Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 101 Jane's Turn, A Round Of Extrapersonal Cultivation

Knock, Knock, Knock… As Elizabeth waited for Jane to answer the door, she shook her head at the thought of having to cultivate Death energy now as well. There were already so many things piled on her plate that she couldn't help but feel this was some sort of wish turned joke through fate. Imagining the part of fate, she thought, 'You want a Gun Art? Ok, here you go. Oh and by the way, f.u.c.king this up will lead you to your death...'

She wasn't left to play pretend in her imagination for long, as Jane soon opened her doors and invited her in. Elizabeth explained the reason for her visit, and after giving her the same speech she gave Sun, the Ice Maiden picked extreme Spirituality. Her reason? It sounded like a joke, especially considering that this was a decision that would follow her until death, but Jane explained it as, "Why? Well… you're already on the path of Perfection and that idiot picked the path of extreme Physicality. Not only would our synergy as a group increase if I completed the Trinity. To be honest, I'm only keeping myself balanced because of your initial recommendations. Unlike a certain training fanatic, I'd be more than content sitting and meditating all day long."

Listening to Jane's response, Elizabeth foolishly grinned whilst nodding her head as she thought of combining the three of their special abilities should they ever enter a group fight. Her daydream lasted a second before Jane started to take off her top to begin the acupoint procedure. Unlike Sun, who could afford to cultivate topless since he was a guy, Jane, though not exaggeratedly reserved, still kept her wits about her image. Additionally, because Jane already possessed Affinity for Yin, she didn't have to match Sun parameter-wise and could attempt to create a Pure Yin Qi Connection with her rather lacking Intelligence and Inner Strength capacity; relative to her level, of course…

Now… because Jane was a King Stage Martial Pract.i.tioner, Elizabeth almost swooned as she started "emptying" her of her Qi. 'Hahaha… Come to me, my precious grandmist...' Jane had close to 2.5 million units of Inner Strength in her Dantian. With so much energy, Elizabeth easily had more than enough to completely excavate what remained of her hidden potential. Now, it probably wouldn't matter how hard she trained, with Chaos Requiem catching up to her rank as a Soldier Mage, Elizabeth could continue cultivating until she had the requirements to pa.s.s into the Spirit Realm without ever needing to make a breakthrough. Whether or not she'd manage to cultivate fast enough to not miss another deadline; that was a different matter entirely.

However, there were still over a million units of Inner Strength left unused. Weighing her options, Elizabeth ultimately decided to finish filling up two more Chaos Seals to maximize the amount of pressure she could draw from fragmented grandmist. According to the information from the status of the Chaos Seals, Elizabeth required 200,000 units of Inner Strength to fill the second seal with fragmented grandmist and 500,000 for the third and final Seal of Pressure. The hierarchy of Seals was made up of three sections, Pressure being the easiest to complete, next was Physical Augmentation. The quant.i.ty of energy required to fill the next two sections her Chaos Seals would soon reach absurd proportions. So, Elizabeth didn't even think about using the last couple hundred thousand units of energy Jane handed over to start the fourth seal.

She was already content with completing her Seals of Pressure as their use would instantly be realized. With Level 3 Grandmist Pressure, Elizabeth could use the remaining energy to temper her body even more thoroughly than before. Still obsessing over her Speed, she opted to continue refining out her white muscle fibers and begin altering her bone structure to be better suited for extreme speeds.

After using up all the energy and netting an extra 40 points in Speed — the total now being 178 — Elizabeth lost most of her fervor, as she patiently waited for Jane to complete the creation of her Pure Yin Qi Connection. Jane didn't suffer nearly as much as Sun during her tribulation, she also didn't take as long; the whole process boiling down to less than half an hour. Still, being cautious to avoid any potential mishaps later on, Elizabeth checked Jane's status.

[Status

Name: Jane

Level: 22

*New) Rank: Early-Phase Martial King [Pure Yin Martial King]

Affection Rating: Undying Loyalty

s.e.x: Female

Strength 250

Endurance 248

Speed 252

Defense 250

Intelligence 389

Luck 10

Inner Strength: 7,000,000

Innate Skills

*New) Pure Yin Qi Connection

Grade: Mortal (Pseudo Spirit)

Description: A special Qi Connection that allows entry into the path of extreme Spirituality. As cultivation progress and Jane becomes gradually transformed by Yin energies, increasingly powerful abilities will be granted. Due to Yin Affinity surpa.s.sing Mediocre-tier even though Jane is in the Mortal Realm, her Qi Connection teeters the border between Spirit and Mortal Grade.

Current Effect(s): Spiritual Breakthrough: At the Mortal level, the user's body may connect and absorb spiritual energy from the air. The user may not absorb True Qi like Spirit Realm cultivators, only the dregs of spiritual air. But that is enough to put them on an entirely different league. Meditation and energy cultivation becomes much easier when compared to those not of the path of extreme Spirituality, especially in the Mortal Realm, and even after breaking through to the Spirit Realm, Spiritual Breakthrough will allow the user to remain at the highest cla.s.s of spiritual cultivation.]

Seeing as her business here was finished, Elizabeth exchanged the usual formalities before getting up to leave. As she made her way over to the door, Jane said, "For the next sparring session... can I reserve you as my partner in advance?" It was a bizarre way to ask for sure, but Elizabeth didn't seem to care, as she didn't react aside from nodding and uttering a "Yep!" while she left through the door.

Walking back to her room, Elizabeth didn't notice, but as she walked, she was cracking the finger joints in her hands una.s.sisted. She had a couple more hours before the next day's "mandatory" training regimen began. So, as she moved to take eat one of the Consummate Resting Pills Yrre had refined for her earlier in the day, she thought of what to do next.

With the compet.i.tion just around the corner, Elizabeth couldn't help but naturally turn to more training. But, part of her reasoned it was best to prepare not just herself, but also her equipment as well. Atid had already mentioned that the compet.i.tion in Sharktop Island would be a no holds barred onslaught of martial arts, weapons, and various secondary occupations. She wasn't going into a regulated and safe compet.i.tion of the mortal world. Rather, anything and everything involved with the Martial Society had very real risks and dangers present. There, people didn't care what the rules said. If you lost, it was because you were weaker, and the weak get no support…

Of course, that was but a mere oversimplification of the event, but the fact remained. Elizabeth had several tasks that would better secure her safety, not just for the compet.i.tion, but also for life in general, that she could accomplish at the moment. The unpreparedness she tasted when she was almost kidnapped still had its bitter notes taint her subconscious. So, after Elizabeth returned to her room, she explained her plan to Yrre and began preparing several materials.

After setting up a forging station and withdrawing the various pieces of Quartzite she had arduously refined before, Elizabeth finally acted the part of a blacksmith as she worked to complete the supplementary armor set she would wear above her actual armor; the "Beginner Armor Set..." Now that she had Fire Magic, all the tedious nonsense she had to deal with before could no longer hold her back. Thus, Elizabeth first used her blacksmithing inscriptions pen to engrave a couple simple defense enchantments.

The enchantments used in blacksmithing were of a different school of thought when compared to "True Enchantments," they were much simpler as well. So even though Elizabeth didn't have much practice with inscribing, her current set of abilities let her almost perfectly trace over suitable inscriptions for Mortal Grade armor. She completed the Engraving process for all four pieces of armor in less than fifteen minutes; a time much faster than she thought she could achieve. So, it was on to the next part of the forging process; Synchronization.

By channeling Neutral Magic, through the inscriptions she just finished Engraving, Elizabeth checked for any flaws in the refinement and inscriptions already completed and would take this time to correct them. Naturally, there were quite a few mistakes she hadn't caught when she was focused on refining and engraving. Moreover, now that she had Fire Magic, even though her affinity for Fire hadn't increased, she could refine a bit more of the pesky impurities from the Quartzite than she as a mere Mortal Stage non-Mage. The next half-hour was spent completing the Synchronization process and with its completion came the last step of forging; Tempering.

Now, mortal blacksmiths would temper their artifacts — usually weapons and armor — through a variety of methods. The most common version being, by "cooking" their unfinished products in extreme, but regulated, heat for a certain period of time. Elizabeth, as a Magical Blacksmith, didn't go through the same process. For the tempering of Magic Artifacts, Magical Fragments, Pseudo Cores, and True Cores would be used instead.

For her armor, Elizabeth chose to sacrifice one of the s.p.a.ce-type Magical Cores. s.p.a.ce was already a suitable energy type for defense, being both undetectable yet omnipresent, everything had to pa.s.s through s.p.a.ce to move. With a spatial barrier applied on top of her already impressive craftsmanship, it would be all the more difficult to damage her. Granted, the spatial barrier she planned to add onto her armor wouldn't make her invincible; it was after all an enchantment created from Mortal Grade goods. However, the greatest benefit Elizabeth would receive would come after she began mastering the yet to be inscribed [Spatial Contraction] spell seed.

Elizabeth placed the pieces of her almost-complete armor set in the four cardinal directions relative to her position and at a post haste pace, she began tempering each individual piece. Coincidentally, her recent breakthrough to Mediocre-tier s.p.a.ce Affinity bore extra fruit as she lost much less of the energy contained within the Magical Core than she would have without the upgrade. Elizabeth had to split the Magical Core into four separate pieces for each subsection of armor and the cuts she made into the Magical Core would cause energy to start leaking. Her Direct Manifestation Innate Skill, acted using very weak ripples of Spatial Magic to contain the rate of decay, and by the time she finished, less than a tenth of a percent of energy was lost from the original, whole, Magical Core.

Wiping her brows clean of sweat, Elizabeth took a second to appreciate her work, as the status of the now complete Supplementary Quartzite Armor came into view.

[Status

Name: Supplementary Magic Quartzite Armor Set

Grade: A (High-tier Mortal Grade Artifact)

Defense: +110 (25 Chest, 25 Waist, 20 Arms, 20 Legs, 20 Barrier)

Special Effect: Spatial Barrier, Spatial Resonance

Description: Created out of slightly spiritual Quartzite found in the Forest of Beginnings, this supplementary armor set would be a prized treasure within the Mortal Realm scene if sold. Created out of Quartzite refined with an impressive 90% or so refining rate, and blessed with the tempering of a Peak-tier Spatial Magical True Core, the defensive properties of this armor are set near the limits of what can be created with Mortal Grade materials. Created out of the basic s.p.a.ce Enchantment for blacksmithing, this armor provides the user with an extra bit of protection in the form of a spatial barrier that dampens most attacks before they can even reach the user and Spatial Resonance. Because the creator of this armor set possessed Mediocre-tier s.p.a.ce Affinity during the time of this armor's creation, Spatial Resonance's effect doubles, now boosting the user's Mortal Grade spatial abilities by 50%]