Way of the Knights

Chapter 98 - A Word From Inos

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"Conquer the Palace?"

Raven repeated, making sure he heard what he said properly. He then saw Inos nod and smile at him.

"Exactly." He turned around to face the Palace and pointed the ground using his scepter. "Like I said earlier, everything within the territory of the Palace will impose a certain test upon you, and only by completing them would you be able to gain the title of a True Heir."

"Remember the supression you felt earlier?" Inos asked, to which Raven nodded as that left a deep impression on his heart. "That's omnipresent in there. In some parts of the Palace, that supression would be stronger."

Hearing this coming from him, made Raven smile helplessly. It was a fortunate thing that the level of foundation he built for himself was good enough, or else it would've been impossible for him to endure it. Although the supression he will fell would be stronger, it's not hopeless for him and instead he could use that supression to forge a stronger body.

"Now, I want to inform you about a few things." Inos looked at Raven sternly as he said this.

"First of all, no need to rush. It's impossible for you to completely conquer this Palace this day, or even a year for that matter. You have experienced many things and I'm confident that you know why that is the case here."

Raven nodded here, of course he understood. To put things in a simpler terms, this place is like a huge smelting trial, probably the best one at that. The difficulty of clearing this trial is high which also means that the rewards he could harvest would be greater that what he could imagine. What Inos is implying here, is that there are no time limit for his attempt so it's better to take things in a slow and thorough manner.

Seeing him understand his meaning, Inos then continued. "Second, time here flows differently outside. For now, it's eight hours outside to one day inside, know that you will be expelled inside this space once time passed. Use this to your advantage."

Now that piece of news is amazing for Raven. Eight hours to one day is already good enough for him to do many things inside while still fulfilling his duties in the real world.

"Third, is that you will die." Raven was stunned but Inos still wasn't done. "Not only once, twice but many, many times. There's just no helping it."

"I know what you're thinking but that's not it." Inos shook his head and continued, "If you die inside the space of the Palace, your body will be reformed here at this very place. There are no limits on how many resurrections you have, nor any penalty to your actual cultivation. But! Once you die, you basically start at square one. All of the trials that you've cleared before dying will reset, all of the enemies you defeated will be similarly resurrected, all of the progress you have will be gone and so on."

Inos paused for a bit to let his words sink in Raven's head. After a bout of silence, he then continued by saying: "That being said, there's also ways for you to retain progress. But those options will only be available once you hit a certain threshold, and might be different from what I have experienced. So the only way to find out, is by actually going out there and seeing it for yourself."

Raven etched his words as best as he could to his brain in order to not forget it, granted that his memory is good enough, it's still possible for him to completely overlook something, so it's better for him to do this.

After a while of remunerating at his words, Raven looked up to Inos and asked: "Anything else I have to be aware of Partner?"

Inos smiled and shook his head. "I've said everything that I could. I'll be gone once you start and appear once some important events happened, my freedom is restricted in a sense like that. Anyway, goodluck!"

After saying this, the outline of Inos' body disappeared in his sight, leaving him in his lonesome. Raven took several deep breaths and then steeled his nerves. It was useless for him to tarry any longer so he stepped forward and once again inside the territory of the golden palace.

"Here we go..."

As soon as his foot made contact with the ground, he instantly felt that sudden wave of supression pushing down on his body. Since this was his first step, the intensity of the supression wasn't that strong yet compared to what he felt at the tenth step.

He took another step closer and felt an exponential rise to the supression on his body. He felt quite bold and took more steps until he entered arrived at fifth step, and this is where he decided to pause.

The supression felt like it was giant boulder pressing every corners of his body. Raven felt it challenging to breath as well as feel his upper body bending ever so slightly. Hesitating for a bit, he then decided to fight the urge to move back a step and instead, he sat down cross legged and decided to cultivate under this mighty supression.

The idea of cultivating under pressure is a very old method of training, but extremely effective nonetheless. Humans believed that an individual's potential could be squeezed out when facing a great adversity that they have to over come. This idea was then proven by the fact that those who faced dangers to their lives constantly, had ended up breaking through higher stages in cultivation compared to those who stayed inside the safety of their own home.

Of course, not everyone liked sending themselves towards their death if it could be prevented, so they found out a way of replicating it's effects while the risk one have to take. That research ended up founding new methods of training with greater efficiency and cultivating while being suppressed are one of those methods.

Training using supression/pressure is different from weighted training. Weights only focuses on some spots on one's body but can't really seep inside unlike pressure could. Pressure permeates into every fiber of one's body, making it more challenging to stand much less perform actions, but once their body adapts to the pressure, they would soon find out that their overall prowess would receive a great boost.

This is why some Knights of the old preferred training under a raging waterfall or immersed under deep bodies of water since this sort of environment is easier to access and they could simply return to the surface once they can't bear it anymore.

As for Raven's current location, it isn't a body of water but the pressure is present and it's not just any simple pressure that feels like a gravitational pull. What's around him is something else entirely, as to what that is, remains a mystery for him.

"This supression isn't like the normal ones. I tried using my Spiritual Sense and found out that it is highly restricted here. Normally, I could use my Spiritual Sense to survey everything within 10 miles around me, now it's reduced to a mere 1 mile, I'd rather use my vision instead at this point."

"Not only that, even my ocular technique is ineffective here. I've been trying to use ot for a while now but I couldn't. Why would that happen? Is it because the technique was given by the crown? How mysterious."

As for the restriction on his ocular technique, all he could do was to speculate about it since Inos haven't even mentioned something about it, and since he's just a new-comer here, he doesn't have much choice.

In the mean time, Raven decided the best course of action here. He decided to multi-task to get as much value of his time as he could.

For one, he was constantly revolving energies on his body to resist the pressure. And since his energy body is already active, every circulation that the made across the energy channels and nodes nourished them and slightly raising their tenacity. That being said, the pressure is also making it hard for him to circulate his energies but this means that if he adapted to this, then eventually he no longer have to worry about any issues like this in the future.

The second task is more on the passive side of things, this pertains to his body. Since it bore the full burnt of he pressure, all he had to do is resist it as long as he could and eventually his body would adapt and become stronger on it's own. Unfortunately, this pressure isn't quite enough to open any of the Great Elemental Gates, but there will be chances later.

The third task is probably the most stressful exercise that he's currently doing. And that is constantly sending pulses of Spiritual Sense around him. Now, that might seem completely redundant since it is highly restricted right now, but Raven knew that this supression could also temper his spiritual sense.

Overall, Raven's training could be considered as a profound torture, but considering the future prospects it would bring, he wouldn't have any other way.