Gravis took a deep breath to relax. The fight was finally over. Gravis' life had constantly been in danger during the last couple of minutes, and even at the end, Red had still nearly managed to kill him. Gravis had fought someone entirely out of his league. Deciding to fight Red was closer to suicide than tempering.
He had used everything in this fight. He had used his body, Energy, Will-Aura, pre-dodging, and also heavily relied on his Elemental Synchronicity. Without the first four, Gravis would have died before he and Red even left the clearing while the last one allowed Gravis to kill Red. Gravis narrowed his eyes and decided to stay a little safer.
BOOM!
Gravis absorbed Red's Energy and broke into the seventh level of Energy Gathering. Earlier, Gravis had decided against absorbing enough Energy for a breakthrough because he thought he would be invincible in the Energy Gathering Realm then. Yet, Gravis had made a grave error. He had underestimated the elders, who had remained on that level for decades.
Red's body had been too powerful, and even with Gravis now being at the seventh level of Energy Gathering, the fight wouldn't have been much easier. The advantage of rising a level in the Energy Gathering Realm was the increased density and reserve of Energy. The increased reserve was literally useless for Gravis since he could just refill his Energy with the one in his mind.
Yet, the density of Energy was also nearly no help in fighting against those people. For example, if Gravis had used 100% of his Energy instead of 50% to attack Red, there would be no difference. The lightning wasn't able to injure someone like Red just by itself. Gravis could only use the explosion's shockwave when his lightning exploded to sever Red's hand. An explosion double as powerful would only have thrown his arm further away. That made no difference.
So, the Energy, when breaking into the seventh level, surprisingly, didn't increase his fighting strength by much while fighting such monsters. The true help was the lower suppression against his Will-Aura. His Will-Aura had only worked once against Red since he had been three levels above him. Now, he could use his Will-Aura multiple times, and it wouldn't lose its effectiveness that quickly.
After absorbing all the Energy, Gravis only needed 60% more for breaking into the eighth level. When he reached the eighth level, he would genuinely be invincible in the Energy Gathering Realm. The higher density of his Energy would also allow Gravis to move faster with his Lightning Movement. With his new speed and Will-Aura, he wouldn't need to fight this passively anymore.
WHOOM!
Suddenly, Gravis felt his Will-Aura going out of control. It started activating by itself, and Gravis couldn't manipulate it anymore. It expanded itself again from its compressed form until it encompassed everything in a 60-meter radius around Gravis. Then, it started expanding widely, and Gravis' mind shook.
Gravis felt his drive to continue in his journey strengthening at a rapid pace. Everything that had impacted his will before, like the situation with Wendy or Gorn's death, started to feel more bearable. Gorn's death was still an issue in Gravis' mind, and he would never forget his death, but his apprehension about gaining strength lessened. Gravis' will was now strong enough that Wendy's situation no longer impacted him in the slightest.
In his mind, her death had already been a certainty, and there was no stopping it. Gravis still wasn't a fan of using her death to further his power, but it felt like his feelings started accepting his logic. Logically, he knew that he should not care about the way how he gained power, but his emotions always wavered when he had to make difficult decisions. Everything started becoming clearer in his eyes as his emotions started synchronizing with his logic.
As Gravis' will and aura grew clearer, his Will-Aura expanded furiously into the surroundings. It was growing bigger by the second.
120 meters.
150 meters.
180 meters.
It just didn't seem to stop, and Gravis narrowed his eyes as they shone with a brilliant gleam. The trees inside his Will-Aura cracked and then fell apart. The earth got pushed down for half a meter until it stopped. The water in the river was pushed down and out of the river, and no new water could come inside of his Will-Aura. The water outside, hitting his Will-Aura, overflowed like there suddenly was a dam in front of it and swept into the surroundings.
210 meters.
240 meters.
270 meters.
At 300 meters, his Will-Aura stabilized. The surroundings were cleared of everything, and a circular crater was created around him, several meters deep. Gravis regained the control of his Will-Aura and noticed that he couldn't compress it anymore. As strange as it sounded, it felt like his will was not strong enough to compress his Will-Aura anymore.
'So, my will is not strong enough to compress my will? That seems weird,' Gravis thought, but he couldn't find any other reason. As he thought back, he also realized that it had been harder to compress his Will-Aura at the start. Compressing his Will-Aura into a half-circle had taken several months, and its strength only doubled. Yet, in about the same amount of time, he had managed to compress it onto a single individual, increasing its power by several dozen folds.
Gravis realized that, as his will had grown stronger, it had also grown easier to compress his Will-Aura. 'This is probably a sign of growth. My Will-Aura has probably broken through some kind of bottleneck, but I'm not sure,' Gravis thought to himself.
Gravis was also surprised about the sheer power of his Will-Aura. Even though it was uncompressed, its strength transcended his earlier, fully-compressed Will-Aura by a large margin. Gravis was incredibly happy about his new, powerful Will-Aura, but he also grew a little bitter.
'The sudden breakthrough of my Will-Aura was not planned. I guess that someone at Red's level would no longer pose a challenge against me with this new Will-Aura. I guess I can't temper myself anymore in the Energy Gathering Realm,' he thought with a sigh.
Gravis looked over at Red's corpse, which was not damaged by his Will-Aura, and went through his belongings. He found many body tempering pills, and he also looked at the saber. When Gravis looked at it, his eyes shone. "A weapon for Spirit Forming experts," he said involuntarily.
The saber was utterly red, with some black streaks going through it. With this, Gravis wouldn't need to worry about a weapon anymore as soon as he broke into the Spirit Forming Realm. Yet, just like Energy weapons couldn't be fully used by Body Tempering people, a Spirit Forming weapon couldn't be fully used by someone at the Energy Gathering Realm. An Energy weapon and a Spirit Forming weapon had the same strength to someone in the Energy Gathering Realm.
Gravis put the saber on his back and now carried three sabers and one long sword. Thinking about the long sword, Gravis took it into his hands and looked at it with a bitter smile. "I originally intended to use you to explode fireballs from a safe distance, but it seemed like I never got the chance," he said.
Gravis always had many different plans for different situations. By using the long sword, Gravis would have been able to explode fireballs early from a distance of over two meters. Like that, the explosions would have been significantly weakened when they hit his body. Yet, there never appeared a situation in the fight where he had needed to use the sword.
Just like not every plan of Heaven came into being, not every plan of Gravis found use.
