“Charge!” Holt screamed as he led his small army forward. They were attacking a horde of servant class demons that had shown up on their lands and were attacking their farms, eating the livestock, and causing great damage. They appeared suddenly and in large numbers. Holt sent out all his generals to lead small armies to deal with the various situation. However, this group had shown up out of nowhere and he had no one left except himself.

Of course, Elwin volunteered but Holt did not want him to go before recovering completely. Elwin couldn’t protest as he could still barely walk properly. So, while Elwin rested, Hazezel took care of maintaining the situation.

Holt was very proud of Hazezel. Though he didn’t have battle talent like Elwin, and he wasn’t an inborn genius like Drake, he was still extremely shrewd. He was great at dealing with political matters and was a huge help to him when Elwin had gone on the expedition. He had taken over all of Elwin’s duties and performed them perfectly.

However, Holt couldn’t think about that too much now. He charged on a horse as he slaughtered many demons on his way. Soon the situation was suppressed, and they had won. Holt returned to the village, but his expression was grim.

The attacks started too suddenly so they didn’t prepare. The initial wave destroyed a lot of their resources, causing great economic damage. The farms he protected was just one example, but even before he arrived, thirty per cent of the crops were already destroyed. The food prices had gone up in the village and many people were unable to afford it. Holt allowed rationing of the village warehouse to prevent the situation from turning into a civil chaos.

However, this was only the beginning. Their troops were still strong now, but they had just been fighting for several days straight before the first wave of demons were repelled. But would there not be a second? A third? Fourth? How many more were there?

He didn’t know, but his intel informed him that there was a large unrest in the Beast Woods.

Holt was confused. They thought they had at least two years before the demons started overflowing, so what was going on?

He couldn’t help but think about those mysterious dark grand mages. Who were they? Are they involved in causing this situation behind the scenes? Did they speed up their plans after realising that they rescued Astoria and figured out their plans?

They controlled a commander class demon, so their abilities were unfathomable. So many people died to get that information to him, but it was still useless. He had to divert his attention to worrying about this enemy in the dark.

‘If two dark grand mages attacked along with a commander class demon during one of these waves, our Jain village is definitely finished,’ he thought to himself before joining Hazezel in the office room.

They read through many reports, signed different documents for permission, and discussed many matters.

Drake was currently in the garden holding a pill in his hands. It was none other than the Zenith pill.

‘I’m such a hypocrite’ he thought to himself. He preached kindness to everyone in the family, telling them not to use slaves among other things. Yet he himself drained the life force out of so many slaves to save Sam and get information about his sister.

Moreover, he was using this pill which was brought by framing Henry for a crime he didn’t do, which he still felt wrong about.

‘What right do I have to tell anyone what is right or wrong?’ he thought. ‘Maybe when push comes to shove, all human beings are just selfish’.

But he quickly shook his head and consumed the pill.

Its effects were miraculous, immediately letting him enter a state of meditation and allowed him to begin cultivating instantly. He would not easily get distracted and break out of the cultivation either.

It was the perfect pill for a newbie mage like him and could increase his cultivation speed several times. He kept cultivating for six hours straight before finally opening his eyes.

‘Not enough,’ he thought. He still had very little battle strength. If it was possible, he would charge into the front lines to help his family, but what could he do? He was only seven years old and had only recently become a mage. He subconsciously turned to his master who was cultivating alongside him.

“Do you want to ask me something?” Ray spoke with his eyes half closed.

“Master, I wish to know how I can cultivate quicker” he asked.

Ray sighed, “If it was so easy to raise one’s cultivation, the number of mages in this world wouldn’t be so few,” he replied.

“But that doesn’t mean that there is no way, right?” he asked persistently.

“Of course, there is. The world is vast, our villages are nothing but a speck of dust compared to the world. There are many kinds of pills, spells, and techniques. Amongst them, there are sure to be some that can help you quickly raise you cultivation realm. However, I do not possess such a method. Even if I did, such methods usually have large drawbacks, often stopping the mage from being able to advance further in their cultivation. As such, I would not provide you with such a method even if I had one.”

Drake was solemn. He expected this but couldn’t help but inwardly cry. What was he supposed to do now? Just sit here and cultivate peacefully whilst everyone else risked their lives?

He had been feeling so helpless when Astoria went missing and when Elwin charged into the Beast Woods, he couldn’t do anything. Now they were in the middle of a war, and he was still doing nothing.

This was unacceptable!

“Please master, I am sure you understand my worries. Isn’t there anything you can do?” he asked pitifully. Ray was his only hope.

Ray finally opened his eyes and stared at Drake.

“What you need is battle strength. It does not necessarily have to come from raising one’s cultivation level…” he spoke slowly.

“Really?” Drake exclaimed.

Ray nodded. “For others it may not be possible, but you, Drake, can learn any spell almost instantly. You can learn spells that are suited to your fighting style and practise them, however, that is not enough.”

Drake nodded. “When I use a spell, it consumes most of my mana. In a battle, I will not be able to use more than several spells before I run out. That is very useless no matter how strong the spell is.”

Ray was glad that Drake understood and so handed Drake a scroll. He accepted and read through it carefully.

This was a special cultivation technique called Mana Strengthening. It condensed a person’s mana and made it purer. Even though the amount of mana that he could hold would depend on the number of mana cores and cultivation realm, this way, the mana he can hold will become purer and more condensed. If he can condense it to twice the original, that was the same as doubling his mana capacity!

But how could there be such a wonderful thing in the world without drawbacks.

The first drawback was that this required extreme concentration to sense and collect the mana from surroundings. This might be hard for others, but he had the Zenith pill, so it was fine.

Most importantly, while this made one’s mana purer, it decreased one’s cultivation by a realm. For him, it was equivalent to making a person restart from zero. All these months he spent cultivating would be wasted, used as fuel to strengthen his mana. Once his cultivation dropped to rock bottom, he would then have to cultivate his Return of Spring Arts again and repeat this process.

The Mana Strengthening was broken into several cycles. In the first cycle, an early-stage true mage will forcefully use up their cultivation completely and become a rogue mage before recultivating back to early-stage true mage realm. This will complete one cycle of the Mana Strengthening technique and would result in the mana becoming two times more condensed. Then once they become an early-stage warrior mage, they will use their cultivation up and fall to early-stage true mage, before recultivating back. Now their mana would be four times more condensed. Finally, they would repeat this when becoming a grand mage, mage king, and mage emperor too, further condensing their mana six, eight, and ten times.

This would make cultivation extremely slow at the beginning stages, but at higher realms, the mage will have much more condensed mana compared to others in the same realm, which would actually make it easier for them to cultivate and break through. Additionally, this would mean that within the same cultivation realm, they would usually be stronger since they could store more mana.

It took him a month to cultivate from the rogue mage realm to True mage realm. Using this technique, he had to return to the rogue mage realm, purify and condense his mana, and recultivate back, which could take several months. However, since low mana capacity was the limiting factor to his battle strength, after finishing the first cycle, he would effectively be several times stronger compared to now. But if he instead spent those months cultivating normally, he would likely not even reach the middle-stage True mage realm and his strength would not increase nearly as much.

Hence, this was the most suitable path for him.

He stopped hesitating and bowed to his master respectfully.

“Wait,” Ray said. He then handed Drake a bottle of pills. Ray didn’t give Drake pills very often. He knew that pills were rare and Ray didn’t have an endless supply, so he was extremely grateful for these. These were mana recovery pills that would help him.

“Thank you very much,” Drake said once again.

“If you really want to become stronger quickly, there is something else you should do as well,” Ray spoke.

“What is it?”

“You should cultivate martial arts. You received a good martial arts technique from your father a while ago, but you haven’t begun cultivating it yet. Like with ordinary mana cultivation, it is easy to make progress in the early stages of martial arts cultivation, and it becomes more difficult over time. Since mana strengthening technique is more difficult at the early stages and less difficult over time, cultivating the two together could be beneficial for you.”

Drake nodded. Cultivating the mana strengthening technique will increase his mana capacity and therefore battle strength by several times within a few months. If he also cultivated the tempered body within this time, he could reach a whole new level.

Drake turned around and sat down to cultivate the Mana Strengthening technique. Over the next few weeks, he had to break down his entire foundation built over the last two months and condense them to make his mana a little bit purer.

He closed his eyes once again, took out a zenith pill and sighed. If he kept thinking about what was right and wrong, he would end up never doing anything. For now, he just had to focus on increasing his battle strength.

He swallowed the pill and under its effect, sank into a deep state of meditation.

…

In the Elven village, Myra was standing in a dark room as she looked at a dead slave. His eyes had burst open, his hair was burnt, his skin was shredded, his tongue was ripped out, and he was dismembered. He was as dead as one can be.

“Another failure…” she mumbled with a dark expression.

She then walked towards another corner of the room where a slave was tied to a wooden pole. This was none other than that slave who was possessed by the leach. Myra used her nails to strike at his throat, causing him to bleed black blood. It was the blood of that leech. The leech screeched and began drawing more life force out of the slave which made him scream in pain.

Myra didn’t mind it at all and collected as much blood as she could before he seemed like he was going to die. She then healed his injuries and force fed him a pill.

This was a miraculous pill that could increase his life force!

He was steadily recovering from that loss but was still extremely weak.

“Please… kill me!” he begged.

Myra paid him no heed as she repeated this process to collect the blood she needed, before finally stopping after five more times. She then walked back to a corner of the room where a bunch of slaves were lying unconscious. She then dragged one to the centre before taking the black blood and summoned a strange creature.

The summoned creature had no face, just a large mouth and a tail. It drank the blood thirstily and emptied a third of its contents before it was satisfied. It then turned to face the slave before vomiting out all the blood. However, this blood now had a green tinge to it.

While this was happening, Myra was closely observing the process to see every detail.

Boom!

His body exploded and Myra suffered a backlash. She was coughing profusely and became dizzy before falling unconscious.

After an hour she woke up lightheaded and feeling extremely weak. She drank some water and recovered a bit of her strength and looked towards the slave who ended up in the same condition as the previous one.

“Again…What am I doing wrong?” she hissed frustratedly.

…

Several months later.

Holt and everyone else were prepared to face new waves of demons, but there was nothing. They were very confused at first, however Hazezel came up with an explanation.

He thought that during Elwin and everyone else’s escape, they had made the commander class demon chase them through a large section of the Beast Woods, which disturbed so many monsters and made them leave their lairs. Overall, their escape had caused huge chaos in the Beast Woods as the demons fled from the armoured mountain bear. Hence, these might have been the demons that ended up leaving the woods and attacking their village.

Since the armoured mountain bear had returned, it was likely that new demons wouldn’t be coming out anytime soon.

However, even this one wave showed everyone how dangerous these demons attacks could be. It was only a matter of time before more waves of demons started coming out.

Also with this demon attack, rumours started spreading around the villages about something happening in the Beast Woods. Hence, everyone was restless and was trying to do what they can to prepare for any more waves.

Drake cultivated diligently. It took him about a month to consume all his cultivation and condense his mana into a purer form.

After this, he began to cultivate the twelve-star body transformation arts. Since martial arts cultivation also required the use of mana, he figured that once he made his mana purer, it would be easier to cultivate martial arts.

But he was wrong.

Once he became a rogue mage, his body stopped producing mana again. So, he had to once more collect the world’s mana refine it into his unique mana. However, since his mana was now more condensed, it became more difficult!

Drake did not expect this challenge and realised that his estimation of two months might be wrong.

But he came up with a new plan. When trying to refine the world’s mana into his unique mana, normally most of the mana would escape and become useless. Hence, he decided to use the rest of the mana to temper his body according to the twelve-star body transformation arts!

This would require extreme concentration to be able to refine the mana while simultaneously tempering the body, however, with the help of the Zenith pill and his matured, adult brain, it was possible.

So that’s what he did.

Drake simultaneously cultivated mana and martial arts.

It was no walk in the park.

Drake often tore his muscles, punctured his organs, broke his bones, and so on. Luckily, Ray was always there to heal him in those cases.

Once he refined enough mana, then he stopped tempering his body and focused on tempering his mana core instead. Once his mana ran out, he would repeat the process.

This guy really is a freak! Ray thought, after seeing his disciple’s cultivation method.