Suktuk-amorak was getting impatient. The human was taking too long! He wanted to check out what was happening, but what if the trainee was just outside his door? Divination required too much focus and he would rather be prepared for his arrival, just in case.

He forced himself to calm down. He had lived for four hundred years and would be in this prison for ten more. He could wait.

Soon, the human would be his.

Suktuk-amorak licked his lips.

It had been a long time since he had last tasted blood.

The next four rooms were small, containing only one enemy each, all elites.

Elite Minotaur Assassin (F) — 100 / 100

Elite Minotaur Defender (F) — 300 / 300

Elite Minotaur Sharpshooter (F) — 200 / 200

Elite Minotaur Spellcaster (F) — 100 / 100

The assassin was lithe, clad in dark clothes, including a hooded cloak that hid its horless head, and liked to attack from behind using its two sharp daggers. Its movement techniques were almost as good as Shen's.

Almost.

His was just better enough to avoid getting stabbed in the back, and his qi-enhanced arms were just fast enough to kill it before it could dodge.

The defender was as armored as the soldiers but wielded no weapon. Instead, it carried a huge metal tower shield that covered almost his entire body. Shen easily got behind its back and killed it by swinging his spear at its throat—twice. The defender's skin was thick.

The sharpshooter was a minotaur in leather armor who attacked using a recurve bow. Its arrows were the fastest he had seen yet, but not as fast as him. He easily closed the distance to the minotaur which, unlike the crossbowmen, threw the bow away and pulled a short sword to fight when he got close. It was just too slow though, and Shen killed it with a spear to the brain.

Lastly, the spellcaster was the first magic-user he faced, and it was... underwhelming. High-level cultivators could wield the very elements as their weapons, call upon lightning and command the seas, yet the mage only sent some magic balls of fire his way.

They exploded loudly, but he only had to dodge them and be far away from where they hit to avoid any damage.

He got close, and it erected a flimsy blue barrier around itself that did nothing to stop his spear.

Elite Minotaur Spellcaster (F) | 8,791 → 8,801 AP

Of the four, he considered the spellcaster was the weakest.

In the next room, when he faced all four elites together, he found out how wrong his assumption was.

Shen entered the room and noticed the four enemies. The sharpshooter and spellcaster were standing on wooden crates in a corner, protected by a defender, and the assassin was standing a little away from them. Shen waited a few moments, but none moved, so he advanced instead.

It took a single step for an arrow and a ball of fire to come his way.

He deflected the first and dodged the second, but this time, something different happened. Against the previous spellcaster, the fireball had kept going until it met the wall behind him and exploded there. This time, it exploded as soon as it was beside him, making his dodge all but useless.

Health: 84 / 100 | -16

The fire consumed the right side of his body and pushed him off his feet. He was still hairless from improving his stats, so no hair got burned, but the smell of burned flesh wasn't pleasant, to say nothing of the pain. To deal sixteen points of damage through his F- resistant body showed how strong the fireball was. The surprise and sharp pain kept him from getting a stable footing even with his F- agility, and he fell to the ground.

He rolled as soon as he touched it, and he heard metal hitting metal a mere instant later. When his eyes adapted to the light after the mess of the flaming explosion, he saw the assassin's blade touching exactly the place where his throat had been.

Shen guessed the minotaur had started running as soon as the fireball was cast, and had been prepared to kill. This room was about more than fighting a formation, it was also about dealing with actual tactics.

His roll turned into a somersault, during which he deflected another bolt. The spellcaster didn't throw another fireball at once, so it likely required some time between his casts.

Shen got to his feet and immediately used his Backstep to both dodge the assassin's next attack and try to get behind it. This assassin was also different from the previous one, faster and with better moves. It turned, and they ended facing each other. But this time, Shen had been expecting the unexpected and had even started thrusting his spear ahead of time.

The spearhead went through the assassin's right forearm that was also preemptively striking Shen, then entered its skull.

Shen stepped forward as the minotaur turned into light, and it proved to be the right decision. A bolt and a fireball got to where he would be if he had stayed in the same place or moved back. The fireball still exploded as close to him as it could, but he avoided any damage by moving forward.

He ran at the remaining trio. The defender moved to block him, but he easily jumped above it—

Suddenly, the minotaur slammed his shield on the ground, and a mysterious force pulled him straight down from the air, all his momentum stolen from him.

He ended up in front of the minotaur, landing awkwardly but still on his feet, and quickly tried to Backstep to the defender's back too. It worked this time, and he just ignored the minotaur to rush at the spellcaster.

Unfortunately, the sharpshooter intervened. It released its bow away and pulled the short sword. Shen killed it with a single thrust of his spear, but that pause was enough for the caster to send a new fireball his way.

He did his best to run away from him, but the explosion happened close enough that it pushed him to the side again, and he took 12 extra points of damage. The worst part was how the defender got between him and the caster again.

Shen took a deep breath and Backstepped as before, but to his surprise, the defender slammed his shield on the ground again, and his momentum simply disappeared. It was as if he had been standing beside it all along. The defender moved to stand before him yet again.

He had it measured though. It had just used its mystical ability, and it couldn't use repeatedly too quickly. He Backstepped for the last time, without getting interrupted, finally got close to the mage, and killed it in a single strike.

Then, killing the defender was only a matter of time.

At last, he emerged victorious.

Elite Minotaur Defender (F) | 8,831 → 8,841 AP

While the minotaur turned into light, he sat down at once to meditate on his mistakes and heal.

His superior blood healed him fast, but more importantly, Shen got to see a new marvelous feature of the changes the system had done to his body. As his health points regenerated, so did his burned skin. It was mesmerizing to see dead tissue just... revive. It went against everything he knew about such kinds of injuries.

Shen hadn't thought about it before, too lost in his own miracle to think of others, but when the Alliance had healed disabilities all over the world and made humanity immune to diseases... How wonderful was that? He had come to the tutorial to repay the alliance, and his father... he might also come to the tutorial out of sheer gratitude after Shen returned. How many other recruits hadn't the system gained doing that?

Even if it was premeditated, it didn't change the fact that they owed the Alliance for that. In fact, seeing how he could get better from what should be a second-degree burn with such ease only made him more grateful to the Alliance. If they also hadn't lied about saving them from oblivion...

There were no saints in the world and the Alliance wanted something in return, but they had done a lot for humankind, hadn't they?

He could smell all sorts of political considerations from that, but he wasn't well-versed in it. He would leave that for his father and clan elders. For now, his gratitude and desire to improve himself and finish the tutorial would suffice to motivate him forward.

Speaking of which, he soon woke up from his musings and focused on the here and now. The easy victories had made him careless and stupid, and he had suffered from it. That wouldn't happen again.

He replayed the previous fights in his mind, and when he stepped into the next room—after spending 10 AP to buy a new robe since his was ruined—to face five of each elite, he was prepared.

Shen dodged the incoming fireballs and kept an absolute focus on them. He only barely noticed the bolts which caused minor injury even if they hit—the sharpshooters were a greater danger by stalling his attack against the casters. He did short work of the assassins, then tried to get past the defenders with simple movements so they spent their strange abilities, only then using the Backstep to get to the back lines.

He focused on killing the sharpshooters first, the casters after, and finally killing the defenders.

Elite Minotaur Defender (F) | 9,021 → 9,031 AP

He had almost been hit a few times, but his improvement was great. He had mastered his enemies once more.

By his estimates from the other room's layouts and the fortress's size, only one room remained the one in the middle. He decided to not underestimate his enemies again. He waited an extra six hours to cultivate and took another half-day doing the actual cultivation.

Health Regen | 4.1→ 5.1/h

Stamina Regen | 2.7 → 3.3/min

His stamina regen had reached its limit, a few decimals beyond his estimate, but not by much. His health regen would also reach the max with another cultivation session.

"Remaining time," he checked.

2nd Stage ends in: 26 days, 16 hours, 45 minutes

Shen wondered whether to step into the next cultivation realm before the last room. There was a good chance he was about to face a middle boss, and he had struggled to go against the previous enemies. Not because he was weak, but because of their defense and tactics.

One less day meant another lost opportunity to get more AP. He had gotten about six thousand AP in the first three days total. Nine times that meant fifty-seven thousand in twenty-seven days. He would be hard-pressed to buy the upgrade even if he rushed, so wasting time here wasn't a good idea.

A moment later, he realized he was going at it wrong.

If he got stronger now, he would kill enemies much faster later. Taking an extra day for safety would also improve his chances of reaching the final boss without dying once. It was an investment, not a waste of time.

So he trained, waited, and cultivated.

Health Regen | 5.1→ 6/h

Since his stamina had already reached the max in the previous cultivation session, he had finally concluded the Blood Flowing step.

Usually, after that step, it would be time to increase his strength and agility. He would've needed to infuse his bones, muscles, skin, and even brain with qi continuously to improve them. The system was right though, cultivation was much slower than using it. He had already accomplished the same results just by spending some AP.

He only needed to do one last thing to move onto the next realm:

Build a core.

Until now, Shen had been pulling qi from the environment to use. That meant all his qi was unrefined and that his supply was kind of limited. Well, the amount he used was so little that it didn't matter, but in higher realms, he might actually exhaust the qi in the surroundings by pulling too much of it into himself. Some special places might lack qi too. It would be unpleasant, to say the least, to find himself in such a situation.

A core would take care of those issues. With it, he could store qi inside himself and refine it.

Building a core was easy. He only had to concentrate enough qi wherever he wanted the core to be and clench his meridian around it, to make a ball shape. That was it. Though he would improve it later, the qi would stay there only in virtue of the shape at first, nothing else.

The hardest part was clenching the meridian, which he could only accomplish with more qi rotating in a specific pattern through his body according to his cultivation method. The mystical pattern would cause one of his two centerline meridians, the Conception Vessel, to compress. As long as he had qi concentrated somewhere in it, the shape would remain after he was done, also thanks to the method's pattern.

The Feng Clan's cultivation manual suggested building a core in three places depending on one's inclinations: between the shoulders, below the belly, or in the middle of the body.

A core between shoulders would allow one's qi to reach the arms faster and was suggested for fighters who wanted extra power in their attacks in detriment of movement. A core below the belly would let qi reach the legs faster, and was for those who liked to move around during battle. And a core in the middle of the body was for those who focused on a more balanced fighting style.

Shen had found himself to be the latter type of fighter. Sometimes, he went for extra power, other times, for faster movement. Therefore, he would build his core in the middle of his body.

It took him little more than a couple of hours to achieve his goal. Compressing the meridian was slightly painful, and moving qi through his body while also keeping a pocket of it somewhere was mentally draining, but he easily succeeded.

When he stopped the technique and his meridians got back to normal, the ball he had created in it also expanded.

His core had been built; he was now a Core Formation cultivator.

The name was slightly misleading. Some books from the library suggested calling it Core Nourishing or Core Development instead, but so many people from so many places over time had called it Core Formation that the name just stuck. Tradition worked like that sometimes, though, in the last few decades, there had been a push to call it just "Core realm" by some influential people.

Shen's clan still called it Core Formation though, and he would stick to it.

Suddenly, his entire body froze. The very qi in the air pushed against him, trying to crush him like a cockroach.

The process of stepping into a new realm wasn't over yet.

Now, he had to deal with the Foundation Tribulation.