Chapter 53
[Breathing Technique]: A training method that strengthens the body.
Elise went quiet as she read through the skill and its modifiers.
[Meditation] was described as a mage's foundational skill. By that logic, [Breathing Technique] should have been the foundational skill for martial classes.
And if the modifiers were identical, could their effects stack?
Whenever she practiced [Breathing Technique], [Meditation] ran alongside it. Did that mean the path of transcendence was meant to be walked with both skills at once?
Magic and martial training, side by side?
No.
Elise corrected herself immediately.
The body was the vessel that carried the spirit. For a magic-based Awakened, strengthening the body wasn't a separate path at all. It was reinforcing the vessel itself.
A magic-based Awakened also had a far easier time learning a Breathing Technique than a martial Awakened did, because their methods and goals were entirely different.
Take Elise herself.
Her goal was to make her body sturdy enough to hold more spirit energy. Her method was to use spirit energy to guide the body, letting it work in concert with the Breathing Technique and the potion's effects.
Martial Awakened trained their Breathing Techniques the other way around—driving their bodies into a higher rank ahead of their spirit energy. Their path of transcendence was paved with brutal training regimens that most spellcasters would never endure.
Different goals. Different methods.
So the system's description of her [Breathing Technique] should never have been modeled on [Meditation].
And yet...
A thought stirred at the back of Elise's mind.
She closed her eyes, sank into meditation, and guided what little spirit energy she had left into another round of practice.
[Meditation] and [Breathing Technique] linked together.
Elise didn't just "see" the active spiritual energy flowing across the spiritual plane—riding the last traces of the potion's power, she slipped into a kind of inner sight as well.
Spirit energy, life force, and the potion's spirituality all moved in unison, meshing with the precision of a finely tuned machine as they strengthened her body.
And I didn't even activate the modifiers on Breathing Technique just now.
When Elise opened her eyes, they were shining with pure delight.
A single round of ordinary practice had given her 0.13 spirit energy and 0.02 Constitution.
If she activated every modifier while training, the gains would climb even higher.
Senior High Cleric was suddenly within reach.
And that wasn't all.
Only now did Elise truly understand what people meant when they said Second-tier was the real beginning of the transcendent path.
Back when she'd been a Priest, all she could do was meditate and raise her spirit energy.
Now that she was a High Cleric, every round of training wove [Meditation] and [Breathing Technique] together.
No—a perfect training cycle should fold in mana refinement as well.
All three attributes the system recognized, trained at the same time.
Excitement surged through her.
At last, Aurelia's true path of transcendence was revealing itself. Layer after layer of mystery peeled away, and what lay beneath was far more complete than anything she had glimpsed at First-tier.
A true mind-and-body path.
A brilliant smile spread across Elise's face.
In the sitting area of the alchemy workshop, Honorius had already worked out what she was doing from the way she kept opening and closing her eyes. Testing. Adjusting. Refining her method.
The moment that bright smile appeared, he understood one thing.
The Church's monstrous little genius had succeeded.
And not merely succeeded.
She had struck gold.
"Elise?" Honorius couldn't hold back his curiosity any longer.
"Thank you, Honorius."
Elise rose and gave him a formal bow.
Honorius waved it aside and asked at once, "What are the results? How much progress did you make?"
"I can feel an increase of a little over a tenth of a point in spirit energy, and two hundredths in Constitution," Elise said after a moment's thought. "That's the most accurate estimate I can give."
"Light preserve us."
Honorius understood exactly what that meant.
More importantly, the first training session after a Second-tier spellcaster developed a Breathing Technique was usually clumsy and unrefined.
In other words, Elise's training speed would only climb from here.
For a heartbeat, Honorius almost wondered whether the Light God himself was personally overseeing her training.
Which meant...
Three months.
In under four months, she could break through to Senior High Cleric.
No—that math is wrong. Elise shouldn't need the full five hundred units to reach Senior Second-tier.
The longer Honorius calculated, the dizzier he felt.
Back when Elise had still been in the Cleric stage, she'd broken through a minor rank in under a month. The Megalith parish had already hailed her as a once-in-a-generation genius.
If she could keep breaking through a minor rank every three months as a High Cleric, then even measured against the greatest geniuses in Church history, she wouldn't fall far behind.
"Elise," Honorius said abruptly, "I finally understand, completely, why my teacher placed those restrictions on you."
In that moment, he truly understood Norias.
A genius like Elise stationed in a frontier territory like Crimsonwood was like leaving a priceless treasure lying in the middle of a battlefield.
Elise only smiled and didn't argue.
She knew her own situation better than anyone. For her, training in Crimsonwood was the best possible choice.
They spent the rest of the day working through a series of training problems together.
With a Third-tier bishop to guide her, many of Elise's lingering questions found answers.
[Breathing Technique skill experience +6.]
[Runecraft skill experience +3.]
[Lightshield skill experience +134.]
...
By the time her skills had finished tallying their gains, afternoon had arrived.
Elise returned to her residence.
She entered the quiet room and sat down.
Once she'd settled into meditation, she activated every modifier that could support her training, then practiced [Meditation] and [Breathing Technique] together.
Finally, she attempted to draw the tangled mana inside her into the refinement process as well, slowly easing herself into the right state.
One full cycle later, she opened her system interface.
---
[Status]
[Name: Elise]
[Spirit: 13.45] (Second-tier)
[Mana: 52.50] (Second-tier)
[Constitution: 2.15] (Second-tier)
Skills:
[Meditation] (LV3: 6,191/10,000)
[Breathing Technique] (LV3: 31/10,000)
---
A single cycle gave me 0.16 Spirit, 0.92 Mana, and 0.27 Constitution? And all of it Second-tier growth.
Elise had known the gains would be high.
The numbers still made her breath catch.
This was only the early stage of converting her training into a true Second-tier method, and the results were already outrageous.
At this rate, her plan to attempt Senior Second-tier within two months had a very real chance of succeeding.
There was just one problem.
Money.
That single session had burned through both a Spirit Potion and a Breathing Elixir—more than two hundred gold coins combined.
Three sessions a day meant nearly seven hundred gold.
She'd earned twenty thousand gold coins yesterday. After clearing almost four thousand in debt, she had roughly sixteen thousand left.
Seven hundred a day, offset by her steady income of two hundred gold and the hundred or so she could make brewing potions, still left her bleeding more than three hundred gold coins daily.
So...
She needed roughly ten thousand gold coins a month?
Those sixteen thousand gold coins would last her just long enough to attempt Senior High Cleric—and not a day more?
Elise's scalp prickled as she finished the math.
Now she truly didn't want to leave Crimsonwood.
There were too many opportunities here to earn gold and merit. Better still, Anarias—that walking boss encounter—would eventually deliver himself right to her doorstep.
Once she reached Senior High Cleric, if she didn't crack the Death Sovereign open and shake some gold out of him, she'd be stuck brewing potions around the clock just to stay funded.
And besides...
"Mewww."
While Elise was still deep in her calculations, Tymis drifted over her head and let out a soft cry.
Elise looked up at the little creature cradling a [Soul Mana Crystal] like a snack, then reached out and sensed its condition.
For a moment, she had no idea what to say.
The good news: Tymis was finally ready to attempt its breakthrough to Second-tier, and once it succeeded, it would be able to help her even more.
The bad news: Elise had forgotten to factor the little creature's resource consumption into her budget.
Her daily loss wasn't a little over three hundred gold coins.
It was closer to five hundred.
Right then, Elise wanted nothing more than to give Honorius a bitter smile and tell him one thing.
Shocked by my training speed?
I'm paying for it in gold.