Chapter 267: Cores and Identities (Patreon)

Vanar

At D rank, cultivators and monsters started to open their acupoints, 108 connections between a soul and the universe, allowing for greatly increased resource regeneration and a fundamental alteration to the flow of energy within a soul, boosting some or all stats but also increasing the quality of the cultivator or monster’s energy by more than 12 times, resulting in the true barrier of fighting across ranks.

But this was nothing compared to the difference between D ranks and C ranks, the absence or presence of a core of power.

During advancement to C rank, for almost all cultivators, their single Mental Forge would form a connection to their Core Container, their psyforce automatically condensing their qi into a solid structure. Then their Mana Wells would connect as well, their mana turning into liquid to surround the new core like a magma layer surrounding the core of a planet, and, finally, it would be time for forging.

Using all their energy, the cultivator would condense their new core and enhance it to match their Laws, cultivation technique, and the choices they’d made in their cultivation path up to that point, a truly difficult process, but, if they succeeded, the end result was an entirely new level of power, their qi, mana, and psyforce all influenced by the properties of their new core to increase the power of their energy by a much, much greater factor than just opening up acupoints, and, depending on the nature of their core, their energy would gain new unique properties as well.

Raven Gale and Wen Alexis, for example, who’d both made it to at least the fifth round of the tournament finals and thus had a chance to reincarnate like Vanar was aiming for, had practiced relatively average cultivation techniques before they’d joined the Za-Lord’s guard and been given the chance to enhance their foundations, so their cores were average, only causing their qi, mana, and psyforce to move far faster than normal and regenerate far quicker respectively. Meanwhile Vanar, with his high grade Rapid Blood Sword Core, had three beneficial properties to his energy. First, his qi, mana, and psyforce all moved far faster than those of most C rank cultivators, allowing him to greatly boost the speed of both his movements and attacks. Second, his energy was much sharper than normal, enabling him to more easily cut through armor and other barriers. Finally, third, his blood related skills, Blood Poison and Blood Flow Berserking, had been enhanced by almost an entire grade.

These were examples of the normal style of core, enhancing multiple aspects useful for combat, but, after joining the United Federation of Planets and reading through the Divine Compendium on the soul net, a text freely available to any C rank of the force, Vanar’d realized it hadn’t been the wisest choice. Sure, the enhancement to his combat power from his core was higher than most of the cores of those from the Heavenly Soul Universe based on cultivation techniques of the same level, but the benefits to training were pretty much zero, so there was a reason none of the over 1,728 C ranks from the Heavenly Soul Universe had followed his example.

The types of cores the Yin Yang Sage and Lord Aalam recommended for anyone wanting to advance to C rank had two main properties as a prerequisite. First, they had to increase the purity of qi, mana, and psyforce, allowing for faster cultivation, easier absorption of resources, added control in combat, and, most important, an easier time advancing to B rank in the future. Second, they had to boost a cultivator’s affinities with all Laws which could become a bottleneck in their later advancements, making advancing in their Laws easier and again boosting their control over their energy.

This wasn’t, however, to say their cores didn’t provide powerful additional effects. No, even the weakest cultivator in the Heavenly Soul Universe practiced a cultivation technique only two levels below Vanar’s Rapid Blood Sword Manual, while many practiced cultivation techniques a level higher like the Four Aspect Cycle, the Yang Destruction Manual, and the Four Elements Breath, while at least seven he knew of trained in Yin Yang Cosmology, one of the six most powerful cultivation techniques in the universe after the Twelve Element Primal Code. There were a lot of cores among those of the Heavenly Soul Universe with better combat effects than his own.

Irena Krol’s Four Elements Absolute Core allowed her to influence the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water in her opponent’s energy, breaking their skills; Li Evelyn’s Living Yin Shadow Core allowed her to control yin shadows a rank higher than herself; and Javier Garcia’s Yin Yang Sky Lord Core quadrupled the quality of his energy while also more than doubling his already rather ridiculous speed. And there were so many others with cores at a similar level. Even someone with a cultivation technique two levels below his own, Nitya Chakrabarti with the supreme single element cultivation technique One With The Hurricane, had a core almost at his level due to raising her technique quite a few levels higher than needed before advancing to C rank, boosting the power of all her skills in addition to purifying her energy and increasing her already ridiculous affinity for the element of wind.

And this wasn’t even mentioning the cores of Isaiah, Lady Li, and Lord Aalam. Their effects were ridiculous, and the cores of Lady Li and Lord Aalam weren’t even complete yet, the two both having thirteen Core Containers, Mana Wells, and Mental Forges, most of which they hadn’t even made use of yet.

The common properties of the cores of the cultivators from the Heavenly Soul Universe, however, also made them relatively easy to spot, even when they were in disguise, which was a problem. No gods or A ranks seemed to have realized just how many cultivators from the Heavenly Soul Universe were participating in the Universal Tournament before the start of the finals, but Vanar was sure all the gods and most of the other major powers present had figured out everyone’s identities given the combination of the feel of their energies and their obviously young ages.

Vanar himself, even though he hadn’t been informed of anyone’s disguise, could already identify almost all the Heavenly Soul Universe’s top combatants, and they were performing about as well as he’d expected, 57 still competing even by round 14, where only 204 contestants were left, and the only member of the United Federation of Planets he couldn’t identify was Lord Aalam himself.

Isaiah was obviously the man called the Slaughterer, his nearly flawless combat style one Vanar had fought with far too many times to not notice, even with the dragon using a halberd instead of a spear, and Lady Li was quite obviously the actress Starflower who was now the only host of the tournament after Astos was fired from his post, though it was unclear if any of the gods and other powers present had realized.

Unlike most of the disguises of the United Federation of Planets, Starflower wasn’t a created identity, but an assumed one, Lady Li almost certainly having killed the original Starflower before taking her place, so seeing through her disguise was much more difficult than seeing through the others, but, at the same time, there were a lot of contextual clues.

Still, as the announcer of the tournament, she had the same level of protection as the contestants until the tournament was over, so it likely wouldn’t be too much of a problem even if her disguise was seen through.

Lord Aalam, however, Vanar couldn’t identify. At the start of the finals, there were nine candidates he’d seen as possibilities for Lord Aalam’s identity, taking as a prerequisite they would have had to have won their regional competitions, but all of them had since lost. Sure, several of them had performed beyond what their original seeds would have suggested, one even taking out the original 31st seed, but they hadn’t used powerful artifacts even until the end.

Looking up at the sky, however, at one of the longest fights of the tournament so far, Vanar had another idea on Lord Aalam’s identity.

Fighting up in the arena at the center of the ring-shaped space station, Reverend Samsara of the sangha, the original 6th seed of the tournament, was up against Poison Master Oh Mega, the fictional identity of one of the Heavenly Soul Universe’s younger combatants, Thomas Garcia, Li Evelyn’s child with the second great talent produced by the Garcia Clan a few hundred years after Earth’s integration. And Thomas, one of the seven members of the United Federation of Planets who’d come over to repeatedly train with the Za-Lord’s guard, was perfectly countering the much stronger combatant.

Unlike most members of the Garcia Clan, Thomas was a mage, wielding an Empyrean grade staff instead of an Empyrean grade sword, but he did train in Yin Yang Cosmology, and he did have a uniqueness which boosted the power of his wing skill, which in turn boosted the power of his movement skill, which in turn made him very fast. Meanwhile, Reverend Samsara’s weakness was speed. Samsara could take out most of his opponents with a single swing of his overly large sword, but he couldn’t reach Thomas. And, while Reverend Samsara was basically unkillable, literally able to come back from the dead while also possessing strong defense and regeneration almost at the level of Isaiah’s, Thomas’s magic blasts, his main offensive technique, contained both the explosive properties of the mix of yin and yang, allowing him to bypass Samsara’s defenses, and a powerful yin yang poison based on the theories originally produced by the Yin Yang Sage.

Slowly, with every blast that hit, Reverend Samsara was growing more and more poisoned, his own energy starting to turn into even more poison as time went on, and his regeneration was becoming less and less quick. Then, after about an hour of fighting, he finally couldn’t regenerate any longer, dying, and, as he was out of energy, he couldn’t immediately revive himself.

Sure, after about a day, he’d wake up—the man’s powers were ridiculous—but he wouldn’t be able to fight in the next round, so he was going to lose the tournament, and that was just what the United Federation of Planets wanted.

Samsara, who’d been the 10th seed, had been up against Thomas, the 139th seed, instead of one of the 64 cultivators with only one loss, as, unlike most of those seeded higher than him, he hadn’t decided to pass on being the one cultivator to not fight in the previous round, and he’d paid the price.

Vanar’s mind scanned over Thomas, then Thomas’s parents sitting together in the compound both the Za-Lord’s Guard and the most obvious members of the United Federation of Planets had started to share, then at all the other members of the United Federation of Planets who hadn’t yet lost.

Given Lord Aalam’s abilities, which Vanar knew from experience included the skill Polymorph, he could be pretending to be any one of them, which would conveniently also allow him to protect the rest of them if any other B ranks, or possibly weaker A ranks, decided to be suicidal.