Flynn didn't know if the assassin fell asleep due to exhaustion or the mental stress of her revelation, but either way, he found it odd that she could sleep so soundly around him. They had only met each other about a day ago, but then again, he was probably the only person alive who knew her deepest darkest secrets.

Flynn figured it didn't matter much to him since he hadn't planned on sleeping tonight anyway; instead, he would do something the delinquent had been itching to do since he stepped foot in the final phase of the tutorial.

Flynn would cultivate.

In his first life, Flynn had gotten hold of a very poor-quality cultivation book. Its fundamentals were weak, and incompatibility with his body caused more problems than it fixed. By the time he met his master, his body was so wretched that he couldn't even use the improved cultivation method his master wanted to give him. Instead, he had to practice refining and cleansing his body for an entire year.

Cultivation methods, much like items, were broken up into rarity, and his first method was the bottom of the barrel. In fact, even calling it a cultivation method was sacrilege. Cultivation followed a similar rarity level of items but with a different name for each step in one's cultivation.

Rather than scrappy, you had mortals, the common rarity was a warrior, and so on. Each cultivation realm was divided into grades, or steps, as most called them, although there were usually far fewer grades to each cultivation realm. For example, there were only two steps between the mortal and warrior realm. Today he would take the first step in his cultivation; Flynn would begin cleansing his body of impurities and toxins that would halt his cultivation in the future.

Of course, he could also choose to go the mage route, shaping the energy that swirled around him into mana rather than Ki. Flynn had even considered it since, due to his shattered mind, he'd be pouring quite a bit of stat points into the mage archetype, but in the end, he knew little to nothing about the inner workings of that path to power, so he'd go with what he knew.

Some speculated that as the body became more robust, both methods could be combined, creating something new. Still, no one, not even the other two races within the first trial, had done it successfully, at least not to Flynn's limited knowledge. And both those races had started out with Mana and Ki long before the arrival of the system.

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The level of one's circle or cultivation determined various things, from the number of skills one could use to lifespan and even class compatibility.

Flynn took a deep breath, the world around him becoming a distant blur of power and mist. Although the world felt distant, he could still see or, more aptly, feel his surroundings. It was as if Flynn was in perfect sync with the world. He recalled his cultivation method as he inhaled the surrounding mist. Power from what felt like every walk of life seeped into his body

He felt the nature-attuned energy of the surrounding trees, bustling with life and power, the hint of water that permeated from his clothes, still damp from the river, and the heat of the campfire's flames. These and millions of other energies made up the world around him, and his body ate them up as if he was starving.

Flynn could feel a slight pang of pain as the wild energies rushed through his body as he tried desperately to control them. It was not raw strength he needed but a soft guiding hand that slowly pushed and manipulated the energy to where it needed to go. Soon his struggle turned into a single cycle, and the energy changed; it was no longer the wild ambient energy; no, it had morphed into that of Flynn's power. He had formed Ki.

The accomplishment did not go unnoticed.

| Title Gained: Path Strider

|| -----| Not only are you the first to walk the path of cultivation within your tutorial, but you did so without the help of an outside source. Few are gifted enough to create their own path. +3% dexterity, strength, and constitution. |

Flynn blinked at the prompt, his mouth growing dry as he tried to piece together what had just happened. In his entire time within the first trial, he had only come across two titles that awarded percent stats; they were few and far between, most of which had already been scooped up by the elite before he even reached the trials.

The system played favorites when it came to firsts and trailblazers. If you did something first, you were often rewarded handsomely. Although three regular stat points would be preferable, even one or two years from now, he will have outstripped such petty gains, but percent changes would continue to build even as he reached the heights of cultivation. He grinned manically before returning to his cultivation, a new fire lit within his soul.

Night bled into day as Flynn cycled, but despite Flynn's fervor, he made little progress on his cultivation. Cultivation was strange. It had no progress bar or numerical value such as level or experience to track one's progress and was solely up to an individual's perspective and instincts. It felt older as if it predated the system, and the system had simply incorporated cultivation into its readings of a person's power.

"You smell horrible; what did you do all night." A nasally Selena spoke up from across the now ashen fire pit, pinching her nose in disgust.