Chapter 86: Advancing by Leaps and Bounds

As the tentacles slowly retracted themselves, a large head came out, looking right at the place Cylius has been. Fortunately, it seemed to not notice anything as it overlooked the surrounding corpses before going underwater again. 

After an hour after the squid had gone back to the water, a space tear surfaced before a person came out of it, looking rather cautious. 

When he noticed that things weren't going well, he quickly got into a random space tear he could find. The space tear was ten kilometers away but by forming his own space tear and teleporting, he was able to cross that distance and come right at the natural space tear.

If he had used his own space tear, the monster was sure to have found it and attacked it. Once the space tear became unstable and got destroyed, even if Cylius were to teleport, the monster could use the slight gap and get his aura. 

Cylius would surely not be comfortable knowing that a false domain existence was chasing him. 

Fortunately for him, the monster only got suspicious of his smell and after knowing that there was nothing there, it went back. 

It even seemed to have left the corpses of the crabs and the birds. Maybe they were too insignificant for it. 

Due to the aura of the monster, almost all of the survivors died. They already had severe injuries and after the monster fully unleashed its aura upon them, most of them died and the ones that survived were barely able to move. 

The remaining survivors didn't even bother to fight with each other as they feasted on their own kin before taking a good quality corpse back. 

Now, the battlefield was riddled with corpses and a slight negative aura already seemed to be forming above it. But once any aura that had a negative element came, it was immediately suppressed by the sea aura. 

There were no chances of it forming at all. 

Since there were huge gains in front of him and he didn't detect any creatures nearby, Cylius helped himself and devoured most of them leaving only two peak first-tier crabs and five second-tier monsters. Which one was a middle stage second-tier with the comprehension of 40%. 

The ones he left were only average ones and those unique ones with the comprehension of two runes or such were all devoured by him. 

[Host has absorbed a total of 1103 Lined Blue Crab species. Beginning transmission of data...]

[850 Lined Blue Crabs. +212.5 spiritual energy]

[200 Mutated Lined Blue Crabs. +75 spiritual energy]

[50 Elite Lined Blue Crabs. +50 spiritual energy]

[2 Guardian Lined Blue Crabs. +20 spiritual energy]

[Amount of runic comprehension:

12% pure Water Rune

45% diluted Water Rune 

15% pure Ice Rune

70% diluted Ice Rune]

[Host has absorbed a total of 1048 White Eye Water Bird species. Beginning transmission of data...]

[900 White Eye Water Birds. +270 spiritual energy]

[150 Mutated White Eye Water Birds. +67.5 spiritual energy.]

[45 Elite White Eye Water Birds. +54 spiritual energy.]

[3 Guardian White Eye Water Birds. +36 spiritual energy.]

[Amount of runic comprehension: 

17% pure Water Rune

53% diluted Water Rune

13% pure Ice Rune

30% diluted Ice Rune]

Seeing the statistics, Cylius nodded his head as he turned the pure and diluted runic comprehension into crystals before leaving the site. 

The aura of the false domain existence might be able to fend off various monsters for a while but it would dissipate soon and when it did, he would be in for a big trouble. 

Since he had already collected all the corpses and the valuable things, he left the scene through a space tear. 

.....

In a random cave.

Looking through the gains he had obtained during this expedition, Cylius let out a satisfied sigh. The gains were truly immense. 

He was sure that if he organized the gains he had today, he would be able to improve by leaps and bounds. 

But he has to process these materials first before trying to cultivate them. Otherwise, he would only end up with a diluted core and runic comprehension. If he did it right away, he might be able to gain great strength in a short amount of time but in the long term, he would be sure to suffer. 

With the goal of reaching the peak, he would obviously be stupid to do that.

[Total amount of spiritual energy: 785]

[+10 vitality]

[+29% pure

+98% diluted Water Rune]

[+28% pure 

+100% diluted Ice Rune] 

These were his total amount of gains. If he processed them, he would be sure to receive much.

First, he would purify the spiritual energy obtained. This way, he would be able to improve the quality of it and prevent dilutions when he built his core. 

After purifying them, the spiritual energy decreased by 10 times but the quality of it was much better than before. The spiritual energy from before had a colorless white color but after purifying it, it now had a beautiful silver color. 

Each value turned into a silver string as it moved around the area slowly. 

Inspecting the quality of the silver strings, Cylius nodded his head in approval. It was slightly better than the one he had purified before. 

So after preparing everything, he sat down in a meditation pose before starting the process of building his core. 

First, he was refining the silver strings one by one but after some time, he changed his approach and started devouring them 2 or 3 at once. 

As the silver strings entered his body, it willingly got devoured by the core as it slowly merged with it. As time passed, the core became bigger and bigger before it stopped. 

15 spiritual energy was required to build 1% of his core which meant that with his 785 spiritual energy, he would be able to build 52.3% so with the original 4.1%, his current core completion was 56.4%. 

After the core were his runes.

His vitality was already 10 point, the limit obtainable by second-tiers, so he would put them into cultivating his death rune. 

Using vitality as a fuel, he would be more sensitive towards death runic strings which with it, he would be able to cultivate faster. 

However, this place wasn't a place with a dense amount of death strings so he would have to put this matter later. 

After this was the runic comprehension obtained from the dead bodies of the monsters. Unfortunately, due to most of the souls perishing from the aura of the monster, the runic comprehension he obtained wasn't much compared to the original amount.

Still, using the comprehension he obtained, he would be able to advance greatly so he didn't really care about what he lost. 

He was thinking of refining the comprehension to turn them into a pure rune string not affiliated to any elements before cultivating them into dimension runes.

Turning them into a pure rune string would be hard for sure. It was said that only third-tiers would be able to accomplish such a feat but with his talent in perception and soul, he was sure that he could do it. 

Turning the diluted comprehension into a pure one took an hour to do. It now looked like a clear crystal with a bit of blue surrounding it. 

The process wasn't hard and the thing Cylius had to worry about was the runic element separation so he didn't care much about it. 

Pure runic strings would absorb their surroundings resulting in the runes we know of today. That was also why the elemental runes were the most common and unique ones such as blade and animal runes were rare. This was the reason there are so many runes and pathways but cultivating one to the peak would require one to stay in a place rich with that rune. 

For example, if a person had comprehended the flower rune, they would have to stay in a place rich with flowers so that they could advance further. 

Starting the process, Cylius went into the deep perceptive mode. 

Everything appeared as vague yet clear. Everything seemed to have zoomed up as they constantly twisted and turned. 

Keeping the vision, Cylius turned to look at the rune crystal. There were two crystals. One for water and the other for ice. 

Getting his perception out, he slowly entered the crystal. In it, was a world of blue with a few strings contained within them. The strings had a deep and bright blue color as it moved freely within the place. 

As soon as he tried to approach them, the strings would run away and not let him catch them at all. The solution to this wasn't hard, he only had to keep them in place before catching them. 

Before approaching the next, Cylius made a cage with his spiritual perception before trapping the blue string inside. The trapped string was alarmed as it frantically slammed itself against the cage, trying to break through. 

However, instead of breaking free, it became even more constrained as shackles came out of the cage and kept it in place. It could only see in helplessness as the spiritual perception came closer and closer to it. 

After catching the string, Cylius immediately devoured it as he turned it into a delicacy of his soul. It tasted great and Cylius could see a flow of cool substance entering his soul, purifying it. 

As this water string wasn't a water rune and only a pure water element, it was a cultivation resource. Popular among people at that, It could help purify the soul. 

After repeating the process more than a hundred times, the crystal was now clear of any element within them. It now looked invisible with a faint white hue surrounding it. 

If one didn't place attention, it would've been hard to notice. 

Mortals wouldn't even be able to see this crystal while only peak first-tiers might have the chance to notice it if they placed full attention. 

Removing the runic elements within the other one also, Cylius was now left with two faint white crystals that were practically invisible to the normal eye. 

Now, if he absorbed them, his cultivation was sure to rise greatly. 

If said, Cylius didn't expect the process to be so easy. Maybe his soul was far more advanced than the rest. 

Absorbing them was easier than separating them. One only needed to hold the crystals in their hands and place them in front of their dantian. 

In a few hours, Cylius had already absorbed all of them resulting in his new status.

.....

Name: Cylius

Race: Thousand Eyed Ghost (half evolved)

Tier: 2

Runes: Dimension (61.47%) Death (12.1%)

Strength: 4

Speed: 9.7

Agility: 50

Soul: 50

Mana: 8.1

Lifeforce: 10

Active skills: [Mind Control lv.4] [Teleportation lv.3] [Lifeforce control lv.2]

Passive skills: [Yin manipulation lv.4] [Living detection lv.4] [Dimension Control lv.2] [Higher Being] 

Description:

[Comprehended two top tier runes and is the current host of status.]