After purchasing the cube, Kyle had to wait for some time for it to get delivered. When it finally arrived, Kyle left the Forward Base and went into the ground.
'The next Refinement is going to suck a lot of ass,' he thought. "The more distractions I have, the better. For now, I will focus on my Major Law of Body and my Law of Hammer. The more oppressive the environment, the better.'
Kyle continued digging into the ground, going deeper and deeper. As he dug deeper, he felt the heat and the gravity increasing. From what he had heard, the Primary Worlds didn't have Gravity Cores. Instead, the bottom of the World Wall spread all of the Gravity Energy.
Ayuvar was a round world with a flat surface. The bottom half was filled with ground, while the top half was filled with air. This meant there was quite a long distance between the surface and the World Floor.
Kyle looked around as he kept teleporting. 'Sure enough, there's barely any valuables. The best ores I can find are just Yin-Metal ores, and I've already reached a depth of over a million kilometers.'
After hours of digging into the ground, Kyle reached a depth of several billion kilometers, and he noticed a couple of other peculiarities.
'The quality of the ore barely reached Minor Metal levels, and there's barely anything. The heat has also stopped increasing. The temperature at a depth of over a billion kilometers is almost identical to the temperature at a depth of just a million kilometers.'
'Usually, the immense pressure of Gravity Energy turns different kinds of Energies into Fire Energy. This is still the case here, but the Fire Energy diminishes so quickly that it can't reach the density required to produce higher levels of fire. Sure, if you shove enough Energy into it, you can also make Minor Fire as hot as Major Fire, but you need so much more Energy that it's ridiculous.'
Kyle felt immense pressure on his body from all of the material above him, but he could still resist it. Even though the heat wasn't increasing a lot, the force of gravity was.
At some point, Kyle also lost his ability to teleport since the immense power of gravity distorted the Space Energy around him.
'I could still go deeper, but this is deceptively dangerous. My body is denser than all the earth and stone around me. I don't even need to move anymore to go deeper. My weight is just pulling me lower. I'm like a stone in an ocean. If I go deeper, I might not be able to get back out again.'
Kyle stopped moving and took a deep breath. Then, he forced the atmospheric Energy into his mind.
The Fifth Refinement was triggered. Not many people could overcome the Fifth Refinement since it was just as painful as Sin Flames, according to everyone.
Moments later, Kyle felt an unusual sensation.
Coldness.
He felt his brain becoming incredibly cold, which was surprisingly painful. The sensation reminded Kyle of his time on Earth, when he had eaten ice cream a bit too quickly.
Kyle felt his focus wane, and his surroundings became more confusing to him. As he tried to think about something, he realized that his mind simply couldn't form anything coherent.
He wanted to think about his Major Law of Body, but whenever he focused on one part, his mind didn't produce anything.
The pain was bad. He had been under the effects of Sin Flames for a long time now and had gotten used to them, but this didn't make it easier to resist the Fifth Refinement in any way. The kind of pain was just very different. There were many different kinds of pains, and people often had different levels of resistance towards them.
Someone might be able to operate normally with immense joint pain, but as soon as they got a medium headache, they might feel like they couldn't do anything anymore. On the other hand, there were people who could deal with major headaches, but as soon as their body hurt, they felt like they lacked the energy to leave bed.
Kyle felt like he was locked in place by the pain. Whenever he moved, he felt like his brain was trying to shoot out of his body, but at the same time, his Sin Flames also told him to move.
The best way to deal with the pain of the Sin Flames, in Kyle's experience, was to never stop moving. Relaxation just made the pain worse. The more distractions and stimuli he experienced, the easier it was to ignore the Sin Flames.
Yet, this pain was the opposite. Movement made it feel way worse. Remaining stationary and not thinking about anything seemed to be the best way to deal with it. Sadly, that would make the Sin Flames worse.
One might think that having Sin Flames would make it easier to get past the Refinements, but that was only true if one had experienced them and then gotten rid of them. The pain of the Sin Flames trained someone's mind in terms of resisting pain. One could say the pain was like a weight, and the mind was like a muscle. By carrying the weight for a long time, the muscle would become stronger. The muscle would be able to perform better if more weight were added in the future.
However, if one still had Sin Flames, one also still carried the weight of them. Kyle's "muscles" were stronger, but they also had to carry twice the weight.
'I... I... I should...'
Kyle just looked forward, his eyes unfocused.
'I don't know,' he thought. 'It's... hard. I can barely aim my mind. If I just let it flow and think about whatever it wants to think about, it's not hard. I can talk to myself about this stuff without issues, but if I think about how to... train... I have to comprehend the Fragments... which Fragments... right, the... what was it?'
Kyle shook his head as he felt his mind burning with immense cold. Whenever he tried to think about his Laws, the pain got worse.
'If I just stay here for 2,500 years, I'm pretty sure I can get through this. The pain by itself is bad, but not that bad. However, that means I wouldn't make any progress. It's 2,500 years of nothing.'
'I have to do something. Anything!'
Kyle summoned his hammer and the cube of Gravity Metal he had bought.
As soon as the cube appeared, it shot downward. The cube of Gravity Metal was way denser than the surroundings.
When Kyle saw that, he moved on instinct. He shot after it, swung his hammer, and hit the bottom of the cube, shooting it upward.
The cube flew for countless kilometers before the gravity pulled it back down again.
Kyle thought about pulling the cube back into his Soul Space, but he decided against it.
'I need to do something, and this is something. Just hit it. Just keep hitting it.'
Kyle flew after the cube and hit it again. While doing so, he also used his Law of Hammer.
The cube vibrated, but it managed to remain stable.
Then, he hit it again, and again, and again.
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