The Titan's Throne

Martial Skills

The Tyrian Double Headed Storm Dragon had sovereignty over many things. One of them was balance of forces; hence a lot of its attacks were about using one's opponent's force against him or her. This required a lot of finesse to execute and even more time to master.

Dragon Descendants only used the kinetic energy from one's fall and the force of the impact between the ground and the participant. This was much easier to execute, whereas a flurry of fists or kicks from your opponents were very difficult to block. Let alone attempt to counter, using the balance of forces.

Hhmm, nope, nope, damn nope. Wait...This looks like the technique which uses the least amount of yuan but it requires one to at least be a middle disciple/student in order to be able to use it. Since I have just begun cultivation, I am only a lower disciple/student.

As Bastian pondered the situation, he rolled the daemon core around in his hand, an old habit of his when he had a problem he could not solve. Sometimes it was a pebble, sometimes a bead. On earth, he used to have a tiny rubber ball he would use.

The situation needed him to be stronger, which meant he had to increase his cultivation somehow within a short space of time

Wait! That is it! But will it work? It's quite dangerous and I am not normal either. I'm confident my body can handle it; I will just absorb a little to test it. Let me just try...

Yes! It worked! Haha perfect!

After skimming through some information in his mind, Bastian had found a technique suitable for his situation, yet his cultivation level was too low to use it.

But he had a flash of inspiration. V only saw Bastian's face show a myriad of different expressions until he finally grinned. He opened up the hand with the core, yet what came out was just dust. Having been surprised too many times, V just facepalmed and shook her head. She was numb to anything that Bastian did.

If it was anyone else, especially cultivators, who had seen what Bastian just did, their hearts would have jumped with fright because Bastian had just done something very dangerous in the cultivation World. Something that usually caused irreparable damage to one's body and crippled him or her for life. He absorbed World Energy directly from a daemon core!

World Energy inside a daemon core was extremely pure and tyrannical. Once directly absorbed by a cultivator, it would do damage to one's body, due to its tyrannical nature. It would also be impossible to process it into qi or mana. Usually, an alchemist would need to process the core into a pill. This World Energy would then be gentle and easy to absorb. The pills created by alchemists were called dans.

Daemon cores were an essential ingredient in the creation of many dans, thus, they were very valuable and expensive. Even dans themselves were incredibly pricy. One dan could cost tens of gold coins. Dans had miraculous properties and were made from rare ingredients. For example, they could increase the speed of one's cultivation, thus they were very expensive.

Alchemist was a subclass of mages, who specialized in making dans and other elixirs for assisting in cultivation or spells. They were undoubtedly the richest type of cultivator on the Sovereign Continent. Their products were rare, highly sought after, and very few.

For one to be an alchemist, he or she was supposed to meet certain conditions. First of all, one was supposed to be a mage. Secondly, one was supposed to have fire and wood elemental affinities. Thirdly, one's affinity for fire would have to be excellent and the affinity for wood would have to be at least average.

Few people met these criteria, thus alchemists were rare, to the point where they were even considered a measure of a countries' economic development!

If a cultivator tried to absorb World Energy from a core directly, without a dan made by an alchemist, their body would be damaged, and they would lose their cultivation, becoming a cripple. Sometimes this could even lead to death.

Yet here Bastian had smoothly absorbed World Energy from a core that was not even a fire or water attribute core! What he had just done was supposed to be impossible. Even when taking proper energy from a dan, one would either get a dan with an attribute one had, or a dan that was attributeless. Bastian had no affinity whatsoever for the earth element, and Kalari Scorpions were earth element daemon beasts. Yet he was able to absorb their energy, and quite smoothly at that.

The dust left over from the core is most likely waste from the energy he could not absorb.

Of course, after a few moments, V merely added this to many of Bastian's baffling feats. She merely stood there and watched. Interested in what he would do next.

Then, V felt a small fluctuation of World Energy from Bastian; this was the sign of someone who had broken through to the next level.

No surprise there, if he had not broken through after successfully absorbing World Energy from a daemon core, then it would be weird. He is now probably a middle disciple, just after only cultivating for a few hours, what a monster.

Due to his powerful body, and the fire qi Bastian had shown before, V had assumed that he was a warrior. Yuan was a combination of both qi and mana. Bastian had the ability to use both qi and mana together as yuan, or separately as he had done earlier on. In the meantime, he only planned to use qi, to make V assume he was a warrior until he fully understood what was happening in his body.

Bastian also did not fully trust her either. So far during their travels together, she had been good, but it could also be just a rouse, although Bastian doubted it. His skill set made him highly adept at judging people.

Even if she was from a super-assassin clan, she was still just a child. Bastian may look like a child, but inside he was a man, one who liked to play the fool but hide his cards well.

In such a world, where the strong preyed on the weak, it was dangerous to blindly trust someone. Especially someone whose history one knew nothing off. Not to mention she was already a Custodian.

That meant she already had a Master and had submitted to someone else. Being the smart man he was, Bastian never asked her about it. This was also one of the reasons V got along with Bastian so much

She had many secrets and did not like being interrogated, especially about her history. Bastian was a child just like her, but when it mattered, he minded his own business. He was the first person she had met outside her clan, who was as mature as she was, in her own age group.

Not to mention, he clearly had secrets of his own. Due to his overly friendly nature, he did not seem like the type to keep secrets. Yet to V, this nature, coupled with his intelligence and abilities, made him a very good companion, and most likely, an even more frightening enemy.

As soon as Bastian broke through to becoming a middle disciple/student, a look of ecstasy filled his face. When he did it, all the yuan in his body compressed itself and increased in quality, leading to his body madly taking in more World Energy. This breakthrough had increased his World Energy capacity and absorption rate. It also felt very comfortable, like warm and cool hands were massaging every part of his body.

After the sensation was over, Bastian put on a grim expression. The scorpions were only 70 meters away from them now, so it was time to act.

"V stand back, don't interfere, I'm going to finish this myself," said Bastian, as he flexed his muscles and bounced on his toes. V merely smiled and complied, taking a few steps back.

She was ready to enjoy the show. Her only hope was that it would last longer than the previous one. Although they were in a slight rush to get back to the city, she was more interested in his abilities, so she did not object to his proposal.

At that moment, however, she made sure she was close by, in case anything happened.

I hope the fight lasts long enough for me to see what he can really do.

Unfortunately for her, fate had other plans.

Martial techniques were also divided into different categories. These were defensive, offensive, support and movement. The most expensive were the defensive and movement skills, particularly because they directly increased one's chances of survival. Offensive skills were also quite expensive, these skills directly damaged one's opponent.

Support martial techniques or skills were the cheapest or the most common. They were the kind that either fitted in none of the other three categories or were in more than one. In general, it was well known that the more uses a martial skill had, the less potent it was in one particular area.