Samantha crouched high in the tree, clinging to its trunk with raw fingertips as a small herd of Iron Boars roamed beneath her. They had been grazing for food below her hastily chosen hiding spot for the last quarter hour, and with every passing minute her desperate desire for them to move on grew alongside the burning in her muscles. She risked only the shallowest of breaths and struggled to remain perfectly still as she observed them snuffling in the underbrush.
Come on, just leave already!
In nearly any other scenario spending some time up in a tree wouldn’t be too strenuous, but she had been forced to stop her climb mid-step and was trapped in an awkward position. Add to that the fully loaded pack slung across her back and the heavy spear she carefully held out to the side, and it came as no surprise that her already-exhausted body was making its complaints known.
When the Alpha of the herd–a fearsomely large specimen that looked to be taller than she was–stomped a hind foot to signal to the others that it was time to move on, Samantha feared it was over for her. The ground rumbled with the impact, shaking the tree she hid in and causing her to nearly lose her balance. Fortunately, the sounds of rustling branches all around her masked her sharp gasp of fear and allowed her to maintain her stealth. By the time she had stabilized her footing and refocused on the group below, the herd was already moving northwards to search for food elsewhere.
After she could no longer hear the boars nearby, she carefully climbed down from the canopy to land back on solid ground. At this point some of her fingertips had started to bleed, but that was the least of her concerns. She looked for what felt like the hundredth time upon the quest that had started her on this harrowing adventure.
Core Quest: Unlock Your Potential (Part 1 of 5) [IN PROGRESS]
Time Remaining: 86 days
Congratulations! Your cultivation base has finally matured enough to begin absorbing ambient qi and infusing your body with vital energies. Venture alone into the surrounding wilderness and locate a qi nexus to begin walking the cultivator’s path.
She frowned at the notification that shone brightly in her mind’s eye, remembering how difficult it had been to prepare for her journey. Not everyone received this quest, but those who did were only given six months to complete it. Considering that qi nexuses–or founts, as some liked to call them–were far from uncommon on the first floor, at first glance the six-month time limit seemed generous; however, when accounting for the research and planning needed to undertake this journey, many felt it was still too little time.
She spent the first two months of her allotted 180 days attending a public course for those who received the questline and wished to pursue it. This class taught more in-depth information about cultivation than what was provided through the city’s primary education system and culminated in learning the Entwined Circlet cycling pattern. The Entwined Circlet was nothing special, but it beat spending her limited funds on an equally basic pattern from a cultivation manual shop.
The next couple of weeks she spent purchasing travel supplies and trying to do some additional research. While gathering the needed gear was easy enough, the resistance she received when asking other cultivators about the questline caught her off guard. When she asked about what to expect, every cultivator simply scoffed and said to ‘figure it out for herself’. Even her cousin Thomas, who had become a cultivator several years ago, refused to tell her anything about it. He said that he’d be giving her ‘undue aid’... whatever that meant.
The only counsel Thomas did give her was to purchase the combat art manual for [Inspect], something that he classified as essential for any decent cultivator to possess. She had taken his advice and spent most of her remaining funds on the technique, but it would unfortunately be mostly useless to her until after she became a cultivator. That is… if she ever found a stupid nexus.
Sighing, she mentally waved the notification away and pulled out her divining rods, continuing eastward as she had been before being driven up a tree. Once again, she tried to reassure herself that finding a nexus shouldn’t be too difficult–though if the last 19 days were anything to go by, she was either terribly unlucky or her rods were defective.
Wild founts appeared naturally wherever ambient qi was allowed to accumulate without much disturbance. Since cultivators and spirit beasts alike absorbed ambient qi, in theory, so long as she was not near a city or a large herd of beasts finding a fount should be easy. If she was nearing any unusual source of qi the divining rods should be drawn towards each other and point in the general direction of the nexus; however, this entire journey she had not felt them so much as twitch a single time.
As the hours passed, she watched the motionless rods with increasing anxiety and irritation. Because her pack was partly filled with necessary travel gear, she could only carry rations appropriate for a two-week excursion. She had been unrelentingly hungry for days now, and her attempts at supplementing her food supply with hunting and foraging hadn’t stretched her rations nearly enough. Mundane forest prey had been scarce, and the energy required to hike through the hills and underbrush all day was immense. If she wanted to continue her search, she’d soon have to risk hunting a low-rank spirit beast even if her chances of succeeding were poor.
While in the process of doing morbid survival calculations, she felt the rod in her left hand move. She paused for a moment, wondering if she had imagined it, but then the rod in her right wiggled slightly as well. A fresh wave of energy reinvigorated her tired limbs and she picked up the pace, following the direction that the dowels indicated to her. As she drew nearer to the source, the rods began to vibrate, then chime, then grew too hot in her hands to hold, but by that point she no longer needed their guidance.
After weeks of traveling through the dimly dappled light of the forest, she got her first clear view of the sky as the canopy opened up. The thicket she’d become so accustomed to gave way to a small meadow about 30 yards wide, where pristine grasses evenly covered the ground and countless wildflowers bloomed in vibrant colors. Qi, the very life energy of the world, was so thick in this place that the air itself felt weighty with potency.
Thrilled to have finally found what she was looking for, she had to physically stop herself from rushing headlong into the open space. First, she needed to check that someone–or something–else hadn’t already taken up residence in this area. She waited just beyond the tree-laden border that demarcated the forest from the meadow and scanned for any signs of the meadow being occupied.
After 10 minutes had passed, she was satisfied that she truly was alone and started walking forward towards the center of the clearing.
Core Quest: Unlock Your Potential (Part 1 of 5) [COMPLETE]
Time Remaining: 86 days
Congratulations, you have discovered a Rank 3 Nexus (Rare)! You are the first cultivator to enter the energy of this rare fount and have been awarded a minor boon! This boon will be in effect for as long as you remain within its boundaries. Choose wisely:
1. While cultivating the qi of this nexus your need for food and water will be greatly reduced
2. While within the nexus you may obscure its location from those not inside
3. You will gain a sense for how much energy of the nexus remains and how long it will exist at this location
Samantha’s eyes widened as she read. There were generally five ranks of rarity: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. She was unsure of how often Rare founts appeared but she did know that only a handful of Epic nexuses had been reported in the last thousand years and had never heard of a Legendary one being found. The additional boon was also a welcome surprise since quest rewards given by the System were notoriously unpredictable.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
She considered her options carefully. Food and water were a huge concern for her, but now that she would no longer need to hike long distances carrying heavy equipment she wouldn’t need as much sustenance. She believed foraging would cover her energy expenditures while she stayed here. Knowing how long the nexus would be around and how much energy was left would be interesting, but she couldn’t really do anything useful with that information. She had no way to stop the fount from dissipating and didn’t intend to report its location to another cultivator for a reward. Being able to obscure her location though? That would be incredibly helpful. She wouldn’t need to worry as much about spirit beasts wandering in or other cultivators coming to take the fount for themselves while she was deep in meditation. With that in mind, she mentally selected option two and another notification came up.
Core Quest: Unlock Your Potential (Part 2 of 5) [IN-PROGRESS]
Time Remaining: 60 Days
It is time to forge yourself anew. Fill your empty dantian with qi to begin to leave mortality behind.
Without wasting any more time, Samantha made her way to the center of the clearing and sat cross-legged in the lotus position. She quickly ate half of the scant remaining rations in her pack to settle the increasingly loud rumbles in her stomach and then set all her equipment off to the side. She was worried that it might be difficult to activate her boon since she had never done anything like this before, but it seemed intuitive enough. She just focused her intent on the desire for safety and protection, and the boundaries of the meadow appeared to warp and blur in response.
Closing her eyes, Samantha cleared out her thoughts and entered a meditative state. She focused completely on the energy of the nexus. How it pressed down on her from every angle. How it agitated and curled around her body as she rhythmically inhaled and exhaled.
Once she became comfortable with the flows of qi, she visualized her dantian–a spherical, spiritual space just behind her navel. As the notification had said, it was currently devoid of any energy, but the class she had taken taught her how to remedy that. All she had to do was establish the cycling pattern that she would use before she started drawing in ambient qi from the nexus.
Within her dantian she imagined a three-strand braid which formed a simple circle. While picturing qi moving cyclically through each strand in an alternating pattern, she began to pull the energy around her into her center. Her goal was to weave the qi that she was gathering within her into this shape. She’d do this until she formed a stable internal flow that would sustain itself even if she was not concentrating on maintaining it.
This cycling pattern was what would allow her to absorb and store qi with any sort of efficiency. Without a pattern she would be harshly limited by however her body was naturally inclined to store the energy, which tended to be chaotic, disorganized, and led to low qi pool and qi regeneration values.
She repeated the pattern in her mind and body like a mantra, pushing all other concerns and sensations away until all there was in the world were the torrents of qi and her.
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Samantha had to take many breaks over the next several days due to the strain that filling her dantian put on both her body and her spirit. She had been told that the initial jump from mortal to Low Copper was one of the most difficult stages of a cultivator’s advancement and now she fully understood why. Every square inch of her ached down to the bone as she drew the foreign energy into herself, and her body was altered on a fundamental level. The qi of the nexus swept through her like cleansing fire, burning away physical impurities and imperfections as every part of her was strengthened, refined, and became able to utilize qi in ways that would’ve been impossible as a mortal.
As the days passed, her body began to acclimate to the process of cultivation and her need for breaks decreased. She could also feel herself becoming stronger, faster, and more… inexplicably alive. On the ninth day of cultivating, she did not feel the need to stop for anything–even forgoing her usual mealtimes and sleeping. She continued to cultivate all throughout the night until, finally, on the tenth day, she broke through.
Once her dantian filled with qi her third eye opened for the first time, it was like the floodgates of reality had burst and she became spread thin across the very world. She caught a glimpse of divinity and the infinite possibilities of power. Her soul danced across countless threads that stretched through the ages like a spider’s web. She saw oceans of blood, obelisks of darkness, twisted abominations of flesh and corruption, but also bastions of the purest light and heroes that rose into the realms of godhood.
It was too much.
The sheer volume of knowledge was oppressive. Domineering. She feared that to gaze into absolute truth any longer would burn her very soul to oblivion, and she felt herself rapidly being swept away by the storm of visions. Her grasp on reality weakened as she tried to force her third eye to close, and she struggled against her own desire to delve deeper into the horrible, wondrous insights. With a final strain and burst of willpower, she slammed her third eye shut and was freed from the trance. Though less than a second had passed since the vision had begun, there was something in her that felt aged in a way that could never be reversed. And with each rapid heartbeat that thrummed in her chest, the memory of what she had witnessed faded like a dream upon waking.
Congratulations, you’ve advanced to Low Copper!
Filling your dantian is just the first step along the Copper path. To progress through the ranks, compress the qi stored within you until you can form a core.
Your body is now capable of fully utilizing qi. Your natural lifespan has been extended and your needs for sleep, food, and water have been reduced. The physical potential of your body has been increased, and you may now train your Attributes to reach even greater heights.
You have gained the following Attribute increases:
Strength: +3
Agility: +4
Endurance: +3
Resilience: +3
Core Quest: Unlock Your Potential (Part 2 of 5) [COMPLETE]
Time Remaining: 50 Days
As a Low Copper cultivator, you have gained access to the following features:
1. Status page
2. A regenerating qi pool
3. The ability to open meridians
4. The ability to utilize qi arts
5. The ability to form spirit bonds
Samantha’s head was left reeling after the third eye vision ended. Despite not remembering most of what she had seen, she still felt like her mind was practically bursting at the seams. She had been warned that these visions were incredibly dangerous and ran the risk of leaving the cultivator lost in the trance or mad, but she hadn’t really understood the gravity of that warning until experiencing it for herself. Still, her excitement at her successful advancement eventually overshadowed any lingering feelings of apprehension.
Excited about all the changes she’d gone through, she viewed her newly available status page.
Name: Samantha Cray
Age: 17
Attributes:
Aptitude (Approximate Max Value):
Strength: 2 → 5
Low (8)
Agility: 4 → 8
High (13)
Endurance: 3 → 6
Average (10)
Resilience: 2 → 5
Low (8)
Cultivation Rank: Mortal → Low Copper
Pattern: Entwined Circlet (Low Copper - Common)
Qi Pool: 10 / 10
Qi Regeneration: +0.5 / hour