I woke up feeling bloated in my stomach. I had left my auto-collection of Qi up and running throughout the whole night, and I had hit maximum while I was asleep. My dantian was now filled to the brim with white Qi, and it was getting slowly infused into the roots without me doing anything. The roots kept on growing, and I was indeed beginning to worry about what Yi Gore had said. If this kept going at this same rate, I would probably have a Spirit Root-Tree that would burst out of my dantian after I reached level 20 or so. Still, at this moment, I had no idea what I could do about it. It’s not like I could just stop the roots from absorbing the surrounding Qi, they WERE co-existing in the same place after all. The best I could think of was to reroute the branches through some of the Meridians, and then leave them hanging out of the exit points. I had taken it VERY slowly with the whole “leveling up” part of cultivation, because I wanted to “look” normal for the Autumn exams, in case someone took a long gander at my statistics through some unknown way. Just as I had been able to see Fung’s stat screen, I assumed there were other ways to forcibly see the stats of another person through some skill, item or blessing. I had asked for Fung’s permission when I had taken a peek at his stats because I respected him, NOT because I couldn’t simply have pried that info out by force.
I had an increasing problem when it came to “uncommon” statistics for the moment, since I had also Leveled Up one more time because I had killed Ifritt’s tome. While the Xp gained had not been as much as if I had confronted the Boss outright like in a direct face-off, since I had only destroyed his container and because he was in an already weakened state where he could not put up much of a fight to counter me back, it still had been enough NXP to fill the rest of the level and then half more of the next bar.
I was now over-leveled by 2 levels, which was beginning to look suspicious. It was also the main reason why I had not opened any further meridians, because every opening would give a certain amount of CXP, and would probably be enough to boost me over level 20 if I “popped” all of my walls altogether.
Fortunately, I had dumbass Jin that was over-leveled by 3 levels to act as a distraction, making me look like less of a weirdo, if anyone asked.
Fung was also over-leveled by one level, so this only looked like a mild case of a “generation of prodigies” on the overall.
There WAS another thing that I had to address though, and fast. If by chance anyone looked at my stat screen, they would see my weird-ass class and my former affiliations. I did NOT what those to get found out.
Hey Timmy, where have you hidden the “conceal my own stats” option in those menus of yours?
Timmy: Your Intuition has unlocked a Hidden System Option.
The [Active Status Concealment] Hidden Skill has now been unlocked in your menus and is available for purchase.
You must first spend a Skill Point to enable the use of this Skill.
The skill progress bar has been added to your status screen.
Description:
Spend a very small amount of Qi per second for as long as you leave this spell active, creating an overlay-like distortion of information about your own statistics to anyone looking into them. The more you leave this skill active, the more options you will be able to hide or modify.
Currently, you are able to alter or hide your name and your Class.
Being scanned with an Appraisal skill two levels higher than the current skill will reveal the true information though.
I immediately spent a skill point on it, since I had already gained an extra 5 stat points and 1 skill point when I had reached level 15, and I knew that I would be using this concealment skill for my entire life. There’s no way that the high level people would not have some sort of “scan” ability built into their skill selection, and I was certain that I would run into a lot of those high levelers, willing or not via Mother System narrative pushes.
As soon as I got the skill, I changed my class from [Low Level Evil Minion Clone] to [Fledgling Alchemist].
I then had Fung do the tentacle-root touch appraisal thing with me again, and he had confirmed that he was now indeed seeing an altered screen. Unfortunately, my former demonic sect affiliations were still showing, and it would take at least a few days of this concealment skill running at full capacity for it to enable the alteration of “factions” as well, when the skill progressed to a higher tier.
Character Sheet:
Name:Trina
Level: 15
Cultivation Stage: Qi Refinement Stage 5
Root Type: Neutral-Attributeless (Transplanted)
Spiritual Root Growth: 15.77840%
Body Age: 13 years, 11 months, 26 days
True Age: 6 months 26 days
Birth Sign: The Brothers
Race: Homunculus - Human Race Base
Sex: F
Class: Low Level Evil Minion Clone Fledgling Alchemist
Height: 149 Cm.
Weight: 56.2 Kg.
Main Guild/Sect: Blue Mountain of Books Sect
⊞Tap here to see more Guilds.
Faction: Pills-R-Us
⊞Tap here to see more Factions.
True Alignment: True Neutral
Displayed Alignment: True Neutral
Religion: N/A
Current Buffs: N/A
Current Debuffs:N/A
Statistics:
Hitpoints: 29500
Hitpoint recovery/sec:0.04
Stamina Points:28000
Stamina recovery/sec: 300
Qi/Mana Points:25499/25500
Qi/Mana recovery/sec: 3
Body Integrity: 100% ⊞
Spirit Integrity: 120% ⊞
Tap on ⊞ to see stats for each individual body part or organ component.
Tap on ⊞ to see stats for each individual dantian, meridian section or acupoints.
Strength:⊞ 21.13
I can even toss Fungus as bait now!
Constitution:⊞ 12.29
The forest rampage has paid off!
Adroitness:⊞ 18.89
Saved my ass more than once!
Perception:⊞16.02
I can slow down TIME (not really)!
Intellect:⊞17.93
I might have read a few books!
Charisma:⊞26.1/28.28
What happened to my hair! ARGH!
Luck: 50.5% Good
Fortune is a six-faced bitch!
Tap on ⊞ to expand each category
I guess that those extra stats have come from triggering that 1% increase when I transplanted my roots, from my trips and hunting experiences during the forest and from me taking the time to read every sort of book that I could get my hands on. So my assumption that you can train a stat outside of just waiting for the system to give you stat points had indeed proven valid. The drawback was that the stats just leveled very, very slowly when doing it “manually”. This made me especially hesitant about spending any of my saved points, because it looked like I could indeed just go towards a monolith build, and then just “train” the rest of the stats up. But I still had to be smart about this.
I assumed that 50 was the highest limit to which one might train themselves under the System’s watch, and the rest had to come from other means, like quests, potions and other sources, an assumption which Timmy confirmed. Therefore, the smartest thing would be to pick an attribute, level it to 50 until it could no longer gain any further improvement via “training”, and THEN do a stat dump into it to push it past the 50 cap.
For now, I had a 75 stat “piggybank” waiting to get cracked, and I was inclined to keep it “safe” until I capped a certain attribute to 50 “manually”. I was gravitating towards focusing on an intellect-based build, because in my book, SMARTER always trumps STRONGER, since a person with enough wisdom and foresight will always find a way to screw over a mindless brute, no matter how strong the brute is. The downside problem comes from living long enough to be able to cook up some plans. But that also can be alleviated through one’s smarts.
Therefore, I chose training Intellect to 50 as my immediate priority. Unfortunately, I was still not a Disciple yet, so I did not have access to the Sect library, and was relying only on whatever I could buy, which was not much, even with Fung’s auction house connections. Cultivation methods were seldom sold or imparted outside of the sects, and those few that were sold on the market were of dubious quality. I felt very little inclination to spend my hard-earned spirit stones on some cultivation manual just to get another almanach of flowery words and stupid pagentries. For now, my own cultivation method worked better than 99% of all of the methods out there. Sure, I’m most certain that there was even a better method out there, but it sure as hell would not show up on the market on some low level auction house. No, what I needed was a place of concentrated wisdom, not a collection of uselessness.
Which made finding such a place, considering at what low level of knowledge the entire population was being kept at by the System, seem like a very daunting task.
There was one more venue from where I could try milking some knowledge, and that was the Hall of Medicine led by Lady Yao.
Which reminded me that I should probably go check on the cultures. We were already getting some decent results with a few of the formations, and our experiments seemed to be coming along at a steady pace.
I left my house, then I entered the Hall of Medicine, where I was welcomed by Lady Yao. We then both proceeded to inspect the latest batches, being both amazed and disgusted at the same time about how some of the substances had interacted with each other.
Still, it was nice to see some results. Finding some alternate way to homebrew some sort of antibiotics maybe was not that far away into the future.
After that, I asked lady Yao if she had any reading materials, and she gave me some anatomical books to read about chinese acupuncture.
I was still curious how the hell stabbing someone with a bunch of pointy things could cure anything, so I took it back for reading and experimentation. Fung would make a nice target dummy for practice purposes.
Just as I was coming out of the Hall of Medicine and was heading home, I spotted Lingfeng, so I ran towards him.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
"Hey, Lingfeng, some of the cultures have yielded effect. Come and see the ones that have...grown!"
I immediately saw all of Lingfeng's muscles tensing and pupils dilating, as he heard my voice and saw me coming towards him. Just as I ran around the corner, I finally spotted who he was talking to.
There was a weird guy that looked like a bipedal black humanoid ant with four hands and two legs that was also wearing a kasaya and wielding a khakkara, the type of staff with the jingling metal circles on top, so I assumed that he was some sort of a beastkin monk. He was handing over a wrapped up item to Lingfeng, so this was probably related to the Hero of the Sun or it was a gift for his recent Level Up.
What did strike a deeper mark on me though was the second guy who was accompanying the bug-monk. He was a dude wrapped up in full plate armor from head to toe, and sporting a tabard depicting a blazing yellow-sun, which made him look like some sort of a Crusader or a Templar with a huge two-handed sword strapped to his back that was almost scratching the pavement because of the length. He was a HUGE guy and looked like he could cleave a horse clean in half by using that sword, but that is not what impressed me the most. Out of the slits of his english-like great-helm, where the eyes were supposed to be, I could only spot two incandescent orbs of light as bright as the sun, staring with surprised amazement back at me.
"So who is this little lady?" A deep, hollow but pleasant voice came out of the plated head. He crouched down to my level so he could get a better look at me. His entire crouched position was as tall as me standing up straight, so I felt those two incandescent eye globes of his pierce right through my very being, in a similar fashion to what the Hero of the Sun had previously done.
Fuck, did I just get exposed? I just barely got my hide status upgrade, I do not think it was ready for this kind of scrutiny.
"Ahaa...I am sorry about my niece's spunk. We were just doing a science project together and she was just eager to show me her results. Trina, Uncle is busy talking to some important people right now. Can you come a little bit later?" Lingfeng accentuated on Uncle a liitle to much.
"Ugh, sure Uncle...I see that you are busy meeting with some bigshots, I shall come back later. Sorry for interrupting you."
I put on a fake smile then run away with my metaphorical tail between my legs.
Crap, those guys were probably from the buddhist Sect of the Sun and the Western Temple of the Sun. Those two factions get along swimmingly, since they are both worshippers of the heavenly celestial orb aka the God Soll, and have been working together for thousands of years to vanquish out the darkness of the world.
I just hope that they did not include me on that list. I hear that some of the more “zealous” members of their factions can be quite hard to deal with.
When I got back home, Fungus was waiting for me at the entrance.
He had a worried look on his face, because he was one of the few people that knew about my true status screen.
While I had ran back home, I had seen many western templars around the sect wearing tabards that looked either like a glowing sun or a burning flame, and they seemed to be looking for something. I was just hoping that it wasn't me.
The discovery of Jin as the Hero of the Flame might have been related to the entire thing, but I still did not know why they were looking inside every nook and cranny of the sect for something. Ifritt’s Tome was already gone, so what else could they have been looking for?
"How the hell did they even get here so fast?" I asked Fung as we went inside my house.
"Teleportation formation. There is one at the top of the mountain."
"Seriously?"
"Yes, but it is usually reserved for emergency measures or unusual occurrences. I guess this qualifies as that. I am also surprised that their number is so large. Something must be occurring behind the scenes that we are not aware of. It costs a hefty amount of spirit stones to teleport so many people over, so the sect would not do such a thing unless it was absolutely essential."
"Weird..."
It took less than two hours for me to find out the answer as to why so many had arrived, when the demonic invader alarm of the entire sect began to scream again.
This time, the demonic invader had not been caught somewhere inside of the inner sect, but rather just a few houses away from mine. The moment when he had been cornered by the nearby Templars, he had used some sort of demonic artefact, and had instantly transformed himself into a behemoth of twisted flesh and blood that was almost thrice as tall as any of the Templars. I still had no idea how he had done such a thing, because it literally defied the law of conservation of mass. Where the hell had all of those extra kilograms of flesh appeared from?
Unfortunately, I did not have the time to indulge in my physics questions as a cruel fight for life and death began against the newly risen demonic apparition.
The present templars started to engage the monster, but things were not looking very good for them. I saw one of the fellows swing his huge-ass claymore straight into the calf of the beast, a strike that could have cleaved a man in half, yet it barely left a scratch against the monster's magically-enhanced hide. Whatever or whoever this dude was, he most certainly had a “Boss” tag attached to him. He also packed a mean punch. He sent the Templars assailing him flying with a mere swat of his palm, and I could hear their bones crunching even beneath the plate, which was now twisted in a very ugly shape. Still, more and more Templars were arriving from the nearby neighborhoods, and were taking over the fight.
I immediately rushed inside of the house together with Fungus, and we grabbed all of the healing potions and pills that we had crafted, knowing that this was a time to put them to good use.
We both began dragging some of the unconscious Templars that had been swatted away by the monster towards our position, and we began administering some healing potions to them and hoped for the best.
The fighting was getting more and more intense, and the monster was getting increasingly enraged, as some of the Flame Templars had begun to use their fire based attacks against him.
Suddenly, the monster began to grab some of the Templars, tore them in two halves, and then tossed them aside like bloodied rags.
The upper torso of one of the torn victims landed with a bloody splatter inside our courtyard.
I rushed to his position and then took off his great helm.
The poor sob couldn't have been more than 20 years of age.
I tried feeding him a potion, but Fung just grabbed my hand and stopped me.
"He’s too far gone...there’s absolutely no way that it would work against such injuries. Do not prolong his suffering any more."
Damn...That’s CRUEL! But...Fung was right. In the end, all I could do was just sit there helplessly watching the lights go out from the Templar’s eyes. I don't think that even my best healing pills could have been able to help him. I did not have any recipes that could stop such catastrophic organ failure.
All I could do was hold his hand as he drifted away from life.
The whole experience had hit me hard. It's not like I had not seen gore before, but it had never felt so wasteful to me when it came to the value of life. One moment the poor sob was enjoying his life filled with hopes and dreams of tomorrow, and the next moment he was now lying here in my yard torn in half by some demonic douchebag. It's absolutely sucked. I hated this feeling of helplessness, hated being unable to do anything about his situation, and hated those demonic fuckers that kept trying to mess up my life. And I loathed the Planetary System for letting such a good person die, just because it fit the narrative. I knew for a fact that the Mother System could have patched the guy up, maybe even regrown his legs, but still did nothing because there was no narrative element anywhere near that would allow for such a thing to happen. I most certainly had not discovered any alchemy essences that allowed for the regrowth of bodily parts, but I was almost certain that something like that existed out there.
All I could do to quench my fury was grab my bow, and put as many Qi-infused arrows as I could and that demonic fucker before he caused any more victims. Fungus had joined me as well, and was unleashing in his own arsenal inside the hide of the monster. I had no idea if we were even dealing any damage, because it took almost half an hour longer for all of the Templars to finally put the thing down to its final rest.
The Flame Temple crew had been hit the worst, with almost 30 casualties in their group, since the Sun Temple members usually focused more on healing and buffing rather than fighting directly. Even though I knew both groups were a danger to me, I just could not find it inside of myself to hate them for their fervor. Putting aside all of their fanatic behaviour as they screamed their evil-slaying slogans while they were rushing at the monster, they were still trying to do what they thought was right for the good of the world, even if they had to pay with their lives. And pay they did.
The huge Templar dude I had met this morning had shown up slightly after the boss had begun tearing people apart, and had made a huge difference, tanking most of the blows like a pro.
After the monster was down, he gave me a very conflicted nod with those glowing orbs of his about my contribution to the battle, before resuming the cleanup and casualty checks.
As the sun was almost going down, Lingfeng also showed up at my house. Before I could even open my mouth, he just said:
"That’s Senior Knight Fall from the Temple of the Sun. He knows."
Well, shit. Those two words said it all. The peace was nice while it lasted. Ok, inhale...I might as well come clean with Lingfeng now. Whatever comes after this, I’ll just have to face the music. I at least owe Lingfeng this much.
"Look, before you say or do anything else, I have to come clean with you. It was me, I am the one that killed the Hero of the Sun, not the Sect Master. I panicked and stabbed him with my hair brooch in the ear when he tried to molest me."
"I know." Says Lingfeng with a regretful face while looking away from me through the window, towards the outside sunset.
"Wait, You fucking knew all of this time? Then why didn't you say something? You should have raged at me, hated me! I just killed your Hero, your great and mighty companion! How did you find out anyway?"
"I did! And I still hate you...a little bit…But I also know that you were only a scared little girl with some fucked up memories stuck inside of her head, memories that pushed you to do the deed. As to how we found out, well Mina, our healer, the short girl in our group, has this weird skill called [Spirit Traceback]. It can show in vivid appearance what has happened in the recent past, and we all saw what he had done to you. It makes for a great detective skill, but has limited range time-wise. I have wondered about it many times, after trying to put myself in your shoes, and I came to the same conclusion...
If I had been in your place, I would have probably done the same...
You see, the Hero was many great other things, but a Saint he wasn't.
Our whole group too...we all knew of his...proclivities. And yet, we did nothing. We turned a blind eye, because we thought that the good he brought to the world outbalanced the evil. And in some ways, it did, for a while. But karma is a bitch, and she came back knocking, asking for a payback. So yeah, I hate you very much for killing the Hero. He was my friend and blood brother. We all have that grudge against you. But we also realise that he had it coming, and the way he died seemed...fitting.
So we pretended not to notice, because otherwise we would have been forced to face the Truth that had been buried beneath the surface of it all. Better to just pretend that he died like a true Hero. Easier for everyone."
"Then what about this me-in-the-Sect thing?" I wave around pointing at everything.
"Well, you were still a dangerous unknown element, so we had to find some way to quarantine and supervise you."
"And the best you could think of was to enlist the probably demonic, and most certainly insane clone as a sect disciple? Doesn't that seem a little too dangerous to you?"
"Hah, is that what you're worried about? The sect gets demonic infiltrators every year by the dozens! There's measures in place for that sort of shit! YOU might have not noticed it, but you have been under surveillance 24/7 ever since you have arrived here."
"And? Am I as terrible as you've feared?"
"Actually, to be frank, not at all. I have actually been pleasantly surprised by your progress. You have not only been a very curious and adept student, but you have also impressed everybody in the apothecary and the healer's guild.
BUT! This does not detract from the fact that you have killed the Hero in cold blood, and that you used to belong to a demonic sect.
In all honesty, I don't think you will ever be able to wash those sins away.
But I also believe in second chances, and you have not disappointed me so far. Heck, I even owe you my life from that tribulation fiasco, not to mention that you just killed an Ancient Demon a few days ago.
The problem is that you remind me so much of Lei Lei's carefree attitude, that sometimes it makes it hard for me to look at you. The two of you are so similar that it hurts. And I also cannot help but feel a little bit resentful that you now get to study, make friends, enjoy life, and make use of your god-given gifts, while she is still dead and buried."
"So, I'm just some cheap knockoff that has stolen somebody else's destiny in your eyes?"
"No hell, no, that's not it. I realise that you and her are two separate entities, but a man's heart is foolish and cannot help but feel what it feels." Lingfeng inhales deeply while still staring at the sunset.
"Therefore, we will go on from this point as usual, pretending that nothing has changed. Do I make myself clear? Or would you rather face the wrath of the rest of my party?"
"Nope. I'm good."
"And just so you know, that Templar dude that you ran into, he was a close friend of the Hero of the Sun, so he obviously knew his sister as well. He is not a person that is just going to let this subject drop. You had better prepare yourself mentally."
Well, damn! While Lingfeng might have liked to pretend nothing was wrong, I knew deep in my heart that everything HAD changed indeed. I knew that I now had to make haste in fulfilling my plans, and just Level Up as fast as possible. I did not think that I was even going to make it to the autumn exams at the rate things were going. I’m just glad that Lingfeng did not outright kill me, since I wouldn’t have been able to resist at all.
A change occured right the next day, as Lingfeng came back to my place with another girl in tow.
"Trina, this is Liliam Fonda, your new roommate. She will be staying with you from now on to keep an eye on...things..." Lingfeng looks away from me.
"That name sounds kind of Western-ish."
"That's because her father is a westerner."
So that’s who they chose to assign as my watchdog? Meh, it could have been worse. I’m not one to judge a book by it’s cover. The girl looks pretty cute, about 15 years of age give or take, and has these weird blue hair accents that stand out from her regular black hair. Partial protagonist hairdo detected? Or harem member? Is she one of Jin’s groupies?
I spent the next couple of hours getting to know her. AH! I think I am in love! This girl is so cute and we have so much in common! I could spend hours at an end talking with her. She gets me so much! And I did not even have to hide my backstory away from her, since she knew all about it. We talked about everything and she also seemed interested in my Alchemy products. When she asked me if I had any resins that would work for her zither bowstring, I immediately found a few samples that she could try.
After running her musical bowstring through the resin, the girl began strumming her zither, and the melody that came out was surprisingly good. She was quite skilled at playing that, I had to give it to her. Everything went fine, until she opened her mouth and then began to sing.
AAARGH ! I could simply not believe my ears. There was something out there in this world that could actually sound 10 times worse than that god damn morning rooster. The walls were shaking, the goldfish in the pond had gone belly up, the nearby flowers had withered, a few of the songbirds on the branches of the nearby trees had fainted, and I think that even some of the ceramic pottery inside of the house had begun to crack.
A screeching that was worse than a chorus of demons from Hell all performing together a summoning ritual orgy was occurring right inside of my house! The girl's voice was absolutely horrendous, and she was also tone-deaf and missing keys, but she kept playing anyway! How the hell was she able to play the instrument so well, but be so off-tune with the singing I had no clue.
Timmy: Strumming my pain with her fingers
TimmyEcho: One time, one time
Timmy: Bleeding my ears with her words
TimmyEcho: Two times, two times
Timmy: Killing me softly with her song
Timmy: Killing me softly, with her song.
Timmy: Crumbling formations with her words
Timmy: Killing me softly with her soooong
HRR! The smartass system went fugeecal on me!
"Lingfeng! You do not actually expect me to have to put up with...that!"
"Ah yes, about the...noise...Do you know why you were assigned to this particular house out of all the ones available in the sect?"
"Because it was empty?"
"Because of its geographical position. This is the house where I could most easily set up this, because the house sits on top of a minor spirit ley line."
*Thunk.* Lingfeng put his hands on one of the walls, and a bunch of runic circles began to glow then fade, activating a formation that had been built together with the entire house. Suddenly, the horrible screeching song vanished without a trace.
"See, there you go, noise suppression formation! This house used to belong to another musical talent before he got promoted to the higher levels of the sect. He would turn on the formation every time he would practice, as to not disturb the neighbours with his noise. The only difference is that he was actually talented at singing compared to her...noisemaking."
"You knew that she was coming and had planned for this disaster for months ahead?"
"I couldn't call myself a responsible Uncle if I had not. Unlike you, she actually IS my real niece."
"If you were a responsible Uncle, then you would have told her that she has absolutely zero talent at singing!"
"Oh believe me, I have. Everybody in the entire family has. Except that the girl is stubborn as a mule, and would simply just not accept it. She even demanded that we hire her a voice coach. We did, and the guy almost drowned himself in her pond."
Well, darn! Ah, You foul demoness, you have fooled me with your dainty appearance and your honeyed words! How foolish have I been! Of course there had to be something very wrong with my new roommate, otherwise they wouldn’t have put her in the same place with the insane demonic clone.