11 years old

Time passed by as Lucius and Delilah became as close as best friends, although it wasn't as if they had a choice anyway as they were the only people there. It was Delilah who first asked when they would be leaving the Garden as she didn't want to grow up in a white washed maze no matter how beneficial it was for her cultivation and Acacia simply responded that it would be soon. Lucius was used to his mothers mysterious ways as she ducked and weaved around questions like they were unjustly thrown at here, making you seem like the impatient fool for asking her such things. Orion on the other hand would give too much information. You could ask him a question about the Basils and he would go on for hours and hours on the history of his glorious race. Lucius was severely lacking in the social department but he was slowly becoming accustomed to interacting with Delilah and although they both had strange tendencies, since they had been in seclusion most of their short lives, they were able to somewhat harmoniously study and train together. Delilah was full of vibrant energy and was always initiating the conversation yet she could turn around and read books for entire weeks without stopping. Lucius had found that she was a germaphobe, as she washed twice a day and made sure to scrub plates and utensils clean before and after eating, she was quite skilful with her trunk and the rest was accomplished with simple techniques she adapted for such chores. Like a water ball technique for washing, wind blade technique being made softer and gentler for drying and so on and so forth. These simple changes in techniques had given Lucius insight into the different techniques and the various uses of just a single technique, helping him accelerate through the first floor of the Library.

Once he had read most of the techniques he was able to see the correlations of techniques and formations which enhanced his ability to tweak his own formations' performance as he desired instead of simply using the pre-established formations that were in widespread use. This was an intended affect that Acacia had thought up from the beginning as she knew how studying techniques could help greatly with symbolry and thus with the other segments of creation. Most alchemists, artifact refiners and formation masters would spend all their time on their craft and disregard learning techniques so most of what they would learn would merely be memorizing formations or pill recipes and such and then need a load of experience to actually advance through the tiers, so it wasn't truly that strange to see an old man who had only reached the peak of tier 1 within one of the sections of creation after studying it his entire life. Lucius however was able to receive direct advice from a great master like Acacia and he was following the pre-determined optimal path to advance through the tiers as smoothly as possible. So by the time he was 11 he had reached the peak in all three segments, he had refined a peak grade qi gathering pill as well as arranged a peak grade qi gathering formation.

The artifact refining was different though as although you could refine artifacts to gather qi for you it was highly impractical as pills or a formation would be much more powerful and sensible. Instead to reach peak grade tier 1 of artifact refining although most would simple create a peak tier 1 weapon or amour, Acacia had given Lucius the difficult task of refining the most used and widespread auxiliary artifact, the Tier 1 'Space Ring'. Although it was a Tier 1 artifact it was usually only refined by Tier 2 artifact refiners as it involved the difficult symbolry of space. Space was one of the higher tier energies and thus the difficulty in manipulating it was far higher than the other elements. Of course if someone were to try and refine a Tier 1 weapon that used Gravity formations it would be just as difficult and the same would go on for the other higher energies. That being said, Space rings were some of the most sought out commodities as having the ability to carry things around within a space in your ring is an extremely useful ability and this was pushed even further as you could put space rings inside other space rings, if the one that houses the other rings is of a higher tier. So if you had a Tier 2 ring you could fill it with Tier 1 rings for even more storage. Lucius had already planned out a storage system he would have after crafting a Tier 2 ring, he would designate a ring to each of the resources he would collect. He was looking forward to being able to store and utilise his farmland to the greatest ability using the storing and isolating features of the space ring that could help keep his herbs fresh indefinitely.

At this point he had also reached the fiftieth floor in the Testing Tower and he had already gained a multitude of experiences in fighting against groups, magic beasts, duelling and assassination missions. He would also spar with Delilah and was able to admire the level of technique with which she manipulated earth. She did go easy on him though as she had already reached the peak of tier 1 and was encroaching on the Second Boundary whereas Lucius hadn't even reached the First Boundary yet. He had already reached the peak of qi condensation with 9 bands of qi around his qi core. He had condensed the core by a monumental amount compared to normal qi condensation realm cultivators so he would gather and refine more qi so he could increase his qi density while still maintaining the right size qi core. The Cosmological Art was slow paced compared to other top tier cultivation methods like the phoenixes' 'nirvana rebirth scriptures' or the dragons' 'Path to Dragon Emperor' since the way the Basil bloodline worked was unique and thus required a unique cultivation that focused on the beginning greatly and would get faster as it went along. Lucius would have to condense such a fine qi core as he would be creating Runes within his qi core instead of condensing a qi pearl as would normally happen in the Initial Accumulation stage.

He would have to create the 5 Primordial Runes of Origin!