Lifeform Diagram

"The Tears of God Ritual can turn deviants into scarce talents coveted by the Church..." Adam filed the thought away. It was still far from mature. His foremost task remained escaping Holy Sound; learning came second, and causing trouble came last.

For now, however, escaping Holy Sound and reaching the Loken Kingdom was still exceedingly difficult.

Jin and Mansla's cooperation had not gone very deep. Although his new teacher, Anthony, treated him well, Adam did not want others to know of his existence. Asking Anthony to take him away would be even more unsuitable.

Thus, while planning everything around escaping Holy Sound, he could not slacken in his studies either. Only by continually learning this extraordinary knowledge could he gain more bargaining chips to deal with the countless difficulties of escaping Holy Sound.

After Jin finished analyzing the Tears of God Ritual, he had gained something from it, but he did not stop. Instead, he continued teaching Adam.

"Bloodline sorcerers and knights are similar in the initial Maintenance stage, so my cultivation method is the same in its first stage as well," Jin explained in detail.

Adam adjusted his Soul Weight, tipping everything toward his body. Though leaning toward the soul would strengthen his comprehension, the cultivation methods of both knights and bloodline sorcerers were tied to life itself. Being able to constantly sense the state of his body would make learning this knowledge twice as effective with half the effort.

"Maintenance—the first stage of most extraordinary professions is like this. It is the first step in laying a foundation. Through movement, you must grasp the pulse of your own life."

"There are three key points: breathing, heartbeat, and immersion."

"Humans exist within the natural environment, interacting with nature at every moment. Among these interactions, breathing is the most frequent and the most basic."

"Air enters the lungs with each breath, where it interacts with the blood. The blood then circulates into the heart and, under the heart's regulation, rushes throughout the body."

"Blood is often regarded as the symbol of life. It is the most important link in life, and from the blood, it is easier to sense the life force that sustains the human body's functioning."

"Through countless movements, ignore the outside world and immerse your will into your blood, then deeper into life itself. Follow the blood's flow and probe the workings of your own life."

"Then you will discover that a large portion of your life force is being wasted. An injury may seem healed, but the hidden damage it leaves behind is still constantly consuming extra life force."

"Every motion in your daily life consumes life force. Incorrect sitting postures, improper running forms, and so on—these bad habits all increase the expenditure of your life force."

"Therefore, knight cultivation is divided into two parts. One is external training movements and daily habits, called the exercise method. The other is integrating one's will into one's life force and actively directing its circulation. That is the Lifeform Diagram."

"There is only so much life force, while the mysteries hidden within the human body are as numerous as the stars. Through constant research, schools with all kinds of effects emerged."

"How to circulate life force to reduce one's expenditure, strengthen the body, improve one's self-healing ability, and so on—since ancient times, no one knows how many people have experimented and failed in this field."

"For instance, someone once believed that most parts of the body were unnecessary. By manipulating life force, he cut off the life force of those parts and redirected the saved life force to other organs."

"His efficiency in conserving life force was three times that of others. In theory, he should have been able to live beyond three hundred years."

"Yet because of that severance, his life structure collapsed, and he suddenly died at the age of forty."

"Looking back now, it was an exceedingly foolish thing to do. Yet one had to acknowledge his contribution to the path of knights. It was precisely because people like him dared to try and fail time and again that the schools of knights could bloom in such profusion today."

"The school I am passing on to you is the most widespread one, and also the one with the fewest flaws: Heart of Life."

"It cannot grant you boundless strength, make your body impervious to blades and swords, let you soar through the air, or regenerate severed limbs. But it can minimize your unnecessary life force consumption while maximizing the life force you can store."

"It is exceedingly suited to us werewolves. If we truly need to fight at close range, our werewolf transformations lose to no school. Therefore, in human form, all we need is to store more life force."

"It also suits you very well. Your bloodline ability can convert life force into mental power. In human form, you are effectively using two methods to increase your mental power."

There was a limit to how much life force and mental power a human body could accumulate each day, after all. It still had to maintain the normal functioning of life and soul.

"Nesser, your talent is truly formidable. You have the aptitude to become a supreme powerhouse." Jin was somewhat agitated.

Only after calming down did Jin continue, "The first stage of a bloodline sorcerer is no different from that of a knight, except for one additional step: stabilizing the connection between one's life and bloodline."

"A bloodline is passed down with life as its foundation. It lies hidden within life, developing as life develops, almost as though they are one."

"The power it normally accumulates seems to exist in another layer of space within the body. Only when the deviant calls to it through its connection to life will that power gush forth, pouring into your life structure and transforming into a special kind of life force. That is transformation."

"A bloodline is equivalent to an unfinished ritual framework. It contains sin and the spirit of one's ancestors."

"A knight must integrate their will into their own life force, while a bloodline sorcerer first uses this to stabilize the connection between bloodline and life."

"Then, a bloodline sorcerer's second stage is not Overflow, but continued Maintenance. Following the connection between lives, they actively collide with the ancestral will within the bloodline, then completely master that power known as sin."

"At that point, the bloodline sorcerer directly skips the Overflow stage and enters the third stage, Refinement. Once the wildly growing bloodline is reorganized, they enter the fourth stage, Return."

"Practitioners of other professions would probably still need to forge a ritual blueprint suited to their own circumstances at this point."

The essence of a ritual was communication between humans and the Three Elements, while the essence of a ritual framework was stabilizing that communication.

Knights had to accomplish their feats, sorcerers had to forge ritual arrays of their own—Jin guessed that Anthony's Reflection Tower was his ritual array—while witch doctors had to create a Universal Cauldron.

Though these things had templates, each person still needed to adjust them according to their own circumstances. Those without a lineage had no idea how much effort they had to spend just to obtain a basic template.

Bloodline sorcerers, however, were born with a template, and one that suited them perfectly at that.

"Therefore, as long as bloodline sorcerers find the right direction, they can forge their own ritual frameworks extremely quickly. Once the ritual framework is complete, even the weakest among them will be Hero rank."

Because of their differing conditions, even if practitioners of various professions forged ritual frameworks, their displayed combat power would differ due to matters such as the scale and function of those frameworks. People had another term for this as well.

At first, sorcerers were used as the standard. Because forging a sorcerer's ritual framework was so difficult, once they succeeded, the combat power they displayed was called Legendary.

After knights appeared, because the scale of their feats varied, the term Hero emerged.

Over the long passage of time, these terms gradually became descriptions of combat ranks for the Return stage, such as Hero rank, Legendary rank, Epic rank, and the like.

As for Mythic rank, that had always been held by clergy. Their ritual frameworks were also rather special: they were their faith. Even a clergyman in the Maintenance stage could use it to enter the "God Is With Us" state. This state could be regarded as the embryonic form of the Return stage.

As their interpretation of God grew deeper and their faith became firmer, clergy could use this to complete divine arts unique to themselves. This was an expression of their ritual frameworks, and could also be considered part of them.

While teaching the various key points of Heart of Life, Jin also explained the essentials of every profession, then described how to deal with each profession at each stage—how to use one's own advantages to strike at their weaknesses.

"Nesser, what you need to do is simple: master your bloodline, then fuse the strengths of sorcerer and knight ritual frameworks, forging your bloodline into the strongest ritual framework."