She sat in the lotus position and began cultivating and compressing qi. Although not as dense as a qi fount would be, the qi density out in the forest was still much better than within the city. Given how close she was to the threshold of Bronze her progress was incredibly quick, even considering the fact that she had recently opened more meridians than recommended. It only took a couple hours for the fog within her dantian to begin condensing into a single liquid droplet.

  At first, she strained to get the fog particles to stick together and congregate in the center of her dantian. As more and more of the fog clustered together, though, that miniscule bead of liquid qi began to glow in her mind’s eye like a beacon. As the bead grew in size it seemed to increase in brightness and intensity as if looking into the light of a star.

  With time, it became easier and easier to condense the fog into the droplet as it seemed to gain a sort of magnetism. Unfortunately, though the remaining fog seemed to flow towards the liquid qi of its own accord, it became more and more challenging to control it. Samantha struggled to keep the increasingly unstable droplet from splitting apart as it gained in power and began to vibrate within her. Fearing that all of her efforts would be for naught, she began employing one of the tactics that she had read about in the book earlier.

  First, she visualized that she was watching water as it circled down an open drain. As she pictured this, she worked to move the remaining fog surrounding the droplet into a whirlpool pattern that matched her image. This, in turn, began to slowly rotate the liquid qi in the center of her dantian. Although she didn’t fully understand why this method worked, the spinning motion that was applied to the droplet helped stabilize it and minimized the vibrations that threatened to fracture it.

  As the last of the fog was sucked into the droplet, the liquid fully stabilized and ignited with a fresh, potent wave of power. Tendrils of arcing energy shot out from the bead of qi like small lightning bolts, and struck the surrounding area painfully.

  Despite the stinging jolts of power that continued to pain her as she read through her options, she did not rush her decision. The least appealing options were obviously the ones that were below Rare quality, since they seemed somewhat generic. Most of them simply gave attribute bonuses or minor efficiency bonuses, which would be helpful, but she would already receive a large jump in her stats from ranking up to Low Bronze. It wouldn’t be adding anything groundbreaking. The Enhanced Relentless core was slightly better due to the attribute bonuses also applying to Silas, but that was still not significant enough of a boost to draw her eye. The really exciting core options were the first three, which she hadn’t even seen listed in the book that Lord Braxand had left here with her.

  The Abundant Core was amazing, as she would gain an enormous boost to her qi pool and regeneration. She also took note of the static* description, in which it stated these gains could not be influenced. On the one hand, she suspected this meant that her qi saturated body and [Sage’s Rumination] would have no effect on the amount she received. On the other hand, she knew that there were materials out there that could drain cultivators of their qi and regeneration–their usage was common in prisons. If she encountered such materials in the future she would likely always have access to at least a small pool of qi and 10 qi regeneration. Arguably though, the best part about this core was the increased cultivation speed it would give her. Considering how she had already done several things that would slow her progress, the long term benefits could really help her reach new heights of power.

  The Advanced Meridian Augmentation Core was also incredibly tempting. The immediate increase to her stats, qi pool, and mental acuity would almost instantly transform her into a real force to be reckoned with. The only downside was that it would further impede her ascension through the higher cultivation ranks. She hadn’t yet fully experienced the impact of having so many open meridians or the expanded binding thread sucking away more of her cultivation progress than usual, but now that she had reached Low Bronze she imagined the climb to Mid Bronze and beyond would be excruciatingly slow.

  The core that really appealed to her was the Rebirth Core, for multiple reasons. First and foremost, she would gain the chance to cheat death. So long as her death wasn’t too extreme–such as being burnt to ashes or perhaps swallowed whole by some Spirit Beast–she could come back to life. If she unlocked one of the bloodlines that would also give Silas a second chance if he was killed, that would go a long way to making her feel more prepared for future fights and challenges. She might even be able to keep some aspect of [As One] which would further increase her and Silas’s chances of survival.

  Her ambitious side was screaming at her to take one of the Epic core options so that she could gain the most power quickly, but she shut that line of thinking down. None of that would matter if she died. The possibility of returning from the dead was too enticing a reward to turn down. Without languishing over the decision further she made her selection.

  Unlike the core selections which were unique to each individual, Samantha had known this choice was coming. Being able to alter distribution of the flood of attribute points received during the Bronze-tier advancement was one of the reasons why there was such a noticeable power increase. Cultivators could either enhance their strengths or shore up their weaknesses, instead of generally improving across the board. Samantha had already spent some time thinking about this decision, so it didn’t take long for her to make the selection.

  Samantha then selected Resilience as her secondary attribute, as it was widely acknowledged to be the most difficult to improve even if someone had a high aptitude for it. The extra points in Resilience would give her the extra durability she felt she desperately needed.

  Samantha finalized her customizations and opted not to choose a tertiary attribute.

  The electric pain in her dantian did not immediately subside even as the core was formed inside of her cultivation system. However, as the core thickened and hardened over the next several hours, the tendrils of energy coming off of the drop of liquid qi were contained by the shell. Unfortunately, just as one pain ended a new one began.

  The next part of the Low Bronze rank up was her body burning impurities out of her flesh. She groaned and did her best not to scream as her muscles, bones, and tendons were reformed to accommodate her increased potential for inhuman power. She had hoped that breaking down and building her body back up with qi saturation would have shortened this process or made it less painful, but it seemed like the processes transformed different aspects of her flesh. While qi saturation made every cell more receptive to the vital energies of the world, it did not rid them of the impurities that every mortal was born with. So, just as every cultivator had before her, she grit her teeth and suffered through the hours-long process until she received the system message she’d been waiting for.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  She pulled up her attributes to see the final values listed:

  Samantha could tell that at least five hours had passed while she ranked up, since her qi pool was now nearly full at 45/88 available qi (40 qi reserved). She had finished faster than she expected, so she allowed herself a small break to recenter herself, cleaned the sweat from her body using water from the sink, and then changed into the new set of clean clothing that was left on the bed for her. She set the soiled clothes into one of the corners to keep the stench as far away as possible, then returned to the lotus position to get started on her next task.

  After she had retrieved the elixir for Lord Braxand, she had been permitted to study the [Indomitable Body] art and internalize the qi patterns scribed within the reusable manual. She had held off on consuming the potion that went along with the art–which opened false meridian pathways–in the hopes that she could open the correct meridians herself and save the potion for Thomas’s use. Once she learned the art she would still need to pay a scribe to transfer her understanding of the art into a single-use manual for Thomas to learn from, but once that was finished, Thomas could also learn the [Indomitable Body] art.

  Now was the moment of truth to see if the skin meridian was truly the pathway she needed, or if there was something else that she needed.

  Samantha began the process of cycling the pattern of the art through the skin meridian in the hopes that the art would activate. She focused the energy on the skin of her right fist as she became more familiar with the flows of the pattern. It took numerous tries to get the speed of the cycling timed correctly with the alignment of the stream of qi flowing through her channels, but eventually she felt the energy of the art coalesce around her fist like armor and received the notification she had been hoping for.

  Samantha couldn’t help but smile as she read the new description of the combat art. Although the static attribute bonus would become less relevant as she kept advancing in cultivation ranks and gaining attributes, having the effectiveness doubled greatly extended its usefulness.

  The last decision she needed to make caused her heart to ache, but given her perilous situation she couldn’t take any half-measures. Samantha checked in with Silas to ensure that he would be okay with her choice of bloodline, since it would greatly impact his own progression as well. After a few moments of back and forth discussion, they both agreed that it was the correct choice and Samantha made the bond ability selection.

  Nearly every bloodline ability appealed to Samantha in one aspect or another. The two bloodlines that she had been leaning towards were either the Celestial Hare bloodline, or the Mongrel bloodline, but the deciding factor had been her core selection.

  The Moonlight Gate ability alone sounded amazing, and a not-small part of her had hoped that she could use it somehow to return to the first floor after she left. However, she couldn’t justify it to herself considering that she had decided to be someone that embodied courage and decisiveness in her pursuit of becoming a true cultivator. That determination, combined with taking a potentially-deadly elixir, gave her the core tenet of Ambition. If she made every decision around finding ways to return home to her family, that would be a betrayal of her goals and cause stagnation in her advancement.

  The other consideration was that she couldn’t possibly be the only person on this floor to ever find some teleportation or waypoint skill. She strongly suspected there would be some mechanism in place to prevent people from descending floors using such methods, given that the System’s main purpose seemed to be to foster growth and ascension. She held out hope that there would be some way for her to descend the floors, and that she would find the answer eventually.

  One of the glaring weaknesses of the [Jackalope of All Trades] skill was that although it allowed Silas to die and be brought back, if they both died then there was nothing that could be done to save either of them. After addressing that one weakness through her Rebirth Core, she believed that she was making the right decision. If it wasn’t the right decision, at least she didn’t believe it was a wrong one. It possessed useful aspects from all the other bloodlines, and its effects would grow stronger when she ranked it up. She imagined that it would eventually be more useful than any other singular bloodline.

  The possible loss of her two special bond abilities would sting, but upon further reflection it might actually be for the best. Although [As One] had saved both of their lives repeatedly, and [Energizer] had gotten her out of multiple tight spots today, the bloodline selection would give her something more powerful than either of them. Not to mention that with the upcoming fights against extremely powerful opponents, it was possible that either she or Silas could be killed with a single blow. She wasn’t sure how [As One] would react to one of them being beheaded or otherwise definitively killed, and she didn’t want to risk both of them dying if one of them was hit. Hopefully, she could at least keep one or two useful aspects of the abilities.

  Samantha let out a sigh of relief. She was glad that she and Silas would get to keep their aptitude increases. As for which aspect she’d turn into a new skill, the choice was easy. She selected ‘Share healing’. Of all the aspects of [As One] and [Energizer] she was hoping to keep, the ability to share healing between both of them was the one that was most important to her. If her theory was right, even if both of them were killed now, Samantha could have her Rebirth Core’s passive healing effect prioritize Silas first. This way, she could restore him to life before the time limit on his body’s stasis expired, and he could guard her body as she healed her own fatal wounds afterwards.

  Wanting to confirm to herself that she had made the correct choice, Samantha looked at what the second rank of Jackalope of all Trades would offer.

  She was excited to see that the transport range would increase by 10 times, and would also become instantaneous. She noted that they would also gain the ability to transport to the other’s location instead of only swapping places. In addition, she would gain more time to heal Silas’s body if he were killed (a month, instead of only a week), and the increase to qi pool and regeneration doubled from 10 to 20 percent. Seeing this progression she understood that while all aspects of this skill had significantly improved, they were still individually less powerful than a single rank 1 ability from a pure bloodline. She thought that the tradeoff of power for versatility was fair, and looked forward to what other bond abilities may emerge from advancing down this bloodline.

  Satisfied with her choice, Samantha also glanced at the new bond ability which had taken the place of [As One].

  Samantha was pleased with the new skill that had been generated. She liked that they had the choice to pass the full healing effects to the other party now, rather than before when [As One] automatically divided everything evenly.

  Given how many changes she had just gone through, she pulled up her profile to review her status.

  Samantha noted that her Vortex mark was now listed as being contained within her Rebirth Core instead of in the qi-regeneration calculation section. Curious, she pulled up her shirt to check the spot around her navel where the mark had previously been, and indeed saw that it was gone. She hadn’t noticed it’s absence when she was cleaning herself after breaking through to the next rank.

  Looking inward, she saw the shell of her new core shining brightly. On the outside of the core was a series of complicated scripts that moved along the surface in geometric patterns. She thought she could see the familiar Vortex mark mandala mixed in with the new scripts, but couldn’t be certain.

  In the hours she had left until putting her plan into action, she would attempt to learn the High Copper rank of the Vital Wellspring cultivation technique. Her mind meridian kept the information she had seen in the training manual fresh in her mind, as well as the lessons that Thomas had been trying to impart to her over the last week. She did not expect to accomplish this before Lord Braxand’s [Geas] notifications expired, but she also refused to sit around in this empty room and do nothing. She would drive herself crazy if she didn’t stay at least somewhat busy.

  And so, the hours slowly passed in silence as she tried and failed repeatedly to perfect the technique–her concentration never fully diverting from the awareness of her system notifications. Whenever those messages reached her, she would be ready… and she prayed that Lord Braxand wouldn’t be.