Taking a deep breath, Nickel mentally prepared himself for what came next.
Once ready, he pulled a goblin core from his [Internal Storage].
It was time to start raising [Gluttony].
Nickel hesitated to swallow the core.
The issue was that monster cores had a taste, at least when consumed via [Gluttony]. The taste depended on what monster a core came from. It would be as if he was eating the flesh of the monster.
The only cores Nickel had were from goblins and slimes. Not the most appetizing of monsters.
Steeling himself once again, Nickel placed the core in his mouth.
He instantly spat it back out, retching.
It was absolutely awful.
Some arcomnet sites he'd read claimed that goblin was a rare delicacy in certain parts of the world. And Nickel could now say, with complete surety, that that was a fucking lie.
Goblins are all over the place. How could they be rare?
And they tasted like shit.
Nickel took several more deep breaths.
He picked the core back up.
This time, upon placing it in his mouth, he swallowed immediately.
For a few seconds, Nickel had to resist the urge to puke. As he did, a system message popped up.
[Gluttony Increased: +.1]
'Good.'
Nickel swallowed down the bile in his throat, and took out another goblin core.
[Gluttony Increased: +.1]
[Gluttony Increased: +.1]
[Gluttony Increased: +.1]
…
After several minutes, and a few close calls, Nickel had managed to swallow ten of the cores.
Upon swallowing the tenth, a new message appeared.
[Gluttony Satiated: Goblin Core]
"Nice… hit the limit for those…" Nickel heaved out between breaths.
Pulling up his status, he navigated to his general stat screen. At the bottom, below his Rank, was the Gluttony stat.
[Gluttony: 1.0]
"Alright. I'll be able to get more Kalna for each core now." Nickel sighed. "On to the slime cores."
Hopefully these wouldn't be as bad…
They weren't.
Instead, they were a different kind of bad.
While the goblin cores tasted like rotten garbage, they didn't have any texture or additional feeling.
The slime cores did.
They had an unsettling greasy, sticky texture, and were highly acidic. They burned going down his throat.
Fortunately, other than feeling like he was swallowing an eyeball covered in blood, mucus, and fire-lemon juice, he didn't have any trouble. He didn't have to stop himself from throwing up, anyway.
Nickel'd call that an improvement.
He had to swallow twenty of his twenty-three slime cores, but once he had, his gluttony stat looked like this.
[Gluttony: 2.0]
Now, Nickel would be getting four points from the goblin cores, and two from the slimes. Compared to most new adventurers, he'd be making twice as much progress. Which was good, given that he needed twelve times the amount of Kalna any of them would need to complete their First Circles.
Speaking of Kalna, it was time to trigger the Silver Kalna technique for the first time.
Moving back into a cross-legged position, Nickel took a goblin core and cupped his hands around it.
Practicing a Kalna technique wasn't difficult. All you had to do was circulate your mana in a specific way.
Of course, it was only because Nickel was who he was that he considered it simple.
He'd been taught the family's specialized technique at a young age. And while he hadn't truly used it, he'd been practicing it's circulation, all in preparation for the day he awakened.
He'd also spent years training to get the most out of what meager mana he had. And that required control. An incredible level of control. Most newly awakened didn't receive the same level of training as Nickel. And those that did awakened much earlier in life.
Despite his complaints, Nickel would be the first to admit that awakening at the last second had it's advantages.
As his mana moved through his body, Nickel began to circulate Lohk from [Devour] alongside it. After fourteen revolutions, seven with only mana and seven with both mana and Lohk, Nickel sent the energy into the core cupped in his hands.
It vanished instantly, pulled into his Internal World while simultaneously being converted into Kalna.
Typically, Kalna techniques only required the circulation of mana through one's mana veins. It was the unique technique of the Silver family that necessitated the addition of devouring energy.
This had two benefits.
The first was that it accelerated the rate that Kalna actually filled one's Circle. The more powerful a Silver's Aspect Ability, the faster Kalna would be able to enter.
The second was a sort of defensive measure. By building the technique around using devouring energy, it meant that only those born to the family, and therefore, born with the Blood of Gula, would be able to use it.
Immediately after the first core, Nickel pulled out the second. And then the third. And the fourth.
Different Kalna techniques had varying time requirements. Due to the use of [Devour]. It took Nickel less than ten seconds to absorb each core.
Less than ten minutes after he began, Nickel had absorbed all his remaining cores. Fifty-five goblin cores and three slime cores.
Pulling up his status once again, Nickel checked his progress.
[Status]
[User: Nicholas Silver]
[Age: 16]
[Pathfinder Rank: 1]
[Kalna: 130]
[Enhancement: 3%]
Nickel blinked seeing his status.
He knew that his Circle would begin to fill quickly, but he wasn't expecting it to be this fast. Even as he watched, the number representing his Kalna reserve continued to tick down.
After a couple of minutes watching it, it had already reached this point.
[Kalna: 16]
[Enhancement: 7%]
This was the power of having a Tier-5 Aspect, with a Kalna technique that scaled off of it. What would take anyone else several days, Nickel completed in just a few minutes.
Nickel flexed his fingers, feeling the boost to his strength.
While it wasn't as massive an improvement as his awakening enhancement, seven percent was nothing to sneeze at.
Especially when he was already so much stronger than a typical awakened.