91 Experimenting with Essence

Sweating profusely, Oli was sitting in his cultivation room.

When using the Infinite Compression Art, Oli was able to handle it much better now, at least the first level of it. But sadly, like the Infinite Torture technique, the first level is basically an introduction to the rest and only exists so the users won't die from the true training that will follow it.

Either way, Oli was glad that he was slowly but surely making progress. He was sure to complete the first level given time, so he was feeling much better about himself.

And now, he wouldn't completely collapse from exhaustion after a few hours. Only after using it for most of his cultivation time would he collapse now.

Today, though, Oli had a few things that he wanted to test.

The reason he was using the Infinite Compression art was to better understand how the essence itself was training his body and how it was able to do that.

Oli realized that the Infinite Compression art only worked so well as a homemade replica of the Infinite Torture technique because of the nature of his earth essence.

Because he and his father used the same cultivation technique, the Ravaging Earth technique, both of their essence natures would naturally ravage and breakdown whatever they come in contact with. And by using that property of his essence nature, Dioro and Oli were able to forcible strengthen their bodies over time.

It also made Oli curious about what would happen if Rathe tried the Infinite Compression technique with his essence nature. Thanks to his nature ripping and splitting anything in two, it probably wouldn't work as well.

So, Oli determined that only those with a suitable essence nature would be able to make full use of his father's creation, the Infinite Compression art.

Next, Oli wanted to test his dark essence and discover more about the nature that he was cultivating.

He retracted his earth essence with a sigh of relief and proceeded to fill the room with his dark essence.

For about half on hour, Oli watched his dark essence move around in the room and how it would interact with anything that it touched but that wasn't long enough. He watched it for another half hour, hoping he could discover what made it special. But still nothing.

Oli pulled out the ancient manual that Trada had left him and start thumbing through the pages.

Carefully reading through the desired effects that the technique should have at each plane of cultivation, Oli started to realize just how much time it would take for essence nature to fully grow.

According to what he read, the full effects of the Dark Abyss technique would only start to appear after entering the elder plane and were most prominent while in the divine class.

Curious, Oli continued reading until he reached the part talking about breaking through to the perennial plane. Though it was interesting, it was pointless to read that part so early, so Oli skipped ahead to find what the full effects really were.

Trying his best to understand everything, Oli finally skipped through the actually technique portion of the perennial plane explanation and found the effects.

The calm Oli soon froze and smiled as he figured out the true potential of the Dark Abyss technique. He also learned why Trada's species were called the Toxic-shadow Dragons and not just the Shadow Dragons.

With time, the Dark Abyss technique would be similar to Vloz's Phantom Assassin technique in terms of stealth. But there were still some key differences.

First and foremost, Oli's technique was king grade and would help him break through to the king plane, not just the perennial plane.

Second, though both taught total concealment of their essence and presence, they did so differently. While Vloz's essence would totally disappear and become nonexistent, the Dark Abyss technique would allow Oli's essence to eventually mask itself as the natural essence around him.

Third, the Dark Abyss technique was like the Dioro's Infinite Compression art, but more complete and had even stricter requirements.

The Dark Abyss technique would tap into the potential hidden in the bloodline of Toxic-shadow dragons and allow the toxicity in their bloodlines to slowly merge with their dark essence nature. Over time, this would allow the dark essence to literally have a toxic and corrosive nature.

There was even a chance that the toxicity would grow strong enough for the dark essence could evolve into death essence. But that was only mentioned as a possibility after completing the technique. In other words, the oppotunity of evolving the essence would only come after entering the king plane, which still got Oli very excited.

So, Oli noticed the two biggest differences.

Vloz would assassinate someone by hiding himself and unleashing the bloodthirsty nature of his essence. With a single overwhelming strike, he would end his opponents.

Trada would be able to conceal herself as well but wouldn't use physically strong attacks to kill with an overwhelming strike. She would break the opponent's defenses and allow the toxicity of her essence to corrode and weaken her opponents from the inside out.

Though the applications were eerily similar between the two techniques, Oli could tell that they were totally different from one another.

Thinking back, Oli reimagined the fight between the tired and weak Trada against the sturdy and unmoving Brak.

Oli finally understood why Trada lost that fight.

In her weakened state, her usual attacks weren't enough to break through Brak's greatest strength, his ridiculous natural defenses as a Razor-hide Dragon. And because she was too weak to do so, her toxic attacks couldn't affect Brak like they normally would.

Brak was probably one of the hardest natural opponents for Trada to face already, but her weakened state after giving birth made things almost impossible for her.

In his heart, Oli reaffirmed his desire to defeat Brak. This time, for both his father and for Trada. She had given him a lot, and he was only now starting to understand how many advantages she had offered him.

"I wonder…"

Oli retracted his dark essence and took a few deep breaths.

Then, he released essence from both of his hands, but a different type in each. In his left hand was dark essence and earth essence was in his right.

Slowly, Oli attempted to bring his hands together, wondering what would happen if Oli tried to fuze the two together.

When the different essences come in contact with each other, nothing spectacular happened.

Oli saw that they were able to touch one another because they were pure essence, but Oli also guessed that was because his essence nature was quite weak since he was only a novice.

There were no signs of the essence blending together or even attempting to. Both essences seemed to acknowledge the other's existence and just moved around the other whenever Oli forced them to touch.

Sad that his idea proved completely unfruitful, Oli wondered if there was ever someone who had managed to blend essence types. It was a question he would definitely ask both Ania and Vloz.

For the next hour or so Oli tried to fuze his two essence types by any means.

He tried to use force by cupping his hand together and keeping both his earth and dark essences inside, but that proved pointless.

Then, Oli tried to wrap a small portion of dark essence with his earth essence. However, the dark essence quickly faded after it was consumed by the earth essence. The same thing would also happen if Oli wrapped his earth essence in dark essence.

Oli discovered that controlling essence while it was wrapped in a different essence was incredibly difficult and Oli couldn't maintain it for even a second.

Next, the young gorilla tried something totally different.

In the past, Oli had stored a few boulders in his void ring. This was so he would also have a target to test attacks while in his cultivation room.

Taking out a boulder, Oli got a step away from it closed his eyes. He placed his wrists together and cupped his hands in a spherical fashion. After bending his legs and readying his stance, Oli gathered both essence types into his palms, one essence type for each hand. Though they still weren't blending together, Oli continued until both hands were coated in essence.

"HA!!!" Oli shouted as he forced his hands forward into the boulder, causing a small explosion.

Looking at the debris, Oli noticed that the boulder had taken two kinds of damage equally. One half was reduced to small pieces of rubble. The other half also broke but into fewer pieces.

Realizing that his essence nature really was too weak after seeing that neither essence was able to fully do what their cultivation techniques could produce, Oli sighed.

Every shortcut to strength that Oli could think up was quickly shot down by reality.

There was only one last thing to test in search of a shortcut, but Oli's hopes weren't too high.