"Oh!" Ning's eyes widened when he finally realized what this was. "Dual Cores?"
It was the same as Princess Alena. "Is this how the princess got her Dual cores too?" Ning asked.
<No. She was simply lucky and was born with two cores. Unlike someone using this technique, she had to suffer from no pain.>
"I see," Ning said. "How many Dual cores are there in this world?"
<92. Of which only 35 are in the Essence Manifestation realm and above with a single core.>
<If counting both cores above the Essence Manifestation realm, then there are less than 15 in total.>
"I see," Ning said. "That is very rare. And you're saying these little ones can learn that."
<Yes."
Ning smiled. That wasn't a bad one at all. "Can it be used by humans as well?" he asked.
<Not this exact skill, but there is another one that does the same thing but for humans.>
"Great!" Ning said. "I want both of those."
Two books were created in front of Ning, one for the beasts and one for the human.
"Wait, so Umbra can't use this, right?" Ning asked. "I assume she has too much Essence to survive the pain of having the Essence core split in half."
<Yes.>
"Guess that's done too then," Ning said. "Although we will have to decide what Essence it is better for them to learn. If possible, I would want them to learn Pure Essence. As for the other one, it might be better for them to learn Shadow Essence, so that they can remain a Shadow Puma."
Ning tossed the beast's book to Emma. "Again, your responsibilities," he said.
"I know," Emma said with a bit of a pout. "You don't have to keep reminding me."
Ning chuckled a bit and flipped through the book he received. He went through it for a bit before his eyes narrowed in confusion and curiosity.
"System, am I missing something with this book?" he asked. "Why does it mention nothing about the dual cores? It only says that you can split your cores. Nothing about how many times."
<That is because there is no limit to how many times you can split it>
"What?" Ning was surprised. "No limit? You mean we can split our cores as much as we want?"
<Yes. However, there is a limit, not because of the skill, but because of the human. One's body can only handle so much pain.>
<also, since you cannot choose the core you want to split, you have to split everything at once>
<Splitting 1 to 2 is already painful and time-consuming. Splitting 2 to 4 is absurdly difficult for a normal human being to attain. As for 4 to 8, there hasn't existed a human in this universe that could do so.>
Ning thought for a moment. "I can probably do that," he said. "But you mentioned something about it being time consuming. Just how long does it take?"
Ning flipped through the book to find something, but there wasn't anything there for him to find.
<It depends on the person and his ability to handle pain. Normally, it would take a person over 2 years to split a core to 2 different ones.>
<Then to split those into 4, it would need one nearly 20 more years.>
"20 years? That long?" Ning asked. "Shouldn't it be 4 years?"
<The more damaged the cores are, the faster the splitting becomes. Because two cores need a lot more to be damaged than just 2 cores, it ends up taking a long time.>
<It is not just the cores that needs to be cut and split either. The Sea of Essence needs to expand to handle four cores, and that takes some time as well.>
<Adding onto the fact that you need to wait for the core to be healed before they are damaged again, it truly does take 20 years.>
"I see," Ning said. "Well, that's done with then. Let's move onto the next topic."
What was the next topic going to be? Ning foudn himself stuck a bit. He had an idea previously, but now that he had learned about splitting cores, things changed quite a bit.
"Alright, so I need to decide just what sort of Essence I want to gather, huh?" Ning thought. "Emma, what Essences do you want?"
"Uhh… any good ones? Sounds like I can have 2," she said.
"You can have 4 if you work diligently," Ning said. "I'm sure it will take you no time to reach that level. It will certainly take some time though."
Emma thought for a bit and asked, "Was it really fun being a regular person, going around this world?"
"Yes, as fun as it can be," Ning said.
"Hmm, then I think I will get the four basic ones. Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth," she said. "How does that sound?"
"That… sounds fine," Ning said. "If that's what you want."
"I'm sure that's what I want," Emma said. "I don't need the other fancy Essence. You can keep them."
Ning shrugged. "Sure," he said. "I'll use the other ones then."
Ning now had to decide what Essence he wanted. He was certain that he could get to 8 Cores by the time Emma reached to 4, so he had nothing to worry about.
He knew for a fact that he was going to get 3 Essences, none of which were Pure Essence. With 8 different Essences available for him to use, using Pure Essence still would be rather stupid.
"System, give me a list of all the different Essences I can use and I can absorb to reach the Divine realm," Ning asked.
The system gave him a list of Essences, which surprised Ning. There were a few there that he wasn't aware existed at all.
"Are you serious? We can use these?" he asked the system.
<On a small scale, yes.>
"What counts as a small scale?" Ning asked.
<Planetary.>
"Huh! Not bad," Ning thought with a bit of a chuckle. "Guess I'm using only the best ones then."
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