Chapter 28 Promotion 2

He picked up the conduit and small knife inside the basket. With that small knife, Nicholas punctured himself in his index finger, and afterwards he let the blood drip from the finger to the conduit to start the process of awakening.

Then he put the conduit on his chest near where his current soul core is residing. Right after, Nicholas proceeded to follow the instructions given by the slot scroll connecting his current soul core to the conduit on his chest.

He focused on forming a connection between the core and the conduit; it took some time before the conduit began to glow in a bright red hue. This means that Nicholas was able to connect the two, and the start of the awakening is upon him.

After that, he began to follow the next step on the slot scroll in his mind by engraving runic text using his mana between the conduit and the soul core. This would stabilize and facilitate the scroll slot formation. He wasn't sure of the content of that runic text since he could not understand it. But Nicholas was able to accurately engrave the runic text as if it were breathing for him since all the engravings were directly transferred to his mind.

Finishing the engraving, he then grabbed a promotion gem from the basket, dropped a bit of blood on it, and then placed it next to the location of the conduit. Gradually, the conduit absorbed the promotion gem, which was then absorbed by his soul core.

When the final trace of the promotion gem was absorbed by the soul core, it marked that he had finally completed the initial process of awakening. After that, he waited for his soul core to grow. As time passed, his soul core has been gradually increased in size and changing in color.

His old core was colored yellow, indicating it contained earth elements, while now it is still mostly yellow but now contains a hint of blue. Gradually, as his soul core expanded and the amount of blue color developed, a weird barrier formed, separating the two elements on either side.

This semi-permeable barrier allows a certain passage between two elements to isolate each other. He then followed the next step in the slot scroll, which isolating the elements to either side. Nicholas focused on isolating the two elements in between the semipermeable barrier.

Time passed slowly while Nicholas was concentrating on this endeavor. Sweat formed in his temples and palms, and he was carefully guiding each elemental particulate to its respective side, separating it from each other. After a while and a lot of hard work from him, he was able to isolate the pure earth elemental particle from the pure water elemental particle in his growing soul core.

Following the next step of the slot scroll instruction, he again engraved a runic text in the semi-permeable barrier in his soul core. After engraving the runic text, it transformed the barrier, which then suddenly hardened. After that, the large soul cores were slowly trying to separate from each other, forming two separate soul cores when they finally separated, like a cell doing a mitosis.

Nicholas, seeing the twin soul core finally separating made him heaved a sigh of relief. According to the instruction, this concluded the process of creating another slot for a soul core. Then, he quickly grabbed some enchantment stones from the basket beside him to enchant and strengthen his newly formed water soul core.

Just like last time, it took a lot of time and effort, but he was able to enchant his new soul core 15 times. But unlike last time, he didn't faint or bleep from any orifices since his physical and mental strength was a lot higher than when it was his first awakening.

After finishing his enchantment, he looked at his chest and noticed another weapon symbol beside his current dagger in his chest. It was a grimoire, and seeing this, he quickly used his phantom phoenix amulet to create an illusion, removing the grimoire symbol near his chest.

He succeeded in creating another soul core in his body, which will allow him to learn more skills and elements in the future.

Nicholas: "Well, that was a resounding success. I should rest for a bit before promoting."

He rested for a bit, lying down on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, and contemplating how the girls were doing in their own promotion while also taking into consideration what to do in his promotion.

Nicholas: "Maybe in the future, I will receive more story quest rewards, which can open another slot for another soul core."

After 15 minutes of lazing, Nicholas finally began to sit in the meditative pose again.

Nicholas: "Okay, let's do this."

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So this time it will be his promotion; he will focus on just strengthening his soul core element instead of mixing elements in his pure water and earth soul cores.

Secondary elemental cores normally available on the market are a mixture of two basic elements, such as the thunder drake, which is a mixture of wind and fire elements. This secondary elemental core, when incorporated with the soul core, will increase the element level and allow you to learn other elements you don't possess.

But since he didn't want to contaminate his pure water or pure earth soul core with other elements, he decided to only upgrade and not learn new elements. So, he began to check his pendant for a suitable secondary elemental core.

Nicholas: "Lucky, there is a pure earth elemental core."

This secondary elemental core, according to its description, came from a tungsten golem, a rare variant of earth golems that normally drops elementary elemental core. It can be said to be luck from Nicholas side, but his luck ran out with that. He didn't find any pure water secondary elemental core; he got pure fire and wind.

Nicholas: "Tough luck, huh?" he mumbled.

Nicholas: "Let's worry about that later; let's focus on promoting my earth element first."

He earnestly began his promotion; after that, he picked up beast materials from the basket and began to meld them with the elemental core. It was quite a boring and tedious task since you just need to incorporate the materials into the elemental core using a scroll that can be bought from the market.

After some time of incorporating, slowly the texture and appearance of the elemental core went from clear to dull from the incorporation.

Nicholas: "This looked weird, but they said it would make the core more malleable but stronger."

The core is indeed a lot more malleable, based on his inspection of the elemental core. Putting his trust in the instructions for promotion, he then took out his earth element soul core and began to fuse his core with the weird-looking ball that was previously the elemental core.

Nicholas: "You can do this. 3.. 2.. 1.."

After some hesitation, he began fusing the two; he found it quite tedious and boring. The elemental core and soul core were fusing at a rate not visible to the human eye; it was hard to do so since it was required not to use a conduit like when first awakening. So there is no visible passage from the soul core to the elemental core.

After an hour of concentrating and focusing on fusing the two, He finally succeeded. in making progress. It was only a quarter way finished, so he took a deep breath and continued this process.

After a grueling three hours, the soul core and elemental core are nearly combined. The beast material that made the elemental core weird-looking was chipped away, leaving a beautiful crystal-clear elemental core inside his soul core. Seeing this, he breathed a sigh of relief. To be honest, he didn't completely trust the process when he saw the result of mixing the beast material with the elemental core.

Nicholas: "Never judge a book by its cover, I guess." He mumbled under his breath.

He admired his soul core appearance; it currently looks like a prism with a large, clear ball inside. This ball was reflecting lights on the yellow prism, making it sparkle and shine in different shades of yellow.

After a few more minutes, the soul core and the elemental core were finally fused. Nicholas immediately went to the next step of the promotion process, which is incorporating the promotion gem.

The promotion gem is not solely used when awakening; its primary usage, as its name suggests, is for promotion to the next stage. A promotion gem can be incorporated without a conduit again since the fusing of the soul core and elemental core will leave them in a vulnerable state for a promotion gem. So he grabbed his promotion gem and some enchantment stones in preparation for the final step of the promotion process.

Nicholas: "I hope it is not as difficult as my previous awakening after I over-enchanted when creating my soul core."

…

The same night at Nicholas's chamber

He succeeded in promoting the earth element to level 3, and he was able to assimilate the secondary elemental core that came from the tungsten golem to his earth elemental soul core. After succeeding on the final step of promotion and enchantment, he was so elated in his development today that he jumped in joy while shouting finally like a kid.

First, he was able to awaken another soul core, which unlocked another weapon and element for him.

Second, he was able to successfully promote his earth elemental level to 3, which allowed him to learn higher-level skill tomes or scrolls.

And third, using his new water and earth elements, he will be able to unlock a new advanced element, although it will take a bit of practice, patience, and determination. He was sure he could use the nature skill or poison skill after some time, which requires level 1 earth and water magic combined.

Though he was a bit disappointed that he was not able to promote his water elemental core since, first of all, he was not adept at using and manipulating water elements since they were just recently awakened,. So, he decided to practice and acquire proper control as a safety precaution before proceeding to promote his water elemental soul core. And secondly, even if he did have the skill, he was not currently in possession of a pure water secondary elemental core.

But this didn't disappoint him.

He was not in a rush; his current abilities and status far surpass his peers by a lot. He made a safe decision to master his new water element first before promoting since it requires precise and adept control when promoting, like he experienced when promoting his earth elemental soul core. But most of all, some of his skill tomes in Gacha rewards will have some use now that he will unlock an advanced element.

Nicholas Alexander Curtana

Level: 20

Age: 10

Stage: 2

Element: [Earth Lv. 3] [Water Lv. 1]

STR: 120 (+110)

DEX: 105 (+125)

INT: 140 (+185)

VIT: 100 (+140)

AGI: 100 (+90)

Power Level: 37400

Equipment: [Battle Hunter's Set] [Dessert Dweller Daggers] [Vitality Enhancer Gloves] [Dexterity Enhancer Boots] [Phantom Phoenix Amulet]

Skills: [Scan Lv.8] [Sands Embrace Lv.4] [Earth Manipulation Lv.7] [Dagger Throw Lv.7] [Dust Gale Lv.4] [Earth Clone Lv.5] [Earth Wall Lv.7]