When he woke up, it was already the second day of his stay in the Martial Spirit Sect. Ren Qingquan quickly prepared himself for a long journey to level up. Before that, he still needs to learn some movement skills to make his travel outside more convenient.
'System, Help me choose an agility skill that is suitable for long distance travel through mountainous terrains.'
After knowing the system is sentient, Ren Qingquan became too lazy to look for a suitable skill himself. If there is one thing Ren Qingquan is currently good at, it is to adapt himself into weird situations. Afterall nothing could beat getting transmigrated.
[Ding! System found a skill called 'Mountain Measuring Step' that met most of the host's needs.]
'Then, let's learn it.'
[Do you wish to spend 2 points to learn Mountain Measuring Step?
Note: System recommends the host to merge all agility based techniques first before learning the merged technique to save points.]
'It seems after getting caught red handed, the system started to be more proactive. It actually gave an extra note which didn't come out when he learned Body Tempering Technique'
As Ren Qingquan thought so, he chose to merge all agility techniques first.
[Merging all agility techniques requires the host to spend 100 points. As it is the first time the host tried to merge techniques, the price has been decreased to 1 point. Are you sure to proceed?]
'yes.'
[Ding! Skill merging successfully. Please name the new skill.]
'Agile Step.'
Afterall, almost every agility skill Ren Qingquan sees has the suffix step in it. He will also follow the naming tradition in this world.
[Successfully named the new skill as Agile Step. Do you wish to learn it? Learning Agile Step will cost 5 points.]
'How come the price multiplied by two and a half?'
[Agile Step is much more complicated compared to Mountain Measuring Step which makes it cost more points to learn.]
'fair enough. I choose to learn Agile Step.'
With that, a memory about Agile Step came to his mind. After breaking from the trance caused by the additional memory, Ren Qingquan feels himself gaining basic comprehension of Agile Step as if he personally trained in that skill for several years.
As expected of skill that should require 100 whole points to merge. Agile Step combines evasion, movement, and escape skill together. His Feather Step skill, which is already one of the strongest among evasion type techniques, is considered trash compared to Agile Step's evasion.
'But system, shouldn't you immediately raise my proficiency to perfection?'
Everyone in this world acknowledged three levels of proficiency for skills.
Low level proficiency only allows the user to use the skill exactly as learned. They must follow the exact movement and blood energy circulation to activate the skill. Just like his Feather Steps which require Ren Qingquan to bend his body into shape similar to '(' or ')' while circulating the energy to activate it. Which makes him hate to use that skill. not because of its ability, but because the way it moves is embarrassing.
Middle level proficiency allows the user to manipulate how much energy a skill costs by manipulating the speed of blood energy circulation. Which makes creating decoy attacks by spending a little blood energy or full force attacks by spending much more blood energy possible.
Meanwhile perfect proficiency allows the user to manipulate even the movement to a certain degree. The user could imitate other similar skills and confuse the enemy.
Of course there are some skills where the above separation doesn't work. His Iron Clothes being one of them. Increasing proficiency just increases their effectiveness at converting blood energy to power.
[Host, there is no such good thing as achieving perfection with mere 5 points. To achieve mid level in Agile Step requires 20 points, and 100 points for perfection.]
'System, now I know you are sentient and need me to stay alive to survive. How about giving me a discount for upgrading my skills?'
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
[No. Survival is survival. The system's principle is another thing altogether.]
'Damn black hearted merchant. Then, upgrade my Agile Step to mid proficiency.'
Ren Qingquan looked blankly as his points decreased by yet another 20.
[Name: Ren Qingquan
Realm: First Stage Martial Master
Point: 39
Technique: Body Tempering (Martial Saint)
Skills: Tiger subduing palm(Middle),
Agile Step (Middle), Iron cloth (Low).
System function: Devour, Shop, Scan, Library, Map, Calculate, System Storage (10 cubic meters).]
His Feather Step Skill has been swallowed by Agile Step that combines all movement based skills he has.
Taking the bed and dried food he bought last night, Ren Qingquan went to the sect's mission hall.
After taking the mission to kill some ferocious beast and obtaining permission to leave the sect, he immediately went to the sect's gate and left.
Upon leaving the sect's area, Ren Qingquan immediately opened the system map and started circulating his blood energy following Agile Step's movement part, Ren Qingquan could feel the wind breezing past him at incredible speed. As he is still new to the technique, he walked through paths with little to no trees in fear of colliding against it.
After spending time from morning to afternoon running past two mountains away from the Martial Spirit Sect, Ren Qingquan could finally see several big blue dots representing items with a certain amount of energy.
Running toward those blue dots one by one, Ren Qingquan started to activate [Devour] and swallowed it. Looking at his point that only increases by one after a whole hour, Ren Qingquan feels it is a bit too slow.
And so, after thinking it thoroughly, Ren Qingquan spent all his points to increase his [Devour]. The reason he asked the system those questions last night is due to a dilemma. As he has thought of two ways to increase his point quickly.
The first one is to use a system map and look for items with high energies before devouring them to gain points. If he followed this plan, then he would need to increase the range of [Scan] to search for high energy items quickly. Although it is tiring, if the amount of points gained is high enough. Ren Qingquan is willing to run around collecting things.
He also has thought about the impact of this plan which will decrease the amount of precious materials stored in Endless Mountain which might quickly alert the Martial Spirit Sect. Although the Martial Spirit Sect have their own medicine garden, foraging for resources in the Endless Mountain is still one of the main sources of income for disciples of the Martial Spirit Sect.
As for the second plan, it is to upgrade [Devour] and start devouring things indiscriminately. Whether it is wood, dirt, corpse, water, grass, or even poop. Ren Qingquan will use [Devour] and swallow them all.
The impact for this second plan will be lower compared to the first one. Because it will at most cause some mountain to go missing from the Endless Mountain. But, as its name implies, the amount of mountains in Endless Mountain is almost endless. As long as he doesn't devour too many mountains in the same area, most people shouldn't realize it.
Spending 30 points to increase the power of [Devour], Ren Qingquan chose to walk further east for another day to make sure he is far enough from the Martial Spirit Sect. By evening, Ren Qingquan had encountered only one ferocious beast. Which is a big boar at Martial Apprentice realm that he killed using Tiger Subduing Palm after a tiring battle.
Ren Qingquan also collected the beast's heart which Martial Spirit Sect uses to concoct pills that have similar effect to eating ferocious beast meat but with a longer expiration date. And stored it in system's [Storage]
Of course, he collected the heart while accompanied by a cacophony of vomiting sound coming from himself. As people from the modern era, Ren Qingquan still couldn't get used to mutilated corpses like this yet.
Upon collecting the heart, Ren Qingquan used [Devour] on the boar.
'Ferocious beasts are also marked as pretty big blue dots on the system map which should mean they could be devoured right?'
As a small whirlwind came into existence at his feet, Ren Qingquan touched the boar's corpse using his foot. Looking at the boar that gets more and more mutilated due to the whirlwind coming from [Devour], Ren Qingquan feels his stomach fluctuate once again. After five minutes, The boar's corpse already disappeared while adding 4 energies on his panel.
Soon after, Ren Qingquan sees another ferocious beast on the system map with a huge blue dot behind it. This time, it is a bear in the Martial Grandmaster realm.
Ren Qingquan could see the bear sleeping in front of a huge cave seemingly guarding it. Activating Agile Step's escape part which contains stealth and instantaneous movement, Ren Qingquan arrived on top of the cave. Jumping above the bear from on top of the cave, he released the ten tons of metal stored within [Storage].
Suddenly, a huge 4 square meter metal plate with 20 cm thickness and many spikes below it appeared. Seemingly sensing danger, the bear quickly tried to stand up and looked around. Before the bear fully stood up, Ren Qingquan kicked the metal plate hard toward the bear.
*BOOM*
Accompanied by a massive booming sound and scream from the bear, Ren Qingquan circulated his blood energy and activated Iron Clothes to withstand the damage from falling.
Storing the metal plate back into [Storage], Ren Qingquan looked at the bear turned meat paste under it. As he looked at the bear corpse while in a dilemma whether to pick it or not, a system notification sounded seemingly knowing his dilemma.
[Ding! Host, you could devour a selected part of item while leaving the other by thinking about which part you wish to absorb]
'Does that mean I could use [Devour] to swallow the meat paste while leaving the ferocious beast's heart?'
[Yes.]
'Why didn't you tell me?! I vomited my whole breakfast when I tried to collect the heart of that boar.'
[You never asked.]
Ren Qingquan: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻