First Stage

Without noticing the passage of time, nearly two months had passed when Fenrir finally made headway in her cultivation technique. In total, there were nine steps to achieve a basic mastery of the Sacred Heart of the Ice Phoenix, with the first three steps focused on purifying one's body and soul to make it more adaptable to Ice and Yin elemental energies. Since she already had affinities relating to these elements, which had been refined through her use of the meditation technique, Heart of Eternal Ice, Mind of Still Water. Now, each breath she drew condensed the Ice, Water, and Yin elemental energies in the air while every exhale produced small particulates of ice that could freeze the surrounding air.

Upon opening her eyes, Fenrir's nose scrunched up, not because there was a foul smell, but because there was a distinct lack of the expected stench. The first three stages of the Sacred Heart of the Ice Phoenix were supposed to purify the meridian and expel impurities from the body. Now that she had achieved a basic mastery of the first stage, there should have been a foul black paste expelled from her body. Instead, Fenrir's skin remained unblemished and, other than gaining a soft glow that made her skin seem even fairer than before, there were no other changes.

It would take a bit of time for Fenrir to understand just how different she was compared to others as, from the very beginning, her body had already been in a purified state. From the moment she had been named by Vahn, Fenrir's body had been comprised of Source Energy, the purest possible form it could take. Even if she had a normal metabolic process, requiring the consumption of food, Fenrir's body would break down anything she had eaten before converting it into Source. Though she wasn't able to make use of this incredibly pure energy, as even the most powerful entities in the record would be unable to sense it, Fenrir would have no real bottlenecks during cultivation.

Though she failed to understand exactly why, Fenrir had a smile on her otherwise expressionless face as she ran her palm along her smooth skin and thought of her Master. She felt that, even though the distance between them was unfathomable, he was still somehow protecting her. In order to make him proud, she was determined to grow much stronger until there was nothing in the world that could endanger her life. When he finally showed up to retrieve her, Fenrir wanted to be able to show him around a world where people smiled happily instead of taking advantage of each other.

With that thought in mind, Fenrir exited her seclusion and moved to a concealed area where a flat training area had been carved into the mountain. There were a series of techniques related to the first stage of the Sacred Heart of the Ice Phoenix and, in order to reach the second stage, she would need to master the basic forms. Fortunately, compared to the complex structure of Magic that she had learned from Eva, most of the techniques listed in the first stage simply required channeling energy in a specific way. Instead of forming a magic circle, all Fenrir had to do was use Ice and Yin Elemental energy through certain meridians, essentially using her own body as the foundation for the structure of the technique.

After stretching her body for a few minutes, as Fenrir knew it was important to make sure your body was warmed up before exercising, she adopted a neutral stance that gave her an elegant and static appearance. Instead of being 'flashy', which complex stances and maneuvers, the techniques related to the Sacred Heart of the Ice Phoenix seemed to focus on 'beauty in simplicity', requiring very minute gestures instead of grandiose movements. As a result, Fenrir's eyes flashed with an icy light as she simply pressed forward with her palm, condensing Ice and Ying elemental energy into the shape of a misty white palm that shot out like a beam of light.

After hitting the black slab that was meant to absorb even the attacks of an expert at the Golden Core Realm, the palm made a pure white indentation against the metallic surface before the entire thing became covered in a layer of ice. When Fenrir saw this, her eyes squinted, slightly pleased by the outcome, as she walked over and pat against the ice, causing the seemingly indestructible metallic slab to fracture as the energy from her attack had even penetrated the very molecular structure of the target, freezing it through completely...

(Fenrir's Commentary: 'Very ice...(o,...,o)')