William started reading cultivation novels only recently.
He liked them enough to binge chapters for hours, even though he skimmed the chapters in most parts of the story. There were only so many of the flowery words he could consume before he was lulled to sleep. Still, it was enough for him to vaguely grasp the similarities between most of these novels.
Even though it felt like he was reading the same novel repeatedly, it didn’t stop him from spending far more time on it than was reasonable. Enough that it was affecting his work.
William’s boss was already on his ass for his deteriorating work ethic, and if he didn’t drop his recent obsession—that was only going to get worse. It would make his currently working ass, suddenly, an unemployed ass.
“William!”
William flinched in his chair and straightened his back while trying to look busy. He didn’t need his boss to see him distracted this early in the day again. As much as he slacked off at his job, he still needed it with the way the economy was.
“Hey, Jeremy,” William tried to sound more awake than he was, “Morning.”
“I need you to stay late to put in some numbers for me. We won’t get them until the guys in the main branch finish their part.”
William couldn’t help the weary sigh that escaped him, but he quickly put on a smile when Jeremy narrowed his eyes. “Sure thing. I’d be happy to help.”
He kept up the smile until Jeremy nodded and walked away. He groaned softly, reclined in his chair, and rubbed his eyes. This was something he’d brought on himself, so it wasn’t something he could blame his boss for, not that the sound logic stopped him from doing that anyway.
William stretched in his chair and let out a small groan in relief. It was going to be a long day at work, so he might as well get himself a cup of coffee. The building had a coffee shop in the lobby, all it would take was a short trip on the elevator.
William walked past the rest of the drones that were working in their office cubicles. An unfair description, especially since he was one of them, but it was the truth, nonetheless.
Was it a wonder why William frequently got lost in reading fantasy novels when this was his life? Even when he was younger, the habit wasn’t much different. He was obsessed with games of the role-playing variety. If finances weren’t an issue, he would have happily kept playing into adulthood.
Learning the cost of owning a computer capable of playing games quickly broke him of the habit. He couldn’t exactly ask his parents to buy him a gaming computer after graduating high school. He wasn’t that shameless. Luckily, the novels had come to his rescue, and he had never thought about going back to games since then.
William pressed the button to summon the elevator, cursing lightly when he saw it was twenty floors away.
Another thing he hated about his workplace, other than the seemingly meaningless work, was that it was in a skyscraper with what might be the world’s slowest elevators. It took over a minute to reach his floor from the lobby.
*Ding*
William blinked in surprise when the elevator’s door opened, wondering if it sped up because he was insulting it in his mind. With a shrug, he stepped inside and pressed the button to take him to the lobby. He just hoped there wouldn’t be any stops on other floors to slow his trip.
William sighed as he closed his eyes, wanting to get in a quick rest in the couple-minute long ride, and leaned on the metal wall. A cup of coffee sounded better and better by the moment.
“That boy is waking up.”
“Yang Hua, can’t you even dose a kid properly?”
William frowned and tried to open his eyes, but it felt like his eyelids were clamped shut. The last thing he remembered was getting on the elevator, and he had been alone at the time.
Did he fall asleep?
“I did, I promise! Look at all the others. They’re still unconscious.”
William realized that his hands were tied behind his back and he was lying on the floor. What the hell was going on? His first thought was that he had been kidnapped, but the more rational part of his brain told him nobody would kidnap an office drone, especially not from a secure building like his office.
“I don’t care! If it wasn’t for Master telling me to bring you along, you wouldn’t even be here! Take care of the kid, Yang Hua!”
William started to struggle when he heard footsteps getting closer to him. Some inner sense told him that he had to escape or he wouldn’t live much longer. However, the same thought made him freeze in shock.
Since when had he ever thought his life was in danger? The sudden presence of other people, the vague conversation with a Chinese name uttered, and William’s inability to open his eyes made him think of another possibility.
He was dreaming.
It hadn’t been the first time William dreamt that he personally experienced being present within a cultivation novel. Still, it was undoubtedly the most realistic yet. He had heard of these types of dreams. Lucid dreams, it was called.
William’s frown turned into a smile as he imagined getting godlike powers and killing his captors like the main character. Since this was a lucid dream, his thoughts should control the dream world.
“Tsk, what a freak. You should be crying, kid, not smiling.”
William’s ears perked up at the voice coming directly above him.
“Well, I guess it’s better if you didn’t cry. Senior Sister Jia would snap your neck, and we’d have to waste time summoning another sacrifice.”
William felt a sharp pain on the back of his neck before he lost consciousness.
“NO!”
William woke up to a shrill, high-pitched scream that seemed to penetrate directly to the center of his brain. This time he was able to see, and he really wished he couldn’t.
It was something straight from a horror movie. No, even a horror movie would be better than what he was seeing.
William’s legs shook in fear, losing all ability to keep him standing if that had mattered. He was tied to a pole, just like all the kids in the room, waiting for their turn to be butchered by the human-shaped monsters.
There was a pile of small, dried-up husks that used to be children carelessly thrown to the side of the room as a woman added to it slowly.
William wanted to wake up. He wanted to go back to his tedious job and boring life. He would stop reading cultivation novels if this was what his brain came up with as a dream.
And it had to be a dream. No matter how real it seemed. It had to be a dream.
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“AHHHHH!”
A new kid shrieked as something translucent was pulled out of her and entered the woman. William shut his eyes as tightly as he could and chomped on his tongue, almost slicing through it with the force he put into the bite.
The only thing that got him was intense pain as tears appeared in his eyes. He would have taken it gladly if it had successfully woken him from this hell.
It didn’t.
He screamed in fear, or at least attempted to, because no sound left his lips. However, that didn’t stop him trying to scream until his throat felt as dry as a desert and he physically couldn’t keep up the effort any longer.
William couldn’t do anything but watch child after child get killed by whatever that woman did to them. As terrible as it sounded, the screams blended together as he tried to block them out. That was the only way he could keep himself sane.
Even if this was definitely a dream and nothing else.
No.
Not a dream. Rather, a night terror would be a more accurate name for what he was experiencing.
Another thought appeared in William’s mind that he wasn’t proud of. Why would they pick an adult like him when the rest were kids? Why didn’t they get another kid instead of him? What made him special?
“Sister Jia, there’s only one left.”
William stared at the woman with dead eyes, happy that he was next and he would be able to get out of this hell.
“Hmm,” The woman licked her lips, “Tell the others to summon fifty more. This batch helped, but my cultivation still has room to increase.”
“Yes, Senior Sister.”
William watched two men rush out of the room. At the same time, the remaining man untied him and pushed him toward the woman who had to be a demoness with the evil she had just committed.
“Be honored,” The woman smiled, “You are a child that will help me break through mortal limits.”
William blinked and looked down at himself. He hadn’t realized he was a child in this nightmare. It only made sense, he supposed.
No matter, it would all end. William looked back at the woman called Sister Jia and waited for his fate.
A gasp of pain escaped William’s lips before he gritted his teeth. The moment she touched his head, it felt like someone had taken a chisel and started to hammer it into his skull.
If he was going to die to this bitch, it wouldn’t be screaming. That surely counted for something, right? That’ll show his fucked up brain for creating this nightmare. In fact, the first thing William would do when he woke up was take the day off work and go to a therapist. He must have some serious issues if he could imagine all this in such vivid detail.
He grit his teeth, keeping those brave intentions at the forefront of his mind, but those intentions flew out the window the moment the pain increased by another magnitude.
The screech of pain he let out was a sound he didn’t even know he was capable of making. Tears were running down his face as he tried to glare the woman to death, still unable to believe what he was feeling.
“HA! You have courage, boy!” The woman cackled, “I would have chopped you up and fed you to the pigs if you weren’t my nourishment.”
At this point, William thought he would prefer that to whatever the hell she was doing. He couldn’t explain it, but it felt like he was losing something more important than life itself. It was like he was being ripped apart from something that had always been with him, and he didn’t mean just in this lifetime.
“Hm? Who would dare disturb me?”
William collapsed to his knees when the woman stopped what she was doing, her attention going to the door. He really should be doing something, anything, to escape. He tried his best to will his body to move, but nothing responded. He could barely find the energy to keep breathing.
“Just a Foundation Establishment brat, and already so vicious.”
William shuddered at hearing the new voice. It was a man that obviously had some authority since the demonic woman hadn’t made a sound in response. The suppression that came along with the man’s voice put pressure on his already damaged state.
“W-Who are you? Please, spare me! My master is the one that asked me to do this. I was forced to, I swear!”
“A master that teaches soul-absorption? Such techniques should be eradicated from this plane.”
“N-No!”
William heard a soft thud, similar to a ball hitting the floor. He supposed that this was where the dream would come to an end. The only thing he wished was that the man had come earlier to save everyone else. There was no doubt that the screams would haunt his sleep for the foreseeable future. Even with all the horror he had gone through, William smiled without humor at the thought of being the first to get PTSD from a damned dream.
He wearily opened his eyes when he felt a hand touch his head gently.
William looked up at the figure before him and felt a shiver run down his spine. The old man was ancient, his face lined with wrinkles and his hair as white as snow. He wore a shimmering purple robe that had intricate golden embroidery. But despite his age, he exuded a palpable sense of power and authority that made it clear he was no ordinary person. He was a cultivator, and a powerful one at that.
If William was in a better state of mind, he would immediately file the man into the ‘old monster’ category.
However, all that escaped his lips was a croaked, “Thank you.”
“Ho? You can still speak in your state,” The old man stroked his beard, “Your soul is damaged to an extent that it should leave you a fool.”
William assumed that was what he felt being removed from him by the woman. As helpful as it was to get more information about what on Earth this dream was about, he wanted to wake up.
“E-End.”
“No,” The old man denied him, “You cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation in this state. There is a way for your soul to be healed, but it will depend on your capabilities.”
William saw the old man take out a small rectangular object made of smooth, green jade. The old man fondly stroked the jade’s surface before looking at him with a complicated expression.
“My master left her cultivation manual in this jade. In the thousands of years I’ve searched for a successor, none have been accepted by the jade. It is fate for us to meet, so I will let you have a chance.”
William watched the old man flick his hand and felt himself rise from the ground. The old man tapped the card-sized green jade on his forehead without wasting time.
[Initializing… Initializing… User detected]
William stared blankly at the blue text that hovered before him, wondering what was happening now.
[Checking host requirements… General knowledge of RPG mechanics found]
At this point, William questioned whether he had been drugged before falling asleep on the elevator. This dream was too strange to consider anything else.
[Checking aptitude… Error: Soul Damage]
[Attempting restoration… Error: User Level Inadequate]
[Booting into Safe Mode]
William blinked when the floating blue text disappeared.
The old man sighed in disappointment. “It seems that the jade has rejected you. I have a pill that can stabilize your soul for you to live a mortal life, but nothing more. We have some karma between us, so this could be considered as me severing it.”
William wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. Still, from the novels he had read, some high-level cultivators ensured they weren’t burdened by obligations. Perhaps this was what the old man meant.
“Here is the pill, little friend,” The old man paused, “All this, and I don’t know your name. What is it?”
“W-William.”
“Wei Liang,” The old man nodded, “A good name.”
William wondered if he had slurred his name that bad. No matter, that wasn’t important since he wouldn’t be here for much longer anyway.
The old man was about to speak again when he heard a soft crack. He looked at his hand incredulously as the jade shattered before his eyes.
William didn’t notice the old man’s shock since his focus was pulled back to the blue text that reappeared.
Name: Wei Liang (William)
Age: 13
Level: 1
Experience: 0/100
Cultivation: N/A
Health: 1/10
Strength: 1
Stamina: 1
Agility: 1
Luck: 1
Points: 0
Traits:
Soul Damage (Major) - Chance of all base attributes to reset to 1 with every point added
Main Quests:
Restore your Soul! (Reach Level 10 to enable the system to restore your soul to a more complete state)
Side Quests:
N/A
“W-What’s going on?”
The old man roared with laughter. “That, little Wei Liang, is you becoming the true successor of my master’s cultivation method! For thousands of years, I’ve been searching, delaying my ascension, and I find the successor when I decide to kill a vicious brat on a whim!”
William didn’t particularly like that his name was suddenly changed without his permission and that this system had popped up out of nowhere and seemingly agreed with the name change.
“You don’t need this pill anymore. It will do more harm than good since you gained my master’s cultivation manual.”
The blue text moved to the corner of his vision and stopped blocking his sight. That was when William saw more text hovering above the old man.
[Name: ? | Level: ?]
It was immediately apparent that whoever the old man was, William was too weak to know anything about him.
“This should be weak enough,” The old man tossed a pill into William’s mouth, “It’s the lowest grade Vitality Restoration Pill I possess. If the grade was higher, your body wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
William groaned in relief as he felt a rush of soothing energy circulate through his body and erase any signs of exhaustion while also healing the wounds caused by the woman. His curiosity to see if he was fully healed pulled the health stat back in front of his vision.
Health: 10/10
The screen disappeared when William was done with it. He was in perfect health, if not for the concerning trait that said he had soul damage. However, there was something he was even more worried about.
William was finally starting to accept he wasn’t dreaming.