December 21, 9:39 PM

Cloud Sector, Plane: Earth

The enemy wizard went down, albeit at the cost of their attack talismans. Thankfully, her focus seemed to be more on being, well, annoying to buy time for her support to clean up the opposition.

Would have worked, too, if Claire wasn’t there.

The spearmen drone things would have worn through Rich’s shield quickly, and the mage would have stopped any of Lindy’s arrows from being used to their full potential.

Four versus two was probably a good bet, maybe even overkill when the defending couple would be heavily poisoned by previous attacks. Claire helping Rich level up to remove the affliction definitely changed things.

The fight was with losses, but mostly gains. She could always head back into the woods to hunt monsters for talisman materials, assuming the system shop stayed around. She had gotten better at the craft too. Claire hoped that she would be able to imbue a more powerful spell into the little slips of paper in the future, but that would have to wait.

Paths to Power (III)

- Level up cantrips. (18/30)

- Level up First Circle spells. (✔)

- Level up Second Circle spells. (0/5)

- Absorb energy. (0/1)

Rewards: Spirit Seeding Pill x2 OR Spirit Hardening Pill x2 depending on Path, Variable

Eye of the Storm (Limited)

- Find reliable shelter. (✔)

- Find a renewable source of food and water. (✔)

- Survive the night, until 8:00 AM.

Rewards: Spatial Pouch, Variable

Monster Slayer (III)

- Slay 100 monsters. (98/100)

Rewards: Gear Upgrade Token

* Do this immediately!!

- Learn how to meditate and level the skill to 11.

Rewards: Basic competence, 1 level up

* Stop being weak (I)

- Raise your Body statistic to 1.00 (✔)

- Raise your Mind statistic to 1.50 (✔)

Rewards: Average physique, acceptable intelligence, 3x Body Refining Pill

* Prove yourself (I)

- Kill monsters higher than your level. (5/25)

3x Spell Upgrade Token (1st Circle)

Claire’s quests had progressed also. Her mind had evidently progressed above 1.50, completing “Stop being weak (I).” She all but wrote off “Eye of the Storm” also, because all that was left was surviving to the morning.

A spatial pouch sounded nice. From the sounds of it, it was a spatially enhanced pouch, like an inventory of sorts. As soon as her mind fixated on the body refining pills from her already-completed quest, a stone jar appeared in the air and dropped in her hand.

Rich had gone off as soon as the mage’s body was disposed of to find James, but Lindy rested still by the counter, leaning against it with arms crossed.

She glanced up at Claire. “What’s that?”

“Quest reward,” she replied. “Some pills.”

Lindy shrugged. “What kind? I haven’t gotten anything physical from my quests before.”

“Body refining, it says.” Claire popped the jar open, getting a whiff of the pill before coughing and shutting the lid back on. “This absolutely reeks— but, what kind of stuff do your quests give?”

Lindy twisted open a bar of candy, taking a small bite. “Stat bumps, tokens, and not much else. There’s a big one in here, though, from reaching level ten that increases my life span.”

“Huh, that’s a weird but cool reward.” Claire sat down on a folding chair, sighing heavily. “Mine has some items and tokens, but not a single stat bump. The one that gave me the pills had a stat bump as a requirement.”

Lindy raised her eyebrows, inviting her to continue.

“You have Paths to Power, right? And Monster Slayer? I feel like if we were going to compare, that would be a good spot to start.”

The ranger nodded. “Both. The lifespan reward is from Paths to Power, and Monster Slayer just has tokens as a reward. Rich and I— everyone, I suppose— has those two. Him and I also have a limited quest. We had to find a way to cure our poison, find an ally, and stay safe until tomorrow.”

“Really?” Claire exclaimed. “I have one pretty close, it’s called Eye of the Storm and it is limited, just like yours. There’s nothing about poison or allies, but it has shelter and the same stay safe until tomorrow bit.”

Lindy’s words were interrupted by her husband’s shout from across the store. “Goodnight, honey! Night, James!” she shouted back.

“He needs the rest,” Lindy went on, to Claire. “Deserves it after all of today.”

“We do too!” Claire shot her a smile. “Do you want to go hunting with me tommorow morning?”

“I’d love to.”

“I’m going to go sleep too, then, if it’s okay with you?”

“Yeah, Claire.” The other woman let out a half-suppressed puff of laughter. “Go ahead.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

December 21

The Expanse

Tianjing looked into the portal in his soulscape, the dark rocky ground stretching on and on. He could see patches of plants and grass in the distance, with the occasional tree jutting out from the dark land. Above it all shone a single red sun.

The monk looked away from the portal, willing his spirit return to where he had came from. Shifting his mind from inhabiting his body to his spirit, he relished in the feeling of progress.

His eyes blinked open as he finished the last of the tea. Neatly, he dispersed the drained leaves and water, then stacking the clay and stone drinkware.

He deposited the set on a table on the way to his own room. With a wave of his hands, he extinguished the incense sticks and the lanters. Black smoke curled from the dead flames, its scent filling Tianjing with a sense of peace and calm.

He opened a drawer in the table, pulling out two wooden objects. Looking faintly like sides of a crescent moon, the deep brown wood had swirling white patterns carved into the side of the divination tool.

The monk closed his eyes and mouthed an invocation, then threw down the cast moon blocks onto the ground. They bounced, and settled. One face up, one face down.

“The heavens smile,” he intoned, looking at his divination. “On their wayward son.”

He swept the blocks up with a wave of his hand and a burst of wind. They clattered on the table behind him.

“This one sees their will, and will obey.”

Tianjing didn’t see the blocks land behind him.

He entered his soulscape and willed himself through the open portal. His body reformed on the dark rocky ground and looked around.

He felt strained more than it ever had been in this realm. It felt like the pressure from being in deep water, but on his spirit and not his body. The chi was far denser here than it was on the mountain’s clearing, too.

In the distance, packs of what looked to be wolves roamed about. There wasn’t much cover to hide from them, either. A few gray trees stuck out of the stony land and strange white flowers grew in clumps across the plain.

The chi in his body responded to his will, flowing to his feet. He leapt forward in great bounding strides, crossing hundreds of feet in minutes. I need to find somewhere to meditate and take advantaged of all of this energy. Where the animals will not disturb my training.

He stopped a short distance from a pool of sparkling liquid. The spring was at the bottom of a valley formed from dark stone hills, and at its edge a group of wolves lapped at the gentle waters.

Tianjing could feel the chi from where he stood. It pressed in on all sides, and his strength seemed to solidify without him even using a mote of effort. Not knowing the strength of the wolves drinking from the chi spring, Tianjing spread out his meditation blanket and sat down on the stony ground.

He drew chi in from his lungs, sinking it into his body as he exhaled. He moved it without any true direction, only trying to saturate the flesh and bone with energy. The chi faded away into the air, no matter how much he tried to keep it inside of him.

The breakthrough that the powerful woman mentioned earlier came when he first drawn energy out of his soul and into his body. Of his own efforts— that was monumental! The system could forcibly take energy from him and manipulate it in its own ways, but Tianjing was not satisfied. That led him to turn to meditation in an attempt to better replicate what the system was doing.

His elemental manipulation happened when the system pulled energy from this area underneath his navel and drew it outside in a strange pattern. Then, the pattern changed as Tianjing willed it to.

By gathering energy into his lungs from the air, he would need to mass enough to break that divide and keep a speck of chi inside of him.

When he realized this, Clearstar arrived. He repeated his words in his mind as he meditated.

My mind and body are prepared, and I am the only thing holding myself back.

Body and spirit embracing the unity of chi— can one be without seperation?

There must not be any seperation between my chi and myself.

My spirit carries with it my chi.

I am my spirit.

I am one with my chi.

Tianjing battered at the barrier between spirit and flesh with his chi. He filled himself up with everything he could from the surroundings, and attacked the bottleneck with everything he had.

His mind ached with a dull, throbbing pain as chi flooded into his body. Just how air inside a sealed bottle keeps the atmosphere from crushing it, energy from inside of Tianjing pushed out against the outer confines of his spirit, lessening the suppression he felt from the world around him.

A sense of hunger consumed him as he felt the chi that filled his body begin to weaken. His eyes flashed open and narrowed in on the chi-dense liquid in the spring.

The monk leapt into the air again, his newly-expanded energy supply twisting itself into tens of sharp blades of wind. They tore into the bodies of the wolves drinking just as their death-bringer landed. He sat down amidst the corpses, torn apart by wind blades nearly an entire realm their superior, and reached out his hands to the water.

Splitting the chi from the water, a dense mist formed around him. He inhaled it over and over, his body filling with more and more chi.

Rebirth myself in chi, she said. And when I do, take these pills.

He sprung upwards with great force, the energy in his body powering his every motion. He ran to the place where he had left his bag, and took out the pills that Clearstar left him.

The stone container surrounding the three white pills crumbled into dust as Tianjing took hold of it— a bit too strongly. He delicately plucked the pills out from the stone, and threw them into his mouth.

Feeling the energy descend, they split apart and let loose another torrent of chi inside of him. The energy seemed to push at him from the inside, filling Tianjing with a sense of extreme pain.

Deep gray energy began to come out of his body’s every pore, as his spirit felt like a balloon being overfilled with gas. As the last of the pills’ energy faded, his body spit out a smelly dark substance all over.

It smelled worse than anything he had ever smelled— Tianjing had lived in a monastery with the nearest water source an entire mountain away for a significant portion of his life— but this was worse.

He cleared his mind of the stench, shifting mental focus away from his body and onto his thoughts.

Like how popping pimples removed a speck of infection out of the body, it seemed like Clearstar’s pills removed the impurities from his body and spirit. No wonder she told me to take them when I was ready. Did I not spend enough thought interpreting great Clearstar’s words?

He ripped his robes off, seeing the insides covered in viscous black liquid. The same liquid that seemingly covered every inch of him. Grimacing, he ran straight back to the chi spring and jumped into the icy water.

After Tianjing washed himself of the sludge, he took a moment to assess himself.

A true cultivator, now. Chi seemed to fill every bit of his body— flesh, bones, skin.

He composed himself and began to gather more energy from the chi-dense water. The liquid close to skin dissolved and flooded through Tianjing’s body and into his abdomen.

It was interesting, he thought, that an initiate on this Path must first step along the oppoosite Path of Body. The chi, though it filled his body, had but a tenuous connection to his actual physical form.

On the Path of Mind, a practitioner’s willpower is what binds energy together— what holds and channels the spirit, which in turn exerts its influence on the world.

The first step of Chi Gathering: Body Forging; for the body protects the mind, which shall in turn shield the body.

Benefactor Clearstar’s miracle medicine accelerated his process through Body Forging tremendously, Tianjing thought. He couldn’t feel any parts of his body where his mind did not have dominion. The chi, he supposed, would need to be condensed a bit further, though.

So there he sat in the spiritual spring, for ten thousand revolutions, until his mind and body were one.