He clenched his teeth as soon as he ingested the liquid radiant aether. The raw essence of the Way surged through his channels, burning through them in an icy cold feeling, inflicting damage instantly.
The fate marks on his left arm lurched to life, churning around his arm, the runic patterns twisting to accommodate the power running through his veins.
"It was just one drop," he said through gritted teeth. Of course, it was one drop of something only transcendent rankers could deal with. Thankfully, with his semi-transcendent nature and the Radiance power within the elixir, it would be enough to keep him alive and kicking during the process.
"Do not try to invest the power into your core," Ariha said as she studied him. She stood up after a couple of seconds. She had seen what she needed to. "It will take half a day, at the very least. Try to cycle the energy through your apertures and channels as much as possible."
He groaned. Because investing the essence into his core would be way easier and quicker with his void essence splintering the raw power into his own. However, channelling the energy throughout his body as she intended him to do would take twice as much, if not more, time, not to mention the sheer amount of toil it would put him through.
"You'll thank me when it is done," the celestial said as she turned back down the mountain path. "Stay strong, I'll go find your next challenges..."
With that, she was gone, leaving a whimpering disciple.
He really wanted to invest all the essence into his void core and be done with it... unfortunately, to get the best out of his physique, he would have to channel the surging energy throughout his body. This was the way.
Sweat formed all over his body, his upper body sizzling in a reddish swell, glistening with the sweat. His expression held an ugly scowl. Most kinds of agony weren't enough to have this reaction from him. Hell, he was even beginning to adapt to the lashes of the swirls of patterns after a whole month of training.
However, the improvement in that training had been beginning to diminish. And now his temporary master had found another masochistic way to train him. Hopefully, it would all be worth it by the end...
Yet he couldn't help but feel a chill remembering there were still twenty-three drops of Radiant Aether remaining in the vial.
Even though the process had ended, the fate marks on his left arm were burning. The runic marks had already faded from most parts of his body, however, the original fate mark with spirals of runes had reached up to his biceps.
Wiping the sweat from his body, he lay down on the ground. There wasn't much waste excreted from this breakthrough, but it surely had put his body through a tremendous amount of toil.
And from the look of things, it appeared his master wanted him to absorb at least a drop of the Radiant Aether every day. He remained lying silently on the ground, his chest heaving up and down, his fist clenching the small vial which held the precious liquid.
Ariha showed up shortly after, her lips curled in a satisfied smile as she examined his beaten-down state.
"I cannot move a muscle," he mumbled, his eyes hovering on her lithe form.
"You'll get used to it," she said, smiling brightly.
He couldn't help but wonder if his otherworldly cute-looking master was inwardly a sadist. Her next commands surely edged him to conclude that...
"Stop slacking off, dear disciple," she said, snapping her fingers. "You wouldn't make it out of here at this rate."
"Give me a couple of hours," he pleaded. "No, just an hour, I can..."
"Stand up," the white-haired woman snapped. "It is time for you to put to the test what you gained from the breakthrough. It has been a whole month, I hope your battle instinct hasn't dulled."
Reluctantly, he sat upright and found a couple of familiar figures standing behind her. Karim and Ovium, and they too seemed reluctant. Well, of course, his master had probably forced them to come here.