Ning took the book and left the room. He went to a different room that was assigned to him and Carlos. Since Carlos wasn't around, the room was entirely his for the time being.
He closed the door and sat on his bed as he let the dimming sunlight fall onto the pages of his book as he started reading it.
The manual wasn't very long, barely 30 pages. The texts were even quite large too, so the overall time to read it all wouldn't take longer than half an hour.
As he read, he realized something that was more depressing about the manual that Kepli hadn't mentioned to him at all.
"This technique can only be used at nighttime, what the hell?" Ning thought with an annoyed look on his face. "Dammit, I should have known based on the name."
The sunset not long afterward, and while moonlight shined through the windows quite brightly, Ning still had to pull out a lantern from its cabinets on the side. He just didn't have as good a vision yet to use moonlight to read a book.
While only half-an-hour read, Ning still in a body where he didn't have an eidetic memory, so he had to read the book multiple times, learning the small details that he missed on his reads, so he could perfect the breathing technique entirely before actually starting it.
It took him late into the evening to be fully sure that he had learned it all. Once done, he closed his eyes and understood exactly what sort of breathing he had to do and what sort of movement his Essence had to make for his core to collect it.
"Seems easy enough," he thought and began.
Little by little, his breathing became irregular with no rhyme or rhythm to them. However, after breathing for a while longer, it fell into a peculiar pattern that no normal human being could do unconsciously.
As he did, he felt the coolness of the Essences around him slowly gather on his body. He felt a layer build around him as they gathered, but somehow only some of that got into his body.
Ning didn't think much of it as that was exactly how the book had said it would be. The book had things that Kepli didn't explain to him. Most importantly, it had another major flaw that had to do with it being usable at night.
That was the fact that the technique could mostly only absorb Moonlight Essence, discarding everything else. Because of how little Moonlight Essence was on a daily basis, that was another layer of difficulty in using this technique.
Ning continued collecting the Essence, hoping something good would happen eventually.
* * * * *
Clara slumped on a couch after returning from somewhere.
"The results came back," Kepli reported. "82%."
"82?" Clara raised an eyebrow. "Not bad."
"It's better than expected," Kepli said. "Carlos and the rest should be bringing more tomorrow. Will you be leaving after you get them?"
"Yeah, I will need to head towards the capital," Clara said.
Kepli said nothing about it. "Oh right, why did you give the new guy the trash technique?" he asked. "We could've just let him find something on his own if you don't trust him."
"I don't trust him," Clara said. "That doesn't mean I don't want his trust. If there is a chance he's genuine, I'm willing to take it."
"Then why the technique?" Kepli asked.
"Because it's the best for him," Clara said.
"Best?" Kepli gave a weird look. "How is the Twin Moon breathing technique best for anyone?"
"It's the best for people who already have an incredibly pure core," Clara said. "Since they can directly start absorbing the Essence without having to go through the gathering process."
Kepli gave a weird look. "That still doesn't make it better than other techniques thought," he said. "The pure core only levels the playing field at best."
"No, the pure core gives you momentum that other techniques won't," Clara said. "After all, since your body absorbs pure Essence to improve, this technique allows for all of it to be absorbed at once if one so desires."
Kepli said nothing.
"Also, the technique is exclusive to gathering Moonlight essence," Clara explained. "That is the closest you will ever get to having a Pure Essence in any other form after all. If the conditions are right, you can use that technique to blast through your Essence ranks faster than anyone else out there."
* * * * *
Ning felt a tempest of energy flow away from the core of his body as it was vehemently absorbed by his body. The moonlight essence entered his body too, but the input was nearly nowhere close to being what the output was.
His body drained the pure Essence in his core like nothing else. Ning started to panic a little that he would soon run out of Pure Essence and then this speed would slow down to a crawl.
'I need pure Essence,' he thought. He knew exactly where to get it.
A fruit flew out of his storage as the sword to his side moved at once, creating a small hole in the fruit. Ning paused his breathing technique momentarily to drown himself in the juices of the fruit.
After he was done, he began the technique once again.
The moonlight essence fell on his skin again, slowly being absorbed away. However, what surprised Ning was the amount of Essence his body was collecting from his stomach.
The pure energy in his stomach was being driven toward his core so fast that Ning couldn't help but wonder if he was doing something wrong.
He could feel his body improving at an incredible rate, becoming even stronger than it already was.
Then, at some point, he felt something happen to it.
Suddenly, the layer of Essence on his body felt thicker. The temperature in the room fluctuated even more. His heartbeat grew louder, and the lingering sweetness from the fruit in his mouth grew more intense.
He slowly opened his eyes and the night now seemed brighter than the day before.
"I've done it," Ning thought with an elated smile on his face. "I've reached the 5-Sense Improvement realm."
