Chapter 40: Breaking The Limit.
A few hours later...
Levi was seen sitting on top of a wet puddle of his own sweat. He was breathing roughly while his skin was crimson red and emitting a pillar of smoke.
This was his sixth session of absorbing the divine light, and it was clear he was close to burning himself out. Still, Levi forced himself to stand, wincing from a pounding headache. Clutching his head, he staggered to the fridge and opened it after fumbling with the handle a few times.
After getting assaulted by its cold breeze, he leaned against the door and remained in that position for a couple of minutes; his wet disheveled hair hiding his pained grimace.
At the moment, he wished nothing but to shove himself inside the fridge.
"You should stop here." Ash’Kral warned, "I know you want to get stronger fast, but consistency is a hundred times more efficient than speed."
"I know, that’s why I am not going to stop until I drop on the ground." Levi uttered indifferently, "I have to test my limits and reach failure; only then can I create a consistent and efficient pace."
"I see you are treating this like working out in the gym." Ash’Kral chuckled.
"Whether it’s cultivation or normal workout, the human body can never tap into its ultimate potential if one always stops at the first sign of discomfort," Levi said.
"You are right, but also don’t forget." Ash’Kral doubled down, "There is a fine line between death and touching one’s true limitation."
Levi remained silent, knowing that Ash’Kral was right.
The human body knew what it was doing by using pain as a way to deter its owner from going beyond its capabilities.
If he kept ignoring it and forcing his body to experience such a high temperature over and over again, he might either pass out or drop dead right there.
Although Levi knew this, he had no plans on stopping now, feeling like he could add at least two more sessions.
Thus, after a fifteen-minute break to cool himself using a cold shower, Levi went back to the same place and sat on top of the previous sweat puddle, not bothering to clear it.
While it seemed disgusting to others, Levi used his sweat puddle as a cooling station.
"After a total of six sessions, each one spanning between fifteen and thirty seconds, the Nine Senses seed now has ten tiny cracks; this means I have completed 1%." Levi murmured to himself as he gazed at the pulsing crimson seed.
The percentage readings weren’t being reported by the seed or written on its body as numbers. The nightcrawlers had taught the humans how to read the clues across the seed’s growth until it reached fruition.
The humans came along and simplified this system by adding percentages since it was much easier than asking someone how many cracks or tree rings they had to check their progress.
In the case of seeds, each ten cracks implied a progress of 1%. This reading system would carry on until the sprouting stage, which occurred after the first plateau breakthrough.
"This means if the energy requirement remained the same and I was doing six sessions a day, I would reach 5% in about..." Levi did the math in his mind in a second or two and then mumbled, "Thirty sessions in five days."
Levi felt that he could narrow this result immensely to three days if he stayed up all night, doing nothing but cultivating, cooling down, and repeating the process again.
He understood that if he was going this slow with divine light, then absorbing the natural daylight with his pores would do nothing but scratch the Nine Senses seed gluttonous stomach.
After all, he was told by Ash’Kral that it needed ten times the energy requirement compared to the Void and Sun seeds.
He wasn’t an idiot.
Although he wasn’t told the difference between the energy requirements of the Void and Sun seeds compared to the Shadowlife seed, he understood that it would be just as significant.
In simpler terms, the Nine Senses Seed was an abomination when it came to energy consumption, and only high-quality resources could fulfill its insatiable hunger.
Thus, Levi lowered his head and continued feeding the beast against the agonizing screams of his body.
Unfortunately, the seventh session lasted for a mere ten seconds before Levi’s temperature rose to a new, dangerous level, leaving him gasping for air with a dried-up throat.
He had drunk more than a liter of water in the past fifteen minutes. Yet, in less than ten seconds, he felt like he was lost for three days in a desert without a sip of water.
It was a horrendous sensation that left him crawling to the kitchen.
Although he was blind, he still felt dizzy and disoriented like everyone else since it was related to the inner ear (vestibular system), which controlled balance, rather than vision alone.
After climbing to the counter, Levi turned on the faucet and placed his head underneath the water. Steam exploded from his head, and the droplets falling down his chin turned hot almost instantly.
This was it, his limit.
Ash’Kral knew it, Levi knew it, and if anyone else was watching, they would think the same.
"Are you planning to stop now and get a prolonged rest?" Ash’Kral inquired.
"You joking?" Levi uttered with a hoarse voice, "This is it, this is the place where the ordinary and the special are separated. If I stopped here, I would be no different than any average person."
"I have to break the limits, I have to at least try...Regardless of the outcome."
’Average person?’ Ash’Kral smiled inwardly as he watched Levi staggering towards the bathroom, ’Does he even know that the average person would have stopped at the second session after the burning sensation started to feel as real as being burned under flames?’
’Does he even know that he has long since broken the limit of the average people and was now seeking to break his own unrealistic limitation?’
Ash’Kral couldn’t help but appreciate Levi’s impeccable standards he held himself to. He could tell that Levi’s concept of what was normal and special was flawed from birth.
This didn’t surprise him a bit as he had watched him grow from a child to this youthful boy, burning with unfulfilled desires stolen from him that night.
While normal people hung around each other from childhood, Levi spent his time mostly around nightcrawlers and his brother, who was also a genetic anomaly.
The only average person in his childhood was his uncle, who took them in and ’raised’ them until they became teenagers and moved to Tamara’s settlement.
He was even home-schooled, as no parent was going to accept having their children study next to a time bomb.
How could he know what was average when the only thing guiding him was the stories he had read from books about the most powerful Daywalkers...Levi felt that if he didn’t take it this far, he had no place to be named next to them.
Thus, after a twenty-minute cooling period under a cold shower, he returned and kicked off one more session.
As he focused his foggy spiritual vision on the divine light surrounding him, it responded to his call almost instantly.
Unlike the first time ever, the divine light was absorbed naturally within Levi’s body without creating any golden inked tattoos or sun symbols. Anyone watching him would think he was meditating under the divine light.
It was like he merely awakened his dormant bloodline to absorb the divine light for the first time. After that, there was no need for such a grandiose transformation.
’One, two, three...four.’
While he didn’t look like he was absorbing the divine light, Levi was feeling the rising heat akin to being dropped into a giant pot of boiling water.
But he kept regulating his breathing to fight off the dizziness while counting down each second. His spiritual vision never left the massive crimson pulsing seed, which appeared to be sucking off any particle of energy that entered the seeds’ field.
As it kept eating the golden particles, tiny cracks started surfacing across its body. Levi zoned out completely on the cracks, not hearing even his thoughts. All that was on his mind was to keep adding the cracks, no matter what it took.
Ten seconds...Twelve seconds...Fifteen seconds!
This left Ash’Kral astonished and a bit concerned as he could feel the same burning heat and knew that it wasn’t to be scoffed at all!
While his pain tolerance had already reached a new freakish height, Levi wasn’t the same. This made him feel that if Levi kept going at it, forget breaking his limit, he was going to melt his organs off!
’Boy, cut it off! You have done more than enough for the day!’
’More...More...More...’