Chapter 138: Chapter 138: Core Disciple

Mila

Dodging the claws of the horse-sized furred scorpion beast by a margin way too close for comfort, Mila sliced a small gash in the monster’s flank with her spear and then dodged backwards, avoiding the monster’s tail. Then, as the monster turned to face her, she flash stepped to the monster’s other side and gave it another small slice before dodging back again.

This was now the fourth E rank monster she’d fought by herself, if you counted the two in the soul net tests, and, starting out, this fight was already tougher than the other three.

It wasn’t the beast. The furred scorpion thing was probably a bit weaker than the five-eyed feathered ox-thing she’d killed in Epecteos’s arena. Instead, it was the environment.

She’d never truly been on a C rank world before.

Sure, some of the environments simulated in the Trial Tower had been similar, but she usually hadn’t been the weaker party when it came to stats in those cases, and Aalam had done most of the killing, so she hadn’t noticed as much.

Being on a C rank world like the capital of the Carium Galaxy Cluster, where the main entrance to the Violet Mountain Blessed Land was located, it wasn’t just that the Laws were clearer and that the effectiveness of stats were lessened in relation to the environment. It was more complicated than that.

Vitality and Toughness, for example, as stats which didn’t have an effect on the environment, were barely suppressed, while the same was true for Spirit, at least in its effect of allowing a cultivator to think faster. Strength, Agility, and the ability of Magic to empower spells, on the other hand, very much were.

This meant fights were much more like you’d see in the movies. Almost every cultivator could mentally react before their opponent’s attack could even half way reach them, making defense and dodging maneuvers much more common. At the same time, the damage of offensive powers were greatly reduced, meaning cultivators could often take hits they wouldn’t be able to in less suppressive environments and recover from wounds even during a fight.

Endurance became much more important and, useful for Mila’s disguised identity, the ability to heal yourself mid-fight became far more practical.

Aiming her spear at one of the scorpion-like thing’s eight eyes, she allowed the monster’s claw to clip her, sending her flying, in exchange for blinding the eye. Midair, she started the process of healing herself with her Breath of Life skill, its effectiveness greatly reduced via a soul shackle to disguise it as the Uncommon grade Triforce Healing, and, after about ten seconds of running away, she was fully healed again.

The scorpion beast, however, was not.

This quick slice and then dodge strategy, combined with the occasional advantageous exchange of blows, continued for fifteen minutes straight, and by that point Mila was starting to feel exhausted. Her disguised level of qi and mana were both getting low, but, given her true amounts of both resource were much higher, she wasn’t feeling much of an effect. The bigger issue for her was the mental exhaustion which came from being at peak alertness for the entire time, something no amount of psyforce could help with.

Thankfully, the scorpion beast was in a much worse state. It had lost seven of its eight eyes, its right claw was mostly limp, and its tail had reduced in speed by more than half, so Mila now had a chance to finish it.

She came at the beast from its right and, with all her strength, she stabbed through one of its already destroyed eyes and into its brain, pushing as deep as she could and then kicking the spear in further while dodging the clumsy tail stab which came her way.

The beast twitched three times. Then, finally, it died.

Falling to her knees, Mila heard the crowd start to cheer. She’d been fighting in a large arena, far more low tech than the one owned by Epecteos, reminding her more of the Roman Coliseum than a modern sports stadium, though there was magic to replace all the same functionalities a stadium would normally have, such as her exhausted face appearing on a giant screen hovering in the sky made out of what looked like clouds.

The three D rank judges evaluating her were about ten meters away from where she landed, in an arena-side box, and, through the use of the Sensory Domain skill she’d shadowed from Aalam, which she turned back on immediately after the fight was over, she could sense the approving looks on their faces.

They were communicating with each other through an application of qi which allowed them to send their voices directly to each other’s ears, but Sensory Domain could pick up that normally hidden form of communication as well, and Omniglot Reader allowed her to understand they were all in agreement to make her a core disciple.

Even while only at 17% mastery, Sensory Domain was a broken skill. Within a certain radius around the cultivator, the length of the radius dependent on the Aura stat, almost nothing could escape the cultivator’s notice. The extra senses provided by the various skills merged to create the skill were all slightly magnified within the domain, which was awesome, but the truly broken part was how the skill operated.

Most detection skills, on a fundamental level, worked by sending energy out from a cultivator’s soul and then calling it back at a rapid speed. How the energy was changed by the environment, such as the type of energy sent out by Danger Sense being altered by karmic ripples created by future pain, then determined what the cultivator sensed.

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This sending out and retrieval of energy, however, could be easily detected by those with much higher Perception, so there was no way for weaker cultivators to spy on those of higher rank without running the risk of being found out.

Sensory Domain, however, worked differently. Instead of sending out and retrieving various types of energy, the skill gave the ability to sense the changes of the naturally occurring energy of those types in the area of the domain without interfering with them. How that worked, Mila didn’t know. Nana Xara said she wouldn’t understand until she reached A rank and, when Mila told that to Aalam, he’d just nodded and dropped the subject, so she figured Nana Xara probably wasn’t lying.

What Mila did understand, however, was the skill’s basic operating principles. If the energy types weren’t already in the area, Sensory Domain would use more of a cultivator’s resources to create them, but that would never happen on a C rank world or in a B ranked blessed land, so, for practical use while she was in the Violet Mountain Sect’s headquarters, Mila could spy with impunity.

Only those with Laws at the grade required to reach A rank would be able to sense what Mila was doing, so, when it came to the Sensory Domain skill, she didn’t need to limit herself at all, her soul shackles deliberately designed to allow the skill access to the full unshackled values of her Perception and Aura stats.

“Thank you, Ms. Ka’Dravone.” The D rank in the center nodded to her in appreciation. “For a utility cultivator to perform so well during her first day on a C rank world is truly impressive, and we look forward to great things from you in the future.

“Given the nature of your skills and class, along with your achievement and obvious talent, we have unanimously decided to accept you into the Violet Mountain Sect as a core disciple.”

The cheering in the arena, which had stopped, started up again, even louder.

Most of the audience members were outer disciples of the Violet Mountain Sect, those that lived on the C rank world connecting to the blessed land, and it was pretty uncommon for a cultivator from outside the sect to be brought in as a core disciple, so they were excited.

Bowing deeply to the D rank, Mila then jogged over to the other edge of the arena and climbed up a set of stairs to a section reserved for those undergoing evaluation, sitting next to the recruiter who’d brought her from Epecteos’s main world of Toril, and slumping down in her seat.

This had been the final test for joining the Violet Mountain Sect, and she’d already passed two rounds of inspection without triggering any red flags, so now there would be only one more round of inspection and the swearing of loyalty left before she would become a full member of the Violet Mountain Sect.

She also, for the first time in a while, was very much alone, unless of course she counted Nana Xara, which she didn’t. Even when he’d been unconscious, the master servant bond she shared with Aalam had always allowed her to know his state and, at any time they wanted, they could share each other’s senses.

It was one of those things she hadn’t really understood the psychological value of until she lost it when going to meet Epecteos for the first time. And now she didn’t have Epecteos either, her only link back to Earth the fact Nana Xara could also talk to Diana.

“You’re getting a lot better at fighting without relying on your main skills.” Nana Xara sent, seemingly as cheerful as ever. “Training with limits to your power like this is actually really helpful, and something I used to force the talents in my force to do, but you hadn’t had time before this. These next six years are going to be very good for setting the foundation for your future growth.”

Silently, Mila started to wonder yet again if she was truly ready to once more act as a fictional identity every day for years, but by this point it was too late to back out.

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