He made it to his master’s quarters, numb as his master’s servant went to make sure that he was ready to receive guests.
Not long afterward, his master walked into the room, looking out over the city.
“Master, I have erred.” Xui Deng dropped to his knees. If there was someone who could make this right, it was his master. He relayed everything that had happened.
His master’s face turned grim as he heard it all. “He killed the one who poisoned him right away?” Grandmaster Eri asked.
“Yes, Master.”
“Good, then there will be no one to question. Make sure that you clean up any loose ends. With them killing someone inside the city, Lord Chonglu shouldn’t let this go,” Eri said confidently. “Even if he was going to let them go, to gain favor with us in order to heal his children, he will do all in his power to appease us.”
Xui Deng was stunned by his master’s ability. Not only had he resolved Xui’s fear in a few short words, he had shown the power he had over the city lord himself.
“Will we get someone to heal his children?” Xui asked.
“Their affliction is a deep one and something that only the higher-ups would be able to deal with. It will take a lot to take them from their own positions. We must make sure that Lord Chonglu knows the grace that we give to him and will pay the fee due,” Eri said in a righteous voice.
New strength came into Xui Deng’s body. The bracelet on his arm vibrated, telling him that a message had arrived.
Seeing it, Eri waved his hand. “Take it, it might be important.”
“Yes, Master.” Xui listened to the call.
Confused, he looked at his master. “I have just got word from some people I know. They said that the guards let the two men go. One of them said that they would come back to destroy whoever poisoned his friend. Captain Quinn has come out of the lord’s manor. His orders were not to kill the duo, but send them a message that the lord wants to meet with them,” Xui said.
Eri’s eyes went wide and then thinned as his fist tightened. “Call upon those loyal to us. I will offer twenty silvers for whoever kills one of them—fifty for whoever kills both of them and brings proof. We must not let these two corrupt the city lord’s mind.”
***
Rugrat had kept on running when they left Chonglu behind. Erik focused on healing his liver and kidneys. With flashes of healing his entire body, he couldn’t focus on the fact that his body was dying from the inside. If he did, then he might give in to panic.
All he could do was deal with the problem at hand and disassociate what was happening in front of him under his Simple Organic Scan.
Rugrat found somewhere safe, pulling Erik off his shoulder and laying him on the ground.
“Get an IV and saline drip into me.” Erik’s face was white, with his veins turning from blue to black in places.
Rugrat didn’t pause, quickly pulling out the gear. He found Erik’s vein, put in the needle and set up the bag.
“Heal me, don’t burn out,” Erik said, every word forced and exhausting. “Gimme potions.”
Rugrat pulled out his Stamina and Mana potion, tipping them into Erik’s mouth as the latter was weak and fading fast. Rugrat used his healing spell on Erik, taking on some of the strain.
Erik focused on his liver and kidneys. The blood coming through was cleaner than what entered. It was slow, but now with Rugrat helping, its speed was increasing.
Erik could only focus on his kidneys and liver. The fear, the knowledge of how close he was to dying nearly sent him into a panic. It was hard to try to keep a cool head.
He noticed that it wasn’t just Erik and Rugrat’s healing at work. With healing his missing limbs, Erik’s body was now naturally more resilient to damage; with the poison in his blood, his natural recovery was ignited.
The Stamina and Mana recovery potions that Rugrat had given him had run out. Erik’s condition was still bad, but the black blood was slowly being cleared out by his liver and kidneys.
With Rugrat helping to keep the rest of his body functioning, Erik pushed on, just staying above Mana fatigue so he wouldn’t have to endure the headaches and mental decline.
For two hours, they fought—healing spells against poison.
Erik had Rugrat alter the dosages of different chemicals and compounds added to the IV.
Finally there was no more damage. Instead, it stabilized. Erik was wheezing, his lips covered in caked blood, his entire body thin and pale as black veins showed.
“Dehydrated, starvation,” Erik said to Rugrat.
Rugrat quickly pulled out another IV. It was hard to find Erik’s veins in his arms, so Rugrat used his leg, giving him supplements to hydrate and give him the basic supplements he needed.
Erik and Rugrat continued to heal. They had never healed for this long before. The mental strain was intense as they both knew one mistake and Erik would be lost.
Erik’s condition started to improve. The blood coming through his liver and kidneys was no longer filled with black poison and held a powerful vitality to it.
Erik felt as if his circulatory system was being reborn. A warm and powerful feeling traced through his body. His heartbeat increased in power, becoming deeper. Each beat shook Erik’s body as blood flowed faster, the black blood being replaced with a deep red blood that seemed to brim with vitality.
Erik’s color started to return as the black in his veins faded away and a natural red appeared.
After passing through his liver and then kidneys, there was no sign of the poison anymore.
His new blood was like rains upon a parched desert: his body drew it in and the previous damage started to fade away. Erik collapsed from the strain as a new strength entered his body.
Chapter: A New Direction
Erik woke slowly. His body felt stronger than ever before. There was still some remaining weakness from the dehydration and starvation he had gone through.
Rugrat moved to him. From his look, he hadn’t slept all night, watching over Erik. “How you feeling?” Rugrat asked.
“A lot better.” Erik checked over his body with a Simple Organic Scan. Instead of spreading poison, his body was getting stronger with the blood in his body, strengthening him internally.
“Scared me there for a bit,” Rugrat said with a half-laugh.
“Don’t worry, not getting rid of me that easily.” Erik laughed.
His notifications symbol was blinking at him, drawing his attention.
Erik opened it up.
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For tempering your blood, you have unlocked the quest: Body Cultivation
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Quest: Body Cultivation
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The path cultivating one’s body is not easy. To stand at the top, one must forge their own path forward.
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Requirements:
Reach Body Like Stone Level
Sub-requirements
Tempering of the Blood
Tempering of the Bones
Tempering of the Organs
Tempering of the Muscle
Tempering of the Skin
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Rewards:
3 to Strength
3 to Agility
3 to Stamina
5 to Stamina Regeneration
100,000 EXP
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==========
Through tempering your blood, you have found that your body heals at an increased rate. Your Stamina and Stamina Regeneration have also increased!
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1 to Stamina Regeneration
1 to Stamina
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Natural healing rate, like overall health, was a hidden stat and not something that people could quantify, or the system recognized. The only time that it was acknowledged was when someone’s body’s abilities took a leap upward, going through the stages
of Body Like Stone, Body Like Iron, and so on.
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You have reached Level 8
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When you sleep next, you will be able to increase your attributes by: 5 points.
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7,280/48,000 EXP till you reach Level 9
==========
With Erik passing out due to exhaustion, his body hadn’t acknowledged him as going to sleep, so the Experience didn’t take effect and he didn’t increase in overall level.
“Damn, how does anyone become a damn Body Cultivator when it’s this hard?” Erik muttered to himself. With the Mana Gathering system, as long as he increased his Mana Regeneration then he was able to pass through the Vapor and Mist stage; in the Drop stage, he would need to compress his Mana slightly and the Core Compression stage would require him to use outside help or spells to control his Mana and form a Mana core.
With Body Cultivation, to just get to the first stage he needed to temper the different systems in his body—a total of five different systems. If going by how he had completed his blood tempering, Erik wasn’t looking forward to the remaining temperings.
He dismissed the information and looked at Rugrat.
“So, what’s the plan?” Rugrat asked. “Do we go back, kill the fuckers who targeted you?”
Rugrat’s voice was casual but Erik knew he was serious.
“Not yet. There are some powerful people in the city and we still need to increase our strength.” Thankfully they hadn’t left anything behind as they had all of their gear stored in their storage rings. “Let’s go to the Beast Mountains instead. We can increase our level and our skills, and build up our gold. There are many things we can find in the Beast Mountains to increase our strength and they don’t care who we are.”
Rugrat seemed to relax a bit. He had been tense ever since the previous day. Knowing that they weren’t going right back into the fight brought relief.
“Let’s move our camp, get some food and sleep. Then we’ll head for the Wild Reaches Trading Outpost,” Erik said.
Erik pulled the IVs out, storing them before digging into some of the rations and water they had. Satisfied, they cleared up everything and headed off.
They had both bought maps of the area so they knew the Beast Mountains region and the closest trading outpost that ringed the massive area.
They made camp and Erik took first watch. Rugrat quickly passed out as Erik surveyed the area.
He didn’t know who had tried to kill him, but he would make sure that they wouldn’t survive.
***
Domonos was sitting in a cafe with his people around him. The rest of the cafe had been cleared out. A man rushed up before taking a knee in front of Domonos.
“Young Lord, we have talked to different people around the city and tried to look for the two men but it has been hard to do so. Their clothing must have changed and they were wearing something similar to the people in Chonglu,” the man reported.
Domonos frowned. He trusted his people to find out where the two people were. After all, it was just two nobodies; they had no status or position in Chonglu.
“Talk to the guards at the gate. Have them report to me if they see these two entering the city again.” Domonos wasn’t willing to chase after these two. The Willful Institute he had become a part of would be descending in the coming weeks to pick up the talents they had scouted and recruit more.
There was also some kind of competition that they had to temper their students that they brought but it hadn’t been revealed to him what they did.
“Young Lord, there were two people who fled the city yesterday.” A man beside Domonos stepped forward, speaking into his ear.
“Oh?” he said, showing faint interest.
“They were healing people in the market area. There had been one of them, but the second day there were two of them. They were attacked but killed the attacker before fleeing. One of them was heavily wounded. Many don’t believe he would survive. The guards didn’t stop them as they fled the city.”
Domonos tapped his fingers against the armrest of his seat. It might very well be the people his youngest brother had talked about. To make the guards even fear from attacking them… Was there something more?
“Many of the people at the market said that when they were attacked, their aura was dominating, making many fear for their lives.”
“They are nothing but weak pawns.” Domonos dismissed them. He had heard that there was something going on with Lord Chonglu looking for healers. This might be the reason that the guards hadn’t stopped them as they looked to flee.
“If they don’t return, then we won’t pursue them,” Domonos said, dismissing the matter. He didn’t have time to waste on these unimportant people and others seemed to want to kill them.
Chapter: Path to Beast Mountains
Erik and Rugrat headed from Chonglu City toward the Wild Reaches Trading Outpost through the forests, keeping clear of the roads and anyone who might be on them.
Their speed was much greater than before and they could run for longer easily.
They’d debated going back to their caches, but with the room in their storage rings, they wouldn’t be able to collect everything, so they continued with what they had.
It was only when they were getting closer to the Wild Reaches Trading Outpost that they started to see people again.
They changed their clothes, wearing a different outfit. After what had happened with the Silaz trading house, they made sure to keep changes of clothes to hide their identity.
Wearing scarves to cover their mouths and a dark cloak, they looked like two bandits back on Earth.
No one who had seen them before would know who they were.
They joined the carts and people who were joining the main road.
Wild Reaches Trading Outpost was simply built, with large and powerful stone walls that showed signs of battle. Powerful weapons were affixed to the walls. Hard-looking men and women patrolled the walls. Their armor was uniform, but was worn based on the power it gave the wearer. These people, more than the clean-looking Chonglu guards, were those who had dealt with life-and-death battles again and again without hope of support and survived.
Moving to the gate, few people dared to yell out, paying their toll and moving into the city.
Erik and Rugrat paid their coinage.
“No killing in the city,” the guard said, letting them through.
They passed through, getting their first view into the city.
It was roughly made, but all of the buildings were made from hard timbers and stone, looking like their own defensive forts.
The people were hardy and unkempt, looking as if they hadn’t showered in weeks, but their weapons and armor were well maintained. They begrudgingly went about their day, selling their spoils to the various trading houses and merchants.
The bars attracted the greatest number of mercenaries, fighters, and traders.
There were different trading houses here that were looking for all kinds of goods, from monster cores, to monster meat, rare ingredients, even weapons and armor that one came across.
The Beast Mountains were not a peaceful place and there was a dark undertone to the city as people moved in groups and evaluated one another openly.
Erik and Rugrat moved through the streets. Using their rifles might attract too much attention. Most of the people here were high-level adventurers who shouldn’t be underestimated. If they saw Erik and Rugrat’s weapons and wanted them, as long as no one reported them, no one would know how Erik and Rugrat died.
Their first stop was a weapons store. It was one of the busiest, with people checking out the new wares. Weapons and armor were prized possessions. There were few stores in Chonglu City that could compare to their selection.
“Hello, can I help you?” a server came up and asked them.
“We’re looking for
bows,” Erik said. Both of them had shot compound bows on Earth and had a few of them lying around.
They already had the Marksman skill so they didn’t want to waste the effort they had put in already.
“Certainly. This way,” the woman said, with a small smile, used to the blunt way that they spoke.
The floor had been broken up into different areas based on weapons.
She took them to a wall filled with bows. People were checking out the different items here.
There were no compound bows here; all of them were longbow or shortbow. Only a few were recurve. There were also some crude crossbows as well.
Rugrat looked them over, checking their stats and abilities.
Erik wasn’t the best shot with a bow, so he focused on the shortbows. They required less strength to pull back on the bow string and their range was lower, but one could fire more arrows faster.
Rugrat went straight for the recurve bows. He’d used more crossbows before and the recurve bows, although being the most expensive, were also the most powerful.
Erik finally picked the best shortbow based on price and base damage.
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Cold Whisper
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Damage: 5 (piercing)
Weight: 3.2 kg
Durability: 89/100
Base Value: 1 Silver, 23 Coppers
Range: Short Range
Requires: Arrows
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Just the bow by itself was worth nearly half a day’s worth of healing people. Erik moved to the arrows, getting three different types.
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Freezing Arrow
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Damage: 2 (piercing) 1 (freezing)
Weight: 0.2 kg
Base Value: 5 Coppers
Attributes: Applies freeze damage on target for 15 seconds. Chance to paralyze.
Used with: Bow
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The Two Week Curse Page 15
