Constipation - Chapter 6

**Jay (System)**

My worry rose inside me as I saw the man step forward and take shelter behind a back corner of the room looking over my one and only subordinate. He took out a clicky thing and was tapping it continually into the night, whenever Mario turned in his sleep or coughed or.. farted, the mad man would record it on his clipboard with complete focus.

Hours passed and the sun rose above us and Mario started tossing around - ready to get out of bed - the hidden master quickly got up to leave, not before jotting down his wake up time of course.

‘Is this guy some parasitic old master coming to consume my subordinate or regular old senial geezer who’s doing some wacky negative IQ behavior.’

‘I mean there’s usually some overlap between those two groups so I can’t make a conclusion yet.’

‘Damn make this patent quick so I can go ahead and give you the cultivation technique, once you have a base that will get rid of all my worries’

‘Now I’m doubtful that making that profound dickhead system persona was worth it, now it will seem strange to be generous; I'll have to be lenient (but not obvious) on the success parameters for the quest I guess.’

I am getting pretty used to swapping now, it's almost automatic, I can feel my consciousness growing by the day even if I can’t cultivate my body/soul I can still cultivate mind.

Swapping Consciousness…

**Mario**

For some reason it has been a common occurrence to feel the tingle that someone is watching me during these last few nights. The downfall of accepting a heaven defying treasure is that you have the possibility of attracting a lot of attention.

|Although I was free spirited for a while, I’m going to have to make sure that no one finds out that I have a System with me otherwise I'm a goner.|

|Well my patent is all but done now and I have 4 hours left till the quest timer runs out, I am fairly sure it will take a while for all the legal stuff to untangle, but hopefully the System accepts it in its early stages.|

|Well there's no time to waste, let me do my final proofread and turn this shit in.|

…

“HUFF..” |It feels like a heavy weight has been lifted off my shoulders|

[Alert]

[Quest: Humble Beginnings, completed ✓]...

Reward: Basic Qi Cultivation Manuel

[Alert]

[Emergency Quest Added]

[Name: Mario Fixen]

[Quests]

[Job Quest: Mentor Path] Contents: Gain recognition from Chris Oilson and collaborate on an market product Reward: Introduction to Formations, +10 Syscoins Failure: Career Path Closure, 10 years of janitor work. [Emergency Quest: Power Up] Contents: Due to an unknown hidden threat you must get too Qi-Condensing stage 1 Reward: 200 SC Failure: Death via unknown threat Time Limit: 24hrs

[Cultivation: None]

[Skills]

Sweeping 1 Engineering Theory 2 Weight Lifting 1 Appraisal 1

Syscoins: 0

Shop:

10 Blueprint Upgrade tokens (100 SC) 10 Qi Method Upgrade tokens (1000 SC) 10 Skill tokens (150 SC) Lesser Focus Improvement Pill (50 SC) Qi Cleansing tokens (199 SC) …

Tokens:

None

“UNKNOWN DEA-DEATH???!?!? FUSKING HELK *(!#@*(h&[email protected]&” I jumped up in the air with surprise, shouting against gods unforgiving torture

“Helllloooo, Mario you okay over there?” I heard Chris ask from his room

“Yeah im fine” |shiz didn’t mean to say that out loud.|

|Damn, Dammit, God Damn, Damnation, Hoover Dam!|

|Another one of these crazy quests like the one before of cleaning up a dead body or something..|

|WTF is cultivating anyways?? I always heard about the legends who sat under the sage trees and dreamt the enlightening thoughts and roamed the world in search of strength and understanding.|

|But that stuff takes a long time, I only have 24 hours to get to this “First Stage”.. I won’t be able to get anything done in that amount of time.|

|I'm going to have to be fast and furious in order to get this to work.|

“Wish me good luck Ma.” I muttered as I prayed.

|Well, I’m going to have to BS this to hell and back.|

|It seems like when I got the quest some info came with it, it talks about the fundamental properties of Qi, something that is almost an energy but at the same time is more efficient and can be molded into matter in an almost lossless manner allowing the creation and manipulation of a bunch of stuff.|

|Well there’s approach where I can try and make air in my vicinity lighter than the Qi so the Qi will float down on its own, because it seems like a part of the cultivation is creating a vortex of Qi to pull down more, but this is inefficient since you are losing some Qi to maintain the vortex reducing your total input, if the Qi flies in on its own then I don’t have to worry about that.|

(…blah-blah–blah technobabble…)

…

As the sun was setting I checked my System screen, and it showed the 24hr time limit cut down to 10.

|I haven’t even started cultivating yet, but I think the time spent was worth it, it’s like that one guy said: “when I need to cut a tree, I would spend 90% of the time sharpening the ax.”|

A weird contraption was set out in front of a rough mat, the machine filled with jagged edges and wires sticking out from all over the place.

|Ok, it’s finally time to get started, first of all I need to sense Qi, based on the understanding given to me that's quite easy.. Ok next step I need to drag it all in, this is the part where my gizmo gadget is useful|

Beep- Boop – Beep– Boop.

|Hmm it seems like it's doing something, I can feel all the Qi around me fall closer, oh damn this is insane.|

I took a shower with Qi through the night, not stopping even once as I fell into a trance-like state.

Swapping Consciousness…

**Jay (System)**

“@#&#@&$!# DUDE CHILL”

‘This damn MC, I'm telling you, WTF! How did he get to the first stage in one night?!? I mean at our sect even the prodiges take a couple days, even with taking hella supplements, this man got to the first stage so fast without the “kool-aid”.’

‘Is he really lucky or a genius for making that weird contraption? I mean we have formations in the sect that have nearly the same effect, but I have no clue how you can make that with only mortal resources.’

‘Well whatever it seems that threat pressure worked, I didn’t expect such results when I made the quest though, I just thought it would motivate him a little.’

‘He should have no problem defending against that Chris fellow now, even if he is the mortal equivalent of a soul consuming grandpa, he is still mortal.’

‘But when I inspect his base it is definitely not the most stable thing I have ever seen, in fact it's quite bad.’

‘I guess there truly is no free lunch..’

‘Still he made it quite far, and I have to give him credit for that- I’m going to have to snoop off his inventions sooner or later to speed up my process as well.’

‘I guess it's time for the reward’

Swapping Consciousness..

**Mario**

[Alert: You have reached Qi-Condensation 1!]

Reward: 200 Syscoins

The sweet sound of money broke my cultivation focus, and I awoke to the rays once again.

|Come at me you hidden threat and take a load of my secret superpowers bitchhhh|

|Although I have Qi now, I feel like I speed-ran cultivation, so I have no clue about any other aspects of it, how the hell do I attack or use it or something??|

|Well I guess I can use my system to get some attacking manuel or something|

|Hmm, I don’t know, the system isn’t selling anything like battle method tokens or something, I guess I can try shooting Qi out from my pores or something (like a hedgehog).|

I pushed out from my dantian, clutching my core I squeezed as hard as I could, it felt as if the Qi was stuck though and nothing was coming out.

|Damn what the hell is going on|

|Shouldn’t I be able to extend and manipulate the Qi to my will? I’m gonna have to appraise myself to see the problem.|

Name: Mario Fixen

Cultivation: Qi-Condensation 1 (Locked due to Qi-Constipation)

Skills…

..

|Qi-Constipation?!? Come on how the hell does that happen? I mean maybe my gadget had some unknown side effects or something like how taking steroids can make your wee-wee stop working.|

|Well damn, I guess I have to spend all my shit already and buy Qi Cleansing tokens|

“Hey System, activate Qi-Cleanse”

[Alert: Qi-Cleanse Activated]

Time: 3hrs,

Result: Cleaned Meridians,

|Well it seems my Qi is locked for 3 hours or something, I will see you in heaven or hell by the end of it- it looks like my doom is approaching.. WHYYYY WORLD, why did you send me this unknown threat to my fragile body.|

I sat there weeping slightly, ready to accept my fate as I heard Chris call over to talk.

Swapping Consciousness…

**Jay (System)**

“HAhahaha, my man suffered Qi-Constipation– Hahah.”

Slap

An echoing slap resounded in a small closet as he whacked himself in the face to wake up.

‘Shit dude get focused, this guy is your one and only life-line if he dies you're screwed; he has no cultivation and is about to be refined into a pill or something by this soul sucking grandpa, wtf do I do.’

I got up in a hurry and dusted off my clothes as I tuned into the shard of consciousness I left.

Creak

The closet door squeaked as I opened it, harmonizing with the squeak of the Mario's door as the old man turned the knob and slowly walked in…

‘Ahh shit, here we go again.’