Sighing inwardly, Julian helplessly lowered his own body, joining them in cultivation.

Chapter Twenty Three -

Time passed and soon three months have blown by.

Kiso, Yuni, and prince Julian formed a small circle all seated in the meditative position. Aside from occasionally stopping to eat or sleep for a couple of hours, the three of them have been cultivating non-stop.

Recently, Kiso has been raising his spiritual pressure slower and slower as he is approaching the bottleneck of the fourth stage.

Kiso thought to himself, "I wonder what's beyond the black lightning stage? Elder Sage didn't even mention a word about there being higher levels.."

Pondering a bit further, he noted, "Although I never did see him exert his own spiritual pressure in the form of lightning now that I think about it."

During these past three months, although Kiso has yet to break through to the fifth stage, between the three of them there has been a bit of progress.

Yuni recently tested her spiritual pressure using the Stage Crystal discovering she has risen to the beginning of the late fourth stage of spiritual pressure.

Not only Yuni, even Julian has said that he is one step away from breaking through to the fourth stage himself.

As his companions have steadily been increasing in power, Kiso has been starting to feel the war horse on his tail. He has always taken pride in being one step ahead of Yuni, yet with his stagnant cultivation she has been rapidly catching up to him.

But how could he have known that breaking through to the fifth stage is akin to nearly tripling his power and is extremely difficult to do. Some cultivators spend their entire lifetimes even unable to break through to the second stage, let alone the fifth. If his grandfather could hear his inward complaints, he would like slap Kiso across his face in jealousy.

Still, Kiso was determined to make the jump on his own.

As he sat meditating, Kiso carefully studied his core with his inner eye. "Still not right..No matter how much heat and darkness nature fuses into my core, nothing changes."

The dark stormy cloud in Kiso's core has remained the same for several months now.

"It seems like the nature energy I absorb just flows back out in bursts." Black lightning constantly escaped his body, traveling through the dark black cloud surrounding him.

Feeling at a loss once again, Kiso casually shifted his inner eye to his spirit veins. As he watched as nature energy flowed through them towards his core, he suddenly noticed something. The bursts of spiritual pressure leaving his body actually push all the nature energy flowing in, right back out!

"Umm.. That's not supposed to happen is it?" Kiso didn't know what that meant, although he felt it wasn't right.

"Perhaps... My core has been completely full this entire time? I've been sitting at the peak of the fourth stage for months, wasting cultivation?" Kiso's head started to hurt. He rapidly pondered ways to prevent the energy from escaping to no avail.

Without an easy answer, Kiso could only begin to think outside the box.

Throwing out all the prior cultivation techniques, he started to ponder instead how to alter his core to allow more spiritual pressure to be stored.

"If my current core is a reflection of a normal storm, then following nature, I should try to change it into a more powerful storm." Kiso's intelligence led him to a quick hypothesis. "The question is how to do that. My core is already rotating so maybe I just need to give it a little push.."

As Kiso began to urge the spiritual pressure in his core to rotate faster, it caused an incredible amount of nature energy to suddenly race into his spirit veins. Before he could even react, searing hot energy, accompanied by ice cold energy, overtook his conscious making him loose his focus.

Even the dark shroud around him and the lightning coiling around his body was sucked towards his core.

As the vast energy passed through his spiritual veins, they caused them to bulge, increasing their size by nearly double. This caused an immense amount of pain to Kiso, but he suffered through refusing to give up.

After several tens of minutes, Kiso refocused his mind that was thrown into disarray. Focusing on his core, he almost shouted out in shock.

The previously slow moving storm cloud became an intensely wild rotating vortex cloud. Looking closely at the vortex, Kiso could see a snake of black lightning coiling around the vortex refusing to dissipate.

"!!!" Kiso's eyes shot open in excitement.

The occasional bursts of lightning in his core before had become a constant never ending lightning snake. That could only mean one thing: His power had increased immensely!

He quickly stood up and called over to Julian who had already opened his eyes when he sensed Kiso's disturbance, "Julian, quick, hand me the Stage Crystal!"

Julian's eyes widened and he quickly materialized the crystal, tossing it to Kiso.

By this time, Yuni had opened her eyes as well and she quickly asked, "Kiso, did you figure it out?"

Kiso glanced over at Yuni, slightly thrown off his excitement by her choice of words, but quickly shook her off and poured spiritual pressure into his palm.

As he exerted spiritual pressure, a thick, snake-like coil of black lightning began to jump around the Stage Crystal. Even the air around the crystal started to distort as the heat from the lightning affected the air surrounding it.

Before Kiso even had a chance to take a second breath, the crystal became a vivid shade of blue.

Julian's jaw dropped. He exclaimed in his head, "Already at the fifth stage! How is that possible?!" Julian had thought it would take Kiso several more months to reach his breakthrough.

Kiso looked at the bright blue crystal in his hand, although he wasn't too startled. After all, he had been absorbing nature energy for months with nowhere for it to go. It turned out he just needed to create a place for it to go. Just like he had altered his core to fuse the darkness and heat energies, he simply needed to chance it once again.

Yuni stood up as well, walking over to Kiso, she leaned forward to stare up at his face.

Kiso's slightly blushed as he backed a step away.

Laughing, Yuni asked, "So, what's the secret? No matter how much nature energy I absorb, my core stays the same."

Kiso's excitement from his breakthrough was audible in his voice as he answered, "Yuni, I don't know what the nature of your core is after your fusion so I can't say for sure. For me though, I had to completely alter the state of my core."

A flash of inspiration shone in Yuni's eyes as she held her little hand to her chin, nodding.

"I had never thought of doing that..." Yuni mumbled to herself.

Smiling sweetly, she bounced back several feet, sitting back in the meditative position. Before closing her eyes, she said to Kiso, "Kiso, my birthday should be coming up soon. Although I'm not sure exactly what day it is, I know it's close. If I manage to break through to the fifth stage as well, be sure to give me a reward!"

When she spoke the last line, her tone became laced with obvious intent.

Kiso didn't even have the chance to laugh or cry before she had already closed her eyes, prismatic coiling lightning once more surrounding her.

Julian finally recovered, shaking his head, he said, "You two are truly incredible.." He gave Kiso and awkward smile then closed his eyes once again.

"Eh? I finally broke through guys, we can get the technique..." Kiso felt like a dog on a chain, able to see the bone, yet bound a foot out of reach.

Yuni's voice rang in his mind, "Kiso don't worry, I'm not far behind, just cultivate a bit longer and we'll get it together."

"Ahhhhh......" Kiso let out a deep sigh, lowering his body to the ground once more to cultivate.

- - - - -

Not even three days later, Kiso's eyes shot open as he looked over at Yuni.

Her brows were tightly knit together and sweat was dripping down her face towards her chin. The prismatic lightning around her was no longer visible and her spiritual pressure was rapidly increasing.

Kiso shook his head, "She really did catch up..I wasted far too much time. Oh well, I didn't have anyone to give me a hint while she did. She better thank me."

Several tens of minutes later, Yuni excitedly opened her eyes.

She stood up, extending a finger out in front of her eyes. A prismatic orb of lightning steadily grew above her finger. The strange part was, that orb of lightning seemed to consist of straight lines running up and down.

Nodding, she looked over to Kiso while smiling, "You were right Kiso, I just had to reorganize the energy in the core a bit. Thanks a bunch!"

"Hahaha.. Thanks a bunch, that's all I get? You know I had to suffer for months without a breakthrough before I discovered the key.." Kiso couldn't help but pout a little.

Giggling, Yuni walked over and gave Kiso a big kiss on the lips. After she pulled away she shyly said with a red face, "My reward!"

Kiso touched his fingers to his lips, although they had kissed before, it still was extremely embarrassing for him.

"Ahem!" Julian coughed, making Kiso and Yuni jump.

"You two seem rather close, I wonder what Yuni means by, 'her reward'?" Julian laughed as he teased them.

Yuni's red face intensified as she pouted, "Julian, is it really necessary to tease us like that? I just broke through to the fifth stage, I think.."

Wanting to confirm her results, she held out her hand, motioning for Julian to toss her the Stage Crystal.

Julian's laugh died down and he materialized his Stage Crystal, tossing it to Yuni with a strange look in his eyes.

Yuni caught the crystal with her already energized palm. When the crystal made contact, it changed color becoming a dim blue shade.

"So it's true." Julian shook his head and helplessly sighed. "You two are both the fifth stage now and can approach the alter."

Kiso and Yuni looked at each other with excited eyes.

As they started to turn to look towards the alter, Julian's voice continued, "I'm still far from the fifth stage, it's likely even five years won't be enough for me. With that in mind, I wonder if I can make a few requests of you two?"

Catching their attention, Julian crouched on his knees, holding his hands out palms down. He materialized a large chest beneath them, then looked up at Kiso and Yuni with an awkward look in his eyes.

"I don't have the courage to ask you two to share the technique with me, but I do have a few requests.

In exchange for this twenty thousand gold, I only ask three things.

First, I would ask you two to let me know if the hidden technique is...well....worth it."

He actually wanted to directly ask what the technique was, but shook off that thought as that would be considered extremely rude. After all, he didn't have the ability to learn the technique himself.

"Second, if it is indeed worth it, I would beg you two to go to the northern province and let my father know of my safety..."

When he spoke of his father he hadn't seen in years, Kiso and Yuni could relate to his pain. They secretly felt this point was something they'd be willing to do even if he didn't pay them.

Taking a deep breath, the prince of the Kamien Empire actually kowtowed to them asking, "Last of all, I would ask you two to return to this cavern to bring me enough food to last ten years..."

Julian wasn't confident in his ability to reach the fifth stage any time soon and to this point he has been unable to discover any way out. It could be said that if there was no connection between learning the hidden technique and escaping the cavern, there truly would be no way out.

Kiso looked to Yuni, who gave a slight nod, then lowered his body to lift Julian's face. "Since you felt so strong to even beg, how can we refuse? If even to simply repay your company and kindness we would fulfill these requests."

Julian's eyes reddened but he shook his head adamantly, "My kindness is from my respect towards you two as cultivating experts. These favors must not be for nothing, I won't accept no for answer." He stubbornly shoved the chest forward.

Throwing his hands up helplessly, Kiso sighed, "Alright then.."

Kiso knelt down, absorbing the chest into his DS ring.

Yuni suddenly pulled on Kiso's arm, dragging him towards the alter past the plate embedded on the stage. As they passed that plate, the ground started to shine, emitting a power downward force of spiritual pressure.

When the spiritual pressure weighed down on their bodies, Yuni nearly feel over. Instead, Kiso caught her, urging his spiritual pressure to counter the invisible force.

A cold sweat running down his back, he thought out loud, "Such powerful spiritual pressure. We really would have died without our recent breakthroughs. Even now I can barely manage to stand.."

Yuni's face grimaced as she sent her own spiritual pressure into her muscles, lessening the force against them.

The two of them struggled across the stage, stumbling up the steps. When they reached the pedestal atop the alter, that strange spiritual pressure disappeared. They knelt down with heaving chests, attempting to catch their breath.

After several tens of seconds and shiver of respect for the power of the defensive formation behind them, Kiso excitedly took out the parchment and string.

Taking one final glance at Yuni's equally excited face, he unrolled the parchment, staring down at the imprint on the pedestal which seemed exactly the same size as the parchment in his hands.

"This is it..." Kiso's hands trembled as he lowered the parchment into the imprint on the pedestal.

To Be Continued!