Marcos used his shrinking technique to take the bag from the puddle, not wanting to touch whatever it was that the man turned into. After pouring a bottle of water over it to rinse it off he looked inside. Inside the bag he found a book titled “The Waters of Life, Level 2”. It contained the level one and two cultivation techniques for some sort of blood cultivation technique. Franky walked over with the two bags off of the necromancer as well. One of the bags was large but empty. This was likely where he stored his ‘pets’. Inside of the other one, however, was a book titled “Control of the Dead, Level 2”. This one appeared to be a necromancy guide, concerned with raising corpses of all varieties and using them to fight for you. It also included a few spells for using Death as a pseudo spirit root, so that you could cultivate without needing one.
“Strange,” he muttered. “They were both carrying complete level two cultivation techniques that I’ve never heard of.” He quickly verified that the others had never heard of these either.
“Probably from Ilarya, then.” said Jim. “Earth tends to only sell techniques a piece at a time, plus if it was from Earth it would be labeled ‘condensation’, not ‘level 2’.”
“Then how did they get them?” asked Caleb. “I doubt the two of them just happened to have opposing techniques of the same level and happened to meet in here. They likely knew each other before coming in here. The Blood guy certainly acted like he had a history with the other guy.”
Marcos shook his head. “No idea. Maybe someone gave the books to them?” With no more evidence to help unravel this situation, they decided to search the various zombies. There were over thirty of them, and all of them had a bag on them. They put all of the bags into Marcos’s backpack, as it was the largest bag, and he would hand them over to the police once they returned to Earth. As the blood man had been hiding somewhere, the two groups started searching for where he was hiding. As the ones the necromancer had reanimated weren’t mummified the way the necromancer had been, he had most likely started draining blood completely some time after Jim left, and was doing so in secret somewhere else. Marcos checked the cultivation manual for evidence and found that the technique to draw all blood in the area towards you, draining people through open wounds, was a level two technique, which meant that he had likely started off slitting throats at level one, and once he advanced he learned the new technique.
About thirty minutes after they started Caleb informed him that he had found a cave where multiple mummified bodies were piled up. This was originally some sort of platforming puzzle trial, and was the closest trial ground to the shop at only a few kilometers away, but the blood man had turned it into his personal lair. Marcos and his group ran there and arrived ten minutes later. While the System greeted them with a sign, they ignored it and searched the area. The mummies were all naked. All of the possessions of these people had been taken away, likely by the serial killer. None of the things were in his bag when he was killed, nor were they here on the ground floor of the trial cave.
“What if he took them down to the bottom?” asked Carol. “He could pretty much teleport. Reaching the end of the trial wouldn’t have been a challenge for him.”
Franky sighed. “Then I’d better go down and check.” He said. “I’m the most agile one here after all.” He finally decided to look at the sign for the trial. This was the level three agility trial. That meant that each platform he could reach or bypass was worth two hundred points, and there were fifty of them, for a total of ten thousand points. If you fell, however, the system warned that there was solid stone at the bottom of the shaft, and the impact would likely kill most people further than four or five platforms from the bottom. This made participating in the trial high risk, high reward.
The two groups went to the side room where the trial began. There was a shaft there, ten meters across and fifty deep, with fifty different moving platforms with no set patterns on the platforms as far as they could tell. Franky did his stretches and practiced wall running a bit in the main room, jumping between a few shelves, then returned. Once he thought he was ready he ran towards the edge and jumped to the first moving platform. Before it could retract back into the wall he jumped sideways onto a platform that was moving up, then a few seconds later it started moving down again. For the next minute he jumped from platform to platform, some moving into or out of the wall, some moving up and down in the middle of the central shaft, some moving diagonally or in patterns, and some floating side to side, all at different speeds and changing speeds. Sometimes vertical platforms would switch to horizontal or visa versa, and sometime horizontal would move into wall slots.
It took Franky almost thirty minutes to reach the bottom, and he had to wall run at least four times, but he eventually made it. Marcos’s phone rang and Franky told him that the next room was full of stacks of items, like the vampire was organizing the trophies from his victims. Marcos decided to go down and see, so he jumped to the first platform. While Franky had been attempting the trial Marcos had studied all of the platforms and was familiar with the movement of at least the first twenty of them. While the random nature of the movement meant that he couldn’t be one hundred percent certain that there would be a platform when he needed it, he could at least stack the odds in his favor. He used the Flexibility moves to understand where he was meant to go and find ways to get there. While his body could barely keep up with the demand, being built for strength and not agility, forcing him to grab the edge of platforms several times and even the wall twice, he managed to make it past thirty of them before his hand missed the edge of a platform by centimeters.
He fell the last twenty five meters and landed on his back on the solid rock ground, hitting several moving platforms on the way down but not landing on any of them. While he heard something pop upon impact, he managed to get up. It didn’t seem that anything was broken, just dislocated. While the others called down from above, having seen his fall, he did several stretches, feeling an arm and several vertebrae pop back into place, and called Jim’s cell phone. After explaining to them that he had only dislocated a few things, they decided they wouldn’t be attempting the trial. Jim and several others had brought a levitation bracelet, however, and Caleb had a flight one, so they all just flew down the central shaft, Caleb carrying Carol, as she didn’t bring one or know the technique. All of them received messages that their attempt was disqualified for cheating, but they ignored it. They weren’t trying to get the prize, just get to the bottom, so they didn’t mind cheating.
When they entered the room they found Franky wearing a black form fitting suit. “This was his Grand Completion prize.” he said when they looked at him in confusion. “It improves movement and reaction speed and can grip almost any surface while being able to stop attacks in the middle of level two.” He then motioned around the room. “Not sure how you get it, though.”
Inside the room were several piles of things. The largest was clothing, followed by food, then medical supplies. In another pile were a few guns, mostly pistols but one rifle and one shotgun, as well as the ammo for them. There was also a pile of personal belongings, such as wallets and jewelry. Then there were various things that were likely rewards from the trials. There were technique books, special weapons, armor, and gadgets, and several kits of pills which he had kept separate from the medical supplies.
“You know, it would be difficult to figure out who these things belong to, especially the system given things.” said Franky.
Caleb agreed. “We did kill the one that killed them. It would only be fair if we kept the System stuff, though we can give the personal effects to the police and let them sort them out.”
Marcos shook his head. “It’s not ours, though. It should be returned to their next of kin.” He had an idea as to how to figure out who got what, though. “System, is there any way we can get a list of who bought what, so we can match their belongings for return to their families?”
A holographic sign appeared. “Knowledge of another trial taker’s purchases cannot be given, as it could encourage one trial taker to target another for robbery.”
“But these people are already dead. Can we get a list of just their purchases, then?” The System repeated the message, and Marcos looked upset.
“You know, not every world is like Earth.” said Carol. “This is likely a needed safety feature to help prevent targeted robbery on most worlds. If this trial ground were opened to Ilarya, for example, I have no doubt that people would be killing each other to take their prizes.”
Marcos nodded. “Yeah, but still, I just wish we could do the right thing here.” Marcos went to the corner to think about things, and the others stored the personal effects of the victims in the larger bag which the necromancer had. There were several storage bags from the victim here as well, but they were also placed in there, to be given to the cops later. A few people had written their names on their things, so that would make identifying them easier, but wouldn’t let everything be identified. The police would have to identify the owners later. To that effect Marcos had an idea. “System, can you teleport me to the shop, please?” he asked.
“Negative.” the message read. “You can either use the staircase at the rear of this reward room to return to the top, where teleportation is possible, or can complete the trial in reverse to earn another set of points. Trial Taker Franky is the only one eligible for a grand completion reward, for completing both trials, as he was the only one to properly complete the first half of the trial.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I figured out how to get the grand completion, Franky.” Marcos said, then showed Franky the message. Franky nodded and returned to sorting and collecting the stolen goods.
Marcos used the stairs to return to the top and purchase another large bag identical to his purchased backpack and stored all of the corpses, then labeled the outside of it. Now the police would have bodies to return to the family, even if they would be closed casket funerals. If they were willing to put in the effort, they could even run DNA tests on the bodies, and perhaps the personal effects, to identify them.
He teleported back to the trial and jumped down the central shaft. The way he estimated it, terminal velocity if he fell feet first would be less than 150 meters per second, the terminal velocity from a sky diver falling head first. That is only one second of fall at fifteen times gravity, and less than a third at fifty times gravity, which he was managing when jumping to test his strength and practice his martial arts moves. As long as he landed on his feet, it shouldn’t harm him.
He had to dodge several platforms, and once rolled off of one half way down, but soon landed on his feet. Due to the shaft’s height he was unable to even reach terminal velocity, but he landed without injury. The system rewarded him five thousand points for ingenuity, but asked that he retry the test, as this didn’t count as a proper second attempt. It had likely thought that he was attempting to complete the test by doing it, not realizing that he just wanted to return to the bottom as quickly as possible.
He put the personal items bag into the bag with the corpses and the others collected the rest of the goods. None of the victims had gotten a level five technique the way Marcos had, but there were many interesting pieces of equipment and several level three and four techniques. Marcos only asked for two things from the system goods. The first was that, while they can use the goods while here, they should verify with the police if they can keep them when they leave, and the second was for a copy of all of the books if they were allowed to do so. Franky figured that, as the police would only be able to sell the things at the yearly evidence auction, as the real owner can’t be found, there was a chance they might get to keep them anyway, and agreed. The others eventually agreed as well, and they all returned to the top of the trial, with Franky being the only one to try and do the trial backwards.
When he made it to the top forty minutes later, a box teleported to him which contained a personal cloaking device. It would only block you from electromagnetic detection, including visual, thermal, and radar, even including laser grids, but Franky loved the prize, as well as the fifty thousand bonus points.
For the rest of the time they had inside the trial, the people split up, doing their own trials. Franky bought a level five Darkness type cultivation techniques with the fifty thousand points from the challenge, which didn’t technically require a spirit root but could benefit from any of them, as a root gave the qi higher energy spikes which could boost the effect against abilities from that root. Essentially, using a water root with the techniques would make the hiding effects stronger against water type detection, but weaker against Earth type.
They then split up, promising to meet back here when there was an hour left, as the portal would appear just outside of the shop area.
---
Ilarya:
When I returned to the manor I told the Ambassador what I had done today and he informed me that he would be attending the auction tomorrow at noon, and wanted me to accompany him. The caravan would be setting out the next morning, and we would be joining them. As for the parasite, the multiple tests had shown that it could be easily defeated. We would simply need to go into seventy two hour quarantine upon returning home, during which time we would lower our cultivation to level two in order to starve it out. I gave him a talisman to isolate the current parasites, and Jiang made him another pot of tea. This one was from the Ji family stores and was supposed to have been in there for over a year, but she added an Ice Shard mint leaf to the tea anyway. This made it feel like he was drinking iced tea despite the fact that the tea was steaming and slightly altered the taste, but he didn’t mind.
I gave him a level two rainbow fruit but it seemed to have no effect. That wasn’t surprising, given the fact that his cultivation was much higher than it. Tomorrow I would see if I could buy any level three or even level four Rainbow fruits four us to use. Those should be capable of helping him even if he manages to break through tonight. Instead, I gave him two of my six Earth Essence stones, the two with the highest quality qi, at the low and middle area of High grade, in case he needed a quick source of the qi.
I read over the cultivation technique he was using again as he prepared and returned the book, taking the war memoir book instead. As far as I could tell the cultivation book had several ways to improve the quality of the core. The first was to compress it. Most techniques taught this method, even on earth, so it was common. While the Earth techniques mostly just removed excess biochemicals like proteins, water, various gasses, and keratin, this world had some unique methods for compressing it. The second was to alter it to carry elemental qi the same way the essence stones did.
After leaving and saying goodbye to Jiang, I went back to my room to think over how this technique might work. Both halves were confusing. I ate a Rainbow fruit and felt my thoughts loosen up a bit, like a level of mental fog had lifted, then returned to thinking. When I thought over everything I knew about solid qi, I eventually remembered a strange scientific paper that I had read in college but almost forgot. Apparently the fruits still had a reason to help my memory. The paper described seven known forms of crystallized qi, analogous to the fifteen or so known forms of water ice, or how carbon can be graphite, graphene, nanotubes, or diamonds.
The first form is what occurs when you barely get it to the proper pressure and temperature. It is by far the most common, and what all commercial core devices used. The second and third are about five percent more dense, and happen at roughly double the pressure at human body temperature. The fourth and fifth are roughly ten and eleven percent denser respectively, and occur at roughly six and seven times the pressure. The sixth is roughly twenty two percent denser and occurs at thirteen times the density. The seventh form was only made in trace amounts when the study came out five years ago, but the pressures were around twenty to twenty five times as high. Were this pressure produced purely with raw qi, it would almost require level five pressures to produce, which likely meant that until late or peak level four this was not an option. Each conversion from earlier forms releases significant heat, which often prevents the crystal from improving as well.
This world must have found a way to use qi to compress it instead of hydraulics and dense materials like Earth, and probably dealt with the heating issue by making it on the extremely small scale, essentially making no more than a grain of sand at first. As qi was added it would form the same type of crystal that the cultivator produced during their breakthrough, thus letting them store far more qi at the same level. One of the main reasons those at core hit a limit with their qi was that the core was too large, and had started pushing on the surrounding body tissue. Compressing the core would let you have the same energy with a smaller core, thus lowering that effect.
The second effect required that the crystal hold onto qi of a specific element, but not alter its form when discharged, as this would cause it to crack. Once I thought of the core as a capacitor or molecular sieve, where the qi stuck to the surface but didn’t penetrate, this made more sense, but I still wasn’t certain how it worked. I would need to study the stones which I owned to see if I could discover how they stored qi.
In the end I decided to take a break and work on my own cultivation. After setting up five of the essence stones in a circle, with each stone only touching the ones beside it in the wuxing cycle so that they might learn to train against each other, I started lowering my cultivation to level two. I put several blocks in my false meridians that limited the density of qi which flowed through them, and soon all of the liquid qi was not longer flowing, becoming a gas a tiny piece at a time as it moved. I fed what was left in my dantian into my cultivation seeds, then put another block into my dantian which essentially added a flaw to its ability to refine qi, limiting the density of the qi to around 90% of that needed for pure liquid qi, thus putting my maximum level at late level two. I noticed that my true meridians and soul sea were trying to force qi into me to overcome these blocks and blocked the points where they connected to me in a similar manner. After once more using up most of my qi on growing seeds, my level officially lowered to late level two.
After that I noticed that I had a dull pain throughout my body. I wasn’t sure what was causing it exactly, but somehow knew that it was flaws within my cultivation showing themselves. My level two advancement technique was a proper, if cheap, one, and it had produced a dull pain. What level of pain would I be in if I lowered myself to level one, where I had only used free techniques to break through and advance, and no doubt had far worse flaws? I was about to try to fix them when Jiang entered the room and we decided to do another realm of training. I could use the pain to train my mind so I agreed to start immediately.
Now that I was late level two she didn’t have to try as hard to defeat me, the contest now being a young child versus a teenager instead of a young child versus a trained adult. While the training still took considerable effort on her part, I was able to produce more troops to attack from more pathways, expanding her training to improve her multitasking capability. This time she used up to five different attack patterns, instead of her old two. She was making good progress, so I called it off early and advised her to eat a Rainbow fruit and meditate on what she had learned so far.
Soon after she ate the fruit, however, she started acting extremely intoxicated and exhausted. I helped her walk towards the bed but when she could no longer properly control her legs I carried her there and told her to go to sleep. As the fruit had completely overpowered her mind, strongly upgrading every system at once, she would be too mentally exhausted right now to meditate. When it wore off and she woke up she could return to meditation, though she wouldn’t get the full effect of the training due to forgetting details. Next time she would need to meditate on the training first, then lay down and eat the fruit. Or I could look for level one Rainbow fruits when I looked for the others. I could always give the extras to his spirit beasts, so that wouldn’t be an issue.
I brought Xiao out from the bag and let him eat a bit of lightning wheat and a few of the fruits. While he didn’t mind them, he asked that I get him more spicy insects, so I decided to swing by the spirit beast merchant tomorrow while I was looking for fruit to buy another ten Blue Horror centipedes. Tomorrow morning would be busy.
