It didn't take a long time for Kyle to plan his next step.
'Got about 60 years left until my shift starts. That's the perfect opportunity to learn the Fragment of Lower Crusher Materials.'
Kyle looked at the shop and quickly found what he wanted.
'Sure enough, it costs Contribution Points. There are also several different variants I can buy.'
The cheapest one was just a small collection of all the necessary materials, while the most expensive one came with a couple of advantages.
'Let's splurge! I'm loaded!'
Kyle quickly bought the most expensive option, which was around 500 Contribution Points.
'Wonder how much Outer Disciples would have to pay for that.'
A couple of seconds later, Kyle was pushed to the side by an invisible force while his home gym became filled with a lot of different things.
Naturally, there were a ton of materials, but there were also several machines and portable Formation Arrays.
The Formation Arrays also had Energy Stones inside them, which meant Kyle wouldn't even need to use his own Energy.
'Bro, being rich and having a good background is crazy!'
Kyle went over to the first material, which consisted of many small purple rocks.
Just as a test, Kyle pulled out his hammer and hit the material full force.
CRK!
The material cracked, but that was it.
'If I got the cheapest variant, I would have to hit this thing slowly to see how it reacts to the environment,' he thought before smirking. 'Luckily, that's not an issue!'
He grabbed the cracked stone and went over to a big machine.
The big machine had a huge hammer at the top, and Kyle put the material on a pedestal below the hammer.
Then, he activated the machine.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The machine quickly hammered the material several times, cracking it with every hit.
Kyle's perception covered the material, and he saw it slowly cracking.
After a bit, he changed the setting of the machine, and it started to hammer the material with less force but at over 20 times the speed.
When Kyle was done looking at the changing material, he grabbed the remains and approached a different machine.
This one was just a huge pot with a Formation Array beneath.
After activating the Formation Array, the material inside the pot started to melt.
For just a moment, Kyle was reminded of the time Theodor had told him to put his hand in molten copper.
That had been fucking scary and painful.
Kyle put his hand into the material, and he immediately felt immense pain, but he was used to that.
Centuries of being the victim of Sin Flames did a lot for Kyle's pain tolerance.
When he was done with this machine, Kyle dunked the hot metal soup into his mouth.
Once more, he received severe burns, but the material also turned into Energy rather quickly.
Afterwards, he grabbed a new stone of the same material and went to another machine.
This one sent a current of Yang-Lightning through it, which demonstrated rather well how the material behaved with electricity.
Kyle could also tell the machine to use Yin-Lightning, but that wouldn't help him a lot. People with a Lightning Affinity would be able to learn a lot about the material by analyzing the Yin-Lightning that came out after it absorbed the Energy of the material, but Kyle didn't have a Lightning Affinity.
There was another machine that slowly compressed the material.
There was another one that turned it into liquid, which flowed into an isolated bucket, which transformed it into gas, which floated into a receptacle that gathered and froze it.
After testing out almost all of the machines, Kyle made a plan for his comprehension.
'My progress is insanely fast,' he thought as he realized how quickly he had fully understood the first material.
'Ever since I comprehended the Higher Primal Material Fragment, I received a significant boost to my Momentum, comprehended the Law of Soul and Center, and got access to these machines. The speed of my comprehension has more than doubled!'
Kyle slowly comprehended one material after the other, and time passed.
How long did it take him to comprehend the Fragment of Lower Crusher Materials?
Just 30 years.
When Kyle was done, he told the shop that he was done, and all the machines and remaining materials vanished.
Surprisingly, Kyle got a partial refund of 138 Contribution Points since he hadn't used everything.
'And done,' he thought with a smile. 'Being rich is great!'
The next moment, he created the best hammer he could make and swung it a bit.
'A bit on the heavier side, but still usable,' he thought as he swung it around. 'That will probably be enough for the Primal Realm. Even if I become a 12/13 Primal, I wouldn't be able to break this.'
'For now, I can mix and match the different levels of materials to get a perfect weapon. Don't want to be too slow. After all, my next enemy is going to be a human, and they don't tend to have stronger defenses than beasts. '
'A mixed hammer should be good enough for now. Unlocking the tenth Cluster didn't increase my power by thaaaaat much, but it still increased it a bit.'
Of course, Kyle had already unlocked the tenth Cluster during his comprehension.
The tenth Cluster had increased his overall power by another 20%, but the actual increase came from his finer control.
The tenth Cluster connected the mind with the body, and Kyle's reaction time had improved tremendously.
'With my weapon taken care of, I should experiment with my eleventh Cluster for a bit. I wanna see how painful it is and how much focus I need for it.'
The next moment, Kyle sat down and closed his eyes.
The eleventh Cluster was also inside Kyle's head, and it would connect his Soul to his body.
'This is where the big drop-off happens. A ton of Seekers never unlock the eleventh Cluster since it's so painful and takes so much time.'
'Let's see how bad it is.'
Kyle gathered his Biological Energy and shoved it into his eleventh Cluster.
As soon as he did that, he started to feel strange.
It was like the world was becoming fuzzy.
He pushed more Biological Energy into it, and the world felt even stranger to Kyle.
This feeling was…
'I fucking hate this!' he thought.
'This feels exactly like my legs fell asleep, but for like… everything!'
'Is this even pain? I don't even know! It doesn't feel like pain. I just kinda hate how it feels.'
'It's distracting as all hell!'
Kyle decided to shove even more Biological Energy into it, and the feeling transformed.
'Ah! Now, it hurts! Thank fuck!' he thought as the fuzzy feeling vanished and was replaced by the constant pain of someone pushing a hot needle into Kyle's eyeballs.
'Yeah, still hurts like a bitch, but honestly, Sin Flames were worse,' Kyle thought.
'Just gotta get back to the ol' Sin Flames grindset.'
'Ignore the pain.'
'Just deal with it.'
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