Capítulo 123: 4-6
Chapter 4 Five Hundred Copies Of The Worst Array You've Ever Seen
Though he had decided on going to the lunatic's true inheritance site, he wasn't ready to go just yet. Though a lot of it was just him procrastinating, it was also true that going at his current strength could be dangerous. Though that was a reason for him to cultivate. It didn't serve as a good reason to pace around a basement
Will paced around the basement. He was looking at the Information Manual Exchange Marketplace, trying to find something useful. He was finding a lot of not that.
His points had gone up since opening the chest, probably because the trap was deactivated for the next person who found it. Even if the trap could activate multiple times, it wasn't going to activate at all with the chest left wide open. As he thought about it he realized he didn't really know what caused the causal chain to shift. It was somewhat odd when he thought about it. Why would it shift because he cultivated outside? Him going outside to cultivate wasn't really much of a choice. There wasn't really any possibility of him not doing that. Even if he had made a choice, it was a choice between starving to death and touching grass. He couldn't imagine he'd ever pick starving to death. It was like for some reason the causal chain expected him to never do anything and kept getting shocked when he did stuff.
He decided to look at the Help section, and his guess was confirmed just about true. Apparently, the causal chain assumed he would do nothing. When he laid in bed, the causal chain assumed a timeline where he continues laying in bed, perfectly still, and eventually starves to death. When he opened the chest, the causal chain assumed a timeline where he stood there holding the chest lid until he starved to death. It was quite interesting.
Thinking about it, his points going up meant that him opening the chest effected something, which meant that most likely someone would find this place later. He had an idea. He copied the note in the chest, then tried to use the Export function to draw the array he'd bought using the ink that was on the note as a physical medium. It worked, so Will made a new document with just the words "spiritual energy gathering array" inside. He then exported it under the array, using some excess ink from the array drawing. The point change was immediate. In fact, the points changed when he first pulled the paper out and held it where it wouldn't fall into the chest if he starved to death doing nothing. They stayed consistent throughout altering its contents, only changing when he moved it back above the chest.
He pulled it back out, and the points went up again, but only by half this time. Same with putting it back. It seemed like doing the same thing didn't work as well. He pulled the book out of the chest, and the points went up even more than with the paper. Then he put it back, and they went up again. Then he pulled it out again. The points went up half as much. He put it back in. The points went up half as much. Repeating the process, it seemed to follow a pattern of half, one third of that half, one fourth of that third, one fifth of that fourth, and so on, Will assumed, since he didn't feel like doing this anymore.
He could tell by now that the chest had some kind of preserving function. He tried the same thing he did with the note and book with the compass, but the point gain was minimal, probably because it wouldn't decompose like paper would.
Will decided to buy something with all these new points. He looked at the Information Manual Exchange Marketplace. It wasn't much better than before. At least he could afford a recipe for some really good grilled cheese. Though the requirements had a bunch of oranges and a red, which honestly made him a bit curious. He made a document in his Document Storage to remind him to buy it when he was rich.
Going back to the Information Manual Exchange Marketplace, he really couldn't find much of anything good. Even the few cultivation manuals he found weren't good. Almost all of them were either too hard to cultivate, had horrible side effects, were hard to cultivate and had horrible consequences for failing, were downright useless, or were one of the previous and also bad. Though some seemed decent but had black requirements, which he assumed were just ridiculously hard to get.
He decided to give up. He grabbed the compass, considered whether he should take the book, took it to prevent whoever came next from getting it, and left the basement, his points going up a bit as he brought the compass outside. He headed over to his cultivation door that he'd left behind the house. It was working quite well, having been running at the upgraded speed for the entire time he was in the basement. He decided to sit down and cultivate to prepare for his coming journey.
He sat down on his door, feeling the rich spiritual energy. Though there were only a few tiny specks of lifeforce in the area, he could still cultivate in spiritual energy at least. Inhaling, he sent the pure into the middle, and the demonic lightning into the bottom.
As he repeated the process, he sent some of his consciousness into the mind space and played on his phone. After two hours, his Inter-Universal Connection Dimensional Energy Bar ran empty. As he looked at the dantians he had been haphazardly throwing energy into, he found that the middle one seemed to be full. It made sense, since he'd taken all the mouse's spiritual energy.
But whether it made sense or not wasn't important. He needed to find a way to continue cultivating. There obviously was one. He couldn't imagine that the cultivators of this place just filled their dantians over a few days or so and then just stopped there. Even if his cultivation speed was fast, Will had no illusions that he'd reached the peak of this world with just two days of cultivation. He knew how strong it was, and it wasn't that much. It was strong, sure, but it wasn't even at a supernatural level. There were bodybuilders in the other universe that were stronger than he was currently.
As he examined his middle dantian closely, he noticed something. The spiritual energy he got from the mouse was denser than the rest. So he just needed to condense the energy. That wouldn't be hard at all. Will moved to condense the spiritual energy. He didn't do it gracefully or carefully, he just relied on brute force to squeeze it really hard. It didn't work very well. As soon as he let go, it all just expanded out again. He really didn't know what the mouse had done to get its spiritual energy to stay like that.
Then, Will had a realization. Sure, the spiritual energy didn't stay dense, but he could make it dense. It seemed that the problem he had wasn't a problem at all. That he could force it to be denser meant that he could just shove more in and it would get denser, since the walls of his dantian took up the role he was taking when he actively kept it condensed.
Will got back to cultivating. He inhaled, sending the demonic lightning to the bottom and the pure to the middle. It went exactly the same as before his middle dantian was full. He repeated the process for a while, waiting for his Inter-Universal Connection Dimensional Energy Bar to refill. While he waited, he played with the Appearance Alteration Menu making his face look all funny in the preview it gave before canceling it and doing it again. After the fifth funny face, he checked his Inter-Universal Connection Dimensional Energy Bar and found that it was a little under half full. He continued cultivating while playing on his phone for a little less than an hour until it ran out.
Phone gone, he checked his middle dantian again. It was barely different. He hadn't really expected to achieve that much in only a bit more than an hour, but he was still a bit annoyed at the lack of progress. Turning his attention outward, he noticed that the spiritual energy on his cultivation door was higher than it was before. Will was ticked off by this. It turned out that the door he was sitting on cultivated faster than he did.
Will calmed down from his irrational anger as he remembered that he could just cultivate his spiritual roots. And so Will set about doing that. Unlike regular cultivation, he could cultivate his spiritual roots all day without getting bored. He'd never really understood the idea of cultivating for days straight like he'd heard of in novels, but once he tried it himself, he started to get it. The feeling of getting stronger really felt satisfying. The only issue was that Will was used to rapid progress, and when it wasn't rapid he got bored easily. But when it came to cultivating his spiritual roots, the exponential growth always felt just as fast.
So Will cultivated his spiritual roots. He did so for six more hours. Then he felt how tired he was. Being two years old now, he needed naps, something he had been putting off for a while now. It seemed like a good time to switch to regular cultivation. He needed something to occupy himself with while doing regular cultivation, and sleep was something that could occupy him.
Will inhaled, throwing the demonic lightning into the bottom and pure into the middle as always. He left all but a sliver of his consciousness to continue doing so as he let the rest drift off to sleep.
—
Will was awoken by the sun shining in his eyes again. As he woke up he suddenly noticed the level of spiritual energy was lower. It was closer to the level the hut had before he started cultivating. He was surprised. It only took him a bit of cultivating his spiritual roots and he was already able to surpass fifty of the array he'd bought.
Checking his dantians, his lower one was close to being full, while the pure spiritual energy of his middle one appeared to be twice as dense. It was a great improvement.
But judging by the spiritual energy density around him, he wasn't going to be able to keep it up. Then he had an idea.
He was able to use the ink on a paper as a component to write something else, then putting more arrays on his array door was likely possible as well. He went back to the kitchen, pulled off the other cabinet door, and got to work.
He first tried making the exported arrays thinner so he could fit more. The previous door's arrays were a half millimeter thick, with a half millimeter of wood between each one, and they costes one point each. He found that he could shrink both down to an eighth of a millimeter each, for ten points. After that, the cost skyrocketed. Though he could afford it, the whole point of making them smaller was to fit more, and he wouldn't be able to even get fifty at that cost.
Will first placed fifty thin arrays on the second door. After a few minutes of blowing on it, he eventually got them all running. Testing it, the thickness didn't seem to effect the power of the arrays.
Will put one hundred fifty more arrays on the second door, then replaced the fifty arrays on the other door with two hundred small ones. After some blowing, he had four hundred functional arrays.
But Will had one last thing to try. He tried using the wood from the wall as a physical medium to put more arrays on the doors by making them thicker. He found out that he could. The issue was that it was expensive. It wasn't as expensive as making the arrays smaller, though. In fact, he could afford to add fifty more arrays per door.
He set about adding arrays. A few minutes later, and a few more minutes of blowing spiritual energy on them to make them work, he had five hundred spiritual energy gathering arrays. And all of them sucked. But together, they were able to achieve something slightly above average. There was a reason the manual was so cheap.
Will brought his cultivation doors outside, placed them on top of each other with the handles to the sides, and sat on top. He decided to cultivate his spiritual roots for four hours, then do regular cultivation until his Inter-Universal Connection Dimensional Energy Bar ran out, which was two hours. After that, he would stop being a little baby and head out. Well, he wouldn't stop being a little baby. That was going to take a few years. But he would head out.
Will started cultivating his spiritual roots. The time passed uneventfully, and after a little over four hours he switched to regular cultivation. He played on his phone for two hours while cultivating. Once his Inter-Universal Connection Dimensional Energy Bar was empty, he finished his cultivation. There wasn't much change, but that was expected since it was a short session.
Will spent a minute convincing himself to stop procrastinating, and then got up. He grabbed his cultivation doors by the handles, one in each hand, and walked to the edge of the array. He spent another minute checking the compass to make sure he was going the right way. He was. Between east and southeast. But he still checked it for a minute anyway. Then he remembered. He had an actual excuse to delay leaving slightly!
He had left the torture book on the kitchen floor. He had been holding it in one hand with the door handle in the other when he entered, but he was holding two door handles when he went back outside. He let go of the door he was holding in the hand other than the compass and headed inside. As he stood next to the book he realized an issue. He didn't have enough hands to carry it. In fact, now that he thought about it, he didn't really have enough hands to carry the compass either. Though he could kind of hold it at the same time as the door it was pretty uncomfortable to do that for a long time. He needed a bag. His head turned towards the bed. He could use the pillowcase. Though it wasn't in good shape, he was only carrying two light things, so he didn't have to worry about a hole being torn and his stuff falling out. He grabbed the pillow case, poked a hole through the sides near the opening, took some strings from the fraying sheet, twisted the strings so they stayed together, threaded them through the hole, tied the ends together, and wore I like a cross bag. It wasn't good, he'd definitely replace it with whatever he could get at the true inheritance site, but it worked.
Will placed the book and the compass inside his pillowcase bag, headed back to his cultivation doors, checked the compass for another minute, put it back in the pillowcase bag, grabbed a cultivation door handle in each hand, and finally exited the array.
It wasn't long before trouble arose. He was just a few feet from the edge of the array when he saw a creature coming over. It looked like a squirrel, except it was bright yellow, with a purple tail and red eyes. It padded down a tree and ran in his direction. Will didn't stop for it. He kept walking.
The creature reached him quickly, but instead of attacking him it just started following him.
The squirrel didn't recognize Will's existence. It just saw two really good cultivation spots. It didn't think about why they were moving, or how they'd just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It just followed them.
Though the spiritual energy density created by the array stacks wasn't really that impressive in the outside world, in a forest with no spiritual energy gathering arrays at all, it was incredibly dense. Especially so with the relatively sparse spiritual energy the forest had. And since pretty much none of the creatures of the forest had ever encountered a spiritual energy gathering array, they just saw a good cultivation spot and went towards it.
As such, after just fifteen minutes of travel, Will had five weird squirrels, two weird deer, three weird wolves, and one weird bear following him. All of them with the signature yellow, red, and maybe purple color scheme. Will had managed to figure out that they were probably drawn in by his cultivation doors, but other than that, he didn't really know what was going on. Shouldn't they be fighting? Will thought so, but they clearly weren't, so he wasn't too sure anymore.
The next fifteen minutes invited even more. This time with an even stronger looking bear mixed in with the others. The fifteen minutes after that brought in a giant wolf bigger than both the bears and a giant snake, along with the ten or so other tagalongs. The fifteen minutes after that brought in twice as many critters as the other fifteen minute intervals, with a whole family of mice like the one Will had killed in the hut joining alongside the normal ten. The fifteen minutes after that brought in an even more giant snake, this one big enough to eat the giant wolf whole, mixed in with the others.
The next three hours passed uneventfully. Not that more things didn't show up, they did, repeatedly, but that was more of the same event happening over and over again. By now, he had a veritable horde following him. Pretty much every creature he walked in range of joined the procession. The smart ones stayed far away. Most of them just thought it wasn't worth it. No matter how good the cultivation spot was, they couldn't use it if they were dead. Only the really smart ones saw what was truly going on. They saw the small unassuming figure leading the horde, and they wanted no part in whatever sinister machinations it had in mind.
A young dragon who had run away from home to see the world returned to it, terrified, and vowed to never run away again. A monkey brought back word to his tribe, and saw the chief look fearful for the first time. A great wise tortoise, who had seen humans before many times throughout his long life, had a good chuckle about it before returning to his cultivation.
Will was starting to get a bit tired. He had been walking like this for over four hours now, carrying two wooden cabinet doors, with his tiny baby legs. But even with his tiredness, he really didn't want to stop. Who knew if his misshapen conga line would erupt into battle if he stopped moving? He didn't know why they weren't fighting. If it was really because he was still moving, he'd end up collateral in a fight between every beast in the forest and every other beast in the forest. It was honestly pretty terrifying.
He had only managed to check the compass to see if he was going the right way by placing both doors on top of each other and holding both handles with one hand. And he had to do it without even slowing down either. He really hoped he got there soon.
Will's hope did not come to fruition. Even after another hour there was no true inheritance in sight. Now that he thought about it, he didn't even know what it would look like. Or if he would be able to see it at all. That really didn't help his emotional state.
Will trudged on for another hour. The horde behind him was still growing. Will was starting to think there were too many damn things in this forest. With all the different things following him, he wouldn't even be that surprised if a human were to join the procession. Every other living thing was doing it. Even plants were following him. Like the thing that seemed like just a big flower that got up and started walking as he walked by it. There was also a giant eagle that was walking like it didn't know how to fly. But he knew that it did know how to fly, because he'd seen it fly over his head before it landed on the ground and started walking.
Will felt like a walking zoo. Maybe it's not that bad, he could walk around the world and charge a fare for the experience. It was more likely he'd just get killed doing that now that he thought about it, but it did give him an idea. He started copying the appearance of everything he could see in his procession into his Document Storage. He added any notable traits they had in the document with them. There wasn't much in the way of notable traits, but he was able to write how a few of them hid themselves before following him, how some moved about in weird ways. He recalled the one thing he saw that didn't follow him and made a document for that as well. Whether it was actually a living thing or just looked like one, he would figure it out later, for now he just added "didn't follow" under it and kept going. It was actually a pretty good distraction. With how many things we're following him it also was taking a bit, which was nice as well.
He spent the next hour cataloging creatures in his procession as they were revealed from behind other things, as well as all the new ones that came. It made him feel a lot better. Now when he saw a new terrifying monster, he got a little bit of satisfaction from getting a new entry mixed in with his fear.
After another hour a human actually came. Well, not really a human, but it looked a lot like one. It was yellow, made out of lightning, and its lower half looked a bit like a stormcloud, but also yellow for some reason. It went in the documents.
He started cataloging the flora too at this point. He'd mostly cataloged everything that was hidden behind other horde members by now and wanted something else to do.
After two more hours, Will felt like something was wrong. He did the complex maneuver needed to access his compass without stopping or slowing down, and found something surprising. He was going the wrong way. By a lot. It was odd, since he'd been going the same direction.
After a very wide turn, he managed to get back on track. He put the compass away, went back to holding one handle per hand, and continued on.
After another hour he decided to start copying surroundings into a map. He'd mostly cataloged all the types of flora by this point, so he was getting bored again.
An hour later, he found out for sure that something was wrong. He was looking at something that looked suspiciously like the path left behind by a giant horde of creatures traveling in a straight line. Like the one following him. He looked at the map in his mind again and saw that it wasn't a straight line. He pulled out the compass and found that it was pointing a different direction than he was going.
Will knew he could just keep the compass in his hand and follow it. But holding the doors in one hand was pretty uncomfortable. After a wide turn back towards the right direction he kept a part of his consciousness watching the map, making sure he didn't veer off. He didn't stop cataloging things while he did so either. He just kept a part of his consciousness watching the map at all times.
After just fifteen minutes, he saw a big spooky red mountain in the distance. A big tacky mountain, in Will's opinion. A sick freak's tacky mountain. And he walked for twelve damn hours for it.
Chapter 5 The Beast King's Disciple (Hapless Two Year Old) And His Army (A Horde Of Wild Beasts)
It seemed clear to Will that the thing the Sick Freak left in his note about this place being impossible to find without the compass was incredibly untrue. In fact it was about five hundred creatures untrue. Because there were now about five hundred creatures here, and none of them had a compass. He was honestly hoping that the Sick Freak would be right about that one. He really wanted to get the horde of terrifying beasts to go away. Sadly, it seemed that the Sick Freak had a secret identity; the Stupid Sick Freak.
Well, he probably wasn't expecting someone like Will to find his inheritance.
And yet, Will was who he got. Well, Will and five hundred creatures, anyway. He stood at the tacky entrance of the tacky mountain. A tacky entrance that could fit his whole accidental entourage. Almost like the Sick Freak had planned this all out. Except he didn't. Will could tell. The Automatic Universal Linguistic Knowledge Database Accessor allowed him to understand exactly why the entrance was so big. It was because the Sick Freak was also the Tacky Sick Freak.
It took a bit before Will finally got through the entrance fully. While it didn't have a door, it did have a sheet of grey fog that made it impossible to see the inside before going through it. Once Will was past the grey fog, he saw what was inside. A test. A sick test from the Sick Freak. Three doors, a sign saying some stupid crap about what each door symbolized, a stupid fountain made to look like it was full of blood because it was made by a Tacky Sick Freak but wasn't full of blood and didn't even really look much like it was full of blood because the Tacky Sick Freak was also a Lazy Sick Freak. Will really didn't feel like dealing with any of it. His motivation for dealing with the Sick Freak's stupid tests was used up on the twelve hours of walking with no breaks with at least four of those hours being because of the stupid formations.
He thought about how his followers always followed him and never walked ahead of him, and the exhaustion he was feeling made him do something reckless. He did a hard u-turn and walked backwards. A part of his mind told him this was a horrible idea, that he'd die, and he heard it, but the alternative was going through the Tacky Trials in the Tacky Mountain made by a Sick Freak who was also a Stupid Sick Freak so his trials would be stupid and boring and lazy and would probably just end up being full of Tacky Stupid Sick Freak Tacky Stupid Torture and honestly? Dying didn't sound that bad compared to a load of bullshit like that. And so he kept walking backwards.
And five hundred creatures moved to line up behind him. Big as the room was, it wasn't nearly enough to fit all the creatures following him. And so they had to make room. First, the super snake that had joined his entourage after the giant wolf, slithered its way over to the middle door, the "trial of lightning" as the sign called it. It couldn't fit in the door. It didn't care. It slammed through the door making a hole twice its size where it used to be. It turned around to get in line. Similar events continued happening at all three doors. As time went on, and the line got longer, they pushed further and further into the trial halls. They got hit with demonic attacks in the demonic trial, shocked with lightning in the lightning trial, and hit with sharp implements that they were too strong to care about dodging and/or too big to weave through in the arts trial. The trials were meant for a beginner cultivator. When hundreds of powerful monsters came crashing through… well, they didn't work quite as well. It took several minutes for them to finish lining up behind Will. Once they did, the line stretched half of the way through the length of the trial halls.
But that wasn't enough for Will. He wanted the trials gone. And so he turned around again, and all his followers ran out to line up behind him. They smashed traps and broke anything that would be faster traversed broken. Yet Will wasn't satisfied. He walked all the way up to the lightning trial's wreck of a door, then turned around. Once again, the horde smashed through the trials, and once again, Will turned around. He repeated this process until the line stretched all the way to the door, then did a few more u-turns to make sure all the traps were well and truly destroyed. Once he was sure they were, and he did it one more time after he was sure just out of spite, he finally proceeded down the hallway. Though, he did so in a zigzag to cause a bit more destruction behind him.
The three halls all let out into the same room. At the back wall of that room was a door with three slots to place orbs in. Each of the trials had an orb in the middle, and participants were expected to go down one path, grabbing the orb on the way, go back to the starting room through another one, grabbing the orb on the way, and then come back to the door room through the last path, grabbing the final orb, and then place all three orbs into the slots for the door. Will walked through the large hole in the door, not even bothering to pay enough attention to figure all of that out.
After stepping through the hole in the door, Will found himself in a very pretty room. The left wall was glass, with an aquarium behind it, while the other walls were white. Will assumed it was probably jade. There were two bookshelves on the right wall with an open square arch between them, and there was a table in the middle of the room. Will took off his pillowcase bag, and quickly wrapped the string around the handles of the two cultivation doors after putting them together. He then walked over to the closest bookshelf, touched every book and copied them all as fast as he could, jumping up to be able to reach the top ones, then did the same to the other bookshelf before heading through the archway into the next room.
Inside the next room was a pedestal, with a single book on it. The book was titled "Demonic Lightning Arts". Will ran over, hopped up to reach it, and copied it. Once he did, he immediately embedded it into his memory. This one didn't have nearly as much torture in it. It also didn't have the female-specific rituals that got the last one age restricted, which was nice. Even though it was a cultivation manual like he had been wishing he'd had this whole time, it wasn't very useful to him.
The Demonic Lightning Arts, in essence, was less a manual on how to cultivate, and more a manual on how to not cultivate. For every step of cultivation that wasn't just gathering spiritual energy, it had a way to torture someone to skip it. The only thing that was even remotely useful that it mentioned was something called the Demonic Lightning Dagger. Will added Unoriginal to his name for the Sick Freak. That was four things now that were just a thing with Demonic Lightning before it. Either way, this Demonic Lightning Dagger seemed like what he was here to find. He looked behind him to see how destroyed the room was, but found that it wasn't actually destroyed at all.
He walked back into the first room and looked out the hole in the door. He met face to face with a wolf, with its nose pressed up against an imaginary glass pane. It seemed like there was some barrier keeping it out. Well, it was certainly convenient.
Will went back to the pedestal room. There were three doorless doorways. The back one seemed to lead to some hot spring-like area, the left one seemed to lead to a staircase leading down to the left of the door and up to the right. When he looked at the last room doorless doorway, he heard a woman's voice echoing in his head.
"Hey, kid, look, it's a shiny thing, you should pick it up, hey, pick up the pretty red thing."
Will stopped for a moment after hearing it. He saw the "pretty red thing" that was mentioned, it looked to be a dagger stabbed partway into the middle of some stone circle on the ground. He had planned to pick it up, since it seemed like the treasure that he had come here for in the first place, but he was starting to feel like maybe he shouldn't. He took a step back, and the voice echoed in his head again.
"Hey, there's no need to step away, I promise you won't be stealing anything. It's, um, a gift. It's a gift for you. So come pick it up, okay?"
Will got the feeling that this voice was coming from the "pretty red thing". Said pretty red thing likely being the Demonic Lightning Dagger from the Demonic Lightning Arts manual. The only weird part was that the manual didn't seem to mention that the dagger could talk. There were multiple instances where the dagger being able to talk should definitely come up, and yet it never did. Will decided to just ask the dagger.
"Awe yu the demonic wightning daggew?"
It didn't come out quite right, but he felt he got the point across. The voice responded.
"Huh?"
Will responded back.
"Fwom the book. The demonic wightning daggew fwom the book."
The voice responded again.
"Don't worry about that. Just come over and pick me up, I mean pick it up. It's a gift. I'll be really sad if you don't take it."
At least now he knew that the voice belonged to the dagger he was looking at. Whether it was the dagger from the book, he didn't know.
"Wisten, I'm not stupid, stop twying to use baby tawk. Just teww me what you awe and why you wan me to pick yu up."
The dagger responded.
"Please just hurry and pick me up before that sick freak comes back. I'm begging you."
Will was surprised that it had used the name he had been calling the Demonic Lightning Sick Freak. He couldn't remember what the third part of the title was supposed to be but Sick Freak fit better anyway. He asked the dagger a question.
"Yu meen the Demonic Wightning Sick Fweak?"
The dagger showed a hint of surprise before answering.
"Yeah, him, now stop talking and pick me up before he comes down here. Hurry!"
Will was starting to get a bit worried with this talk of the Sick Freak coming back.
"Isn't he dead? How wouwd he come down hewe?"
The dagger scoffed.
"How could he be dead? He's cultivating upstairs. And if you don't pick me up and go quick, he's going to stop cultivating and kill you. So let's hurry it up and get going."
Will didn't know whether he believed that the Sick Freak was still alive or not. It seemed like the basement was old. Really old. But then again, there was also a sacrificial ritual in the Demonic Lightning Arts manual that said it could increase lifespan, so maybe he had been able to survive using that. Either way, Will didn't feel like sticking around to find out. He let go of his cultivation doors, rushing over to grab the dagger.
Will was a bit surprised to find that the dagger's handle felt completely normal. Actually, it felt particularly comfortable. The notable part was the lack of any demonic lightning attacking his hand like he expected. He ignored it for now. He rushed back and grabbed his cultivation doors, the dagger calling him a "stupid kid" under its breath as he did, and ran to the door. He lifted his cultivation doors in front of him and ducked under the wolf's head. Instantly, the beast horde parted before him, many of them slamming into the wall behind them in an attempt to break through to line up better to no avail.
The dagger made a sound of confusion, but Will ignored it and ran. But he didn't even make it past the trial halls before he was noticed by a sick freak.
—
In a cultivation chamber sat a man. He was an old looking man, with a wispy beard and greying hair, but his body was toned and muscular. This man was the Demonic Lightning Sovereign, and he was in a good mood today. A seed he had planted a long time ago had finally borne fruit. And like any good fruit, he was going to use it as sustenance.
It was a new sacrifice his genius mind had come up with, one where he tortured and killed his own successor. And the fruit would fall right on his doorstep soon enough. He found that he was too excited to cultivate, so he headed downstairs to clear his head. What he found was shocking. His Demonic Lightning Dagger was nowhere to be found. Even weirder was the mark on the floor that looked like someone had been dragging around furniture. None of his furniture had been moved, he had arrays set up to prevent that, and the marks looked like they came from wood furniture, and he didn't have any wood furniture that would leave a mark even close to that. As he followed along the mark, he found it led straight to his front door. His front door with a large hole in it.
When he went outside, he became even more shocked. It looked like the whole forest had decided to come to his house. There was everything from a lightning squirrel to a damn lightning spirit to a walking flower. One person came to mind.
Beast King. This was something that only he could do. And ever since he used his nephew in a sacrifice, they had been sworn enemies. But he didn't feel the man's presence with his spiritual senses. The only presence he felt was… his Demonic Lightning Dagger? And someone holding it…
The Demonic Lightning Sovereign felt he understood. This must've been the Beast King's disciple. He should've known that killing all the kids suitable for his arts from the major families wouldn't be enough to stop him, that old dog had never been one to care about lineage. And looking at how a kid this young had managed to control this many monstrous beasts, he was starting to feel like letting the Beast King pick one of them would've been a lot better.
Talented as they were, there wasn't a chance in hell that they could've controlled an army like this at that age. But either way, this was an opportunity. The Beast King's disciple had just shown up at his doorstep. He could just kill the brat!
The brat was Will of course. Though oblivious to the fact that he had just been labeled the Beast King's disciple, he did see the Sick Freak come out of his house. And he kept running.
The Demonic Lightning Sovereign was waiting. He was going to follow after the kid and kill him, but if he did so now he'd run into the middle of this terrifying stampede. No, he'd wait until all the beast army was fully outside. There, he could fly above them. The large majority of the beasts here weren't able to fly, and he'd be able to take on the ones that could. Then, all he needed to do was pelt the kid with attacks from above and take his dagger back when the beasts clear out.
But Will didn't know what the Sick Freak was planning, he just saw him patiently waiting when he looked back. It was pretty creepy, but he kept running anyway. He ran around the stupid fountain, out the stupid entranceway and into the forest outside. He ran, checking behind him every few steps.
It was only when the whole horde behind him was out of the building that the Sick Freak moved. He was fast. It only took him a few moments to appear in the air above the horde, a streak of red lightning following behind him. Will saw him look down at him, and smirk, as he held up his arm and a red lightning bolt appeared in his hand.
Will was terrified. He wasn't surviving that if it hit him. But he had an idea. He ran in a circle. He hoped that one of the things following him would block him from the Sick Freak's attack.
Will's wish was granted. As soon as he started turning, chaos broke loose as the whole horde tried to line up behind him as fast as they could. The super snake slithered above him to get to the other side faster. Just as it did so, the red lightning bolt was let loose hitting the snake on its back. The only damage it did was to some dirt on the snake's back. Will was relieved, but he didn't stop. He kept running in circles, biding his time until he could think of something.
Will thought hard. His heart was pounding in his ears. He heard the dagger speak to him again.
"Kid, are you the Beast King's son or something?"
Beast King. Who was that? Will didn't know who that was, but it seemed important.
"Who is the Beast King?"
He asked the dagger and the dagger responded.
"You don't know the Beast King? How are you controlling all these monstrous beasts then?"
Will snorted in his mind. Control? Like hell he could control them! They were just following his cultivation doors. Because of the arrays on them? That gave him an idea. If the dagger thinks he's related to the Beast King, the Sick Freak probably would too. So if he can get these "monstrous beasts" as it called them to follow the Sick Freak, then maybe he could buy time to get away.
But how would he do that!? The bastard was flying in the air! The amount of points it would cost to write an array on someone so far away would be crazy! And even if he could draw an array on him, what was he gonna do next, ask the Sick Freak to stand still while he blew on his chest!?
Now that he thought about it, maybe he could copy an activated array? He copied an active array from his cultivation doors and exported it onto the ground. It worked! He had to use the pure spiritual energy in his middle dantian for it to not cost a ridiculous amount, but he could do it!
It was then that he noticed how many points he had. Holy shit! That was a ridiculous amount! He had seen a few actual cultivation manuals that he could afford with that much! He may actually have enough to put arrays onto the Sick Freak!
When he tried it, though, the cost for even one wasn't something he could afford. He needed a physical medium to do that. He felt that the issue was the range. If he had something that could hit him from long range… maybe the dagger?
"Do yu do wong wange attacks?"
The dagger replied.
"I can, but we'd need to form a contract for that, and my qi would probably rupture every meridian in your body."
Rupture his meridians? With qi? Like… qi deviation? He felt hopeful.
"Wike qi deviation?"
The dagger sounded exasperated.
"Yes, qi deviation! Obviously!"
Will asked again.
"Just qi deviation? Nothing ewse?"
The dagger sounded even more exasperated.
"What do you mean 'just' qi deviation!? It's qi deviation! You'll get qi deviation and die!"
Will felt his heart fill with joy. Just qi deviation was fine! He was immune to that! He could form a contract with a talking dagger! That's awesome! He almost forgot that he was about to be killed by a torture maniac. He focused.
"Fowm a contwact wih me!"
The dagger mocked him.
"So you can die faster? Are you stupid?"
Will yelled at the dagger.
"Jus do it aweady!"
The dagger got mad.
"Fine then! Put a drop of blood on the blade and I'll take it from there. Just don't go cursing me when you die."
Will went to bite his finger like they did in the stories he read. His skin was really tough but after biting really hard he managed to do it. He ran his thumb along the side of the blade, wiping the blood on it. The dagger finished the contract in moments.
And then he felt it. Earlier, his theory was that the demonic part of the forest's demonic lightning spiritual energy came from the Sick Freak's treasure, while the aggressiveness came from the forest itself. He was so, so wrong about that. What flowed into his hand from the dagger's handle was way more aggressive than the demonic lightning spiritual energy of the forest. It didn't even feel like demonic lightning, it felt like the handle of the dagger had turned into a portal, and on the other side was a raging storm from the deepest layers of hell.
Immediately after the change, he felt something else. It felt like a phone that was held up to his ear had finally stopped ringing, and the person on the other side was the same storm from the pits of hell that the handle had turned into a portal to. Except in this case, the phone was in his mind.
Will immediately focused on his hand holding the dagger. As the first bit of that storm's power touched his hand, he furiously directed it all into the meridians in his hand. He felt a piercing pain as the rampant power tore through his flesh to reach it, leaving a thin hole in his hand, but he kept going through the pain and just sent all the energy through that hole so it didn't make more of them. The whole process was instant. Will had prepared himself before the contract to send all of the energy into a meridian as fast as possible, so the damage to his hand only ended up being the one hole.
It still hurt like hell, though. Or like a storm from hell. After another instant passed, the dagger finally finished turning its attention away from making a contract and back to the child. It wasn't that surprised the first instant. It had expected that he would last for a few moments. He seemed decently strong. But after the few moments it had expected him to last passed, it was a bit impressed. It was only after a full second had passed that it started to be a bit confused. Surely a toddler couldn't be that powerful, right? But it wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility.
When two seconds had passed, it was shocked. The kid, who should definitely be dying was… saying ow?
"Ow ow owie owie ow owowow!"
Will wasn't doing too good. He had a hole in his hand and some really painful stuff was traveling through it, but it didn't travel through it smoothly and kept nicking the sides a little which hurt a lot. Other than that, he was pretty okay, but it really hurt a good deal. It was worse than most of the times in the hospital were.
But he could handle it. He had work to do. He split his consciousness, leaving a bit to deal with the ouchy tunnel while the rest prepared for the next step of his plan. Then he realized he didn't know how to do a long range attack. As he realized that he heard the dagger's voice again.
"Kid, how the hell are you still alive?"
Where before the voice felt directionless, now it felt like it was coming from the connection in his mind. He tried sending his response to that connection.
<How do I do a long range attack?>
It felt a lot better to be able to talk without having to do it through the mouth of a two year old.
"You figured out sword telepathy already!? What the fuck are you!?"
Will didn't really get why it was so surprised, it felt about the same as using a phone. He was more surprised it called it sword telepathy when it was a dagger.
<I thought you were a dagger?>
The sword? seemed annoyed.
"Is that what the sick freak wrote? I'm sure he didn't write that I could talk either, yet I'm talking to you now aren't I? He's stupid, and I'm a sword. Got it?"
Looking at the sword in his hand, he noticed that it looked different than it used to. It actually looked like a sword now, though it was toddler-sized. The handle could finally fit in his hand properly now. It had also changed color. But that wasn't important now. He needed to figure out how to do a long range attack with this thing right now, and he needed to cover the sick freak with arrays so he could escape.
<It doesn't matter. Just tell me how I can do a long range attack.>
The sword simply said "Like this." before sending something like a video into his mind. It wasn't as good as the videos from the tutorial, it wasn't able to convey the how of it like those did, but it was able to display the what of it like them. What it showed was aligning one's mind with the sword, and thrusting it forward.
Will didn't quite know how to do that. But he still tried. He moved backwards so all the beasts were in front of him. He split a piece of his consciousness to be ready to export the arrays.
Then Will thrusted the sword at the Sick Freak. He didn't really know what aligning one's mind was, and he certainly couldn't do it like a swordsman would.
But he didn't need to. Though Will wasn't 'one with the sword', far from it, Will and the sword were perfectly aligned on one thing. They both had the same opinion on the Demonic Lightning Sovereign.
They both thought he was a Stupid Sick Freak, too dumb to figure out how to actually cultivate. They both thought he was a Tacky Sick Freak, who lived in a Tacky Mountain. They both thought he was a Lazy Sick Freak, who just sacrificed people instead of putting in real work. They both thought he was an Unoriginal Sick Freak, who just put Demonic Lightning in front of a word every time he had to name something. And they both thought he was a Sick Freak, who tortured people in disgusting ways for his own gain. They both thought he was a Stupid Tacky Lazy Unoriginal Sick Freak and they both hated his guts.
And that was enough. Not for anything else, but for this? It was more than enough.
What shot out from the sword towards the Sick Freak looked like a storm straight from hell, forced into the shape of a beam. It was so much more than just lightning alone. It was the hail that tore through buildings and heads alike. It was the snow that buried men alive and left corpses when it melted. It was the bone-chilling cold. It was the winds that uprooted trees and threw them around like twigs. It was ringing left behind by the roar of thunder. It was the flood that swept men under the crashing waters to drown. And yes, it was the lightning. The lightning that lit up the dark skies like day as it struck.
And it was cruel. Not just in its indifference, but with an active malice. It felt sinister.
Before the beam even fully made contact, Will was already exporting the arrays. It was expensive, exorbitantly so, but Will had changed a lot of things since he left the hut. It turned out walking in a line throughout a good portion of the forest while bringing almost every creature nearby into a giant conga line had consequences. So Will started exporting. It turned out the bastard had a good few layers on today. They made a good canvas. Will exported as many arrays as he could, as thin as he could. By the time he was done, there were over a thousand arrays on the Sick Freak's clothes. Once the arrays were set, he used the Export function to scratch out the arrays in his cultivation doors.
Then the beam struck the Sick Freak in the chest. Will had made sure to leave that spot array-free, so he didn't waste points on an array that would get destroyed. That proved to be a good decision.
The beam tore through his clothes and left a dent in his chest where it hit. The Sick Freak's expression was one of confusion as the impact knocked him out of the sky before he could get his bearings. He only lost control of his flight for a moment before he stopped himself midair. But the horde saw him.
A new, even better cultivation spot has appeared. And it had just stopped moving. Their instincts told them that it was fair game now. And the fight broke out.
The Sick Freak had been staying in the air just above the horde's reach. Now that he fell, he was within it.
In just a few moments, he found himself encased in a bubble of beasts. Forget killing the brat, he didn't know if he could even move. Creatures of all shapes and sizes were fighting to the death all around him. He didn't know why they were fighting when they should all be in the same army, but they certainly were.
With the Sick Freak now preoccupied, Will ran. He ran as fast as he could. He didn't run in the direction he had been going before, he turned 45° left and ran that way. He copied his surroundings into his map while he ran. Once the fight was over and the Sick Freak was gone, he was definitely going to go collect some beast corpses to eat.
Because Will was very hungry right now.
Chapter 6 Martial Arts That You Can Only Get By Contracting A Sword That Kills Its Contractor In Minutes
Will ran through the forest, ouch tunnel still ouching. He didn't know quite where he was going, currently. He wasn't lost, he still had the map on his mind, but that only told him where the Tacky Mountain, the beast ball, and the forest were. The forest being all around him, of course.
He was hoping for another hut, but since that obviously wouldn't happen, he was looking for a cave. It took him an hour of running before he found one.
The cave he found wasn't a good cave, it was barely a cave at all honestly. It was only a few feet deep, but Will didn't really have the opportunity to be picky. He sat down on the stone ground, his legs burning.
He had been walking for about twelve hours, and then was walking once he got inside the mountain, and then he was running, and then running again once he managed to escape. He was also quite tired. It was getting close to four in the morning now, and he'd been awake since sunrise.
Not that he really felt like sleeping right now. The constant pain in his hand didn't really facilitate a restful night, especially since he'd probably lose his arm if he stopped managing it. On that note, he felt like he should ask when that stopped.
<Hey, how long are you gonna keep flooding me with your qi or whatever?>
That reminded the sword about the fact that Will should've been very dead by now.
"I'm not sure. I've never had a contractor last this long."
<That's worrying. How long do they usually last?>
"Usually around a minute. Actually, why are you lasting so long?"
<I'm immune to qi deviation.>
"What does that even mean? Immune? How can you just… be immune?"
<It's a whole thing. Anyway, do you have a name?>
"No one lasted long enough to name me."
<Well, the Sick Freak…>
The sword cut him off.
"That doesn't count. He didn't even contract with me. And he thought I was a fucking dagger. Fuckin' dumb bastard…"
Will decided not to mention how the Sick Freak had named it after himself. It felt impolite. He sure as hell wouldn't like being reminded of it if he was named after the Sick Freak.
Will suddenly thought of something.
<Do you have more things like that sword thrust move you showed me? Do you have, like, an exclusive sword technique or something?>
The sword seemed a bit… awkward?
"Haha, um, I do, but it's, um…"
The sword stopped stalling and just said it.
"It can only be practiced by women. I'm sorry."
When Will heard this, he felt about the same as he did when it told him he would get qi deviation if he contracted with it. Which was excited. He could swap his sex whenever he wanted. Now that he thought about it more, he had an idea. He went to the Appearance Alteration Menu switched his sex to female and confirmed the change.
<Um… I'm a girl.>
The sword stopped for a moment. It had thought this kid was a boy, but thinking about it more, it wasn't like it had been going off anything other than clothes and hair, really. It felt even more awkward now.
"Oh, uh, haha, I'm sorry, I didn't realize. My bad, haha. So you're a girl then, haha."
He swapped back again.
<No. I'm not.>
"Huh?"
<I'm a boy.>
The sword was confused.
"Why did you lie just now then?"
<I didn't.>
The sword was more confused.
"What?"
<I didn't lie.>
"I don't get it. Are you a girl or not?"
Will swapped again.
<I am now.>
"Huh?"
Will finally couldn't hold it in and started laughing.
<I can change it at will.>
The sword sounded defeated.
"Oh, okay. That's fine, then. You can learn the technique then I guess."
Will felt a bit bad for the poor thing. He wasn't going to act differently because of it, but he did feel it.
<So, what's this technique of yours like anyway?>
The sword felt a lot less defeated when it thought about it more. It would be a disappointment if the first person able to wield it wasn't compatible with its arts.
"It's not as much a technique as it is a comprehensive arts."
<I don't know what that means but go on.>
"It's basically just a bunch of techniques wrapped into one."
<Okay, so how do I start?>
"You'll have to start with the footwork first."
Will looked down at his feet. They hurt. His legs also hurt. He wasn't doing that. Not now.
<That's an issue.>
The sword was confused for a moment before it understood what he meant.
"I didn't expect you to start actually practicing now. You should at least start memorizing it though. Here."
The sword sent a whole bunch of information, along with two "videos". The movements in the first were light and airy like a cloud floating through the air. The movements in the second were like the wind. The figure in the video was running, but it was smooth and graceful. It was like a dance. A very fast dance.
They both had a feminine look to them, which Will found to make sense considering what the sword said earlier. Will also thought they were both really cool. He copied everything he was sent into his Document storage and embedded it into his memory.
<I've memorized them.>
"Oh."
The sword seemed to just accept it, too tired to go through the effort of getting proof. It knew he did. Why wouldn't he be able to? He's immune to qi deviation, can change his sex at will, of course he can memorize things after seeing them once.
<I'm just gonna sleep now I think.>
"You can still do that in this situation?"
<Not well, but I'm really tired right now.>
"Not really what I meant, but okay."
Will left the bit of his consciousness managing the ouchy tunnel behind while he let the rest sleep. It wasn't a good sleep, but he at least got some.
—
The sun rose, and though Will slept through it, he eventually woke up at midday. He was feeling a lot better.
The ouch tunnel was ouching as always. He was really hoping it didn't just do that forever. By now, his meridians were full of the sword's qi. They'd been that way even before he went to sleep actually. They were just more full now.
He really wanted to put it into his lower dantian, but he knew it'd tear his body to shreds the second it left his meridians.
On the bright side, his legs were better now! He stood up eager to test out the footwork from last night.
"Good morning. You about to try the footwork I showed you?"
<Yep.>
He started with the cloud one, since he didn't have to leave his cave for it. He moved his feet according to the steps in his memory.
It didn't turn out well. His current body being that of a toddler, his fine motor skills were pretty bad. It felt a lot like trying to write while holding the pen with sausages. Except the pen was also vibrating violently and the sausages were on the end of ten-foot poles.
It only took a moment to dig through his memory to find the next step, but when he attempted to move his foot where it said to, he was two inches off minimum. It was so aggravating and unsatisfying that he lost track of time and practiced it for an hour without realizing.
Even after an hour though, he still could barely get close. His movements reminded him less of a cloud and more of a ball of cotton. After reviewing it and getting that result he got even more annoyed and practiced for another hour.
After the second hour, it finally started to look slightly like a cloud. For about a second in between multiple minutes of cotton ball. But during that moment of almost-cloud, he saw how cool this was.
It was more than simply looking like a cloud, there was some supernatural element to it as well. Like even if he got hit by a sword, it wouldn't hurt. Because how would a sword hurt a cloud? He was only able to achieve about 1% of that, but it was still cool as hell that stepping a certain way could actually negate damage. It didn't even use spiritual energy.
But he was a bit tired of slamming his head against this wall. He had another wall to smash his head against now. There was still the second footwork, the one that looked like wind. But he couldn't do it in the cave. He left his cultivation doors, currently off, in the cave along with his pillowcase bag tying their handles together as he walked outside. He only walked a few feet away, so he wasn't too worried.
He tried following the steps in his mind for the wind-like footwork. It wasn't any easier than the cloud one, but it seemed like the results were more visible when done poorly than the other ones. At least the effect of moving quickly was.
Will felt like this one was definitely going to be more useful. For running away. Because it's not like he was gonna use this to fight someone. Best he was taking on was a regular twenty year old. Fighting someone with cultivation? It'd be better to run. Or to grovel. Maybe make use of his being a baby to make them feel bad about killing him? Basically, he could run faster now and it didn't cost more stamina to do it.
That was the best part, the lack of higher stamina usage. If it was just running really fast, he could already do that. The issue is that running faster than he had been would lead to his having to stop and breathe for a bit. Which he very much couldn't do earlier. He was very thankful he hadn't stopped earlier after seeing what happened with the array-covered Sick Freak earlier.
After Will practiced the wind footwork for an hour, he realized that he didn't have a name for either of them yet. He decided to ask the sword what they were called.
<Hey, what are these called, anyway? Like the names of the footworks.>
"The first one is Cloud Steps and the second is Wind Dance."
<Easy to remember.>
Now knowing its name, he continued practicing the Wind Dance footwork. After another hour, he felt like he could run a bit faster. It wasn't a great amount, but it definitely was more than he could've gotten by practicing regular running back in the other universe.
Now that he had practiced footwork until he got bored of it, he needed to find something else to do. The issue was that he didn't have many options. He could cultivate, but his only options for that were to use the doors and call a new horde over, cultivate normally without them and cause a dead zone that something dangerous (anything living in this forest) would investigate, cultivate everything but life force and make a spiritual energy dry zone that something dangerous would investigate anyway, or cultivate so little that it wouldn't actually effect anything at all. None of the options were very appealing.
He could go back to the hut, but it felt like it could be dangerous. Walking that far in this forest without the cultivation doors making a horde was risky, and doing it with them was like doing it with a Sick Freak beacon, which was even worse. Also, considering that the Sick Freak made the hut, or at least the basement under it, it felt pretty dumb to go there. Which left him low on options.
<Got any idea on what I should do now?>
"Weren't you gonna practice the footwork?"
<Bored of that now.>
"What are you, a child?"
<Yeah.>
"Good point. Well, why not cultivate?"
<Can't. I'll attract something here if I do it with the doors and attract them here with the dead zone without them.>
The sword thought "dead zone" was a bit overdramatic for an area just drained of spiritual energy, but it didn't dwell on it.
"What do you usually do then?"
<Usually I had the formation at the hut, but that place belongs to the Sick Freak.>
"Best not do that then. Maybe you can work on another array like the ones on your doors?"
<What do you mean work on another array?>
He had already filled out the doors with as many as he could reasonably fit at this point.
"Didn't you come up with that array? Just work on another one."
Will realized that the sword assumed he had made those arrays. Well, they were made by someone's baby boy, so it was kind of close. It was a reasonable guess, he probably seemed like a genius from what it'd seen. Sadly, he wasn't even close to a genius. Well, he was a genius for a two year old, but he didn't even know if he was that impressive in this world. There may be actual two year olds smarter than he was in this world. It was a bit depressing to think about.
<I didn't make that. I don't know the first thing about making arrays.>
"Then where did you get it from?"
The sword was sure he hadn't gotten it from the Sick Freak. An array used by him would've worked way better, and an array designed by him wouldn't have worked at all.
<I bought it.>
"From who? Your toddler friends? You buy it at the toddler market?"
It was a bit hard for Will to answer. He didn't really want to explain the Information Manual Exchange Marketplace to the sword. He decided it would be best to just explain his capabilities without explaining the why or how.
<I can buy manuals from a shop through my mind.>
The sword didn't even bother doubting. There was no point.
"Well, maybe by something else?"
<I spent all I had in the fight with the Sick Freak.>
"Maybe you should just practice footwork, then."
Will sighed loudly and heavily, then begrudgingly continued practicing the Wind Dance footwork. After fifteen minutes, he was so bored he sent some of his consciousness into the mind space to play on his phone. He noticed that he was actually able to perform the steps about the same with his consciousness split like this as he was with it only split between dealing with the ouchy tunnel. It made sense, he supposed. He didn't really have an issue in the mental aspect. It was just his lack of dexterity that was an issue.
By the time his two hours of phone playing were up, the sun had started to set. Checking his progress, he found that he was a bit faster now than he was before. It wasn't as substantial a change as he'd seen in the first two hours, but that made sense considering the first two hours had started with him unable to get two steps right in a row.
As he was convincing himself to continue practicing, he remembered the books from the Sick Freak's bookshelves. He'd copied them all when he was there, but he hadn't looked at them yet. He decided to start looking through them.
The first one he looked at was a book of poems. They weren't very good poems. Looking back at the title and finding it read Demonic Lightning Poems, it made a lot of sense.
The next one was a book on alchemy. It appeared to be pretty low level. Will's Automatic Universal Linguistic Knowledge Database Accessor surprisingly allowed him to know what the herbs it referred to were, as opposed to just a literal translation of their names. Sadly, it only let him know what they looked like and other information that would be clear from just encountering one, like the air around one herb being a bit warmer, or how the color looked in different environments, though he couldn't tell which of those environments it could actually be found in naturally. Will didn't have a cauldron though, so it wasn't particularly useful to him anyway.
The next two books he looked at were adult novels. They surprisingly didn't get removed because of age requirements. Will assumed it was probably because of how much they used euphemisms. If he didn't have the Automatic Universal Linguistic Knowledge Database Accessor, he'd probably think they were just really confusing books about gardening. Of course, he did have that, so he understood that the flowers it kept mentioning were not flowers, and the valleys, hills, mountains, and peaks were not geographical descriptions either. He closed them both once they got to that part.
The next one he looked at was pretty interesting. It was a book on formations. Most of the formations were less than useless for him. One made it look like plum blossoms were floating through the air. Another made people within its range 'let loose their inhibition', which judging from what else it said about its effects, seemed to be a fancy way of saying it made them act drunk. But there were a few things in the book that were very interesting to Will.
Foremost of interest was the technical knowledge. It wasn't a book for people first starting out, so it didn't describe the basics, but it had a lot of tips that let Will figure out some stuff. The biggest thing he learned was of a common quality that almost all formations share. That common quality being the need for things he didn't have.
When it came to treasures needed for formations, he had the lightning trees, the compass maybe, and the sword. And the sword was stuck to his hand currently. It was a bit disappointing.
The next book he looked at was a novel. It seemed like a young adult novel. Will made it halfway through the first chapter before getting bored, and since it wasn't anything useful anyway, he moved on.
After another euphemism-ladened adult novel that Will skipped, he got to what seemed to be an herbal compendium. It wasn't that useful, since he didn't have an alchemy cauldron, but it at least helped him know some things to look out for, whether that be for avoiding or gathering. After embedding it into his memory, he checked it against the documents he copied plants into and found that only three were in there, one being worth gathering and the other two being dangerous enough to avoid. He was glad he hadn't tried gathering herbs before getting this book.
Moving on, he found the most useful book yet. It was a book on arrays. It disappointingly didn't have any arrays in it, but what it did have was a lot of information on them. It seemed to be a book focused on designing new arrays rather than a book of arrays to use. It describes a lot of symbols and what they did, how they worked with each other, and a lot of other useful stuff. Embedding it into his memory and looking at the spiritual energy gathering array he had bought, he was able to understand somewhat what some of the symbols on it did. He could understand a bit of it with Automatic Universal Linguistic Knowledge Database Accessor already, but that told him more about the meaning behind each symbol rather than its exact function. Now he understood how those symbols interacted with each other and how their placements effected that.
Sadly, the vast majority of the less basic symbols simply weren't in the book he had. He wasn't sure if they were rare, a secret, in a less beginner level book, or were from a different universe altogether. He didn't know who the array was made by, other than the fact that someone considered them a baby boy when it was put up for sale.
After the book on array design, he surprisingly found a technique manual. It was for the Demonic Lightning Fist and it sucked. A lot of it was because it was confusing, but even with that issue cleared up by the Automatic Universal Linguistic Knowledge Database Accessor, it was clear that it just wasn't a good technique. It was clear the Sick Freak wasn't a talented punching expert. Whether he just used someone else's technique, used other body based arts, or just attacked from range with his demonic lightning, Will couldn't say.
The next book he looked at was another young adult novel. After that was a book of euphemisms that used cooking and alchemy terms, which fit well since the main characters were a mortal chef and an alchemist. After that was another one with the standard flower and geography euphemisms. He stopped them all before even finishing the first chapter.
It took Will a bit to understand what the next book was. At first, he thought it was another adult novel, but Will really couldn't figure out what it was trying to imply. It didn't take him long though to realize that the Automatic Universal Linguistic Knowledge Database Accessor was telling him that this was just an actual gardening book. Which made a lot more sense, considering the lack of a plot and how the references to plants were full names of spiritual plants. It wasn't that useful for much else other than the chuckle he got after realizing what it was. He didn't have any of the requirements, and he definitely wasn't going to start farming outside a random cave in a forest where his enemy lived.
The next book was another young adult novel, then a book of poems not written by the Sick Freak that was actually pretty okay, though Will didn't know for sure considering he wasn't interested in poems. After that was another euphemism book, followed by a book on manners which Will embedded into his memory.
The next book he found was a book on monstrous beasts. It had a blurb about what a monstrous beast was, which had a pretty loose definition, some explanations of relevant terms, and then the rest of the pages were information on different monstrous beasts. After embedding it into his memory, Will had a fun time trying to match the beasts he copied from his horde to entries in the book. He made a second copy of the monstrous beast book, putting the models of the beasts he'd matched up next to their entries, along with the little information he'd written down next to some of them, and the rest tacked on to the end of the book. He unembedded the first one and embedded this one instead.
After the monstrous beast book, he found another adult novel, another young adult novel, another adult novel, and another young adult novel.
After that he found a book on torture which he closed immediately. The next one was another adult novel, except this one didn't use euphemisms and got an age requirement put on it. After that was a book on torture that also got an age requirement put on it, then another one, then a book on torture that didn't get an age requirement, then another adult book that got an age requirement, then another. The rest of the books were the same mix of age restricted adult book, torture book, and age restricted torture book. Judging by the colors of the books' covers, Will seemed to remember these all being on the second bookshelf from the door.
The books he'd copied really managed to drive home the "Freak" part of the Sick Freak's title of Sick Freak. To put even adult books that only used euphemismsin the first room from the door is crazy already. But the Sick Freak actually had a second shelf in the first room dedicated solely to explicit stuff that those didn't even qualify for. Will's only disappointment was that he wouldn't be able to export them to show people how messed up the Sick Freak is.
Once he'd finished going over the books he'd copied, six hours had passed. He ended up losing track of time, it seemed. Well, he managed to stave off boredom while practicing footwork, and he was actually a good bit better at it now, so he was satisfied.
He was also going to sleep. He went into the cave, using the Wind Dance footwork of course, and sat with his back against the wall. Leaving a piece of his consciousness handling the ouch tunnel, Will quickly drifted off to sleep.
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder