The next twenty minutes passed in relative silence. Jack had his senses honed to the surroundings, ready to snap back to his feet at the slightest sound or movement. Unless the next batch of creatures would materialize out of his shadows, he would not let them get the drop over him. He didn't say anything further to Sarah, because she had already made the decision herself. If she still wanted to live after everything that had transpired in the past twelve hours, that meant that she was ready to do what it took to survive: even if it meant getting her hands dirty.

All she needed right now was just someone to stand by her and let her cry her heart out. Being confronted with death was a traumatic experience, and this was the closest yet Sarah had gotten. He’d imagine having one’s throat ripped out was not the most pleasant way to go out either. But it also brought clarity, as nothing else in the world could. If Sarah did not know what she wanted from this new world previously, now Jack guaranteed that she knew her priorities.

Finally, she wiped her tears and moved to get up, burying her spear in the ground and leveraging it to get back up on her feet. Jack leaped back onto his feet gracefully, looking at Sarah’s haggard expression. Her eyes no longer carried a false bravado, but something else… a silent resolve that existed underneath the surface, only to be called upon in times of crisis.

“Hey, Sar. You good?” Jack asked informally, keeping the tone casual instead of overly caring, lest that backfire.

She nodded but didn’t verbally reply.

“Now that I think about it, I never asked you about the [Gemstone Beast’s] weakness. What is it?” Jack wanted a pretext to change the topic, but he was indeed curious about the beast’s weakness, considering that it was likely they would face more of them within [The Underbelly].

“When the beast leaped at me for the second time, after I was already wounded…. Well, I just went by my instincts, even if it was risky. If I were put in the same situation again, I don’t think I could do it, but I targeted its eye with [Qi Spear] and managed to strike it clean through, shattering it. The next moment, it just shattered even though my strike wasn’t all that powerful,” She explained, her tone ponderous as she tried to recall the details of the fight to the best of her ability.

“That’s amazing, Sarah! And also very helpful, we now have a way to hunt these monsters easily,” Jack seemed genuinely impressed, managing to impale the moving beast’s eye was no small feat even if they were no longer entirely human when it came to their physical capabilities.

“Hunt?”

“Have you checked your notifications?” Jack asked with a small smile on his face, starting to realize how some people managed to farm up points so quickly.

You have slain Gemstone Beast, Level 4 [Elite]. You have received: 125 TP. [Elite] modifier: x4. Total TP received: 500.

You have slain Gemstone Beast, Level 4 [Elite]. You have received: 125 TP. [Elite] modifier: x4. Total TP received: 500.

You have reached Cultivation Level 5 [18%]! You have reached Swordsman (O) Level 5 [32%]!

Total TP: 2400

Qi Projection has reached Level 2. Maximum range has increased to thirty meters.

“.....1000 Tutorial Points?” Sarah asked incredulously, staring at the number as if she couldn’t believe it was real.

“Fair price for almost dying, I’d say,” Jack grunted in slight displeasure, admonishing himself for not thinking that the monsters would be capable of long-range QI attacks like he was.

“What did you loot?” she asked, now intrigued.

“Haven’t yet. Shall we?”

Sarah nodded.

A minute later Jack was standing in front of the shattered pile of crystals that belonged to the first wolf, relaxing when the option to loot still popped up in its current state.

You have received:

Soul Stone [Gemstone Beast, Consumable]: Contains the fractured soul of a Gemstone Beast. Can be used to summon a Spectral Gemstone Beast that shares 75% of the original stats, for 5 minutes. Spectral Gemstone Beast cannot utilize Qi attacks.

“Huh. That’s metal,” Jack whispered under his breath, raising his eyebrows at the description. Well, it did seem useful, if nothing else but to serve as a distraction, so he wouldn’t be complaining. Still…. It was just a little too morbid for his tastes. Grudges were supposed to be absolved with the death of a man, but in this world…. perhaps not.

He proceeded to move to the next corpse, but that one only brought him disappointment. Try as he might, no option to loot showed up. He even tried to pick up the scattered crystals on the ground, even though they seemed dull and lifeless now but it was to no avail; the moment he made contact with a crystal it shattered into countless small motes of azure powder, before vanishing.

“Get anything?” He asked, curiosity getting the best of him.

Sarah stood in front of the first corpse, wearing a flummoxed expression on her face.

“Well… the option that normally pops up, you know, the loot button. Well, it’s not showing up,” She turned her gaze to Jack, perhaps hoping he could solve the mystery.

“Probably because there’s nothing to loot. I only got one item between the two I killed. Try the next one,” he suggested, and on that note, Sarah jogged over to the other corpse.

“Out of luck,” Sarah tried to swipe a crystal from the ground, but the same sequence of events repeated, the crystals shattering on touch.

“Guess the [Tutorial Points] were the real reward,” She shrugged, not seeming too disappointed.

“Well that’s not entirely true,” Jack replied, reaching out into the rectangular tear that had materialized in front of him, and pulling out a glowing violet crystal from within. The violet glow within pulsed, growing to peak brightness before receding to a dull glow, and then repeating the process. The cycle was rhythmic, almost like a mimicry of a living organism's pulse…. An observation that he found quite disturbing, but chose to ignore for now.

“I can summon the beast we just fought, for around five minutes. It’ll be weaker than it originally was, but it serves as a good distraction in case we need to escape,” Jack answered the unasked question before Sarah had a chance to ask. He found it best to not tell Sarah that the crystal was the [Gemstone Beast’s] fractured soul, because even he felt uncomfortable using the item. And Jack was someone whose cardinal principle was to make use of whatever was available on hand, especially in a survival situation.

“Okay. That’s helpful, I guess. But what now? Do we retreat?” Sarah honestly didn’t seem very moved by the item, but given her delicate mental state that was understandable.

“If we hadn’t just received this summoning stone I might have chosen to retreat. [Gemstone Beasts] have robust defenses and require significant expenditure in Qi to take down, not to mention their terrifying beam attack. But now that we have a way out, I’d like to try and pick them off individually,” Jack explained his plan, a conspiratory grin flashing on his face.

“How?” Sarah asked, her voice conveying a slight hint of doubt.

“Well, look at that cluster over there,” Jack pointed in the distance, around fifteen meters away from their current position. Three Gemstone “Husks” lay there in a roughly triangular formation, large chunks of crystal embedded into the ground that showed no sign of life.

“Yeah?” She followed his gaze, but couldn’t discern anything special about them.

“Now, as far as I understand, these [Gemstone Beast’s] operate on some sort of proximity trigger. I can’t be certain, but my estimate is anywhere from five to seven meters. And the problem is, they’re close enough to each other that all three will awaken at the same time if we’re off by the slightest margin. So, I was thinking…. why try to awaken one of them by stepping into the trap, when we can attack from outside its range?”

“You mean….?”

“The range for my Qi Projection skill is thirty meters at level 2. Yours should be at least twenty, if I’m not wrong,” Jack stated, receiving a small nod from Sarah.

“Good. Now I’m not sure if my attack alone will be able to destroy the outer shell, but I have a feeling if both of us attack at the same time it will shatter. If we’re lucky, the beast will die inside the shell, but I wouldn’t put much stock on that.”

“That could work,” Sarah muttered thoughtfully, gazing at the Gemstone Husks in the distance and thrusting with her spear, aligning her aim. “But I'm low on Qi.”

“Ah…. yeah. If this works we can take the entire batch out quickly, so we can wait a few hours until it's replenished. We could use [Qi Replenishing Pills], but that would be quite the exorbitant waste,” Jack replied after pondering upon the matter. He was not one to shy away from a challenge, but fighting an enemy that his sword couldn’t cut through was a frustrating endeavor, and he would be foolish to play fair.

"Best to use that for emergencies only," Sarah immediately refuted that train of thought, and Jack was in complete agreement with her.

"Agreed," He grunted in approval, creating some distance between himself and Sarah before going through some of the more obscure sword forms he had learned with his instructor, trying to recall even the slightest tidbit of knowledge that could help him.

He did find himself wondering though, if there were a less expensive way to replenish his Qi. The usage of Pills seemed like an external method, relying upon a foreign element to recharge his Qi. But what about the internal method? Surely there had to be one, if Qi was as powerful an energy as he thought it to be. The thought of Adept Lanhai, or the roughish young adult, utilizing pills to recuperate his Qi just felt… wrong. Inferior, almost.

What was he missing? He recalled the mysterious experience [Qi Sight] had given him, the ability to access that lake that rested within his body, perhaps in a more metaphysical sense. He had a feeling that it had something to do with that lake, but that was alone not enough for an answer. From a different viewpoint, Qi was an energy source. But an energy source that had to rely on external items to replenish itself… wasn’t that far inferior to the possibilities he had been shown. He clearly understood that the system had somehow managed to replenish and repair the damage humans had done to earth over the course of their existence, but it almost seemed like an afterthought.

A casual thought passed through his mind, remembering that there was an item in the system shop called [F+ Grade Cultivation Manual]. The word manual implied that it would teach them, or guide them how to use the power of ‘Cultivation’, or was the hidden meaning behind it the secret to replenishing his Qi naturally? His interest suddenly peaked towards this manual, but the whopping cost of 20,000 TP meant that he could only wearily sigh for now. But he would not forget about it.