Gravis never found out that Heaven nearly got him. Ironically enough, his personal need to come clean with the Lightning Guild had saved his life. So, Gravis simply continued his life in the Heaven Sect.
When he returned to the Heaven Sect, he immediately asked to look at the exchange list. Doing missions granted an exchangeable currency inside the Heaven Sect, the same as every other sect or guild. Did the whole south-eastern branch of the Heaven Sect only have this one saber and the Heaven's Balance Cultivation Technique? Of course not! They had a lot of wealth and offered a plethora of different things for exchange.
The Heaven Sect obviously didn't accept regular currency in exchange for their resources. Their storage was already full of gold and Energy Stones. Why would they need more of that? People needed to exchange Mission Points for treasures. Every single mission granted a specific number of Mission Points, and Gravis had just finished four missions at once.
On top of that, due to the Heaven's Balance Cultivation Technique, Gravis' Energy had increased by a total of 30%. Two of the criminals had been on the same level as Gravis, so they each gave Gravis a total of 10% of his currently required Energy to get to the next level. The other two only gave him 5% each. After adding those 10% to the other 20%, Gravis' Energy requirements to get to the next level of Energy Gathering were reduced by 30%.
If Gravis only cultivated via meditation inside the Heaven Sect, he would need two months to reach the fifth level of Energy Gathering. Yet, because of the 30% of Energy and the week of "relaxation", he would only need to meditate for one month to get to the next level. Of course, he would rather not train in seclusion since that would not increase his battle experience or will.
So, Gravis looked at the exchange table. The Heaven Sect was oozing with treasure, so there had to be something interesting in there. Gravis saw that he could exchange his mission points into Energy Stones. The reward for the execution missions depended on the strength of the target. Executing someone on the second level of Energy Gathering gave the executioner 100 points, and they doubled with each increase in level of the target.
Gravis had a total of 1,200 points right now, and the exchange rate of Mission Points to Energy Stones was 25 to 1. If Gravis used all of his Mission Points to exchange for Energy Stones, he would get 48 Energy Stones. That would equate to 75% of the required Energy to reach level five of Energy Gathering. With those stones, Gravis would have no issue in reaching the fifth level of Energy Gathering in a single day.
Yet, before Gravis decided to get the stones, he looked through the other treasures. Gravis could see a lot of weapons and even armor sets. He had not seen good armor sets yet in this lower world, but they were bound to exist. Armor sets were a logical counter to weapons, after all. Of course, due to the higher requirement for materials, armor sets were more expensive than weapons.
Gravis could only afford a single armor set from the list right now, but this single armor set was already pretty incredible. It had the ability to nullify any element at the fifth rank or lower. Since most people almost always concentrated on one element, their elemental resistance for other elements was basically zero. A fire disciple at the second level could heavily injure Gravis if they hit him with one of their fire-based attacks, even though Gravis was at the fourth level.
Gravis thought about the armor set for a while. In a one-on-one fight, this armor set would be useless because only regular opponents at the seventh level or outstanding opponents at the sixth level were his match. The armor set wouldn't help much in that case.
Yet, it was incredibly useful for group fights. Gravis thought back to the battle on the tree. Resisting the lightning hadn't been an issue for Gravis, but he had to resort to guerilla tactics to fight the Fire Guild. If he had had that armor set in the battle, he could simply charge into the Fire Guild. The fireballs would've been useless on him.
Gravis preferred the armor set over the Energy Stones. In his mind, increasing one's strength was not a problem. He just had to kill more people or beasts. Yet, increasing one's defense was nearly impossible. He could always advance his Realm, but he couldn't always increase his defense.
Gravis resisted his greed for the armor set and continued looking through the exchange list. Gravis also found multiple Formation Arrays, and he also saw a familiar one. The Formation Array that had the ability to contain experts at the peak of Energy Gathering was also exchangeable. When Gravis saw the price, he inhaled deeply.
5,000 Mission Points!
That equated to killing a person at the eighth level of Energy Gathering! No wonder the Lightning Guild had only given one of those to their division in Earth Town. Gravis also saw other Formation Arrays. Most of them were different kinds of attacks of varying strength. One would only need to crush the jade token, and an attack would shoot forward.
Those Formation Arrays cost half of the reward that an execution of someone of the corresponding level would bring. For example: Executing someone at the eighth level of Energy Gathering would grant the executioner 6,400 Mission Points. A Formation Array with a full-power attack of someone at the eighth level would then cost 3,200 Mission Points.
Gravis guessed that he would probably need two such Formation Arrays to kill someone at the eighth level of Energy Gathering. The first attack would be to exhaust the Energy and to weaken the person, while the second attack would end the fight. Like that, the reward would be equal to the cost.
Could someone abuse this to gain Energy with the Heaven's Balance Cultivation Technique? Sadly not. The technique worked by disrupting the balance in the target's Energy center. The technique was infused into the user's attacks, and if someone died to something else, they wouldn't get marked by the technique. Thus, no Energy would be released into the surroundings.
Gravis also found some pills that increased a specific aspect of a body permanently. If Gravis took those pills, he might regain the advantage of his body. As his Realm increased, his body would grow more useless. At the third level, his body alone allowed him to fight someone one Realm higher. At the fourth level, his body only made him incredibly strong on the same level. At the fifth level, the power of his body would be barely noticeable.
As Gravis continued browsing through the exchange list, he saw more and more things that he wanted to buy. After several minutes, Gravis arrived at the technique section. He saw several books describing different uses of different elements and also some Martial Arts created for Energy Gathering experts. Sadly, those techniques were very underdeveloped and didn't make use of the Energy very well.
Yet, when Gravis saw one of the techniques, he stopped and looked at it more closely. The technique was also inside his budget.
Pre-Forming: 1,000 Mission Points.
Gravis read the description and understood what the technique was about and why it had this weird name. The technique allowed someone to push their Energy into their mind.
Normally, people could only form their Spirit at the ninth level of Energy Gathering, at the earliest. In order to influence the Spirit, the Energy had to reach a sufficient density. Before it reached that density, the Spirit wouldn't react to the Energy.
This technique used the will of the person to condense the Energy in their mind. Sadly, the Energy condensation properties only worked inside the mind of the user. As soon as the condensed Energy left the user's mind, it would go back to its usual density. It was impossible to exploit the technique to create an attack stronger than the Realm of the user.
With the ability to condense Energy, people could attack the Spirit Forming Realm earlier than usual. The prerequisite was that the will had to be strong enough to support such density. This was no issue for Gravis.
Why was this technique so cheap? It was because there was no sense in having this technique. If someone condensed their Spirit, their Energy Vortex would grow stable, and their Energy wouldn't be able to further condense anymore. Their foundation would become unstable, and they would be the weakest Spirit Forming expert that had ever existed. What was the point of that?
Yet, when Gravis had seen the technique, a reckless but brilliant plan formed in his mind.
'This could save my life in the future,' he thought.
