Lightning Is the Only Way

"Let's see," Gravis said, readying his saber again. "Let's try with something small, like 5% of my Spirit."

Gravis summoned a mixture with only five percent of his Spirit, yet something unforeseen happened.

POP!

The mixture wasn't able to stabilize and scattered into the surroundings. This hadn't happened before, so Gravis was confused for a second, but he quickly noticed the difference between this time and last time. "The last couple of times, I always used 10% of my Spirit. I guess I need a minimum amount of Spirit to make the fusion work. Funny, the manual hadn't mentioned that," Gravis muttered.

Then, Gravis summoned another mixture with 10% of his Spirit. Like the first three times, it remained stable. "So, it really requires a minimum of Spirit to stabilize," Gravis muttered while scratching his chin in thought. "I wonder how lightning interacts with it."

Then, Gravis started slowly infusing the mixture with lightning.

WHOOOM!

Suddenly, all the lightning in his body started crazily going into the mixture. He tried stopping the lightning, but it was hopeless. It just wouldn't listen! Gravis immediately started sweating with nervousness.

BOOOOOM!

After the sphere had absorbed 10% of Gravis' lightning, it couldn't take anymore and violently exploded. The surrounding 30 meters got completely decimated and a crater formed, which was around five meters deep. Luckily, Gravis was immune to his own lightning. An attack like that could have killed him otherwise.

Gravis continued standing there, unable to process what just happened. After some seconds, he finally calmed down and started scratching his chin again. "It felt like I didn't have enough control over the mixture when the lightning entered it. In the beginning, it was no issue controlling the sphere. Yes, I lost control over my lightning, but I hadn't lost control over the sphere at that point. Though, why did I lose control over my lightning in the first place?"

Gravis started thinking about the concept of Spirit, will, and lightning. How did he control lightning in the first place? This question appeared in Gravis' mind for the first time. He had actually never questioned how he was able to control lightning. One shouldn't forget that he already had control over lightning when he had reached the Energy Gathering Realm, though not as precise as now.

"I think it should be my Spirit," Gravis said as he continued thinking. But didn't the Spirit only appear at the Spirit Forming Realm? How had Gravis controlled his lightning in the Energy Gathering Realm then?

The answer was actually pretty simple. The Spirit had always existed, as the Spirit was the soul and the mind of the cultivator. If one didn't have a Spirit, they wouldn't be human. The Spirit Forming Realm didn't actually "form" the Spirit in the sense that it was created, but in the sense that its form would change.

The Spirit Forming Realm only made the Spirit adapt to Energy, or in Gravis' case, lightning. This allowed the Spirit to manipulate Energy, or lightning, with substantially increased precision and power. Before that, one only had rudimentary control over an element.

CLAP!

Gravis clapped his hands together as he got the answer. "Of course!" he shouted. "If I combine my Spirit and my will, the created thing is basically another me. My lightning didn't listen because this sphere was adapted to lightning and, therefore, tried to absorb it crazily. So, when it started absorbing the lightning, it basically overate itself and collapsed."

Gravis looked to the ground in deep thought. "So, in order to stop my uncontrollable mixture of Spirit and Will from exploding, I need to make the amount of Spirit in the mixture bigger than the amount of absorbed lightning. Though, the issue is that I can't keep my lightning from being absorbed. Hmmm."

After some seconds of deep thinking, Gravis found a solution. "If it absorbs all the lightning in my body, then I only need to put in more Spirit than I have lightning remaining. Currently, my Spirit reserves are at about 55%, while my lightning reserves are at around 90%."

Gravis had a plan, but he was a little worried about it. "What if the sphere doesn't stop absorbing when it ate all my lightning? Will it eat the lightning in my Spirit as well? If that happens, I'll lose several weeks of progress. I need the lightning in my mind to increase my cultivation, after all," he muttered with worry.

Gravis thought about this for a long time until he made a decision. "If I put this off, I still won't know how it will act. If I try it later, even more of my cultivation time would be in danger. Risking a couple of weeks of progress now is better than risking years of progress later." Gravis sighed. "Well, here goes nothing."

BZZZZ!

Gravis shot 45% of his lightning into the horizon. In his time thinking, his lightning and Spirit had recovered a little, so Gravis now had 50% of his lightning, and 60% of his Spirit left. If there were nothing more to absorb, then, logically, the sphere couldn't absorb more. Though Gravis still remained careful. Slowly, he created another mixture of will and Spirit. This time, he used a little over 55% of his Spirit.

The sphere appeared, and it was multiple times bigger than before. Every previous sphere only had 10% of his Spirit, while this one had over 55%. When Gravis noticed that the sphere was stable, he started to funnel lightning to it.

BZZZZ!

Like before, the lightning violently left Gravis' body and shot right into the sphere. All the lightning vanished in less than a second, and Gravis felt utterly drained. His dantian was completely devoid of lightning, and his Spirit had less than 5% of its reserves left. Gravis used the Energy inherent in his body and shoved all of it into his dantian, which quickly got converted to a small amount of lightning.

Then, he took the small amount of lightning in his dantian and shoved it into his mind, reloading it somewhat. This eased the stress on his mind. After that, Gravis took a deep breath and looked at the sphere.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!

A two-meter-wide sphere of purely concentrated lightning lingered in the air. Many peals of thunder per second exploded out of the sphere, creating a cacophony of violent sounds. The ball was also incredibly bright, and when Gravis looked into it, he was quickly forced to avert his gaze. To him, the lightning sphere appeared brighter than the sun.

Yet, Gravis also grew excited. The sphere didn't collapse, and after it had stopped absorbing the lightning, the connection between the lightning inside his dantian and the sphere had been cut. As long as Gravis didn't touch the sphere with more lightning, it wouldn't absorb more. Yet, the best part was that it hadn't even touched his Spirit. All the lightning inside his mind remained, taking a load of Gravis' shoulders.

Gravis continued watching it for several seconds with his Spirit, enraptured by its glory and power. After watching it until he was satisfied, Gravis willed it to move.

WHOOM!

A small shockwave traveled into the surroundings as the sphere started moving, its power decimating everything it touched. Yet, there was a slight issue.

"Why is this thing so fucking slow!?" Gravis shouted in frustration.

He was using everything in his power to make it move, but it was moving even slower than the walking speed of an average mortal. Hell, even a weak old man would walk faster! After trying it for a couple of seconds, Gravis gave up.

"Alright, so using it as a weapon like this won't work. Creating it takes over a second, and anyone that feels its destructive potential would have long fucked off into the distance. Well, not everything can be perfect, I suppose," Gravis muttered as he scratched the side of his head.

Then, Gravis looked at his saber with an unsure expression. "I guess I can only infuse the sphere into my saber. Though, I'm scared that my saber will just immediately explode. I really doubt that it can handle so much power."

Gravis looked at his saber, unsure. He had gotten the saber only relatively recently, yet it was already too weak again. "I need a better one," Gravis said. He also checked his Spirit Space. When he had killed Sear, a saber popped out of his Spirit Space. Back then, Sear didn't even have the chance to retrieve his weapon before he exploded into a shower of blood. Sadly, the saber was only about as good as Gravis' current one.

Gravis sighed. "Delaying won't help. In the worst case, I lose my current saber. At least I still have another one left. Here goes nothing… again."

Then, Gravis willed the sphere to move towards his saber.