A pungent odor pervaded Vice’s nostrils as he walked past a brownish-red monolith. The large rock towered over him at almost four times his height. ‘Huh? I’ve never seen this thing here before, I wonder what it is?’ he thought as he stared at the thin red aura given off by the object. ‘System, are you able to scan this thing?’ he asked.

[DING! Error! The system is unable to scan the object.] Virtue buzzed.

‘Favian? Do you have any clue what this is?’ he asked as he walked up to the monolith and touched it with his hand. A warm sensation filled his palms before they slowly started to smolder up to a point where Vice couldn’t bear it anymore, and he thrust his hands away from the rock.

‘Nope,’ Favian replied in an uncaring tone. ‘And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you after those rude comments you made.’

Vice gave a long sigh as he stared at the monolith one last time, noting its exact location so that he could come back to investigate it in the future. ‘I’ll be back here for you at some point, I bet you hide some pretty expensive treasure within you,’ Vice thought. He then leisurely walked further into the drab forest until he finally spotted something worthwhile to release his pent up anger on.

Vice was perched upon one of the willow trees that were abundantly rooted in the area, and from his line of sight he could make out a white fox. The fox was moving slowly around a blue plant, which Vice wasn’t fully able to make out from this distance. It circled the plant multiple times and tried to bite it, only for a blue barrier to spring forth into existence, stopping its fangs from sinking into its target.

‘That… looks valuable. My luck doesn’t seem too shitty today despite that damned widow maker getting away from me,’ Vice thought. He immediately let his mana release from within his arcana core and circulate around his body, until his palms were coated in a thick purplish layer. This time, however, instead of purplish wisps striking against his hands, a purple swirl of water akin to a tornado rotated in his palms.

Vice allowed the liquid in his hands to grow in size until it was almost as big as a newborn baby. With a flick of his wrists, the liquid left his hands and darted toward the white fox. Vice’s Chaotic Roulette was not only able to materialize weapons for him, but it also was able to cast elemental spells. Despite the liquid’s purplish appearance, it was a water elemental spell called Water Tornado and had a highly destructive force.

CRASH!

The first Water Tornado smashed into the fox’s body, slinging it away more than ten feet. Brown leaves and black soil were flung into the air, but the blue plant stood unharmed, its barrier even thicker than before. The second Water Tornado that Vice cast circled around the fox, and impacted it from behind. Again the fox was propelled into the air, and a loud shriek was heard from it as its bones cracked. The purple liquid entered the animal’s orifices, its insides being turned into jelly by the substance it was forced to ingest. Before the fox even fell to the ground, only a couple of feet away from the plant, it was already dead.

“Wow, those foxes are usually too fast for me to defeat with any of the weapons I get,” Vice murmured. He slowly walked up toward the corpse of the animal and instantly removed a small butchering knife from his spatial pouch. He used the knife to cut into the fox with high precision, and after making a large enough cut he plunged his hand into the still-warm body of the fox. Vice wriggled his hand around until they touched onto something rock solid. He then grabbed onto the object and used all of his strength to remove his hand from the fox’s corpse.

A blue gem the size of a small fist was left in Vice’s bloodied hands. A viscous red liquid dripped off the gem and his hands, and the soil underneath sizzled as the fluid came into contact with it. Vice was unaffected by the acidic nature of the fluid, and only a slight tingling sensation was felt as he caressed his fingers around the gem.

‘Hmm, this is an okay quality gem I guess. Nothing that’ll make my heart beat faster,’ Vice thought as he glanced at the item, before rinsing it with some water and putting it into his spatial pouch.

Vice moved toward the mysterious plant and could see that it actually had two completely different pistils growing out of its stem. One was shining in a blue light, whilst the other was decayed and wilted into a brown color. A sweet fragrance and a rotten stench were given off by the plant at the same time.

“This barrier, it’s strong,” Vice said as he tried to wrap his hands around the plant. He tried smashing the barrier with his fists or cutting into it with his dagger but to no avail. Even his Water Tornado was useless and left the plant unscathed. No matter how much mana he tried to push against the barrier, it wouldn’t budge.

“What’s that?” Vice mumbled as his black eyes stared at a tiny area that the plant didn’t cover with its barrier. This small defect was only the size of a grain of sand. He scrambled to his knees and took out the dagger from his spatial pouch before thrusting it into the defect.

CRACK!

The barrier surrounding the plant shattered into tiny blue shards as sharp as glass, much to the dismay of Vice who had several shards lodge themselves into his hand. “Fuck,” he shouted, and frantically removed the shards embedded into his brown skin. Thick purplish-red blood dropped from his wound onto the grass, and a similar sizzling sound happened as before with the fox’s blood.

After taking a bandage and wrapping his wound tightly, Vice inspected the plant further. ‘How the hell can a barrier like this even injure me? That’s just insane,’ he thought. Carefully, Vice dug into the ground near the flower. A pungent vapor akin to a durian fruit that had gone off was released from the soil. Even for him, this smell was unbearable, and he covered his nose tightly with a bandanna that he removed from his pouch.

“Damn, this is disgusting. What in the hell is this stuff? Why can I still smell this foul thing?” he said. Finally, after digging for a few minutes, Vice found where the plant’s roots ended and picked it up all in one go. Despite not knowing exactly what it was, Vice believed this was some precious resource. He thought he could either sell it or use it for cultivation.

‘System, what is this thing? Can you tell me anything about it?’ he asked.

[DING! The host will need to upgrade this system before such a function becomes available.]

‘I expected as much,’ he thought as took in a big breath. With the precious resource placed into his pouch, he hastily made his way out of the forest. The sun was almost in the sky, with dawn approaching.

Vice was able to make his way back to the villa very quickly, and after checking up on his mother he went to his room and proceeded to sit down on his bed in a meditative position. Vice took out the blue gem he’d looted from the fox and absorbed the arcana from it. A blue aura was released from the gem as he held it, and the wisps of blue energy were absorbed into his body at an insanely quick rate. Only five minutes after he’d taken the gem out, it was already sucked dry, and it cracked into several pieces in his hands.

Vice stared at the dulled gem pieces in his palm for a moment, before throwing them out of his window. ‘Hmph, just as I thought, the quality isn’t good enough to sustain me for a whole session of cultivation,’ he thought.

[DING! The host has cultivated to the next level by an additional 30%. The host is now 40% along to leveling up.] Virtue buzzed.

Vice was stunned at this revelation. ‘So a trashy beast arcane core like that can net me so much power? I really am going to have to find some more and use them to cultivate further,’ he thought. He then spent the rest of the day cultivating, however the amount he gained from this session without an arcane core was considerably less. ‘At least I’m halfway to the next level now,’ Vice thought before finally allowing himself to fall asleep. As he was a cultivator, he didn’t need as much sleep as a regular human and could go days without sleep and still be fine.