5497 Self-Evaluation

Regardless of how he accomplished his victory, it became an established fact that he had defeated a powerful mutated beast by relying on 'himself'.

The only external tool he made use of was the Oceancaller, and it hadn't even been necessary to employ it in the first place. If not for the fact that he wanted to test and exercise his water energy manipulation abilities, he could have ended the fight a lot sooner by powering up his attacks with Worclaw energy right from the start!

Ves gained a much better understanding of his personal combat system from this actual fight.

He lifted his fist and recalled the overflowing strength that he previously displayed.

The various powers and abilities he employed were already powerful by themselves.

The endowments of a phase lord boosted his defenses and mobility to a ridiculous height. Ves could directly compete against many mechs in this aspect.

His defenses were as good as a quasi-first-class mech, though they were still short of matching the performance of a genuine first-class multipurpose mech. He had been lucky that the Azure Tornado Dragon grew up on a planet without significant deposits of phasewater. If the mutated beast was able to make use of transphasic attack methods, then Ves would have suffered a lot more injuries during this fight!

His short-range mobility was incredibly good due to his ability to quickly and precisely teleport across modest distances. However, he was still unable to traverse longer distances unless he equipped himself with a modular flight system or other external tool. He knew that he would eventually be able to mitigate this problem as long as he advanced his phase lord cultivation and implanted a specialized organic warp drive organ in his true body.

His offensive means were a mess to be honest.

His water manipulation capabilities with the Oceancaller was not great when employed against a single powerhouse. Ves lacked enough practice and comprehension to launch pressurized jets at his opponents. However, he was much more confident in wiping out swarms of weaker opponents. The artifact flute excelled at building up massive waves of destruction as long as he was allowed to build up his attack.

Ves was not satisfied with his armed and unarmed combat techniques. He knew that any serious mech pilot or infantry soldier probably regarded him as a clown for fighting like an untrained amateur!

While Ves had spent enough time among all kinds of soldiers to roughly gauge how skilled they were, he lacked the training to execute all of those powerful and efficient moves himself!

Blinky actually helped quite a lot in this fight. Though he was just about to complete the second stage of his Imaginary Universe Method, his internal universe could accommodate a huge amount of E energy, far more than the Azure Tornado Dragon was able to harness in a whole day!

One of the reasons why Ves originally added energy devouring capabilities to his crucial companion spirit was because he wanted to turn the Star Cat into a nemesis of all qi cultivators!

How great would it be to confront a powerful qi cultivator in battle, only for Blinky to step forward and suck away all of the fancy spells and techniques employed by the enemy?

The fight against the Azure Tornado Dragon had been an opportunity for him to test this concept.

While the mutated beast could technically be classified as a natural cultivator, its ability to manipulate water energy had become sophisticated enough to turn this into a good representation of an actual fight against a qi cultivator.

Unfortunately, Ves was not satisfied with Blinky's performance.

The capacity of the Blinkyverse was expanding with every second that passed. Ves could stuff so much messy energies inside of it without needing to worry about causing it to burst for a very long time.

The real issue was that the throughput was too low!

"It's like trying to empty the fuel tanks of a battleship with a tiny straw."

The size of that 'straw' had not grown as quickly as everything else!

What was the point of developing a huge internal universe that could potentially become as large as the physical universe when the channel connecting the two only amounted to a small gate?

If Ves wanted to turn Blinky into a much more useful asset, then he had to find a way to massively boost the companion spirit's throughput!

"THIS IS A SHORTCOMING OF HIS CURRENT CULTIVATION METHOD." Ves concluded.

When he originally devised the Imaginary Universe Method, he paid far more attention to the properties of the Blinkyverse itself. This came at the cost of neglecting the importance of increasing Blinky's energy absorption speed!

He wondered whether his mother already noticed this flaw, but deliberately left it unaddressed in order to teach him a lesson when she improved his cultivation method.

"THAT IS DEFINITELY THE CASE!"

He needed to fix this problem one way or another. Though Blinky's devouring rate had grown at a slow and steady rate as the companion spirit continued to age, this pattern was far too slow for his liking!

Blinky's devouring rate had to be at least 10 times higher in order to deprive the Azure Tornado Dragon of its powers!

Ves had been hoping to rely on Blinky to rob the mutated beast of all of its air energy. This would cause the dragon to lose the ability to amplify its lift force when it flapped its wings. There was no way the creature could remain aloft under those circumstances!

At least Ves became aware of this shortcoming early enough. There was plenty of time for him to remedy this issue.

In the end, Ves had to fall back on his Worclaw energy to finish this fight.

Though Ves had only channeled this special energy type for less than a minute, he had depleted a huge amount of it. This was evident from how extensively the Worclaw energy cycle inside his body had shrunk from his previous expenditures!

The cycle maintained by his oversized Jutland organ became a lot more lethargic. Ves even had the suspicion that it would have collapsed entirely if he continued to drain this high-end energy for another minute.

Ves carefully inspected the state of his Jutland organ. It was already working hard to replenish the lost Worclaw energy, but try as it might, its production rate was incredibly low!

It took a bit of time for Ves to quantify the state of his Worclaw energy reserves. He needed to develop a specialized meter in order to record this stuff properly, but that was far too low on the priority list for him to work on anytime soon.

If his judgment was correct, his Worclaw energy reserves had dipped to around 38 percent. He estimated that his Jutland organ could restore around 9 percent of his total capacity per standard week.

"GREAT. IT WILL TAKE 7 WEEKS BEFORE I AM FULL AGAIN."

That was a huge amount of time!

Ves could not escape the reality that he needed to treat his Worclaw energy as a trump card. It was not feasible for him to make use of its power on a continuous basis.

He furrowed his brows. His Jutland organ had improved by a huge extent since he became a phase lord. It had sublimated along with the rest of his body when he endured the lightning baptisms, but it had not gone through any qualitative transformations.

That was another obvious shortcoming.

Ves always had the suspicion that Worclaw energy had incredible potential. The reason why he never explored it in depth was because it was too unfamiliar to him. It had too little in common with E energy and other phenomena that he was familiar with. This left him in a helpless position.

The only way he could think of that could help him understand the properties of Worclaw energy was to borrow the knowledge from people who encountered it in the past.

There were only a handful of notable groups in the Red Ocean who seriously fought against the mighty Alshyr race that wielded this powerful energy.

Ves needed to conduct a serious trade with the Red Two or the first-rate colonial superstates in order to get his hands on this precious knowledge!

From what he had learned so far, the study of Worclaw energy was so high-level that it was impossible to obtain it by paying a lot of money or MTA merits.

Ves had to be prepared to make serious concessions in order to learn the truth about Worclaw energy!

He did not know whether it was worthwhile for him to do so at the moment. Though he did not dispute its power, Ves still remained in a position where it was not necessary for him to beat his opponents in person.

So long as the Bluejay Fleet and the forces of the Larkinson Clan remained at his disposal, there was no need for him to take action in person.

He had rarely made use of his Worclaw energy in all of the years it had circulated in his body.

Only in rare cases was he forced to tap into it, but his clan had grown so strong that it was unlikely that there shouldn't be any pressing need for him to employ this trump card in the future.

He decided to set aside this matter for later. He still had to finish this fight.

Ves' formidable true body stood in front of the heavily injured body of the Azure Tornado Dragon.

The previously majestic winged lizard looked incredibly beat up at the moment. Multiple powerful Worclaw energy-infused attacks had pulverized or torn away huge chunks of the creature's flesh and bone.

Unlike the Giant Stone Eater, the Azure Tornado Dragon did not excel at defense. Its body only gained a modest boost in resilience when the mutated beast reinforced its body with water energy.

In fact, the Azure Tornado Dragon had deliberately focused much of its mutation efforts into mastering the power of air!

The stupid dragon became so obsessed with flying that it had tried to lighten its body and make it more flight worthy!

Ves actually did not think this was a bad idea, but it was a pity that the Azure Tornado Dragon lived on a planet that had already been conquered by red humanity.

He didn't know whether the creature was smart enough to understand its own mistakes. It looked awfully pained to the point where it released ugly noises from its mangled throat.

Ves gently stepped forward and placed his palm onto the creature's head. "YOU FOUGHT WELL, DRAGON. I AM SORRY FOR WHAT I AM ABOUT TO DO, BUT MY OCEANCALLER HUNGERS FOR YOUR SOUL."

It had been shaking in his hand the entire time. The artifact flute showed much more liveliness than before. Its urge to absorb the Azure Tornado Dragon became so strong that Ves had the illusion that it would fly from his grip if he continued to prolong this moment!

Ves did not dare to waste any further. He quickly studied the fallen dragon and decided to kill it by crushing its heart. One of his previous attacks had opened a gap that exposed this important organ.

It would be a waste to kill the mutated beast by breaking open its skull. Ves wanted to preserve its head and turn it into a trophy if possible.

Ves employed a considerable amount of force to stab his oversized artifact flute through the heart and a few other important-looking organs before the Azure Tornado Dragon lost its vitality at a rapid rate.

He quickly moved back to the head and pressed the Oceancaller against the creature's skull.

Soon enough, the flute produced a powerful suction force. The entire spirituality of the Azure Tornado Dragon quickly left its original body and disappeared inside the artifact in an instant!

The Oceancaller started to heat it. Several runes associated with the concepts that the Azure Tornado Dragon happened to be familiar with started to glow brighter than the other ones!