Eryndor settled on his routine once he decided on cultivating.
Pop the pill. Circulate Qi. Repeat.
Cultivate. Eat. Cultivate. Sleep. Repeat.
Fifteen days passed as he finally reached the peak of stage six of Qi Gathering realm.
On that day, he got a message that he was invited to witness the results of Dr. Ralph’s project.
Eryndor first asked the messenger if he could bring more people with him, who simply nodded.
Eryndor proceeded to ask his roommates and Syndra if they wanted to tag along to watch Dr. Ralph’s project results. Unfortunately, none of them were free at the moment.
He simply shrugged, and followed the messenger.
"Will we have to go to the headquarters?"
The messenger shook his head.
"Nope, he has been researching his project in the Academy. It gives inspiration to be among so many young minds, he says."
Eryndor had no reply to that.
The next few moments there was only silence as they walked.
The research labs are in the main building of the Academy too?
Eryndor thought when he noticed the direction they were walking towards.
At this point he was numb. The Federation had simply not bothered with different buildings, putting everything in one structure itself.
A few minutes later, Eryndor was standing in a lab, gazing at the table covered with white cloth.
There were a few others who stood with him, only one of whom Eryndor recognized.
Since they had decided to delay forming their team, all four of the roommates had decided to gather information on potential second years they could invite.
Naturally, they set their sights on the ones present on the leaderboard.
Starting from the second half of first year, students could start participating in ranked matches to increase their ranks on the leaderboard.
Of course, one had to be eligible for ranked matches in the first place.
The eligibility criteria was to have a score above ninety five in any one domain of battle, be it speed, defense, or offense.
For comparison, twenty was the max limit of stage one, with an increase of ten at each realm, resulting in hundred being the max of stage nine of first level.
That was unless your mastery of cultivation art was extraordinary enough to break limits.
The higher one ranked, the more rewards they got at the end of every four months.
The leaderboards didn’t distinguish between the year gap of students.
All four-year batches competed on a shared leaderboard, which had a lowest rank of five hundred.
The one who Eryndor recognized was one of the few second year students who had managed to make his way on the leaderboard which was filled with the third and fourth years.
Edward, who won his ranked match yesterday, and managed to take a place at rank five hundred, was also one of the few second year students on the leaderboards.
There was only one first year student on the leaderboard currently, Kron. The one whom Guardian Sol had taken under his tutelage.
Eryndor peeled his sight away from the student as Dr. Ralph entered through the door. Laughing heartily, he opened his arms wide and declared.
"Haha, sorry for being late. It turns out everyone has already arrived, I am truly sorry."
He gestured to the table upon which a cloth was laid out. Without any sense of ceremony, he held its edges and whisked it away.
Eryndor could now see what was hidden beneath the cloth. It was a diagram, or rather, an array formation from the looks of it.
He had seen a few of this stuff while browsing information, but he had never seen one as complicated as this.
No amount of words would’ve been enough to describe the complexity which the array formation on the table depicted.
Dr. Ralph had an extremely proud look on his face as he explained.
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"This…is an array formation which would change how group battles work. This would give us the greatest advantage in future.
"There is just one problem, currently it needs invocation of an Eldritch Entity’s Revered Appellation for it to truly work.
"I haven’t solved that problem yet, it would’ve been good if one didn’t need the help of an Eldritch Entity for it to truly work."
Dr. Ralph saw everyone’s confused expression and laughed once again.
"Oh sorry, let me explain what this is first."
He pointed at the array formation and continued.
"This…is what will allow us to give our energy of Consciousness to others.
"If you’re not aware, energy of Consciousness is a term coined by Dr. Kirchoff in his latest article.
"It is the energy which fuels our abilities, and also the one which fuels the abilities of the anomalies. Dr. Kirchoff also solved the mystery of why they killed living beings using simple correlation.
"Anomalies want the energy of Consciousness within us."
Seeing their shocked looks, Dr. Ralph chuckled. "Let’s leave that to another time shall we? You can read Dr. Kirchoff’s papers later, this is my time to shine."
He picked up the piece of metal upon which the array formation was carved and displayed it to everyone, while explaining.
"Like I said earlier, this formation will allow people to give their own energy of Consciousness to a target of their desire.
"Battles would be countless times easier since we could now donate our energies to people who possessed truly powerful tide-changing abilities without the fear of them running out of energy."
He put it back on the table after everyone got a good look at it.
"But like I said, there is just one fault which I wasn’t able to overcome until now.
"You see, energy of Consciousness has a unique mark of the owner. The array formation I made could transfer the energy of Consciousness sure, but the target couldn’t use it since the transferred energy still belonged to the sender.
"I didn’t know how to remove this mark of ownership. That was, until Dr. Kirchoff gave a little help."
He used his index finger to fix his specs and continued.
"He said that in the few important books he had stolen from the Outer Domains, there existed information which said that beyond a certain level, people could share their ability.
"Of course, it is temporary, the complete ability cannot be shared, and frankly, the process to obtain it is too lengthy and difficult.
"But, it is still possible. One just needs their Revered Appellation. It is basically a set of lines which points towards their existence.
"Dr. Kirchoff shared the Revered Appellation which he had obtained through one of these books.
"He said that this Revered Appellation pointed towards an Eldritch Entity whose authority included what I want."
Seeing that some of them took a step back, and had nervous expressions.
He waved his hand and convinced them.
"Don’t you all believe in Dr. Kirchoff? I may be crazy, but what about him? It was Dr. Kirchoff who said that this Eldritch Entity is a friendly one he has most recently established contact with.
"If I pray to him through the Revered Appellation, the Eldritch Entity would agree. Don’t worry."
Eryndor spoke up, hesitating.
"Have you done it before?"
The researcher smiled, "Nope."
He then continued, "But no need to worry, trust me. I am starting."
Without waiting for their reaction, he prepared everything, and took his stance of prayer, but before Dr. Ralph even began, Eryndor felt a stirring within him.
It bewildered him.
What? Don’t tell me…