11 Recovery (1)

Resting under the shadow of the blueberry tree, Leto felt refreshed. His garden looked like a mini paradise, full of fragrant flowers and exotic fruit trees.

The swans swam in the artificial pond. The hot summer breeze was pleasant to the touch, as Leto slowly drifted to sleep.

After a pleasant nap, he woke up with sleepy eyes and yawned. Some small leaves were stuck in his hair.

His stomach growled unhappily. He absentmindedly rubbed his tummy, feeling hungry, yet lazy to go back to the palace, reluctant to leave.

His sleepy eyes fully opened, as he seemed to get something. Turning around, he saw the unripe blueberry tree he slept under, and grinned, feeling the anticipation.

He touched the coarse tree trunk and closed his eyes. A small stream of energy moved in a set pattern in his body and exited from his hand, pouring into the tree.

Sudden changes happened to the tree, which could be observed with naked eyes. The leaves grew lusher and vibrant, even growing in size, appearing full of vitality.

At a glance, the tree seemed to be aging, which wasn't true. In reality, the tree was gaining more perfect form. This was the power of vitality essence.

Leto closed his eyes and concentrated his mind on his soul-bound treasure.

''Only 2 points were deducted. The efficiency's about the same. Thankfully, it's not damaged.'' Leto nodded inwardly and observed the growth of the tree.

Slowly, along with the metamorphosis of the tree, its fruit also miraculously transformed. The blueberries became more exquisite and crystal clear without blemish. Also, they turned partially transparent, temptingly revealing the succulent insides.

''Oho, it's turned into crystal berries. Sweet!'' Leto grabbed one and ate it. It was even more delicious and juicy than previously. He felt refreshed as if he had taken bath in the spring water.

''It's not too different from original crystal berries, no, it might even be a bit superior! If I eat this regularly, my spirit will surely recover, and I might even strengthen it a little.''

Leto felt emotional while feeling lucky to have found such miraculous soul-bound treasure.

There were miraculously plenty of uses of vitality essence.

Evidently, it was some kind of energy, but what kind exactly, Leto hadn't confirmed thus far.

There were many sorts of energies, but none were this versatile.

Leto's hypothesis was, that the cryptic tree bark was connected to the most mysterious, Genesis power, the power of creation that only true supernatural existences could use. In his previous life, despite many years of tireless research, he couldn't come up with a plausible explanation, as even in the high-level planar area he lived in, the genesis power was the stuff of myths and legends.

At first, he thought the vitality essence had the power of life, as its primary use he found at first was healing power.

As long as he didn't run out of vitality essence, ordinary wounds or diseases wouldn't be able to do anything to him. Even cut off limbs could be regenerated at according price. The stronger the body, the more energy it took to heal, so the cost went up correspondingly.

With the passage of time, he found many new unexpected uses for it, one of them being the miracle he did moments ago - perfecting of the lifeform. As long as he poured enough vitality essence, he could transform even the most useless lifeform to something significant.

Another use was cultivation boost, which was the most inefficient one. Technically, as long as he had tons of vitality essence, he could continuously breakthrough like crazy, but the price was ridiculous. In his previous life, Leto only used this ability when he reached the bottleneck or when he needed to stabilize his realm.

Next major use he found, was that he could learn skills super fast as long as he paid appropriately.

For example, at his level, he could only learn some 1st level mortal grade skills with a lot of practice and effort. With the help of vitality essence, it could be done in a blink. This ability was kind of a cheat, as, if he learned 3rd level mortal grade skill at his level, the practicing requirements of which being 7th-9th level of body tempering realm, he would have the power to skip levels and overwhelm 2 levels higher opponent. Of course, if he used the third level mortal grade skill when he was at the 7th-9th level of body tempering, it could only help him bring out his maximum power, so he would no longer have the ability to skip levels.

Nothing was absolute, but the majority of skills went in such a category. At the 1st-3rd level of body tempering realm, the practitioner was illegible to learn 1st level mortal grade skill, which would help him bring out his power to the acme. For 4th-6th level body tempering realm practitioners, 2nd level of mortal grade skills was appropriate and so on.

If early-stage body tempering realm (1st-3rd level) somehow managed to learn 2nd level mortal grade skill, he could have the power to skip 1 level. The reason was simple. The requirement to practice 2nd level mortal grade skills was the 4th-6th level of body tempering, which was equal to having 200-350 kilograms strength. Normally, it was impossible to master the skill, which had the requirements one's body couldn't fulfill. If the practitioner pulled off such a miracle, he could become outstanding, as he would have the power to skip levels.

Though as his realm increased, such an advantage would be gone, but having received the insights into practicing the hard to master a skill at his level, he could continue to be outstanding, at least at his level.

With the help of vitality essence, Leto could instantly learn 3rd level mortal grade skills, which only 7th-9th level body tempering realm experts could learn, hence he would receive a huge advantage.

If the skill was agility type, he could outrun people at the same level or even level or two higher than him at ease. If the skill was the attack type, he could beat that much stronger opponents and so on and so forth.

The problem was, gathering vitality essence wasn't easy. It was also precious as god knows when the sudden crisis will arrive, as he might need it for healing and hence, survival.

The miracles of vitality essence didn't stop there, however. It also had the power to increase the level of items. Items were divided into several levels: common, which was literally everyday use items, uncommon, appropriate to early-stage body tempering realm warriors, rare, suitable to an intermediate stage of body tempering realm experts, epic, for late-stage body tempering and so on.

Similar to the skills, if early stage body tempering realm person had an epic weapon, he could have the power to skip 2 minor levels, for example, technically, 1st level body tempering man with an epic weapon wouldn't necessarily get disadvantaged in a fight against 3rd level one.

If good skills were combined with a good weapon and good cultivation, a person could bring out unimaginable power.

In the case of good weapons and skills combination, a person's power was incalculable, as it was impossible to exactly estimate which level he could challenge, after all, there were many variables to consider. There were cases of thousands of normal people beating the 9th level of body tempering realm expert to death too, so nothing was impossible.

It was ridiculous to think about having absolute power at the lower stages of cultivation, such as crushing lower level opponents with just a fart. Of course, as the realm increased, the difficulty of breakthroughs and quality of power fell further and further apart. Sometimes, skipping levels was no longer even an option for high-level cultivators.

Leto shuddered as he remembered some experts from his previous life, who had the ability to skip even two big realms, which was equal to over 15 levels!

The world was full of monsters. He would never dare to underestimate much weaker existence, not to mention an entity with equal power to his. Of course, nobody would dare underestimate a strong opponent.

In the banquet, for example, he met one such monster. Markin' Bro' Koli, one of the two guardians of the kingdom didn't have an undeserved reputation. His cryptic soul-bound treasure could detect a terribly massive amount of vitality from that man. At least, he had the power to skip over 5 levels, not to mention his real cultivation.

This wasn't all. This man had a specialty - archery. If he didn't fight head-on, he could probably slaughter existences who were even as much as a whole realm higher than him.

''Sigh, there's no use to thinking about useless stuff. I guess it's time for full recovery. I can't wait to start practicing.'' He thought and returned to the castle after collecting some crystal berries for his family.

Half an hour later, he was sitting with eyes closed in the large bathtub, which was carved out in the floor, surrounded by pillars which connected the floor to the ceiling.

The mist coming out of the warm bath partially obscured his figure.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes.

'Converge!' The red dots went out of his body and merged into a red drop of blood, which gave off fierce energy fluctuations.

Just like that, 100 points of vitality essence was gone.

Leto opened his mouth wide and gulped down the drop of blood with fast motion, then closed his eyes.

Soon, his skin started turning red and the water around him began sizzling.

This drop of blood created from 100 points of vitality essence had miraculous properties: The consumer's blood would boil and even burn to some extent, which would result in one to enter rampaged state. In this state, all physical abilities were enchanted to some extent for a short time, in exchange for the lowered intelligence and lacking reasoning.

Leto's blood boiled. The impurities in his blood were being forced out. The special herbal bath and the drop of blood, which boiled his blood worked together and forced out contaminations in his blood vessels, cleansing it thoroughly.

Some of the harder to reach decaying worms, which were sealed temporarily were eliminated and forced out.

Gritting teeth, Leto held on his willpower to not let out a scream. The number of times he used this method to boost his competence to save his life was numerous, but the pain of having one's blood burned wasn't something one could get used to.

After a long time, he cooled down. Now, the pool had a dark hue, as the amount of contamination he got rid of was big.

After getting out of the water, he didn't feel the usual heaviness. Instead, he felt lighter, as canals in his body were opened up and cleansed.

His strength restored to 37 too, which was a huge leap.

''It's still a bit lacking, but I think I can start practicing some low-level skills already.'' Leto thought. Practicing would help him recover faster too.

After a day's rest, the treatment showed its full effect. After recovering from the backlash, his strength increased again and stabilized at 41 points.

''Removing these worms from my flesh and muscles will be a bit difficult, but I still have about 2 months' time left, before the seal weakens. Meanwhile, I'll surely find a way.'' He was feeling hopeful and looking forward to full recovery. Something like that wasn't enough to faze him, as he had gone through much more dangerous situations.