With her resolve steeled and everything handled, Cely immersed herself in quiet cultivation. On this note, let us actually talk about what happens during this. In this reality, will can influence energies.
Every will can do this to different degrees with different energies, from which emerges the concept of talent in certain cultivation systems.
For Cely, she absorbs Qi, also called Spiritual Energy.
Concentrating on the Qi around her, she guides it into her body, where she then uses a specific way of circulating said energy in order to make it hers. It is then pulled into her dantian, a kind of central accumulation point of the body, where the energy is integrated into herself. Practically speaking, this energy becomes a part of herself.
Energy reserves used for fighting are different. They skip this circulation and just get absorbed into the dantian to be used on command.
Yes, surrounding energy can be used to fight as well, but it is slower and less powerful than techniques originating from oneself.
This is how domain skills work. They establish an area where the energy has the will of the user enforced upon it to cause a phenomenon. This, though, takes a lot of energy to initialize.
Right now, Cely was just cultivating, though. It doesn't take much effort and, for beings at the Immortal Tier and above, it can become automatic. She kind of missed that, though; meditation like this was relaxing.
It only took a day for Cely to break through to the 5th stage of the Golden Core Realm since she had leftover accumulation. After this, though, it slowed down a lot.
Each stage took about a week, and Cely stayed in meditation for five weeks straight.
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Dan looked slowly through the documents before him. He was careful not to miss even the most minute of details in the reports he had gotten. 12 more people had died over the last month, and the entire council was getting impatient. All of them had lost people over the last months.
Also, just yesterday he had gotten news from the Divination Department.
They foresaw death. His, and that of all in the city.
They saw how towering monsters rampaged the streets, as the council tried to use the formation to hold them off in vain. It would be a massacre.
Dan bit down on his hands in frustration. His sharp teeth drew red blood, shimmering with traces of gold.
"Brother?" a voice interrupted him.
At the door stood Dan's brother, Seth. His figure was way more lithe than Dan's. He was similarly tall, if slightly larger, and his fur had the same color and patterning as Dan's.
Dan looked up at his brother, who was watching him with a hint of concern.
"You think we will be able to change that fate?"
Dan's voice contained a hint of fear. He had seen the memory crystal the Divination Department had created firsthand. The figures of those Monster Gods... Dan knew them all.
They were way above what Grimm could handle.
Worst of all, their communications and escape paths had been cut the day they had gotten the divination. Dan felt that whoever was behind this wanted him to know. They wanted to tell him and all the others of the COG that there was no escape. They wanted the council to despair.
Dan had not told the people in the city about the reason for a lockdown. He just told them martial law had been enacted to finally find the murderer. In a way, that wasn't wrong.
"I don't know."
Seth's voice showed resignation. Dan knew that Seth was usually positive, so seeing him like this exasperated his own despair as well. Unable to contact Lucifer for help, he saw no way to prevent the inevitable.
He wouldn't stop trying, though.
"Tim!"
Calling out into the hallway, Dan heard a crash in the distance before scrambling footsteps approached the door. It was Tim, his secretary.
Tim looked just like a normal human. Circular, thick glasses. Slightly messy hair and an unkempt general appearance aside, that is. He was also clumsy. He kept tripping over himself and breaking things by accident.
Outside of that, though, he was Dan's secretary and had been reliable in that regard.
"Y-yes, s-s-s-sir?"
His stuttering voice echoed as he fell into the room, holding documents that spilled on the ground as he fell.
"Inform the rest of the council members. We will assemble for our last stand in the guild and activate the formation then."
"R-right away, sir!"
Tim replied, saluting with his right hand, forgetting that he was holding documents, making them almost spill out of his grip again. Panicking, Tim caught it soon enough and scrambled to keep all the documents in his arms.
Right after, he ran out of the office, and one could see him tripping yet again over the doorway.
Dan just shook his head in slight bemusement. No matter how much of a clutz Tim was, he was reliable. He had no idea why he was so clumsy, though. Immortals should not have those kinds of issues when coordinating simple bodily movements.
The Doctors Guild was unable to determine why this was the case, though, and concluded that Tim must be suffering from a high-level curse they could not identify.
Tim wasn't going to run around the entire city to contact the rest of the council members and instead spent time using a communication talisman to talk with each one individually.
"S-sir Klein, I a-am to inform you that you and the rest of the council members are to go t-to the Adventurers Guild for a final stand."
Tim's voice had the same cadence as always as he steadily walked through a tunnel that was definitely no longer in the Adventurers Guild. No matter his tone of voice, his steps were steady and his facial expression indifferent.
Having infiltrated the upper echelons of the council for years right under the nose of Dan, he had ample experience playing his character. It took a few minutes before Tim arrived at the end of the tunnel, a large door appearing before him.
Without hesitation, the man pushed it open, revealing a large hall with multiple figures.
The Monster Gods of Nimmer Forest.
Most of them had shrunk themselves to fit the hall, but they were still way taller than the man, at least 10 meters tall.
"Young Grimm, I am guessing the preparations are complete?" The deep voice echoed from a towering wolf sitting at the center of all the other Monster Gods. It was a Fenrir.
Its bluish-gray fur shimmered in the dim light of the hall, and its pristine fangs glared in flickering candlelight.
"Don't worry, Your Majesty, Ovel. I have secured all 729 formation nodes, and the Transcendant Heaven Sealing Formation is already activated. After today... hehe."
Timothy Grimm's face twisted into a menacing smile as he remembered those pictures of slaughter and destruction the Divination Department had produced.
"The council and that traitorous Edward who killed my father will cease to exist"
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Cely awoke from her meditation in high spirits. She had fully stabilized her realm at the peak of Golden Core and would, in not too much time, get to the Nascent Soul Realm. She had honestly missed the feeling of advancement a lot. She had been stuck at the peak of Transcendent God for way too long back then.
As she was preparing to take out her egg to check up on it, a tremor rattled her room. A second later, an aura of divinity radiated across the entirety of the city of Grimm. Followed by a second, then a third. Each one stronger than the last, before finally, Ovel joined as well.
His aura as an early-stage Transcendent God surpassed all others combined, and it physically distorted the laws as it pressed upon Grimm.
Cely felt the threat of death the moment this began, and with each aura layered on top, the feeling got worse.
Looking at the grains of AO-500 in her ring, Cely narrowed her eyes. It was too coincidental.
She couldn't care less about the fact that this was likely preorchestrated and could only go out to face the music, though.
Stepping out of her abode, Cely saw 15 shadows towering in the sky. Among them, she saw the Chaos Hydra that had threatened her before, and a smile formed on her face.
"I wanted to erase you when I regained my strength, but it seems fate has other plans. Your destiny is to die today."
As she uttered these words, Orioth's heads turned to look at her in confusion. It heard what she had said, but it had no idea how a mere Golden Core Realm being could dare utter such words.
The next second, though, it and all the other Monster Gods could tell why.
Their combined aura of divinity, which had suppressed Grimm into submission, shattered in a mere moment as the terror of who Cely used to be was about to be unveiled.