Chapter 106: Fundamental Defence Techniques Part 1

With his Hunter's mind, Adam's perceptivity and focus were enhanced and superior to others at the same cultivation level as him. Using it, within only 9 hours of practising the use of his energy, he felt as though he could wield his energy quite easily and focus it on specific areas of his body.

He made sure to take the time to do that practise as without it he wouldn't have a chance at using the Fundamental Defence Techniques that required great energy control and skill to use.

"Time to actually attempt to use and learn the fundamental defence techniques" mumbled Adam to himself as he felt as though he was ready to do so.

Adam found that he used a lot of mental power to control his large energy storages and he realised that he had to make sure that his Intelligence and Energy Stats were equal to make it easier for him to wield his energy storages.

Luckily his Intelligence Stat was only 1 point lower than his Energy Storages and with his Hunter's mind, that helped him increase his focus, he was still managing to control his energy storages.

His aunt had recovered and seemed happy as she began getting her life back on track, which allowed Adam to focus almost completely on himself and his future. After cultivation and strength was revealed to him, nothing else enticed him and it was currently the only thing he was aiming towards.

He was also aiming towards complete independence and didn't want to rely on others as he was contemplating forming an organisation of his own after the tracker that Elizabeth placed on his motorcycle left a sour taste in his mouth.

It really did remind him to not trust anybody and he wasn't planning on leaving his training for anything other than to visit his aunt and Chase occasionally.

While increasing his strength from hunting, he was also acquiring gold, which made it so that through hunting in the dungeon, all his problems were solved and made it so that he didn't ave to worry about anything else while doing so. 

Blocking all thoughts out of his mind, Adam allowed the Hunter's mind to take complete control as he blocked out his own emotions and thoughts that were distracting him.

He didn't want to spend too much time training in the Fundamental Defence Techniques as the training despite giving him EXP, wouldn't give him gold which he could have earnt through hunting.

Adam knew that the system gave him an advantage over anybody else and the incredible Mastery Feature would allow him to increase his mastery of anything by spending stat points on it.

What Adam was planning was to learn and grasp the basic concept of both the skills until he had gained 1% mastery of both of them, then to spend stat points to increase his mastery of the skill.

Starting off with the External Hardening Technique that was used by External Cultivators, which Adam felt was the easier option, he began to spread his External Energy to every part of his body.

Making sure to cover his entire body and coat it with External Energy, Adam as per his master's brief description of the skill, attempted to harden his body's cells.

However, he realised just how vague and meaningless his master's description of the skill was after multiple times of trying to use the technique to no avail.

He had no idea how to harden his cells and had tried to compress them with energy to increase their durability, which he couldn't do, and he also tried to increase their size and density with energy, but he couldn't do that either.

He was struggling to alter, reinforce or effect his cells in any way and he was unsure of what his master truly meant by his cells. Thinking about his master he had no idea how old he was or just how developed his knowledge of the modern world and the human anatomy was, so what he would call cells might not be what he believed to be cells.

No matter how many times he tried to he couldn't even detect his cells which were on such a small microscopic scale, he had no chance of sensing them with his current level of sensory ability.

[Maybe what he meant by cells was its basic definition, a small compartment in a larger structure, which could be that you can harden different parts. Or maybe I took his explanation wrong and interpreted it as individual cells, when I should have interpreted as large groups of cells] thought Adam to himself.

[The best and most useful part to harden of my body to harden would be my skin, which is the first part of my body that will be hit. But ideally, I should aim to be able to harden my muscles, bones and Internal Organs as well so that I become immune to all attacks] continued Adam to himself.

He was trying to be too precise with the process, which was only expending his mental power and wasting his time, instead, he should aim to harden entire parts and not single cells of his body that he couldn't even sense.

He was unsure of how capable his cells were of being hardened and how exactly to harden them, but the only thing he could think of was to store energy in the specific area that he was planning to harden.

It took him a while to be able to spread his External Energy throughout his outer layer of skin, despite him become more accustomed to using his energy, as it was a very difficult thing to do. 

However, after doing so he didn't feel his skin become hardened and to test that, he summoned his Leporidae Summon and ordered it to slash his arm gently.

His body was the same as it was before and the energy that he had spread around and stored within his skin didn't have an effect on his body.

He could feel that his energy wasn't being used by his skin and was only stored, so instead of pumping energy into his skin, Adam tried to do something weird.

It took hours of practice, but he had finally succeeded in completing his weird idea, which was to absorb energy from within his body and around him into his skin.

He wanted to use his skin as a beacon, then when the energy reached his skin, instead of absorbing it through his pours into his energy storages, he absorbed it into his skin. 

After many failed attempts, Adam finally succeeded in doing so and he was pleasantly surprised to see that his skin was burning all the energy that he provided it from his own body and the energy around them in order to enhance itself.

[It was just like I thought, instead of providing the part I want to harden External Energy, which will be stored by the specific part of my body, I need to draw it in from that part and expend it using that part that I wish to harden] thought Adam to himself joyously.

Summoning his Leporidae Summon again, he ordered it to slash his arm again and he was shocked by the results.

The Leporidae Summon's claws cut into his skin, but his skin was much more resistant to the strike which massively lowered the damage and the deepness of the wound as even the Leporidae Summon itself was shocked by the increase in resistance that Adam's skin displayed.

{Ding, 1% Mastery of the External Hardening Technique has been achieved} announced the system.

Adam couldn't help but jump up in joy despite the pain he was feeling in his arm as he opened up the system's Mastery Feature.

[System explain to me exactly what the technique is, its effects and its limits] ordered Adam who only had a basic idea of how it worked and wanted to know everything about it and its capabilities.

{The External Hardening Technique allows the host to harden their exterior body using External energy and is limited by the user's cell energy storage capacity and the amount of energy that they have. The host isn't limited by anything with your unique constitution and as long as you spend enough system points to improve your mastery of the skill, you increase your strength} stated the system.

{Currently, with your 1% Mastery of the Technique you can only increase your Resistance by 1 point using 1 EESP each minute and as your mastery of the technique increases, so will its power} continued the system.

{The different stages of mastery of skills are:

Beginner Level that equals to thirty percent of the maximum power of the skill.

Low Level that equals to fifty percent.

High Level that equals to seventy percent.

Peak Level that equals to ninety percent or higher.

Perfection Level that equals to ninety-nine percent and it could be said that it could not get any better} informed him the system.

"Interesting" mumbled Adam to himself as he prepared to spend system points on his mastery of the skill and begin to learn the Energy Sleeve Technique.