Chapter 96
The same day.
Elijah was deep beneath the house, in the hidden basement.
It wasn't something newly built, but a repurposed space — reinforced, shielded, to withstand his ever-growing power.
The air down here was heavy and dry, still and quiet, the kind of silence that only came from being surrounded by stone and solitude.
He sat cross-legged in the center of the room, eyes shut, body completely still.
Two hours had passed since he began cultivating his element — or, more precisely, strengthening the core that the system had fast-tracked into existence.
Unlike most others, who had to slowly gather elemental Ki from within and around themselves, Elijah's system had bypassed the first step:
the gathering and condensation of elemental Ki into a core.
He wasn't even sure how it had been done.
