Looking at the new item he could produce now that [Qi Conversion] was at Level 21, Arthur could not help but ask Sisa, his tone somewhat serious, “Mind telling me if there are any other versions of Spirit Slag I need to take note of before I continue leveling [Qi Conversion] in the future?”

“Er… I have a feeling that this would be the last one of the Spirit Slag series, but I’m not so sure on my answer,” Sisa replied. “Other than a few hints from the system here and there, just like the time you asked me when you’d unlock the production of Spirit Stones, the knowledge I have is more or less the same as yours… give or take additional knowledge from the system itself once you unlock something new.”

“Basically, take your answer with a grain of salt. Got it,” Arthur said in response.

“With that out of the way… mind telling me the difference between Spirit Slag and Superior Spirit Slag?” he asked not long after.

Of course, as the system’s assistant, Sisa did not hesitate to explain with some flavor text. “If Inferior Spirit Slag was gray dust, and Spirit Slag was white dust, then Superior Spirit Slag took on the form of bluish-white dust.”

“Now, you might be wondering. Does the color of the dust actually signify anything important?” she soon asked Arthur, only to answer the question herself not long after. “Surprisingly, it does. The color of the dust signifies the amount of qi present in the item you’re trying to convert. The more bluish-white the product is, the more qi there is. Of course, there’s also the debate about products taking on other colors due to elements and whatnot, but let’s save that for another time.”

“A great example of an item that contains a lot of qi is the core of the Spirit Improvement System,” she continued, prompting Arthur to look at the rotating object at the center of his mind as he knew what she meant by core. After all, that rotating object was the first thing to ever exist in his mental landscape.

In fact, it was only now did Arthur realize that the object at the center of his mind, which was previously a bluish-white octahedron, had gained even more faces on it. With his Qi Purity now at Tier 2, Grade 0, it had now transformed into a dodecahedron, confirming Arthur’s hypothesis from back then that the object would eventually turn into a sphere.

As for the ground below the dodecahedron, it had become more solid, giving off the feeling that there was now depth to the ground. With that in mind, Arthur could not help but wonder if the ground would stop extending downward at some point and show its improvement on the surface instead. However, only time would tell him that answer.

“As we both can see, the core of the Spirit Improvement System is an item that contains an immense amount of qi… relatively speaking to the products you’ve produced so far,” she said. “Speaking of which, have I told you before that the core actually allows you to visualize your stats?”

“Really?” Arthur could not see how the core was capable of… now that he thought about it, with Qi Purity increasing the faces of the core every time he went up a tier, it made sense. “I get how it can visualize Qi Purity with it becoming more and more like a sphere as I upgrade the stat, but how does it visualize Qi Capacity and Qi Recovery Rate?”

“It’s less obvious compared to Qi Purity, but if you look at the core closely, you can see the qi inside the core, right?” Sisa asked in response, to which Arthur responded by giving off the feeling of him nodding. “The flow of qi inside the core relates to your Qi Recovery Rate. Naturally, the higher your recovery rate, the faster the flow.”

“As for Qi Capacity, it’s the density of qi inside the core,” she continued. “With your Qi Capacity at 100 points, the feeling of the core being dense isn’t that obvious yet. However, once we get your Qi Capacity up to the thousands, you’ll eventually be able to feel that density.”

“Anyways, just wanted to let you know that small fun fact. I still have to explain the difference between Spirit Slag and Superior Spirit Slag,” she said, noticing that their conversation had gone way past their original topic.

“So, in short, Superior Spirit Slag has more qi than Spirit Slag, thus the bluish-white color. In fact, it would be more apt to call Superior Spirit Slag the poor man’s Spirit Stone,” she told Arthur, prompting the latter to ask soon after, “Why’s that?”

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“Well, according to what the system gave me, Superior Spirit Slag, even though it’s still being used as fertilizer for plants, already has enough qi in it to be used for cultivation in places where the density of qi is sparse. On top of that, its nature is closer to a Spirit Stone rather than Spirit Slag,” she responded.

“Of course, the purity of qi in a Spirit Stone, even a low-tiered one for that matter, can’t match the purity of qi in Superior Spirit Slag. But you know what they say, quantity can gradually make up for quality,” she added. “Also, if you ever wondered if Superior Spirit Slag is used as fertilizer for normal plants, that would be a no. With the amount of qi contained inside the stuff, it acts more like a poison to those plants, killing them.”

“However, the opposite could be said for plants used in alchemy, which totally love the stuff,” Sisa said to Arthur, giving him a few more tidbits of information. In fact, when he heard this, Arthur could not help but think, ‘I have a feeling Jian and Qin are going to praise the God of Spirit Slag again once they find out I can produce this stuff. After all, from how Sisa is explaining it to me, Superior Spirit Slag is basically god-like fertilizer.’

‘Speaking of those two…’ Arthur asked Sisa, “How much do you think Superior Spirit Slag sells for?”

“I was just about to get to that,” Sisa said in response. “Just like the previous products you made through [Qi Conversion], you need a minimum of 100 grams to exchange it for System Points. In this case, 100 grams of Superior Spirit Slag gives you 1000 System Points, a ten times increase over Spirit Slag.”

“Wait… what?” Hearing how Superior Spirit Slag only increased his point yield by 10 times instead of 100 times just like when he upgraded from Inferior Spirit Slag to Spirit Slag, Arthur could not help but wonder if the system was trying to slow down his progress or something. However, he had another question he needed an answer to. “Anyways, that’s not what I meant. What I meant was how much would Jian and Qin get if they sold the Superior Spirit Slag I produced.”

“Oh, that,” Sisa replied, soon giving off the feeling of shrugging her shoulders. “We can surmise that it would definitely sell for a lot more compared to Spirit Slag. After all, from the name of the competition itself, the alchemical competition needs a ton of alchemical plants to be procured. Of course, the best way to speed up the growth process of such plants is Superior Spirit Slag.”

“As for how much exactly, we’re better off not knowing that,” she said, to which Arthur surprisingly agreed to. Thinking about System Points was already somewhat confusing, much less to say about currency, which would definitely have various denominations and other weird quirks considering he was in another world.

With that question answered, he then went back to the important matter at hand, asking, “Well, moving the topic of Jian and Qin aside, is there a reason as to why Superior Spirit Slag only gives me 1000 System Points. Inferior Spirit Slag only gave me 1 per exchange, while Spirit Slag gave me 100. Following that progression, then wouldn’t Superior Spirit Slag give me 10,000?”

“Here’s the thing, Arthur,” Sisa said to him. “The system considers Inferior Spirit Slag as a product it gave you to get used to the life of a spirit vein. Think of the entire time you spent converting qi into Inferior Spirit Slag as your tutorial.”

“Once you reached [Qi Conversion Lv. 11], which unlocked Spirit Slag, that’s when the system considered that you were done with the ‘tutorial,’ giving you an item that rewarded you with much more System Points than Inferior Spirit Slag,” she added. “In other words, this amount is the actual progression for each new product you unlock. With that, expect the new product you unlock in the future to give you 10,000 System Points per 100 grams.”

Although the explanation somewhat confused him, Arthur more or less got the gist of it. With that, he then pondered as to whether he should stop producing Spirit Slag, given how Superior Spirit Slag gave him 10 times more points per 100 grams. Then again, with his Qi Purity at Tier 2, Grade 0, he could only produce 10 grams of the stuff per conversion. Plus, considering that he had just newly unlocked the conversion of the product, it would take him a total of 10 hours to produce 100 grams.

On the other hand, with [Qi Conversion] at Level 21, the duration for each conversion of Spirit Slag was reduced to 10 minutes. On top of that, with Qi Purity at Tier 2, Grade 0, he now produced 120 grams of the stuff instead of 100 at Tier 1, Grade 9. Not to mention that he had fully automated the conversion process of Spirit Slag.

With all of those variables laid out in front of him, then it was naturally obvious as to what Arthur was going to produce from now on.

“Time to start producing Superior Spirit Slag!”

“…you sure about that, Arthur?”

“Of course not. Who’d even be that stupid to do that?”

“…”

“…well, except me when I was a Spirit Seed, of course.”