'Black Star…' Keeping the name of the structure he had to form to achieve the next stage in his mind, a certain thought surfaced within the young man's mind, making him feel as if he heard of it somewhere before.
'Probably a reference to another game or something.' Slightly shrugging his shoulders as he decided not to think about it any further, Valyr returned his attention to what Noel had to say, seeing that the old man wasn't finished with his explanation yet.
"You'll know that you've formed a Black Star once it feels like there's a suction force fighting against the control you're exerting on your Shadow Energy," said Noel. "Of course, don't just release your control over the Shadow Energy the very instant you feel that there's a suction force counteracting against your own control."
"Only when you feel like the strength of the suction force is more or less equal to the control you exert would you only then remove your control over the Shadow Energy and let it do its thing." Informing Valyr a few more things regarding the process to achieve the 1st Cleansing grade, Noel eventually returned his attention to what he was doing previously, closing his eyes as he left the young man a few more words before truly engrossing himself once more.
"Remember. You only have less than two and a half hours before we have to leave the Shadow Plane."
"If you don't achieve the 1st Cleansing grade by the time there's only 10 minutes left before we leave, unfortunately, I'll have to forcefully wake you up and you'll have to do it all over again."
"Good luck, brat. You're definitely going to need it." With Noel leaving these words behind for Valyr as the former swiftly returned to his state from earlier, the latter looked at the elder beside him for a bit, faintly wondering what the old man was doing at the moment.
However, just as he tried to take a peek into it, there seemed to be a barrier of energy surrounding the entirety of Noel's body, making it difficult for Valyr to see what the old man was truly doing. Pondering for a while whether the barrier of energy shrouding Noel's body was due to his high class rank or due to his control over Abyssal Energy, Valyr eventually decided to discard the thought and focus on what was important, closing his eyes as he cut off all his external senses not long after.
Whoosh!
Now more or less used to the feeling of using his mental power to peer internally into his body, the young man soon found himself within the small black mass once more, being greeted once again by the sight of dark pearls hovering around in space.
"So, all I have to do is to compress them into one spot and let the Shadow Energy collapse on itself, huh." Muttering these words to himself as a reminder of the process, Valyr soon exerted his control over the dark pearls, forcing them to head to the center of the space to congregate once more. "Sounds like the process to achieve Pure grade, but with less steps."
"Hmm?" Just as the young man had begun moving the dark pearls towards the center of the space, he noticed that there was now a repulsive force trying to force back the control Valyr had over the dark pearls. Fortunately, the repulsive force around the pearls seemed to easily bend under pressure, so Valyr went ahead and put a lot of his mental power on the dark pearls to dispel the repulsive force, allowing him to control it again.
"I guess this is why Noel told me good luck." Though the rate of mental power he had used to control the dark pearls was only considerably larger than the rate it took him to achieve Pure grade, Valyr knew that it would still be difficult for him to complete the process to achieve the 1st Cleansing grade, even with his mind tempered by subjecting it to inordinate amounts of pain.
Taking in a deep breath as to not let his emotions get the better of him, Valyr went ahead and moved all of the dark pearls in the space towards the center, consuming a greater amount of mental power as he began pushing the dark pearls closer together.
Surprisingly, by the time dark pearls began to interact with one another due to the pushing force Valyr was exerting, the weak repulsive force around the dark pearls from earlier seemingly returned with its strength considerably greater than before. Noticing that, Valyr put in even more of his mental power into the orb of dark pearls he was making, using part of it to dispel the repulsive force being created.
"Ngh…" By the time Valyr felt like hours had passed since he began the cleansing process, the young man finally felt like he was now scraping the bottom of the barrel to grab every ounce of mental power he could get his hands on, feeling a headache gradually brewing. At that point, the dark pearls still showed no signs of collapsing on itself as a repulsive force around the pearls was still being generated.
But then…
Pop!
As if a thin layer of sorts was broken, the repulsive force swiftly disappeared without a trace as the dark pearls at the very center of the large orb started to fuse with one another, forming a suction force that began to counteract against Valyr's exerted control.
Feeling elated that achieving the 1st Cleansing grade was quite near, Valyr seemed to have grabbed a great amount of mental power out of nowhere, exerting more force on the orb of dark pearls to speed up the collapsing process that was happening. Thankfully, it did not take much more mental power for the collapsing process to speed up, with the suction force being generated at the very center now equal to the level of control the young man had exerted so far.
"Phew." Seeing that he could now free himself from controlling the dark pearls, the young man inwardly let out a long sigh of relief as he watched all of the dark pearls gradually fuse into giant dark pearl before proceeding to collapse even further.
Bang!
Then, accompanied by a muffled yet loud explosion, the giant dark pearl grew larger for a bit, only to then begin rapidly shrinking in size as its outer surface grew more and more bright.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Within seconds, the large dark pearl at the center soon began to generate dark particles that resembled the dark particles Valyr had manipulated to achieve Pure grade. However, compared to those dark particles, the dark particles being generated by the large dark pearl not only glistened similar to the dark pearls from earlier, but also contained far more power.
Ding!
Hearing a series of notifications resound in his mind, Valyr was just about to open his notification screen, only for him to instead activate all of his external senses to see whether there was still a lot of time left before they had to leave the Shadow Plane.
However, at the very moment he had done just that, he heard a voice that crushed that small hope in his mind.
"You've definitely surprised me quite a few times today, brat."
"You're just in the nick of time."
