48 Supreme Affinity, Extraordinary Manual

Darkscale looked at the words that appeared on the black screen. He rapidly memorized the recipe for this Cleaning Potion, and realized that the herbs necessary to make it wasn't that uncommon.

"This potion is rankless and cannot even be considered a real potion by any respectable alchemist's standard. However, it is effective." stared the Black Hand merchant, gesturing widely with his right arm. " It will hurt though, and all the energy that you have stored in your Core will be expelled, so you should use it only before going into a secluded training session." he continued explaining, stressing with a concerned tone the last part of his speech.

"Core?" Darkscale was surprised by the use of such word to describe his Natural Heart. At least that was what he understood from the words of the horned creature. This wasn't the first time he heard speaking of "cores", but it was usually in correlation with smithing material in some of the books present in the Cave. He always thought it was some kind of gem, or mineral that was so popular that nobody even wasted their time explaining it.

"Mmm? What's wrong?" asked absent minded Spike, still thinking of the numerous things revealed to him and how to approach better the situation on his side.

"What's a Core? It's another way to call a Natural Heart?" asked him Darkscale, with a plain voice that didn't quite express the curiosity that he was feeling. He had become very capable of hiding most of his feelings.

"What?" Spike seemed surprised by the question. His eyes lit up as a wave of energy expanded from his body.

The serpent didn't move even if he sensed what the bronze ranked trader was trying to do. This wasn't the first time that he was being checked by the horned merchant, but this was the first time that Darkscale could use his own energy to feel the wave touching his flesh and trying to probe his cultivation base.

The first thing that he gathered was that Spike's cultivation base had a very different texture from his own. It was way more chaotic, like a troubled sea, completely unlike his placid and gentle cultivation base. He couldn't imagine how much difficult had to be to keep such a cultivation base under control without letting it go astray.

While Darkscale was probing the energy of the horned merchant, the latter was also examining the serpent's.

"What the hell?" if it could, the mouth of the merchant would have dropped to his knees. He pointed a shaking long finger at the snake, forgetting whatever he was talking about before that moment.

"What is that energy?" he screamed with a shrill voice. He almost believed that his energy probe had been wrong somehow. What he was sensing made even less sense than the story of the rebel MAID.

"Two Greater Elements?" Blood Energy and Ghost Energy were both considered Major forms of energy. Meaning that an attack with them was stronger than the same attack using the same amount of Fire or Earth Energy.

Blood Energy was a Greater Energy, only one in a million had the capacity to cultivate it. The manual to cultivate such an impressive energy were normally held by powerful medium and big sized organization. However, Spike would have understood if a reincarnation could have them on him.

From the first moment that he realized that the snake was a powerful Pretorian reincarnated, he understood that he would eventually remember the cultivation method used in his precedent life. That was the reason behind the decision of not giving him a complete cultivation method and only a poisonous manual that could be used as auxiliary to any other cultivation method.

However, Darkscale didn't have only red bloody energy inside his energy container. In fact, the red energy wasn't as developed as another great mass of silver energy, giving off a ghoulish and oppressive feeling.

Ghost Energy!

Ghost Energy was even more special than the Blood Energy. It was a Supreme form of energy. In the entire Empire, spanning millions and millions of miles and where billions of people and creature of any sort lived, only a couple hundred cultivators had any affinity at all with a Supreme form of energy. Also, even between the people of that small group, only a few could cultivate the Supreme Energy. The rest could only use their affinity to cultivate a lower form of energies that were linked to the supreme one.

Why? Simply because a cultivation manual that could enable someone to create a cultivation base full of Supreme Energy were very few. Each one of them was in the hands of a major power of the Empire and considered as one of the most precious legacies.

'How? Just who are you?' Spike mind was spinning. He had greatly underestimated this reincarnation! He was once someone that could cultivate a supreme energy?

Darkscale noted the shock on the horned merchant face, and wasn't quite sure what to do. He didn't know what great elements were, in fact, he had no notion at all of the elemental affinity. Spike told him before that before starting cultivating he needed to test his affinity, but he just started using the Heavenly Battleground Technique and it worked just fine.

"Young Friend Darkscale, can I ask you how did you manage to get so much Ghost Energy in your cultivation base?" asked the now slim trader.

"Hmm? I just used the Ghost Pond." answered vaguely the serpent. He knew that the merchant wasn't asking from where he got the energy. He was probably trying to ask about his cultivation method, but the snake refused to give it up. Especially now that his intuition told him that it was something powerful.

"Just used the Ghost Pond? This... this..." the voice of the horned creature was full of incredulity. He looked at the creature before him as he was some kind of monster.

"Wasn't I supposed to cultivate Ghost Energy? The technique that you left me requires its use after all.." Darkscale didn't get why the merchant was so surprised about his cultivation base being full of ghost energy. Wasn't he supposed to cultivate it regardless to utilize the Soul Agony Venom Technique?

"Young Master... every technique requires the use of certain type of energy, it is impossible for people to cultivate them all... People normally only cultivate a specific type of energy as their cultivation base... then transform the energy in their energy container to match to match the one required by the technique..." explained the merchant. He smirked, thanking the Heavens that the reincarnator hadn't completely recovered his memories: he still could manage to help him, building a better connection with him.

Thinking about the advantages that such a bond could create for him, the last strand of frustration that he was feeling towards the reptile disappeared.

"The Ghost Pond isn't really a method to cultivate Ghost Energy by directly putting it in your cultivation base... that's insane! It's a Supreme Energy! Cultivators usually would transform it into some lesser one derived from the Ghost, like Terrorfire, Darkness, Light or Whisp and absorb those!" he continued trying to explain what people truly did with something like a Ghost Pond.

"Then, when you want to use a technique that requires Ghost energy you can transform it back!" he finally said, with a smile.

"That's very stupid. Why you won't simply cultivate Ghost energy, to begin with?" asked the serpent full of doubt. He had become accustomed to never trust people at their word value. Especially not someone like Spike that had proven to be unreliable by giving him a broken MAID.

"Why you can't cultivate Ghost Energy, to begin with?" responded with a shrill scream the horned creature, his eyes almost bulging out of his face. After a moment the merchant calmed down. He truly didn't have an answer for the question. Yes, why? If you truly had the affinity and an insane godly cultivation technique that allowed you to absorb Ghost energy, why wouldn't you use it?

"Ehm.. ehm... normally cultivator haven't any affinity with Ghost Energy, so they won't be able to cultivate it even if they wanted to." said the creature with a broken voice, trying to not sound condescending at all while explaining very common sense things to the serpent.

"Oh, people can only cultivate things that they have an affinity with?" wondered the serpent, almost murmuring to himself.

"Well, not exactly... you can cultivate an energy that you have no affinity for, but it would be a complete disaster! The lesser affinity, the longer will take you to cultivate. It is completely stupid to cultivate energy that you have no affinity for." stated the merchant.

"I see, so I have Ghost Affinity?" asked Darkscale.

"Yes, you are an incredibly rare case: both Ghost and Blood are major elements." understanding that he was giving advanced lesson without before having explained the basis he walked back a bit. " There are countless energies in the world, however, we categorize them on base of their rarity and strength: Minor, Common, Greater, and Supreme." he said, looking at the serpent with a severe expression.

"Multiple minor energies can make a common one, multiple commons can make a greater and so on" he continued. " So when you have a Greater affinity, for example for Darkness, you can create Shadow and Darkwater energy very quickly, being those common and minor energies that are contained under the Darkness Energy." the merchant was trying his best to explain something that for him was incredibly easy, but he wasn't a teacher. Nonetheless, he persisted, continuing: "At the same time you can cultivate a Shadow Cultivation Manual and use Shadow energy to create Darkness Energy".

"The same thing happens with people with Supreme affinities like you: they cultivate lower elements and use them to build up to the supreme one when they use techniques... that's because the manuals to cultivate Supreme elements are very very rare. " he finally ended his explanation, looking deep into the violet eyes of his chosen client.

" I swore to work with you and I really like you young friend Darkscale, so I will be blunt: if someone ever discovers that you have a method to cultivate directly Ghost Energy, you will probably live shortly" the merchant gave him this latter advice from the deep of his heart. He really didn't want him to die. Not after all the effort, he spent on him.

'I don't really understand how that guy that subdued him did miss something like that... If he was flying... maybe a rank two expert? No, it's impossible that he did miss something like that... maybe he realized who he was and left him go?' Spike, considering the things that the serpent told him happened in the so-called Blood Woods, was surprised that he hadn't been kidnapped by the blue cultivator.

He decided that it was also a good idea of doing some research on this mysterious individual, maybe it would help him shine some lights on the serpent previous life.