As ti slowly passed inside the tunnel, Levi went from throwing a tantrum every single day to doing so every hour.
The test was grueling.
Sitting in one place doing nothing of substance for even a single month was hard. Three years was another thing entirely. Levi clearly hadn't signed up for this ntally and it showed with every outburst that bounced off the cave walls.
But as Levi slowly went insane, Leon sat there unfazed.
His mind was his toughest attribute, forged through countless experiences until ti had stopped being sothing that pressed against him.
It was only a asure.
Three months passed.
Then four.
Soon half a year was gone.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
At this point Levi seed to have finally given up.
The tantrums stopped. The cursing stopped. It coiled into itself and began secreting a strange sticky liquid, coating its own body in it slowly until it was sealed inside a makeshift cocoon.
Leon watched it for a second.
"Finally so quiet."
He settled deeper into position and closed his eyes.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
He hadn't been idle all this ti.
The transcendent stage was just within his grasp and he needed a solid foundation under him before it landed. This wasn't a stage to stumble into carelessly.
It was fundantal.
At the transcendent stage a cultivator changed in their very essence. Not just their output or their techniques but what they were at the core level.
The chanism of that change was the magic well.
A reservoir ford from within, filled with magic, sitting inside the cultivator like a second organ. One that couldn't easily run dry and could release energy in full force when needed, powering attacks and movents at a scale lower stages couldn't touch.
The well had three levels.
Bottom, middle, and top.
Filling the bottom was the first stage of transcendence. The middle was the second. And when filled entirely to the brim, a cultivator broke through into level six.
Magic king.
But the well wasn't a fixed shape throughout history.
So were enormous, the size of massive tanks. So had extra levels that sat outside the standard frawork. And on rare occasions, so were bottomless.
According to ancient records the human king had a bottomless magic well.
An inconceivable storage of magic. An output that could be scaled upward without ceiling, compounding until the destruction it represented stopped having a clean description. In his generation he was the number one talent.
What it took him to fill that well, only he ever knew.
'I wonder what special characteristics mine will take.'
Leon turned the question over without urgency.
He had mana, soul energy, life energy, fu shu energy. The bloodline of a drake. A soul that had sat in the void for a thousand years. Badur's Gates. The grimoire of death.
Whatever ford from that mixture wouldn't be ordinary.
And three years in seclusion might not even be enough to fully internalize it.
"Look into yourself."
He said it quietly and closed his eyes, beginning the slow work of drawing his energies together toward a single point. Mana, soul, life, dark. All of it pulled inward.
These were his materials.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Day passed into day.
Leon sat in contemplation from morning into night, night back into morning, and the ti moved around him without his participation.
One year passed.
In that year, he ford the foundation of the bottom part of his magic well.
He examined what had taken shape and sat with it carefully.
It wasn't bottomless.
He noted that plainly and moved on.
But it had four source holes.
Four distinct intake points, ford directly from the mixture of his energies. Each one corresponding to a different current. It ant his well wouldn't store a single type of magic. It would hold and cycle four simultaneously, drawing from any of them in full force without needing to convert between them first.
That wasn't standard.
He stayed with that observation for a while.
Then he noticed sothing else.
Three silhouettes sat inside the well.
The first was a giant drake, its shape unmistakable even in the abstract space of his forming reservoir.
The second was made of soul energy, humanoid in outline, completely still.
The third was a door. Large and brutal in construction, similar in feeling to Badur's Gates.
Leon's focus shifted left without opening his eyes.
The beast Actualization was still present. Still anchored to him from outside.
So these three things weren't connected to it.
They were independent.
"It's still early to co to a conclusion."
He said it to himself and went back to ditating.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Another year passed.
He didn't move an inch.
Stillness had stopped being a discipline a long ti ago. His body breathed. His energies cycled slowly. The cave sat around him.
Nothing else was required.
Then —
[Your patience is a sign of a tempered mind. Please proceed into the fourth test.]
Leon opened his eyes.
There was a figure in front of him.
The space had changed. He'd been moved into a different section of the inheritance without noticing any transition, transported mid-ditation with no sensation of movent whatsoever.
The figure had sothing on its face that looked like a smile despite its edges being ghostly and indistinct.
"You are…."
Leon was taken aback.
[I know you're not a mber of the hydra clan. Quite unfortunate. You have such talent.]
The man's mouth didn't move.
The words arrived directly, intent carried cleanly without sound.
[I apologize for using this Echo Shard. Unfortunately ti has taken a toll on my preparations. I see you have one too? That's good. I assu I'm not the only one behind you.]
The ghostly silhouette spoke calmly, its presence steady despite being clearly diminished by ti, using whatever remained of the system woven into the tunnel to push its words forward.
"Echo Shard?"
Leon raised his brow.
He glanced inward for just a mont.
Is that what the system was called?
Was it the sa thing sitting inside him? the thing Altor had given to him?
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