Almost the moment Puren Ning uncovers the black ball, the beast comes toward her at much greater speed than it had shown before. She braces, though certain that the impact from a creature ascending to human form would obliterate her regardless of anything she did, only for it to stop in front of her and grab the thing without any kind of protection at all. After it happened, that seemed obvious. Magical beasts, monsters, and advanced cultivators all had far more powerful bodies than a common human. Even if it were dangerous to her, one wouldn't be able to say the same about a more powerful creature.

There emits from the black sphere a quiet beeping, and a faint red light venting out from the space around the beast’s neck. The creature turns away from Puren Ning, twisting toward the door opening out of the house, and promptly falls over headfirst into the ground. Hesitantly, she asks “Are you alright?”

The only thing that comes back from the ground is more beeping, and a whirring noise. As she watches, the light against the back of the beast’s covered head is obstructed by something inside the ball, leaving a shadow toward the creature’s tail. The whirring is joined by a grinding noise, and the tail thrashes back and forth wildly. Deciding she can’t actually do anything here, Puren Ning kneels down to watch what happens.

Once she had gotten comfortable, the grinding stops. The noise that follows is more wet, and Puren Ning is suddenly very accepting of her decision to wait until she had additional tools to use to test the item, even if it had led to the ball being taken by the first thing to lay eyes on it as she had feared. Judging by the lack of thrashing of the tail, whatever was happening either didn’t hurt as much as whatever had been going on before, or the creature had been knocked unconscious or killed. She shuddered to think what would have happened if she had tried to activate the item on her own.

Sudden absence of sound, as the whirring stops, followed by a thunk from inside the sphere. On the side facing up, a circular hole opens in the black material, and a reddish paste launches from the opening. Puren Ning stays where she is for a moment, then goes to pick up the staff the beast had let go of as it went for the ball. She wasn’t entirely sure what she would do with it, but if it had been used by a beast, it probably wasn’t normal. Now she had three things, the body of a beast, which could help in cultivation if prepared properly, a ball that killed things that she put it on, and a tool of a beast that had managed to make a human form.

Deciding the safest method of handling the black ball was to use the staff, Puren Ning gingerly reaches to take the length of wood from the prime body before her. As she touches the object, she marvels at how closely it resembles an ordinary branch. There is a slight resistance when she pulls the stick from the beasts grip, like it had been loosely gripping the object before the catastrophic failure of head existence, but she manages to pry the weapon away from the post-life grip. She is therefore quite surprise when the arm in question then starts grasping in the direction of the branch.

Resisting the urge to simply start bashing the down beast with it's weapon to finish it off, Puren Ning instead thinks of the stages of cultivation. A beast that had advanced to the point where it's head was ruined the way this one’s must be and still be alive had to be higher than rank five, and possibly even higher. She hasn't even managed to make it to rank one, so even with a heaven defying artifact and a critically injured target, there was no way she would be able to kill the creature. In fact, as far as she knew, no one in the entire village would be able to take advantage of even this weakened state. There was still only the one path to survive, and it was to keep the beast from wanting to harm her. Instead of giving in to her instincts, Puren Ning gently presses the stick into the grasping hand.

Taking a hold of the wood, the creature presses one end against the edge of the bottom opening, and it's tail lengthens impossibly to wrap around the top of the sphere and press on the other end, while it uses it's other hand to push backward against the floor, popping itself out of the opening. The light extinguishes almost the moment it is no longer blocked from sight, though from the brief glance she gets off it, there seem to be characters lit up within the object. A gaping hole through the beasts skull, exposing pink brain and dark blood beyond a layer of whitish yellow bone draws her attention away from the inert orb, though. Puren Ning stares at the grisly sight, unable to move. She has touched the thing that did that, carried it around in a bin. If it had done the same to her, she wouldn't be able to simple remove herself from the thing and stand up again.

Her gaze is broken when the creature turns around, hiding the massive weak point from sight for the moment. It bears it's sharp teeth at her in a facsimile of a human smile on a creature that would have broken down it's original body and made it into what it's idea of a human would be, and makes a number of noises at her that might have been what it thought language could be.

“This one does not understand what the illustrious, exalted beast is trying to tell me. Maybe if you can understand me the great cultivator can give some other method of communication a try, like gestures? The village cannot offer much, but will welcome you gladly,” she says, trying to get a similarly nonviolent response with her own faked smile.

Instead of following what she had said, the creature makes a few more noises, though some of them did start to sound like actual words. Wrapping its tail around the sphere, it lifts the object from its resting position and puts the gore-spattered less than black thing in front of Puren Ning.

She recoils from the offer, nearly falling backward as she instinctively moves away from the thing that blasted through the head of a creature that was clearly more powerful than her, before remembering herself. Humility was the key here, along with a respectful decline of the beast’s offer.

“This one is not worthy of such a powerful artifact. Illustrious beast is far more suited to ownership of an object of incredible strength of destruction.”

When the beast replies, Puren Ning is somewhat shocked that she can actually understand a word.

“Mwen panse mwen konprann yon koup de mo sa yo tan sa a. Kenbe pale, chak mo ou di ede tradiksyon an bati baz done li yo. Evantyèlman, li pral kapab kite m 'konprann ou konplètman, epi tou dousman transmèt mo sa yo mwen bezwen kominike tounen nan direksyon ou tankou ke mwen ka konprann. Tankou, si mwen moutre l 'yo di pran sa ... Oke, li konnen pran omwen. Take.”

“Apologies, but this one lacks the requisite cultivation level to handle that sort of wound inflicted upon your body. If there were any sort of way to be sure it would not kill me, this one would gladly take your offered bounty. Benefits from having such a powerful weapon cannot be overstated, especially if one such as yourself were to be around to keep any who would want to steal your property from doing as they please.”

“Lèw pi byen tout tan. Yon bagay sou kontantman, mwen pa konnen ki sa w ap pale de lè ou pote moute kiltivasyon, li ta ka yon erè tradiksyon, menm si mwen devine mwen te fè wè ke nou te nan tè agrikòl pandan ke nou te vini pous mwen ka asire ou menm si, ke mwen pa bon ak rostlin yo. Dang, li pa konnen ki sa pawòl ou pou rostlin se ankò. No. Cultivation.”

Blinking, Puren Ning considers the noises the creature had made. She wasn’t sure exactly what the connotations of ‘no cultivation’ was supposed to be, other than clarification of her weakness.

“No, I do cultivate, I just haven't made it up to rank one. Eventually I will be able to reach that point, but even with spending my time meditating on the mountain there hasn't been much progress.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Ou ap di yon anpil nan bagay sa yo, men pa youn nan yo se reyèlman ki itil. Kouman sou yon apwòch diferan.”

Upon speaking, the creature raises its staff up, then brings it down on the ground.

“Youn.”

Repeating the gesture twice, it then says, “De.”

Suddenly, Puren Ning understands. She taps the curtain next to her, says ‘one’, then taps twice and says ‘two’.

“One. Two,” comes from the creature. It waves its hands toward her, and if that wasn’t a suggestion to continue counting aloud, Puren Ning didn’t know anything about communication at all.

The two of them spend a few minutes like this, with the beast increasing the rates of numbering by a factor of ten every thirty numbers.

Eventually running out of numbers she knows, Puren Ning points at a few of the things around the room, speaking the names for each of them clearly. Once she gets to the end of her introduction of everything her family owns, the beast speaks again, this time in perfectly understandable, if slow and stuttered, language.

“I actually finished updating. This language. Back with the numbers. Apparently it has strong similarities to. An already understood and. Preprogrammed language.”

“In that case, would you please not destroy this village and devour everything within it to temporarily sate your terrible appetites?”

“I'll try, but. No promises. I'm only half a mind, and the other. Half is unbindable to any. Possible understanding that. Might take place without. A full. Agreement from him.”

“Almost understandable. Would you like anything this one can bring you?”

Puren Ning didn't know much about beasts, other than common knowledge. They were a source of meat, most had learned to fear humans, and ones that had cultivated to a high level could reform their bodies to become something near human. Since even a tier one cultivator could demolish a crowd of people stuck at the base level, a beast at level five or higher would have the capability to destroy the village long before an overseer would be able to bring help from the Sect. Either way, the village would be destroyed, so Puren Ning had decided not to risk trying to send a message about the beast and bringing forth it's wrath. That path might lead to the beast being neutralized more quickly, but would also speed her death.

“Put this. On your head,” the thing says, proffering the ball again.

“This one would prefer not to have a giant hole drilled into her head”

“It was. A one time event. Even if it wanted. To trigger. Again. It wouldn't have. Mechanisms in place. To do so.”

“What if you're wrong though?”

“While I can see. How the potential cost to you. May seem to outweigh. The benefits. That's probably mainly because. You don't know. Any of them.”

“I know that if I put it on someone I don't like head it will put a hole in their brain.”

“That was. A one time thing. It inserted. A piece of. Its own technology. Into me. It's not even in there. Anymore. You going on. With that one point. Can’t help discount. The advantages.”

And with that, she was hooked again. No one who had even tried their hand at cultivation could ignore the stories of some low class, low ability nobody stumbling across an item of immense power that made them undefeatable in the same category. Some technique to cultivate faster than even the most talented person, a weapon that bonds with the wielder and moves them to their greatest potential, or even just someone who makes their way up to a moderate level through hard work, and is chosen to go on an expedition that leaves them with the legacy of the ancestors who left behind their proving ground. In other words, benefits were good, and Puren Ning wasn't going to simply let this opportunity slip past her.

“Fine, tell.”

“Ok well first off. It's a sweet helmet. Absorbs pretty much every kind of. Radiation. And is tough enough. To withstand the punch of. An angry god. The only reason I'm not. Going to wear it. Myself is because. It's too heavy on its own. For me to move in. And not overbalance constantly. Plus, even if. The translation. Function. Just got ejected. Into my skull. It still has a. Suite of scanners. Hooked into the. Visor. So you'll be able. To see all sorts of. Interesting things.”

“What do you mean by interesting, exactly?”

“Depending on the settings. You can see. Ultraviolet. Infrared. Various other types of. Radiation. Magical energies. Electron charges. Potential energy. Kinetic energy. Coordinates. For the appearance. Of meteors. Projected into space. And, there's a handy alert. For when something. Dangerous is approaching. From a side. Not being faced.”

That seemed very appealing, actually. The first step of being able to control an energy was being able to sense it. That was why so many cultivators learned to master earth, water, fire, or more rarely air. Those were things they could learn to control because they had easy access to the medium. Puren Ning hadn't even heard of most of those things, but magical energy would be what they used for array formations. If she could control those, she could use techniques that required incredible precision spent forming the patterns over a long period of time in moments, being able to simply will the magic into place and have it take effect on its own. Array Masters didn't usually even require high cultivation levels to be powerful, which meant if she could use this artifact she would be like the heavens to earth in regards to almost any cultivator on her level. Deciding on that moment to take the risk, Puren Ning puts the sphere on her head.

Black surrounds her.

“This is not working,” she says, head encased in a black globe.

“Try turning it on.”

“How am I meant to do that, exactly?”

“Say ‘turn on’.”

“‘Turn on’,” she says, only for the impenetrable blackness to do absolutely nothing. “Didn't work.”

“Ah, give it back. I need to. Adjust the. Language. Settings.”

Wordlessly, the girl removes the bowl from her head and passes it back to the beast, which bares it's teeth at her and lifts the object with both hands up onto it's own skull. It barks out a few words in what Puren Ning was assuming would actually be the language of beasts, and the whirring starts again.

This time, she looks away, and only hears the 'splurt’ of the device doing exactly what it had done the first time. That really didn't bode well for the truth of the creatures claims.

From the floor comes a single, “Ow.”

“I thought you said that wouldn't happen again.”

“It didn't. This was different.”

“Looked the same to me.”

“Technically. It did the same thing. Correct. But it was going in to. Take out the translator. Copy its. Software. And reimplant it. As you don't have any. Comparable chunks of. Technology in you, you'll be fine.”

“How would I know if I actually do have secret powers that would trigger the hole machine?”

“Well, if you did a. Self scan the. Visor will. Detail anything off about your. Biology, from magical interference to. Physical mind. Tampering.“

Deciding to ignore the fact that the suggestion was to use the helmet she was worrying about to determine if the helmet was a threat to her safety if she put it on by putting it on, Puren Ning activates the self scan.

Self Scan

Strength 9 Stamina 7/9 Dexterity 10 Health 9/9 Intelligence 11 Special ?/?

No special qualities detected

“Show me the energy of the heavens,” Puren Ning commands the device.