Raising his scythe into the air once more, Akata sliced it downwards toward the ball again. But the result was the same as last time.

Boing.

The yellow ball bounced off of the ground and back into the air where it stayed. Akata looked at it with frustration and thought, “What the french toast! All I need to do is get it to pass straight through the ball without touching it! Can it really be that hard.”

Akata had been at this training for weeks. He had wanted to incorporate elements into his fighting to make himself more diverse and unpredictable but it had proven to be quite difficult to do this. The first element Akata thought to use was the Inner Element of Illusions. He was going to have his scythe become illusory at times when he swung it to catch his opponent off guard.

The easy part was getting his scythe to become illusory, the hard part was being able to activate and deactivate it within a minute amount of time. He wanted this to be almost instantaneous, yet he couldn’t manage to do it.

He swung repeatedly at the ball attempting to have the scythe pass through but it never worked and instead the ball just kept on bouncing up and down. As time passed, Akata grew increasingly worked up until finally he stopped completely and sat down in meditation to calm his mind.

“Ugh! Stupid skill not working right. It’s like it won’t ever work no matter how many times I try or how many different ways I go about doing it. No, I must do this! I won’t lose to a simple technique that I thought about creating and using. Humph, we’ll see who wins in the end. Give me until the time that I have to leave and I’ll have this skill down.” Akata said with his words full of decisiveness.

“Big words coming from someone who can’t even make a weapon illusory for a bit of time and then make it corporeal again. Hehe. It should be a piece of cake really.” Noluck said while laughing quietly.

Akata paid him no attention as he got back up and raised the scythe in the air again. He waved it down toward the ball and when it was about to strike… Bang! It bounced off the wall and then made its way back into the air again. The same place as before.

“Again.” Akata said to himself. He practiced and practiced until eventually at any given moment he would be swinging that same strike at the ball. It was in this fashion that days went by fast for him. He barely had time to even eat.

In truth, Akata didn’t have to eat much of anything at all. Most cultivators at his same level would still have to eat a bit of food to sustain themselves because they weren’t able to draw on much energy from Heaven and Earth. However, Akata could bypass this because he had two cultivation bases absorbing energy.

Also, his plant cultivation base made it so that he could absorb the energy of the sun much easier than before to replenish his energy. He also received more nutrients from water and plants than he had before. All this made it so that he didn’t have to rely that much on food for survival.

Another two weeks went by and soon there was only a month left of Akata’s punishment. He raised his scythe in the air and waved it down to the ball in front of him. The ball was green in color with yellow polka dots covering it. When the scythe reached it, a purple glow emitted from it.

The scythe then seemed to pass through the ball as if it were a hot knife through butter. It was like the ball wasn’t even there and Akata was still swinging the scythe through the air.

Bang!

The ball burst apart as the scythe became corporeal from within it. Akata shook his head in disappointment. “Too early. I need to be a bit more patient.” He waved his hand causing a purple rune to form in the air ahead of him. The rune expanded and became round as a ball was formed, this time orange with five red stars lined up.

Swish! The scythe cut toward the ball and completely passed through it, but Akata was too slow in releasing the intangible illusion and the scythe passed through the ground where it became stuck. “Too late.” Akata sighed out loud as he shook his head once more. “Again.”

“Too early.”

“A bit slow on that one.”

Bang!

“I’m almost there, just a bit more practice and I’ll have it!” Eagerness could be heard within Akata’s voice as he spoke to himself. It had been three more days and he stood with the scythe in his hand. Sweat was covering his body and he seemed tired, but his eagerness showed otherwise.

All of a sudden. Whoosh! Swish! The scythe passed straight through the ball and then sliced through the ground as it became tangible again. “Ah!” Akata was surprised as he tried it again. Whoosh. Swish. The same thing occurred.

“I… I did it! I finally did it!” He screamed out. It had taken him a bit more than three weeks to accomplish his goal of turning his scythe illusory and then back to being tangible when he needed it almost instantaneously. But due to his continuous practice he had finally succeeded.

Akata took in a deep breath and then his dull crimson eyes gleamed with determination. He waved his hand causing four more purple runes to appear in different locations in the cave. They all expanded to become balls, some red others pink, and some having stripes and others dots. Akata waved a finger and all of the balls shot toward him.

Akata raised his scythe in the air and then dashed straight for the incoming balls. The first ball he passed by his scythe went straight through as if he never had a scythe to begin with. The next ball however was hit into another ball and bounced off of it causing both to hit the ground and wall respectively. Akata quickly changed his scythe to make it illusory again and had it pass through another ball as it then turned tangible to hit the ball that was behind that one.

Switching between illusory and tangible, Akata practiced his combat skills with his illusory technique. Sometimes his scythe would completely pass through the balls and other times it would bang against it with a huge force. The balls were made sturdy so they didn’t suffer any damage.

Only when Akata was extremely tired did he fall over and collapse to the ground gasping for air. His red furs were all sticky from his sweat and stuck to his skin. And his hair was disheveled. From this, it was easy to see that Akata had put in a lot of work.

“You know, if you train your body more, you won’t get into this sorry state so fast. Body cultivators are one of the most powerful beings. Heh. I remember this one body cultivator who was extremely terrifying. He actually punched so hard it created different spacetimes.” Noluck said, seemingly reminiscing about the past.

Akata was still gasping for air barely conscious but he could still hear clearly. His eyes went wide with astonishment as he heard this. A body cultivator could be that strong? It seemed impossible to him. But that was only because this was beyond his own comprehension. He thought to himself, ‘Maybe I’ll take up body cultivation again. I’ve really been slacking on it. I wouldn’t mind having a powerful body again.’

After making that thought Akata closed his eyes and went to sleep. It seemed like a deep sleep, almost like a coma. Akata found himself in a meadow full of yellow grass and a black sky. Surprisingly, he found out that he could see with his own eyes. But, what astonished him about the scenery was not the yellow grass or the black sky but the sun. It was a giant red sun in the sky yet, it didn’t actually seem to be a sun. It was like its true purpose wasn’t to illuminate the world below it.

Akata took a closer look at the sun and found that it was a bit off. The red sun seemed to be drawing in some type of energy from all across the planet he was standing on. No, it seemed to be drawing in energy from everywhere not just the planet. But the energy was sort of different, it wasn’t the energy of Heaven and Earth but it still felt like he knew this kind of energy.

Akata walked closer to the sun observing it the whole way. It wasn’t really bright at all so it was fairly easy for him to look directly at it without straining his eyes. As he observed it he found something strange, after looking deeper his eyes went wide and he gasped. “Is that… a rune?” He couldn’t believe what he was seeing within the sun. No, it wasn’t even a sun, it was a giant rune the size of a sun.

As Akata got closer he felt a tugging within him. It was like a suctioning force was enveloping him. Trying to draw out… his soul! He looked back up at the giant red rune and could feel the suctioning force become stronger. “The energy it’s drawing in is not the of Heaven and Earth, but of souls. It’s drawing in souls as its energy? Just what kind of rune is this.” Akata stood still for a moment and then his eyes went wide with disbelief. “Could this be a… soul rune? This rune should be able to gather and guide the Outer Element of Souls. Wha… Whaat!”

Akata became excited and immediately sat down to study the giant rune in the sky. He wanted to understand how it was made, what did it do, when it could be used, where was it most applicable. All of these questions developed in his head as he was trying to gain enlightenment and insights regarding this soul rune.

As he was sitting there studying the soul rune. His body that was still asleep started to glow with a crimson light. The red rune inside of his soul region started to glow brightly and spin at a fast speed. The glow lit up Akata’s body and seemed to change him. The changes weren’t external but internal. His dantion region, his soul region, everything that was used in cultivation experienced this change. As for the change itself, only Akata would know what it was after he woke up.