Lightning Is the Only Way

Gravis walked down the corridor until he found a room with a "16" painted on the door. Gravis put the key in, opened the door, and entered.

The room looked different than he thought. He had expected lightning coming out of the walls, yet he only saw a small cabin with two holes. One hole was on the ceiling and the other one on the floor beneath it. The two holes were only about five centimeters wide. This was probably where the lightning was supposed to be.

Gravis closed the door and thought back on the Lightning Codex. When he was confident, he started walking forward and sat on top of the hole. He waited, but nothing happened. After a while, Gravis noticed a lever to his right, which could be accessed easily from his position.

He prepared himself and pulled it down.

BZZZT!

Lightning came from the top hole and hit Gravis' head, but Gravis didn't react. His Elemental Synchronicity was always active, and lightning without a will behind it could do nothing to him. The lightning went through his body and into the bottom hole.

Gravis pulled his hand back, and the lever popped back into place. The lightning also immediately stopped. "Interesting," Gravis thought. Gravis took a deep breath and readied himself. This would probably hurt a lot.

While using his Elemental Synchronicity, Gravis could ignore the lightning, yet he was supposed to temper his muscles. If he didn't absorb the lightning, he wouldn't be able to temper his muscles nor create a Lightning Seed.

He could let elements pass through his body, unhindered. Back when he fought against the low-grade demonic beast snake, he had used it to get rid of the poison. He had been bitten and Gravis had used fire to cleanse his body. While his body remained unaffected, the poison was burned since it was not part of his body, after all.

Gravis pulled the lever down again, and the lightning returned. With a last sigh, Gravis stopped his Elemental Synchronicity, and the lightning fully hit his head and rampaged throughout his body. Gravis clenched his teeth but stopped after a while. It was not as painful as he had thought, actually. He had expected something more painful.

Gravis concentrated on the lightning and made it move towards his dantian. He couldn't place the Lightning Seed inside the dantian since it would just destroy the whole thing, but he could place it right outside it. In the future, Gravis would use his dantian as the place for his Energy Vortex.

Manipulating the lightning inside one's body was usually done differently than Elemental Synchronicity. The practitioners would manipulate their bodies so the lightning could only go in, but not out. When enough lightning was compressed in a specific spot, it would condense a Lightning Seed.

Gravis smirked. "Even though condensing a Lightning Seed is different from my Elemental Synchronicity, I can still use it to make the lightning gather in one spot," he said to himself.

He willed the lightning to move towards his dantian, yet also willed the lightning to attack him. He had to temper his muscles, after all. All the lightning started gathering in his dantian, and not even a little bit left his body. Without his Elemental Synchronicity, this would be impossible.

After a while, Gravis felt something condense beside his dantian. "It's already done?" Gravis exclaimed in surprise as he inspected his body. There was something akin to a small star beside his dantian, and it was continually sparking with lightning. Sure enough, Gravis had already condensed his Lightning Seed.

Gravis was quite surprised. The Lightning Codex said that creating the Lightning Seed took, by far, the longest time in cultivating lightning. Normal people had to bathe in lightning for weeks before they could condense it. Gravis' Elemental Synchronicity had saved him a lot of time by forcing all the lightning to stay in one place.

Gravis couldn't use his Lightning Seed yet. He could only create new lightning by funneling his Energy through the Lightning Seed, and he didn't have any Energy. He would first need to step into the Energy Gathering Realm before he could use it.

Gravis looked at the timer above the door. In the beginning, it had shown 20 remaining hours, and now it showed a little more than 15 remaining hours. Gravis had taken less than five hours to create his Lightning Seed.

"Well, no point in wasting good lightning," he said as he continued tempering his body. His Lightning Seed was automatically at the Destruction Energy ratio of the lightning in the room. There was no point in pushing more lightning into it. Instead, he would use all remaining lightning to temper his body.

After 15 hours, the lightning stopped flowing, and Gravis couldn't activate it anymore. He looked at the timer and saw that his time was up. Gravis stood up and performed some practice attacks, yet he didn't feel a difference.

"15 hours of pure tempering in lightning, and I don't even feel a difference in my muscles," he sighed. "This will take a while. The Codex said the tempering depended on the destruction and recreation of muscles. My muscles are probably already too strong to be harmed by such weak lightning. I need stronger lightning," he concluded as he left the room.

He locked the door and went back to the reception desk. He placed the key down and also 50 gold. "five hours on the second floor," he said to the woman.

The woman didn't show an expression as she took out a new key, but inside, she was sneering. A lot of first-timers underestimated the time it took to create a Lightning Seed, and some of them tried to condense it on the second floor, thinking that would expedite things.

Of course, it didn't work that way. Their bodies first needed more lightning resistance before they even could attempt to temper themselves on the second level. "Room 3," she said and tossed the key over.

Gravis received the key, nodded, and went back into the Lightning Tower. He quickly found his room on the second floor and entered. The room was identical to the last one. Gravis sat down and pulled the lever.

BZZZT!

The lightning came down, and Gravis already felt the difference. It was way more painful, and it also felt more violent. Gravis could still take this pain easily and smiled. "Now, this is way better," he said to himself as he started pushing the lightning into his Lightning Seed. He would first increase the purity of his Lightning Seed before he went onto tempering his body.

Gravis concentrated on increasing the Destruction Energy ratio of his Lightning Seed, and he felt like he was already halfway there when the lightning suddenly stopped. Gravis pulled the lever down, but nothing happened. When he looked at the timer, he noticed that his five hours were up. 'What? Already? I'm only halfway there!' he thought in frustration.

It seemed like Gravis' situation was the opposite of a normal person. Regular lightning practitioners needed, by far, the longest time to condense their Lightning Seeds, but for Gravis. For him, it took longer to increase the purity of the lightning.

Yet, Gravis made a mistake in his assumption. He thought that he took longer to increase the purity of his lightning than other people, but that was far from true. He was still around three times faster than other people in increasing his Lightning Seed's destruction. It only felt so long for him because his condensation of the Lightning Seed was many tens-of-times faster than others.

"Seems like I need about another five hours to get my Lightning Seed to the right destruction purity. The Lightning Codex also said that every additional 10% take double the time of the previous 10%. So, in total, it would take me 10 hours to go from 20% to 30%. By that calculation, I would need 20 hours to go to 40% and 40 hours to go to 50%," Gravis said while narrowing his eyes.

Gravis then started calculating. "I have ten gold left, and I need another five hours on this level, which is 50 gold. So, to finish this level, I need another 40 gold. Then I need around 20 hours on the third floor, which would come up to… 2,000 gold," he uttered while taking a deep breath.

"I need money."