The clip-clops of a dozen galloping horses sounded out and Ashley walked to the front of the stable with a raised eyebrow. Knights were riding along the street and the people made way for them. Most of them didn’t have armor and instead donned only the tabards that had their Lord’s insignia on them.

These particular ones had the insignia of a silver-colored rose on the front of their tabards.

“There you are!” shouted a man and Ashley turned her head in the direction. It was a plump man with blond hair. With a flushed face, he asked, “Are you out of your mind? You haven’t fed the horses!”

“Feed the horses?” she mumbled.

“Do we pay you for nothing?” yelled the man and pointed at the stables with a quivering hand, “You have to feed them early in the morning and it’s almost noon, for the Emperor’s sake. If you run off with those rats again, you’re out.”

“Umm, yeah. Sure, sure. I’ll get to it,” she said and gave him a sheepish smile. Just after finishing the sentence, she got the hang of herself and said with furrowed brows, “Wait a second. I’m-”

“Well, you better,” he hissed and glared at her with barely restrained rage, “This is your last chance.”

“Actually, I was gonna say I quit,” Ashley said as she lazily raised her hand.

“You what?” he asked, exasperated.

“I said I’m out. I’ll find something else to do instead,” she said.

“Do you think a street urchin like you can find a job like this one again?” he asked through gritted teeth.

That was enough context clues to figure out what her backstory was. Depending on where the character started and the path they chose, the backstory ended up being different. In her attempt to figure out the most enjoyable path and location duo, she’d tried making every kind of character but this was new, and that meant it was bad news.

“Sure I can,” said Ashley.

“Don’t expect me to take you in when you come crawling back,” he warned.

“I won’t,” she said and turned around.

On the surface, she was confident. On the inside, she was praying that the few lore tidbits she remembered were facts and not exaggerations. Namely, the fact that cultivators were rare. It was said that only one in a hundred people had a Core, and as a result, could cultivate it.

That meant she could easily become a Knight Squire.

She stopped, thought of turning back and asking for directions but her stubbornness said otherwise.

“Hesitating, are you?” asked the man, “But it’s too late now.”

Ashley didn’t answer.

She walked away, bumping into a few people on the way. They grunted and yelled at her but she had no intention of stopping until she was out of earshot of the place. The further she went, the number of people in the streets decreased and the buildings became shabbier and shabbier, to the point that some of them were wooden shacks that were barely standing. Which was odd, considering they were built into the side of a mountain with a gentle slope, and that ought to require more attention when building.

Only after getting completely lost did she realize that there were no minimap nor quest arrows to guide her.

“Oops,” she said and looked around.

Her throat was getting parched and she needed to find a way to wherever the knights were. Without any money, she would starve to death and she had none of that.

That’s when she halted in her tracks.

“Inventory,” she thought.

[Inventory] has not been unlocked yet.

Please purchase a [Bag of Holding] or [Spatial Ring] to unlock this feature.

“What did I even expect?” she mumbled.

The town wasn’t as small as she expected. She was simply near the outskirts before. From where she stood, she could still see the trees to the south and east but to the west, there was a fortress. To the north, there was a vast plain beyond the buildings and a road that went on into the distance.

“Ash?” a girl asked from the shack next to her.

Running into someone that knew her from her backstory was troublesome. That’s why she did what any proper gamer would: she ignored the girl.

“Ash,” the girl said again.

She walked down the mountain and to the west. If she wanted to become a knight, it only made sense that she get to the most fortified place. Even if it wasn’t her destination, they could surely point her in the right direction.

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“Ashley, it’s you, right?” asked the girl as she caught up with her.

“Huh? Who?” she asked, an innocent expression on her face with slightly raised eyebrows, “No idea who you’re talking about.”

“Come on. It’s obviously you,” said the girl and pinched her cheek.

She was dressed in tattered clothes that were a size too small, showing off most of her forearms, shins, and navel. Short, brown hair hung from her head, and emerald eyes wide with worry stared at Ashley. Her face had no shortage of soot and dirt on it, and that’s when Ashley became conscious of her appearance. From her appearance alone, the girl looked to be around her age.

What did she look like?

Was she just as dirty or was she better?

Sleeping on hay and using a rag for a blanket didn’t fill her with much promise, even less so when she was sleeping in the same smelly building as horses.

“What are you doing here? Did you get in trouble?” she asked.

“Umm… no,” said Ashley and gave her a small smile, “Everything’s fine. I just wanted to take a look at the distance. That’s all.”

“Are you really alright? You looked like you were in a lot of pain,” said the girl and furrowed her brows.

“Yeah. Yeah, as good as new,” she said.

“So did that seed actually work?” asked the girl.

“Seed?” Ashley asked.

“Yeah. You ate it and collapsed. We dragged you back to the stable,” said the girl and raised an eyebrow, “Do you feel any different? Like seeing things or-”

“I guess?” she said.

The UI was visible to any cultivator. Cultivator NPCs often referenced them, saying that they could see and hear words of the Heavenly Dao, written on bamboo slips or whispered in a disembodied, feminine voice that was eerily lifeless —their description of AI-generated text.

“Does that mean you’re… one of them now?” asked the girl.

“I think so. Yeah,” said Ashley, and the girl clasped her hands around Ashley’s own. She put a massive grin on her face and pulled her into a tight hug. It was so tight that she couldn’t breathe properly.

“That’s amazing! You can be a knight now. Just like you’ve always wanted to,” she said.

The helpful name tags that floated over the heads of players and NPCs alike weren’t there, making the situation more awkward than it had any reason to be.

“Sure. Yeah,” Ashley said slowly, looking away.

“Gotta let everyone know it’s legit,” said the girl and pointed a finger at Ashley, “Just you wait! We’re all gonna be knights now. Don’t even think a one-day head start will help you much.”

The moment she said that she dashed away and Ashley watched the girl fade off into the distance, climbing the mountain with surprising ease.

“Finally. The weirdo’s gone,” said Ashley and breathed out a sigh of relief. As she walked down the mountain, she asked out loud, “Minimap?”

[Minimap] has not been unlocked yet.

Please purchase a map of the area to unlock this feature.

As the bamboo scroll covered her vision, she walked without looking at what was in front of her. That’s when she stumbled on something and tumbled to the ground. Dragged by her momentum and the slope of the mountain, she slid a slight bit. The stone road left its mark on her hands, drawing blood and forcing her to wince.

She glanced behind her back after picking herself off the ground. On the ground was an old bucket and beneath it was a small puddle of water. Some of the splashed water found its way to her pants and one of its legs was now wet.

“What the hell is this doing on the road?” she hissed through her teeth and kicked it away.

Instead of rolling away, it flew up. Few of the planks that made up the bucket snapped in half and the metal that bound the planks together dented. When it hit the wall, most of the wood broke in at least one place while the metal fell to the ground, separated from the wood.

It was broken in the truest sense.

Ashley stared at her feet with furrowed eyebrows.

“But my Strength is only 1,” she whispered under her breath, “How strong is 10 Strength anyway? That was the minimum.”

Keywords [How Strong] and [Strength] have been mentioned.

The potency of your Strength increases by 10% for every Stat Point that is added onto it.

“Ten percent? Is that supposed to be additive or multiplicative?” asked Ashley but the bot didn’t answer. At a loss as to what else to do, she raised her fingers to do the math. Now and then, she folded and unfolded her finger as she muttered underneath her breath. Finally, after two minutes, she concluded, “Since it’ll increase nine times, if it’s additive, it should be almost two times stronger. If it’s multiplicative, it should be almost two and a half times stronger than this.”

She experimented with the UI that floated in her vision. She thought, “Close.”

The bamboo scroll disappeared from her vision.

“That’s underwhelming,” she said and stood still for a second. She scratched her head and titled it, “How am I even supposed to increase my Strength? There was no XP bar or anything. Hell, there wasn’t even a progress bar for the technique’s mastery.”

That’s when she noticed eyes on her. People stared at her through the windows and from the street. She was back in the decent part of the town. The buildings looked like they were holding together decently rather than being on the verge of falling.

One of them was staring at the broken bucket.

When their eyes met, the middle-aged woman scurried into a house.

“I guess that means cultivators are rare,” mumbled Ashley and walked off hurriedly.

When she stepped, the people recoiled, their eyes glued on her.

Ashley grit her teeth and hastened her pace into a jog, then into a run, and from there, into a sprint. Her feet were lighter than ever and she could perfectly breathe while running. A hundred meters were scaled in moments and she felt a tingle in her shins, thighs, biceps, and palms.

As her muscles demanded, she jumped as high as possible.

She reached a height of over two meters with that jump —it was more than her height.

As expected, the few pedestrians stared at her pass by but there weren’t many of them on the road. Only one or two of them at a time, but they were there. An odd sensation similar to a stage fright overtook her as her ears turned bright red and her cheeks flushed.

“Lowkey. Gotta go lowkey,” she mumbled and jumped atop one of the one-story buildings, which were the only ones nearby. The ones with more floors were where Ashley assumed the suburbs and the center of the city were, of which the district she found herself in was not a part.

She left the surprised folk behind and dropped into the next alley over after making sure no one was looking.

Now no one was afraid nor surprised.

No more scared people and certainly no more stares.

Ashley took a deep breath and felt an itch on her palms. She turned her hand and stared at it. The pain from before had subsided and was now replaced with that itchy feeling. It made her want to rigorously scratch it but she knew that the wound would open again if she did, or perhaps get worse.

That’s when she realizes she was parched.

“This can’t be happening,” she whispered and looked behind her back, “Maybe I should’ve followed that girl.”