Three days went by in the dark Abyssal Cells. Edward Vistro stopped keeping time by the sun since he couldn't see it anyway. Now, he counted by his mana core's pulses. The cell's air was heavy with ozone and spiritual energy. To most, the room looked empty, but anyone with spiritual senses would feel a hurricane brewing.
Edward sat in the center of the stone floor, still as a statue. Inside, he was doing something that would make even masters of the Luminaris Kingdom go crazy: inscribing the Forty-Eighth Circle into his core.
He used the Celestial Needle technique, vibrating his mana to bypass the core's natural resistance. He was patient, like a diamond cutter. The forty-eighth circle was a thin violet light, capable of holding the weight of a mountain. He smoothed the inscription to ensure mana flowed smoothly, unlike the turbulent flow of human mages.
With the forty-eighth done, he moved right on to the Forty-Ninth Circle, drawing mana from his channels and circulating them through his meridians. The pressure in his chest grew as his core spun fast, vibrating the stones below. He was building circle by circle, making sure everything was perfect.
Finally, as his internal clock signaled the end of the third night, he started the Fiftieth Circle.
This inscription was intense. The fiftieth wasn't just another circle; it was the Great Stabilizer for the Adept Stage. As it locked in place, Edward felt a change in his being. The ten Apprentice stage circles and the forty Adept stage circles synced into one powerful engine.
With a surge of his cultivation base, Edward felt the overwhelming amount of mana brewing inside him. It was now official.
He had officially reached the Middle Level of the Adept Stage.
Edward breathed out a blue vapor. Despite this big achievement, he frowned.
"Slow," he thought, frustrated. "Too slow. The third night's almost over, and I just made the breakthrough."
To any other cultivator in the Human Domain, his complaint would be seen as madness. Getting from the initial to the middle level of the Adept stage in just three days was unheard of. Most spent years to achieve this. But Edward wasn't comparing himself to others; he was comparing himself to his peak as the Mage Emperor. Back then, he could form thousands of circles in one breath. His current fifteen year-old body was a constant drag, holding back his true power.
As the Middle Adept rank stabilized, Edward felt the familiar, intoxicating expansion of his Sea of Consciousness. The mental space behind his brow—the realm where his spiritual energy was processed and stored— increased.
This expansion was the real reward of the fiftieth circle. It gave him the mental power to calculate the complexity for Epic-ranked spells. In his previous lives, his favorites had always been the spells that bridged the gap between the living and the dead, or the physical and the metaphysical. Now, one such spell was finally within his reach: The Extraction spell
This was a High Elf spell, modified by Edward for a human sea of consciousness. It let the caster pull out a living thing's essence—its marrow, blood-core, vitality—and turn it into something consumable. It was nasty and called Dark Magic by the Church of Light, but Edward thought magic was neutral, only useful.
Accompanying the expansion of his consciousness was the growth of his Spiritual Sense. He released it, passing through the Null-Stone walls and earth above. It swept through the Vistro estate's foundations.
His range had grown significantly. He could now perceive the world with startling clarity. He scanned the main mansion, seeing the heat signatures of the servants as they lay in their cramped quarters, and the pulses of the guards on the walls. He felt his sister, Sara, asleep in her suite. He felt his father, the Marquis, full of magical energy, asleep in the master wing.
Everyone was asleep, safe in their wealth and walls, unaware of the predator below.
Edward turned his spiritual gaze down, into the sub-basements and deeper caverns.
The silence became a mix of scratching, sniffing, and chattering. The Goblins.
The Vistro family, like many of the great houses of the Luminaris Kingdom, maintained a breeding pit of low-tier monsters. These creatures were used to test the mettle of young squires and to provide a live target for the mages to practice their spells. The goblins were vermin—cruel, cowardly, and biologically dense with a raw form of essence that humans found distasteful and difficult to digest.
To most mages, goblin marrow was poison. To Edward, it was material for his Body Tempering pill.
He saw thousands of them in the dark. They were as plenty as ever, their numbers kept up by the Marquis's handlers. Their marrow was rich in what Edward needed to harden his bones and widen his channels. Without this physical refinement, he would be unable to increase his cultivation speed, which he currently couldn't do, due to how weak his mana channels were.
Before moving, Edward checked his Suppression Rune.
It sat perfectly over his core, a complex rune that suppressed his cultivation base to the outside world. To anyone, the cell remained empty of mana. Even the Marquis, with his spiritual senses, would perceive nothing but an unawakened soul. This was Edward's greatest advantage. In his eightieth life, he had spent decades perfecting this rune, learning how to hide a mountain inside a pebble. As long as he didn't unleash a Cataclysmic-tier spell, he was just an unawakened child.
He stood, his joints popping like dry sticks. He hadn't moved in three days, but his mana kept his blood flowing.
Edward stepped toward the cell's center. He ignored the iron door and locks.
He started calculating. Teleportation, was complex. One had to consider the density of matter, gravity, and Mana Displacement.
For an Adept, a few kilometers was the limit. For Edward, it was crossing a room.
He gathered mana at his feet, creating a fold in space. The air distorted as he synced his body's vibration with the goblin pits' coordinates two kilometers away and five hundred feet deeper.
Everything was silent.
One moment, the Abyssal Cell held a 15 year-old boy. The next, the cell was empty, with only the lingering scent of someone and Sara's untouched food.
The transition was instant.
Edward appeared in the monster pits' tunnels. The smell was awful—wet fur, excrement, and rotting meat. But as his feet touched the earth, he set his gaze on the goblins ahead.