Chapter 24: Preparing to Jump

Son said, “That’s why I couldn’t track Stephanie's location. She isn’t in our world right now, but she also has not passed through the borders of the kingdom. She is inside this portal which leads to another dimension." Son paused for a bit to have a closer look at the portal and continued, "From its fluctuations, I think it’s an inferior dimension." Son explained that an inferior dimension is sort of a pocket space, similar to a demiplane. I then thought of its resemblance to the portal Anton made when we came across the vampire; only in this case, pocket spaces are much smaller, covering the size of a building or two at most.

Before heading inside, we all prepared first. We asked Julian to guard the outer perimeter so that no one can interfere with us on the inside. Son handed me a piece of candy to act as a body implant that contains some sort of special mana created from the Living Stone. It can be implanted to anyone through ingestion and would seep into the meridians and enter the mana network that travels all around the body. Apparently, it can act as a phone in this new world. You can contact anyone just by subconsciously thinking of them without having to voluntarily think of their name or face. I think it works by picking up on the unique mana signatures of different people that one subconsciously thinks of and recognizes. Also, the clothes I picked up from yesterday were augmented by Son to become combat-ready equipment. For the weapon, Son couldn’t prepare one immediately, so he asked his personal nanobots to work on it, I requested for a weapon that can transform its shape to whatever I desire. Now Son’s creations won’t be as strong as a soul weapon like David's, but it’s the best better than normal weapons at the very least since he used the last of the living stone’s rocks.

While Son is creating the transforming weapon, I used the time to increase my mana cultivation to Rank-3. With each rank upgrade, everything about me grows in quality: my speed, strength, reaction time, and thought processes. The third rank of mana cultivation involves storing the mana present in the world into my Dantians. I'll be storing them and owning them in the sense that the mana from the air would enter into my Mana Network and sort of be like my blood. When the mana is stored inside the body, it would take on the properties of its owner. For people often who use fire, the mana would turn red and fiery. In my case, the Heavenly Way mana appears as formless and colorless, just light and transparent. While this might seem weak, it actually is not since this mana is capable of a very  useful trait. I can at any moment, I can change the property of my mana at will; from fiery hot to ice cold and from ice cold it can even change to bone-chilling cold, the type of cold that people feel when faced with intense killing intent.

After cultivating my mana, I collected some of the combat-related books that I can access at the Library. I found books entitled, "Fist Arts of the Heavenly Way," "Leg Arts of the Heavenly Way," "Saber Arts of the Heavens," and "Heavenly Spear Arts." The fist and leg arts, unlike the other combat arts, do not form a weapon intent in the body. Instead, they present techniques on how to attack using the body, with a few basic movements using each body part something that people can copy after looking at it once. But once paired with the accompanying breathing technique, which pairs the use of mana with movements presented in the technique, and the resulting effect would be that it would have a multitude of variations within each movement, making it very hard for one to counter. The sword and saber arts are in contrast with each other. While the sword intent emphasizes adapting to the situation, making it feel light and agile, the saber intent is heavy and overbearing. Rather than adapting to the situation, the saber intent makes the surroundings submit to the will of its user. As for the spear, its only desire is to pierce, entirely letting go of defense and focusing everything on the attack. That’s why spear intent actually feels like an aura piercing through the heavens.

While cultivating for a Son came and gave me the transforming weapon. It looks like a pure black bangle that you can control with your own thoughts after taking ownership of it with a droplet of your own blood.

After cultivating my mana, collecting combat-related books, and gearing up with the transforming weapon, I checked on the others. Each of them is also battle-ready. Topher’s mind is focused more than ever. David used a technique to further sharpen his sword. Son prepared his Exosuit and every weapon in his arsenal was ready for deployment. Julian hid his aura by the entrance, almost feeling invisible unless you pay attention to him. Roel focused his mind to see how he should change his body, and tagging along with him is his current partner, the manticore, a mythological being that has the body of a lion and the tail of a snake. Jolly is resting on the side, tired from helping Son deck out our gear. She gave each of us a bottle with a single drop of liquid, an elixir capable of healing our bodies once, given that we have the energy to drink it at all. Dianne is ready as well; she has cast multiple buffs for each of us. Lastly, Joyce readied her state of mind to prepare to face the worst-case scenarios that could happen. As the kids were also preparing to jump into the portal, Topher told them to head back home since, at the moment, they are only either at first or second ranks and would be more of a burden. They also tried to convince me to stay behind because technically, I don't have a high combat rank. But I shrugged their idea off and said, "I don't care about what you say. It's my fault that Stephanie is behind that portal so I'm going in." Now that I have reached Rank-3, I can fully utilize the strength of my body. As written in the novel, a Rank-3 cultivator has a strength of around 300 kilograms from mana cultivation. In my case where my mana is augmented and blessed by the Heavenly Way, I get twice as much as the strength of an ordinary Rank-3 cultivator making it up to 600 kilograms. But as for most of my strength, I got it from cultivating my body in accordance with the Heavenly Body Cultivation Manual which measures up to 90 megagrams, making my strength almost equivalent to that of an ordinary Rank-7 primary cultivator with 100 megagrams of strength. While it may not appear impressive with these people who are all at Rank-9 Pinnacle of the mortal realm, surely it is enough to fight in skirmishes.

Now that everything is set, it's finally time to rescue my niece, Stephanie. I volunteered to go in first and just wait for them inside. We finally jumped in and while Max is on top of my head as soon as his body touched the portal. His body rebounded out and flung off me. Upon entering the portal, I found myself in a strange place. I decided to look around while waiting for the others. I saw a dirt road

that can lead up or down. The path downwards leads to a stone-arch in which that the path beyond  doesn’t lead to anywhere it’s at the end of a cliff. The path upwards leads to a bright and golden building that looks like a church. The way to the dirt roads is bordered by numerous trees like a forest, but it gets cut off at around ten trees in. It feels like the trees were just put there to make walking up the dirt path more pleasing to the eyes and less distressful. Around five minutes have passed and no one from the outside has followed me in yet. I decided to go back to where the portal is, but I spotted a random patrol coming towards my direction, so I hid by the corner. One guard said, “Boy, the commander illegally opened another portal leading to the Church of the Holy Light. He knows the rules.” The second guard replied, “Yeah, I heard he couldn’t do anything else since the main entrance is inaccessible to the outside world now. The city is in a state of lockdown already since the disappearance of the princess was announced. A fluctuation of mana as big as the main entrance would alert the people in charge. He was smart to use this portal since it is small enough to not be noticed by the authorities and it closes after half an hour.” After hearing those words, I saw the portal closed which means that I couldn’t exit the same way that I entered.

I calmed myself down and thought things through. I thought about my two goals and how I should go about achieving them. First, I have to rescue Stephanie and second, I have to think of a way on how to get out of here. I can’t be seen but I also need them to sense and fear repercussions If they see me so Stephanie doesn’t get hurt. I then remembered that I had brought with me the robe and mask I wore earlier. I thought, "Who knew me being lazy to put these aside would come in handy?" I took them out and put them on, maybe being one of Franco’s Sigil Knights will make them think twice about attacking me. But that’s only my last resort since my goal is to not be seen as much as possible. I waited for the two roaming guards to go on their way before getting up. But as soon as I got up, they looked back and saw me. I freaked out and used my movement arts to knock them out before they could move. Phew! Good thing they were just Rank-1 warriors. I put their bodies to where I was hiding and I closed some of their acupoints, mainly dealing with their consciousness. Given their rank, they should remain unconscious for the rest of the night. I have to be more careful from here on out.