Tactical Retreat

"That … freaking…. Hurts!" Young grunted as he rolled around on the ground. Though the acid made contact with his skin he didn't have any serious injuries like his left hand. His flesh was on fire though and the sensation would not go away. If anything, it had intensified. Unlike the mass of acid which dissipated quickly, this dispersed acid mist lasted for what seemed like ages.

After rolling around on the ground in pain for several minutes the burning sensation slowly began to fade and You was finally able to get to his feet. His body was covered in sweat from his brow to his abdomen, the skin affected by the acid turned a deep red color.

He glanced around to make sure he was alone and checked his mini-map as well. He would not make the same mistake a third time! All seemed quiet so he set about the task of collecting the monster spirits, each of which lingered over the corpse of the fallen Cave Grubs.

With each spirit he absorbed his Cultivation level rose by an additional two levels. In the end his cultivation level was now 28.

He also noticed something else :

[Health : 90 / 143 (54%) ]

[Qi :381 / 442]

[Stamina : 95 / 165 (46%) ]

[Power : 9 (48%) ]

[Speed : 6 (60%) ]

[Agility : 4 (77%) ]

[Intelligence : 7 (34%)]

[Cultivation Rank 0, Level 28 / 99*]

He'd also gained some progress towards raising some of his other stats.

"Help > Cultivation Level."

"Cultivation Level : By raising one's cultivation level you grow one step closer to ranking up. The difference between cultivation ranks can be comparable to night and day. Overall, raising cultivation level usually improves all of your stats evenly."

As he suspected, defeating monsters would also provide him with progress towards raising his stats. He would need to experiment a bit more, but from what Young could tell each of his stats had increased by 5% progress for each enemy defeated.

He also now understood why most cultivators avoided participating in battle despite the benefits. Regardless of the outcome, Young could only assume that these creatures would be considered dreadfully weak by any standard. Still, he'd been forced to almost completely consume his weapon and lost almost half of his health in a single encounter.

Granted, he was outnumbered, but he could see creatures like this easily disposing of apprentice disciples by the droves. In fact, Young was now sure of one thing -- his Body Reinforcement had most likely saved his life. Without it, the results would have been much worse.

He could still feel the sensation of discomfort and numbness in his flesh but Young decided that he should press on. After all, he was down to his final two mushrooms and he was already out. If he failed to achieve his goal the battle seemed less significant to him.

He summoned his weapon and continued walking through the dimly lit cavern. He made it no further than a dozen meters before a familiar alert appeared.

[Enemies detected : 19]

"No way.." He whispered to himself as he watched his minimap slowly fill up with red blips. He backed away slowly, realizing that discretion was now the better part of valor. It would be impossible to deal with so many of the grubs at this point.

He stealthily slinked away, hastily putting as much distance between him and the large group of Cave Grubs before he finally felt he could breathe easy.

"I guess I'm not going to gather mushrooms tonight. Ha…" He said to himself with a chuckle. He decided to return to the spring and regroup so that he could plan his next strategy. Spark's advice seemed right on the money, Young would need to make use of weapons if he hoped to escape this jungle and the one he had, though useful, clearly didn't cut it. It was time to make another foray into forging.

Young went to his Forging menu and began the process of creating another weapon. This time he searched through his inventory until he found the capture sphere containing the large red spirit. He was surprised to find that the description of the item changed however:

[Greater Wisp Sphere - Rank 1, Quality 185.

A wisp that has survived by feeding on other spirits. Using it in a forge crafting should yield a more powerful item.]

"This is...kind of creepy.." Young whispered as he read the description of the item.

He placed the item into the spirit slot of the forge menu and then placed the second of his three materia along with it. He only paused for a moment as he considered what choice to make. He absolutely needed another weapon and since he'd grown more comfortable with using a sword he saw no reason to switch now. After configuring his augmentation and clicking the seal icon to initiate the forging he was faced with a different message.

[Unable to forge. You need at least 1,500 qi points to create this weapon.]

"What? 1,500!?" Young said as he covered his mouth.

Thinking about it logically, making better materials to forge would require more effort but the problem was the amount needed. Currently his qi maximum was 442 points, raising it was easy enough but also time consuming.

He closed the menu and then glanced at his Saturation level, taking note of something strange.

[Saturation: 15% (36) ]

There was a second number next to the saturation percentage, but what was it? After racking his brain for a few moments more an epiphany struck him.

"This must be the monster energy I collected!"

Young thought to himself for a few moments before he decided to give things a try. He assumed his meditation state and began to cultivate. Sure enough, once he entered his soul sea there was a much smaller ball of yellow energy there. He moved near to it and reached out his hand and the energy instantly began to flow into him, however because he didn't have a clear intent the energy simply returned to its mass.

"I need to direct this. But… into what? Let's do a test." Young said as he reached out his hand again, this time focusing on assimilating the energy. He took only the tiniest of amounts and was surprised to see a new alert instantly.

[Qi +5 447]

"Wow, this stuff is really potent. I only used a tiny bit and my qi rose so much." Looking at his HUD he realized there were still 35 units of this monster energy to use.

"That's another 175 qi. It's nice but it still won't be enough to make the weapon I want." Young thought it over for a few more moments before he decided to try using the monster energy on his Body Reinforcement.

He first chose Outer reinforcement, but was rejected.

[Enhancing this further is impossible without reaching Cultivation Rank 1.]

Undaunted, he decided to try (Inner) rank reinforcement, which focused on muscles and internal organs. He tried to use the smallest amount of monster energy possible to infuse into his muscles then he checked his status menu.

[Body Reinforcement (Inner) - 1.02%] +

For five monster energy units he was able to raise his body reinforcement by 1%.

"So...roughly, 495 points are needed. Or...nearly a hundred more of those squishy menaces. Still, this is faster than the other method." Young nodded his head in approval.

Finally there was one more thing he wanted to test. He wasn't even sure if it was possible, but something urged him to give it a go.

He focused on his vitality and began assimilating a small portion of his remaining monster energy. Sure enough the progress towards leveling up increased, this time by a large amount.

[Health : 90 / 143 (64%) ]

"Holy -- a ten percent increase from just two units. That's huge!" Young shouted with excitement.

"This is great! The benefits of fighting monsters far outweigh the risks. Spark was right, maybe this can be done in two months…"

For the first time in a while Young felt optimistic about his future, now the problem at hand was to obtain more monster energy!