6 Walking

Disclaimer, I want to try writing in past tense, so this chapter will be in past tense, if I find the story to flow better this way, then I might change it to this.

This chapter might get a little technical, but I hope you don't mind that.

Claire was awoken by a loud knocking on the door, with the bright rays of sunlight entering in her room blinding her, something that hadn't happened any of the other days. Combining the knocking with the sunshine, there's only one realistic possibility, she overslept and should be out of the room by now.

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With some yawns she got out of bed and put on her underwear while thinking loudly to herself. "Guess this is the consequence for pushing my body a lot the past few days, and the cultivation last night didn't seem to help in any way." The knocking became louder as female a voice arose outside. "Please open the door within ten seconds, otherwise I'll have to forcefully enter." Claire looked towards the door and, in a raised voice, replied. "Sorry about that, but can I get a minute or two? I just woke up and need to put on some clothes." A sigh could be heard from the other side of the door. "I'll give you 2 minutes." "Thanks."

The door opened just before the 2 minutes were up and a fully dressed Claire stepped out. "Sorry about that, it seems that my body really needed some sleep." The young girl who looked to be a maid sighed once more. "No worries, at least you didn't put up a fight when told to get out." Her expression tensed up for a bit while saying that, before relaxing as she spoke. "Now that that's out of the way, I'll give you 15 minutes to get your things together, before you have to leave the room so I can clean it."

She turned around and started walking away, before remembering a single other thing to say. "Also, the breakfast period is over, and they cooks are on break, so you'll need to find breakfast another place, though we can give you a refund on your prepaid breakfast." As she's about to walk away from Claire once more, Claire replied. "Thanks for the hospitality and I'd like to take you up on the offer of getting my money back, and another thing, you can clean up straight away, as I don't have anything to pack up."

She walked up to the girl, from her purse she took a 10 Copper coin and handed it to the girl. "This is for you, it's half my meal." She said with a smile. The girl took the coin a little confused and asked. "But I didn't do anything to earn this. Why did you give it to me?" Claire giggled at the question. "Because I wouldn't have thought to ask for a refund if you didn't mention it, this is just me saying thanks." She then left the girl standing in the hall as she went to the entrance. Claire got herself the refund and left the tavern to get some breakfast.

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The young girl by the name of Hana stared at the coin for a bit of time, before thinking back to the times she had seen the nice girl from just now. She realized that she had seen the girl have a sword on her when Hana saw her return to the tavern the two previous days. "Wait, she didn't have her sword on her just now, I hope she didn't forget it just now." She hurried into the room and searched around, just to find nothing. "This is weird, I could have sworn that she had a sword when she returned yesterday."

A realization struck Hana after thinking for a bit. "If her sword is neither here nor with her, it must have been stolen at night and she just forgot about her sword in a hurry." She hurried out of the room, to the entrance. "Mom, has the nice big sis from the room you sent me to left?" The woman who greeted Claire on the first day turns to Hana. "Yeah, she left a few minutes ago, why are you in such a big hurry?"

"She gave me 10 Copper for informing her about getting her money back. After she left the hall, I realized that she didn't have the sword I saw her carry the past two days, so I got worried that might have forgotten it and checked her room, but it wasn't there, and now I can't inform her about it being stolen." The mother looked at the crestfallen Hana. "Dear, you must have remembered incorrectly, as she had her sword when asking for the refund." Hana shook her head. "I'm sure that she didn't have it on her."

"Now now, she definitely had her sword as she left, so don't worry about it, just be happy about having earned 10 Copper." The mother said in a calming tone, while her mind was thinking about what had happened, before arriving at a single conclusion. 'If that girl shows up again, I'll need to give her a discount, I can't afford to offend someone with the status to have such an artifact.' As the mother makes a promise to herself, Hana calms down and returns to cleaning the rooms.

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Claire spent some time looking for some camping gear, especially a tent and something to easily get a fire going. The tent was for when disappearing into the sub-space would be weird, so it can hide her entering the space, and reason for the fire starter was pretty obvious. She spent a total of 3 Big Copper, 2.5 on the tent and 50 Copper on the Firestarter. The starter turned out to be not much other than a flint and steel that a smith had made easier to use.

After getting herself these items, she asked around for directions to the Blue Flame sect, which were really easy to get. She just needed to head out the southern gate and follow the big road for a while, then she'd easily find it. She went out of said gate and started going towards her destination, she'd switch between jogging and walking on her way there, as not to tire herself out prematurely.

After she had been on her way for half an hour to an hour, she thought about why exactly she couldn't cultivate while walking. This led to her think about how her cultivation method actually worked. 'I draw in the spiritual energy of the world and store it in my body, where I then refine that energy to become a part of my body. What actually is stopping me from doing this when not relaxing? Let's start with the first part of actual cultivation, sensing the energy and drawing it into the body.'

She tried drawing the energy she could sense already sense into her body, just to find nothing to be happening. 'Huh? Why can't I draw it into me? I know both a cultivation method and I can sense the energy, so there should be nothing to stop me from doing this.' A realization struck her, and she laughed to herself. 'Of course, it wouldn't be this simple, otherwise my manual wouldn't have said that no person in history had done it, but honestly, when did the seemingly impossible stop me back on earth.' With a sly smile on her lips, she muttered something to herself. "I'm going to have to science the shit out of this."

She walked a good bit away from the road, but still close enough to not lose sight of it. Then she went and sat down in a lotus position and started cultivating, not for the sake of cultivating, but for the sake of feeling the spirit energy. When she started her cultivation, the only change she felt, was that the energy started approaching her, so she stopped cultivating and started once more. This was repeated quite a few times, until she finally felt something change in the spirit energy, but she was unable to put her finger on the exact change.

'Hmm, maybe doing this in my sub-space would be better, as there's a lot more spirit energy in there.' With that thought in mind, she looked around herself to check for people watching her, before entering the space when she found none.

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Claire popped into the cultivation space and immediately started cultivating while feeling for the same change. It was luckily more noticeable this time around, and she was able to clearly find the difference after initiating and ending cultivation a few more times. 'This is good, I should now be one step closer to figuring this out. Now I just need to know why this change happens, then I'll be even closer to cultivating while walking.' She did the same cultivation trick a few more times, but this time while focusing on the body instead of the spirit energy.

What she figured out, was that sitting still and using the technique in the manual, made her body react in a similar fashion to a magnet of opposite polarity to the spirit energy, which is why it was sucked towards her. This did give her an idea to try out, that being to try and move the absorbed energy before refining it, and possibly create something like an electromagnet with it. So, she sat down and started her cultivation once more, but instead of refining it once it was in her body, she let it build up for a bit of time.

Once the spirit energy had built up a bit, she tried to move the energy around in her body, by utilizing some parts of her cultivation manual that she thought might work. Nothing really happened for some fifteen minutes, but then she discovered a way to slowly move the energy around in her body, there was just one major problem, it was really slow and hard on the mind. 'Great, another step is done, although this can use quite a lot refining, it does still do the job.'

She tried to focus her attention on her left pinkie toe, as if something did go wrong, that'd be a body part that wouldn't mentally hurt too much to lose. As her attention focused on the toe, she started moving the energy in a spiral that connected the top and bottom points with a straight line. Even though the energy was moving slowly, it had a clear effect on the energy around the toe, causing it to be sucked into it at a faster speed. 'Phew, luckily I didn't lose a body part this early on, that would've been quite annoying to say the least, now I just need to check if continue to this will run when I stop cultivating.'

She stopped her cultivation, but continued to move the energy around, and it actually worked, although the speed was reduced to a quarter of when cultivating as well. 'This is great, now I can speed up my cultivation both when cultivating and doing things where I have thinking space. I just need to do this on the rest of my body as well.' She slowly shifted her focus to the whole foot, where she tried getting the spiral to spread out, which succeeded. This process continued for the next hour, until she was able to have single long spiral moving through her body, but this did leave her mentally exhausted.

She ate a few of the food items in the storage space. 'I think I should get back to walking now, I should try this out once my mind has rested a bit while walking.' She exits the sub-space and continues her walk to the sect.

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I'm always open to talking about the novel on my discord, you might also get previews on chapters while I write them

Link: discord.gg/kxGA4dfmJv