The sky, that had been filled with tiny specks of light, turned from dark black to a deep crimson, to a fiery orange, to, eventually, a bright blue.
As the sun rose from behind the hills, my body slowly got engulfed in its light.
Although I had spent the entire night practising mana techniques, I barely felt tired; This was, of course, because of my endurance stat, which was my second highest stat, right after the mental stat.
During the night, I had learned the basics of three mana techniques: The ‘Immortal’s skin’, the ‘Void rending blade’, and a technique that was described in a book called, ‘The travels of the sky treading wanderer’.
When I practised ‘Immortal’s skin’ and ‘Void rending blade’, I earned two new skills that then got recorded on my status.
The invulnerable immortal’s body (1/8) (0.01%)
Description: Although they inevitably died when fighting the god of revenge, the invulnerable immortal managed to withstand a full-power attack from the god with their body alone.
The immortal’s skin(0.1%): One’s skin increases in strength, at 0.1% it is little better than common grade light armour.
Void rending blade (3%)
Description: Originally a demon beast technique, this skill has been adapted to suit bladed weapons. Because most of the skill’s effect was lost during the adaptation, the skill is not worthy of its name, as it can not cut through the void.
Effect: Allows one to increase the sharpness of their blades. When fully mastered, skill ‘Void rending claws’ is granted.
The ‘immortal’s skin’ which was part of a greater skill, seemed incredibly strong; Even at 0.1% mastery, it allowed my skin to be as strong as armour. Although it was only common grade light armour, it was still amazing.
As for ‘Void rending blade’... I didn’t know what to think of it; It sounded like an amazing technique, but according to the description, it was just a rip-off of a pre-existing technique.
The only reason I decided to keep practising it, was because I would learn the pre-existing technique once I mastered this one.
The third technique also didn’t disappoint; It is a technique that allows one to quickly learn new languages. And, although I didn’t get a new skill from it, it did increase the level of the ‘language translation’ skill.
Language translation II
Descriptions: allows one to communicate in unknown languages
Effect:
I, allows communications in all languages of one's homeworld and the most common languages of others.
II, allows communication in all mortal languages.
Watching the sun rise from behind the horizon, I finished my training.
I had about ten hours left until I would have to face the tribulation and, as such, I exited the courtyard I’d been practising in.
Although I had ignored it until now, I was very much aware that the city lord was paying close attention to what I was doing.
I don’t know exactly why he did, but I decided it was for the best if I left the city quietly; if it turned out he had some malicious intent, I wouldn’t have the power to stop him.
As such, I called the attendant who was watching me quietly and send him away to get me some food.
When the pair of eyes that were watching me disappeared, I activated the ‘first blood’ title, hiding myself.
I quietly made my way out of the city and, with 9 hours left until the tribulation, started running south.
Among the things I learned in the library, there are several ways to deal with heavenly tribulations; One of the ways is to use a naturally forming array that weakens tribulations.
Right now, I am standing in one such array. It is located south of white-gold city and it took me eight hours to get here.
Although it is a powerful array, it isn’t guarded by anyone. The lord in control of this region doesn’t have the available resources to do so; Anyone who has to undergo a tribulation is at the very least at the peak of the mortal realm, and hiring spirit realm experts just to guard a natural array is too costly for anyone but the richest of lords.
It is, however, not free to use. Anyone who uses it has to pay a fee to that lord and whenever someone undergoes a tribulation here, which would be visible from the nearest city, a spirit realm expert is dispatched to collect it.
I don’t have any money to pay this fee, but if I manage to survive the tribulation, I’ll probably be able to leave quickly; The class change evaluation would then be over after all.
I had equipped the armour I’d looted from Wu Hanshan, the dying man I encountered, and was waiting for the tribulation to start.
It took several minutes, but after a while, dark clouds started gathering overhead.
The wind picked up and the clouds periodically lit up from the inside.
The time between flashes decreased and a huge amount of energy started to gather in the centre of the gathered clouds.
‘It’s starting’, I thought to myself, as I unsheathed my knife.
I started circulating my mana and used the ‘Immortal’s skin’ to increase my defences.
At the same time, I used the ‘’Void rending blade’ and my knife filled with mana.
It took roughly thirty seconds to prepare myself, and the tribulation’s energy was still building up.
After keeping my defences up for a few minutes, something finally happened.
Lighting erupted from all over the clouds; rushing along the clouds’ surface to the centre. There, they gathered and the energy that had been building there doubled.
As soon as that was finished, the energy exploded and a huge lightning bolt struck down as if it intended to destroy the planet itself.
Seeing this happen, I preemptively swung my knife upwards, utilising ‘void rending blade’ as best I could and increased the power of the ‘Immortal’s skin’ to the maximum.
The lightning and knife collided and a deafening sound rang out. The blade of the knife bend backwards and it looked like it could snap at any time.
At the same time, the mana in my body ran wild, as the lightning tried to penetrate my body; My attack had weakened the lightning strike massively, but the leftover energy still managed to put pressure on me.
The lightning energy was concentrated on my right arm, with which I was holding the knife, and, as such, I also focused the ‘immortal’s skin’ on that place.
As the energy weakened and it eventually stopped putting pressure on me, I put into motion a trick I learned from the library; I allowed the energy to penetrate my skin and, once inside my body, I surrounded it with my mana and started absorbing it, converting it into mana.
The lightning energy, now trapped in my mana, contained two major parts; Pure energy, this was the part I was absorbing, and a volatile part. As more and more of the pure energy was extracted, the volatile part became increasingly concentrated and harder to contain.
When 70% of the energy was made up of the volatile part, I could barely contain it and had no choice but to expel it from my body, otherwise it would start running wild and, although I would ultimately be able to absorb more of the energy, I would be injured and wouldn’t be able to face the rest of the tribulation.
When all the lightning energy had dispersed, I quickly sat down cross-legged and started the most important part of my plan in facing the tribulation.
The strength of all the tribulation’s lightning strikes were determined as soon as the tribulation started and were based on my cultivation strength at that time, as such, if I managed to increase my cultivation strength after the first strike, it would be much easier to face the following lightning strikes.
Since tribulations usually struck when someone reached the peak of their realm, this wasn’t possible to do for most people; it would take days for someone to pass the barrier between realms after facing their tribulation.
But, since I was only at the second-core mortal stage, I could do so quite easily; my mana core was already saturated with mana and, with the additional energy absorbed from the lightning, I only needed to give it a little push to pass into the third-core stage.
There was a risk with this of course; if I failed to enter the third-core stage by the time the second lightning bolt struck, I would be hard-pressed to survive.
Despite this, I quickly gathered all my mana, including the recently formed mana from the lighting strike, and gathered it in my mana core. There, I started the process of condensing my mana I learned from the library.
I started rotating the mana in my mana core, synchronizing it with the natural pulsating of the core. When I did this, just like resonating vibrations strengthen each other, the mana’s rotating speed increased dramatically.
The fast speed of the mana forced it from the centre of the core and to the core’s edges. Because of this, an empty space formed in the centre of the core, giving it room to shrink.
As the core shrunk, the mana’s speed increased, forcing more mana from the core’s centre, allowing the core to shrink increasingly.
This process repeated itself and, when the core couldn’t shrink any more, the mana that was forced together into the smaller space condensed.
Finally having passed into the third-core stage, I had very little, but very dense mana at my disposal.
I allowed the mana to exit the mana core and quickly observed the core’s changes; It had become slightly more durable and, just like when I entered the second-core stage, an extra opening had formed.
The opening when I entered the second-stage would imbue the mana that passed through it with the space attribute, as such, this opening would most likely give it some other attribute.
I didn’t have time to test it out, however, as the tribulation’s second lightning strike had nearly finished charging.
Quickly taking some mana-stones from my sub-space, I swallowed them and stood up.
I absorbed the mana from the mana-stones and prepared to face the second strike.
Repeating what I did for the first strike, I activated ‘Immortal’s skin’ and ‘Void rending blade’ and, when the lightning bolt struck down, I swung my knife at it.
With my increased strength, I split the lightning bolt in two when I struck it and one part flew off in the distance.
The other part, however, struck me in the chest and, in response, I quickly concentrated the ‘Immortal’s skin’ there.
However, although I had responded quickly, a good chunk of lightning energy managed to penetrate before I could defend against it.
Since I had only just entered the third-core stage, I didn’t have enough mana to both defend against the invading energy and the energy that was now clashing with my defences.
As such, I couldn’t do anything as the invading mana ran wild in my body, rupturing arteries and injuring my internal organs.
With my increased strength, I could still heal, but it would take quite a while, even though I still had to face one more lighting strike.
The lightning that was facing the ‘Immortal’s skin’ eventually weakened and I could use some of its mana to quickly contain the energy running wild in my body.
Although I had way less mana than before, it was also much stronger. As such, I managed to extract 95% of the pure energy from the lightning before I had to expel it and managed to increase my mana by a good chunk.
The second had left me gravely injured, but I still had to face the third lightning strike.
I quickly took out several more mana-stones from my subspace and started absorbing them, increasing my available mana as much as possible before I’d have to face the final lightning strike.
At the same time, I took the jade bottle from the space ring that had also contained the armour and took one of the pills out of it.
The pills, I learned, would temporarily seal someone's injuries, preventing the injuries from hampering someone’s strength. The downside of this, however, was that, when the seal disappeared, the injuries would be much worse.
I didn’t have time to think about this, however, and had no choice but to swallow the pill. Otherwise, I would undoubtedly die to the last lightning strike.
The pill dissolved in my stomach and its energy burst out. The energy travelled through my body, covering up all the injuries.
Although I had gotten injured by the second lightning strike, I felt confident that I would survive and I took out a few more mana-stones to absorb.
“Hey, you! Who gave you permission to use this array?!” As I was absorbing mana, preparing for the final lightning strike, a voice arrived in my ear.
I turned my head and spotted a large figure; The spirit realm expert dispatched from the nearby city after they saw the lightning had arrived.
‘Ah, Shit’, I thought to myself as I quickly thought about what to do. I’d hoped to be able to leave before the spirit realm expert arrived, but now I’d have to deal with them.
“I’m sorry! The tribulation arrived earlier than expected, I didn’t have time to get permission!” Coming up with an excuse, I responded to the figure.
“Doesn’t matter! I’ll make sure that you pay up! If you survive, that is!” The figure shouted again, before taking some distance; The final lightning strike was about to start.
Looking up at the gathered clouds, I prepared myself; This would be the strongest lightning strike yet and I’d have to give it my all to survive.
The final lightning strike started; The clouds dispersed as all the energy contained within was gathered and a sphere of white light was all that was leftover.
The sphere seemed to explode as it turned into a giant, blinding, lightning bolt.
It struck down with incredible speed and collided with the knife I’d swung.
This time, I made sure to control my strength, and the lightning bolt didn’t split apart.
Instead, it lost nearly half its power as it struck me.
I increased my focus on the ‘immortal’s skin’ and made sure to defend against the lightning properly.
The strength of the lightning was too high, however, and some of it managed to get through my defences; Even the armour, which had withstood all attacks so far, got damaged and a hole the size of a fist appeared where the lightning struck.
Luckily, the energy that invaded was dramatically weakened and failed to do any harm.
The lightning weakened, and I eventually got to the process of absorbing the leftover energy.
Since I had the chance to practise twice already, and since I didn’t get injured this time, I managed to absorb nearly all of the pure energy from the lightning before expelling it.
<Third trial complete>
<All trials have been completed>
<Granting ‘Limitless core champion’ class, get ready>
When I absorbed the last bit of energy, three messages appeared consecutively.
When I finished reading them, a warm feeling appeared in my mana core and spread throughout my body.
Any injury disappeared when the warmth washed over it and soon my body was filled with a comfortable warmth.
A soft moan escaped from my mouth as all my muscles relaxed. I enjoyed the comfortable feeling for a while as the temperature slowly increased.
After a while, however, what had started as a comfortable warmth, had turned boiling hot.
My blood, literally, started to boil and the mana circulating in my body disappeared as if evaporating.
The temperature of this energy filling my body increased exponentially, and soon every cell of my body was crying in pain as I collapsed.
My eyes and ears stopped functioning and all that was left was the feeling of pain.
The pain kept getting worse, whilst my body refused to shut down, forcing me to stay conscious.
Seconds turned into minutes, minutes turned into hours, hours turned into days until it eventually felt like the pain had lasted for years.
<’Divine energy resistance’ learned>
I don’t know when it happened, but after what felt like centuries of torture, the pain suddenly disappeared.
Although I had been unable to do so when I desperately wished for it, now that the pain had disappeared, I lost consciousness.
<Class ‘Limitless core champion’ granted>
I think you need a 'Passives:' for Hella' new Divine energy resistance
Edit: In her status
You are correct, I forgot to add it