body changed from pure white to green and brown. The essence that is tainted by the aura of death changed from white with a hind of deep gray turned into black upon being refined.

Now that half of the essence in Arbors body is gone, he began to replenish it and refine it until all the essence in his body is refined. This cumbersome procedure took around four hours. Arbor took the initiative to tell Leo and Sald to hold off on breaking through until he verifies some information. The both thought about the request from Arbor and decided to trust him as it would not pose any harm to them and that they should put a little faith in him.

The third step to break through to the kaholo realm involves building a foundation. The most important of building the foundation is the amount of essence that is poured into the dantain when breaking through. If some idiot was to only put in one molecule of essence then they would have the weakest foundation to build on and would be extremely fragile and their dantain could be destroyed easily. The refined essence not only benefitted him in a battle sense, but it also started to strengthen his dantain as it nurtured it when it entered.

Arbor prepared himself mentally before trying to breakthrough for the second time. This time, the barrier is not there, and all of the essence seamlessly poured into his dantain. As the essence soaked into the dantain slowly started to rotate slowly and gain color. Arbors dantain, once a small gray spherical object, started to fill with swirls of green and brown, and a small amount of black. The ball started to fill up color until there is no longer any gray. At this point Arbor only used up half of his essence.

His mental state became firm and as he began to pour the rest of his essence into dantain. At this point, the more essence he poured in after the fifty percent, his soul would start to hurt. This is because the level of essence that a dantain is supposed to hold is in correlation to the body potential.

As Arbors body potential is atm level nine, he can already be seen as have one of the strongest foundations for someone who just entered the kaholo realm. The maximum level of foundation that he can achieve is a nine and half. The gap to a level ten, a perfect body, is not something that can be built with work. It can only be bestowed by the havens.

The gap between a persons body potential and a perfect body can only be halved. For example, if Arbor has a level four body potential then, he would only be able to bring his foundation to a level seven.

This only affects the persons ease of essence release, control, and manipulation outside the body. Hence, making it easier use spells and battle skills. Heavenly resources have been found that increase the bodies potential, but there is no known way to increase the foundation of the dantain.

Beads of sweat poured down Arbor's face as his soul started to be in pain as he continued to send more essence into his dantain. In order to be able to hold the extra essence the dantain started to expand little by little in correlation with the amount of essence entering it. The pain became to excruciating for Arbor when he reached the point of having used up seventy five percent of his effort. If tested, his foundation would be measured at nine and one quarter. The most devastating part Arbor noticed about his dantain are the cracks in it! Normally, only those small few with a soul spirit that involves souls would be able to push their foundation this high without it cracking. All others would have their dantain break and they would become disabled because this level exceeds what the body is able to handle at this point since they are not able to cultivate their soul yet.

The few reasons that Arbor's dantain did not break is because of the training Ashliel put him through that also nurtured his soul a minuscule amount, which is completely unknown to Arbor. The second reason is the essence refinement skill that he used. This enabled his dantain to become more durable as it was filled with stronger essence from the begging and the dantain became strengthened as a result.

If Arbor's dantain got compared to the rest of the peoples' in the universe, he would easily rank among the top ten. Of course those who have one of the handful of famed Heavenly Bodies.

"Finally made it to the kaholo realm. Just another step on the path of cultivation. I wonder what other abilities I have now." Arbor felt relieved as he laid down on to his back.