Altura

“Retre, how goes the plan? Is the first part of the zone complete?” I asked through the communicator.

“No.” came the angry reply. “The third group is taking even more time to do it, and they are getting less Qi too. Yes, I know they are the ones that can do it every day until they get the Qi they need, but they are only getting about 1 million Qi individually. At this rate, it will take them two to three months to get all the Qi they need!” Retre said.

“Retre, how much time did it take for them to get there normally? I am sure that it was more than a few months, no?” I said, “And besides, we can give them all the ‘hunters’ from the other zones, we won’t have any use for them once we are Spirit Trees, but it should cut a month or two off their timeline. And they will start getting six times as much Qi once the entire zone is done. So by the time we are done with the moon, I think they will all be in the Spirit Tree stage.” I answered, trying to reassure him.

“Yes, but the timeline has been delayed again.” Retre grumbled.

“Yes, it has.” I replied. Retre sighed and cut the communicator off, leaving me alone. Well, best get to it and find out what was going on with the humungous amount of Qi I had gotten.

System, why did this new organization give so much Qi from the get go?

The organization is unique in its novelty, importance, and scale. The colonization of the moon into a city by a coalition of factions to help each other become more powerful has never been attempted before.

And that made sense. Xianxia and co-operation did not go hand in hand. Ok, fine, I was bored. I had nothing to do while I waited for the ‘plan’ to finish. Ugh, waiting for things to happen was just the worst that could happen.

But time passed, of course it did. An hour. And then another. I would love to say that it happened before I knew it, but I was excruciatingly aware of every minute that passed. But the next stage did get over. And a third of the zone had now been colonized.

System, show notifications

Organization level up!

59 million Qi: level 3

Oh right, what were the requirements again?

System, requirements please

Please clarify

Huh, the System couldn’t read my mind anymore? I kind of liked that.

System, please show requirements to level up Unnamed co-operative organization.

Unnamed cooperative organization

Requirements:

10 Spirit Trees

⅔ of zone colonized

Rewards: 79 million Qi

Well, that was nice. The next part wouldn’t be giving any Qi, but the reward was increasing. And the moon had a lot of space left. The Spirit Tree part made me worry, however, I did just have a hundred people.

System, can you show the previous requirements for the level up of Unnamed co-operative organization

The information has not been archived

Now that was suspicious. Why did I get the feeling the System was hiding something from me? The Qi rewards were luxurious, and everything seemed to be headed straight for me to reach Warrior Tree in a month or two, but it also seemed…contrived.

I had plot armor of some kind. The System must have been helping me, but why? What was coming? What was going to happen that the System wanted me to reach Warrior Tree at once? The Qi rush, the System’s actions, all made me want to return to the planet as fast as I could. But that would have to wait till I was a Grand Tree. I did not have enough power now.

And it was back to the wait. At least this time, I had something to think about.

Kerrin

The ‘Space zone’ as Kerrin had named it, was barren. A complete lack of any plants or beasts, except the creeping vines, even oxygen was lacking here. As far as Kerrin could tell, it seemed to be the natural surface of the moon with vines added in. The only reason he still thought it was one was because the vines were there.

“So, what do you think we should do, Kerrin? Just walk to the next zone over?” Pannia asked.

“Yes, I would say that it is the prudent course of action. The place is abnormal. I dislike that. But be on the lookout for wildlife, the ones in the last zone aided us greatly, I hope to form an alliance with the ones in this zone.” Kerrin said.

“Now, isn’t that hopeful.” The boulder nearby said. Kerrin turned to it in surprise, but he already knew what it was. A King of Earth.

“A King of Earth, I take it?” he asked.

“Yes, I would call you clever, but it is rather obvious.” the boulder replied, shaking as if to emphasize what it was.

“The zone used to be quite like the other ones, it just found itself destroyed by us. Just two Kings of earth remain now, the rest are dead. And so are your compatriots.” The King of Earth said, releasing the aura of a Spirit Tree.

“I assure you, they are not my compatriots. The Tourney participant-” Kerrin began to explain.

“Yes, yes, I know, it's the only reason you are alive.” the King said. “What I want to know is what is going on, I want to know the factions involved and how they are warring. And in return, I will offer you safe passage to the next zone and some information. Do we have a deal?”

The King’s tone might have been steady, but the threat was still clear. Kerrin didn’t have much of a choice here, and besides, the deal was a good one. Kerrin just hoped that Panni shared his sentiment.

“So, are we going to take this boulder on his word?” she asked. Kerrin was speechless, how did she tell a boulder's gender?

“I do not see much of a choice in the matter.” he answered. The only way forward was to have a nice long talk with a boulder.

“The deal is confirmed, sir.” Kerrin told the boulder.

“Yes, now do tell me your tale first.” the boulder asked, and so Kerrin did. The boulder listened intently as Kerrin told him about the Grand Elders, how they were divided and how the Archduchess was being hunted.

“Hmm, I see. A mess of things, eh?” the boulder replied. “Well, you completed your bargain, it's time for me to complete mine.

“So, on the topic of the zones. As I am sure you have suspected, there are five zones, Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Lightning. The zones have five Kings of their element ruling them, as far as I know the Fire is the only one where all of them are Spirit Trees.”

“As for the distribution of your people, the Air zone has five Spirit Trees, and Fire had two. A woman, possibly the one you call the Archduchess, killed him and became a Spirit Tree herself. The Water and lightning zones each have one Spirit Tree.”

“I would recommend that you not go to the Fire zone. The woman has started changing the entire zone, and she will touch upon the Kings of Fire soon. I do not see her surviving that encounter. In fact, I suspect the zone will turn out quite like this one.I might be apathetic, but the Kings of Fire are cruel. Why do you think the other zones do not have Spirit Trees?”

“And if you want Qi, I suggest you look in the space between the zones, the space is only accessible once all of the Keys have been collected, and then too by using all of them, but the vine root is there. The root should be worth about five hundred million Qi alone, and that is without all of the other tings in there. Here, this is the Earth key. The space is only accessible to you Tourney people, it was made that way.” the boulder said.

Kerrin almost panicked. The Archduchess was about to encounter five Spirit Trees? And there was something here that gave five hundred million spirit Qi? The Qi was half of what was needed for the Warrior Tree stage. What was the First Warrior thinking? Why had he put such valuable things here? Or had he put such things here? The System had been the ones to put the zones in…but the First Warrior put the vines. And the System said how much Qi a thing gave. Wait, how did the boulder know how much Qi the vine was worth.

“King, how do you know how much the vine is worth?” he asked.

“Oh, just a little guess. Now go, your time here i over.” the boulder said as the Earth began shaking. Panni had to practically drag Kerrin out of the way, but even she travelled in the direction of the Fire zone. The Archduchess needed to be told of what was going on.

Altura

I saw red. No, not the blood kind. The kind where that was the only thing I could see. The colonization of the third part had been going well, but then things changed.

As far as I could tell, we had encountered some kind of beast lair, and had called out the beast. A massive turtle that literally set half the zone on fire. And that was when things turned red.

I called on my Qi, spreading out ice. I had no idea what I would be hitting, or even if I would be hitting anything, but I spread it out. And it was costly. I could feel the air push back against me, trying to stop me. But I was a Spirit Tree, and from what I could sense, so was the other guy.

The ice spread, and a little ice-blue entered the scene. A little by little, the red was fought back, until I encountered the perpetrator. I shot a bolt of ice, removing my scepter as I did so.

“The land is ours, you shall not have it!” the turtle bellowed. I conjured a blizzard in reply.

“Well, you should have told us that before attacking us! Because we have plans to, you know! And you didn’t exactly mark your territory!” I answered as the blizzard fought against the heat radiating from the turtle. I had never fought on such a scale before. I was losing a million Qi every two minutes, and the turtle had to be losing more.

“The land was always ours! The burden of finding lies with the attacker! Not the native.” the turtle said.

“The burden of defending lies with the native! And do you truly want to debate the semantics of who should have done what? Do you think I do not know that you are about to lose?” I answered.

“I am aware, Archduchess Altura. But I give my life willingly, just to stop you and your humanoid plans!” the turtle said, its voice tiring as the blizzard finally tore through the fire. I stopped it from killing the turtle, I had a feeling that if the turtle died by my hand, things would be bad. The turtle had said ‘ours’ that meant there was more than one.

“Retre, repor-” I began saying in the communicator before another attack came. A bird suddenly emerged out of nowhere and began throwing fire at me.

“I, of course, defended.

“The killer of Fiere shall not live! Come children, let us destroy them” the bird said as it shot towards me. I dodged, but no children appeared. And she said ‘them’, that meant that Retre and the others were alive and likely fighting ‘the children’.

I just needed to deal with this bird,, and, and then I could see what was happening. I knew that another blizzard would leave me lacking Qi, so I decided to strategize.I killed the turtle, shooting a mini tornado of ice at the two beasts as I thought.

System, show notifications.

Qi gained!

Fire Xuanwu killed: 53 million Qi gained (50 Mid-Spirit Tree +3 anomalous beast bonus)

Mid-Spirit Tree (219, 507,896/ 629,145,600)

of 369,507,896 Qi (150 million Qi spent)

As I thought. The Qi wastage was high, but if I took care of how much Qi I spent, I could survive a few more battles.

I manipulated the weather around the bird, making sure to keep it cold. So cold that it would constantly leak Qi. The bird retaliated by making it hot around me, but sadly for it, I did not need to worry about that post Spirit Tree stage.

“Do you know nothing but resorting to such crass tactics, human?” the bird taunted.

“Yes, but I don’t want to use them on you. I am saving them for hte more important beasts coming after you.” I said, provoking it. The bird looked egoistic, maybe it would lose its tempe- a big blast of fire just shot at me, followed by many others.

“The more important beasts, huh? Well, look at me kill you before you get to them!” the bird said, losing its temper. The bird was stupid. Yes, I was under great risk now, but it barely took any Qi to fly around. I would be gaining Qi, not losing it while escaping, while the bird would be spending far too much Qi.

The bird continued to shoot at me, a kilometer sized blast every second that kept me travelling at high speeds, trying to predict where the blasts would come next and evade the m accordingly. I did it better than expected, the scepter’s trait of enhancing my ability over an area extended to my senses.

And so we played a game of deadly whale-a-Altura in the air as the bird lost. Just half an hour later, the bird turned tail and ran, clearly lacking in Qi now. I did not do it the favor of letting it go, a mini-blizzard formed around it and snuffed it to death.

System, show notifications.

Qi gained

Firebird: 57 million Qi (Mid-Spirit Tree 50 million + Firebird 7 million)

Mid-Spirit Tree (307,003,730/629,145,600)

of (426,507,896 Qi (nearly 120 million Qi spent)

I had recovered nearly thirty million Qi while fighting. The bird had helped me.

“Retre, are you still alive.” I called through the communicator.

“Yes, for now. The attack was quite something. I killed a Spirit Tree and had a hoard of other things attack me and the rest of us. What about you?”

“I just had two Mid-Spirit trees, a bird and a turtle attack me.” I replied.

“…I take it that you broke through to Mid-Spirit Tree yourself?”Retre asked.

“Yes, just before the battle” I replied. I would have talked more if I didn’t sense a massive spatial disturbance emerging.

“Do you see it too?” I asked Retre.

“Yes, and it's already delivering me a few more guests. An Early-Spirit Tree along with hundreds of Grand Trees. What about you?” Retre asked.

I smiled as I looked at my newest challenger, “Well, looks like I have all the luck. Just one for me. A Late-Spirit Tree dragon.” I said, switching the communicator as I prepared for the battle.

A massive, hundreds of kilometers long Chinese dragon stood before me, coiling in the air. Oh, this was going to be interesting.

Xerte

Xerte was conflicted. AT the moment, the entire zone was in a state of war. As it turned out, Grand Elder Betaca’s faction wasn’t the only one in the zone, there was another one. Grand Elder Artica’s sworn enemy. And now Xerte had to choose who to support in this senseless war.

Well, he could just kill all enemies. The zone had plenty of those. And get Qi from them all. And so he did. Not breaking his camouflage, he started to stalk the battles. The first battle was between three Mig-Grand Trees and a Late-Grand Tree.

The Late-Grand Tree won, but not before he took a lot of damage. The poor woman was bleeding from six different places and had lost an arm. Xerte even felt guilty doing it, but he knew that she would kill him if she had the chance.

A fire dagger split her head from her body and ended her life.

Qi gained!

Late-Grand Tree: 5 Million Qi, Qi reduced due to lack of contribution.

Ah yes, killing higher level cultivators gave a lot more Qi. And now he would benefit from it. The next was, of course, to kill some more of the injured winners. The battle was surprisingly full of them. As it turned out, pretty much every cultivator was somewhat capable and managed to inflict some damage unless the other person was too high in cultivation.

And Xerte was happy to kill them and get the Qi. After all, whoever was left would just go back to hunting him and his friends right after this. And so they fell, one after another, Xerte killed fifteen Late-Grand Trees and seven Mid-Grand Trees, getting over a hundred million Qi. Now he could take advantage of the battle and breakthrough. A Late-grand Tree was much safer than an Early one.

System, begin trial.

And Xerte was back in his spirit space, staring at a hole forming on his Grand Tree.

‘Tell me, Xerte, how do you think Qi reacts with spirit?’

What? Xerte knew that the question was not of normal, the difficulty level was much higher than the questions usually asked at this stage. But he did know the answer, thanks to the Archduchess’ guidance on the matter.

‘The Qi is, but a constituent in the spirit. The spirit does not react with it at all. The Qi can be removed altogether.’ he answered.

The hole went away, and then returned a few seconds later, likely with the new question.

‘Tell me in detail Xerte, what is Qi?’

What? No, it didn’t. The question was a nightmare for Xerte. Because he did not know the answer. No, he couldn’t fail now. What did he know about Qi? What was Qi?

Qi was in spirit. And it could be manipulated by it. The Archduchess had called it a constituent. But what was Qi? A type of energy? A different substance altogether? What, oh what, was Qi.

Xerte wondered about it, making theories and dismissing them rapidly. A construct, a material, an expression of emotion…Xerte rejected them all.

“The time approached its end, Xerte. I ask that you answer me now, else I shall have to fail you.’ the hole said to Xerte’s dismay.

So he just gave it the best answer he could.

‘Qi is the raw form of energies, but not all of them. Qi can serve as a material that can be converted into a certain spectrum of energies, this enables magic. Though particular in nature, it travels in the form of a straight line unless otherwise willed. And it shows a certain amount of awareness by choosing the path of least resistance.’ Xerte answered, his heart in his mouth.

‘An unsatisfactory answer, Xerte. But it will suffice, for now.’ the hole said, going away as Xerte breathed a sigh of relief. The hole was gone, and he was free of its trouble. And he was a late-Grand Tree to boot.