Traversing the trail up the mountain with looming trees - many of them and the shrubbery alongside the trail itself - filled with thorns was a matter of patience and watchfulness and dullness. The only break in the routine were the occassional attacks by monsters, many simple enough to handle and no more intelligent than the overly large mosquitos that attempted to suck his blood. The monsters, and the traps.
Of the two, Arthur much preferred the monsters. After all, those at least provided beast cores that he could then utilize. Traps were just as dangerous, but yielded nothing more than pain and wrecked footing as he found out, upon missing a particularly cunningly wrought one.
He'd stepped over, carefully, the rope that had been strung across the trail, careful not to trigger it. Took a second step over and one more forwards, and found his foot sinking through the leaves strewn ground into a pit. He felt the scrape of spikes on his skin as he dropped, and when he automatically jerked his feet upwards, the downwards pointing spikes now dug into his flesh. He hissed, basically embedding them in his leg.
It took the use of Bark Skin, some careful strikes against the wood and a lot of pain before he dragged his foot free. Even longer to dig out the splinters from within his flesh. Thankfully, there were no monsters during this period, though Arthur found himself cursing quietly as he waited for the wounds to close.
"Got to be careful, this is a marathon. Make sure I'm not too fearful, when I'm not a paragon." Arthur pushed himself to his feet using his spear, looked around and carefully began his climb. He slowed down a little, just enough to keep a better eye on the surroundings and to tap the trail with the butt of his spear before he took a step.
In the meantime, he checked over his status screen to see his gains after weeks of training.
Cultivation Speed: 2.773 Yin
Energy Pool: 24/30 (Yin) + (7/7)
Refinement Speed: 0.1421
Refined Energy: 0.43 (40) +(0/3)
Attributes and Traits
Mind: 15 (Multi-Tasking, Quick Learner, Perfect Recall)
Body: 25 (Enhanced Eyesight, Yin Body, Swiftness, Fast Twitch Faster, Lightning Reflexes, Explosive Strength)
Spirit: 15 (Sticky Energy, From the Dregs, Strengthened Aura)
Techniques
Night Emperor Cultivation Technique
Focused Strike
Accelerated Healing – Refined Energy (Grade III)
Heavenly Sage’s Mischief
Refined Energy Dart
Bark Skin
Seven Cloud Stepping Technique (189%)
Pocket Simpanan Tua (135%) (Refined Energy Dart - 84% Integrity)
Imbued Strike - Yin Poison
Partial Techniques
Simultaneous Flow (181.7%)
Yin-Yang Energy Exchange (89.8%)
Yin Poison Darts (47.9%)
Yin Aura (67.3%)
As much as he would have liked to hit the third transformation, the time cost was too high. Already, with a ten point spread between body and his other attributes, he had found himself feeling a little unbalanced. He could barely keep up mentally with how fast he moved, the size of his energy pool was making it hard to fill at a decent rate and, overall, he just felt a minor sense of dislocation. It was, supposedly, worse as one managed to increase one particular attribute significantly more than the ten points. Of course, humanity was more than adaptable, it was literally their main trait. Given enough time, you could grow used to the difference in traits and push it even further; but it did lead to uniquely predisposed individuals.
Ten points was, of course, not a firm number. As one grew stronger and climbed higher, those ten points increased as the relative difference in attributes decreased.
Even so, Arthur had no desire to be one of the weirdos with too imbalanced attributes. Considering he'd need to increase basically another fifteen attributes, he realised he just did not have time to wait. Not with the problems that the Ghee Hin had already mentioned waiting for him outside.
Sure, increasing his own survivability was important, but that came from allies and techniques as anything else.
Anyway, if he did this right, he would be able to cultivate outside with the stones he acquired now and had coming from the Clan, allowing him to grow stronger before he enterred the next Tower. Less rushing around, unlike this entire damn Tower.
He had to admit, it was partly his fault too. He'd spent time working on his techniques - techniques he was trying to create himself, even - rather than purely cultivating. But there was only so much sitting down, meditating and pulling on energy one could do before growing insane.
What he'd pushed hardest on was the Yin Aura, mostly because developing that had been required to make his Imbued Strike - Yin Poison more effective. He still was not able to keep it going continously, but it now shorted out much less often. Which had quickly made him one of the most dangerous attritive duellists in the clan. If he could survive long enough and land blows on his opponent - whether it was defended against or not - he would, eventually, win out.
Just like how Mel and Jan and the rest had collapsed fighting from the poison on the first floor, his own opponents in the arena eventually became punch drunk and easy to put down. The nice thing about the Yin poison was that, eventually, it disappeared without causing any long lasting harm either, which meant he could utilize it constantly.
Of course, the biggest negative of the current poison was that it took time to build up. Unless he managed a critical blow, it took multiple attacks to inject enough of the poison to make a substantial difference. Considering the fact that the moment he managed a critical blow, most creatures were dead or dying; it made the poison at first glance rather useless against monsters.
Which was fine. Arthur's major issue wasn't with the small individual monsters - he even had an explosive method of dealing with them, and once he got his aura working, an area effect technique. What he needed, and what the poison was geared towards, was the boss monster. The big, nasty creatures at the end that often required multiple attacks.
Just like the hydra that they'd fought before, which if he had the Yin poison working properly would have been dealt with. The point of the poison wasn't to end things fast - he had Focused Strike, and eventually, he'd probably purchase something like Power Strike to combine the both.
No, the point was to take down those creatures that were immune to power attacks.
Or even better, deal with creatures who were immune to physical attacks. After all, working through his aura and Tower energy, it could and should affect non-corporeal creatures. Of course, that was theoretical. He didn't, after all, have any of those to deal with.
"Yin to pin, the kind of boss, that would be a loss." Arthur muttered to himself, eyes sweeping the floor. He'd dropped the rhyming a bit when he was with others, the business of work and cultivation keeping his mind focused.
Now, alone, it'd come back with force. Nervousness, a way to keep him busy and not utterly bored.
All good things.
Now, if only something changed in the damn walk.