85 Broken And Bleak, Off To The Next Substation

As Elizabeth watched the world fade back to white, a couple new spatial signatures registered in her senses before they too faded. Now sitting in the lotus meditative pose, Elizabeth's eyes had a glint flash across them in understanding as she thought, 'Guess that's why I didn't transcend the limits of this test...'

As she reflected on the space substation legacy trial, she initially thought it to be quite the switch-up with regards to difficulty, as the substation for Time felt much more clear-cut. However, now that she understood the requirements to get a score above 100, she couldn't even get mad.

As Elizabeth understood it, the Spirit Stones she had been gathering were all "Worthless" Peak-tier Mortal Grade. These Spirit Stones were all in the process of corruption, with their energy bleeding out in the environment; thus providing her with a signature to follow. She received a 100 for collecting all the Spirit Stones of this quality. But, as she broke through to Bad-tier Space Affinity at that last second, she could sense a couple new traces of spatial energy far off into the distance.

The new spatial energy signatures were several times weaker than the one's pulsing out of the Mortal Grade "Spirit" Stones. Yet conversely, that meant that their rate of decay was much weaker and therefore, they held much more energy; perhaps even to the extent of being true Spatial Spirit Stones.

'Actually… now that I think about it, this test was much harder than the test for Time, right?' Elizabeth asked no one in particular, as the true difficulty of the test was starting to sink in. What was the test again? She had been thrown into a black expanse with the only source of light coming from the Inner Strength imbued in her eyes and her task was to sense for spatial energy signatures. Admittedly, the first — and only round — round of Spirit Stones that Elizabeth found were all leaking spatial energy like mad. But they weren't exactly bunched up for her to snatch easily; she probably ran a couple miles around the point she had been dropped off, just to get the first couple dozen Spirit Stones. Also, Space energy wasn't exactly the easiest energy source to locate as it was nigh-indistinguishable from the air around it. If Elizabeth hadn't been training with the [Spatial Meditation] method before attempting this trial, it would be hard to guess whether she'd be able to find any stones at all.

With Elizabeth's thoughts coming to an end, she could be seen shaking her head, as if she were disappointed to the extreme. Her line of sight had landed on the Spatial Spirit Stones that were now crumbling to ash. The Spirit Stones were not taken away with the black expanse rather, as Elizabeth's senses could now perceive, the stones were actually not acclimating well to the absolutely neutral environment of the white room. She could only tell now that her Space Affinity had reached Bad-tier that the environment of the black expanse was actually slowing down the rate of decay of the Spatial Spirit Stones. Now that there was nothing slowing down the stones, their self-destruction came several times faster.

Elizabeth sighed as she got up. Her body had been ravaged by energy to point where just standing left her shaking, and through the pain wasn't much compared to the multitude of heights she had previously experienced, it would be unbearable to continue as she was. Fortunately, Elizabeth had grown somewhat used to staying in pain for extended periods of time. Thus, before she rushed to breakthrough, she first limped over to the exchange hub to check if there was something that might be able to keep her functioning in the Mortal Stage for a little while longer.

Elizabeth had high hopes as the catalog for just a subsection of the exchange hub had several tens of thousands of items for her to choose from. With her Gold and Grey Tickets, there was no telling if there would be methods to suppress her self-crippling power or some magical resources that she didn't even know of that could accomplish the same.

Upon entering the exchange hub and watching Scion's domain materialize again, the uncanny gold man shot Elizabeth a questioning look as he said, "You look like you should take some time off. Might I recommend the Resting Chamber?"

"For now… I'll pass on that. You should already know I have new tickets, so could you pass along the Jade Slips that hold the catalog for resources and methods?"

"Right away~" Scion materialized a new Jade Slip on the tips of his fingers; this one being a bit larger than the one Elizabeth already read. He tossed the Jade Slip at Elizabeth and waited for her to read through it and decide on what she wanted to buy; if she were to buy anything this time around, that is…

Elizabeth scanned through the new Jade Slip with startling speed and after three whole minutes, she set the Jade Slip down to think through her options. 'Holy flipping fuck! There are so many options for me to choose from...' There were countless methods and alchemical pills which could temporarily resolve her problem, but the pros and cons of each option differed immensely. Even some of the enchantments and spiritual meals offered in the resources section of the Jade Slip were tempting. Unfortunately, Elizabeth could only pick one option had stick with it to the very end.

Most of the options either suppressed and or sealed her physical parameters, but wouldn't do the same for the spiritual ones or vise versa, and while some methods were in line with her perfection path's stringent requirements of sealing both attributes, the methods or resources that accomplished that were either too weak to be of much use or they had negative side effects that Elizabeth wasn't willing to endure.

As Elizabeth was on the brink of losing her mind, just as she was about to leave to breakthrough and not have to deal with this unsolvable problem, Scion spoke up once more. The golden man said, "Are you looking into methods for suppressing your cultivation, by any chance?"

"Uh… yeah?" Elizabeth said, her attention now fully captured by Scion.

"Well, you do seem like you're about to pop any second now. You're also the spitting image of what my master was looking for while he created the castle, given the talent you've shown thus far. So… I'll share a bit of extra information with you. It would seem to me that your foundation is as solid as can be before collapse, and you just so happened to have passed master's personal energy majors with the requirement to earn…"

Scion's eyes dulled down and seemed dead for just a couple seconds, before returning with the vigor present prior. He seemed a bit shaken, but quickly stopped behaving bizarrely as he continued saying, "Just heed my advice and take the substation for Foundation. If you come out the other side in one piece… I guarantee that you'll have received something much more impressive than what's available to you with mere unmarked tickets."

"Oh? Can I even take the test in my current state?" Elizabeth asked as she gestured to her bloodied appearance and uncontrollably shaky demeanor.

"Mhmm..." Scion seemed unsure as he flashed Elizabeth an unsure look. He said, "I can't say for sure, but getting a score above 100 should be a piece of cake to someone like you. Just remember that to get what I talked about… you'll need a score that's borderline impossible to achieve."

"Gee thanks! That sure is reassuring." The sarcasm in Elizabeth's voice was impossible to hide as she waved a farewell at Scion's way. The golden man returned a wave as his appearance melted away back along with the bar.

Elizabeth continued limping out of the exchange hub all the way until she reached the opened door that led to the Foundation Substation Legacy Trial. She took a deep breath and entered the room. Elizabeth closed her eyes as she was starting to feel the fatigue her body had accumulated today catch up with her. With eyes still closed, she vowed to take a break after this substation was over with. She only opened her eyes after receiving word as to what she was supposed to do.

[Ascend the steps and resist the pressure to the best of your abilities. Performance will be graded on how far along the steps you rise. The trial will end should you stay static for 60 seconds or if you descend a step.]

Elizabeth opened her eyes and for a split second, she felt her stomach turn at the sight of the never-ending staircase that seemed to pierce the heavens. She silently cursed Scion a million billion times for suggesting that she could complete this trial in her current state, as one of the very few things that were kryptonite to her at the moment was any form of pressure. Akin to a balloon filled to the utter extreme, any such poke or prod with pressure might cause Elizabeth's body to literally burst.

Still, she wasn't utterly convinced that this trial would end just like that, as the golden man shouldn't have given her advice off ill intent. There was no bad blood between them and this test was after all a test of her foundation. Perhaps, she had just over thought things and jumped to conclusions without extending the due diligence this situation required. Besides, even if all was for naught, Elizabeth had been planning on breaking through to the next Stage of cultivation without taking this test, to begin with.

Thus, Elizabeth decided to test the waters to see how dangerous this trial would be for her current state, as she still had a thin margin to go before crossing the point of certain death. Elizabeth gripped her right hand so tight that her nails dug into her flesh and drew blood. She also heaved yet another deep and heavy breath before walking over to the base of the steps and taking the first step up the heaven-spanning staircase.