Chương 13

After several moments of ragged breathing, Ethan pulled his arm from the spider's corpse and slid down from its back. Since standing up felt impossible, he sat on the ground and tried to bandage his shoulder first, but couldn't find the strength. Giving up, he lay down and pressed a piece of fabric to the hole in his stomach as he started to cultivate with a foggy mind. In just a few hours, his bleeding stopped, and even his left arm started to feel better.

His eyes fluttered open, confusion settling over his face.' What's going on, Ani? Did my health regen change?'

'Yes. After reaching tier-1, all regenerations tripled.' Whoa. Tripled? Isn't that too much? It can't possibly go up like this. Maybe it's special to the first tier? He slowly rose and sat down, his body still hurting like he'd been hit by a truck with barbed spikes.

'What's the regen rate right now?'

'0. 1% per minute normally and 0. 2% per minute when in deep meditation such as cultivating or sleeping. Same for all resources.' That means whether it's mana, health, or stamina, I'll be back to full in 16. 5 hours at most. Or I can just use the Void Manual and fill them up in about 8 hours. That's not bad at all. It won't be useful in battles, but as long as I escape, I can be in top condition in a few hours. It shows how important escape skills like [Blink] and [Void Wrap] are.

Also, it seems regeneration only improves by advancing tiers and isn't related to stats. Hmm. Wait a minute… How did I calculate those hours so fast? Ethan narrowed his eyes, feeling something odd.

'Show me the status.' Status: Tier 1 - Level 10 Health: 288/420 Mana: 130/220 Stamina: 196/280 Vitality: 42 Strength: 30 Endurance: 28 Agility: 40 Intelligence: 22 Perception: 20 *Available stats: 30 Skills(Rank 1): [Blink], [Void Wrap], [Fabric Tear], [Mana Sense] He felt giddy seeing how much the numbers had jumped all of a sudden. The Intelligence stat is almost doubled. Is that why my mental process feels so smooth? It wasn't just that one either. Silently but surely, power surged through his battered body.

He knew nothing about what came with a tier up, but a +10 bonus to each stat was definitely a welcome surprise. It felt like there was another difference as well, but he couldn't put it into words. It was almost like he'd changed on a fundamental level and become more. Shaking his head, he tried his new skill. Suddenly, another layer was added to the way he perceived the world, making him gasp. He started to feel the mana everywhere in a 60-foot radius, give or take.

The mana in the air was denser than that in solid objects like the rocks and cave walls, but even that was nothing compared to what his body radiated. This allowed him to roughly map his surroundings and nearby structures even with his eyes closed. The image wasn't clear or particularly detailed, but it would still be a huge help in darkness. In any case, that wasn't the purpose of the skill. He snapped his head at the spider's carcass. Just like him, its body was also leaking mana, but much, much more. Finally!

A skill to discern the tiers of others. Though I'm gonna need a lot more examples to guess their exact level. Right now there is just me and the spidey for comparison. His eyes drifted to the dense ball of mana residing in the spider's chest. A monster core, perhaps? He did plenty of autopsies in the nightmare village in search of something like this, but it was to no avail. None of his old hunts had yielded a core or something magical in nature.

The brief excitement in his eyes vanished, replaced by hatred as he stared at the dead spider. This damned thing almost killed him twice, broke his knives, and cost him two charges of his talismans, leaving him with a single shield skill. A monster core and the three and a half levels he'd got were nowhere close to paying its debt. There has to be a poison gland somewhere inside. The tips of its legs could be substitutes for daggers as well. Hell, I might even pull its teeth and make a necklace.

Because fuck giant spiders. He checked his searing left arm and found that his bones were merging without an issue. Still, not wishing to suffer any longer, he returned to cultivating. Three hours later, almost in great shape, he stood up and got to work. It was still dark outside, but there was much to do in the cave. Now that the spider was gone, he wanted to stay here for his training, but only after checking the surrounding areas thoroughly in daylight and making sure it was safe.

Climbing the spider's back one more time, he plunged his arm into the hole he'd dug and pulled out the severed limb. It was a 10-inch-long, solid and heavy piece of bone, covered with a thin, leathery skin. However, the first 3 inches or so had sharp edges and a pointy end. Now that he was looking closely, this thing was perfectly fine to use as a dagger, resembling a short-bladed stiletto. Actually… Ethan's eyes lit up as he weighed it in his hand.

He arranged his grip and raised his hand, throwing it toward the nearby stalagmite. With a quiet thud, it penetrated the rock as if it were mud. An evil chuckle escaped him as he imagined himself throwing poisoned daggers through [Fabric Tear]s from 150 feet away and hitting his enemies two seconds later. Rubbing his hands together, he went to collect his newest throwing dagger and started cutting the spider's other legs for many more to come.

Severing more limbs turned out a lot harder than he'd expected since he was cutting through ridiculously hard bones. [Fabric Tear] could solve his problem easily, but he was not going to waste his mana for this. He needed the mana for his training; the more, the better. The thought made him pause. He opened his status panel once again and stared at it, biting his lip. Fuck it, we ball. He allocated all his extra stats on Intelligence. His mana pool expanded like crazy, reaching 520 in an instant.

This was not the original plan, but hey, tough times required tough decisions. For the next few levels, he could ignore everything and focus on Agility, Strength, and Endurance. For now, having more mana meant more training and faster results. And a better chance to survive. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. With this much mana, abusing his skill, [Blink], could carry him 600 feet away in a few seconds. That was about a tenth of a mile.

Maybe it wasn't much for crazy ones like the late-spider, but still a great trump card. Humming a happy tune, he switched to using [Fabric Tear]s for the operation. Though, being a mana miser, he sliced them two at a time by pressing the legs together. Once done, he lit up a small fire inside and found the beast's poison gland. It was at its jaw base, reaching toward the back of its head.

Not too big, but more than enough to dip his new daggers and his darts many times, turning his blowgun suddenly much more deadly. The beast's core, on the other hand, was next to its heart. The red gem-like object was a bit smaller than his fist and almost pulsed with mana. While at it, Ethan severed the spider's head and plunged into a sharp stalagmite in the middle of the cave. That would give him plenty of motivation to push himself beyond his limits in the coming days.

At least, that was what he'd told himself, knowing very well it was an act of spite. Then, he checked out the bodies of the goblins, along with the stag, but couldn't find a core or anything alike. The cave needed a good cleaning, and so did he. For now, he indulged in his bodyweight workouts, which started to feel useless with how strong he had become recently, and at the first light of the day, he went to the river for an overdue bath and laundry.

After that, he spent the next few hours scouting the cave's vicinity and found only beasts around his level, so he decided to settle here in the end. Of course, he'd keep scouting regularly since other predators could realize that the spider was gone and decide to move in. For his first task, while he was eager to try his new throwing knives, he chose to figure out his accursed storage ring. His items randomly appearing around himself was turning from ludicrous to dangerous, and he intended to fix it.

Starting with a pebble, Ethan abused the spatial ring's only function, sending it in and out as he tried to make it appear inside his palm. Imagining the position and willing it wasn't enough. There was another component he was missing, and after countless tries, he finally had a lead: instinct. Or rather, a strong belief that convinced not only his mind but also his body. The problem was that while he imagined inside his palm, as far as the ring was concerned, the position of his palm could be anywhere near him.

Including the background scene behind his palm helped a little, and considering his hand's position compared to the rest of his body helped even more. Yet it still wasn't accurate enough. Instead, when he trusted his body about where the pebble should appear, the process became much more coherent. However, communicating with his body was anything but simple. Trying to tell your instincts what to do was like talking to air. What he needed was experience and practice.

And so, he kept exercising the muscle he'd only recently gained. Days followed one another. The exercise of throwing daggers through [FabricTear]s was undoubtedly his favorite. Full-spin or half-spin throws were out of the question because of the size of the portals, but that was fine. He was already somewhat proficient with throwing weapons, but creating a portal in front of them mid flight and hitting a target far away was challenging, to say the least.

If his aim was slightly off, the dagger would miss the target altogether. [Mana Sense] helped when deciding the trajectory, but only inside its own range. Even that stopped being the case when the target was moving. It didn't dampen his spirits though. Patching up his weaknesses piece by piece had always been his pride and joy. The experiments with [Blink] yielded some interesting results. The worst part of the skill was that it teleported him to the exact position he occupied when he activated it.

He couldn't simply face an enemy, activate the skill, and appear behind them with a knife at their throat. Fortunately, he found some countermeasures against this. If he rotated his body back and swung his dagger in an empty space, and then teleported behind the enemy halfway through, he would be in a position to sever their head the next second. Sure, an intelligent enemy could figure out what he was trying to do beforehand, but at least beasts weren't that smart.

The interesting part he'd discovered was that he could cease his momentum if he wished to. If he was running against someone and [Blink]ed in front of them, he could either kick them with all the momentum he had, or simply emerge motionless and… kick them weaker? Yeah, that wasn't a great example, but this opened many possibilities. For example, falling from a cliff and dying wasn't a thing for him anymore, as long as he managed to [Blink] to the ground before the impact.

He was convinced that this skill was downright cheating. [Mana Sense] also had a unique application; it amplified his senses. If he focused the skill on his eyes, it improved his sight and allowed him to see much further. Focusing it on his ears sharpened his hearing as well. Unlike the skill's passive effect, however, this required a constant mana cost. It was nothing compared to the [Void Wrap], but still not something to use constantly.

Oh, it could also enhance his taste, but he wouldn't call this an improvement. It just made the meals taste weird. As a carnivore enthusiast, he was already loving the flavor of his roasted meats. Using [Mana Sense] only made it different, not necessarily better, in his opinion. Days stretched into weeks as Ethan fell into a strict routine. Other than focusing on his skills, he kept up with his workouts, even including a huge boulder in his exercises and starting more efficient weight-lifting sessions.

Yet, after all that time, his gains were only slightly better than they'd been on Earth. If he stuck to it, the gains could add up over years, decades, or however long these cultivators lived. But he didn't think it was worth the effort when the Strength and Endurance he gained from level-ups already surpassed them by a lot. Instead, he decided to focus on something his stats didn't offer him. Flexibility.

He was plenty supple for someone 6'2'' but there was always room for improvement, especially with his new superhuman body. Therefore, he switched to new exercises and started doing daily intense stretching workouts. Other than these, he didn't forget hunting either. Although rather than grinding for Exp, he only hunted when he was trying something with his skills, or to stock some food for future purposes. There were a few occasions where he had no choice but to defend himself against stronger beasts.

They weren't on the spider's level, but they were still deadly encounters that pushed his boundaries. Despite that, he noticed that his leveling speed had dropped substantially. It seemed that these beginner levels were rather easy to pass, but the higher his level became, the harder it would be to reach the next one. Still, after spending a whole month here, he gained two more levels, and he was ready to leave.

Chilling in a shallow stretch of the river, Ethan rested his elbows behind him on the riverbed and basked in the afternoon sun. Right above the water surface, he casually wiggled his right hand's fingers, a pebble appearing and disappearing between his fingers like a glitch in the matrix. He stood up and jumped to the shore. The next instant, his naked body was covered in his tattered clothes. When he stepped forward, his sneaker appeared around his right foot, and it happened for his left foot on the next step.

Looking up, he threw the pebble toward the birds on the nearby tree. The birds took flight in a hurry, but two [Fabric Tear]s came to being right beneath them before two twigs emerged inside and poked their bellies. The birds faltered in the air as they started flying even higher in haste.'' I remember you, yellow beak!'' Ethan yelled from the ground, pulling his twigs from the portals.

''That's the third time you got hit. You'd be dead if that was my dagger. You hear me!? Your lives are mine. Mine!'' The birds' loud screeches somehow drowned out his villainous laugh. Yellow Beak was likely saying, ''Enough is enough, man! I'm fed up with this shit. We are migrating!'' With a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, he made his way to his base.

In front of his cave, next to the bearskin rug, his small kettle–made out of a large leaf and vine branches–sat over an almost-extinguished fire, steeping the orange flowers he'd found in hot water. The flowers of this plant smelled like linden, tasted sweet, and made surprisingly good tea. He was more of a coffee guy than a tea one, but wouldn't complain under these circumstances.

Ethan took out the wild ram horn from his ring, filled it with tea, and got rid of the spent leaves before sitting on the rug and taking a sip. He was going to miss this place, that much was certain, but he'd achieved everything he wanted, and boredom was getting to him. With a long road ahead before he could reunite with his fellow Earthlings, he decided to leave early tomorrow, but only after wiping out the neighboring goblin settlement in a bloody massacre.