Chapter 3704 Essence I Step! "To not die," I said as I stepped on one of two good floating discs and sat down. The crystalline protection is very powerful, but I do not have complete confidence that it could protect me if the shit went downhill. I hope it didn't, but if it does; I hope to have at least a second of protection. Seconds passed as I looked at the huge, coppery thing. It hadn't yet released the energy toward my disc. I am not worried as it will come, it might take a few seconds to an hour, but it will come. Till it does, I am checking all my preparations for and over. Finding everything perfect at every inspection. It was two minutes and forty-three seconds later, the coppery block sent the energies toward me. It is greater than I would like to have at the first time; I wanted mild, in the first shot, but no such luck. I wanted to run away, but I controlled my emotions. The coppery energy touched the stone disc and was absorbed by it. A moment later, the runes on it lit up a copper light and a coppery metallic mist begin to come out of it. Buzz! This mist seeped into the thick crystalline layer, lighting up the formation, which spread around energy through the crystalline layer, turning it into copper colored from the original blue. 'First part complete,' I thought. Feeling relieved that it didn't overwhelm the formation. The armor sent the energy into the ashy layer, which charged it up before the energy went to the solidified red layer, which began to ripple across my body while sending waves of coppery energy, which now had a hint of purple in it. The method which was already ready caught the energy and began to circulate. Hun! Immediately, a surprise couldn't help but appear on my face. The energy is much heavier than I thought, which makes the job even more difficult, seeing I need to circulate the energy at a certain speed. I gritted my teeth and began to circulate the energy at minimum speed, while at the same me catching the waves coming behind and circulating. Every moment, more and more waves will come, and I have to circulate it at the minimum speed. This job gets harder, with every wave, I collect and circulate. It is why I wanted the lighter load to get used to it, but I got a load heavy enough that had killed the Sky Sovereign, who had come here, and if I didn't manage it, I would suffer the same fate. I am circulating faster than the minimum speed, but even that is not enough, as I am slowing down as more and more loads come at every moment. Seconds passed, and the pressure on me kept increasing. I am giving my all to circulate as fast as I can, but I am slowing down with an increasing load that I had fallen down to the minimum speed. If I went slower than it, I would suffer the consequences. So, I gritted my teeth hard and circulated harder, never going slower than the required speed, despite increasing load. I don't know how long it passed, but finally, I finished circulation of the first load and it entered my soul, body, and energy. It felt lacerating, but all three had absorbed it greedily. A moment later, a second load came out and a third. The loads have started to come out, but it didn't lower the pressure on me as much as one would expect seeing, I am still catching the loads every second, before circulating them inside me. Time passed, and I cleared my mind of everything else and the only thing, I focused on was circulating the energy. This seemed to help me as I began to circulate faster, which relieved some of the stress I had been feeling being near the edge. Finally, in what seemed like hours, the loads stopped. I circulated what I had and every moment, the pressure on me got lighter and lighter, till I finished circulating the last load. I wanted to lie down and sleep, but I focused on the meta-scan, and what I saw couldn't help, but surprise. The amount of energy, I had digested should have been enough to complete 12% of my needs. I had calculated the number, based on the data, but to my surprise, it was enough for less than half. The other treatments and their reactions to my peculiar condition have increased my appetite. It had made me happy, but also frustrated. Sometimes forbidden power creates conditions that make it hard to rely on the calculated prediction. One needed to be always alert, in case it provided a wary result than one had been expecting. I turned to the copper block, which had released a huge burst of energy; it was about seven times more than what I had been expecting. It would have killed me; thankfully it didn't strike my disc. Minutes passed, and I watched in silence before the energy came toward my disc again. "Fuck!" I cursed as the disc absorbed before sending it to me. Like before, I begin to circulate the energy. I tried to keep my calm and focused on circulating and not on the amount of energy, that came at me. It is 61% higher than the last time and going to be difficult to circulate it, but I have no choice but to do it and I did, till it made me bleed from my orifices. I got a few minutes of rest before energy came again, but this time, it was fractions of what had come to me in the last two times. However, the joy was short-lived as another burst came a few seconds later, after finished another burst came. Twice as big as the first. I dealt with it, barely. Time passed as the small, and the big bursts of energy came at me, taking me closer and closer and closer to the limit. Hun! It was waiting for another burst of energy to come at me, when suddenly the copper lit up and several drops of coppery liquid moved toward the disc, with one coming toward me. I moved to get up, but I was barely moved an inch before the tiny drop hit the disk and it blazed. Before watery coppery mist, came out through the covering my whole body, while I watched in horror. This is the essence; it is hundreds of times denser and made of a different element than the energy. I had only to read about it in the information. Only two sources contained the information about it, and it wasn't much other than referring it as essence and terming it different from the coppery energy. Nobody I had inserted my seeds on had encountered it. I have not heard about anyone encountering it. Even if they had, they were likely to inform, which would bring to my current trouble, since I didn't have any information about it. I couldn't prepare for it properly. Now, it is seeping through my defenses, avoiding everything, without any problem. Those defenses were specifically made for the coppery energy, and since it is not that, they didn't block it and let it come at me.