Ethan stood outside the office and looked at the survivors around him. They looked a lot healthier than they did when Ethan rescued them two days earlier.
“Yeah,” Ethan nodded to himself. “I think something is going on with them. I had a suspicion, but I don’t think normal people would recover this well before.”
Two people were by the gate and two by the door, leaving the other three to train. They wielded wooden sticks from the pallet and sparred while Ethan watched. Jonathan sat beside him, panting.
“This is exhausting,” he groaned.
“Yeah,” Ethan smirked. “It is. But it’s necessary. Sometimes, I’ll be gone doing other things, and you’ll have to hold the fort alone. I can’t leave you if you’re completely helpless.”
“I know,” Jonathan nodded and smiled. “I get it. We do appreciate it, you know? Saving us and building us up rather than treating us like lessers. We all had the impression that that was how the System viewed us, especially after the scathing comments from that System Guide woman.”
“What?” Ethan frowned and looked at Jonathan. “You didn’t mention that before.”
“Oh, right,” Jonathan scratched his neck and half-smiled. “Sorry about that. Once it was clear we couldn’t cultivate, she became rude and dismissive, calling us leeches and freeloaders.”
“That’s-” Ethan shook his head. “No matter. She was likely affected by her cultural conceptions. I grew up knowing that everyone is inherently equal. The fact that I can cultivate while you can’t doesn’t change much for me… Not yet, at least. Haah! I believe you can still become stronger than was possible before. Qi flows through the air, and while you can’t actively cultivate and strengthen yourself with it, I think it still works on improving you somewhat.”
“Oh,” Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “You think so?”
“Yeah,” Ethan nodded. “I think our people here are a good example of it, in fact. How long would it have taken someone to recover from near starvation to be able to train this hard before?”
“Oh,” Jonathan said after a few seconds of looking at the others. “You’re right. The state we were in would have taken hospitalisation and days of recovery, I think. Just some food shouldn’t have done this much. Not to mention the mental strain of the events leading up to our rescue. For us to put that trauma behind us so fast is extraordinary.”
“Yeah,” Ethan nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. So, while you may never become as strong as a cultivator, you will become stronger than what was considered peak human fitness before if you work hard. So, keep training, practising and working on yourselves, and you won’t have to feel so helpless again.”
Jonathan smiled and seemed to forget his exhaustion as he rushed into motion and began training. They’d set up obstacles around the room for them to run and navigate, and a corner was dedicated to strength training.
Ethan smiled as he turned back and walked into the office.
“I think I need to finish the first quest as soon as possible,” Ethan frowned at the idea. “But that means I’ll have to leave, and I’m not sure how wise that is. They may be getting a second wind, but if another cultivator shows up… There’s a chance they’ll be friendly, but can I take that risk?”
Ethan sat and meditated as he thought. He heard the crack of wood against wood and the grunts of effort as the survivors trained outside his door.
“But, if I stay here on the off-chance that something shows up, I’ll stagnate. It’ll hamper my progress, and there will come a time when I will fail to protect them because I don’t have my attuned Qi or I’m not strong enough.”
Ethan frowned as Qi flowed through his body, but he was saturated, so it just cycled through and escaped through his breath and pores.
“I-. I’ll give them another couple of days, but then I’ll have to act in my best interest. I refuse to remain as I am. I’ll reach for the skies, the tallest peaks of power.”
Ethan sat still for a few hours, just thinking and meditating.
“I need to prioritise myself,” Ethan resolved. “I have to be strong enough to help them. I have to be strong enough to find my family. I have to be strong enough to make a difference, and for that, I need to seek opportunities for myself and not sit here and wait for something to show up.”
***
Ethan approached Jonathan, who now looked healthy and reasonably fit, even after only a few more days of training.
“Qi truly works on mortals as well,” Ethan smiled. Jonathan turned to him when he approached.
“Ethan,” he nodded and smiled. “What can I do for you?”
“Well,” Ethan hesitated but took a breath and sighed. “I need to leave for a bit. I’ve been thinking and feel I should finish the other quest I received.”
“Personal strength, huh?” Jonathan smirked. “It’s fine. You’ve done more than you needed for us, and we’re stronger now. We’ll manage without you for a while, don’t worry.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Ethan smiled, relieved. “That’s good. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone for, but I don’t think it’ll be more than a few days.”
“That’s fine,” Jonathan said. “You go and get stronger. We’ll be fine. To be honest, I think it’ll do us good to see that we might not need you to handle every little problem.”
“Heh, yeah,” Ethan smiled crookedly as he walked toward the door. He nodded to the people who sat guard and opened it. “Take care, guys.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
He closed the door behind him, took a deep breath of the clear and fresh air, and started walking.
“The quest is leading me toward the city outskirts,” Ethan thought as he passed through the dilapidated streets. The sun rose over the horizon, and Ethan listened to the distant birds as he walked. “I wonder what it’s leading me to?”
He hadn’t gone far when he heard a low growl from the side. When he turned, he saw three wolves moving toward him. He gripped his sword and prepared himself.
“Three of them,” Ethan frowned. “And I don’t want to use Void Step. I should save it for an emergency.”
The wolves split up and tried to flank him, but he didn’t give them a chance to position as he dashed forward while infusing his body with Qi. The wolves jumped back, but he kept on one of them, dashing after it. His Qi-empowered body closed the distance, swung his sword low to high, and cut a deep line in the wolf’s throat.
Rather than wait for it to die or attack again, he turned his attention to the others. After a few more seconds, all three wolves lay dying on the street. Ethan finished them off with a quick thrust to their heads, cleaned his sword, and kept walking.
[You have slain a Wolf - lvl 2.]*2
[You have slain a Wolf - lvl 3.]
[Level up!]
“Level five,” Ethan smiled. “Hmm. I feel like I’m good on Qi storage for now, and my physical stats are alright. I think I’ll see what the mental stats do.”
He put two points into Intelligence and one point each into Wisdom and Willpower. He felt a rush flow through him, centring on his head, but he didn’t notice any significant change or improvement.
Name: Ethan Marshall Race: Human Class: N/A Level: 5 Stage: 1 - Spirit Initiation Stats Body: Strength 5 Agility 6 Vitality 6 Mind: Intelligence 5 Wisdom 3 Willpower 2 Spirit: Essence 8 Harmony 3 Attunement 8
“I suppose mental stuff is more nebulous?” he mused. Ethan kept walking but activated Spatial Sense to avoid a surprise like that again. “I really need to get a grip. I keep forgetting about it.”
Nothing happened for a few hours as he kept walking, following the guidance of the System’s Quest.
He arrived at what was considered the outskirts and saw rubble-strewn streets, broken and crumbled buildings and rusted hunks of metal that used to be cars.
His Spatial Sense alerted him of a group of people hiding in the basement of a nearby building. Three people were sitting near a wall, while one stood near a set of stairs that led to an external entrance to the cellar. It looked like the internal entrance from inside the building had collapsed.
Ethan frowned as he stopped moving. There was something off about the person standing watch. Something drew his attention to the person.
“Wait!” Ethan raised an eyebrow. “Could he be a cultivator?”
He hesitated for a few seconds before he grimaced and shook his head.
“I can’t afford to waste any Qi on them,” he lamented. “If they’re hostile, I’d have to waste what little I have left, and if they’re friendly, I’d be inclined to lead them back to base. I need to focus on myself. I’ll pass by here on my way back. Fucking hell. Why couldn’t I have gotten Qi, which is easy to recover?”
Ethan shook his head, sighed and kept walking.
He walked a few more hours, only interrupted by another few wolves who attacked him. These were only level 1 and posed no threat to him.
“Not even a level,” Ethan grumbled. “If this continues, I’ll have to find a place to meditate. It takes too long to recover unattuned Qi while moving.”
As the sun began its downward journey toward the opposite horizon, Ethan left the city behind and walked along the cracked highway as it escaped the confines of the abandoned buildings.
The quest eventually led him off the road into the wilderness and woods. The landscape shifted from relatively flat land to rolling hills as he walked. His Spatial Sense allowed him to avoid dens and burrows of monsters and evade creatures that caught his scent. As the sun set and darkness fell, he broke through the forest and stopped in his tracks.
“What the hell?!” Ethan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Why is there a mountain here? That wasn’t there before.”
A huge mountain towered above him in the distance. The peak obscured by clouds.
“Is that-?” Ethen squinted his eyes. “It is. Stairs going up the mountain!”
Ethan stood frozen for several minutes as he processed, but eventually, he shook his head and walked forward.
“Nothing to it,” he thought as his grip on his sword tightened. “Just another of the System’s shenanigans. It brought Qi to the world, skills, levels and cultivation. What’s another thing?”
The last rays of light disappeared, and clouds covered the moon and stars. Without Spatial Sense, Ethan would have been blind.
The Quest led him to the mountain, and he began the ascent. The mountain towered above him, seemingly impossibly tall, but Ethan walked on, undaunted.
Around the halfway point, Ethan began to feel a strain, as if an immense weight was pressing down on his shoulders, but channelling Qi allowed him to continue.
The pressure increased with every step, and by the time he’d moved three-quarters of the way up, he had to stop and recover Qi before moving on.
Every step grew laborious; he breathed heavily and sweated profusely but finally reached the summit. The top of the mountain was a flattened plateau, and in the middle was a crumbling ruin of a large building.
“This looks like an ancient palace or something,” Ethan thought as he regained his breath. The pressure remained, but it was even, as he didn’t need to climb anymore. “I can see the remnants of walls and large lawns and stuff. What is this? Some remnant of an old cultivator sect?”
He stepped forward tentatively, pushing his Spatial Sense to its limits. He saw nothing as his Sense was rebuffed at the crumbled wall.
“Oh,” Ethan frowned and grimaced. “That’s not good. Not promising at all. If I can’t use my Spatial Sense, I’ll need to be very focused and check everywhere. Also, it means there’s definitely something in there. There’s no way there wouldn’t be something, right?”
Ethan rolled his shoulder, hefted his sword, and walked over the rubble of the wall.