Chapter 2 – Maniac

The next morning, Karlo got up and went to the ancient café. He hadn't been able to sleep most of the night, and when he woke up, the clock was already pointing at 9.

As he was walking, he noticed there were far more people than there had been the day before. In fact, thinking about it, the only people from the village he had seen yesterday were the guard and the woman who took them to the café.

When he arrived, he found 2 of the other 4 players there. What's more, the entire place was packed with people.

"Spent too much time looking at that book last night, did you, Karlo?" Sandra said.

"Yeah, for sure."

"Oh, have you figured out how to cultivate, then?"

"What, no."

"Well, Bob here figured out that you simply think of activating the cultivation technique, and it operates automatically. Even now, we're cultivating. We've unlocked our talents and a chat function. Why don't you try it too?"

"To be honest, I haven't gotten the technique yet. I've been trying to understand that nonsensical text this whole time. I barely finished the first page last night."

"Wow... did you gain anything?"

"Haha, we'll see once I've finished the booklet," Karlo replied dismissively. Although these people seemed nice enough, at the end of the day they were his competitors.

Things were completely different than they had been. Karlo wouldn't underestimate the ability of humans to 'adapt' to the circumstances.

As he sat down, Karlo looked at what would be his last meal for at least the next few days. It was a small bowl of porridge.

"Oh, I forgot to ask; what talents did you get?" Karlo thought they might think it was a personal question, but he asked in such a nonchalant way that they'd be embarrassed to say no.

Bob spoke first, "I got 'Cutting Edge', it's an uncommon talent that increases my speed at learning techniques. I think I got it because I was the first to start cultivating."

Sandra then said, "I got 'Fast Cultivator', Kate and Ethan got the same. It's only common, but it increases our cultivation speed by 5%, so I'm quite happy with it.

They were a lot more open than Karlo had expected. He supposed they had already shared the information with each other and probably didn't care to add one more.

While eating, he realized that while he might be able to forego food, he couldn't do the same for water. When he had finished, he approached the counter and asked the woman standing there if the water was free. It wasn't.

Thinking hard, eventually, Karlo came up with an idea.

"Do you have some sort of container I could borrow for a few days, please?" he asked the woman.

She looked him up and down. The woman was a bit on the chubby side, but she had a strong motherly aura to her.

She sighed and told him to wait a moment. Going into the back, she came out holding a glass bottle.

"Will this do?" she asked.

"Oh yes, thank you very much. I'll return it in a few days."

"Keep it," she replied with a smile.

"Thank you, thank you."

Back at the table, Sandra and Bob asked what he needed a bottle for.

Karlo smiled and said, "For water," and then he walked out.

He came to the same water fountain they had been at yesterday.

He scooped up some water with his hand and tasted it. If he was being honest, it wasn't great, but he at least confirmed it wasn't seawater. So, he filled up the glass bottle and made his way back to the room.

Sitting at the desk, he immediately got back to work.

As he went through the second page, he realized he had more paper, and the feather pen wouldn't run out of ink. He guessed that the game had noticed what he was doing and was helping him. Also, the candle simply never went out, just continually burning on and on.

Disregarding these thoughts, Karlo continued working hard.

An hour or two later, there was a knock at the door, "Karlo, we're looking for work. It seems like the villagers can give missions," it was the voice of Ethan, the tall, skinny man he had first spoken to yesterday. "Do you wanna come join us?"

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"Thanks, Ethan, I think I'm gonna work on this booklet for a while longer."

"Hey, well don't spend too long. Remember there's no free food from now on."

"I got it. Thank you."

Karlo heard the sound of Ethan walking away.

While he appreciated the thought, and he even felt tempted by the missions, Karlo had already made his decision and he was going to stick to it.

A while later, when he finished the second page, he checked his panel again.

[Karlo Berrio

Cultivation: F-

Life: 60yrs

Affiliations: Yellow, Blue

Talents:

Techniques: True Basic Qi Gathering (9%)]

'9 percent?' he thought to himself, 'maybe I got something wrong?'

Reading again, he couldn't find the mistake, so he gave up and moved to the next page.

A number of hours later he was finished with the third page. When he checked the panel though, it showed 13%.

'It looks like the pages are out of order too... Oh well, that shouldn't take too long to fix at the end.'

He came to the conclusion that with solid focus, it took him about 3 hours to complete a page. Factoring in sleep and breaks to relax his brain, he could complete about 5 a day. It was already 3:30 pm. He could probably complete 2 more today, go to sleep at 10 pm, wake up at 6 am, before completing 5 then repeating the process.

Following this schedule, he'd be finished 3 days from now. If today was Monday, he'd be done Thursday night. That meant 3 days without food, and 3 days drinking fountain water.

'No pain, no gain'.

So, Karlo strictly followed this schedule. Every day he'd get up in the morning and get some water from the fountain, then he'd get straight to work. When the others would knock on his door to express their concern, he'd politely decline.

None of them offered him food, and Karlo didn't hold it against them. He had made his own choice, and the consequences would be his to deal with.

On the morning of the final day, Ethan told him that they had all advanced their cultivation from F- to just F. Even though Bob had begun cultivation the night before the rest of them, evidently because of their talents, they had all advanced at around the same time. He said that he felt better than he ever had; stronger, faster, full of energy.

On the contrary, Karlo had never felt worse. He had been a normal person living in the city back on Earth. He had never gone multiple days without food, and it was proving worse than he had anticipated.

Thanks to his lack of energy, it was taking him longer to finish the pages, which cut into his sleep hours. It was becoming a vicious cycle. Luckily, today was the last day, if he could finish 5 today, and then rearrange the pages into the correct order, he'd be done.

That night, Karlo finally finished lucky page number 20, and he looked at his panel. He saw 81% next to the technique.

So he started rearranging the 20 pages on the desk. Instead of trying to figure it out, he simply kept trying different options until the percentage went up. The first page he had completed gave 5 percent instead of 4, so he kept it first. Then he kept trying different pages for the second until, on the thirteenth try, the percentage went up to 82.

It took him less than 10 minutes to complete the entire thing and on the second to last page, the percentage jumped from 98 to 100. Then it disappeared entirely.

His panel now showed,

[Karlo Berrio

Cultivation: F-

Life: 60yrs

Affiliations: Yellow, Blue

Talents:

Techniques: True Basic Qi Gathering]

"Hahaha, finally!" Karlo couldn't stop himself from laughing out loud.

Looking at the time, it was almost midnight, but Karlo wanted to see the fruits of his hard work right now.

He sat in the middle of the circle mat on the ground, and thought to himself, 'Activate true basic Qi gathering.'

He sat there waiting. One minute, two minutes, three, four, ten minutes! Nothing was happening.

Suddenly, Karlo had a thought, 'Maybe because this is the true version, I have to activate it without the game system's help?'

He had already read each page tens of times, but he hadn't read the booklet in its chronological entirety. So he read the entire thing, which took a good half hour, and began following its instructions.

He first relaxed his mind and heart through the breathing method in the booklet; 5 seconds breathing in, 5 holding, 5 out, and 5 holding again.

After repeating this many times, Karlo thought he might fall asleep, but he felt ready for the next step. He began to feel his breath moving in his body.

Instantly, it was as if a new world had opened up to him. He could feel the oxygen moving from his lungs into his bloodstream, then to his heart, which pumped the blood all around his body.

Karlo instinctively felt that this was impossible, but reminded himself that this was a completely different world and things had changed.

He continued feeling this cycle until at some point he noticed other pathways. They seemed to be empty, beginning near his lungs, and leading to an area in his stomach. In fact, they were just as extensive as the blood circulatory system, reaching all parts of his body.

From the book, Karlo recognized these as his Qi veins, and the area in his stomach as his Dantian, or Sea of Qi. Although he felt nothing flowing through them, he knew it was only because he couldn't sense Qi yet. In reality, all living beings have Qi flowing through their bodies.

After that, he spent a long time observing and trying to feel the Qi flowing through him. Many hours passed, and he began to enter a trance-like state. Perhaps the combination of no food, lacking sleep, and intense focus had put him into the perfect state of mind to feel Qi. Because all at once he could feel it, all through his body, and a small ball of it in his stomach.

The issue was, that he could only sense the Qi flowing from his Dantian to other parts of his body, but he couldn't feel it entering his Dantian through his breath like the booklet said.

Despite being almost unconscious, Karlo moved to the next step; feeling the Qi in the air. Supposedly, this was significantly harder than feeling the Qi in your own body, which is why the booklet prepared the reader by having them feel their inner Qi first.

Somehow, though, Karlo didn't find it difficult at all. Within the first few minutes, he could feel it. He could almost see the Qi, like floating specs of light. He began to see it enter his body through his breath, flowing down into his Dantian, from which it spread to the rest of his body.

Now Karlo could move on to the final step; manipulating the Qi in the air to draw more Qi into his body. This was by far the hardest step because beyond just sensing, it required finding and developing entirely new abilities.

It was like someone telling you to fly a plane with no experience, only you had to build all the controls at the same time.

Karlo spent many hours on this. At some point, he felt as if he had been sitting in this spot for months. Weird mutterings sounded in his ears, his head grew heavy, and his eyes lost focus. All the while, memories of the text in the booklet flitted around in his mind. He struggled to keep trying. With all his might, he kept pulling on the specs of light in the air.

Finally, he found that a single spec seemed to be reacting to his thoughts. It shook slightly, and when Karlo increased his intensity, it slowly began moving towards him.

It got closer and closer until it was but a few inches from his body. But then, mere moments before the spec of Qi would enter, and he’d begin cultivating, Karlo blacked out.