Xavier stared at the stump where his right hand used to be. The Lost Bone of a Dead God, the soul bound weapon that he had, was sitting beside him in its scythe-staff form. He was glad he hadn’t been using it in its unarmed configuration. It would have likely been melted beyond repair.

  His hand, however, appeared to be growing back.

  Once Xavier’s hand had melted to nothing, the energies that he’d pooled there had finally dissipated into the air, and left… a cauterised stump.

  Fortunately for Xavier, it was only cooldowns that were locked to the universe he was in. While he was in his Time Alteration field, he was still able to heal himself.

  He had never lost a limb before, but he’d done his research. If he’d lost this limb while he’d been E Grade, it would have been near impossible for him to grow it back—it was a very expensive procedure. He would have had to wait until he’d gotten to D Grade, and his body had been reforged by the System, for him to get his hand back.

  As a D Grade, however, he now had the ability to regrow limbs, and Xavier’s Toughness was high enough that his health regeneration was quite strong.

  Even so, it still took four hours for his hand to grow back. He supposed if it grew back in an instant, severing limbs in a fight wouldn’t do all that much.

  It was a slow and painful process. Xavier simply sat there in the middle of his time dilation field, wondering where he’d gone wrong. He was trying as hard as he could to master this Body Cultivation spell in the very little time that he had.

  After what he’d just done, it seemed like a fool’s errand.

  It reminded him, very much, of the time that he had burned through his core when he’d first been experimenting with it. Sam had shouted at him, told him he’d been an absolute fool to do what he’d done.

  Xavier had instruction back then. This time, he was working completely blind, and there wasn’t anyone around to help him if he messed up.

  He needed to figure this out on his own.

  When just over four hours had passed, Xavier released a long breath and raised his hand. The skin looked different to how it had before. It looked redder, more raw. It also felt smoother than it had before. Xavier hadn’t read about that. He wondered if it would return to its normal colour in time, but he supposed he didn’t really mind.

  During those four hours while he’d waited for his hand to heal, Xavier hadn’t practised with the Body Cultivation spell at all. He wasn’t feeling confident in it, and the last thing he needed was two of his hands to be melted into nothing.

  So he’d just sat there, contemplating what had gone wrong.

  By the time his hand had finally grown back, he had a smile on his face. Something he hadn’t expected. But, he couldn’t help himself. The worst had happened. He’d messed up the spell and it had backfired—pretty hard—on him.

  But he had been able to fix that.

  And even though he hadn’t managed to use Body Cultivation in a significant, helpful, way, it had shown him something—the path of power had potential.

  If it was strong enough to do that kind of damage to him, without him even knowing how to use it, then how strong might it become when he did learn how it was used?

  Something else had also happened when his hand had been melting, he’d just been too focused to realise it.

  The spell had received some ranks.

  Body Cultivation has taken a step forward on the path!

  Body Cultivation is now a Rank 26 Spell.

  …

  Body Cultivation is now a Rank 30 spell.

  One cannot walk backward on the path.

  I really received ranks for doing that?

  Xavier couldn’t help but shake his head and laugh. Somehow, the System thought he’d developed the spell in a significant way because he’d… melted his hand to nothing.

  Maybe it was because the System didn’t really know much about this spell, but then again, he knew that the System was only describing the level of power that he had attained, and not necessarily giving it to him.

  Xavier stood up and paced around inside his time dilation field. The C Grade Infected Rock Worms were still frozen in time outside of his field, and he ignored them as best as he could. There was a fight going on out there, and here he was just… meditating and practicing with a spell.

  His life had become even stranger when he’d gained that Time Alteration spell. Things no longer felt as urgent when he was in the middle of a life a death battle, even though they were just as urgent as they had ever been.

  All right, well, if I gained five ranks in Body Cultivation for what I just did, that must mean I made some kind of progress with the spell. So, whatever I did, I was clearly on the right track, even if it didn’t work.

  That made him frown. He looked down at his right hand. Still red. Still oddly smooth. Still looking… raw.

  If he’d been on the right track, it meant he would need to try to do the exact same thing again. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he could handle the pain—he certainly didn’t want to intentionally inflict that kind of pain on himself—it was simply that he didn’t see what he could do differently.

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  That flash of insight that he’d had… it hadn’t worked. He wondered if that was because he hadn’t had a proper target. All he’d actually done was try and strike the air.

  But no, he didn’t think it was that. He could launch a spell at nothing if he so wished. Most of his spells, at least. There were very few that were so limited as to need a target—Time Prison was one of them. This one Body Cultivation spell was an entire path of power, which meant that it wouldn’t be so restricted as to be always needed to be used against a target, right?

  That made sense to him, and so he had to run with it. That meant that he’d done something wrong when he’d punched. Maybe he hadn’t been able to expend the energy in the right way. Perhaps because he’d never done something like this in the past.

  He thought about all of the spells that he possessed. On a fundamental level, he’d never really examined how they worked. He didn’t need to. All he needed to do was cast the spell, to will it to happen in the right way, and what he needed to happen would happen.

  The only physical combat spell that he possessed was Enhanced Telekinetic Strike, and that wasn’t a melee spell in the same way that Body Cultivation clearly was. It was a telekinetic spell that had been modified to do what he required it to do.

  Xavier tapped his foot ever harder on the ground the more he got frustrated with this problem. He’d been going through all of these exact same thoughts as he’d sat there for the past four hours and watched his hand grow back. Why was he putting himself through going over them all again? There weren’t any new insights for him to glean without actually taking action, were there?

  So that was what Xavier did. This time, he didn’t sit cross-legged on the ground when he cast this spell. He was standing up.

  Xavier cast Body Cultivation. Celestial Energy tried to flood into his body, but he was easily able to control the flow of it.

  As the energy entered his body, more thoughts entered his mind, these ones coming unbidden.

  When Xavier had first had trouble controlling his aura and his core, it had been because he hadn’t struck the perfect balance at which his Spirit Core burned energy.

  He tilted his head to the side. It was all cultivation, wasn’t it? This was simply a different, more ancient form of cultivation than the ones that he had practised in the past. It was something more raw.

  A form of cultivation from a universe long dead…

  But, he had to believe it functioned in a similar way. Cycling energy through his entire body had certainly seemed to serve an important function. It had made the ranks in his spell go up.

  That’s something the people before the System wouldn’t have had—an indication that what they were doing was actually working.

  For a moment, he wondered about what he was doing. Even before he’d had the Body Cultivation spell, he’d known how to bring Celestial Energy into his body and have it flow around the currents. He’d known how to cycle it through his body, even if that energy always came back into his core.

  This was something that all Denizens learnt how to do. It was remarkably similar to what he was doing right now. It seemed as though he would be able to use all the fundamentals of Body Cultivation without even having the spell, so there must be something that he was missing here.

  Xavier paced around the time dilation field again. Despite how much patience he’d cultivated during Liana’s instruction, he was beginning to feel frustrated. The frustration wasn’t doing him any favours. All it would do would be cloud his judgement, and that was the last thing he needed right now.

  Think, Xavier. Think.

  Body Cultivation must be different in some fundamental way to the other ways that he could cultivate. It mustn’t only be limited to drawing energy into himself and manipulating its movement around his body. There had to be something else that Body Cultivation did.

  He brought up the spell’s description again, even though he knew it was rather limited.

  Body Cultivation – Rank 1

  Body Cultivation is the process of enhancing the body through the use of internal energy cultivated from outside of oneself. When mastered, this energy can be used to strengthen and empower every inch of a cultivator’s body.

  Xavier read over the description several times. He wasn’t pacing around the time dilation field, so much as striding and stomping, leaving holes in the ground everywhere stepped.

  Finally, he stopped himself and took a deep breath.

  Concentrate. You can figure this out.

  One of the fundamental ways in which this was different to his cultivation skills that involved his cores was that the energy didn’t have anywhere that it could remain. There was no place to put the power—it had to be used, or it was lost.

  And he couldn’t use the other energies that were in his cores for Body Cultivation. That was clear. The description had specifically said that the power needed to be cultivated from outside of himself, and that power was Celestial Energy—the rawest of energies in the Greater Universe.

  And so far, the only way that he knew how to use it was to cycle it through his body.

  Or to melt my own hand off.

  But melting his hand off had taught him something, hadn’t it?

  It had shown him that he’d been on the right track. The five ranks he’d gained hadn’t been for doing the wrong thing, even if he’d ultimately been harmed.

  All right. Take action. Let’s try this again.

  He’d already cast the spell, the Celestial Energy was already coursing through his body, cycling down the different channels. The first thing he did was disperse a great deal of that energy.

  In the energy’s current state, it was difficult for him to quantify just how much of it he had cycling inside of him. Not without some effort. So, he focused on it, dispersing almost all of it. The more he focused on the energy, the more he could feel how much energy it actually was.

  This is D Grade Celestial Energy, he realised. And of course it is. I naturally bring in D Grade energies.

  That made something click inside of his mind. He’d been practising a low-rank spell—with ranks only an F Grade Denizen was likely to have—with D Grade quality energy.

  Of course something had gone wrong!

  That was like using rocket fuel to try and run a bicycle. All it would do was burn it…

  Xavier stood still as he worked.

  One unit of D Grade Celestial Energy was the equivalent of 100 units of F Grade energy. That seemed like a good amount of energy to work with, rather than what he’d been doing previously. As the spell was Rank 30, 100 units of F Grade Celestial Energy shouldn’t be a great deal.

  So Xavier held on to a single unit of D Grade Celestial Energy which he cycled through his body. He raised his right hand, the one that had just been regrown, and extended his claws, focusing specifically on the claw on his index finger.

  He pooled the unit of Celestial Energy into that claw.

  As he did, he felt the energy at work. Felt it slowly heat up his claw. It didn’t make it glow red like before. He didn’t think he was using enough for that to happen, which was something that he was glad for.

  Xavier drew in a long breath. He breathed deeply, and fell into a meditative state, harnessing the deepest level of concentration and focus that he could manage.

  He raised his claw, and that same insight he’d had before, when the energy had been pooling in his entire hand, came to him.

  He struck at the air, slicing a point that he targeted with his single claw. As he did, he pushed that energy outward.

  The energy struck the air. There was a small explosion of power. He couldn’t tell how powerful it was—he only used a small amount of energy, after all—but the moment he did it, notifications flooded into his vision.

  Body Cultivation has taken a step forward on the path!

  Body Cultivation is now a Rank 31 spell.

  …

  Body Cultivation is now a Rank 40 spell.

  One cannot walk backward on the path.

  Xavier threw his head back and laughed in joy, and that was when he saw another notification pop up, one that made his eyes go wide.

  It was… a title?

  Accidental Champion!

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