Samantha crouched high in the tree, clinging to the trunk with raw fingertips as a pack of iron boars passed beneath her. They had been ranging for food below her hiding spot for the last quarter hour, and her thighs were beginning to feel like jelly. She risked only the shallowest of breaths as she observed them snuffling in the underbrush and did her utmost to remain perfectly still. She feared even the slightest tremble would disturb the branch beneath her feet and have a falling leaf or pinecone give away her location. “Come on, come on! Just leave already!” she thought desperately, the beads of sweat on her face feeling dangerously close to dripping down to the forest floor.

When the alpha boar stomped a hind foot and the ground beneath cratered and rumbled with the impact, Samantha feared it was over for her. The tree she hid in wobbled at the shock and she took in a sharp breath, nearly losing her balance. Fortunately, the sounds of shaking tree branches all around her covered her mistake and she maintained her stealth. By the time she had regained her nerve and refocused on the group below, the herd was already moving northwards to search for food elsewhere.

Samantha stayed in the tree for another 5 minutes before climbing down and landing back on solid earth. By now, some of her fingertips had started to bleed, but that was the least of her concerns. She kneeled in the soil for a few breaths and closed her eyes, allowing herself a scant moment to wallow in feeling tired and miserable. When that moment had passed, however, she did her best to let the emotions drain away as well. This method didn’t always work for her, but perhaps some higher power took pity on her today given the circumstances. Feeling a bit more like herself than she had in several days, she rose up on shaking legs and continued towards her goal. She looked for what felt like the hundredth time upon the notification that had started her on this harrowing adventure.

*Ding* Core Quest: Unlock Your Potential – Part 1

Life within the World Spire is neither easy nor safe, though perhaps as a resident of the 1st Floor it could be considered so when compared to floors above. Regardless, you have survived! After 17 years, your cultivation system has finally matured enough to begin walking the path of immortals.

Venture alone into the surrounding wilderness to locate a nexus of qi. Accept? Y/N

She scowled at the vague instructions that overlaid her vision. No hints as to where to go, no explanations as to what she might need when she got there, and she wasn’t even able to get any concrete information on what to expect since apparently the final chain of this quest bound the newly minted cultivator to secrecy. Even that much she wasn’t able to be told directly, having to deduce it from several conversations with various friends and family.

Sighing, she mentally waved the notification away and pulled out her divining rods, walking east as she had been doing before being driven up a tree by the imminent arrival of an iron boar herd. At least finding a qi fount shouldn’t be too difficult, she reassured herself once more. The locations were always changing, and if you traveled long enough in one direction you would eventually discover something. That’s what she’d been telling herself for the past 19 days, anyway. Her stomach rumbled as she moved, but she ignored it and focused on scanning her surroundings and checking the rods’ movement. If she was nearing any unusual source of qi, the rods should be drawn towards each other and point in the general direction of origin.

As the hours passed, she watched the motionless rods with increasing anxiety. Perhaps it was naïve of her, but she had only packed for a 2-week excursion. When it became apparent that the founts were making themselves scarce, she began to ration her supplies, but she would run out by tomorrow. Even supplementing her diet with foraged roots and other plants didn’t stretch them as long as she would’ve liked. The energy required to hike through the hills and underbrush all day was immense, and soon she’d have to risk hunting a low-grade spirit beast with an uncultivated body and a mortal quality spear if she wanted to continue. In other words, she’d have a better chance making it back to town before starving to death.

While in the process of doing morbid survival calculations, she felt the rod in her left-hand twitch. At first, she thought she had imagined it, but then the rod in her right twitched as well. After so many days of disappointment she didn’t dare celebrate yet, simply following the direction that the dowels indicated to her. As she drew nearer to the source, the rods began to vibrate, then chime, then grew too hot in her hands to hold any longer, but by that point she no longer needed their guidance.

She emerged into a small clearing of trees about 30 yards wide. The forest debris she’d become so accustomed to these last weeks gave way to the pristine grasses and wildflowers of a meadow, so beautiful that even professional gardeners would be envious. Flowers bloomed all around in vibrant colors too numerous to name, and the sun shone down from the clear sky above, the canopy of trees no longer impeding its rays. The qi, the very life energy of the world, was so thick in this place that the air itself felt weighty with potency. She didn’t know what finding a fount would be like, but this? This was beyond her wildest imagination. Samantha was attempting to move forward into the center of the clearing when a notification popped up in her vision.

*Ding* Core Quest: Unlock Your Potential – Part 1 [COMPLETE]

Congratulations, you have discovered a Rank 3 Nexus (Rare)! Truly the gods smile upon you this day. You are the first being to enter the energy of this rare fount and have been awarded a minor boon! This boon will be in effect for as long as you remain within its boundaries. Choose wisely:

While cultivating the qi of this nexus your need for food and water will be greatly reduced While within the nexus you may obscure its location from those not inside You will gain a sense for how much energy of the nexus remains and how long it will exist at this location

Samantha’s eyes widened as she read. There were generally 5 ranks of location rarity: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. She was unsure of how often Rare founts appeared, but she did know that only a handful of Epic founts had ever been found the last thousand years, and that a Legendary fount had never been found on the 1st floor to her knowledge. She also was stunned at the reward choices—she’d never heard of anyone receiving a boon like this before, but maybe this sort of thing was also sworn to secrecy by the completion of the quest chain.

She considered her options carefully. Food and water were a huge concern for her, but now that she had found the qi nexus she wouldn’t need to eat as much to sustain her constant hiking. She believed foraging would cover her energy expenditures while she meditated here. Knowing how long the nexus would be around and how much energy was left would be interesting, but there would be nothing that she could do with the information. She doubted she could cultivate this much energy anyway, and she had no way to stop the fount from moving elsewhere or dissipating whenever the timer ran out. Being able to obscure her location though, that would be incredibly useful. She wouldn’t have to worry about spirit beasts wandering in while she was deep in meditation or other cultivators coming to take the fount for themselves. With that in mind, she selected option 2 and another notification came up.

*Ding* Core Quest: Unlock Your Potential – Part 2

It is time to forge yourself anew. Integrate the qi of the nexus into your cultivation base by drawing it into your dantian. Break through to the low Copper level and begin to leave mortality behind. Accept? Y/N

She accepted the next chain of the quest without a second thought. She didn’t come all of this way for nothing, after all. She thought that the continued lack of clear instructions was frustrating but was glad that information about cultivation techniques were not quite as guarded as details for this questline. Her family was able to teach her an appropriate breathing and cycling pattern for just this purpose.

Without wasting anymore time, she made her way to the center of the clearing and sat, cross-legged in the lotus position. She quickly ate half of the remaining rations in her pack to settle the increasingly loud grumbles in her stomach she had been ignoring all morning, and then set all her equipment off to the side. Samantha was worried that it would be difficult to activate her boon, but it seemed intuitive. She just wished that she were protected, and the boundaries of the meadow appeared to warp and blur in response. Closing her eyes, she began the breathing pattern in her first attempts to cultivate.

Samantha cleared her mind and entered a meditative state. She stretched her mortal awareness to its limits to sense the flows and waves of qi that came from every direction and felt like she was submerging herself in a vast sea of infinite currents. The weight of the potency of the nexus pressed down on her as she breathed in, curling around her limbs as she exhaled. “Breathe in for 7 seconds. Hold. Sharp exhale for 3. Breathe in for 5 seconds…” She repeated the pattern in her mind and body like a mantra, pushing all other concerns and sensations away, until all there was in the world were the torrents of qi and her. With time, a small whirl of energy started to form as she focused on pulling the flows into her center. She imagined that the space just below her navel was a hungry void, and that the void pulled ever increasing volumes of qi into its depths to fill it. This was a slow process, but she soon became more familiar with it with practice.

Samantha had to take many breaks over the next several days due to the strain that the cultivation put on her spirit. Cycling in this area was extremely profitable, but it was like sprinting for miles when you had never really trained for it or stretching muscles beyond what they were used to. She got the sense that once she had filled her dantian for the first time and was able to generate her own qi things would be easier, but for now the process was both tiring and taxing. In the hours that she was not cultivating or sleeping, she was foraging for food. She had memorized most of the edible plants in the Eastern Reaches in preparation for this excursion, so it wasn’t overly difficult to scavenge. She located several abundant pockets of wild vegetables and tubers, as well as herbs for seasoning for when she made soups with water from a nearby stream. She had a few brushes with danger when she encountered other denizens of the forest; however, retreating to her nexus and activating the obscuring effects were enough to spare her from injury.

As the days passed, her body acclimated to the process of cultivation and her need for rest lessened further, until she only needed to stop to sleep or eat. Samantha noted absently that even her need for those human necessities were notably reducing as her dantian edged ever closer to full. On the 9th day of cultivating, she did not feel the need to stop at all, and on the 10th day of cultivating she finally broke through.

She didn’t really know what would happen when she filled her dantian and became a low Copper cultivator. She considered any number of possibilities, from crippling pain, to the heights of pleasure, to nothing changing at all. What she had not considered was an eternal moment of pure disorientation. When the last drop of qi had filled her core, it was like the floodgates of reality had opened and she became spread thin across the very world. For the tiniest fraction of a second, she felt her third eye peek open as she caught a glimpse of divinity and the infinite possibilities of power. Her soul danced across the weaves of fate and followed branches of victories and failures that spread out through the ages like a spider’s web. On the threads she saw oceans of blood, obelisks of darkness, twisted abominations of flesh and corruption, but also bastions of the purest light and heroes that rose into the realms of godhood. It was too much. She couldn’t bear the knowledge and she had no way to categorize or interpret it. She felt that to gaze into absolute truth any longer would burn her very soul to oblivion, so she forced closed her third eye and was freed from the torments of enlightenment. Not even 1/100th of a second had passed, but there was something in her that felt aged in a way that could never be reversed. And with each rapid heartbeat that thrummed in her chest, the memory of her brief insights faded like a forgotten dream.

*Ding* Core Quest: Unlock Your Potential – Part 2 [COMPLETE]

Congratulations, you have begun your ascent to immortality! You have glimpsed beyond the mortal coil and have maintained your sanity!

As a low Copper cultivator, you have gained access to the following features:

A self-regenerating qi pool Qi combat arts Body cultivation Status page

Samantha couldn’t help letting out a shout of triumph as she read the notification. Her excitement at her successful advancement overshadowed any lingering feelings of apprehension from the experience, and she instantly viewed her status page.

Name: Samantha Cray

Age: 17

Cultivation Level: Low Copper

Qi pool: 10/10 (+0.5 qi points/hour)

Body Cultivation: None

Spirit Bonds: None

Combat Arts: None

Strength: 5

Agility: 8

Endurance: 6

Resilience: 5