Chapter 222: 222. DEVOID
Taking a bite from the baguette-like piece of bread in his hand, Noah took a moment to savor its taste. Having bought it from a bakery in the Dragon claws city, it tasted exactly how he expected bread to taste in an advanced city. Though their cake remained bad.
Apart from the occasional murmurs in the room, the traveling experts were mostly silent. The journey had retained its nerve-racking effect on their minds, but occasional conversations had lessened it.
At some point during the journey, the experts had begun to use and share potions. From merely watching; Noah managed to learn a lot about mana potions brewed for tier 3’s. They existed in different grades based on the color of the core of the user. Those grades were further split into two, based on quality. Low quality and high quality.
With most of the cultivators present sporting orange cores, with exceptions like Nathaniel, Ariana, and a few others featuring yellow cores. Just like he, the experts mostly utilized potions for red-cored cultivators, since the ones for their color remained valuable.
Just like the others, Noah had to associate with the cultivators seated beside him. A particular cultivator named Veronica proved to be the most easygoing among the other two.
Being a woman who was in the middle stage like most, and boasted an orange core in the octahedral stage. She sported deep green hair and looked to be in her mid-thirties, and she apparently was a mother of two. Both were girls.
That detail about her personal life left Noah feeling uncomfortable, but he soon got used to it. She didn’t seem eager on trying to milk information from him, just chatty. At least for now she wasn’t.
Veronica managed to tell him a bit more about potions, this was of course after Noah craftily constructed sentences that sneakily required those answers.
He also conversed with a man named Brian, but the middle-aged experts preferred to stay silent most of the time. The others in the room were proper talkative and tried to gain information from Noah. Causing him to shut the friendly door he had decided to open to them.
During his personally idle time, Noah continued to thank the gods; whoever they were for making Nathaniel constantly busy. The man was so focused on the steering job that he barely left one position. This of course was because of the constant array of crackling whirlpools in their way, laid down in formations that forced him to remain cautious at all times.
The environment was also riddled with whirlpools of different sizes, forcing the expert to give his job his undivided attention.
As experts who had bodies capable of lasting weeks without rest, they didn’t struggle apart from having to regularly pour mana into that construct. This made them experience a sense of weakness.
At some point down the now almost two days journey, many experts including Veronica had begun to feel that Noah simply didn’t want to waste his energy after all the braggadocious words he uttered.
However, Veronica didn’t see it as anything much, since she found the young man intriguing. The same, however, couldn’t be said for the others, who had begun to get annoyed at the young man. But there wasn’t much they could do since the person capable of giving him a task was too busy trying to steer them away from danger.
And so more hours passed in that state. Occasionally, lightning bolts would smash into the sphere, but the defenses which were also lightning-based managed to always protect them. There were defensive measures also based on other elemental affinities, but their use remained mostly non-existent.
That relatively peaceful yet nerve-racking trend continued for what felt like years to Noah even if only two days had passed.
At some point during the journey, everyone’s armband suddenly buzzed, and the experts were shocked to find that a countdown now existed below the “Give-up” function of that inscribed item.
“Only a bit more than two days remain. She was on point with the time limit,” Noah muttered gazing at the golden numbers grouped into days, hours, and minutes. The appearance of that countdown placed heavy pressure on the minds of the cultivators. who felt the need to move faster, even if they were already traveling fast.
Due to the sheer amount of energy needed to keep the ball from succumbing to the upward force while moving faster, Nathaniel had to decrease their moving speed.
He’d occasionally speed the ball up when they arrived in front of whirlpools, but even at that, they had begun to need potions long before then. Yet they weren’t satisfied.
During that period Noah had asked Veronica about how the group had been formed, and contrary to his earlier belief about the other around five hundred aspirants being out of the test; there had been other groups instead.
Apparently, but not shockingly, there had been some who held sentiment against someone from a noble family leading them, and decided to form groups of their own. How they were faring no one knew nor did they care, since even with their large numbers they were beginning to struggle.
Noah considered those sets of persons stupid.
‘Anyone who’s remotely smart will leave their best potions for later. From the looks of things, we won’t last past the sixth stage,’ Noah thought getting ready for anything those experts threw at him out of anger. He hadn’t contributed anything since he arrived there, it wouldn’t be normal if some individuals didn’t pick offenses.
Thankfully, the crackling whirlpools began to reduce in number which signaled that they had arrived at the end of that stage. Sighs of relief inevitably exited the mouths of many, but the ones who weren’t blinded by hope understood that that area could become their ending point. Or such a place was already close.
With heavy hearts and nervous thoughts about what the sixth stage held, the group of a bit over one thousand crossed the thin barrier that separated the different stages.
To the horror and shock of everyone present, immediately after their transport arrived inside that silver-lighted environment, huge cracks abruptly opened on the sphere’s structure, causing those keeping the construct together to feel an incredible force try to rip that illusory yet solid object out of their mental control.
Water poured into the sphere’s insides, as cracks continued to open on it. However, the sphere suddenly experienced a bright flash of deep orange light, and everything returned to normal.
The cultivators had poured more mana into the construct at Nathaniel’s command.
A sense of fatigue had begun to spread in the minds of many because they strained their cores by drinking potions while almost emptying them at the same time.
Thankfully their efforts had been worth it, but they needed more energy to move, ab resource that had started to get scarce.
“Let’s take a peek before resting,” Nathaniel’s voice rang out, as even he looked tired.
The gazes of many inside that construct fell on the massive space before them at their temporary leaders’ words, and to their pleasant surprises, it remained devoid of anything but clear water.
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