Chapter Six: Impending Mayhem

The sun rose on a crisp spring-like morning over James' neighborhood, but before James had woken up, there was something else happening hundreds of miles away.

An older man, seemingly 70 years old or so, was plunging through the air with a nervous expression on his face. "My cultivation has already degraded to a pitiful state. Soon enough, I won't be able to even fly; I need to at least find a splace with sufficient essence energy to sustain and regain my cultivation base."

Almost as soon as he said that, he stopped dead where he was flying and his gaze frantically snapped towards a certain direction, "A place like that should be suitable..." he then shot off in a slightly different direction. Although his strength had been significantly lowered, his conciousness and sensitivity to essence energy hadn't decreased in the slightest.

James woke a short moment after this previous scene, and started his routine with basic bodyweight exercises while he circulated the second volume of his body tempering method. He planned to condense one or two more streaks of lightning qi. He was running out of time, and he wanted to make it so that he could at least power his full body up before he had to start fighting. He sat down for about thirty minutes to condense two more thunderstreaks, bringing him to six total. His speed with this was getting much much faster with practice, and the dragon said that this would be good enough for now; they clearly had no clue how close their impending doomsday was.

James once more ran to the park, it was early morning and all of the lazy people of his neighborhood would never get up this early. His run was getting easier each time, and he invested two lightning streaks into each of his legs to get there extremely quickly. Using two in one limb still dealt him a bit of pain after use, but it was nothing unbearable. His mentor said that his body could at most handle three streaks per limb without any serious damage like fractured bones or torn ligaments.

He focused his willpower to hasten the recovery of the four thunder streaks, a trick he had picked up by sorting through the dragons old memories. This actually increased to total amount of essence energy in the surrounding environment even more than before.

Once his power had recovered, James took a deep breath before whispering to himself, "Let's start the experiments..."

The dragon offered it's words of caution before James started his practical training, "Take it slow, no more than three streaks per limb okay?"

'Yeah yeah I got it," James shook his mentor off, but he wouldn't disobey him. He slowly spread one thunder streak to each of his limbs. the first four limbs were powered, and it was nothing that James wasn't already used to, it was when the fifth streak of lightning qi reached his brain, he was stunned.

There was originally a swift flowing breeze in the fields, but in James' perception, the waves of swaying grass had slowed to a crawl. By his observations, James reckoned that he was percieving reality at around three times the normal rate. James lunged forward and launched himself up into the air with a yell and he flew almost ten feet into the air this time, much higher than before thanks to his newly advanced body and actually using multiple streaks of lightning qi.

James' eyes shot around as he moved at a speed that felt awkwardly slow compared to last time; gravity seemed to operate at a snails pace and he slowly maneuvered in the air, doing some flips before landing.

James let the thunder streak in his mind dissipate and time started to flow normally. He thought that even his body felt a little more sluggish in that state, maybe he would feel a little more normal once his tempered body advanced further to match this ridiculous cultivation method of the storm dragon. He also had a naturally high level of consciousness, even above the natural grade of his body.

Upon further examination, James found that he was even able to manipulate himself before exploding the energy of a thunder streak in mid-air to propel himself. The idea was sparked by a certain blondie with an 'explosive' temper of an anime that he'd watched before. It obviously wasn't something he could do because it completely wasted the energy of one whole thunder streak, but it was a cool concept to work with.

James stopped and his eyes went fuzzy as he stared into the void, as if he was focusing on something he couldn't physically see. "The natural energy here is thicker than it was a couple days ago, this should be because of the law of infinite thunder, am I wrong?" James tossed a question towards his mentor.

The dragon smirked to himself, "Yes, it's been turning your willpower into essence energy, but don't worry, it has no negative effects on your willpower either. Think of it as cleaning up the trash you leave behind from simply existing, and turning it into something useful" He was clearly very proud of his creation.

James had a somewhat puzzled expression his face when he spoke, "That essentially breaks the laws of physics, doesn't it?"

James' mentors smirk turned into an ear to ear smile following his disciples confusion, "Your science holds some logic, but it clearly hasn't come into contact with the aspects of cultivation. It's not as if I blame them though; before we arrived, this plane had such a small quantity of essence energy that it was literally incalculable, so science was formed as if essence energy didn't even exist. I guess some of those religious followers had something right when they talked about how the souls value couldn't be measured..."

James gave a nod and a hum, this reasoning seemed fine with him; he was never a fan of the laws of physics anyway. The reason that he had asked about this was because it seemed like a place that would be better suited for condensing thunder streaks than his home. The storm dragon, reading his thoughts, spoke again, "Your theory is indeed correct, but know for the future that it takes time for your expended energy to be suitable for re-absorption. If the energy still has your mark on it, it would do no more than replenish your stamina. However, once the energy naturally fuses with the environment, you should be good to go."

"Damn, we sure do talk a lot..." James laughed before sitting down. He planned to collect plenty of thunder streaks now that he had a much tougher body. When he started drawing in the surrounding energy, James had a very content look on his face; the speed of absorption here was so much faster!

Normal cultivators would be absolutely pissed at James for his complaints about his previous absorption rate, but James simply didn't know that. With the richer source of energy available, his cultivation speed could definitely be compared favorably to most of the invaders on the planet that they fled from, despite the latter environment being surperior.

James sat there for almost an hour, thankful for people still staying home during quarantine. Finally, he got up, and the sounds of cracking followed. These sounds weren't joints popping, but electricity crackling. James' eyes flashed wish violet streaks of light and he looked down at his hands. He had cultivated an astonishing four more thunder streaks during this short period! This literally almost doubled his battle strength, which made both James and the storm dragon quite happy.

There was something else that James had achieved that was far more important though... And that was an enlightenment in the law of infinite thunder! Not only would this make the benefits of the seal more extravagant, but it also gave him insight into the power of thunder himself, allowing him to directly use his energy and turn it into electricity, as opposed to relying solely on his thunder streaks.

"Kid, this essentially means that you're a full fledged thunder element cultivator... almost..." The dragon showed its approval, but trailed off.

'What do you mean 'almost' huh?' James was a little nervous, how was he not a full borne cultivator yet?

His master spoke with some bitterness in his voice when he spoke, "We'll cross that bridge when w-" He was cut off by a beam of light shooting through the sky, passing right over James' head, albeit by over a hundred feet. A harsh wind plowed through the atmosphere before pushing James down and back, or at least trying to. James stood steady, but his eyes were shaking as one thought raced through his head, 'Wind type essence energy!'

"And a trace of shadow energy as well..." The storm dragon added before he himself realized something, "It's one of the highest ranking troops in my army, highly proficient in one on one combat and only had to bow his head to a select few people of our kingdom, my sworn brother and I included..." his voice only fell lower and lower as he continued.

There was a pause before James' eyes widened further, he was heading in the direction of his home! He sprinted and sprinted, putting three streaks of essence energy into each of his legs and dashing home at a speed he wouldn't have thought humanly possible before. James didn't even seem to notice his ludicrous speed because he was too busy screaming at himself trying to go even faster.

James cut a corner about one hundred feet short by simply jumping over the house on the corner before finally arriving on his street. There was a broken window and a mans body in the street, it was his neighbors. He saw blood on his other neighbors window, and a crushed car in the driveway. The storm dragon almost broke into sympathetic tears at this point, "Can't he fucking see that these people were commoners?! This is no different than killing a dog for its miniscule territory!"

James seemed to be synchronized with the dragon in their emotional outburst as he finally sped towards his driveway before stopping dead. His door was open...