Chapter 182: Ch 182: Climbing the Mountain
As the beast had suddenly gotten stronger, Rein asked everyone to be defensive and not to get hurt. Even though they had healing medicines with them, getting hurt in this situation would not be a good idea. After enduring the boosted beast's attacks for five minutes or so, the beast suddenly let out a very loud roar and immediately died afterwards.
So it looked like whatever happened with the beast, it did make it stronger but at the cost of their life force. So if someone was capable of enduring the beasts attacks for some time, then the beast would automatically die without anyone else doing anything.
This was a very good news for Divine Scale Pavillion's team. They were already the strongest when it came to defense so the current situation was favourable to them. But the disciples would also be in a lot of danger as, if any of the attacks were able to break through the defensive skill of the disciples, they would most likely die immediately.
So Rein told all the disciples to create a three person team. This way they would be able to take care of one another in a dangerous situation and at the same time would be able to look after each other's blind spots. This way all the disciples would be safer.
...
Just like that the expedition continued. On their way Rein's group did come across other groups but no one tried to do anything with them as Rein's team was just too powerful. Rein also was not interested in wasting time fighting these people so he also did not bother any of the teams.
After about half a day of journeying, Rein's group was able to reach the foot of the mountain. They had faced many of the boosted beasts on their way and killed them all.
After analysing the corpses of the boosted beasts, Rein found out that all the regular materials had become useless but at the same time the special material of the beast which was a spirit core, had become more potent and of higher quality.
So the disciples were very active in killing more of these beasts and extracted their cores while throwing everything else away. That was the reason why Rein's group was a bit late in reaching the foot of the mountain.
As the mountain was almost straight, climbing it was not that easy. This time Rein made everyone a group of five and these five people used their spiritual power to climb the mountain together. Rein was sure that the Mountain was going to be even more dangerous than the forest and that was the reason why he was trying to be more cautious.
So far Rein had done a very good job leading everyone and Colinde was also following Rein's commands, so all the other disciples also did not complain and did what they were told. That was how the mountain climbing began.
...
The climb up the mountain was easier than one would have expected it to be. There were no beasts or monsters attacking them and all of the disciples only needed to worry about climbing and nothing else. But after about an hour of climbing everyone noticed something. It looked like all of them had lost quite a bit of their spiritual powers.
They were using the spiritual powers to climb this mountain, so losing some spiritual power was normal. But climbing mountains needed very little spiritual power but the disciples had lost almost half of theirs. There was no way that just climbing a simple mountain would need this much spiritual power.
Rein asked everyone to stop after noticing that and told them to take a little break in the caves present on the body of the mountain. Then he started to do some experiments.
After trying many things out, Rein found out that there was some kind of special while in hand mountain that made it so that whenever someone was using spiritual power here, they would unknowingly consume ten times the needed amount.
Rein told everyone about this which made them scared. Losing spiritual power was equivalent of losing all their powers. So if they lost all their spiritual power while climbing the mountain then they would not be able to protect themselves from any potential danger.
Seeing the uneasy look on everyone's faces, Rein assured them and told them about a way to solve this problem. The solution was actually very simple but very hard to execute. All the disciples just needed to not use spiritual power at all while climbing the mountain and had to climb with just their physical prowess. Then they would not lose any of the spiritual powers.
At the same time, Rein also told them to drink a pill that could replenish the spiritual powers that they had lost so far. That way they would not be short of spiritual powers if they needed to suddenly fight an enemy.
After replenishing their spiritual powers, everyone started to climb the mountain once again. This time they were having a lot of trouble as they needed to use their physical body instead of spiritual powers.
The physical body of a cultivator was definitely stronger than a normal human but at the end of the day, it was just slightly stronger and was nowhere as strong as a very boosted by the spiritual power. Only the people with physical strength boosting skills were having an easier time.
After they continued climbing this way for two more hours, the night fell. It was dangerous to continue climbing in the dark of the night so Rein decided to stop climbing for the day and again set their camp on a rock that was sticking out from the mountain.
But it turned out that the mountain that was safe in the morning was extremely dangerous at night. Many demons suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started attacking the disciples. This sudden attack took them by surprise and two of the students were badly injured but fortunately no one died. Colinde immediately took action and slaughtered all the attacking demons as if they were just cabbages.
But that was not the only group of demons that attacked them. There were more groups attacking them continuously after a certain time interval.
So Rein decided that the disciples needed to take turns guarding the Resting site. Colinde was going to take the first shift and Rein would be awake for the second. The other disciples also quickly divided themselves into the shifts. It was time for the disciples from the Demon Slaying Division to shine as this was the kind of situation that they were the best at handling.
Just like that all the students spend a troublesome night and soon it was daytime. As soon as the sun came out, the demons magically disappeared. So the disciples got ready to start climbing again.