Training skills to advantage was fundamental. Twelve hours of free training every 30min could allow any user to leapfrog over their competition. I said previously that all we really needed was time to grow stronger. That was precisely what an event was time to grow exponentially stronger and test out what skills worked for us.

…

The others left, leaving me to my own devices. For a while, I sat on the edge of a building staring over the ruined city. But, I wasn't idle, Reddit was up, and I found a reliable fire spirit summoner who summoned a flame spirit for his shaman class.

Spirits played an essential role for both shamans and cultivators. They could be used to transform different types of QI or spiritual energy into something usable.

Different spirits could convert different strains of QI into something I could use. For a powerful cultivator having multiple spirits was a good thing. For a shaman, it was a necessity; they relied entirely on spirits for their power. It was a little like Pokémon, honestly. Shamans used multiple summons and often traded spirits. It seemed like a lot of fun, but I had other designs.

When I looked at this place, it reminded me of a dense rotten forest ready to burn. Higher-tier fire spirits had the power to convert death QI into usable energy. The substance created from the conversion was actually called Fertile Ash or when concentrated enough Divine Dust. It was an important component when creating several cultivation pills. The higher tiered the fire spirit, the more ash and the higher quality they could produce. Not to mention spirits could also grow in tier from combat and even learn system skills. That was news to me, and it made summoning a fire spirit even more attractive.

One of the most important factors when placing a summoning circle was location and size. The larger the circle, the more powerful the spirit that could be summoned. There didn't seem to be an upper limit, but special ingredients were needed to entice the spirit. For fire spirits, wood or death QI were required to attract them. Fire spirits had a natural inclination to destroy the undead and burn wood-type entities. This attributed even more to the pokémon feel to the spirits.

With that in mind, this city was a perfect place for a summoning.

The city was a ruin, zombies shuffled through the streets irradiated from Manhattan, and the buildings I flew through before had started to crumble. Some of the zombies had formed mobs and begun hunting other undead. The flesh of the living wasn't the only thing they were interested in any longer. As they consumed one another, they changed form and evolved. I could feel the deathly QI within them concentrate as they fought and devoured each other. Really it was a fascinating process how long before another raid boss would form just from this mutation.

Even more interesting were the leaders of these hordes. Not only did they direct their undead, but they devoured those from their horde too damaged to go on. They mutated the fastest, growing larger, losing substance, gaining a heavier presence, or becoming skeletons. A rare few turned paler and began exclusively drinking the black ichor within the undead. As a whole, the undead evolved rapidly within the city as complete anarchy took hold.

I know turning the whole city into a summoning circle sounded badass, but the odds were good I wouldn't be able to contract with such a powerful fire spirit. Well, without beating it to death first. Nope, that wasn't going to happen; it would be better to just evolve my own fire spirit than to summon something I couldn't work with. Besides, I had an entire world of undead to use for resources.

So, I followed the Reddit post and stole a protractor from a nearby store. Once my circle was positively perfect, I stole a zombie from one of the hordes and ripped open its skull, like popping the top of a Pringles can. The circle lit up the second I placed the oozing glowing green brain in its center.

A fox, the size of a tea cub, appeared from the circle, and I knew I had made a mistake. It immediately dove into the brain, covering its fur in green goopy brain matter. Soon green brain matter covered every inch of the fox and the whole summoning circle. Then, finally, it turned to me before shaking, splattering brain matter everywhere before its fur burned away the rest.

The fox sat on its haunches and stared up at me. Small patches of yellow fur mixed in with its red fur as it turned its head to the side. I sighed and purchased the skill Bind Spirit.

Ding!

Bind Spirit lvl1

Type: QI +4

Rank: C

I pointed at the little fox and felt a fragile sphere of QI form. The little fox turned its head to the other side as I tossed the ball of QI.

The little ball flew forward, opened, and snapped shut. A fire lit up within the ball as the little fox suddenly started struggling to getaway. Despite how fragile the QI sphere appeared, my QI was fucking dense. Eventually, the little fox gave up, and I felt it bond to me. Slowly a link formed between the fox and me.

While it didn't seem like much of an accomplishment, I felt damn proud of myself. I threw my hands in the air and shouted. "I’m going to catch them all and become the number 1# spirit master,” I shouted before getting ahold of myself.

“If you think capturing me makes you a spiritual master, you’re dumber than I thought you were.” A harsh feminine voice said.

“Does someone want a bath? I asked the fox.

“You wouldn’t dare.” The fox said.

I tossed the fox out of me and into the open. The creature managed to fold its QI into my own, which felt weird. Releasing it required controlled isolation and more focus than I’d like to admit. She wasn’t very cooperative after being captured either. Seeing how I’m way more potent than her, I expected near worship from the start. Instead, she started running her mouth off.

She scrambled to hang on to the ledge, which led me to believe that the physical world could damage her on some level. “What are you doing, jackass, help me, or I’m going to splatter? You’re supposed to serve me in exchange for my protection.”

“Can you create Fertile Dust?” I asked the struggling spirit.

“No! Help me; I’m slipping.” I let her lose her balance and fall a little before I flew down and gently caught her. “You let me fall, you jerk. How could you do that to me? I’m your bound spirit? Don’t you know what that means?” She said.

“Go ahead, I’m sure you’ll tell me,” I said.

“It means that you’re supposed to use me to fight your enemies; what kind of shaman doesn’t know that.” I raised an eyebrow. Yea, shamans, used spirits to bolster weapons, merge with, and as combatants. For me, she was similar but different. According to Reddit, I could use her to bolster my cultivation with body refinement. But, of course, we’d need to find sources of fire QI for that, maybe in the next event.

Her stomach began to shrink once we returned to the roof. “I’m a cultivator,” I said.

The fox turned her head to the side. “Well, fire hounds, alright, if you’re a cultivator, you don’t need me to fight your battles; I’m a pet.” She said the last words with trepidation.

“A body refinement tool actually well when you’re at a higher level. You look a little bigger. Did the brain help.” I asked.

The tiny fox yipped at me and ran to the brainless zombie. She sniffed at it before turning her nose up. “The brain was the best part. Can I have another? If you want me at a higher level, you better feed me.

I flew down and snatched up a few more zombies. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Flickering Starfire Tails, you can use my full name or,”

“I’m calling you Star for short,” I said.

“Can you at least call me Starfire?” Star asked.

“No, eat the brains and grow strong quickly; there are plenty to go around,” I said.

“Nope, I’m near my limit today. If I eat anymore, I might explode; just give me six hours to digest, and I’ll be good.” She leaped into my QI, blending her QI seamlessly with my own.

While she rested within, I felt a heat radiating from her into my body. After going to Reddit for advice, I found a cultivation technique for body refinement. While she was full of zombie brains, now was the time to begin refinement. This wouldn’t increase my Parameters; it would be an exclusive power increase outside of system support.

To refine this fire QI flowing at this level, I needed to sit in a pot of boiling oil and meditate. Fortunately, these supplies were cheap. I purchased a massive pot, a stand, a snorkel, firewood, and gallons of cooking oil from the shop. I placed a few logs under the pot and poured in the oil. From there, it took about thirty minutes to get the oil boiling, and I hopped in.

So, there I was in a pot of boiling oil breathing through a tube while the city raged below. I felt it happen slowly; the fire QI moved through my body, trapped by the oil. Indeed, if there was more fire QI, it would have forced its way out, but while submerged, it was forced to linger in my body. The total effect of what this body refinement technique was meant to do eluded me, but I’d like to believe I felt a little stronger afterward. Time continued to tick away as Star rested and infused me with her QI.

When Star emerged from my body, she was a few inches longer. I could feel an increase in power from her, but it wasn’t a tier jump. Star could pass as a regular fox with her single tail and large pointy ears. Even her orange pupils looked positively normal. If not for the sheer heat that radiated from her fur even, I would be fooled.

“I’m hungry. Can I have some more brains, pretty please, with chickens on top?” I pulled them from my inventory, and she pounced on them, devouring the zombie brains like a vampire on a schoolgirl. However, this time she could eat three plumping up until she resembled more than a fox.

“Great, you’re fat,” I said.

She glared at me. “Take that fat. I’m pleasantly plump. It's not my fault the brains taste good, and you have an endless supply of them.” Star said.

“So, I’m making you eat them,” I said.

“Yes, and I am taking the obvious abuse better than most in my situation,” Star said.

I thought about rolling her off the edge but thought better of it. It was about to be back in the pot. I flicked through the Reddit page on body tempering only to realize I’d made a mistake. Apparently, I’m supposed to use image training to house the fire QI, or else it would bounce around my body until the oil was removed. This was why I couldn’t feel the fire QI anymore or an increase in power.

I could have burned the city down, but I preferred to let the zombies concentrate. It could make for better fights later on.

When Star returned to my QII hopped back into the boiling oil for the last four hours of my event. I set the return for automatic. Within the pot, I envisioned a mass of space dust, and slowly the fire QI began to gather with my own to create this new mass. Energy crackled as the cloud of energy flowed within my QI, shifting and compacting. In a sense, it was my foundation for body refinement.

An hour before I would return, I felt a spike of death QI equal to that of Manhattan. So, I popped the lid off the pot and flew up to investigate. Down below, I sensed an undead I hadn’t encountered before. It was ghostly and dressed in a black robe. Many of the other undead had been slain around it. The creature rode in on a massive snow-white motorcycle and wielded a scythe in one hand. Skeletal wings extended from its back ending in spear-like spines.