Arriving back in his original position finally allowed him to exhale a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He had no idea his reckless plan would work. He knew the flames had gotten more powerful, but he had no idea the power of them.
He was very glad he had started with the Dao of purgatory inferno. If he hadn't, he might have died or missed out on the rewards. After all he wasn't sure the cost of failing in the secret realm, but he was sure if he had physical changes in his body from the environment, that it must mean his real body was transferred into the secret realms.
Putting that aside he began assessing the rewards for the first trial starting with the ring.
{Ring of Corruption}
[Forcefully bound]
-Acquired from slaying the apostle of The Daemon God of Corruption, its exact power is unreadable and sealed by the lingering essence of the apostle.
"Well, that was underwhelming. Not surprising though, this damn system loves to tell only partial information". He sighed and decided to start checking out the remainder of the rewards.
[Necrotic flames]
- Flames which feast on the dead to increase in power, has taken the first step to unlocking Purgatory Inferno. Flames of Pride always active, when using.
-Inferno of pride: unlocked by the understanding of one's prideful aspects of user's personality. Flames begin to properly resemble that of a sovereign.
Deciding to test the flames he stretched his hand out an in an instant the flames spread on his hand. They had gained more blue spreading through them, while the white was barely noticeable. He had completely integrated the apostle's soul into his own power, yet there were more intricacies to the flame than those. A deep and extremely powerful purple flame had propagated itself within the origin of the flames, he could feel the intensity it radiated out. An enormous amount of pride, rippled out in waves from its small form.
He had felt that same emotion welling from within as he damned the idiotic apostle of corruption. He dared taint the domain that John had sovereignty over, unknowingly the pride of a ruler had become his. He felt other emotions as well that had begun festering and transforming from mere emotions, into intense and powerful Daos. He felt his mindset had evolved as well, taking on new understanding and elevating his existence.
He felt the Dao of pride empowering every aspect of his existence, his body developed faster and stronger as his pride wouldn't allow for a weak form. His body cultivation has finished but it continued to be refined by the qi flowing through his body, advancing his physique to an even higher level. His dantian and meridians experienced the same effect, continually drawing in qi from his surroundings without any effort required by him. He also felt that grasping the mystical natures of Dao's significantly lessen as if his brain and understanding became prideful themselves and allowed for his comprehension to elevate to the level his pride deemed itself worth of.
He decided to meditate on his newfound knowledge and practice his combat with the myriad of new skills he gained. He felt lucky that time hadn't passed while he was in the secret realms. Unfortunately, he felt as though his power had risen too quickly without him taking the time to consolidate them.
He was also itching to harvest the seeds and plant even more of the medicinal herbs. As he prepared to do so a jolt ran through him. He quickly went back to his cabin and cleared a small area on the left side of it to place the alchemy hut. He had completely forgotten about the reward because of the challenges of the last trial clouded his mind.
Summoning his demolition golem once more he cleared a modest space for the hut and after double checking the measurements, he summoned the hut just like the forge. It filled the space perfectly, and he quickly decided not to clear any extra space outside the hut.
This was because the hut had spatial distortion magic imbued within it, this made it much larger than his forge even though his forge was four times the size on the exterior. The storage room itself was larger than his cabin after all, this let him do some organization of the herbs he had gathered and easily extract the seeds from within the medicinal herbs without any worry for where it would be stored.
He went about finishing his business, planting the medical herbs in a small field in front of the Alchemy hut, and the other small tasks in his way. After wrapping up everything, he sat in one of the empty caves adjacent to his cavern. Sorting through all the knowledge he amassed took only a couple minutes, with his mind working in overdrive from the Dao of Pride. He finally got to the part he was most looking forward to the overhaul of his combat techniques to match his combat to his newly developed powers.
He summoned the combat training module to isolate his presence from the surroundings, acting as a weaker version of the secret realm. Rather than transporting him to a separate realm, it generated an isolated spatial region in the area around him. While it didn't stop the flow of time from his perspective, it created a space perfect for training and keeping him safe. He began by trying out numerous combos and trying to tie together the moves.
He had not summoned the training dummy at that point, so he was able to practice to his hearts content. Time ticked by as he continued honing the techniques he began developing. While his physical strength grew it wasn't at an insane rate due to him not focusing on it and only relying on his passive cultivation. The new techniques he made shot his power through the roof rather than relying on simplistic applications of the methods, he had begun developing his own spells and martial arts utilizing the mastery he had over the Dao's.
It was an extremely rare event that had been only seen a few times in the history of that world, for someone at such a low cultivation level to have such a massive mastery over Dao's. His power had begun shifting from following the standard conventions of the power following the realms one is in, to having similar mastery over the Dao's as a Nascent Comprehension Realm, which are two realms over his current Energy condensation realm.
He steeled his resolve and scrolled through the combat modes; he clicked on the one that caught his attention.
[Novice Training Module advancement]
-You have reached a level where you can attempt to advance to the next tier of training module. Any injuries will remain after the trial completion as long as they're not life threatening. If a death occurs, you will revive but won't be able to attempt this until your power exceeds the difficulty of the trial significantly. If you clear it with no deaths a special reward will unlock.
His finger floated between the X button and accept button as he wrestled with indecision. He reread the description over and over, he knew that if he took it on and failed, he wouldn't be able to accept it for a long while, but the temptation to beat it now and display his strength crept up on him. He felt his pride swell from within him, he steeled his resolve and spoke with conviction. "I must defeat this now and set up for my continuous advancements". All doubt within him disappeared as he firmly clicked the accept button.
The barrier around him darked and the walls let off and ominous light as a figure materialized in the distance. Darkness shrouded its figure, and it swept its hand out, immediately dispelling the darkness. In the place of the ominous figure which radiated an intense aura of bloodlust stood the featureless white figure of the training dummy. A massive bastard sword appeared in its hand and armor coated with black spikes that seemingly dripped with blood materialized around all but the shining blue core in the middle of its chest.
Not even a moment after its arrival the Dummy was in motion, arriving in front of john in an instant, and slashing towards his leg in an effort to cripple him right off the bat. Pride coated Johns body and speed up his reaction time, movement speed, and heartbeat pumping his body full of earth qi. Using his authority over the qi, he reinforced the bones in his legs, feet, hips and his spine.
He leaped from the ground with insane speed, but that wasn't near his limits as fire exploded from his hands and feet the moment, he left the ground. This caused him to have a significantly faster and continuous velocity than he could achieve by solely relaying on his legs. As soon as he had moved the Dummy had slashed out with insanely powerful sword qi, which exploded the entirety of the cave wall it collided with. He stopped in the air by halting the propulsion of the fire he floated there using his qi, he quickly brought his legs closer to his chest and as if leaping off the air he quickly shot them back down. A clear platform instantly materialized under his feet by condensing the mana in the air under them. As he shot forward, fire flared around his feet launching him directly at the ominously armed white figure. The fire died out on his hand and the flames increased in size on his feet as he materialized his newly crafted blade. The blades shape shifted and morphed into a spear, infusing into it the fire and earth qi to increase the penetration and damage from his attack.
His spear collided with the ominous sword which descended right in his path. Sparks flew from the impact and shockwaves spread out with intensity, through the Dummy stayed strong and flung John backwards by shifting its stance and thrusting towards him. Johns armor immediately rose from inside his body and blocked the slash from penetrating him, but it still had immense force. He barely avoided hitting the top of the cave by circulating the flames in his surroundings and basting them above him, causing his velocity to slow and letting him land safely. He charged at the Dummy with his spear firmly held in for hands, blasting behind him with flames made his movements explosive and far surpassed the speed of even his godly movement technique.
As he reached within 30 ft of the Dummy, he let the spear go from his left hand. Hid flames flickered to life erratically on his palm as a flaming spear materialized. He shifted his weight and transferred the speed of his momentum into the spear, causing it to explode on the chest of the Dummy before it could slash down with its insanely heavy sword. With its vision obscured he adjusted his stance slightly to put weight on his left foot and trust the spear forward at its core. The dummy reacted, shifting its stance exactly as he predicted and bringing the sword down on the spear in an instant.
A smirk spread across his face as the spear dematerialized and he backflipped out of the range of the slash. His faint had worked against the creation of a god; his pride swelled; but he didn't let it get to his head. He sharpened his focus, on the Dummy as its ominous aura intensified. A slash infused with the entirety of the Dummy's power exploded forth and time stopped as it traced towards his chest.
In that instant, he twisted his body while launching upward, a platform appeared under his feet as he channeled earth qi into his spine for stability. Allowing him to barely avoid the deadly slash.
He appeared in the air beside the Dummy and fire blasted from behind his leg unleashing a spiraling kick that collided with its knee with precision. The leg exploded as he collided with it, fire blasted out of his chest and he launched backwards. Barely dodging the massive swords downward slash, as the Dummy completed his slash it went to brace on its leg. The missing leg didn't support it though, and it began falling as its balance was disrupted.
Taking advantage of the scenario, he launched forward. A slash swept out deflecting his jab, instead of hitting the shining blue core in the middle of its chest, it instead ripped off its arm.
The Dummy changed tactics and an extremely quick blast shot from the blue core. John barely dodged even with his increased foot work and blasting as much fire to propulse him away. At least that's what he thought, the blast flipped around without his notice and collided with him. Even with his newly advanced physique and his attempt to dodge once more, it struck him. Searing a hole through hot majority of his arm, and without a moment to catch his breath the Dummy appear before him. It had moved much faster than before because it abandoned its sword for a moment, in order to inflict heavy damage on him.
The searing pain from the sizzling hole in his arm was amplified by ten as the Dummy slammed him into the ground before pressing on his shoulder with its foot and using all his strength to pull on his injured arm.
John wailed as a ripping sound filled the area, but he didn't lose his concentration. He grit his teeth through the pain as his arm was being ripped off completely.
He felt a severe wrath exploding from within and began to consume his mind. His pride flared and limited the effect his wrath was having, but didn't destroy it. Time paused for a moment as the wrath fused with his personality and he felt strength welling up from inside for just a fleeting moment. While this happened the insignia on his palm raced up his body and settled on his lower back and the ring teleported to his right ring finger as if they sensed the impending fate of the limb.
His left arm was ripped off destroying his shoulder joint and ripping off most of the muscle and skin around it. The left side of his chest was destroyed as the majority of the skin and muscle was ripped off along with the arm. The Dummy tree his arm off to the side
The dummy then grabbed him by his shirt and slammed him on the ground. He coughed blood as his ribs shattered and pierced his lungs, his eye lids became heavy.
As he thrust the spear forward it ripped through the air with intense power, Pride filled the spear's form and the flames amassed on the tip and blade as it collided with the form of the training dummy. An extremely powerful explosion rang out as his attack pierced the through the training dummy, its flesh ripped apart as the spear pierced through its body. The explosion radiated out from the center of the dummy as its form had destabilized, and it was nothing but a pile of ash after the attack died down.
[The user has defeated the Novice Training module and has unlocked the Expert Training module]
He wanted to collapse on the ground, but he heard a roar in the distance. It seemed the Dummy's all-out attack had escaped the barrier and notified the surrounding creatures. He moved with purpose even as his shoulder gushed with blood and his lungs filled with blood, his qi had long since depleted not allowing him to stop the bleeding and hold the bones together. He passed through the small opening in the wall and reached inside the cavern, he was lossing blood to quickly and was forced to conjure his fire and sear off the wound on his hardly remaining shoulder. He continued running and dizzily collapsed right before he could make it to his cabin. He made made it back alive and was safe.