Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 98 Unfathomable Reward

Aboard the yacht, Luca and Atid stood anxiously waiting for Elizabeth and Sun to resolve the dangerous Qi fluctuations emanating from Sun's body. Even though several dozen minutes pa.s.sed after the fluctuations stopped increasing in frequency, the two Spirit Realm cultivators didn't dare drop their guard until every instance of unstable Qi vanished.

Atid, being the person responsible for granting Sun a spatial cultivation method, knew from reading the method beforehand how precarious a situation his foster son was placed under. As a Warrior Stage Martial Pract.i.tioner, even a small wisp of unstable s.p.a.ce Qi could detonate into a sizable explosion. Although they had already set up several formation barriers around the time bomb known as Sun, s.p.a.ce was an origin energy after all, which naturally led them to not a.s.sume the ship's safety was guaranteed.

Every second that pa.s.sed with Sun's future left uncertain caused Atid to stand worried beyond belief. But, there was nothing he could do. Unlike the mere Soldier Stage Elizabeth, Atid had not an iota of understanding for the nature of s.p.a.ce. He might have a general understanding of cultivator anatomy, but he wasn't nearly proficient nor capable enough to act as a Martial Acupoint Master. Even his Qi Connection wasn't much better than the one Sun used.

Never had he felt such helplessness when confronted with a young woman. Yet, he could only be glad she joined his side on her own volition and opt to skip certain plans to reciprocate a bit of the goodwill she had thus far shown him.

…

For roughly three-quarters of an hour, Elizabeth perfectly absorbed any extra bit of unstable s.p.a.ce Qi the entangled mess within Sun's Dantian produced. As time pa.s.sed, Sun's progress was evident as she absorbed less and less of his unstable Qi, until the final moment were she sensed Sun's Dantian return to normal.

After forty-five minutes of constant Qi absorption, Elizabeth managed to create enough fragmented grandmist to bring her total potential to 10% of its absolute max for her current state. Though the quant.i.ty of Qi she absorbed from Sun was much less than the amount generated from eating her spiritual meal, the quality was dozens of times more potent. After all, the difference in Qi created from Bad-tier Affinity and Good-tier Affinity was heavens apart.

Now calming down from that tense situation, as Elizabeth relaxed, several notifications appeared through the activation of her functions.

[Choice Quest 3: Challenge Of One's Self (Complete)

Degree of Completion: Null

Difficulty: Incalculable

Choice 1) Devolve into further Sociopathy.

Choice 2) Evolve to become Humane.

Description: Only after confronting real life, even if treated as a game, will you better understand yourself. Although, this is an impossible choice for someone like you...

Rewards:

Choice 2) Open Mind: For choosing to act against your intuition and evolving out of general negativity, you've made the first step to widening your horizons and expanding your point of view. While this might be of little consequence now, in the future, when perception and understanding become the main source of your power, having an Open Mind will reduce the number of pitfalls you encounter.

Choice 2) ???: Forced, Power, Ancient, Manipulation, Choice? Soul, Emotion…

Alert! Breakthrough in Affinity!!!

Innate Skills:

s.p.a.ce Affinity

*New) Tier: Mediocre-tier

Description: Your ability to manipulate s.p.a.ce approaches the Realm of Spirits. You'll find manipulating spatial energy to be several times easier than when your Affinity was at a mere Bad-tier. Generating s.p.a.ce-type Magic from Inner Strength is also several times easier and s.p.a.ce-type spells and skills are less demanding on your energy reserves.

Current Effect: Cultivation of energy remains unimpeded until Level 30. High-Peak Mortal Grade s.p.a.ce-type buffs are 100% more potent.

*New) Direct Manifestation

Description: With attunement to s.p.a.ce bordering on the baseline for Spirit Realm Pract.i.tioners, the user may begin influencing the s.p.a.ce around them.

Current Effect: Sensing and creating s.p.a.ce ripples is now possible. The stronger your spatial sense and Intelligence the greater the intensity of the ripples.

Kinesthetic Acuity

...

*New) Current Effect: Spatial attunement increases by a factor of ten. The user's absolute domain has increased in range to 50 cm.]

'What the f.u.c.k? Hey P, what's up with my second reward for that Choice Quest?' Elizabeth could somewhat understand where the rest of her gains came from. But the Reward marked "???" made absolutely no sense. Naturally, the go-to person for this kind of situation was P, her G.o.dly supervisor.

'That? Well… It's best if you find out organically, as there's more potential bad than good from me telling you straight up. Just ignore that "reward" and go about life the best way you see fit.' Enigmatically, P responded with a very cautious set of words. She didn't explain much of anything and to the curious Elizabeth, her words acted with the opposite effect they intended to conveyed. This matter now became interesting to Elizabeth, but without information, she could only do as P said and ignore the matter temporarily. However, P would be mistaken to think Elizabeth would forget such a bizarre reward.

With Sun saved, again, Elizabeth stood up and stretched as she spoke to Sun. She said, "Ay, follow me. I've got something I need to discuss with you."

Helplessly, Sun could only nod his head and thank her for coming in his time of need; again. Too embarra.s.sed to speak, Sun just moped behind Elizabeth and silently followed her. However, it didn't take long for both of them to be stopped, as Atid had questions and concerns that needed to be addressed.

In a short two or so minutes, Elizabeth calmly explained the "stupidity" of Sun's blunders with accuracy that subconsciously terrified Sun. It was like she knew more about him that he himself, giving details about the origin of the unstable Qi in technical points that even he hadn't considered. But, given that it was Elizabeth that spoke of his problems in such succinct and concise points, Sun couldn't help but feel warmth in knowing that she looked into his problems so seriously.

After learning of Sun's problem and, more importantly, knowing that it was already completely resolved, Atid gave Elizabeth the pa.s.s to do as she wished. But before letting her leave his sight, he told her to visit him the next time she had some spare time. As Elizabeth left to head back to her room with Sun, Atid left Luca to visit his room as well.

For this trip to Sharktop Island, Atid being a Spirit Realm cultivator knew of the extreme changes coming to the world. He was more than well prepared to make key moves in the coming days, and part of his plan was to set up a separate base aside from the dojo on the Island. Part of his preparation for this transition was to bring copies of the methods he had collected over the years, and at the moment he was combing through his most prized possessions, thinking of what to teach Elizabeth.

'That unpredictable la.s.s… She's absurd in every sense of the definition! Cultivation, Medicine, Enchantment, even Martial Arts… In every area, she's already either covered or working on something. Let's see… what technique might catch her interests.' Just thinking of Elizabeth's multifaceted talents left Atid with a migraine. He busied himself in the miniature library made up of methods, manuals, and sutras, hoping to find something that may be of use to the dojo's most absurd member.

...

Over in Elizabeth's room, Yrre had acted the part of a trusty servant as she left after knowing Elizabeth had the situation under control. As Elizabeth helped Sun resolve the conflict of his evolving and unstable energies, Yrre had returned to clean up the mess she had created after the subsequent battles she and Elizabeth engaged in. Now, after Elizabeth entered the room, thinking nothing of her servant's work aside from the obligatory "good job," Sun was in awe as this pristine and girly domain looked nothing like Elizabeth's room back at the dojo.

Fortunately, before Sun could make any baseless a.s.sumptions, Elizabeth cut straight to the point as she still had a ton of things piled onto her unending list of things to do. Elizabeth sat down and gestured for Sun to followed suit before saying, "Now that we have some privacy, I'll be frank and admit part of the reason your Qi acted up today was my fault. Since I returned, I noticed both you and Jane had followed through with my recommendations and now possess Pseudo perfect cultivation foundations. If I'd been more proactive and allowed you to reform a Seamless Magic Connection, the most trouble that evolving Qi would give you could be blown away like dust."

Elizabeth would have continue explaining somethings, but Sun interjected, saying, "Don't blame yourself! I was too eager to improve! If… If I'd only waited a couple hours for my flames to stabilize before focusing on s.p.a.ce, this wouldn't have happened." Even if he wasn't talking to Elizabeth, something Sun would never allow was someone taking the blame for his mistake.

To his sudden outburst, Elizabeth sighed and shook her head. She said, "That may be true, but knowing that I could have stopped such a situation goes to show my fault in this fiasco. Look, I didn't bring you here to discuss whose fault it was, so let's get to business already. What I want to do now is not induce a second Qi Connection, but rather let you choose what path you want to take forward…

Right now, you have a Qi Connection just a bit above the average, but looking at your development there are several paths to choose from. My path is that of Perfection, leaving all my abilities, both physical and spiritual, to be all-around superior. However, you don't have to follow me in that regard. In fact… it seems you're inclined to the path of extreme physicality. Your physical abilities have always been better than your spiritual ones. But, the choice is up to you.

The three extreme paths to choose from are Physicality, Spirituality, and Perfection. You already fit the requirements for Physicality and Perfection, but if you want to go with Spirituality, we'll need to start you on a strict meditative training before restarting your Qi Connection. So… think about the options and when you've decided, let me know and we'll get you up to par."

"Think about it? What's there to think of? I'll take extreme Physicality. Admittedly, Spirituality has never been my forte, and while Perfection seems well… perfect, I'd rather focus on my body than anything else. Cultivation and energy, while important, have never been as useful to me as my body and I don't think they'll ever be..."