Shen's spear made quick work of the hornets while considering how he had made the right decision to land in this world close to the forest rather than inside.

The forest was an endless battlefield. Shen had killed a horde of horned rabbits not so long ago, then forty-eight werewolves had ambushed him, and now had to deal with hundreds of hornets. Instead of a tutorial area, the place looked like a trial for an army to test their resource management skills in a battle of attrition.

He swung his spear at a perfect angle, killing two hornets while jumping and twisting his body in the air, thus dodging five attacks.

Despite his thoughts about the forest, coming here after he was prepared had been outstanding. Being constantly on edge had let him improve by leaps and bounds. He could extract the full power of his F stats, and his situational awareness had reached a point he had only seen in battle-hardened cultivators. He was really in awe of how much the improved learning speed was doing for him.

His new spear at the F tier helped, too, of course. Shen had bought after only a couple days in the forest. The blade had the same enchantments as the F- one, anti-wear and sharpness, but at the F tier rather than the F-. The spearhead's edge was so sharp he felt like it could cut through anything.

Shen danced amid his enemies, avoiding all attacks, killing with abandon. Eventually, Alice Winter started helping. She threw fist-sized fireballs against the hornets. The attacks' effectiveness was limited at best, as the ball of fire dissipated after hitting half a dozen hornets or so. Fortunately, they still killed many just because the animals were so packed together.

Shen felt a bit conflicted about her help.

On the one hand, he had less than fifty stamina remaining after getting rid of the rabbits and werewolves. The most irritating thing about the forest was G-rank enemies forcing him to spend stamina to deal with them.

On the other hand, he didn't need any help right now, so she was effectively stealing his AP.

The thought of losing AP lasted only until he heard a dry stick snap not too far from him and turned to see hundreds of horned rabbits surrounding them. Shadows didn't fight Shadows; they would all attack Alicia and Shen while ignoring the other animals.

"Sorry!" he yelled before rushing at her, putting her over his shoulders like a mortal would carry a sack of potatoes, then running also to grab his backpack.

It was taboo for a cultivator to disrespect a sapient being's personal space except in certain situations. Getting surrounded by enemies and carrying her to safety was an exception, but he still found it wise to apologize in advance. She was a woman, and he was a man, which brought other considerations to the table.

Alicia, whom he was realizing was a silent girl, didn't express anything. He ran at F+ speed thanks to his boots until, after a couple of minutes, he arrived on an enormous tree that was so wide it would take at least a hundred people to hug it. Once there, he put Alicia down with care and stepped back before cupping his hands in front of him and nodding.

"I apologize again," he said. "If you want to pursue the matter with my clan after we leave the tutorial, I'll take responsibility." Even if it was only to save her, he had touched her. It depended on her whether she would let the matter go, trusting him not to mention it to anyone.

If she had been a cultivator, he might've needed to take her as a concubine. As a mortal, she would be offered monetary compensation or a job.

Shen wondered if system-enhanced mortals would be given greater status in the Eternal Empire after the tutorial, but he doubted they would receive the same rights and responsibilities as cultivators. It wasn't a matter of power. Some things could only be achieved by living long enough and passing that knowledge to the new generations in a certain way, and the perspective of short lives prevented that. Mortals simply couldn't understand honor like cultivators. Even Shen, who had grown amid cultivators, had trouble understanding some of it sometimes.

"I... Okay, I guess?" she sounded a bit... dulled for the occasion.

Maybe mortals so distant from the seat of the Eternal Empire had a different culture and were used to getting touched? Or perhaps it was the opposite; she was very conscious of her body and was in great shock? Asking would be intruding, so he had no way to know.

"Please keep helping however you can," he said. Offering her AP was a subtle way of asking her not to seek his clan for his offense.

Then Shen put the backpack on the ground and turned to where he had come from.

He had run to the tree not to escape but to decrease his enemies' maneuvering capabilities and keep the girl safer.

An army composed of F-rank hornets as big as his forearm and G-rank horned rabbits approached, following him like hounds looking for meat.

He rushed at them.

Genetically Enhanced Hornet (F) | 36,092 → 36,102 AP

His spear pierced the last enemy, and it turned into motes of light.

Shen was breathing heavily for the first time in a while—the prolonged effort had made him mess up with his breathing technique. He had a little over twenty stamina remaining, and it had reached as low as fifteen points at some point. His cultivation-improved stamina regen had saved him here. As he had expected, this fight had been a resource management struggle as much as dodge training. He would've run away while carrying Alicia, despite the rudeness of it, if he had ever reached ten points, but that had thankfully not been necessary.

Alicia had used seven fireballs total, then vomited and sat with her head between the legs. Mana-based magic seemed to have different consequences than qi-based techniques when overused. A cultivator would've hurt themselves instead, maybe even crippled their meridians and destroyed their future for good. She had only fallen ill.

Shen controlled his breathing and watched out for new enemies, but none came for a while. He thanked the heavens and approached the girl.

"Is there a way for me to help you?" he asked.

Cultivators were supposed to help mortals in danger, which wasn't the case. However, helping anyone who was sick was just basic human decency.

"Need rest," she said with a voice that sounded drunk, not even raising her head.

"Can you stand up and move a little? Standing so close to the smell of your vomit will slow down your recovery." Shen knew it from experience; he couldn't even count how many times he had puked due to making more effort than his frail body could handle.

Alicia had sat just beside the contents of her stomach, and it reminded him of the times he had been too proud to call for help. Smelling it for hours had made his recovery much slower.

She took a few moments to reply but then nodded, stood up, and moved away. She sat about ten feet away.

Shen couldn't even remember the last time he had seen food. The people in the tutorial didn't need it anymore, so the tutorial didn't give them any. He had searched, but the forest had no fruit tree, mushrooms, or anything similar, and anything he killed turned into light. So, Alicia throwing up had been unexpected.

The contents were a weird mix of what looked like darkened blood and blue jelly. Shen didn't look too closely, but it smelled terrible.

He moved his backpack to a few feet beside her and sat down to meditate about what he had experienced in battle. He lost track of time as he went through his mistakes and successes. Being faster or slower here or there might've been better. Attacking in another way would've made him more effective. Moving differently would've improved the flow of battle.

After a while, he thought he had the gist of it. It was time to see how his theory would compare to practice. He went through the Windstorm Spear Art and Gale Footwork forms, moving like he had done in the fight first, then contrasting it to how he had just concluded was best.

The process was shameful.

The system's learning speed improvement helped him a lot, but he sometimes found himself moving out of instinct rather than knowledge. He did what he found best to survive a situation, ignoring the wisdom of his ancestors that had created the techniques he practiced. For instance, why develop a new "jump and twist" method to attack while dodging? He had the Flowless Hurricane movement to do just that in a much better way!

Of course, his instinct wasn't useless. Some of the moves he had started using were the intuitive combination of two or more techniques to fit a particular situation, and they saved him in the heat of battle. The "jump and twist" was a good example. There was no technique to kill two flying enemies almost beside each other while dodging five others coming from specific places. Yet, by combining the Flowless Hurricane with a simple jump and a simple swing of his spear, he would've achieved the same thing with less effort and ended the movement better positioned to cause more damage to his enemies' ranks.

Shen got absorbed by it. For once, no enemies attacked for a while. When he finished analyzing the moves, he repeated the optimal solution over and over again to ingrain them to his bones.

At long last, he ended.

That had been a good training session; time to get more AP.

"Thank you," Alicia said, taking him from his thoughts.

He was a bit startled; he had forgotten all about her. He turned to see her standing up, looking in his direction with a smile.

"No problem." He nodded.

It was weird to see a mortal thank a cultivator without bowing their head even slightly. Hell, a fellow cultivator would've nodded even if they were stronger than him. It didn't matter where she lived in the world; the Eternal Empire's culture wouldn't change that much from region to region, would it?

Shen...

Shen had been avoiding thinking about some things.

He had been entombed alive in what felt like a cavern rather than been cremated. Mark Williams had ridiculed Shen for claiming to be from the Eternal Empire or the Feng Clan. People's clothes were strange. He had found no other cultivators in the first stage. And the system had called his robe "ancient."

Separated, each of those things had an explanation. Mark Williams could be an idiot; the system could've brought him together with mortals too far from the seat of the empire; the system might have a different sense of time to call something ancient. Yet, on each occasion, he had noticed their strangeness. The hardest one to explain was the first one, his burial.

No cultivator would've failed to identify whether a mortal, as he had been before, was genuinely dead. In his clan, where his father was the leader, that was simply impossible. Even if there had been a coup, to entomb someone alive would've been such a humiliation that even the Immortal Emperor would have intervened in it. At the very least, they would've buried him alive to let him suffocate quickly.

In the past weeks, Shen had been thinking about it more and more, and now, the way she thanked him triggered a final revelation.

Alicia Winter's culture was way too alien to his. Everyone's culture was. None had cupped their hands in greeting when he went to help them with their final bosses in the first stage. None had kneeled when faced with a cultivator. None had even looked honored for his intervention.

Shen...

He might be...

Running from the incoming revelation would be easy. Keep fighting, keep training, stop thinking about what might've happened.

Yet, his father might...

Shen took a deep breath.

His father, Feng Yang, would've never, ever, let his son be entombed alive without a fight. And could his clan even survive the ire of their strongest?

Shen clenched his fists and steeled his heart, then asked, "Who is your cultivator overlord?"

The confusion in Alicia Winter's face was answer enough, but the final nail to the coffin was her one-word question, accompanied by a confused look, "Sorry?"

He suddenly felt the world spinning and getting smaller.

"Have you ever heard of a cultivator? Of the Feng Clan? Of the Eternal Empire?"

She shook her head. "I haven't... Sorry?" She was getting even more confused. "Are you okay?"

He could think of five possibilities.

First, everything, from cavern to tutorial, was a prank, but it was too elaborate to be one.

Second, everything was an illusion to let him grow stronger while testing how he would react to ignorant mortals, but it sounded like just wishful thinking.

Third, his clan had fallen in disgrace enough that every member had been entombed alive separately, but that sounded too unbelievable. He had been a mere mortal weeks ago. Even if all else failed, the Eternal Empire's laws would still forbid any cultivator from treating a mortal like that. That also didn't explain what had happened after he left the tomb.

Which led him to the fourth possibility: the Eternal Empire had disappeared somehow, and with it, cultivator culture. That sounded like a poorly written story. A world without cultivators was impossible to even imagine, and the Eternal Empire that governed it was... well, eternal. There was nothing and no one who could cause its downfall.

But could the Eternal Empire face something that claimed to span over multiple universes? Had the Multiverse Alliance destroyed them? If so, why was Shen left alive? Maybe because he had been a mortal?

Speaking of him being alive...

The fifth possibility was that he was actually dead, and this was a strange kind of hell.

Shen had stood up from a coffin filled with dust in a locked cave. He had never heard of such a hell, but he had never claimed to be knowledgeable about the ways of the afterlife.

Still, that sounded the most unlikely possibility. Shen felt alive, and he was meeting people who seemingly thought they were alive. He wouldn't discard that possibility, but out of all four, the one that was the most shocking yet most likely was...

The fall of cultivators.

That explained everything much better; the culture, the people, his father's absence. It even explained how the Eternal Empire hadn't interfered with the Multiverse Alliance's plans or even told the mortals what to expect from it. The empire had never before failed to lead its mortals, especially during times of peril.

The Eternal Empire was gone.

And if the Eternal Empire was gone, everything he knew, everyone he knew, was gone with it.

That terrible reality was too much. The world seemed too small, as if it was trying to crush him where he stood. It spun around him. He couldn't focus, breathe, or think.

Shen did his best to steel himself. He clenched his fists so hard his fingernails turned backward on his F- resistance skin. The pain grounded him a little, and he took a deep breath, then stared at Alicia, "I need a moment," he said, turned back, and left.

He ran at F+ speed until he thought he was far enough, the unbidden tears making his vision blurry.

Shen fell to his knees and released a scream of pure anguish, for his father was dead, and his people were gone.