Heavenly Library, 13'th floor:

  "Ok, I am here! What did you find out?"

  Fung and Xibei came into my sight as my projection rushed down the corridor towards their position in an almost Naruto ninja run.

  "Here... have a look. We found a bunch of these…" Xibei passed me a heavy book.

  "Hmm..."

  *Pageflip*

  "Hmm…interesting"

  *Pageflip*

  "Yeah, the description of these spells is sort of similar to what I was looking for, but it's not exactly the winning ticket. There are too many crippling penalties attached to each of these magics."

  Indeed, the methods depicted within were a little bit drastic even for my taste. While all of the spells were indeed able to “cleanse” the body of any and all internal impurities, the price for doing so was way too high.

  The first spell depicted inside of the book was a “Fire Cleanse” spell that burned away all of the nearby impurities, even those that had made their way INSIDE of the victim. Of course, as you might imagine, “burning” something while it was beneath the skin or inside the lungs would cause even more harm to the body than the original poison, disease, or hostile magic spell that got cleansed in the first place. Also, the spell did not remove the “leftover” ashes either, so even if the cleansed person somehow survived the internal immolation, the charred ashes would still linger within the body and would cause complications.

  Still, it could prove to be a useful spell for some external-use only, like for getting rid of those nasty yellow spores from the Dungeon floors and walls. The stone staircase which led to the third layer had been cordoned off where the spore-infested zombie had come up from, and people had been told to stay away from that place lest they get even more of the yellow gunk attached to them. Until we found a proper way to perform some sort of a mass-cleansing on the environment near the third level staircase, that place was off-limits.

  The second spell depicted within the book was an “Earth Cleanse” spell which basically summoned a “Branch of the World Tree” that would pop out of the ground and then “suck out” all of the bad stuff from inside of the victim. While the branch itself caused absolutely no harm to the patient and I could see the spell having a valid medical use for someone like Ping, it was a useless spell during any sort of a combat situation because the whole “branch” basically rooted its target in place. It functioned by surrounding the whole body with roots and vines for more than an hour while the magic did its job, so it was silly to use such a thing in a combat situation unless you could afford to remove a party member as a combatant for more than 60 minutes.

  Another cleansing spell came in the Wind variety, where the victim would “exhale” all of the bad stuff that was inside of the body, but the downside was that it did not destroy any of the harmful substances, it only removed them from the body. Stuff like those yellow spores would simply get inhaled back again, or any disease would simply reinfect the victim immediately after the spell was over. Also, it spread the harmful substances in the surrounding environment, so it was a hazard for any other available teammates, as they could get infected from the person that was cleansing himself instead. The patient would literally have to exhale inside of a bag over and over again to cough out the bad stuff from his innards to even make the spell somewhat workable.

  The fourth ridiculous spell was the “water” type of cleanse, which would cause the patient to “sweat out” all of the harmful substances or impurities from all of his pores, but as a result, the target bore the risk of becoming a desiccated husk if the infection ran too deep inside of the body. Also, similar to the Wind cleanse, it did not destroy the pollutants, but merely it dissolved and diluted them. Ideally, this cleanse was supposed to be used while taking a bath in a Spirit Spring who had the innate power to keep itself in a pristine condition, but such a thing was not available anywhere near the village. Also, becoming desiccated husk would be a bad thing during combat, as withering oneself away would most certainly mess up the entire body’s chemical balance and most likely get the spell user killed.

  Then there was the Lightshadow cleanse, which was probably the closest to what I wanted, which both purified and destroyed the harmful substances inside of the body but would cause the caster to become blind if the spell was used repeatedly too much. With each cast, the eyesight of the caster would deteriorate a little bit, so after about 10 or so casts, the user would become totally blind. While the spell was really useful and could be also used in combat, such a crippling side-penalty removed it from the “usable spells” list.

  Of course, since only the eyes were the organs that were getting affected, we had the option of simply removing the orbs and then regrowing them with a Regeneration Pill, but who the hell was crazy enough to scoop out their own eyes with a spoon just so they could cast another set of cleansing spells. No, what we needed was something “spammable”, as I had defined it for the rest of my party, which was basically any spell that could be used over and over again without any sort of a penalty to the user, at least as long as one had the Qi to fuel the magic.

  Finally, depicted in the book there were the “Class-only” cleansing spells, which required a person to be aligned to a certain faction or a certain God. The alignment mitigated any of the other downsides of the elemental “basic” spells but made them available for only a select few. For example, the Sun Templars had a Class spell called the “Touch Of The Cleansing Sun” which removed and also destroyed any and all harmful effects and substances from the Templar’s body but required the User to be a sworn Templar of the Sun so it could only be used on the Templar himself or other nearby Sun Templars.

  Also, because they were class-specific spells, which meant that they were basically useless to anybody else, the spell-circuits for those types had not even been written inside of the book, which had left me absolutely fuming, as I could apparently “circumvent” such restrictions with my weird modules, so I would have been able to use the Templar cleanse without any problem if such a Spell had actually been recorded.

  Since this was a bust, I decided to not learn any of those spells for now, because I could feel it in my bones that a better spell was available somewhere around here. Heck, if anything, this book had proven that a cleansing spell like the one I had in mind did actually exists, but it was “cordoned off” by a bunch of other requirements or was the reward of some hidden Quest.

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  Of course, I knew for a fact that such “requirements” or “restrictions” were absolutely bullshit, because Momma System would be able to cleanse someone immediately if she actually wanted to, without any prerequisites. I only had to find the proper way to force her into doing that.

  Therefore, I told Xibei to start copying down on paper in the real world the spell-circuits that were available in the book, so we could analyze and dissect them better later. I also got down from my bed inside of the Clinic and started heading towards the Smithy, where Xibei’s real body was located.

  Just as I was walking out of the Clinic’s door, I got intercepted by Liliam.

  "Erm...Trina...got a minute? There's something that I need to talk to you about." Liliam said while fidgeting as her blue-hair cowlick was almost bouncing up and down on the top of her head.

  "Sure love, I’m all ears. Tell me what’s up while we head towards the Smithy. Xibei and Fung found something interesting, and I told them to copy it down on paper."

  "Well...you know a lot of alchemy recipes, right?"

  "Eh...I would not label my recipe list as “large”. While I do know a bunch of recipes, they are mostly common stuff that just about every average alchemist knows, or the other weird concoctions that I have figured out on my own. Compared to a true grandmaster, I’m a piss-poor alchemist, at least recipe wise."

  "Mmm...don’t beat yourself down like that! It’s quite a normal thing that you have a limited recipe list...you barely got into this only profession a few months ago. Some of those grandmasters you talk about have been at it for hundreds of years! Of course they have more knowledge! But...that’s not what I’m interested in. I hear Uncle Liffy shared his recipe for “monthly female problems” with you. Did you get around to making any of those pills yet?"

  "Aaaah...so that’s why you look so jumpy. Yeah, I made a couple for a “test run”, but I already used them on myself. I hate having to put up with that period problem when there's so much other stuff that requires my attention. If you want me to, I can try and make some for you. We can head to the Pill Forge shack right now?"

  "Realy? Thanks! I’d be very grateful for that! In fact, I think you should consider making a lot of those if you can, because they could come in handy for trading around the village for other materials. If none of the ladies in the village will be at risk of getting pregnant during such harsh times, I think it would increase the morale of all of their male partners since they would be able to freely…(*cough*)...well, you know." Liliam was turning all red in her face and ears.

  "Good idea! Yeah, this stuff should be made available to the public everywhere. No more bleeding and hysterical women! It’s a win-win! I gotta see if I have enough materials to make them though, some of the required stuff is sort of rare, if I remember the recipe properly. Ah...damn...That means I’ll need Will-E’s Storage too. One second, let me tell Fung to send Will-E to the Alchemy Shack. We can... (*ShiverDownTheSpine*). We...Ugh..."

  "Hmm? What’s wrong?"

  "Nothing. It must have been the wind. It’s getting chilly in the autumn." I gestured towards Liliam with my eyes so she would keep on walking.

  No, it had not been the wind. Unlike other idiotic characters that chuck such “gut feelings” to the side and pretend that “it must have been the wind or a stray cat or something”, I took such “spider tingly senses” quite seriously. What I had felt was someone staring down at me from an unknown location but with a significant amount of murderous intent behind their gaze, so it was obvious that someone was sneaking around the village in invisibility mode and was not one of the residents.

  As a result, I immediately derailed our path and went towards the Smithy. Once I was there, I picked up Will-E, and then I immediately told Fung and the others via party chat that we had an intruder in the village so they should immediately go get the higher-level guys from the Temple. Lingfeng, Lew the Troll, and Mr. Nobi had been managing and training the troops over there, so they were almost 24/7 at the Buddist temple nowadays, but if we wanted to catch whoever was snooping around the Village, we would probably need their “muscle”.

  In fact, I was surprised that it took so long for some spies to show up, because that group of Blood Cultists who had raided the older nearby Dungeon to take its orb away to summon the Ancient Evil couldn't have been working on their own, therefore the disappearance of their entire team should have been noticed by someone.

  After that, I went straight for the Mayor’s office, because I knew he had a guard dog that could be used for sniffing out the intruder. Most invisibility spells did not have a “smell invisibility” attached to them, they were optical-only spells, so a dog was quite a good tool to use against such stealth tactics.

  Patches the Dog was a big-ass white-furred fluff ball with floppy ears, a giant shepherd dog that had two hilariously accurate square-shaped black patches of fur on both of his sides, hence the name. He was also child-friendly, as the little 4-year-old daughter of the Mayor always seemed to use the pooch as her mount. In fact, that’s how I found them playing around the Mayor’s office, so I had been forced to bargain with the little brat so she would “loan” me her doggy for one of the sugar jawbreakers that I had been concocting with my Cooking-Alchemy mixed skills.

  After that, the Mayor took the dog’s leash, and with a few snips and clicks that were the dog’s trained “language signs”, the former seemingly “harmless” furball immediately went into “hound” mode and began to look quite ferocious while sniffing around in the air.

  Once the dog had been “primed” for a hunt, we rushed to the site where I had gotten the chills down my spine and we let the mutt do its thing.

  Patches was confused at first since we had not given him a “source material” that he could chase after, but after a few more of those clicks and snips from the Mayor which basically meant “find the enemy”, the dog finally figured out what we wanted and began following a scent trail.

  We followed it, and it ended at one of the spawned wooden cubes that I had used as a fence placeholder, so whoever had been sneaking around had obviously jumped over the thing.

  I did not relent though, so I took Patches to the other side of the fence, and he picked up the scent trail again. By this time, Lingfeng, Nobi, and Lew had also joined us, but I told them to “play helicopter” and remain hovering on their flying swords somewhere above us.

  The trail led away from the village towards the North, and Lingfeng immediately understood what was going on.

  [Your “spy” is headed towards the location of the old Dungeon. The direction is obvious, and there isn't anything else out there that could be used as a base. Whoever these guys are, they probably took residence in the ruins of the old Dungeon after the core got removed. This could become quite a problem if they are from any of the hostile factions. We don’t know how much they have learned yet. Our position might have been leaked away to the world already!]

  [Ok, then I got an idea. We can use Nobi and Yi Gore to scout out the location. Heck, even Rheina learned a weird stealth skill that she recently acquired in the Dungeon, so we should call her too.]

  [Right. Go tell the others to get ready. Things might get really ugly, really fast.]

  "Mayor, thank you for your assistance. We’ll take it from here." I bowed to the middle-aged man and his dog.

  "BAW!"

  "Yes, you too, Patches! Good boy! Good doggie! Here...have some fried chicken."

  *Crunch*Munch*

  "You and Patches should go back home, because this might result in some bloodshed if those people sneaking around are hostile. Until we know their true intentions, it’s better if all of you normal villagers stay out of harm’s way. And try and find some discreet way to inform everyone that we have foreigners snooping around, so the villagers will know how to keep their mouths shut properly."

  Sorry for such a long downtime, but I’ve had some major problems at work. As you may know, school is re-starting, so all our medical offices in our building had to emit “certificates” of health that say “this child is not infected with anything, is safe for collectivity” before any of the patients could send their brats to school. We have about 35k-ish+ people in our care if I had to sum all of the offices together, and a lot of those people have kids between grades 1 to 12, so they ALL had to get those damn “your child is available for infection” certificates, as I jokingly like to call them. THOUSANDS of the damn things. That meant a lot or printing. And when volumes like that come in, a lot of hardware fails. Well, a lot more than I would have liked. I did not get one fault or two, I got fucking 13. Well, one printer broke 5 times in a row, so not really 13, but I digress. I had to give that particular office my own printer so they could finish their job. And when I took the guilty printer to the repair shop, I had a huge argument with the guys over the extended warranty. Basically they were refusing to service me, because “they do not cover extended warranties for COMPANIES/offices anymore” since 2 years ago. But the printer had a 5 year extended warranty when it was bought, which, logically speaking, should have still been available. I even called the consumer's police, but they also gave me the “we will investigate and come back to you in two weeks” bullshit. FUCK that shit, I need the printer...YESTERDAY. SO I told them all to go fuck themselves and I came back to my office with the damn broken thing. And then I tried to fix it. Turns out that the metal spring which holds the upper and lower part of the printing cartridge (all of the printers are laser printers, aka the ones which use black dust, not ink, btw) got loose from one of the badly-recharged printer cartridges, and had gone in the mechanism. Don’t try to refill your cartridges when you don’t fucking know what you’re doing, or stuff like this happens! Seriously, don’t. You’ll only make a repairman somewhere curse you for life. I recharge all of mine because I’ve been doing it for 15+ years and know every nut and bolt on them, but I tell all of my offices that for the purposes of what they are doing, it's safer to just buy new cartridges. Anyway, after the spring went in the mechanism, it got squashed and then it scratched both the printing roll on the cartridge-side AND also the heating coil uptop. When a paper goes through the printing assembly, at the end, there’s this plastic roll thing that heats up and makes the ink permanently stick to the paper. That part got shredded. I had to open the whole thing, buy a replacement part, wait for a day until it arrived (funnily enough that was the EASY part), and then put it all back together, which took a couple of days when I wasn’t able to write anything. And even when it turned on afterwards, the damn thing would print on only HALF a page. When I told the printer to print me a full-black page, it would output only half a paper in black. It took me a day more of poking and prodding before I finally figured out that the LID which usually goes up and down in front of the laser was stuck, and was causing the laser to only get to half of the page. I had seen the partial functionality of the damn thing as an affront to my engineering self, so I did not quit until I fixed it. Meh. In the end, I got it to work, but that shit ate all of my mental mana. SO yeah. I’ve only been able to do 1-2 hours each day of minor writing and idea depositing, which is insufficient for a whole clean chapter.

  Therefore, I will cut the next “chapter” into many smaller 1000-1500 words chunks, since they are all changing POV’s and locations anyway, but I will publish them throughout the next few days, with 1 or 2 each day.

  Basically, as soon as I have SOMETHING, even if it’s minor, I will publish it, rather than have you wait for a whole week.

  I would also like to thank my Patrons saganatsu, The Stars Align, Gavin Gass, Journeyman_Mike, Enarthuralitides, LS, Hunter Rhoades, Oliverthms, Bsreads, VoidDraak, Jonathan Frerichs, Bob, Lucas Brizeno, Leonard K Spencer Jr, C. Wilbs, Beau Bryant, Emporer303, BritishBob, Enaz the great, Joachim Janssen, Cade, StoryEater Michael, Thegoodman2132 and Zhaliora for their former or continued support./hug