“I… See…” I now realise why that human was pinned in his place in such a way. He was forced by the link of the eight potions and the altar, with the last potion acting like a medium to facilitate all this.

As for the pain thing, well… My humans should experience hell if they want to gain power.

As I watched the mist getting thinner, I noticed it wasn’t fading away. Instead, it was gathering around my human boy, forming a thin layer of pale white coat over his body.

And with each passing minute, that coat was getting thicker and much clearer to me. It was strengthening the bond between my kid and that altar.

The light gushing out from the altar kept rising up. The phenomenon was big enough to stir clouds around the end point of that pillar high in the sky.

This kind of energy… It looked quite fierce without doubt!

Lily was right. If I stayed there, and just imagined all these altars releasing such massive amounts of energy, I’d have ended up interfering with the process without doubt.

“Another is standing up,” just as I was focusing with that kid of mine, another stood up and Lily just brought my attention to him..

He was climbing another altar, and was facing the same ordeal as the first one.

As he reached the top, more humans opened their eyes, stood up, and started climbing. All experienced the same thing. All had to go through the same trouble to reach the top.

*Rumble!* *Rumble!* *Rumble!*

More rumblings came from different altars while all the humans getting to the top of each altar struggled and fought with all their might to stand up and crush the last potion, releasing the same white mist.

One by one they climbed up, struggled to get to the top, and finally fought against the exhaustion and despair they all felt to crash the last potion.

White mist started to thickly appear in a large number of spots all over the place of altars. The more time passes, the more humans come up.

“So the last ones are the weakest?” After the passage of three hours, and out of the original five thousand humans, only less than a hundred remained seated at the bottom.

“No,” Lily responded in a whispering tone, “it’s the opposite!”

“Really?” I raised one eyebrow and couldn’t help but ask for an explanation, “how?”

“Sitting there isn’t just to prepare the mind and soul for the next step, but it’s for starting to get acquainted with the energy in the world,” she slowly explained, “so the more time one spent the stronger he would become.”

“I see,” it was related to getting familiar with the world’s energy before starting the whole process. That meant those bunch of my humans had an affinity with the natural energy in this world.

Out of five thousands, only a few hundred had the talent and ability to become cultivators on their own. That was a very low ratio indeed.

I didn’t need to ask, but give me any strong and famed race in the entire universe and this ratio would be much higher.

Without this trick here, my humans were destined to miss the train of cultivation.

Sigh!

This cheat way I had here had its limitations too. The process of making these potions was really long, tiring, time consuming, and needed lots of resources.

“What happens if someone fails to stand up and crush that last potion?” I asked when the last human climbed up and smashed his potion to pieces, releasing the white mist.

It took almost six hours for him to stand up. I took note of these less than a hundred human groups, deciding to shower them with more attention and care.

Strength wasn’t only related to stats, experience, or being able to lead an army. Strength would come too from cultivation.

These less than a hundred humans were the seeds of the strong elites I’d nourish from now on. They would help in leading armies, doing missions, and be pillars of my kingdom.

“He will explode,” she said, such a scary ending for anyone failing this, “I warned them already. Going through this isn’t a joke. Either they’d live and become stronger, or fail and die as a punishment.”

“…”

I looked in silence towards her. I never thought such a thing would happen. It was a choice, a hard to make choice, one that wouldn’t just affect one’s life, but might also end it.

“It’s a relief all of them did great then,” I sighed while looking at the mist and the thick pillars of light gushing out from the altars, “what now?”

“Now? We will have to leave them to end their transformation experience,” she said, raising up her voice at last, “damn! It felt really hard to whisper like this all the time.”

“You did great,” I said in gratitude.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she turned her eyes away, towards the rest of the capital, “we just started. This path is long and dangerous… So don’t expect all of them to succeed in doing something similar.”

“I’ll pray for their safety,” I honestly said while moving my eyes around the capital, “my humans aren’t weak or cowards! We have lots of negative traits, but none of these include any of these two.”

“Fine then,” she chuckled, “I’ll keep watch here. You can go do whatever you want.”

“In less than three days we will move out,” I said in warning, “make sure to be ready, get everyone ready before that.”

“Just don’t go missing when the time comes.”

“I won’t miss that,” I said with a short laugh while praying inside that I wouldn’t miss that date and come too late.

During cultivating, I’d always lose track of time. That wasn’t a good thing. But during the training, I’d be more focused.

And to me it always felt like it would take a few hours to train, ending up spending days and weeks in real time.

Damn hard!