Ever since that day, Nio was a different person. Well, that was a little of an exaggeration but not untrue. That day Nio let go of the chains that restricted his true self. Ever since then, he felt much more liberated and free. But it wasn't like he had completely changed and forgotten everything else.
Nio still cared about those he previously cared about, and his goals did not change, the way that he went about it was the thing that changed. In the years that passed after that night, Nio became slightly more aggressive. In the past, he would purposely hold back and only use the default techniques, however, he now made use of the fighting experience that he acquired to violently defeat any opponent that was strong enough to excite him enough.
His change didn't go unnoticed, of course. At first, it drew some concern from his mother, Nero, and Notres, but they soon realized that his recent personality was in fact the true him and that it didn't go against his morals.
His morals and ideals had remained the same. If one had to describe him previously, his alignment would be something like Lawful Good was now Chaotic Good.
For that reason, none of them interfered with this change, rather they were happy about it. They had finally recognized a certain feeling they had when dealing with Nio. The feeling of talking to someone else other than the actual person, leaving them a little uncomfortable. In the past, none of them could recognize such a feeling, but after witnessing such change, they could finally pinpoint what had made them uncomfortable before, and now they felt much better talking to him now, knowing they were talking to the real Nio.
They felt closer to him than before, like the true family they believed to be.
And this fact changed a lot of the ways they interacted.
Nio and his mother started talking more outside of training, completely disregarding the rules of master-servant rules of the Nell family. In the past, most of their interactions were at the times of servitude, lunch, dinner, and other daily needs. Now they talked more during the free time of any of the two.
Nero became even more clingy. In the past, although she clinged to Nio, there was more of a sense of respect and benefit, but now it was fully a clinginess born from warmth and security.
Notres relationship with Nio didn't change that much, other than the fact that Notres went to talk with Nio more often than before. Before his change, Nio was the one to approach Notres most of the time.
In short, his old relationships were improving. However, due to his new brutality and battle junkie personality, his relationship with the other members of Squad 9 was steadily worsening.
It wasn't a hostile relationship, not yet anyway, but the other members of Squad 9 started seeing Nio as a freak and a tyrant. Just because he was the strongest in the squad, did he think that he could beat up others in such a way?
It was quite ironic that these children could be aware that such brutality was too much and were calling Nio a tyrant, but they couldn't recognize the true tyranny in front of them, the Nell family. Nio was starting to think that these kids no longer had any hope.
Luckily, Nero and Notres were starting to show signs of independent thought, they already started questioning the way the Nell worked, they started asking why's and what's.
In short, they were slowly getting ready to become free from the chakles of the Nell family and think for themselves, and Nio was there to make sure that such a scenario would happen.
Those were some of the great changes that happened during the two years after that night. Nio, Nero, and Notres were now ten, along with a lot of Squad 9. They were now ready for Cultivation.
Because of that, Martial Arts Class and Body Development Class had their class time cut short, becoming more casual, if one could call it that. They became more like routine training rather than classes.
Instead, most of the time was now occupied by two new classes. Cultivation Theory and Cultivation Practice. The former is more focused on the theoretical part of cultivation, the principles, the steps, the doctrines, and the history of cultivation. The latter was pretty straightforward, it was in that class that the members of the Stygian clan would start cultivating.
At the moment, they only learned how to enter a meditative state, which was the best state to be in to absorb Heaven and Earth energy and refine it into Qi.
It was in this class where talents became even more apparent. Those whose numeric value of talent surpassed two were slowly getting behind, while people like Notres and Nero, whose talent was evaluated as one, were ahead by a huge gap.
However, the most talented was obviously the one who already learned how to meditate because of his chakra training.
"Good work, 9-1-1. Your mastery of meditation has reached an acceptable level, you can now start practicing this cultivation method to start refining your body."
The instructor, an old member of the first generation of the Stygian Clan, handed over a book titled "Basic Method of Bone Tempering" by Steve. This was the key that Nio had been waiting for, to get his hands on a cultivation method and start walking the path of a cultivator.
After that night, he still hadn't caught sight of the damn rabbit that had attacked him in the past, and he was getting impatient.
Regardless, he had now explored a lot of the forest and had started a small hobby. It was a journal, in there, he wrote everything that seemed important in order to not forget anything.
Certain things in the System's shop. Certain info on the current condition of the competition that the System sometimes leaked without any need for payment. He had even reserved two pages to draw out a map of the forest so he could remember more clearly. Unlike the map given by the family, this one had some things he had written to better organize himself.
Besides that, the journal also had some of his notes about cultivation.
It also had some plans he had made regarding his cultivation. He knew that his bloodline came from his mother's side and that therefore he had eastern ancestry. That meant that his bloodline most likely had ties to cultivation.
'I mean, the name seems like something out of a cultivation novel, Xianxia is the genre called, I believe?'
It also had some of his stats pointed down in order for later analyses to figure out the exact growth rate he was having.
Since he was planning to start cultivating this night, he believed it to be the right moment to note down his current stats, in case they changed.
The journal was written in English, of course, and since no one in this world knew the language or the Latin alphabet, the only way to be able to read it would be to be a transmigrator. Not a reason to be careless, but a good enough reason to be comfortable writing such valuable information down.
[
Status:
Name: Nio/Nioo/9-1-1/Alex
Age:10(28)
Cultivation: Body Tempering Stage 0
Bloodline: Mortal of Chance and Change
Health: Good
PHY: 36
SPE: 24
END: 42
INT: 31
CON: 29
Credits: 652
]
His stats had grown by a good amount, but he was starting to fall behind in certain areas, mainly his SPE, which was his lowest stat now. The SPE stat did not correlate with his movement speed, but his reaction speed and the speed at which his brain processed information were falling short of his current capabilities. This forced him to hold back when sprinting and other movements to prevent a situation where he couldn't keep up with his own movements.
Luckily, he had awakened the Sharingan, however, this was not a good solution. His Sharingan was defective. Not in the sense that it was malfunctioning, but rather that it was slightly, not by much, weaker than a normal one-tomoe sharingan.
According to information he had bought, the reason for that was because of the way he had awakened it. He didn't awaken it solely by the power of his emotions, but rather, he instinctively used cursed energy along with his memory due to the sudden increase of said energy's output. Therefore, Nio awakened the Sharingan using cursed energy as an aid, mutating the Sharingan.
Although it was now slightly weaker than the original, there were benefits to collect from the situation. The smallest of them was the capability to activate the Sharingan with cursed energy. The biggest of them all was the capability to better perceive his own cursed energy traveling through his body or outside of it, successfully improving his cursed energy control. He was already capable of that, it was just that he could now use the Sharingan to do it better.
Nonetheless, this still meant that he was having trouble keeping up with his opponent's and his own speed.
But he was already searching for new paths to fix such weaknesses.