Extra's Survival: Raising SSS-Rank Characters Is My Only Option

While the Blue Moon’s birds flew across the night sky, Encrid trained. There was nothing else he could do while he waited, and the seven-star quest was still sitting in the corner of his vision like a dark cloud that refused to go away. Every blacked-out line of the quest seemed to tell him the same thing: Get stronger, fool.

So, after the office closed, Encrid went to the training ground behind the granary, where the ground was lit by the faint blue light of the lamps. He practiced with his sword until his arms became so tired that his hands could no longer follow what his mind told them to do.

When he finally reached that point, he sat on the frozen mounting block, pulled his coat tightly around himself, and turned his attention to something else.

The Star.

For someone who had been so deeply immersed in reading the novel, Encrid had spent the past month and a half in this world without properly cultivating his Star. It was not because he had forgotten about it. In fact, he had been thinking about it ever since he arrived.

The problem was that he had always been caught up in one thing or another.

He had been forced to leave the Gannon household the very next day after he possessed Encrid, and there had been no proper opportunity to cultivate while travelling. Even after reaching the Wall, there had always been something that needed his attention.

Of course, he had already looked at the Star and understood what it felt like. He had awakened the ability to sense it when he reached the Initiate realm, so he was not completely unfamiliar with cultivation.

He simply had not had the time to sit down and properly begin.

There was another reason as well.

Although for the past month, he had been trying to concentrate on Star cultivation, Encrid actually had wanted to wait until he had enough peace and quiet to focus entirely on cultivation.

Now, that time has finally come.

He had handed the search for Rael over to the Blue Moon, and he had also managed to sort out the ledger work to a reasonable degree. There were still plenty of problems waiting for him, but for the first time since arriving at the Wall, he had enough breathing room to put them aside for a while.

So tonight, he decided to focus seriously on his Star.

Encrid closed his eyes and followed the same method described in the novels he had once read. Back then, he had always skipped these parts because he wanted to get to the exciting battles. Now, he deeply regretted doing that.

He slowly turned his attention inward.

He moved past the feeling of his breathing and then past the steady beating of his heart. Beneath all of that were the seven sealed rooms of the human body.

Encrid could feel them now.

This ability generally appeared when a person reached the Initiate realm. However, since it was Encrid who had awakened the realm and not Jin himself, the feeling was still somewhat strange to him. There were seven distinct presences spread along his body, and each one felt like a glowing coal sitting inside a dark fireplace.

The Vermilion Star was located at the base of his spine. It represented fire, strength, and the body’s inner furnace. It was known as the soldier’s star.

The Celestial Star was located behind the navel. It represented light, size, and gravity, giving its cultivators the ability to influence the world around them in ways that ordinary people could barely understand.

The Golden Star rested around the solar plexus. It represented raw power and was known as the conqueror’s star.

The Verdant Star was located near the heart. It represented growth and healing. It was the healer’s coal, and it was also the star that a certain girl two hundred miles south was carrying in the wrong direction, like a wound that had never healed.

The Black Star was located behind the brow. It represented the ability to see things that others could not and was considered one of the hardest stars to open. Almost every terrifying fortune-teller in the novel had awakened this star.

The Zenith Star rested at the crown of the head. The novel had barely explained this star, as if even the author had been afraid to say too much about it.

And then there was the star at his throat.

The Azure Star.

It was faint, cool, and completely his.

Its principles were Flow and Adaptation. It represented water and ice, movement and change, and the ability to take whatever shape was needed.

Azure cultivators had always been some of the most unsettling fighters in the novel.

They were not the strongest.

But they were the fighters who somehow never seemed to be standing where the attack landed. They could redirect an enemy’s strength the same way a water channel redirected a river. They could change their fighting style in the middle of a battle, often faster than their opponent could understand what was happening.

The Azure Star was the third hardest star to open because it demanded something most people did not have.

It required a person to stop stubbornly holding on to their own way of doing things.

’Which the original Encrid apparently had,’ Jin thought, not for the first time. ’And then he drowned that ability in wine. What actually happened to you?’

Encrid slowly controlled his breathing, following the instructions from the small library on the Wall. He focused his attention on the cool presence at his throat and tried to push against it.

Cultivation at the Initiate realm was mostly about this.

A person had to focus their mind on something sealed inside their body and keep doing it for hours, even when that sealed thing gave almost no response.

The Star slowly became warmer.

A thin stream of something that was neither heat nor light moved through channels inside his body. Encrid did not know what those channels were called, but he could feel them clearly.

Then the feeling disappeared.

The books said that repeating this process again and again would slowly widen those channels. According to them, this was the entire path from the Initiate realm to the Ascendant realm.

They also said that somewhere along that journey, an ability might awaken.

When that happened, the Star would begin to reveal itself through the person who carried it.

Water would learn its first shape.

Encrid had been focusing on the Azure Star every night for three weeks.

The Star remained there, cool and beautiful, completely sealed away like a lake trapped beneath a thick layer of ice.

It gave him nothing.

On the twenty-first night, Encrid finally became frustrated.

’Flow,’ he thought toward the Star as his body ached from training. ’Adaptation. I have already adapted to a new body, a new world, a medieval toilet, and a broken system. What more do you want from me?’

The lake beneath the ice remained silent.

However, something was changing for the boy who sat four paces away from him.

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