[Volume 2] Chapter 43 - Legendary Expenses_Spire Dweller

The first thing Samantha did was go to check out the new ‘special’ inventory she’d unlocked in the rift shop.

Rift Reward Shop - Floor 2

Current Balance: 23,221,926

Filters: [Rift] -> [Special]

*Select the below items to view more information about them

Name

Category

Rarity

Cost

Dynamic Cultivation: The Simultaneous Advancement of Body and Soul*

Technique Manual

Epic

2,000,000

Rift Walk*

Utility Art Manual

Legendary

5,000,000

Blossoming Wisteria Beneath Silver Moonlight*

Cultivation Pattern

Mythic

10,000,000

There were only three items available on this new page, but the cost to purchase all of them would be most of her current point balance. Still, the eye-watering expense appeared equally matched by the mouth-watering offerings as she read through each description in turn.

The Epic-rarity technique manual would teach a way to physically train while cultivating, which would unlock a whole new facet of her personal advancement. Not only could she improve her attributes using this method, but also fighting styles and weapon forms! Many times while inside the rift’s cultivation chamber she lamented being only able to sit placidly in the lotus position for hours on end. While the time spent wasn’t ‘unproductive’ per se, streamlining her advancement process early could only be a good thing.

The Legendary-rarity utility art [Rift Walk] was also highly enticing. Twice now she’d passed up teleportation abilities through Silas’s bloodline, but this utility art gave her another opportunity. It would essentially allow her to open a rift that would exit in a different location. Unlike her current ‘transport’ ability in [Jackalope of All Trades] where she needed a clear physical pathway to Silas to activate it, this was a true teleport. Space itself was somehow twisted to connect two disparate points together, so even solid walls or locked doors could be bypassed with it. She may even be able to use it in spectral form, though that would require some experimentation to get right.

The cultivation pattern was truly impressive as well. As a Mythic-rarity pattern, having this all but guaranteed she’d have the fastest qi regeneration and largest qi pool amongst her similarly-ranked peers. It also covered the entirety of Silver tier, which she’d potentially stay at for many years before reaching Low Gold. It was true that she couldn’t make use of it yet, but she intended to remedy that before she exited this rift. She just hoped her determination could withstand the upcoming years of near-isolation she knew would await her. So far she’d been making do by interspersing cultivation sessions with completing scenarios, but with no further scenarios to break up the monotony she’d only have Silas and Tobias for company for who knew how long. She already felt a twinge of dread at the mere thought of it, but she didn’t dare face the Ancient Cliff Drake without becoming the strongest version of herself possible.

Based on how long her previous advancements took and her increasing efficiency with utilizing higher qi saturation as she ranked up, she estimated it could take up to three years to reach Low Silver. If she purchased the highest saturation option for the chamber (500 points a day) it would cost her a total of 531,000 points. Rounding up to 600,000 points to give herself a bit of a buffer in case her estimations were off, and factoring in the potential 17 million points required to purchase the three special rift items, she had a remaining budget of 5,621,926 points to freely spend.

The next thing she wanted to double check was how much it would cost to fully upgrade and outfit Tobias. She had a rough idea of the cost after casually looking into it over the years, but now it was time to solidify the numbers.

A combat construct would never truly be as powerful as a cultivator for multiple reasons. Constructs lacked a cultivation base, meaning they didn’t benefit from bonuses from meridians, a core, or core skills. They also couldn’t advance beyond a certain tier depending on several factors such as what materials they were made from and the quality of their enchantments. In Tobias’s case, it seemed even the newly available Rank 15 spirit beast materials counted as a downgrade from the obsidian-like stone his statuette was currently made of, and his scriptings were masterfully done as far as she knew. Assuming she’d never be able to improve these things but upgraded his maximum rank potential, his limit would be Peak Emerald–which Theora had once told her was three tiers beyond Silver and the minimum tier recommended before exiting the World Spire.

Each upgrade to his tier potential would also add 50 to his qi reserve, which couldn’t be increased otherwise. Regardless of a construct’s various limitations, they did have one advantage that could help bridge the gap between them and flesh-and-blood cultivators: their aptitudes could all be raised to Heroic levels.

Tobias’s current aptitudes were Exceptional Endurance, High Strength, and Average Agility and Resilience. Raising these all to Heroic would be expensive, but worth it in the long-term. It was less noticeable early on, but at later ranks the approximate maximum for attributes were heavily affected by aptitudes. She also planned on maximizing his attributes to match his new aptitudes–which would give him 37’s in everything and arguably make him more powerful than she was right now.

She also needed to consider what she wanted Tobias’s five known arts to be. Ever since she’d learned how to transform [Cloud Step] into [Cloud Run] she’d been teaching it to him, but either her skill as an instructor was lacking or it was just more difficult for constructs to learn a new art directly from a cultivator. Probably both. After all, how constructs used arts was more akin to firing a pre-scripted caster than forming the technique within meridians. Because constructs have no cultivation base, once an art was ‘learned’ it was integrated with their scriptings as a sort of activatable ability. This inherent difference made it difficult to explain a lot of the concepts to him, but Tobias was still making steady progress even with her imperfect teachings. He also already knew [Taunt] and [Concussive Blast], but while she was happy with how [Taunt] kept attention away from her and Silas during fights she had mixed feelings about the effectiveness of [Concussive Blast]. If she could find a suitable replacement for it that would be best, but if not then she’d only have two more arts she could add to his repertoire.

As a front-line fighter, it was essential that one of these two remaining arts helped him avoid or reduce damage. Though wounds wouldn’t hinder him in the same way as it would a human, any injuries he needed to repair took away from his overall ‘active’ time. She considered teaching him [Indomitable Body] like she was doing with [Cloud Run], but honestly felt that she could purchase something better for him. [Indomitable Body] could add 10 points of Resilience to a chosen body part, but that bonus didn’t stack if it was used multiple times on the same area. She wanted Tobias to have something with the ability to scale to handle heavier damage, if possible. Looking through the full selections of available manuals, one in particular caught her eye as a good fit.

Rift Reward Shop - Floor 2

Current Balance: 23,221,926

Filters: [Manuals]

Sub Categories: [Combat Arts], [Utility Arts], [Techniques], [Misc]

Rarity: [Common], [Uncommon], [Rare], [Epic], [Legendary], [Mythic]

Primary Element: [Wood], [Fire], [Earth], [Metal], [Water]

*Select the below items to view more information about them

Name

Category

Primary Element: Characteristics

Rarity

Cost

Wrath’s Vengeance*

Combat Art

Fire: Dynamism, Chaos

Uncommon

12,000

Valorous Assault*

Combat Art

Fire: Intensity, Strength

Uncommon

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

15,000

…

The first, [Wrath’s Vengeance], was retaliatory in nature. It created a layer of qi over the user’s body that stored a portion of the force the user was struck with throughout the fight. The user could then choose to add that stored force on top of one of their attacks to create a singular, mighty blow. With [Iron Bulwark] allowing Tobias to endure more hits with less injuries, this art could serve as a good finishing move. In contrast, [Valorous Assault] was a more straightforward means of dealing damage. It empowered the user’s muscles with Fire-dominant qi, letting them hit with more force and speed than they would normally be able to. She imagined the effect was similar to [Flurry], though perhaps with a less pronounced difference than her bond ability offered. In addition to enhancing his attacks overall, she thought this could potentially serve to counteract any slowdown caused by [Iron Bulwark].

She went back and forth between the two options for several seconds, but eventually decided that [Valorous Assault] was the right choice. As useful as [Wrath’s Vengeance] could be for Tobias, it required him to be hit before becoming useful. Furthermore, the resulting attack could be as qi-intensive as it was devastating, which wasn’t ideal for a construct with no qi recovery capabilities. [Valorous Assault] could be used from the very start of a fight–even during ambushes–and had a flat, predictable qi cost. She set it aside in her mind to purchase while she looked for a potential replacement for [Concussive Blast].

After scrolling through the options yet again, she ultimately decided that [Concussive Blast] was here to stay for the time being. While there were Rare, Epic, and even Legendary arts that would be appealing to her as a cultivator, for Tobias they weren’t a good fit. They either cost too much qi to use, or they were too situational. As it stood, [Concussive Blast] offered an affordable mid to long-range attack that could disorient the enemy or draw lots of attention. For her purposes, this was good enough until she stumbled across something that was really fantastic.

The arts all decided, the last thing she needed to look into for Tobias was what enhancements she’d make to his equipment. Now that Rank 15 spirit beast materials were an option, this was where she expected her estimated costs would increase the most. That said, she doubted she’d find any weapons or armor made with comparable materials on the second floor–maybe not even on the third floor. Expensive as it would be, this was a great opportunity both to improve their chances with the Ancient Cliff Drake and prepare for future challenges for years to come.

In terms of selection, there was a lot to choose from but knowing exactly what she was looking to get out of the Rank 15 materials made the process quick. For example, the premium metals sourced from Minor Metal Elementals were superior in terms of toughness and flexibility but lacked the enchantment capacity of some other materials. Since she was more interested in the gear itself holding up well than loading it up with scripts, the choice was simple. With this same mindset she decided what every other material should be upgraded to, then planned out what enchantments she’d want to add to his equipment.

Once finished, she tallied up all the expenses for Tobias–maximizing his tier potential, aptitudes, and attributes; the cost for his new arts; and refreshing his gear–and inwardly sighed.

1,497,563 points.

Tobias was worth it, but that didn’t completely take the sting out of the large number. On the bright side, she’d still have 4,124,363 points in her budget, which was more than she’d originally started the final scenario with. And, if she was being honest with herself, this was more than she’d ever dreamed of earning when she’d started the rift and even purchases in the 100,000’s seemed unattainable.

With Tobias’s needs fully accounted for in her mind, she shifted her focus back to personal purchases. Her cultivation pattern would be handled by the Mythic pattern, so she mostly needed to finalize plans for her and Silas’s equipment, items to help fight the Ancient Cliff Drake, and alchemicals to help with training and advancement.

Being the most important purchases for immediate and long term survival, she spent a full day going through the rift shop to make sure she exhausted every potential option. When she finally had her full list of ‘essential gear’ organized, she was pleased to see she’d only be spending a little over 3 million points on everything. The remaining points could go towards the buffer for her cultivation for now, and once she’d reached Low Silver she could revisit the shop to look into the many non-essential items she was interested in.

Perfect. Now all that’s left to do is take the leap.

Samantha took a deep breath, calmed her thoughts, and committed to spending an ungodly amount of wealth in one go. Starting with the ‘special’ items tab, she purchased all three offerings in quick succession. Before she could even fully navigate into the next tab, three glowing dots were already closing in on her location. In seconds they floated before her, as if awaiting her attention.

She grabbed the technique manual first and its weight settled neatly into her palm. For 2 million points, ‘Dynamic Cultivation: The Simultaneous Advancement of Body and Soul’ was a rather plain looking book. It wasn’t even leather-bound, rather, it was a neat stack of papers held together at the ‘spine’ by silk ribbon threaded through regularly spaced holes. Hopefully its contents were more impressive than its outward appearance. Placing the tome carefully in her new rift storage, she grabbed the manual for [Rift Walk] next.

More functional than beautiful, this manual was at least a proper book instead of papers held together by ribbon. It didn’t have a leather cover either, but instead sported a thicker type of light blue cardstock with stylized calligraphy labeling it as ‘The Art of Rift Walking’. As gingerly as with the technique manual, she put the paperback into storage.

The Mythic-rarity cultivation pattern manual made the other two purchases look like trash by comparison. Rich, dark leather covered the thick stack of pages. Stamped into the center of the leather cover–and filled with a layer of silver leaf–was an artful depiction of blooming wisteria rather than a written title. It was incredibly detailed, down to partially opened flower buds and bark-like texture along the plant’s vines. Taking it into her hands with reverence, she caught the pleasant scent of aged paper that sometimes accompanied libraries or old books. She couldn’t help but feel like this was the kind of manual that powerful families were established around, and where the exclusive privilege to learn from its pages were only for the most promising or elite members. She was tempted to open it right away, but put it away in storage with the others before she became distracted.

Next, she pulled out Tobias’s statuette and bought all the upgrades she’d decided on for him. There were no incoming items this time because the changes were automatically applied to Tobias’s construct itself, but with each purchase the figurine notably heated up. The statuette didn’t visibly change much like when she’d first bought equipment for him, but she did see a few small details on his weapon and armor were altered as their materials changed. She also thought he maybe got a bit taller, though it was hard to tell.

She could sense something happening with her binding thread and the statue as the adjustments settled down and the figurine cooled, but couldn’t put her finger on exactly what. Even trying to look more closely with her spiritual senses didn’t reveal much, only giving her a vague impression that her binding thread was being moved within the confines of the construct. She supposed the connection was being used in the scripting somehow, which wasn’t too surprising considering that the System had warned her that the severance of the thread would cause Tobias to lose any upgrades she’d given him.

Not wanting to wait to speak with him, she fed the additional 200 points needed into his now-500 qi reserve capacity and activated the construct.

He appeared before her in an instant and entered a ready stance, prepared to enter the fray of battle in a heartbeat if needed. Seeing that there was no danger, he relaxed and let the butt of his glaive rest on the ground. Pausing as if noticing something was off, he smoothly lifted the glaive back up and gave it a swing. Then he jumped, bent down into a squat, stood back up, and stretched.

“I feel like a new man!” he said with a laugh.

Samantha stood to properly greet him and realized that she’d been right earlier. He had gotten taller.

“Heroic aptitudes will do that to a person, I hear,” she joked. “I also got you some new equipment and arts I thought would be useful. I’m realizing a bit belatedly that I probably should’ve asked more about your preferences before buying everything, but–”

“No! No, this is great!” he cut her off. He looked down at himself with a wide smile and a slight shake of his head. “Better than great, actually.” Taking on a more serious expression, he met her eyes briefly before lowering his head to her. “You won’t regret this. I mean it.”

“I know I won’t.”

He raised his head and flexed his hand open and closed a few times. “Do you mind if I spend some time getting a feel for the new… everything?”

Silas hopped over from where he was resting a short distance away and looked up curiously at Tobias. “A spar should help with that, no?” Silas asked Samantha.

She answered Silas first. “He’ll be a much tougher opponent now, so don’t let your guard down!”

Responding to Tobias next, she said, “Not at all! That was one of the reasons I summoned you anyway, aside from just saying hello. Silas is up for a spar as well if you’re interested.”

Tobias looked down towards Silas and nodded respectfully, “Thank you. I accept.”

Silas chirped happily, then led Tobias over to an area a fair distance away so Samantha wouldn’t be affected by their bout. As their fight got underway, she finished with her other intended purchases. By the time the last item hovered in space beside her, her point balance was reduced to 1,582,175.

Reaching out to grab the nearest item, she smiled at the luxurious feeling of her combat robe. The Rookanjack leather panels had been replaced by materials from a sea-dwelling creature called a ‘Vilaris’. It was better in every way–from comfort to scriptability–but also apparently had a unique property. If a certain amount of force was applied to the leather at once, it would harden up to be more like a shell. Testing it now for herself, she set the robe down on the ground and stomped down on a panel with her heel. She winced as the flexible material hardened on impact, making it feel like she’d just struck a rock. Touching the stiff leather with her hand, she felt it go back to being flexible again after a few seconds. As for the rest of the robe, she’d upgraded the fabric into a cloth woven from a Silkworm-like spirit beast. The silk possessed similar properties to regular silk such as breathability, elasticity, and thermal regulation, but didn’t share the vulnerability of weakening when wet. With the higher enchantment limits on everything, she opted to mostly improve the existing enchantments. The self-repair functionality would be quicker, the self-cleaning would be more effective, and the durability enhancements would add strength to the already-impressive Rank 15 materials. The only new enchantment she decided to add was temperature regulation, which had previously only been on her leather helm due to how expensive it was.

With that thought, she set down the robes and picked out her helm and boots from the floating items. These had both been upgraded to use Vilaris leather as a base, but to have sections of tougher, more inflexible leather in the areas that made sense (such as the soles of the boots). Similarly to with the robes, she enhanced the pre-existing scripts before adding in new enchantments. By the end, her entire armor set had the best combination of enchantments she could fit on each piece for durability, self-repair, self-cleaning, and temperature regulation. She wouldn’t say that any of it looked especially grand–in fact, it didn’t look much different from any other fabric and leather armor–but that was probably for the best. If her equipment stood out too much or looked too expensive, it was possible she’d be attacked for it at some point. Its lack of particularly striking design did not dampen her excitement to own these pieces in the slightest, though. It took most of her willpower to stop from changing out of her casual robes and into the new gear right away just to try it on.

Later, Samantha. You’ll have plenty of time later.

Setting them down for the moment, she grabbed her spear and buckler next to appreciate the differences.

The spear was slightly heavier than before, but not nearly enough to have an impact on her maneuvers with it. The wooden shaft–which was originally carved from the heartwood of a Bloodfruit Tree–had simply been upgraded to a Rank 15 version of that same spirit beast. The wood’s inherent ability to absorb blood to strengthen and repair itself was too useful to switch to the other materials, in her opinion. With the heightened enchanting limit, she improved the length-altering script so that she could now shorten or extend it by up to three feet. She also added a new script to make it fire-resistant. As for the spearhead, the qi augmented tungsten was now outclassed by the shaped bone of a shrew-like spirit beast called a ‘Drauglet’. After improving the existing enchantments for durability and edge-sharpness, she added a self-repair function for good measure.

Her shield bracer arguably went through the most significant changes. The buckler had already been scripted to slightly adjust its cuff size to fit the wearer, harden with qi investment, self-repair, and to possess a small 5 qi reserve for the hardening. After upgrading the Rank 5 Silt Crocodile leather to Vilaris leather she of course improved the self repair script, but also decided that she could afford to make some true alterations too. First, she completely removed the ‘right sizing’ enchantment in favor of just paying to have it better-tailored to her measurements. Then, since the Vilaris material inherently hardened when struck, she got rid of the hardening and qi reserve enchantments as well. In their place she added a shape altering script, which would allow her to manipulate the flexible leather into a semi-rigid form even if it was not currently hardened. This functionality was powered by ambient qi by default, and would only require qi investment from her if significant shape shifts were made back-to-back.

Delighted with how all of her gear had turned out, she finally turned to the variety of alchemicals still waiting for her. She placed the most volatile of the items in rift storage and was glad that everything placed inside was spatially isolated from each other rather than stored in one unified area.

As she was in the process of storing the excess training powders and cultivation elixirs, Silas took notice and complained. “Leave room for me, remember? Ah!”

Silas dove to the side to dodge a quick swipe from Tobias’s glaive and Tobias laughed. “I almost got you that time! You better watch out.”

“Leave–” Silas jumped upwards to avoid a low sweeping slash. “--room–” Silas flapped his wings hard to shift direction mid air and dodge a stab. “--for me!” He attempted to [Thump] Tobias on the head to disorient him, but Tobias jerked to the side fast enough so that Silas only clipped his helm.

Samantha rolled her eyes at his antics. “I’ll pull things out to make space when you want to go inside. How about that?”

Silas’s mood immediately brightened. “Okay!”

She couldn’t help but chuckle at his quick turnaround. He may be ‘old and wizened’ now by Lunar Hare standards, but he never entirely lost this… endearing childlike honesty. She hoped he never would.

Speaking of taking things out of storage…

Reaching inside the rift, she carefully removed ‘Dynamic Cultivation: The Simultaneous Advancement of Body and Soul’. Before she bought any time in the cultivation chamber she wanted to learn this new technique.

She opened to the first page and started to read… and then promptly closed the book and put it back into storage. This wasn’t going to be a quick read if the flowery prologue was any indication. Much like with Xiao Qian’s Compendium, she’d probably need to spend an extended period studying and reflecting on the contents.

Craving a burst of progress, she pulled the manual for [Rift Walk] out of storage to read it instead. Unlike with the technique manual, as soon as she opened the front cover she felt herself being drawn in by the pages. Complex equations and diagrams seemed almost simplistic as information flowed seamlessly from the scripted tome into her mind. The further she got in the book the deeper the knowledge seemed to settle, until she finally reached the last page and the item crumbled into dust.

Congratulations! You’ve learned a new Utility Art.

Rift Walk (Legendary)

Qi Cost: 50 base + 0.1 qi/50 feet

Max Duration: 30 seconds

Rend space and bend it to your will, allowing two otherwise distant points to be traversed with a single step. Rifts take a short time to form and cause a spatial disturbance in their immediate area. Anything remaining in the rift’s field of influence upon opening will be destroyed.

Caution: If the rifts are not manually closed, they will close after 30 seconds. Anything that spanned these openings will be split such that their parts remain in the respective areas where the rifts closed.

Aaannnddd that’s a little terrifying.

The art was incredibly useful, but was also extremely dangerous. She’d need to be conscientious when using it so as not to destroy or harm things unintentionally.

“...Oh! You’re back now?” Silas asked.

Samantha looked down and realized he was sitting in her lap. She didn’t remember him coming over here, or Tobias disappearing. His new full duration was 8 hours, so she must’ve been engrossed in the manual for hours.

“Sorry, were you waiting long?”

He let out a huff. “Forever! Put me in storage before you read anything else.”

She laughed. “Let’s do some tests and we’ll see how it goes.”

[Volume 2] Chapter 43 - Legendary Expenses

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