Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 51 Trash-Tier Affinity

[Status

Name: Elizabeth Ultimatia

Level: 5

Rank: Mortal 100% (Seamless Magic Connection)

s.e.x: Female

Strength 20.16

Endurance 35.54

Speed 25.59

Defense 20.02

Intelligence 39.31

Luck: 10

Inner Strength 633/633]

A bit of frustration and confusion crossed through her mind as she let the fact of the matter sink in. No longer could she call herself a "speed" mage; not that she ever was one to begin with. After all, she had yet to develop any magic and already one of the defining traits she ought to possess was missing. The previously overperforming Speed stat of hers was completely outdone by her Endurance!

Still, it wasn't like such a development wasn't welcome. If not for the events she'd pa.s.sed through in the Shadow Realm, her Endurance Stat wouldn't be anywhere near its current level. Besides, Elizabeth had yet to discover a better way to train for speed; the same was true for Strength and Defense. Though, with her recent acquisition of Bismanthium, she had some plans in mind.

For now at least, what Elizabeth had in mind was to increase her reserves of Inner Strength. With an unheard of 39+ units of Intelligence at the mere rank of Peak-phase Mortal, Elizabeth would be a fool to continue delaying increasing her reserves any longer. If Elizabeth compared herself with the standards set by her leveling system, she would need around 40 points in every Stat to reach level 10; the goal of her next Main Quest as well as what would const.i.tute a perfect foundation. She had only just recently reached Level 5, but to any rational cultivator — Mage or Martial Pract.i.tioner — with just her Intelligence Stat she earned the potential of a Mid to Late-phase p.a.w.n.

Since Intelligence was the Stat responsible for managing energy, whether it be control or potency. Of course, the deficits brought because of her weaker-in-comparison physical Stats, de-escalated her overall level of threat. It wouldn't do her much good to possess such extreme levels of Intelligence — the stat, not actual intellect — if her reserves would last but a moment; even less, if her body couldn't keep up with her.

So, as Elizabeth waited for Amazon to deliver her the ingredients to stock up on "energy potions," and for her dad to send a courier, Elizabeth went over to her bed, picked up her Demonic Beast Egg, and sunk into a new meditation session. Because meditation for replenishing energy and creating s.p.a.ce for more energy was so vastly different, Elizabeth had yet to start nurturing her Demonic Beast Egg with this method.

According to the [Basic Beast Rearing Manual] out of the various nurturing methods available to beginners, achieving Resonance with her unborn Demonic Beast was one of the riskiest yet most rewarding methods ever conceived. The risk came from the gamble most cultivators would take in messing up with the Beast's natural talent, as achieving Resonance would set a standard for the unborn beast.

If say, for instance, a completely incompetent cultivator with a worthlessly mediocre foundation picked up an unborn Beast Egg and tried attempted this type of nurturing. Then, even if the unborn Beast Egg came from mythical Legacy, with enough talent and potential to rival that of actual G.o.ds, most if not all its potential would be squandered before it even hatched…

However, the inverse case was possible; infinitely improbable, but definitely possible. Someone like Elizabeth who cultivated a perfect foundation could theoretically pick up one of the absolute worst of the worst Low-level Mortal Grade Beast Eggs and given enough time, effort, and nurture, a new G.o.d-slaying ultra beast could take form.

Now, Elizabeth already knew her egg was higher than Spiritual Grade, meaning that after it hatched, it would naturally progress through the stages of cultivation in both the Mortal and Spiritual Realms without any real effort. However, she couldn't guarantee that her egg was of the absolute highest Rank — whatever that rank may be. So, knowing that she could only proceed with perfection, she reasoned it would be a waste to not share some of her perfection with what would eventually become a very useful tool.

Elizabeth didn't take long to enter meditation, after all, she'd been practicing entering light meditation for energy replenishing like a mad woman for the past two days. Now that she was Level 5 though, she'd actually confronted the first "bottleneck" of her cultivation career, as it was actually a requirement to possess Trash-tier levels of Affinity with at least one type of energy to create Magic or Martial Qi.

Of course, Elizabeth could use the Trash-tier Elemental Affinity Stone to cheat her way out of this bottleneck if she wished. She could even accept the Bad-tier Affinity Stone from her completion of the first Main Quest and not only cheat her way through the bottleneck, but also do it with an energy type of nontraditional elemental standing, like s.p.a.ce or time.

However, Elizabeth chose to not engage in such cheating; at least not yet anyway. In her [Temporal Meditation] and [Spatial Meditation] techniques, she came across mantras and pa.s.sages that would help boost her affinity with time and s.p.a.ce the natural way. Such mantras and pa.s.sages were recited and pondered on throughout Elizabeth's ongoing meditation session, and she would continue with them until either her Affinity rating with s.p.a.ce and Time improved to Trash-tier and another prerequisite to entering the p.a.w.n Stage was cleared, or, she trained her other Stats — namely Strength and Defense — to levels appropriate for leveling up. If by that point, she'd still not yet reached Trash-tier affinity with either Time or s.p.a.ce, then naturally, an affinity stone would be used up.

.

.

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"???" Here Elizabeth was prepared to spend hours and potentially days, grinding the mantras and pa.s.sages of her [Temporal Meditation] technique to reach Trash-tier affinity, when not half an hour into her very first session, she accomplished it… She stopped, with a bit of distress over how easy it was, and to her surprise, along with the change to her Time Affinity, there came a new Innate Skill.

[Alert! Breakthrough in Affinity!!!

Innate Skills:

Time Affinity

Tier: Trash-tier (Fragmented Transcendent)

Description: Now possessing the ability to generate time energy/magic, active time skills and spells are usable.

Current Effect: Upon restarting Time Talent cultivation, the user improves twice as fast while only having to put in half the effort. Cultivation of energy remains unimpeded until Level 10. Low Mortal Grade Time-type buffs are 50% more potent.

*New) Timeworn Eyes

Description: Bred from the subconscious and natural use of time insights, the user may perceive the rate of time in a much more radical manner. Whether it be speeding up the rate of time you perceive to skip past the days or slowing down time to better react to instantaneous encounters, your mind can perceive time at different rates at will.

Current Effect: Change perception of time by a factor of 2.]

When Elizabeth recalled the effects of her Innate Time Affinity, it made sense that she would be able to improve her affinity at a faster rate than normal. But this… this was a bit too extreme, right?

As Elizabeth questioned why it had come so naturally to her, P spoke up from the void, "Why? Well, obviously it's because you've been so productive! I mean seriously! Look at all the fruitful training you've accomplished in the last two days. From the constant meditation to recover energy, to the repeated pushing and breaking of your limits, it's hardly a question of why you've managed to increase your Time Affinity. You know, back when you were at your rope's end, confronted by several beasts, all objectively stronger than you, when you chose to gun down those predators that were chasing you… Back then you had already shown a premature release of the Timeworn Eyes, and yet now you still question how it's possible for your affinity to increase so quickly? Stop underestimating yourself!"

"..." Again, Elizabeth entered a bemused state as her bipolar divine partner kept switching up the way she conversed. One moment, she would speak to her with the kind of reproach and disappointment in line with a strict teacher and the next it would be all sunshine and rainbows. Now, P was actually mixing the two as she held a strict tone yet spoke such encouraging words and to be frank, Elizabeth couldn't quite wrap her head around the conflicting tones.

Elizabeth sighed, forgetting about P's apparent mood-swings, as she returned to the life of meditation. She switched mantras and focused on [Spatial Meditation] until a buzzing from her phone woke her up. Elizabeth spent a total of two and a half hours cultivating Inner Strength and improving her nonexistent s.p.a.ce Affinity before she had to pick up the packages that had been delivered to her.

She didn't have a similar breakthrough with s.p.a.ce as she did with Time, but the session wasn't without its fair share of benefits as the previously stagnant 633 units of Inner Strength rose to 692. Now, the best part of cultivation after reaching Level 5 for Elizabeth resides in the fact that she no longer had to deal with expelling the by-products of her cultivation through her skin. Rather, because she possessed a Seamless Magic Connection, all the gunk and tar that would have ruined her bed and messed with the nice scent of her room would instead by trapped by that Magic Connection and be released as a breath of foul air. Elizabeth went up to the window in her room and released said breath of foul air, and then merrily left to go get her packages.