95 Qualitative Change

Lucien tried his best to try and break the third chain, but to no avail. He hasn't tempered his will enough yet. Once his attention was not on the Freedom Path, the chains disappeared as if they were not there in the first place.

But he could still feel the pressure coming from them. Feeling a spot 2 meters away from himself, Lucien focused and willed to move there. He felt pressure coming to crush his whole body as if it was squeezed through a single point in space and then emerged on the other size. From the outside it looked like his body was in two places for a second as teleportation was incredibly fast.

He felt like his insides were turned after the process and wanted to vomit.

'uhhh... so Henry was protecting us before, and now that I'm doing it myself... I understand.'

It took him a minute or two to recover.

'It seems I will have to keep using it to get used to it... the way it is right now I can't even apply it in a fight.'

He kept teleporting around the cave and the period he needed to recover was shortening. Just as he was about stop, he felt the Soul Devour Clone break through to Rank 3.

The only reason it was the Soul Devour Clone that did it first was because it only was focused on one stat. It was a really unique case compared to the other Paths, since all of them could enhance at least 2 stats even with the junkies manuals, but not the Soul Devour. It was only focused on the Soul and didn't have any applicability to fleshly stats. This was the reason it was easier to breakthrough, but on the other side it would be considered quite weak if people only looked at stats, as it would be a true glass cannon.

'It seems good things come in pairs today.'

Lucien didn't really need to go find Soul Energy before attempting his breakthrough as he had plenty left over from the war. He had gotten to 1000 Soul easily and everything else that Soul Devour took before the conversion in Existence Points was stored in the Crimson World.

He could have used it to get a nice boost to his Soul, but he preferred to first use what he would need for his Path and then put the rest into his Soul stat.

The current Soul Devour took 1/10 of the Soul of victims that died within the Domain and transformed it in Soul Energy that could be used to improve the Soul or for breakthroughs. In that war Lucien himself killed at least a 100 Rank 1 Practitioners which had ranging powers from low Rank 1 to peak Rank 1, so on average he got 7 points of Soul Energy from those 100 Practitioners.

At that point a bit less than 450 was used to bring the Soul to the peak of Rank 2 and the rest was stored in the Crimson World. But those were only the victims that died by his hands, in his Domain many others died, so much that in the end he had over 400 000 Existence Points only from the Souls of those unlucky fellows. Lucien had calculated them to be at least over 1000 Rank 0 Practitioners and another 100 Rank 1s.

In total he had around 1600 points of Soul Energy in the Crimson World waiting for him to use. If he directly used it on his Soul it would jump to 6600, but he was much more interested in the Rank 3 Soul Devour Path.

Since it was a Rank 3 advancement Lucien knew that it wouldn't happen in a matter of minutes like Rank 2 Paths or silently like comprehending a Middle Path, so he left the Mountain before his attempt. He didn't go really far, but just went to the nearest forest and found a big rock. Walking towards the rock, Lucien used the Earth Path and merged with it. Once he was at the center, he used his absorption power to make a small area for his body and sat down.

He was not going to use any energy from the outside world, but he was not sure if the breakthrough itself would cause a commotion.

Silently and unbeknownst to the world, Lucien began his breakthrough. Using the Soul Energy from the Crimson World without any reservations, a day and a night passed.

As everything was quiet, a sudden boom was heard even through the thick layer of stone, which signified to opening of the final gate to Rank 3, but things didn't end there.

Lucien was currently feeling like his head would split and explode. As he broke through, he didn't feel a 9 meter domain that opened, the Soul Devour Path was unorthodox and didn't have those small domains where you could control and turn everything in Particles for the Path, Soul Energy was unique to lifeforms and couldn't be transformed from anything else. But what he felt was his Soul Domain expand drastically. All kinds of information flowed in and his brain could barely process it.

5000 meters...

50 000 meters...

500 000 meters...

5 000 000 meters...

It went from 5000 meters to 5000 kilometers. He suddenly felt like his Domain covered a quartile of the continent, but it was definitely not as clear as before, which was a fail safe for himself and his brain. If he focused on an area it would clear out and he could see everything.

Lucien already knew that Rank 4s felt the Soul Energy that spread and he needed to bail, but he decided to throw one final look at a place and see the reaction.

As he focused on the royal palace of the Scarlet Empire, the image in his head cleared and he saw that the throne room was already empty, Henry had left in a hurry as some officials looked confused.

'Curiosity, father, could kill you one day.'

Lucien didn't hesitate and moved his whole body to the Crimson World, he didn't even leave a spec of his presence behind, and didn't use his Soul to see the scene outside. He was pretty sure things would go south any moment as Beasts would definitely come to investigate something so close to the Mountain.

'All Existence, is there a way to see outside without alerting Rank 4 or Rank 5 Practitioners of our presence?'

-The marker that is left in the other world when you transmit your body here is untraceable by Ancestors, it can also be used to peer into the world without alerting anyone. Point of view cannot be changed through.-

'So what I would see is inside of a rock? Well not like I have anything better to do. Show it.'

A translucent kind of screen appeared in space and projected a scene. Lucien wouldn't have taken more than a minute inside the Crimson World, before calling out to see and what he expected to see was a rock. But there was no rocky walls in his vision, in fact he didn't recognize much of what he was seeing, even through he walked here.