Chapter 423: First To Finish 3rd Stage, Powerful Aethir
While Blue Maw Pirate Kingdom was in a quagmire, Erix and others in Unfettered Kingdom were progressing rapidly.
When there was nothing to stop you, and no opposing views for the grand development while having constant resources, fast progress was inbound.
Everyone's daily routine was using Elemental crystals they gained from Labyrinth Tower clearing.
For people at Royal-order lifeform, they used resources from pocket dimensions and dungeons to get stats since leveling was no longer possible.
If they wanted to gain physical stats, they had to eat pills made from valuable high-tier resources that increased stats permanently and they were only found in the pocket dimension and sometimes in dungeons.
If they wanted to get Magic power, they had to refine magic cores of powerful monsters from pocket dimensions and dungeons. They had to fight, kill, and get these themselves.
If they wanted to increase their spirit power, they had to do that via Spiritual Arts and resources. But the resources that boosted one's spirit power were in a category of "rare" just like resources that boosted one's soul power.
People had to work harder for those.
But this was even more hard for Empyrean-order powerhouses. The resources that could increase their physical stats were not much.
However, the limited number of Emypyrean-order powerhouses still gradually got stronger in the Magic area, and increased their elemental and concept masteries with daily training, clearing Labyrinth Tower floors as they get stronger daily and get more rewards for progress.
But the wall that would slow down their progress also approached swiftly as they started exhausting resources.
Erix and others were busy daily on a similar routine, with their main focus being Elements, Concepts, and Spiritual Art's third stage.
They didn't go out to kill monsters and look for resources in a pocket dimension to increase their stats. There were better and more efficient ways to do this, but just not available to them at the moment.
They knew they could start this when they reached Shadow Bamboo Sanctuary, so until then, they focused on areas in which they could make constant progress.
And this progression phase was truly fast with nothing to distract them and all of them having a singular focus on achieving the higher realms.
After two days, Erix reached the 4th realm in Punch Concept, Absolution Impact. Rin also reached the 4th realm in Blade Concept, Inversion Blade.
Isabella made progress in her Yearning and Harmony concepts since she had been focusing on them for half a month, reaching the 3rd realm in both.
The Harmony increased her overall power in literal folds and her combat style was properly established as she created her unique skills suitable to her concepts while using her elements to their full potential with them and rapidly progressed in Labyrinth Tower Floors with her newfound combat power.
Her potential was blooming.
Aria's lack of Concepts was filled during this period as well, reaching the 3rd realm Bond and 2nd realm in Dream concept.
Dream concept became a crux in her combat power because it had so much synergy with her Animus concept and brought out her full potential with mind-blowing skills.
The Animus element was something that could breathe a soul into the existence of anything, living or non-living, imaginary or fake, give purpose to nothingness, and make it something.
It was the opposite of the Void element in a sense.
Time, Space, Void, Animus—Three of these four principal elements were already available in their group.
Life & Death — These two primordial elements were also available to Erix, Rin, and Lilith, and soon all Regalons like Lily, Isabella, Aria, and Maleina because the Regalon race's crux source was the pure balanced power of Life and Death.
It was just like how a race of Dragons with flame dragon bloodline would awaken the Fire element automatically due to inherent affinity, and how some Demons with a focus on Blood in their racial attributes would awaken the Blood element naturally.
Erix had already evolved Lily and Aria after Isabella into the Regalon race and evolved their bloodline to Mythical-rank, giving them a huge boost in stats.
It had only been seven days since Lilith used her Insight Scroll, so she was still in its effect, but the next turn to become Regalon was hers.
During the past few days, Erix, Rin, Isabella, Aria, Lily, and Maleina were also making progress in the Way of Unfettered spiritual art's 3rd Stage daily.
It was hard and nightmarish, but suffering also increased in their Spirit power every day and they remained steady.
They didn't let the mental burden accumulate and fought against it and the negativity flooding them, which in turn made them stronger.
Aria became the first one to finish her 3rd stage and acquire Aethir Mystic Intent, officially completing the stage as she directly received a boost of 3000 Aethir.
The Way of Unfettere's 2nd stage transformed one's basic spiritual senses into a Spiritual Mystic Eye, which permanently enhanced their Spirit power by 10% while enhancing the senses.
It could further evolve based on one's personal experience and breakthrough, but of course, nobody had progressed to any next level in their Spiritual Mystic Eye yet since it required much time, effort, and experience.
On the other hand, Aethir was a higher version of Spirit power. While having everything that Spirit power had, it now also had the ability to directly interfere with anything, be it real, fake, dream, reality, law, principles, minds, and as far as one's imagination went.
Because the fundamental core of Aethir's purpose was to turn anything one imagines into reality and likewise affect the reality of oneself and others. This was not easy by any means and required much hard work, time, and cultivating Aethir, exploring Aethir's six transformations, learning them, and mastering them.
For instance, one could essentially turn an incoming fireball attack into a bunch of flowers by consuming one's Aethir force, rendering that attack useless. Of course, this was a crude use of Aethir.
Reaching the level of having Aethir meant opening an entirely new branch of power, but one had to learn about it first.
Aethir Mystic Intent that Aria gained after completing the 3rd stage of Way of Unfettered boosted the basic power of Aethir a single notch while also giving her the basic knowledge that she needed.
Aethir Mystic Intent was a direct manifesting power that consumed one's Aethir force to bring out various results depending on the user's mastery of six transformations. It could apply one's Intent into a physical medium or ethereal medium while creating its own rules and principles.
Aria had Aethir before and access to all six transformations, but she couldn't use it properly as she had no knowledge of it. She only used it to boost the potency of her skills, which was the main use of Spirit power and it boosted them better than spirit force. Of course, this was also a crude use of Aethir considering it could boost a skill way better by applying the power of six transformations.
However, acquiring Athir Mystic Intent finally granted the required basic knowledge to Aria and she knew how to use it properly!
There was no doubt that Aria finishing her 3rd stage of Way of Unfettered made her strongest in the group right off the bat purely because of the fact that she had Aethir Mystic Intent and received such a boost in Aethir after finishing the stage.
But others didn't intend to remain behind for long!