12 Breakthrough (Revised)

Standing before the entrance of the Dojo, Elizabeth was just about to leave without a word to anyone else when suddenly, Sun called out to her from behind.

"Hey!" He successfully got her to turn around, and awkwardly continued, "It… It's rather late outside. So, would you like me to walk you back home? Letting you wander in this darkness just doesn't sit right with me..."

During some of the breaks she had taken throughout the day to recover her Inner Strength, he had slowly pieced together the fact that Elizabeth not only lived a considerable distance away, but she also covered that distance on foot to warm up before arriving at the dojo. His reaction would be a sight to see, should he ever learn that half the reason was actually because she'd take walking alone over being driven over due to personal preference.

"Hmm..." Elizabeth paused to consider things from his perspective.

She realized that over the course of the day, she had all but forgotten the fact that she had transformed into a young attractive woman. 'It would not be a good look for me to be randomly walking the streets alone,' she thought.

'Then again,' she quickly refuted, 'After today, I'm considerably stronger and faster than most normal people.'

After quickly checking her Status to confirm she had enough Inner Strength to run the whole way back, Elizabeth addressed Sun, "I'm good. See you tomorrow."

...And she was off, running at full capacity like she hadn't just twelve hours training like some shonen anime protagonist. Almost immediately though, the fault in both Elizabeth and Sun's logic was made evident as Elizabeth had to stop no less than a dozen times before she made it past Miami Beach's commercial district.

'Of course there'd be all these fucking people in my way,' Elizabeth cursed up a storm as she finally made it out of the tourist hub and could run the remaining six or so miles back home without little to no interruption. 'The sun only just went down an hour ago at eight, and I've heard that Miami's nightlife is somewhat comparable to Las Vegas.' She rolled her eyes, 'If anything, things around would only ramp up from here!'

Yet, for all her complaining, the journey back home was much quicker compared to her morning run to the dojo. With traffic becoming nonexistent the moment she stepped out of the commercial district, Elizabeth didn't need to stop as many times going back to her house, resulting in her arriving just after thirty-five minutes of commute; shaving off a whole ten minutes compared to her morning run.

Upon arriving back home, Elizabeth felt like her body had thoroughly crashed as if she had been running on pure adrenaline; which probably was the case considering she could only feel truly at ease in her home and had more than likely been carrying subconscious anxiety for the majority of the day.

She couldn't muster the will to do much beyond making a quick snack and taking a quick shower before dropping dead asleep the moment her body hit the frame of her mattress.

The next morning, at exactly six in the morning, something seemed to spark within Elizabeth's mind as she woke up feeling various "lazy-positive" sensations jolt across her body. She got out of her bed and made yet another simple breakfast, acquiring yet another point of experience towards her cooking skill, before checking her Status.

[Status

Name: Elizabeth Ultimatia

Level: 0 (1/5)

Sex: Female

Strength: 10 → 12.05

Endurance: 11.4 → 15.5

Speed: 21.8 → 21.85

Defense: 10 → 12.05

Intelligence: 20

Luck: 10

Inner Strength 198/198]

Elizabeth grinned as she reviewed, 'I've met the conditions to breakthrough to Level 1 and become a proper Beginner Phase Mortal Stage Practitioner. Endurance is half a unit away from being perfect for a Level 3 Mid Phase Mortal Practitioner, and speed is almost halfway comparable to a Level 6 Beginner Phase Pawn Stage Practitioner.'

Elizabeth chuckled psychotically to herself as she pondered, 'Imagine if I wasn't so severely held back by Inner Strength reserves… With the mere 198 units I currently have, I must have only spent three cumulative hours worth of experience through Innate Strength Conversion. Imagine how much more impressive my Stats could be if I hadn't prioritized developing Muay Thai as a Skill over increasing my Stats,' she almost drooled at the possibilities.

She quickly sobered up from her power fantasy as she focused what truly mattered now. It was time for her to break through and forgo the identity of a non-Practitioner. For now, while all her Stats exceeded that which was required of someone to become a perfect Beginner Phase Mortal Practitioner, she had no real cultivation base.

What she had cultivated to this point were merely the resources to build her cultivation base. She had prepared the groundwork to ensure she was capable of laying the perfect foundation. Now, she just needed to finish her breakfast before making the final last-minute preparation in her bathroom.

The process would be considerably more nasty than her previous experiment with cultivating Inner Strength, for instead of widening the pool of energy at the core of her being, she would effectively be intentionally spilling said energy across her body to refine it into a proper vessel for cultivation. It was the ultimate goal of the Mortal Realm and across its Six Stages, the body would be refined from the outermost layer inward.

With the outermost layer of the human body obviously being their skin, and with no previous cultivation and energy techniques to process the impurities filtered out through the process, Elizabeth could expect to expel ten to fifty times the amount of impurities her first meditation yielded.

Thus, she found herself stark naked, sitting in a bath of temporarily crystal clear water. She took a second to review the process before actually initiating it. From the core of her Inner Strength reserves, in an ambiguous metaphysical area below the navel, she summoned her energy and directly integrated it into her skin.

Exactly 100 units of Inner Strength would be consumed while conducting this 'first pass' so to speak, which would instantly refine 20% of her skin into a more energy-conductive structure. A normal non-Practitioner unaware of the requirements to attain a perfect Mortal Stage cultivation, would need several additional passess and would likely never achieve the full 20% refinement needed in the Beginner Phase.

The moment one strayed from the path of perfection, it would only get harder to return on track as imperfections in one's foundations would make it impossible to perfect later Phases, Stages, and Realms. So, Elizabeth couldn't afford to rush things now, even if she had the Speed to breakthrough to Level 6.

She kept her eyes closed, retaining her meditative posture in the bath, as she focused on driving her Inner Strength across every square inch of her body. As she finished, she smirked as she felt the effects of refining her skin and how much easier she could summon her Inner Strength.

And then the smell hit her…

Elizabeth cringed and opened her eyes to find that the water most of her body was submerged in had blackened such that she could barely see through it. It smelled of sulfur and death, inspiring the idea that it would be for the best to just burn the whole of the house down just to erase its presence.

[Breakthrough Alert!

Level 0 → Level 1

Rank: non-Practitioner (Base) → Mortal Beginner Phase (20%)]

"Success has never smelled so bitter," Elizabeth muttered to herself as she stood up and looked at the pitch-black water below her. She wrinkled her nose in displeasure as she drained it away and showered off what remained.

'Fortunately, this should be as bad as it'll ever get,' Elizabeth thought as she towled herself. 'A perfect breakthrough into the Mortal Stage should get out most of the remaining impurities out of my skin. It's the equivalent to sanding down a wooden piece with the coarsest sandpaper possible to get the rough draft ready for a real polishing.'

Once she found herself dry and in clean clothes, she checked the time and paused. Less than an hour had come to pass since she had woken up, leaving her with several hours to kill before the dojo opened up for another day of training.

"Hmm," Elizabeth smiled knowingly as she put away her phone and sat down in her room. Thus far she had increased all her Stats with the exception of her Intelligence. Now, she felt, was as good a time as any to see what cultivating that would be like.

So, she closed her eyes and entered meditation once more. She first actively recovered the hundred or so units that had been spent on her breakthrough even before she began a completely new process. Now, she wasn't increasing her Inner Strength nor recovering it actively. Instead, her energy was consumed as she used it to commune with the mantras of her Temporal Meditation Cultivation Method and increase her Understanding.

With Temporal Meditation being a Time-type Cultivation Method, Elizabeth would consequently increase her Understanding of Time itself by cultivating it. This, in turn, would result in her being able to manipulate time in the future. Ultimately, the idea was for her to become a Goddess of Time, capable of bending the Laws of Time at her whims, but most imminently, it would give her the ability to create and manipulate Time Magic after she cultivated past the Mortal Stage.

As a Level 1 ignorant nobody, though, the most she could accomplish with Temporal Meditation was increasing her Intelligence in the pursuit of trying to understand the concepts behind rudimentary time manipulation. So, Elizabeth meditated and studying intently as time seemed to elude her.

Two hours would pass before the alarm she set up broke her out of her trance, but to her it felt like it could have been two minutes; then again, it could have been ten hours. Either way, she checked her Status and confirmed her progress.

"This could get really broken, really quickly," she grinned to herself as she picked herself up and made her way out of the house. With her understanding of the dynamics between her Inner Strength and Intelligence Stats, she could effectively run a cultivation loop between the two and exponentially increase them after she reached Level 6 and gained access to Magic.

As she became more proficient with her Inner Strength Conversion Skill and her energy reserves increased, she would increase the rate she increased the rest of her Stats. While a higher Intelligence stat would increase the speed of Inner Strength she could cultivate.

Suddenly, the idea of rounding up several millions of units of Inner Strength by the end of the Mortal Realm seemed much more feasible.

Elizabeth sighed as she cleared her head of any more distracting thoughts and started another run towards the dojo.

As she was now, even if she established her routine in training all-day every day, with the spiritually inert environment of Earth, it would take her months, if not years, of dedicated Intelligence and Inner Strength meditation to reach that level.