Chương 1: The White Room, Wolf-Man and A Forest

A white room that seemed endless. All around me was...nothingness. I felt a pang of deja-vu as I looked around the room that seemed to have a blue tint towards the end of the endless expanse. A paradox, I guess. Maybe an illusion based on my perspective...I don't know.

This entire place reminded me of one thing:

A waiting room.

But the leather gauntlets attached to arms I didn't recognize--my arms, or rather new arms--told me that I wasn't here to wait for any wishes like in some low-quality fanfic.

I was here to fight something.

The sound of a horn shook through the endless white expanse I was in, the very fabric of the area in front of me shaking and making me feel nauseous. I fell down to a single knee, managing to see some blond hair falling down in front of my vision - I didn't have blond hair. I had brown-hair. What had changed? Why was my body different? And for God's sake, what the fuck is making that horn sound?!

As soon as my questions came to an end, even as my curiosity was still surging through my mind, the horn stopped and I could finally compose myself.

Multiple deep breath later, I finally found the balance that I'd lost from the shaking and stood up again. I looked around but something instantly caught my attention. In this land of white and nothingness, there was a massive screen that seemed to stretch kilometres wide.

It was completely blue with black writing across it. But what was written was what caught my attention.

[Player: Tyler Williams]

[Class: Monk]

[Abilities: Unarmed Combat Mastery Lv1, Robust Body Lv1, Quick Reflexes Lv1, Qi Manipulation Lv1, Serpent Physiology Lv1]

[Weapon: Bare Hands/Gauntlets]

[Current Condition: Preparing For The First Test.]

[Points: 0]

...What? Isn't...isn't this like that manhwa 'Life Howling'? Kinda like a rip-off of 'The Gamer' but mixed with 'Terror Infinity'. It was an enjoyable read. Not the best grammar or art but the idea was interesting.

And this whole menu looks way too similar to the menu the MC of that comic saw when he first got sent to the white room.

If it follows the same route as that comic then--

*Growl*

My thoughts were cut off when a wolf-man appeared in front of me. Just a bunch of white energy dots that collected and formed it. It was wielding a club and was about 5 feet tall and was well-muscled though it wasn't bulky or intimidating and covered in muscle mass. It was obviously more built for speed and endurance than raw power as shown by it's lithe build.

On instinct, I felt my arms being brought up as I settled into a stance I'd never once got in before right now. Which pretty much helped me, along with the other pieces of evidence, confirm that this place was the same place from 'Life Howling'.

The status screen, the wolf-man, the instinctive ability to fight that coincided with one of the abilities shown in my status...it was all too much to be a coincidence.

Without giving me anymore time to think, the wolf-man rushed at me, it's club raised high. True to it's physique, it was incredibly swift and I barely had any time to react before I had to tilt my torso to the right, letting the club sail past my body harmlessly.

Again, from instinct and whatever the passive skill [Unarmed Combat Mastery] did, I whipped my fist out and the gauntlet I was wearing collided with the wolf-man's ribs, throwing him back.

A whimper came from the creatures snout and it actually seemed quite damaged by my attack.

I also noticed that the way I threw that punch was...odd. Odd because I'd obviously done movement I knew wasn't normally possible for a human. In the sense that the way I whipped my arm around shouldn't be possible with the way human joints work unless...[Serpent Physiology]. That skill probably gave me incredible flexibility. It seemed to enhance my strength as well because the wolf-man, despite being small, was still heavily muscled and should weigh at least 110lbs. Me being able to send it a metre or so back with a single punch was more than I knew I should be able to do.

Just what kind of weird body was I in at the moment? It felt like I was definitely in someone else's body right now. At least I was still in control, right?

Ducking again, I noticed [Quick Reflexes] was really putting in the work before I dropped to the floor, following what my instincts told me to do, and swept the wolf-man's leg out from under it, knocking it over with another whimper from it's snout. Especially when it's somewhat short snout hit the ground head-on, beginning to bleed.

Knowing what I had to do, I threw myself at the down wolf-man and positioned myself behind it.

I, ironically, slithered my left arm around it's neck and grabbed my right elbow, steadying the arm, before I began to choke out the wolf-man with my legs wrapped around it's waist and holding it's arms there as well.

I practically crushed it like a Boa Constrictor would and after a minute or two and a lot of thrashing from the wolf-man, it gave in and went limp.

Seconds after it went limp, it faded away into motes of light and I could finally relax.

Lying on the floor, I looked up at the white ceiling or maybe it was a sky? It didn't matter. I looked up and just regained my breath. It hadn't taken long and I'd only attacked it twice but I'd put my everything into that last move and it'd slightly tired me out. Especially now that my adrenaline was coming down.

But suddenly, I felt a calm and warm energy filling me, replenishing my stamina. Almost instinctively, I knew what this energy was. Qi.

Qi filled me and soothed my sore body until I was able to breath easy again. I sat up, feeling a different type of exhaustion. Again, I somehow knew it was due to my body running low on Qi.

Looking up, I saw the screen that was exactly the same as last time...except now I had 10 points.

Thinking I could finally test to see if it were exactly like 'Life Howling', I called out, "Show me all the things to do with Qi replenishment that I can afford right now," I said and near instantly, the screen changed to a sort of shop menu.

[Lesser Qi Replenishment Potion - 1P]

[Qi Replenishment Potion - 5P]

[Greater Qi Replenishment Potion - 10P]

It went on for a while, surprisingly, showing different types of potions that seemed to all have the same effects. But really, that wasn't what I was looking for. What I was looking for, however, didn't take too long to show up.

[Basic Cultivation Manual Lv1 - 10P]

Without waiting, I looked through it's info and upon confirming that it would allow me to replenish my Qi and grow it at the same time, I instantly brought it.

[Basic Cultivation Manual Lv1 - The ability to draw Qi in from the surroundings and temper the body while replenishing your own stores of Qi. When not being used to replenish the amount of Qi you've lost, it can be used to expand the amount of Qi you have.]

Said information and how to enter a meditative state to absorb Qi from the surroundings and how to pull it through my body, slowly tempering it before adding it to my Dantian either to expand my Qi storage or replenish what I'd used/lost. I quickly got into a lotus position and closed my eyes before breathing in the specific way it told me to. It felt incredibly natural to me and I don't know whether that was because of my class, the fact it was a skill I'd brought and now owned or both of those two things working in tandem.

Slowly but surely I became aware of an energy source that was apparent all around me. Like little motes of light. I pulled the motes of light toward me, slowly at first but ever so quickly building up speed and influence until most of the motes of energy, Qi, were flying toward and entering my body.

I pulled the Qi through my skin and saturated my muscles, veins, bones, nerves and flesh with Qi, strengthening it ever so slightly before I pulled the Qi toward where my Dantian was.

This was a single wave of Qi. If I had to quantify it, I'd used 70% of my storage to replenish my physical stamina and the wave of Qi I just brought into my Dantian was about 5% of my total storage. So I quickly got to pulling in more waves of Qi.

I quickly discovered that there was only a certain amount of Qi I could actually pull in. Whether this was due to the fact my Qi Manipulation ability was so low or because the Cultivation Manual I was using was only the basic one, I didn't know.

But it didn't matter. Ever so slowly, I replenished my Qi and slowly tempered my body at the same time. Though the tempering was very slight, it would eventually add up to something.

Why was I trying so hard? Because if this isn't an incredibly lucid dream, I'd just been thrown into what was practically a death game. I needed power and if this Cultivation stuff could help give me more power, then I'd do it as much as possible. Even after I'd filled up my storage, I continued trying to cultivate though it quickly came to my knowledge that expanding my amount of Qi was much harder than replenishing it, so I had to give up. Even after trying to stuff the Qi into my Dantian with wave after wave of the stuff, my capacity only grew by less than half a percent.

Guess that stuff about cultivation taking a while for normal people wasn't all lies in those Xianxia books, huh?

Chuckling to my own little joke, I opened my eyes before looking around...only to see that I was in a forest. Ah, shit, another cultivation cliche - the old 'I was cultivating so I couldn't sense any changes around me' shtick.

I heard a howl before two of the those wolf-men from earlier jumped out of the bushed in front of me.

Ah shit, here we go again...