In the darkness of space, the Dreamer slept. They were curled, thousands of dark tentacles embracing themselves. They had been like that for a long, long time.

And then they felt interference in their realm.

Their tentacles opened, revealing white ones, and in their midst, a bright blue gem filled with swirling stars.

The Dreamer's eyesight pierced through the emptiness straight into the distant mega world they had repurposed for the Pioneer Tutorial. It watched a single bolt of golden lightning form on the skies there and pierce their perfectly forged creation.

The heavens were arrogant and absolute; they bore no perceived slight, as minor as it might be. That was the main reason the Primordials had tamed Reality so long ago. Now, the heavens destroyed the perfectly crafted defenses of the Dreamer's closely monitored experiment just because a couple of pieces of dust were about to hit a cultivator undergoing a tribulation.

With the defenses down, the Void Spawn cried in elation, finally feeling a connection to the Void.

The Void answered their call.

Black circles the size of moons, darker than dark, filled the surroundings of the mega world. Portals from which beings copying the form of many different living beings entered. Thousands, millions of them invaded, but they were weak. The connection to the Void was too unstable so deep in the Multiverse. They needed a footing and time on this site to strengthen said connection and allow their powerful to come.

The Dreamer was about to personally intervene for the first time in thousands of years. Fortunately, they didn't need to.

The Alliance was many things, but a blatant liar was not one of them. Earth's galaxy had been placed at the Multiverse's very center, only less protected than the Primordial Galaxy itself. The moment the Void appeared, the Guardians came.

Humans had been given one year of protection, and the Alliance would deliver.

Hundreds of thousands of living beings wearing protective gear to survive and maneuver in space appeared from blue portals everywhere, together with as many spaceships. A fight of enormous dimensions took place around the world. The Alliance and their archenemy faced each other on yet another front.

The Alliance asked the Dreamer for help, but they didn't reply. Headquarters had enough people looking at it already. A B-rank's help would speed things up, but he had more important things to do.

The Dreamer coiled on themselves again. They had woken earlier than planned, which was undesirable, but it had at least allowed them to glimpse the present. Now they knew where their dreams diverged from reality, and that assisted them in their goal.

They returned to the Dream.

"Why not wake it up and let it deal with the problem itself?" Sharendil asked.

She was wearing her people's battle gear, a combat suit made of Deephase Nanocrystals that looked like liquid mirror. In the darkness of space, it made her all but invisible. She was floating in space beside her Conductor, not too far from a massive tentacular body.

"They are about to succeed in their goal or fail for the last time," Yornolar replied from the other battle gear. His was connected to hers, thus allowing communication. His ancient Voice was a rarity in their people. "Seeing us might change that."

"So what?" Sharendil insisted. "What do we care about the inferior races? They serve us, not the other way around. We shouldn't even be here."

"That thought, Primordial Maiden, is the reason we are here," he said with a teacher's tone. "The Void invades a galaxy next to ours, and your arrogance would rather see them conquer it and threaten us than lend your help. The Alliance sent none of their so-called B-ranks, and the one they have will not awake until it's too late. They have no idea how important this position is to our common enemy or what they could do with it. We must act while the Void's connection to this place is still unstable and no strong foe can come."

"We could easily eradicate this galaxy from home and be done with it," she suggested.

"No," he replied simply but firmly.

"You are too merciful," she countered. "That's the reason you'll lose to me in the next Consonance."

"Be it as it may, until my Voice is taken, you are mine to command, as dictated by the Choir. Thus I command you: kill the Void Spawn and sever their connection to this galaxy. Leave only the Seedlings and Hatchlings already on the planet."

Reminding her of the Choir made her freeze. She still had nightmares of the first—and last—time she had joined it.

Without further word, Sharendil obeyed the command.

Soon, the Void was gone, and the galaxy was secured.

Shen took his qi away from the spear, and it broke into tiny pieces before the system made it turn into light. The G weapon was too low-quality to withstand qi for much longer, and when he took the energy away, it lost the only thing holding it together.

He then took the qi from his body, and it hurt but didn't burst open. It could withstand his Boundless Qi, if just barely.

He looked at his body and found it clean. The Foundation Tribulation had left him covered in black goo when it removed his body's impurities, but not this one. He realized it was because he had broken through to a new realm not long ago and hadn't eaten anything since. Only his breathing was adding impurities to his body, but not enough to be noticeable when removed.

What he also didn't find were his clothes. The heavens hadn't been so kind as to restore them, and while it had felt liberating to fight naked, there were also some... physiological issues to moving too fast with nothing to hold certain parts tight. So he spent 10 AP to buy a new robe, 10 AP for a new belt, and 1,500 for one health and one stamina crystals.

After he was satisfied with his state, he sat to think about everything that had happened.

He had entered the Fate Origin realm and won the fight, but now that the exhilaration was gone, he wondered if it had been a mistake. Cultivation was about building upon the previous realm rather than reaching the end at all costs. It was a stable walk rather than a sprint. Not doing things the right way might cripple him for good.

The Initiate realm required one to feel, absorb, and control qi to a certain level, while the Meridian Clearing realm involved clearing Obstructions. Doing so meant repeatedly, intensively, and lengthily using qi in one's meridians. If a cultivator had skipped or half-assed the Initiate realm, they would either fail or take much longer to finish the Meridian Clearing realm.

The Foundation Establishment involved improving one's health and strength by pushing qi into specific body parts. It would be simply impossible to reach certain parts if the Meridian Clearing realm hadn't been done to perfection.

The Core Formation was about building a core, strengthening it, and tempering the body. If the Foundation Establishment hadn't been adequately done, one would find it impossible to improve anything. The body needed a minimum level of quality to be temperable using Core Formation techniques.

Shen was suffering from rushing. He should have a body capable of withstanding at least one hour of qi and a core with the reserves to fill both his body and his weapon for that long. Instead, he had skipped a few steps, and it left him with a lacking body that could withstand maybe forty minutes but only had enough qi reserves for a little over five minutes. His body should also be able to deal with his Boundless Qi without trouble, but it was hurting him.

And those weren't even the worse parts.

The worst issue was that it would take much longer to finish the steps of the Core Formation realm now that he had stepped onto the Fate Origin realm. The tribulation had reforged his body, so it had become much harder to temper it.

That reminded him of another issue. The tribulation's reward should also have made Shen faster and stronger than he was; he could feel it in his bones. Instead, he still felt as he had when he had mastered his F+ stats.

"Status," he said, hoping to find the answer to that issue there. He did.

Status

Name: Feng Shen

Rank: F

AP: 1,624

—

Health: 100 / 100 (12/hour)

Stamina: 82 / 100 (6.6/min)

—

Strength: F+ (attempt growth deferred until rank up)

Agility: F+ (attempt growth deferred until rank up)

Resistance: F+ (attempt growth deferred until rank up)

He needed to reach the E rank for his stats to go beyond the F rank.

One of the warnings he had gotten about using the system versus cultivating had said that he could raise stats by cultivating. The message hadn't outright said he would need to rank up using the system, but it had kind of informed him about that by omission. Or at least that's what he remembered.

Getting to the E rank would take 10,000 AP, but he only had 1,624.

Good thing there were six rows of enemies remaining. He had checked when he descended from the skies.

"Remaining time," he said.

| 2nd Stage ends in: 5 days, 12 hours, 33 minutes

The time was tight, but Shen had learned how his shortsightedness, impatience, and arrogance had brought him to bad places.

For now, he cultivated. He set the second mystical symbol in his core. Once again, he got too mentally drained to continue after it was done.

He passed the time until the next cultivation session by practicing the seventy-two general-purpose techniques of his clan's Foundational Knowledge. They weren't hard, and it took him only a few hours to practice each one a few times.

When Shen finished with the techniques, he still wasn't ready for the third symbol, so he reviewed his fights, meditated on the Concept of Boundlessness, and practiced a little—he had to spend an extra 10 AP for a new G spear for that, and he didn't use his qi on it.

But at long last, he placed the third and last symbol in his core, and the formation activated.

Shen didn't know what each rune did individually or if they had individual meaning, but he knew what the formation did. Coincidence or not, it had three functions.

First, it automatically absorbed qi into his core. It was slow, not nearly as fast as when he took qi in, but it was constant and didn't require his attention. It was great for his core to never be entirely devoid of qi, even when he wanted to spend his time doing other things.

Second, it made the qi his. Shen frankly had no idea how that worked, only that qi became easier to move and use once he got ownership of it. Indeed, he could already feel it took him a fraction of the previous willpower to move it around his body.

Third, it automatically distributed the surplus qi being absorbed through his body.

Each function fed the next. Shen needed to have qi for the formation to make it his own, and the qi needed to be his for the formation to push it into his body without his conscious thought. That third part was vital because it was closely linked to what he would be doing during his subsequent cultivation sessions: tempering his body.

A qi-tempered body was needed for the cultivator to have a greater chance at surviving the Core-Origin Tribulation. He was past that point, but it also increased how well and for how long he could withstand qi.

One way of tempering his body was by slowly pushing very minute amounts of qi into it. Whenever he did that in his fights, he kept his body saturated with qi, so it hurt him when he reached his limits. Taking things slowly got his body used to qi instead, and the formation would do it for Shen.

Active cultivation was also used to temper one's body. As usual, it involved rotating qi through the body in a set pattern, so the body could withstand larger amounts—though still not as much as when he fought—without hurting. Non-stopping cultivation 24-hours a day could theoretically make one finish the Body Tempering step in about a year.

That was, of course, if they didn't reach the Fate Origin realm before completing that step.

By rushing things, Shen had at least tripled the time required. He estimated that even in the tutorial's qi-rich environment, it would still take him at least six weeks, maybe more, if he cultivated six hours a day.

He frowned at the thought. Earth had been filled with qi, but why was the tutorial like that? The second stage, at least, was on another planet, unless he was in an illusion.

But he shook his head. Now was not the time to consider things beyond his understanding. He had much more important things to do.

Like the cultivator he was, Shen suppressed his stray thoughts, impatience, and desire to go and fight werewolves.

Instead, he cultivated.

"Remaining time," Shen said.

| 2nd Stage ends in: 3 days, 18 hours, 12 minutes

Finishing with his core—for now—and tempering his body for the first time had taken him almost two days. He had nearly four remaining. That should be enough to get the AP he needed as long as he didn't mess up.

"Inspect," he said, focusing on the next row of enemies.

| Enhanced Werewolf Nightinblade (F) | 100 / 100

Shen stood up, took his spear, and moved to his next challenge.