11 Compendium of pathways

The fight didn't take long as Marcus's energy recovered after the battle with the leaf tiger. Sending lightning towards the second young master that he prepared at the beginning killed him immediately. Seeing this, the two followers started to run away, but Marcus didn't chase them; he was looking at the dead body of the second young master.

This was his first time killing someone. He knew that in this world this was something ordinary, but he couldn't help but be shaken by it.

Calming his feelings down, Marcus finished collecting blood from the leaf tiger, absent-mindedly he went back to his house.

Two days passed, Marcus didn't practice in these two days, he kept thinking and was finally able to come to peace with what happened. He understood how this world worked, and now he was able to experience it first hand. He now knew what huge mistakes he made. First, he froze after killing the second young master if not for the other two guys running away he could've been dead by now. Second, he put too much trust into people ever since running into Zhi Ruo. He knew that not everybody would be as friendly as them.

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Fan Qing was looking down at two young men. He, as a clan head of Fan clan, had the biggest influence in the hundred temples city. The only person that could oppose him here was the branch leader Cheng Gang. Yet… one of his two sons were killed. The two young men in front of him were two brothers that always accompanied his son Fan Yu, Mo Fai and Mo Chang. When they came back yesterday he was devastated, Fan Yu was the son he wanted to take over the clan after him. His talent was much higher than his older brother, Fan Zhuang, and in a few years he would grow stronger and safely take over the position of the future clan master.

But now it was impossible. Fan Yu was dead, and his plans were ruined.

And yet the culprit was still free!

After searching the city and the forest, there were no traces of him whatsoever. After two days he could be anywhere!

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Being oblivious to all of this Marcus stayed in the forest practicing. Three days passed and his practice was going well. With the help of the Divine Body Modeling, his body was getting stronger.

Name: Marcus

Age:15

Health: Good

Aptitude: MAX

Muscle strength: 6.6

Flexibility: 6.5

Speed: 6.4

Energy: 48.9

After the big initial jump at the beginning, the rate of improvement slowed down until it eventually evened out and became steady. In the meanwhile, he also practiced the Basic energy gathering (lightning), and with the Energy wave scanner fully mastered he decided on practicing a new technique. So he searched for something that will be useful in battle.

"Host, I have something perfect for you to learn."

Es? What is it?

"It's compendium of pathways. Pathways are like blood-vessels, the difference is that they transport energy. Their biggest benefit is that they will speed up the time to transport energy from your core to any part of your body that is connected to a pathway. An example would be to your hands, this way you can gather the energy much faster, but those are not the only benefits. Your back is a blind spot; if you want to cover it in lightning, it would need you to focus your attention on controlling the energy to your back and constantly supplying it there. But if you make a pathway that will give you the same effect you will only need to supply the energy. Cutting in half the required focus that can be used on other enemies. But these are not the only possibilities; there are thousands of possible pathways in the compendium. The armor you previously exhibited is even possible to recreate, well… without the increase in power of course."

This is… I have to stop being surprised.

Looking for the compendium in the library, Marcus found that there were countless possibilities. His body had a limit, but it still could fit dozens of different pathways. With this, his fighting powers would increase greatly. In the cultivation section, Marcus found the method of creating the pathways and started to learn it.

The method was very similar to the way he created his core. But it was in no way easier. Instead, it was much more difficult as he needed to give it a custom shape as well as to connect it to the core. But the connection had to be very special, because it lets the energy out to the pathways but not back to the core so it wouldn't rebound and cause damage to his core.

From the compendium, he chose a pathway called Coil acceleration. It had many steps in its construction. First, you extend a pathway from your core at a sharp angle and all the way to your palm, then you form a point close to your core you extend a branch that goes to the other palm, and when you join your palms together, it creates a circle. The connection of the circle and the core must be at an angle so when you put the energy; it would start to circulate and accelerate the energy in the circle further. The very last step is to create a coil around the initial circle, their energy would circulate and speed up the energy in the first circle to an ineligible speed. The effect would be that the energy in the circle will amplify and become more powerful and when released its speed will be at a level an eye will perceive as a flash of light, it would be impossible to evade.

Creating this pathway would take many days as the simplest circle that he worked the whole day was only half done. But while working on it Marcus had a lot of time to think, and he came to realize the usefulness of this technique. First, he could use it to shoot very quick attacks from both hands, and even empower them using the coils. He can also put his palms together and charge multiple times more powerful attack that would be impossible to evade; its only weakness was that he had to charge it.

So he continued practicing.