Sitting on a sofa in his rented apartment, the boy ate a meal of meat and first-class food. At this moment, he was reflecting on his journey so far.
Kayden had been awake for eight months. At this point, its victim count had already passed one thousand deaths. His battle experience was honed to an absurd level for his age.
More than 90% of his fights were now won solely using his technique. He didn't even need to use brute force. His rank was at the peak of the sixth level and would be far above that if not because of the lack of mana in the stone.
At this moment, he could face practically anyone at the apprentice rank, as long as they were average people. Against geniuses, he only had a few fights, and in most of them, he had to utilize his enlightened state.
With that, the fight became... easy. His strength gain was ridiculously high and he could easily overwhelm his opponents and didn't even need to go to the point of extreme exhaustion.
At most, he needed to rest a few moments before going to the next fight. Kayden felt like he was no longer making progress fighting other people. The boy decided to focus completely on his state of enlightenment and cultivation.
The boy ordered several different foods via cell phone and some items needed for him to spend a long period in isolation. He would live next to the mana stone until his date to Sol Academy.
The next day, the boy headed into the forest with a large sack on his back. The boy was no longer afraid of the animals around him. The mages cleaned out anyone above the apprentice level from the surrounding area, so he was practically a king in there with his current strength.
As soon as he arrived, his first action was to clean up the environment and then he started cultivating again. He wanted to get at least the seventh rank before the championship and also see how many times he could double his mana this time.
Slowly, the days began to pass. Kayden's only company was himself. The only sounds that accompanied his life were those of the forest. One period of time he was cultivating, and in others, he was testing the limits of enlightenment.
At first, he only did this inside the tree, but over time he started to go out to explore the forest a little, mainly looking for somewhere to bathe. This need of his was met when he found a large lake near the mana stone.
Just by getting close, he felt the overload of mana in the water. Something wasn't right there. After searching for a bit, he found several crystals at the bottom of the crystal-clear lake.
They overflowed with mana, especially mana with certain characteristics of the water element. This was clear when seeing the small crystals getting wet even out of the water.
From that moment on, Kayden began to use the lake to bathe and also to drink water. The boy first tested to see if he would have any adverse reaction to a small amount of water and, in the end, discovered that it clarified his thoughts.
It was a very small improvement, but it managed to do a good job when taken constantly. A few times, Kayden was confronted by other animals, but they soon learned not to meddle with the boy.
Kayden didn't kill any of his attackers, as he needed them to get the message to the others. What was better than a strong beast avoiding a certain place and demonstrating this to the other animals?
A month later Kayden was ready to advance to the seventh rank, the boy took several crystals from the lake to improve the mana in the environment and when added to the stone the amount of mana was very high, almost approaching five times the normal value.
The boy was sitting on the floor in the lotus position, with each cycle of his breathing his heart calmed down and his mind became colder and colder, slowly he began the breaking process.
The process was similar to his first breakthrough, but there was one small detail that changed everything.
'submit to your place' Kayden thought when he saw a remnant of the world's will entering the mana he purified, this time the boy would not tolerate even a grain of sand in the sea of mana's wills that were not his.
It didn't take long and he finally had the mana to advance and without caring about the pain in his body the boy squeezed the mana to half its size, it didn't even take 30 seconds for him to carry out this process.
Then he continued pulling mana from the environment, this time he also didn't need to worry about reprisals from his body, as he had finally reached an age suitable for his cultivation level, well... at least that's what it seemed like.
Ten minutes later the accumulated mana was squeezed again and the density in his body increased even more, without even losing focus for a millisecond Kayden began to gather mana again.
This was where he had stopped the other time and wanted to know how far he could go, this time the mana accumulation process took about 30 minutes, as the amount of mana he needed to double was several times greater than before.