Chapter 88: Refinement of the Body and the Spirit

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Edward didn't necessarily have to use lightning to rebuild his body. Actually, he didn't even have to rebuild his body at all, if he wanted to he could simply breakthrough here and be done with it.

However, he wanted a perfect breakthrough. He feared that if he didn't reach for perfection, then he would one day be stuck. Edward knew it was his previous 'perfect' breakthrough when he used lightning that later stopped him from breaking through without opening the Chakras, and trying to achieve another perfect breakthrough would probably set the bar even higher.

He had already started on this path though, and if he tried to go for a regular breakthrough then he would probably be ruining himself, so he wanted to go for a perfect breakthrough, or what was closest to it.

If he couldn't use lightning, then he would use fire. The Dragon Flame was more than strong enough to destroy his body and reconstruct it, as well as refine his Chi as much as possible.

But Edward had thought about his perfect breakthrough for a while now, and realized that only using the flame wouldn't be enough. His strength did not just come from his body and his Chi, his Spirit played an important role, so he wanted to make his Spirit go through the same thing as his body.

The Dragon Flame couldn't do that, unfortunately, but while in the Moria Edward had found an interesting crystal that could do the job.

Opening a portal to the bracelet on his left arm, Edward felt the familiar freezing sensation as the crystal was baited out of the Spatial Bracelet. The Magworm tried to follow, but Edward closed the portal before it could get out.

He then trapped the crystal into a space barrier prepared beforehand, and fortunately the crystal went back into a solid shape when it finished freezing all the Spiritual Energy left in the cube with it.

Now, at the bottom of the lake, inside Smaug's body, Edward was sitting cross-legged with two elemental forces trapped in front of him, preparing himself for the breakthrough.

Normally, what he was going to do with those two elements would simply destroy his body and kill him, but while he brokethrough his very being entered a strange state of extreme adaptability that allowed his body to get reconstructed, and so he assumed the same went for his Spirit. He hoped.

With a thought, the whirlpool in Edward's Dantian started accelerating as Edward began compressing the whirlpool onto it's center. At the same time, Edward's Spirit brought the two space cubes to him, and he first released the Dragon Flame, which he absorbed into his body.

His entire body immediately started burning, and his Lower Dantian was getting attacked by the fire too. But the whirlpool of Chi counterattacked as Edward's golden blood flowed around his body to repair it, while the Chi did it's best to counter the fire.

Both Edward's Chi and body were getting rapidly strengthened under the great might of the fire, so Edward went for step two, and released the crystal.

Instead of just giving it a small stream of Spiritual Essence, he directly presented his very spirit to it, and the crystal jumped into his body as it latched onto his spirit.

Edward was feeling very strange amidst the pain as his body was getting burned and his spirit was getting frozen, but as Edward, through sheer will, directed his freezing Spirit to his Dantian and the approaching Dragon Flame, the crystal and the flame started conflicting against each other.

And while the two forces of nature were fighting one another, Edward's Body and Spirit were getting reconstructed, growing stronger everytime. As for Edward's Chi, the giant whirlpool was closing in on itself, his Chi entering a half-solid half-liquid state.

As time passed and the two forces of nature fought for hegemony on Edward's being, he himself grew stronger and stronger, and the two forces were taking longer everytime to destroy him.

The crystal however, showed some sign of intelligence finally as it felt Edward's spirit was starting to overwhelm it, and so it backed down from the fight as it decided to completely destroy Edward's Spirit before going back to the flame.

Feeling the attack, Edward wasn't scared and he opened a portal to his left bracelet as the Magworm flew out in a hurry, heading for Edward's Spirit. Before it could even get to him though it was grabbed by Edward, who crushed it with a mere squeeze.

As the spirit body was destroyed, it's very essence was released as Edward's spirit sucked all of it's strength into itself, gaining a pretty major power boost.

The crystal, who had been overwhelming Edward easily until now, finally met it's match as it found itself unable to freeze Edward's Spirit. On the contrary, like a hungry beast Edward began enveloping the liquid crystal.

At the same time, Edward's Dantian had cracks all over it, before it suddenly started peeling, revealing a solid purple core underneath. As for the runes engraved on the dantian, they had appeared on the solid core too.

The Dragon Flame tried burning the core, but it did not show any change before the powerful flame. A greedy thought came to Edward's mind, and he led the Dragon Flame to his core, and… absorbed it.

The Freezing Crystal was now trapped into his Spirit, and the Dragon Flame was trapped into his Core.

The two forces tried fighting back, but Edward Core and Spirit were too strong and instead began consuming them instead. Slowly, the two forces were forced to fuse with Edward, becoming his.

His Core and his Spirit then worked together to reconstruct his body, building it better than ever before. Some of Smaug's blood and flesh were even drawn in as his body was getting reconstructed.

And as Edward's body was reconstructed, his breakthrough was over. His Lower Dantian had disappeared, and was now replaced by a solid core the size of a fist. This core was purple, with green and blue runes graved deep into it, and a white light seemed to be entrapped in the middle of the core. The energy from it seemed endless to Edward, as the hundred time space rune had now merged directly into his core.

As for his Spirit, it shone with a cyan light as it could now form constructs with Spiritual Energy, much like Susan from his home world.

Edward looked at Smaug's body around him and floated out of it. Then, his spirit spread as he crumbled Smaug's body before him.

Only a small amount of his blood and flesh had been used to reinforce Edward's body, and all the blood had been restrained from spreading thanks to Edward's spell.

A space barrier much stronger than the one he had used to trap the Dragon Fire and Freezing Crystal earlier appeared around the dragon, entrapping his entire body, as he was forcefully shrunk. Through Edward's magic and his Space Concept, the space inside the barrier was shrunken to become only as big as his fist.

At the same time, time inside was slowed down to a crawl, almost stopped, so Smaug's body wouldn't rot.

Edward couldn't put other Spatial artefacts into the two he made himself because their space was unstable, but the one Merlin had gifted him, while smaller, had a stable space as it was still part of the world's space. But he couldn't put a raw space directly into it, he had to make a container.

With a wave of Edward's hand, the earth beneath him turned into metal as a box was formed. It was a simple metallic box, a little chest, and Edward threw the miniaturised space into it. As the small chest was closed, Edward halted his manipulation of the space inside, and it spread all around the box.

It did not break out of the box though as several runes were carved onto it before it could, and when this was all over Edward threw the box into his Spatial Bracelet.

The dragon's body now safely hidden, and his breakthrough achieved, Edward used his water magic to propel himself out of the lake.

With his momentum, Edward rose more than a hundred meters in the air, before stopping there.

He was surprised by what he saw. Several armies were fighting across the fields in front of Erebor. From far away, Edward could see an army of elves, not from Rivendell but probably the kingdom in the forest. Another was an army of dwarves, within which were the members of the company.

And facing them was an army of Orcs and Wargs. At the same time, another army of Goblins and Ogres, which looked a little similar to Trolls but were a little smaller. Facing them was an army of men, although calling them an army was maybe a little much as they were simply the people of Laketown, which had been destroyed in his fight against Smaug.

Having analysed the situation, Edward ran in the air so fast that anyone would watched would only see a blur, and in seconds he arrived above the army of Orcs and Wargs.

Fire appeared in both of Edward's palms as he joined them together and faced them toward the ground. The fire in his palms churned with Edward's magic and Chi as it was fired toward the ground in a similar fashion to a fire breath. Of course it wasn't close to the real thing, but it was more than enough here.

The fighting armies bellow looked up in terror as they saw a giant tide of fire descend from the sky, and fall onto the army of Orcs and Wargs.

Some tried to flee, but it was useless as they were burnt into cinders. The remaining orcs who had been lucky enough to be fighting the Dwarves and Elves and were thus not in the area hit, trembled in fear as they saw their army destroyed.

The Dwarves and Elves, understanding this attack was not for them, quickly finished the remaining orcs in their ranks before looking at Edward, who was flying down using his Spiritual Energy.

The dwarves of the company, who recognized him, gaped as they finally saw Edward under his full power, and understood the one who slayed the dragon was actually their friend.

Edward nodded at the dwarves before commanding the two armies, "Go lend your help to the men in Dale, kill all the goblins."

After opening the Throat Chakra, Edward's voice had gained a natural charisma to it that made people want to listen to what he said, and would make people agree more easily to his words. Despite receiving the orders of a stranger, the two armies ran toward Dale.

As for Edward, he did not immediately go to Dale, but instead moved up the plain, where the Orcish general, Bolg, was.

He soon arrived at an abandoned fortress, and although he couldn't see any Orcs with his eyes, he could feel many of them hidden inside the fortress. His Chi Sense had now reached a hundred meters after his breakthrough, so he could feel everything inside the fortress.

Edward didn't know Bolg's Chi signature, and since there were Ogres he couldn't just take the strongest Chi signature and assume it was Bolg. So he decided to be a little more ruthless, those were orcs anyway, corrupt creations.

Waving his arms, Edward's magic encompassed the fortress, and the stone walls started getting getting closer to each other. The orcs laying in ambush inside the walls of the fortress began panicking and tried to flee, but they all were deep in the fortress and they couldn't flee in time as they were all crushed to bits by the walls of the fortress.

Making sure not a single person somehow survived, Edward left for Dale.