Sam took back over the explanation. You could tell they’ve been married a while. “The Faithfull, as we are calling them, are a lot harder to try to draw parallels in power. They choose a ‘Divine entity’ to follow” Sam used air quotes on a divine entity, “basically some kind of god from any of the ancient Myths or even one of the versions of the Abrahamic god. As they act in line with that god’s values, they receive Divine Favor points. That’s the DF you mentioned earlier. The DF gets spent on special abilities they can use. The more DF they have, the higher their Faith Rank (FR) they have. This acts as a multiplier for their abilities power and how many times they can use them each day.”

  “Tom has chosen to purchase a few ability point upgrades and that lightning power with his points. He is a pretty good fighter and is some kind of survivalist, enjoying living in the wild with minimal supplies for a good while at a time. He had helped keep many of us alive, even rescued those two boys when their parents were killed by some mutated Rattler snake that was as big as a telephone pole. He got a point of DF just for killing the snake, something to do with a yormangunther or something from the old Norse myths.” Hope said.

  “Jormungander, the world serpent, and child of Loki,” I said, “supposed to fight against the gods in Ragnarok. Sorry, I’ve always been a big fan of old Norse Mythology.

  She shrugged like it didn’t matter to her. “Anyways, depending on the nature and domains of the god chosen, the faithful could have any kind of abilities, no mana or Ki cost, just a limit on how many times per day they can use it.”

  I nodded in thanks then looked over as I heard someone approaching. It was an older lady, probably in her fifties or something. When we made eye contact, she smiled and spoke, “I’m Ella. I noticed you have some decent-looking leathers tied to your pack. Do you have any plans for them?

  “Um.. not really. I looted them off of a mountain lion that tried to bite my head off.” I answered.

  “How many pieces did you get?” she asked

  “I have four Pieces of hide, also got a couple of fangs, claws, some feathers from a hawk, and talons from the same.” I said, listing off the loot I got from the two spirit beasts. “they all came from spirit beasts if that makes any difference. The Mountain lion was rank two, and the hawk rank one.

  “If you like, I can make you a good leather vest for armor in exchange for two of the hides. It would take two of the hides to make the vest. I can even buy your other animal components. I’m always looking for more crafting materials. The pre Initialization materials don’t seem to produce as good results.” She offered.

  Aside from selling them on the market, I didn’t have any particular use for the hides, claws, and other bits. So I pulled out the two Puma Fangs, eight Puma Claws, four pieces of Puma Hide, a bundle of feathers, and the eight Talons to let Ella Appraise them and make me an offer.

  “I’ll give you fifty credits, or I can trade you a minor spirit beast core. These two say it holds twenty points of Ki. What do you say?”

  I thought over the offer, Rukia could always use more Spirit beast cores to help her grow faster. But, unfortunately, I didn’t have any use for the junk, though I’m sure a craftswoman could make something good with them, given her class ability. “Sure, I’ll take the core for them,” I said with a smile, “and any armor is better than no armor.”

  “Ok, sweetie, just let me get your measurements and one question. Would you rather have higher durability or higher defense? It won’t be a large increase in either case unless I get lucky and get a high-quality result.”

  I thought for a moment and decided that greater durability would be better, my defense was already getting high for our ranks, and I’d rather it not turn to shreds in just a fight or two. So, “Greater durability, please, and thank you.”

  “I’ll have it ready by tomorrow morning. I’m assuming you will be spending the night at least. I know you want to get back home to your family, but it’s dangerous out there at night.” She said kindly.

  “Do you have any uses for Mana Cores? I have quite a few from the goblins I’ve killed. And I have this red staff that I can’t use.” I had no idea how much they were worth or what uses they had.

  “We can use the cores to give us a boost of mana when we are running low, but they are worth more at the System Store. We can buy two or three minor mana potions for the same value as the Cores. I’m sure they have other uses, but we don’t really know what yet. As for the Staff, it looks good for fire magic Users. Hector would be interested in it if any of us are. He is on watch right now, but you can ask him over dinner when his shift is over.”

  I thanked Ella as she took the goods I sold her to a back room to craft my new leather vest.

  “So, how do I access this System Store thing?” I asked Sam and Hope.

  They showed me where the City Core was and told me I just needed to touch it and that David already set the permissions to give me access. Then, they left me to practice their martial arts with their daughter and the other two boys.

  I touched the sphere attached to a narrow pedestal, and my mind was blown away. There were thousands of things in the shop. It took me a few minutes to sort through all the options in the interface, but I managed to navigate to the Sell options and selected the thirteen Goblin Monster Cores. The system offered two and a half credits per point of mana rounded down, contained within each core. The goblin scavengers had ninety mana each, the shaman apprentices had one hundred fifty mana each, and the shaman had one hundred seventy mana. It offered me a whopping c4025. That was insane based on how much I got in loot off of those same creatures. I seemed to get only ten credits per level of the mobs. And twenty credits per rank of spirit beasts.

  I selected yes and watched my Credits rise to c4345. Now to see if I’m rich or a pauper. I entered into the search parameters for a bag of holding but got an error message. I remembered that Sam called it a storage ring, so I entered that into the search parameters. c5,000,000 for a storage band? What the absolute fuck? I panicked for a moment, then saw the list was sorted from most expensive to least and had to smack myself on the forehead. But, of course, they want you to see the most expensive items first by default. So I toggled the list to show the cheapest first and looked over what I saw.

  There were cheap items that gave you ten slots per ring for only one hundred credits. The trend from there seemed to be ten credits per slot, though it got more expensive if you go too far up. A one hundred slot ring that negated all weight and kept things in stasis cost fifteen hundred credits. The stasis option increased the price by half again. But if I got that, then I wouldn’t have to worry about abandoning good spirit beast meat, afraid it would spoil before we could safely eat it.

  Once you went over one hundred slots, the price per slot went up, even without the stasis effect, just the weightless property they all had. The plain two hundred slot ring cost three thousand credits, and adding stasis to it brought it up to forty-five hundred, way out of my price range. So I decided the one hundred slots with stasis would be the best option for me. I selected purchase, and the funds drained from my sheet, and with a flash of rainbow-colored light, a ring appeared in my hand. Like Sam’s, it was an unadorned metal band that, when I slid it onto my middle finger, automatically sized itself to my finger. That’s nifty.

  I remembered the strong recommendation to get the cultivation manual and that it only cost ten credits, so I decided I needed to get that too. So I entered Beginners Guide to Cultivation, and a few options showed up.

  Cultivation for Beginner Sapients (Body Cultivation Stage) c10

  Cultivation for Beginner Sapients (Elemental Energy Stage) c1,000

  Cultivation for Beginner Sapients (Spiritual Energy Stage) c10,000

  Holy fucking hell, the guides for the other two stages were bloody astronomical. I would have to wipe out over a hundred goblins to make that kind of cash, and that’s just for the middle one. So I went ahead and purchased the first guide and waited for the flash of light and for it to appear in my hand. And I waited and waited. I looked around, trying to see if it went else ware. I checked my character sheet and saw that the credits were spent. I ran my fingers through my hair and felt the ring against my scalp. But, wait… of course, they would dump it into a storage item if you have one.

  I focused on the ring, and a ten by ten screen popped up with one of the squares holding the image of a book. Again, I focused on it, and a prompt popped up.

  Cultivation For Beginners (body cultivation stage): Human Edition

  Quality: Average

  Rarity: Uncommon

  Durability: 20/20

  Weight: 1lb

  Traits: Contains knowledge useful for any human just starting on the Ki Path of power.

  Value: c10

  Out of curiosity I selected the goblins staff to sell

  Firebrand

  Goblin Staff of Fire

  Quality: average

  Rarity: uncommon

  Durability 34/40

  Effect: +10% fire damage

  Sell Value: c425 (c500-durability loss)

  Four hundred twenty-five credits aren’t too shabby for a piece of level five goblin loot, worth more than even its core was. But I decided to wait and see if the fire mage, what was his name? Harold, Harvey, harry, eh, something that started with an H, I was sure. I could just re-inspect him over dinner. Hey, that was one handy thing in this new world. I won’t have to go months not remembering a co-worker’s name and using hey, you, and the like when chatting.

  I tried looking up Ki restoration potions, but unlike mana potions, they were expensive as hell. Just a fifty-point Ki infusion potion would cost me five hundred credits. I was still going to buy a couple, but damn. Before I bought those, I looked up the health and stamina potions. It looked like the basic fifty Hp potion would restore health over one minute and cost me one hundred credits each, not an instant cure, but it would save my stamina and Ki after a fight. At least the stamina was cheaper per point, only costing fifty credits for a hundred-point stamina recovery over one minute. So I went ahead and bought five Ki Infusions, five Health Potions, and eight Stamina Potions. I still had c935 left to my name.

  With some good items for my loot, I decided it was an excellent time to study my path of power and see what I did wrong.

  Chapter 11

  I sat down in the Living room and began studying in earnest. This book could help me survive to make it home.

  The guide was not written by a human, but it did contain some helpful information and some not so helpful but interesting information. Knowing that Essence is generated by living things and the more complex the creature, the higher quality and volume of Essence generated. Though I didn’t like what that said about humanity and the first prompts we all received at the beginning of initialization. Humanity was apparently simple compared to other sapients if we reached critical population levels to generate the necessary Essence to start System Initialization.

  At least humanity was so diverse that the system needed to use three paths to handle our diversity while other races are so uniform that they only get offered one path, and rarely two.

  So the Ki system wasn’t entirely physical. Well, that makes some sense. If it was physical, they would have to move around our organs and everything, and if the third Dantian is in the head, they would have had to remove part of the brain to make it fit. I shuddered at that thought. Not a lot of new information in the second chapter. What are Dantians and Meridians? It basically reaffirmed what I learned from all those cultivator books, though the Diagrams are nice.

  Once I began to read about the creation of Ki for the first time, I had to smack myself on the forehead. Apparently, I went about it in the most difficult way; my wife would laugh her ass off at me. Instead of compressing all the Essence at once, it’s better to do it in small batches; it gives less pushback and burns less stamina doing it that way. Well, at least I’m past that part unless I bottom out my Ki reserves, but hey, that’s what the Ki infusions are for, right?

  Here we go, chapter five, choosing my first meridian. This should help quite a lot. It even has diagrams of each meridian with descriptions of what the benefits are for each. This should help with plotting my progression soon.

  Ok, I already have the bone and dermal Meridians open. The lung increased my stamina by six points, boosted my Essence absorption by about a third, and resisted airborne toxins. So smoke, spores, or anything like that. No more hay fever. That’s sweet.

  The heart meridian was basically the entire circulatory system. Boosted constitution by six, increases health and stamina regen too, that’s very useful. More health, can run longer and heal more health per day, that couldn’t be beat.

  Muscle naturally gives a plus six boost to strength, increased defense by five like the bone meridian did, and gave a bigger stamina pool. So I guess it was from having more efficient muscles, burns less stamina, and all that or something.

  The brain, aka the neurological system, gave a plus six to both wisdom and intelligence? Bloody hell, that a lot for one meridian, but they both reside in the brain, I suppose, so that makes sense. And a plus thirty percent to mental resistance. I didn’t want anyone playing with my mind.

  The stomach, or digestive system, meridian gives a slight boost to endurance and constitution, but needing half the food and water would be clutch when it came to extended travel on foot.

  The final is the Immune system; well, the spleen is a big part of that, so I guess it works for a name. There were no stat bonuses but gave a thirty percent resistance to disease, poison and an extra bonus to health regeneration. My hp regen would be… over double what it is now with this and the heart meridian. I’d heal over thirty hp per day. That was half my current health pool.

  Hmm, it’s going into how to open a meridian now. Unrefined savage? What the fuck?

  How do you open and cleanse your meridians, you ask? Well, some unrefined savages might try to brute force their way into their meridians. This may be a quick and dirty method for the first 2 or even 3 Meridians, but each meridian is more challenging to open than the previous ones. There is also the risk of backlash and damage to your cultivation system should you push too hard or fail to breakthrough.

  Well, with those consequences, I guess they weren’t wrong. But how was I supposed to know there was a better, less traumatizing way to open the Meridians. I wouldn’t have had to undergo the peel-athon, and it looks like it would be far less painful. Ok, time to study the proper method.

  So just imagine my Ki as a drill, poke a hole in the intake and outflow of the meridian, and then just circulate Ki through it until everything flushes out. Wearing away at the blockages and gunk until it is fully open and clear. It might take longer, but it won’t take as much effort and doesn’t risk damaging my systems. Let’s give this a try and see how it goes. Which meridian will I need to open next? What will help me travel safely?

  The muscle meridian will make me stronger and beef up my defense, too; it can make me more combat effective. The stomach, however, will boost my hp and stamina pool and allow me to survive on less food and water. The heart will give me a lot more hp and a solid boost to my regens. But the boost to my stamina regen will barely exceed the gain from the stomach; both will let me jog nearly nonstop I’d still regen one stamina per minute while jogging.

  I think the stomach would be best for now. I could travel longer, farther on less food and water. Rukia would still need the same amount of water, at least for now, but with her Ice based Ki keeping her cool, she can go for longer already without overheating and burning through her water reserves. So yeah, I think the stomach now, maybe the muscle or heart next. I can decide later on that.

  I put the book back into storage, closed my eyes, and settled into my meditation. I visualized my lower Dantian, almost full of Ki. I took a few minutes to convert a bit more Ki to top it off for the most significant effect.

  Once it was full, I focused on cycling my Ki through my Bone meridian as fast as possible. I guided the Ki in my Dantian and spun in one direction. The middle of the spin focused on the opening of the Stomach Meridian. As the center of the vortex formed, I concentrated on hardening the Ki to a fine point and allowed grooves to form along with its cone shape.

  I imagined a boring drill bit and pressed it against the blockage. I let the rapidly spinning Ki spin the bit, and I watched as it began to cut into the opening, pushing through until an opening formed. It was maybe a tenth the size of the meridian. Again, I let my Ki slow as I took another deep breath and began the same process on the exit point.

  It wasn’t nearly as hard as just forcing my way through like before. And with how much more difficult it was the second time, I wasn’t sure I could force open a third. I could only push a few points worth of Ki into the opening, but I pulled it through the Stomach Meridian, lighting it up to my inner eye as I did so. The Ki was slow and sluggish, but it slowly pushed itself all the way through and came out the other end. Not as clean and pure as it was before.

  I continued to push more in as it came out. It slowly cleared out. I wouldn’t be able to do it all in one session. I still needed to learn about the Ki techniques, but I should be able to maintain this once it opened at least halfway. For now, it required a lot of focus and control to keep the Ki moving, though. Once the hole doubled in size, I would take a break and learn some fantastic techniques.

  After I pulled out my book again, I found a few interesting uses for Ki, one of which I accidentally used after getting mauled by the mountain lion to heal myself. I could directly fortify myself with Ki or enhance a weapon or something as well. It also explained why my stamina nearly bottomed out. Using Ki without the right meridian burns your stamina too.

 

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