121. Out of Time (I)

“One… two… three…”

A voice struggled to utter each syllable as if under great strain.

“Six… seven… eight!”

With a loud thud, a heavy weight fell onto the ground. This was followed by loud barking noises filled with momentary anger and indignation.

“Hey! How can you drop me? Hey!”

“You’re too heavy. Did you gain weight again? What have you been eating these days?”

Zachary stood in the middle of a small clearing. Beside him, Wander wiggled his four short legs helplessly in the air as he tried to right himself. Zachary wiped the sweat from his face and watched the turtle struggle.

“Hey, help me up!” Wander said.

“No.”

Zachary turned to Elmont which had been silently observing to the side. He gestured and the treant held out a branch horizontally. He jumped up, grabbed it, and began doing pull-ups. He grunted with each repetition as more sweat poured down his sun-tanned back.

Unlike any other Ensouled, humans did not gain much improvement in strength, resilience, or other physical attributes as their soul level and rank advanced. Physical exercise was the only way. A strong and healthy summoner had obvious advantages over one that was frail or sick. Faced with the unknown of what would happen when the republic ship returned, he wanted to be as prepared as possible.

Zachary finished with the pullups and started doing jumping jacks.

Behind him, Wander finally managed to right himself by using a green shield beneath himself. He muttered angrily and wandered around the clearing, looking curiously at the various plants and critters in the dirt.

“Are you doing all this so you won’t lose to Heather anymore?” Wander asked.

“What?” Zachary lost his balance and fell on his butt.

“Hahaha!” Wander barked, “This exercise as you call it isn’t going to help. Even I have accepted that human females are the more dominant one during human mating. I don’t know why you are still in denial.”

“I told you already! That’s not true! She’s just more experienced, that’s all.”

“Uh huh… is that why she’s on top all the time?”

“Wander, I can’t stop you from peeping, but can you not talk about it?” Zachary complained.

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As they shared an eternal bond, they were stuck together for better or worse. This meant that Wander had a front-row experience to his most intimate moments. He couldn’t even keep Wander out of his soul realm due to the nature of the bond.

“Haha, fine. I won't if you find me a female turtle. But she has to be pretty!”

Zachary snorted, “How am I supposed to tell if a turtle is pretty?”

“It’s easy!” Wander insisted, “A shiny beak, large eyes full of emotions… oh, and smooth skin.”

“Go find her yourself.”

Zachary sat down, too tired to do any more exercises. He looked over at Wander who had found a warm spot where the sunlight pierced the foliage. The turtle even closed his eyes and started to doze off. Zachary felt a stab of annoyance at the sight.

“Wander, time to train.”

“Come on! I was just about to take a nap!”

Ignoring Wander’s complaints, Zachary touched a summoning orb on his belt and summoned Voodoo. The poisonous worm appeared after a purple flash of light. It looked around hissing and clicking its mandibles. Its eyes fell upon its greatest foe, Wander, and a sharp aura of death filled the small clearing.

Wander couldn’t act bored anymore and turned to face the poison worm, “Haha, you’re not afraid of getting another beatdown?”

“Hisss… I want to watch you slowly die…” Voodoo retorted.

The two never got along, ever since their first fight. They were life and death, complete opposites that could not coexist. Wander always held the upper hand until now which only drove Voodoo’s hatred deeper.

“Since you said that, I’ll crush your skull twice today.” Wander retorted.

“Hiss! You dare!”

Voodoo opened its mouth and shot out a dense barrage of poison.

Wander barked mockingly and raised a wide green shield like a wall.

The two of them were at it again. Their mutual hatred had some uses, notably battle training. They were great at pushing each other. Voodoo’s abilities had improved greatly in a short time and so had Wander.

However, Zachary was still uncomfortable having summons that couldn’t get along. He felt like he couldn’t completely trust Voodoo. But he couldn’t be picky at the moment. Voodoo was undeniably strong and he had no alternatives. He had to make do with what he had.

After returning from the expedition to the quintessence mine, he was able to use the remaining quintessences to raise Doro to the Four Paths Adept Rank. Thanks to that, he also reached the Four Paths Adept Rank at the same time. Afterward, he only had time to help Wander reach the Two Paths Adept Rank while his other adept rank summons remained at one path.

It was a pity. He was almost out of time. The navy ship would arrive soon. If not, perhaps he could have advanced to the Five Paths Adept Rank along with Doro. However, that would have still been a challenging goal to reach. Soul cultivation wasn’t so easy. It only seemed so because Doro was talented and due to earth quintessences that perfectly suited it.

Within a rank, cultivating from the first path to the fourth path was considered relatively easy. From the fourth path to the fifth path, there was a large threshold. It was as difficult to break through the fifth path as it was to reach the fourth path from the first.

However, considering real-life scenarios, a single Five Paths Adept Rank would struggle to defeat a group of five One Path Adept Ranks. Higher path Ensouled were stronger within the same rank but they were not overwhelmingly so. In such cases, it was better to have great numbers.

Raising one summon to the limit was okay for soul cultivation purposes. But raising many summons to the limit was an inefficient and silly thing to do. Therefore, most summoners had one powerful Ensouled that their backbone, the ace of their team.

Heather considered his ace to be Doro. If it wasn’t Doro, then it was probably Voodoo. No one could guess that Wander, which the others called a mossy terrapin was his true ace.