I should’ve noticed this in the shop, but I had enough things to worry about. But now that I was aware of the problem I will treasure this pair like my life depended on it. Yes, that’s not an overreaction at all.

Also, it turns out my new clothes fit me quite well, I’ll miss my sweats, but this new look doesn’t seem too bad. Though I really want to know if some Multiverse magic automatically sized them for me when I bought it. Who knows.

Alright first things first! Cultivation! I’m actually getting excited to read something for once, who would’ve thought.

The booklet on how to cultivate was very small, in fact it only had 3 pages, with words only taking up one side of the page. Pretty wasteful.

Of all the 3 pages page 1 had the most information, while the other 2 didn’t have that much. Though the impact of all three was not to be compared.

The first page was a short lesson on cultivation.

It talked about what cultivating actually was, and to summarize it was to use the Ambient Qi in the atmosphere to nurture and grow the body. Kind of like plants doing photosynthesis. Funny.

It said other things about nurturing the body and what not, but to me it was all just flavor text, the key point was to use qi to nurture the body. Simple enough.

The other important thing page 1 touched upon was the fact cultivation was divided by realms, and each realm required different means to get through it and the higher your realm the stronger you were. Oh, and they went in an order that apparently couldn’t be skipped without significant injury.

1. Body Tempering

2. Qi Refinement

3. Core Formation

4. Nascent Soul

5. 1st Stage Immortal

6. 2nd Stage Immortal

7. Domain Realm

8. Dominion

9. Universal Manifestation

10. xxxxxx

Number 10 was censored for some reason but it’s the strongest one, so I guess it gets to be a little special. In all honesty the names sounded pretty cool. I was getting excited thinking about climbing them. I wonder what level the metal man who basically cracked space was? Had to be pretty high right?

Anyway.

Apparently each realm had a reason for its name and had various rules and descriptions of things you needed to do to advance and all of that. Though the book didn’t tell me about any of that for the Core formation realm and up.

But it did tell me for Body Tempering and Qi Refinement, which were on Page 2 and Page 3 respectively. Even though it didn’t say much about either of them, it definitely said enough I think.

Body Tempering.

The First Realm on the long road to the Peak of Cultivation.

It is where one must prepare the body, the foundation of everything, for the climb.

The mortal body cannot inherently handle Qi, and thus must be tempered.

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It requires taking a small amount of Qi into the body and allowing it to break your body apart until it is ready to handle Qi.

It is recommended to use a manual.

Sounds like a painful time but I’ve never been one to shy away from pain. In fact, it sounds more fun than painful. I wonder how much stronger a Body Tempering realm cultivator is than a normal person? Is it like a body builder compared to a regular civilian maybe? Who knows.

Next of course came Qi Refinement.

Qi Refinement.

The body has been tempered, yet impurities remain.

This realm will begin the process of storing qi into the body for prolonged periods and ridding the body of your mortal impurities.

One must also learn to use the Ambient Qi to progress.

It is recommended to use a manual.

I think I won’t fully understand this one until it’s time for that realm. So, for now body tempering is the focus. There’s also that black flame, I supposedly produced. Need to figure that one out, I wonder if it being black means it’s hotter than normal fire?

But I’ll pause all that reading and contemplation there for now, I need to go hunting before the daylight is gone.

I still have the actual cultivation manuals to read and the Tutorial information booklet too, but I can’t waste any day the current core conversion rate is still in effect. I know I’m already strong enough to probably kill around 60 Goblins in one day.

Which of course is what I did yesterday. Now knowing what to expect I think I’ll even be slightly better at it this time around, maybe I can reach 70? We’ll see.

Anyway.

I went to collect my spear and was pleasantly surprised by the shininess of the blade. It even shined brighter than when I first got it. Nice. Even the shaft looked polished. I guess that blacksmith is worth his own shit as he put it.

Just guessing based on where the sun is, it’s already past midday I think? So, I only have a couple hours of daylight left. If I want to reach my goal of 60, I’ll need to get a little reckless. Oh, maybe I can kite them like zombies. I kind of did that accidentally at times yesterday.

And with the thought of wondering if I can play zombies again on my mind, I walked out of the Outpost, of course the green man manning the gate had to open it for me to leave, and we exchanged short nods before I made my way back into the embrace of the forest. Maybe he wasn’t mad at me anymore? It was just a tiny little question after all.

So, with my freshly sharpened spear and my coin pouch, which has been emptied for this trip, I started jogging around trying to get the attention of a Goblin or two. I noticed when I first got here that there weren’t any Goblins really close to the Outpost, is it because of the green man standing out front maybe? Who knows.

I jogged ahead for what felt like 20 minutes. I had no clue. Either way it took 20 minutes for me to run into my first Goblin, and from I know so far where there’s one Goblin, there’s a bunch more one dying Goblin shriek away.

Which was exactly what I let it do, of course not without a nice stab from my spear.

After I let it scream its heart out for a bit I put it out of its misery. I continued jogging forward for roughly another 10 minutes and I could hear the shrieks of Goblin approaching me. After a couple minutes the group was upon me.

Though instead of trying to immediately kill them I just ran ahead a bit, using the trees, random logs, bushes and whatever else in the forest to help slow the Goblin so I didn’t have to sprint very fast.

After a couple minutes of doing this my work finally paid off, a lot more Goblins have showed up.

All of a sudden, I’m being chased by over 100 Goblins.

Shit.

Am I an idiot? Did I get too cocky after just one day of fighting?

Well, can’t change the past.

Only thing to do is follow the plan, kite them, kill the ones that get close and keep moving.

And kill I did, along with running. A lot of running. The sun is close to setting and I’m currently resting behind a tree. I haven’t even been able to pick up the orbs from the slain Goblins, as the horde chasing hasn’t diminished in the slightest.

‘Shrieek!’

Shit they found me, coming out from beyond the tree I gripped my now less than shiny spear and charged at the closest Goblin, one strong stab to the chest was enough to put him down, before another one was upon me. Retracting my spear, I did my best to spin and hit it with the shaft, though not before it got a slight hit on me with its club.

I mostly brushed it off but had to back up again as three more Goblins came up from behind me. Using reflexes that I’ve been almost forced to develop today, I spun and swung my spear in a sweeping motion briefly pushing the Goblins back, as I took that time to run to my left, up and over one of the bigger logs in the forest. Big enough that the Goblins couldn’t hop over it with ease and instead had to climb.

I didn’t let that moment go to waste and quickly let out as many stabs as I could from the other side of the log as they came up, not all of them connecting but more than enough did to wound all three Goblins.

It didn’t take long for me to finish them after that, granting me a bit of time to catch my breath.

‘Shrieeekkk!!!’

Fuck.

It was going to be a long night.