Chapter: A new direction

Erik woke slowly, his body felt stronger than ever before, there was still some remaining weakness from the dehydration and starvation he had gone through.

Rugrat moved to him, from his look he hadn't slept all night, watching over Erik.

"How you feeling?" Rugrat asked.

"A lot better," Erik said, checking over his body with an organic scan. Instead of spreading poison, his body was getting stronger with the blood in his body, strengthening him internally.

"Scared me there for a bit," Rugrat said with a half-laugh.

"Don't worry, not getting rid of me that easily," Erik laughed.

His notifications symbol was blinking at him, drawing his attention.

Erik opened it up.

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For tempering your blood you have unlocked the quest: Body Cultivation

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Quest: Body Cultivation

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The path cultivating one's body is not easy, to stand at the top, one must forge their own path forward.

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Requirements:

Reach Body Like stone level

Sub requirements

Tempering of the Blood

Tempering of the Bones

Tempering of the Organs

Tempering of the Muscle

Tempering of the Skin

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Rewards:

+3 to strength

+3 to agility

+3 to stamina

+5 to stamina regeneration

+100,000 EXP

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Through tempering your blood you have found that your body heals at an increased rate, your stamina and stamina regeneration have also increased!

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+1 to Stamina Regeneration

+1 to Stamina

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Natural healing rate, like overall health was a hidden stat and not something that people could quantify, or the system recognized. The only time that it was acknowledged was when someone's body's abilities took a leap upwards, going through the stages of Body like Stone, Body Like Iron and so on.

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You have reached Level 8

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When you sleep next, you will be able to increase your attributes by: 5 points.

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7,280,/48,000 EXP till you reach level 9

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With Erik passing out due to exhaustion his body hadn’t acknowledged him as going to sleep so the experience didn’t take effect and he didn’t increase in overall level.

"Damn, how does anyone become a damn body cultivator when it's this hard?" Erik muttered to himself. With the mana gathering system, as long as he increased his mana regeneration then he was able to pass through the Vapor and Mist stage, the Drop stage he would need to compress his mana slightly and the Core compression stage would require him to use outside help or spells to control his mana and form a mana core.

With body cultivation, to just get to the first stage he needed to temper the different systems in his body. A total of five different systems. If going by how he had completed his Blood tempering, Erik wasn't looking forward to the remaining temperings.

He dismissed the information and looked at Rugrat.

"So, what's the plan?" Rugrat asked. "Do we go back, kill the fuckers that targeted you?"

Rugrats voice was casual but Erik knew he was serious.

"Not yet, there are some powerful people in the city and we still need to increase our strength." Thankfully they hadn't left anything behind as they had all of their gear stored in their storage rings. "Lets go to Beast Mountain instead, we can increase, our level, our skills and build up our gold. There are many things we can find in beast mountain to increase our strength and they don't care who we are."

Rugrat seemed to relax a bit, he had been tense ever since the previous day, knowing that they weren't going right back into the fight brought relief.

"Let's move our camp, get some food and sleep, then we'll head for the Wild Reaches Trading City," Erik said.

Erik pulled the IV's out, storing them before digging into some of the rations and water they had, satisfied they cleared up everything and headed off.

They had both bought maps of the area so they knew the Beast Mountain region and the closest trading outpost that ringed the massive area.

They made camp and Erik took first watch, Rugrat quickly passed out as Erik surveyed the area.

He didn't know who had tried to kill him, but he would make sure that they wouldn't survive.

***

Domonos was sitting in a cafe with his people around him, the rest of the Cafe had been cleared out as a man rushed up before taking a knee in front of Domonos.

"Young Lord, we have talked to differ people around the city and tried to look for the two men but it has been hard to do so, their clothing must have changed and they were wearing something similar to the people in Chonglu," the man reported.

Domonos frowned, he trusted his people to find out where the two people were, after all it was just two nobodies, they had no status or position in Chonglu.

"Talk to the guards at the gate, have them report to me if they see these two entering the city again," Domonos said, he wasn't willing to try and chase after these two. The Wilful sect he had become a part of would be descending in the coming weeks to pick up the talents they had scouted and recruit more.

There was also some kind of competition that they had to temper their students that they brought but it hadn't been revealed to him what they did.

"Young Lord, there were two people that fled the city yesterday," a man beside Domonos said, stepping forward, speaking into his ear.

"Oh?" He said, showing faint interest.

"They were healing people in the market area, there had been one of them, but the second day there were two of them.

They were attacked but killed the attacker before fleeing, one of them heavily wounded, many don't believe he would survive.

The guards didn't stop them as they fled the city."

Domonos tapped his fingers against the armrest of his seat, it might very well be the people that his youngest brother had talked about, to make the guards even fear from attacking them, was there something more.

"Many of the people that were at the market said that when they were attacked their aura was dominating, making many fear for their lives."

"They are nothing but weak pawns," Domonos dismissed them, he had heard that there was something going on with Lord Chonglu looking for healers, this might be the reason that the guards hadn't stopped them as they looked to flee.

“If they don’t return then we won’t pursue them,” Domonos said, dismissing the matter.

He didn’t have time to waste on these unimportant people and others seemed to want to kill them.