Kapitel 2: Spirit Energy

Michael opens his eyes after a good night's sleep, when he sits up a jiggle on his chest reminds him of his new body. He turns to sit on the side of the bed, from where he's able to grab yesterday's clothing to put on. Having designed multiple types of clothing in his past life, he knows how to put it on, but even knowledge can be beaten by having to actually do it, so he fails with the bra once or twice, before some struggling to get it on correctly. Once again noting a tingle spread through his body from his chest, when he puts on the bra, he does his best to ignore and get used to it. After dressing up fully, finding the other pieces of clothing to be easy to put on, he enters the sub-space to study a little before breakfast.

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Upon entering the sub-space, Michael walks over to the books first, as he deems learning about the world to be pretty important. When he lifts the first book to read it, he finds a letter laying under it. He lays the book to the side and open the letter, it reads:

"Hey Michael, welcome to the world of Archid, you should be in a hidden alleyway when reading this. I hope you find your new body to your liking, as it took some time to make it a real beauty, but that will come to show later. Anyway, let's get to the important information now.

Your new name will be Claire Turner and your "starting area" is one of the weakest provinces of this world, to give you as much time as you need.

Now for the cultivation ranks, most ranks are split into nine stages, the first two ranks are:

Body Refining, this is the rank where you increase the strength of your physical body, to prepare for the power of the next ranks.

Core Creation, throughout this realm, you will create your dantian, also known as the core. The dantian will contain and refine the qi you'll be using for skill and abilities.

More info about the realms of cultivation can be read in one of the books.

P.S. I've given you the ability to shapeshift as well, it can't do much now, but it will improve and evolve in accordance with your cultivation realm. I gave you the power as I'm curious about the ways you'll be using it.

P.S.S. I might have also hidden more powers within you, but you'll need to discover those on your own.

P.S.S.S. I hope you will enjoy your time in this new world, and I hope to not see you for a long, long time.

Written by your friendly neighborhood god."

With a sigh, Michael puts the letter away. "Why do I get the feeling that god misplaced the letter, I guess he'd want me to see it when I first arrived," He looks down at himself once more and says. "I should probably also start thinking of myself as a girl, I did wish for this after all, so, I better get used to it already, and my name will be Claire Turner from now on." After steeling his resolve, no that doesn't fit anymore, rather, her resolve, she repeats her name a few times for herself.

She decides to try cultivating as soon as possible, but that breakfast is important to get over first, so she exits the sub-space and walks out of her room, after a quick use of the bathroom. (A/N: I'll spare you for those details)

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Upon entering the nearly empty eating area, Claire sits down at a one-person table. A waitress quickly appears by her side, giving her a menu to choose from. 'Hm, the standard looks good." She asks the waitress to bring her, her food. Her food is delivered around 10 minutes later, the breakfast consists of 3 slices of healthy bread, a little butter, and some fruits.

She finishes her food quite quickly and goes back to her room, on her way back, she thanks the waitress for the good food. After she arrives at her room, she adopts a lotus position on her bed and enters her sub-space.

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Once Claire has entered the sub-space, she spends the next half an hour reading through the book on cultivation, before starting her own cultivation journey. After taking a lotus position and closing her eyes, she tries to feel for the spirit energy mentioned by the book.

As she's sitting there for half an hour, excitedly trying her best to feel the energy in the air without success, a thought pops up in her head. Instead of trying to forcefully feel the energy, maybe meditation will help more. After a few minutes of meditation, a tingle spreads across her body, causing her to open her eyes with a small shock.

Along with the opening of the eyes, her concentration is broken and the tingle slowly dies down, but it doesn't disappear completely. "Hmm, this must be spirit energy." Now that she can feel the energy, she tries using the technique in her custom manual (A/N: the info of the manual is in her head). She can feel the tingle from her skin seep into her body.

As the spirit energy is flowing smoothly into her, seeping down into every muscle fiber of her body, improving them little by little. Her heart is slowly able beat with a stronger force, her body is more flexible, and similar changes are happening. She opens her eyes after a few hours. "That felt good, I can understand why people like to cultivate," She gets up from her bed to do some light training, just so her body gets at least a little movement today.

As she's doing some stretches and other exercises that doesn't require much space, she's able to feel her body being quite a bit stronger than before, which is surprising with how little cultivation she has been doing at this point. After spending around 15 minutes on exercise, she resumes the lotus position. "Time to continue." She starts the cultivation process once more.

After around eight hours of cultivation, she snaps open her eyes, a feeling of power sweeps through every fiber of her being, bringing incredible pain with it. The lotus position falls apart and she rolls around on the floor, screaming in pain, as she's not used to a lot of pain.

Luckily, the sub-space doesn't allow sound to pass into the real world. This gives Claire all the peace, quiet, and time she needs to calm down from the pain. The pain slowly recedes from her body over the next half an hour, with many pained gasps, pants, and moans being released from her mouth in that span of time.

Once that half hour has passed, she's able to crawl over to lean up against a wall in the subspace. "Hahh, that was not was I expected at all, but I can certainly feel that my body has become stronger," She clenches her right hand into a fist, enjoying a strength beyond what she ever had on earth. "I'm quite surprised that just becoming a cultivator elevated my body to this level, oh, that reminds me of something. Shouldn't this space have expanded when I became a body refiner, or is it only when I rank up from that?

As if her words had just triggered something, the walls and ceiling of the sub-space start moving away, causing her to tumble onto her back, as she was leaning against the wall.

The expansion causes the room to grow to a size of 4x4x4 meters. Along with the room expanding, the quantity of the spiritual energy is also increased. As the walls are retracting, a few different things are revealed, those being multiple sets of clothing of different kinds.

"Speak of the devil," She looks around the space in amazement and tries to figure out how it just expanded, but even after spend a good 10 minutes on it, she has to chalk it up to her lacking knowledge on how this world works or god's power.

She stands up to do some more stretching, as her body really needs some moving around. After having stretched out for some time, Claire goes over to look at the clothes that appeared, but she's interrupted by the thought that she might miss dinner, as there's no way besides by intuition, to tell time inside the sub-space.

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Her eyes open as Claire exits the sub-space with a smile, but that smile is quickly replaced with a surprised expression and a shiver quickly spread over her body, as she's unprepared for the lower energy amount in the actual world. "Phew, that was quite the experience, having that sub-space has just become an even greater boon." She prepares herself and then leaves to go eat dinner.

Unlike in the morning, the dining area of the inn was nearly at max capacity, this raises the expectation of the dinner Claire's about to have.