Divine Beast Ascension

The New Territory

With the entire clan rushing their pace, the Iron-body Gorillas were able to cross many mountains, jungles and even a desert to reach their new home in just over one moon. They entered the territory from the south and soon had to hike up the last mountain range that ran diagonally through the bottom half of the territory from the south border to the east. Once on top, Rathe stopped everyone and let them enjoy the view.

“You see that? That’s ours and no one else’s! There are even a few tribes and clans that live here, so we’ve already got citizens to take care of. And if you look down, you’ll see that vast clearing where we’ll begin our settlement. So, are we ready for our new home!?”

“Yes!” everyone shouted in unison and ran down the mountain, anxious to rest and get comfortable.

“Ha, are you excited brat? I would be if I were you. Now you can train again, and you’ll even have a master teacher at your service. How about a spar?”

“Uncle Rathe, let me at least cultivate and make my breakthrough to low-novice first,” Oli was antsy to begin cultivating and especially excited to start his soul training. After he fused with the soul jade, whenever he did his soul exercises, he could feel someone within himself. Assuming it was the soul jade, he would try again and again to reach it with his spirit but wasn’t strong enough to do anything. Now that he could finally train again, he didn’t want anything keeping him from breaking through.

“Stop playing Rathe, there’s plenty of time for that after we get settled,” said Vloz as he vanished and sped down the mountain.

“Fine, let’s go already!” Rathe followed behind with Oli and Ania pulling up the rear. It took almost an hour for them to descend and reach the clearing. There, they all gathered armfuls of the long grass and made themselves a quick nest to sleep on. Both suns had already set, and the gorillas slept soundly, all but one of them as least.

Oli began to train the moment his nest was made and continued long into the night. He was able to begin the novice portion of the new soul technique and wasn’t able to sleep, literally. That night Oli learned that it was called the Infinite Torment technique with good reason.

.....

The training happened in a level system similar to the levels of cultivation, moving from one to the next after mastering each level. But the training was to endure a special kind of spiritual torture that increased at every level, and nothing was stopping Oli to try even the god level if he wanted. It was all up to the cultivator to set his own pace.

Oli thought that the early stage would be fine and tested it out, only to try and quit in the middle of training it. Sadly, he learned why it was infinite torture because it would go on regardless of trying to stop it for at least three hours. He laid in his nest, trying to forget about the constant energy that would squeeze his soul over and over. Finally, just before the sun came up his soul relaxed, and he fell into one of the deepest nights of sleep he ever had.

The morning seemed like any other as everyone got up at sunrise apart from their clan’s young master. No one wanted to disturb the boy since they had just finished their exhausting trek, but Rathe had other plans and tried to shake him awake. When Oli still refused to get up, Rathe laughed and gave him a little kick out of bed. Oli went rolling across the clearing until a hand reached out and grabbed him. He looked up to see his mom shaking her head at him. With that, Oli finally got up and started to listen to his mother.

“Oli, it’s about time you got up. Come on, Rathe and Vloz were just about to show us a cave they found,” she lectured

“Okay, okay I’ll tag along,” said Oli as he wiped his eyes.

“Come on, it’s not far,” Vloz led them back to the mountain south of them. Soon, they noticed that just as the mountain face bent into itself, there was an opening hidden among the bends. The darkness didn’t bother them as they entered, especially with Vloz leading the way. He told them when it would go left or right and after ten minutes of walking, there was no light to be seen from the cavern entrance. Even so, they didn’t stop and walked another five minutes in a straight line until Vloz and Rathe both stopped and Vloz said, “This is the place.”

“Huh?” Oli didn’t understand what was going on.

“Ha. You wouldn’t know anything brat. Let me show you,” Rathe released some of his essence to cover their surroundings in a yellowish glow. What caught everyone’s eyes were the scattered crystals embedded all over the cave, and the area in front of them was packed to the brim with these crystals that were much larger from that point on. The interesting thing was that the crystals around Rathe also gave off the same yellow glow and enhanced it even more.

“You mean, this cave is a magicite deposit?” Ania knew exactly what this meant for their clan as the new rulers of the territory.

“Yup! This is exactly what we needed!” Rathe was giddy, pounding his chest in delight. “With this, we’ll build up a city for sure!”

“Umm, what are these exactly?” Oli was the only one still in the dark about what these were.