Note from Void_Scribe: đ
Hello again, everyone! This is the last chapter for today. I know it is a bit shorter than usual, but it was a necessary step in the story to show the exact moment the boys begin practicing and assimilating their new body techniques. Tomorrow we will return to the other squads, but before that, we will be making a quick stop along the wayâso look forward to it! We are getting closer and closer to introducing new elements, fascinating characters, and formidable enemies. I always try my best with every single chapter; I know there are still several squads left to make their appearance (remember there are 9 squads in total!), but everything will come in due time. I will be introducing these new elements bit by bit so the story flows naturally without becoming overwhelming. I truly hope you all continue enjoying the novel!
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CHAPTER 217: Ten Thousand Stones per Soul and the Forging of the War God
The silence governing the underground hall of the temporary residence was dense, almost suffocating. After sealing the doors and activating the isolation formations that cloaked their presence from the outside world, the twelve fighters gathered in the center of the main salon.
Floating above a black stone pedestal, illuminated by the flicker of torchlight, rested an Ancestral Jade Tablet of a deep, polished green. This was no simple manual printed on mortal paper or parchment; it was a treasure of spiritual memory given to them by Patriarch Samael before their departure: the [Manual: Indestructible Body of the War God].
In unison, Eliam, Ignis, Nylas, Draven, Altair, Aion, Borg, Goran, Maren, Korg, Magnus, and Tormund projected threads of their divine sense toward the surface of the jade. The instant their minds touched the object's matrix, the archaic runes ignited with a golden brilliance, and a conceptual voiceâladen with the weight of countless millennia of slaughterâechoed within their seas of consciousness:
"The body is the weapon, the soul is the blade. Whoever masters this path does not seek the refuge of armor; their own flesh is the wall upon which the laws of the universe are broken."
However, when they attempted to peer beyond Phase I: The Stellar Bronze Forging, an overwhelming conceptual barrierâsealed personally by the supreme laws of the Origin-level techniqueârepelled their perceptions with a violent push. Not a single one of the twelve flinched or wasted time cursing the seal; they understood the clan's golden rule perfectly: the highest inheritances only revealed themselves to bodies that had demonstrated the biological strength to bear their weight.
Eliam withdrew his divine sense from the jade and opened his eyes, his pupils glowing with a liquid silver luster.
"The requirement for the first stage, the Astral Iron Skin, demands the massive absorption of earth-attribute spiritual treasures or high-grade exotic metals to purge mortal impurities from the body," Eliam said, looking at his eleven brothers. "But sealed within this shelter, without the time to hunt for mineral veins outside, we do not have those materials on hand."
A feral smile, devoid of any doubt, spread across Ignis's face as he cracked his knuckles:
"Then we'll do it the clan's way. If we don't have processed elemental attributes, we'll use the brute force of saint energy to compel our flesh to mutate."
"Exactly," Nylas nodded coldly. "But for brute force to compensate for the lack of divine metals, the amount of energy required will be astronomical. An ordinary session won't be enough."
Eliam raised his right hand, displaying his storage ring, and issued the definitive command through the Soul Nexus:
"Every single one of us will empty our personal reserves. We will use ten thousand low-grade saint spiritual stones per person. One hundred and twenty thousand stones consumed in a single night. We will force bodily transmutation in one continuous cycle of tortureâwithout interruption or restâuntil our skin turns to iron. To your chambers!"
Without uttering another word, the twelve warriors scattered down the underground corridor, locking themselves inside their respective reinforced stone chambers.
In less than three seconds, a dull, seismic tremor shook the foundations of the entire residence. Inside the twelve rooms, the spatial seals of their rings opened simultaneously, and one hundred and twenty thousand saint-grade crystals cascaded onto the floor. A tide of blinding, purely spiritual white light flooded the complex, compressing the atmosphere until it became so heavy that a mortal-realm cultivator would have been instantly crushed by the sheer air pressure.
In the central chamber, Eliam sat cross-legged on the stone floor. Surrounding him, the mountain of ten thousand saint stones gleamed with dazzling intensity.
Without a shred of hesitation, he activated the War God's breathing method and channeled his Abyssal Dragon bloodline. The space inside his room compressed abruptly, as though the weight of an ocean floor holding tons of mass had slammed down upon the chamber.
Instead of absorbing the energy thread by thread, Eliam unleashed a tidal wave of mercury Qi that crushed the ten thousand stones in a single instant. The crystals detonated into a fine spray of white powder, transforming the saint power into a dense, liquid mist that enveloped his body. The Origin technique claimed its bloody toll immediately: the physical sensation of a mountain range collapsing onto his vertebrae while a sun melted his bone marrow.
Eliam's outer skin began to tear and char under the shockwave, but his abyssal dragon blood surged around the violent Qi, dragging it deep into his cells. In rigorous, cutting silenceâwithout letting out a single groanâEliam's new flesh and skin began weaving itself beneath the dead tissue, taking on a metallic gray tint, cold and utterly stripped of mortal weakness.
On either side of the leader's chamber, the underground corridor seemed to split into two opposing hells from a devastating clash.
In the chamber to the left, Draven unleashed the absolute zero of his Blue Ice Dragon. To him, allowing the purifying heat of the manual to scorch his skin was a waste; he used his freezing Qi to flash-freeze the energy of the ten thousand stones before it could even penetrate his pores.
The collision between the ice and the saint energy triggered a controlled reaction. The superficial layer of his skin froze over and shattered like broken glass (CRACKLE!), revealing beneath it a new cellular structure that the manual forcefully sealed. His flesh took on the texture of Steel: a bluish alloy, so dense and frigid that the moisture in the room transformed into permanent needles of frost suspended in the mid-air.
In the immediate chamber to the right, Ignis pushed his Volcanic Yang Dragon to its most violent extreme. Instead of sitting to meditate peacefully among the crystals, he opened his mouth and exhaled a torrent of white and scarlet fire that slammed directly into his own pile of ten thousand spiritual stones.
Under a heat surpassing the temperature of ordinary magma, the saint-grade crystals did not vaporize: they melted. The ten thousand stones fused into a bubbling, brilliant pool of pure liquid Qi across the stone floor. With a feral laugh of martial euphoria, Ignis submerged his entire body into that incandescent pool, absorbing the spiritual metal and liquid energy through his open wounds, while his skin took on a dark bronze hue that crackled like burning coals in a forge.
Further down the corridor, the very structure of the building began to groan and fracture under the weight of the four sovereigns of brute physical tempering.
In the chamber of Borg, possessor of the Bronze Rhinoceros Dragon, the process produced no sweat or smoke, but pure impact. His body reacted to the compression of saint energy as if being forged upon an anvil. Every time a blast of purifying Qi slammed against his skin, his densifying flesh resonated with the sound of an ancient temple bell:
DONG... DONG... DONG!
With each acoustic vibration, Borg's musculature compacted inward with such violence that his body weight multiplied tenfold. The heavy stone tiles beneath his crossed legs cracked and gave way, sinking into the floor in the exact shape of a colossal hoof.
Next to his room, Goran, possessor of the Armored Bronze Dragon, endured a molten ordeal. Because his bloodline was a metal attribute, the heat from the War God manual softened his skeletal plates and the thick layers covering his back and shoulders to the point of fusion. Instead of breaking, the plates melted together and reforged over his meridians under the pressure of the energy. Sparks of fire and molten metal erupted from Goran's open pores (CLANG, CRACKLE!), dropping to the floor and scorching the stone as his skin transformed into a continuous armor of matte astral iron, without a single seam or weak point on its surface.
In the adjacent room, the echo of a blacksmith's hammer resounded without pause (CLANG... CLANG!). It was the heartbeat of Korg, whose Volcanic Iron Dragon bloodline fused the solidity of metal with the internal turbulence of the earth. Korg compressed the energy of the ten thousand stones against his ribs until the soft tissue of his torso was completely purged, leaving behind a grayish skin scarred with grooves that glowed like veins of red-hot iron cooling in rock.
And at the far end of that sector, Tormund, dominator of the Basalt Dragon, turned his room into a cave of primordial gravity. As he absorbed the Qi, his skin did not mutate into ordinary metal, but into Cold Iron: a substance as massive and dark as the core of a volcanic boulder. His body's density surged to such a degree that it altered the local gravitational field; fragments of broken floorboards and stone splinters from the walls tore away from the ground and began orbiting around his immovable figure.
While the earth titans crushed the floor, three chambers in the eastern corridor defied the very laws of space, light, and time.
In his seclusion, Nylas unleashed the absolute pull of his Abyssal Demonic Dragon. His Dantian became a black gravitational singularity. Instead of the energy from the ten thousand stones flowing toward him, the crushing weight of his void ripped the crystals from the floor and compressed them in mid-air, crushing them into a tiny sphere of white light hovering above his head.
From that sphere, a torrent of compressed saint Qi poured over him like a waterfall of heavy mercury, shredding his mortal skin in seconds and forcing his demonic bloodline to construct a skin as black, opaque, and cold as the void between starsâcapable of absorbing light without reflecting a single gleam.
A few steps away, Aion's room was a spectacle of dual annihilation. His Twin Paradox Body reacted to the Origin technique by splitting the exact space of the room into two conceptual halves.
His left half summoned a black hole that devoured the light of five thousand stones, plunging that side of the room into an absolute, freezing pitch-blackness. His right half channeled the remnant supernova energy of his twin, detonating the remaining five thousand stones in a storm of blinding stellar radiation.
Trapped at the exact center of that paradox, Aion's body was torn apart and reconstructed in a simultaneous cycle. His skin transmuted into Stellar Obsidian: a surface as black and dense as glass, crisscrossed by fissures through which flowed a golden and white radiance, identical to a constellation trapped within flesh.
In the quietest, most melancholic chamber of the hallway, Altair faced the divine technique through the apathy of his special Ash Monarch physique and the Entropy Dragon. While the War God manual attempted to harden his body through thermal compression, Altair's bloodline applied the concept of the end of all things.
Upon making contact with the saint energy of the ten thousand stones, the outer layer of his skin "aged" thousands of years in a matter of seconds. His mortal skin dried, withered, and turned into a thick crust of dead, gray ash. With a faint sigh of apathy, Altair shrugged his shoulders, and the ash layer sloughed off his body (FWOOSH!), falling to the floor like withered dust to reveal a new layer of skin beneath: an iron surface, leaden gray and utterly impervious to the passage of time or elemental decay.
The finale of that marathon of biological transmutation erupted in the final two rooms, where the energy was so violent it threatened to blow the roof off the complex.
In Maren's room, the static of the Celestial Lightning Dragon reached a level of critical saturation. Maren had no patience for absorbing Qi conventionally; he hurled high-voltage lightning bolts into the floor, causing the ten thousand spiritual stones to chain-detonate in mid-air with a deafening roar:
CRACK-BOOM! ZAP, ZAP!
The room filled with blinding electric plasma. Maren spread his arms and absorbed the saint energy directly from the lightning bolts bouncing furiously against the stone walls. The ionized Qi pierced his pores like thousands of incandescent needles, charring away superficial fat and leaving behind an astral iron skin of a bluish tint, across whose surface ran constant static discharges that crackled at the slightest movement.
And in the final chamber, Magnus, possessor of the Vajra Earth Dragon, demonstrated why his structure was a marvel of martial nature. While for his eleven companions the process of the Astral Iron Skin occurred from the outside in, for Magnus it happened in reverse order.
Upon activating the manual, his Golden Liquid Vajra Skeleton acted like a colossal spiritual magnet. The pure energy of the ten thousand saint stones was sucked in with such force that it bypassed his mortal flesh without even touching it, colliding directly against his golden bones in the deepest reaches of his anatomy.
His molten gold bones absorbed the impact and began radiating a hardening shockwave outward. His flesh, his meridians, and finally his skin were cooked and compacted from the inside out, fusing directly against the Vajra skeletal armor. When the process concluded, Magnus's skin was not gray; it possessed a deep metallic bronze color with golden flashes beneath the surface, granting him a physical density practically indistinguishable from a divine statue of solid gold.
The dawn of the second day did not bring the opening of the underground doors, nor the cessation of the energetic roar within the Morningstar residence. What had transpired during that first nightâthe violent absorption of the initial thousands of spiritual stones and the tearing of skin to form the Astral Iron Skinâwas merely the threshold of the biological hell to which the twelve fighters had willingly subjected themselves.
To assimilate an Origin-level body art without the aid of divine metals, relying solely on the brute force of saint stones, time was a non-negotiable tribute.
The heavy doors of the twelve chambers remained hermetically sealed for an entire month.
Throughout thirty endless days and nights, the underground corridor never knew absolute silence; it vibrated continuously with a deep, oppressive, seismic hum. Inside their cells, the warriors of the assault division devoured their personal treasuries of ten thousand crystals a head, keeping their dragon bloodlines operating at the absolute limit of overload.
Once the first week consumed external impurities and consolidated Phase I - Stage 1: Astral Iron Skin, the purifying energy of the War God Manual penetrated into a much deeper, more agonizing stratum of their anatomy, initiating Stage 2: Dragon Bowstring Muscles.
During the second and third weeks of seclusion, the pain evolved from gravitational to mechanical torture. The immense density of the saint Qi ripped from the stones tore apart the muscle fibers of Eliam, Ignis, Borg, and the others, forcing them to regenerate under the crushing pressure of their respective bloodlines. Their muscles compacted, braided over themselves, and took on a taut, merciless elasticity, identical to the bowstrings of a colossal siege weapon. Their brute physical strength tripled in the process; every involuntary movement inside their chambers made the air snap, as if steel cables were ringing out beneath their skin.
However, the true bottleneckâthe ultimate punishment that consumed the final week of the month and exhausted the remnants of the one hundred and twenty thousand spiritual stonesâwas the ascension into Stage 3: War Jade Bones.
The solar fire and mountain-crushing weight of the divine manual bypassed the muscular armor and drilled straight into their bone marrow. In Eliam's chamber, his Abyssal Dragon blood enveloped his skeleton while the saint energy dissolved the mortal calcium of his bones, replacing it cell by cell with a mystical, dense, glowing structure. In Goran's room, his armored bones absorbed his bloodline's molten metal until they became unbreakable pillars; while in Draven's frozen chamber, his skeleton adopted a frosted sapphire luster emitting a perennial chill.
The end of the month arrived with the culmination of the final warrior in the hallway's furthest corridor: Tormund.
On the thirtieth day of seclusion, the last saint-grade spiritual crystal in Tormund's chamber disintegrated, turning into a fine mist of gray ash that settled over the cracked floor. Sitting at the center of his high-gravity cell, surrounded by fragments of basalt rock orbiting in zero-gravity due to his body's sheer density, Tormund looked like a monolith sculpted at the dawn of the world.
Deep within his anatomy, a dull, tectonic rumble reverberated (VUUUM... CRACK!). The cellular replacement process had concluded. His entire skeleton had completed its mutation, transforming into Magmatic War Jade: a bone structure as black and heavy as a planet's core, and practically unbreakable against any physical or elemental attack from a cultivator below the Saint Realm.
Tormund slowly opened his eyes, projecting a flash of earth light that fractured a floating rock in front of him. He exhaled a long breath of turbid, hot air that cleared the dust from the room. His matte skin, braided muscles, and jade bones existed in perfect harmony.
At that exact moment, across the other eleven chambers, the auras of Eliam, Ignis, Nylas, Draven, Aion, Borg, Goran, Maren, Korg, Magnus, and Altair stabilized abruptly, shattering their final conceptual barriers. The month of seclusion was over; one hundred and twenty thousand spiritual stones had been entirely devoured, forging twelve indestructible bodily weapons.
Note from Void_Scribe: đ
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