First thing Augus did was to collect samples, of every material that composed the defense position. Which were quite a lot yet less than Augus expected, this was because he wasn’t going to simulate the quarters or the bathrooms for example.
Anything that wouldn’t be used in defense would be omitted.
This left Augus with a manageable list of materials consisting of mostly wood, stone, dirt and a small assortment of magical metals served as the actual defense.
Because of their rarity they weren’t placed all over the wall but rather in strategic points, mainly were ranged cultivators were positioned. This he asked the Officers and veterans about and they gave him information in spades.
Firstly that soldiers were divided in two types, physical and magical.
Physical used bows, crossbows, guns, javelins or even an atlatl for long range attacks.
While magical used spells of all the different types; elemental (all 8), spiritual and rarely plant constructs. The only missing type was soul attacks and that’s because Siphon monsters weren’t affected by them as they didn’t have souls.
This in turn made them the least popular among cultivators -favored mostly by Enforcers as they are the ones who usually found themselves in the need for a quick incapacitation- though Augus did consider them for his design, as soul attacks were effective against the Siphon themselves and attacking them could be a valid strategy depending on the situation.
With such a diverse cast of attack methods distributed among all the soldiers Augus would have to account for these during the adjustment for the Siphon monsters, mainly their resistances and attack patterns. For example, by this point in time the Siphon had long learned not to cluster during an invasion, as any magical type of attack could be turned into an AOE.
Starting by the ranged attacks gave Augus an advantage, by the time he got to adjusting the parameters for the close range attacks he would have the section on the elemental factor done.
All this elemental problems came because of the soldiers cultivation level, most were already at Golden Core so they could use elemental attacks. Nascent soul cultivators could do even more according to the soldiers, though they were lesser in number among the foot soldiers, the Officers were almost all Nascent Soul, two were even at Ying-Yang soul realm.
This realm also marked the limit of strength this training World would allow, as stronger Siphon monsters were always managed by the upper ups of the military.
Monsters of this stage were described by the Officers as walking tanks, anyone below Nascent Soul wouldn’t leave even a scratch, while Nascent Soul could at most hold on the monster for a while and that depended on their individual skill. Unless they were on a group, a coordinated effort could take down a Ying-Yang soul monster.
The only ones who could contend against a Siphon monster at the Ying-Yang soul realm is a cultivator of a matching or superior realm.
The only saving grace of these monsters was that at Ying-Yang soul realm they didn’t have much destructive capabilities, they only appeared at Body reformation realm, which is why they were always handled by a matching cultivator, if not they risked mass casualties and even breaches into the city, as it had happened before.
With all this information, while Augus rested from analyzing the samples he collected he created a standard for the invasion.
For starters no Body reformation monsters, they weren’t necessary for the training. This made the Ying-Yang soul monsters the “bosses” of this training and as such there would be few, no Officer would participate in the training after all.
The idea was to have the Nascent soul soldiers coordinate to kill these bosses while they fought against Golden Core and Nascent soul monsters. Meanwhile the Golden Core cultivators were the main target for this training, they had to survive, defend, assist and improve during this invasion.
The first one was hampered by; massive amounts of enemies ranging from Foundation Establishment to Ying-Yang soul, random detonations that were meant to simulate the aftermath during a Body reformation fight that happened during a real invasion, exhaustion and panic.
The second one, defense, was the main objective, if the wall fell they lose, if all their teammates died, they loose.
The third one, assist, was about coordination between Golden Core and Nascent Soul cultivators to have the latter kill the bosses. The few Foundation Establishment soldiers also focused on assisting, as their lower cultivation realm meant they wouldn’t be of much use during an invasion.
The fourth and last one, improvement, was maybe the most important aspect for the soldiers personally, as they expected to improve all aspects of combat during this training, adaptability, one on one combat, mass fights, chaotic fights and all the little variations that appeared during an invasion.
If they could fight generally better they would have a better chance when the invasion started so from what Instructor Dominic commented, these attempts were to be accompanied by standard training on their personal techniques and group techniques.
The World was supposed to be a ‘safe’ environment were soldiers could get used to what an invasion entailed and test their techniques. Luckily Augus didn’t have to worry about this, he only had to make a realistic invasion so that the soldiers could survive the real deal.
But first Augus had to attend class, expert level formations class to be specific.
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“For starters I’m going to asses your actual level in formations, you say you are Advance level but that could mean knowing how to make 3 formations to knowing 300.”
“Understood sir.”
The class started right as Augus entered the Instructor’s office, after barely a greeting.
As he said, Instructor Dominic gave Augus a stack of papers where he could write down the formations he knew. From the most basic to the most complex, as such he wrote down the ones he learned since Qi condensation onward. This didn’t mean they were the simplest ones, the complexity of a formation only sometimes had anything to do with it’s creator’s cultivation level.
What distinguished a Novice Formation practitioner from an experienced one were various factors. Firstly the basic amount of formations known, anything else didn’t matter if you only knew three formations.
The standard was to know at least 10 of each category; killing, defensive, illusion, mathematical, ritualistic, transmutation, sealing, entrapment, miscellaneous, among various others. Though many cultivators ended up knowing more of a certain category and less of others, usually between those lesser known were mathematical formations, sealing and entrapment. The first one has had less use with technological developments while the other two were less effective against the Siphon monsters as they drained the spiritual energy they used by simply existing. They ended up being more of a stalling method rather than serve it’s intended purpose.
The second factor that classified practitioners was their skill, what could they do with the blueprint given to them, how efficient they could make their version without loosing in other aspects, etc.
When a modern formations practitioner made a formation, at least for the more basic ones, they were attempting to recreate an almost perfect model. By this point these formations were so perfected that any change would incur in a loss in other aspects, which while acceptable in some instances, usually meant that one needed to just do a copying job in the earlier stages.
While in the later levels creativity was more valued, as improvements of existing formations could still be done or creating new formations.
Finally, the third factor was innovation, though this one counted the more advanced you were as a formations practitioner, as the “innovation” of a Novice wouldn’t be very trusted or useful.
Instructor Dominic would focus on improving all three factors of Augus’s mastery and after he completed the test Dominic figured out what Augus’s level really was.
“If we use cultivation terms you are a half-step advanced Formations practitioner.”
After Augus gave him a confused look he expanded, “You have clearly learned Novice and Experienced level formations, but among Advanced formations you know a few at an appropriate level and a few others you could improve on.”
“What I noted is your surprising mastery of mathematical formations, care to share?”
“I have used them in my Worlds before to have Siphon monsters move realistically.”
“Oh? Like programming?” As a Master formations practitioner he figured what a mathematical formation could do, judging by how computers worked.
“Precisely.”
“Ingenious, though a miscellaneous formation may give you better control over the monsters.
It’s centered around controlling inanimate objects and with how Siphon monsters work you don’t even need a formation to give motion to the object.”
“What makes it different from my programming approach?”
“It’s generally better, the connection is more direct as there’s no intermediate program to go trough. You can probably make it’s responses more diverse and it’s at least as efficient as a mathematical one.”
“One formation can control various monsters?”
“No, but you don’t need to do so.” Dominic changed his tone, Augus’s question was unexpected, in his eyes there was no need to inscribe various formations.
“Why so? How can I control dozens or hundreds of Siphon monsters then?”
“You programmed each Siphon monster individually?”
“No, I created a set of answers and let the monsters refer to them depending on their situation.”
“Smart, but with this formation [Command] you can imitate how a real Siphon system works. You attach it to a Siphon and let it control the Siphon monsters, like in reality.”
“But why would I do that? It seems that I would be substituting the program for the Siphon instead of voiding it.”
“Because you can make it to grow and learn. Instead of always referring to an unchanging set of answers the formation allows the object, in this case the Siphon, to learn according to it’s interactions, you can even insert information directly into it to accelerate the learning process.”
“So the Siphon would act according to the limits and goals I set?”
“And it would then command the monsters in a more dynamic way than any parameters you could feasibly set.”
“So the mathematical formations are being abandoned for a reason…”
“They still have their uses, but they are too specific to remain mainstream. Like sealing and entrapment formations, their uses are no longer essential as it once was.”
“Only killing and defensive formations can remain always in demand, regardless of the times.”
“Even them have limited effectiveness against the Siphon, as formations they are always being drained of energy against monsters. Killing formations have to be deployed quicker, which impacts other aspects like efficiency and power. While defensive formations have to side either with quick deployment yet weaker defenses or slow but stronger defenses.”
“So that’s why formations are being focused more on Makers than Fighters?”
“They are always more effective when you don’t have to worry about their energy being drained constantly, so most inventions tend to assume either high consumption rate or barely a consumption, two extremes of which, as a World Maker, you don’t have to worry.”
“Because unless specified I wouldn’t deploy a formation in an area being actively siphoned?”
“Precisely, 99% of your formations will be in environments with enough ambient spiritual energy to sustain themselves without spiritual crystals.”
“I have a question about spiritual crystals instructor.”
“Ask away.”
“Why do they almost always have to be clean spiritual crystals when powering a formation? I understand it’s because there’s no need to include modules for separating impurities from pure spiritual energy but, is it really just that?”
“Like always, when it concerns formations, is about efficiency. A dirty crystal is nonviable to use because the energy required to separate impurities from spiritual energy is more than what the crystal can give. It continues until cloudy crystals where the ratio is just bad, you can still use them but about 60% of the energy is lost. The only one that manages a positive ratio are clean crystals.”
“So any crystal other than clean ones just return a lesser amount of energy than it’s extraction needed.”
“The only reason clean crystals are favored is because the extraction of it’s dormant spiritual energy requires no extra spiritual energy, unlike the rest.”
This back and forth of questions and answers continued until late in the afternoon, only stopping when dinner time came and the instructor and student departed to eat and meditate.
While Augus couldn’t advance his cultivation realm, he could do basic meditation that would end up increasing his spiritual energy capacity in the long term.
