Usually, Calvin liked to wait until he was back at the sect to claim and use any reward tokens he earned during a mission. It was…simpler that way. The first time around it had just sort of happened, with him not really getting a moment of privacy till he was back at his villa, but then he’d received his gemstone orchid and realized he’d have had a rather difficult time explaining where he’d found a neatly potted spiritual herb native to a province tens of thousands of miles away.
Furthermore, paradoxically Calvin felt that he was probably less likely to be actively monitored by a high realm cultivator within the sect’s core territories than outside of them. In the outside world, there were any number of reasons a nearby senior may be monitoring a disciple from one of the province’s Great Sects, but there were very few people who would dare peek past the grand formation surrounding the sect, much less to spy on a single insignificant disciple. And while the Eight Peaks sect might be home to more Core, Soul, Unity, and higher realm cultivators than most of the rest of the province combined, they were busy people with plenty of more pressing concerns than the actions of one among countless Outer Sect disciples.
Thus it had become something of a tradition of his. He’d return to the sect, submit his reports, receive his reward from Mission Hall, perhaps have a celebratory dinner with his team if things had gone particularly well, and then finally retire to the relative privacy of his meditation chamber to see the real goodies he’d earned.
But this wasn’t exactly a normal mission anymore. Even during their previous mission, after which he’d decided to take a break to focus purely on his cultivation, he’d never been as close to death as he had been just minutes ago. He’d gotten lucky. Unbelievably lucky. And while he would be the first to admit that much of what he had now he owed to luck, he hated to have to rely on such a fickle thing.
Sitting with his back against a tree a fair distance away from where he’d finished off the demonic beast, Calvin slowly turned a fist-sized beast core in his hands. It was bigger than any he’d ever seen before, and nearly perfectly spherical, a translucent orb of glittering black crystal within which red lights danced like a swarm of fireflies. The surface was as smooth as polished glass, but just beneath the surface was a web of cracks that pierced through the entire core.
The Scroll called it a Flawed Beast Core (Hound of Conquest), Below Average quality, and just looking at it made him nervous. Because a Foundation realm beast should not have had a core nearly this big, nor this round. The hydra he’d once helped kill had been near the peak of the Foundation realm, and its core had been half this size and looked more like a cluster of tiny grapes covered in jagged, unsanded glass.
From everything Calvin knew about beast cores (which was admittedly not very much) this looked more like the core of a spirit beast in the Core realm, and not the early stages! No wonder its aura had felt so strange. Judging from the cracks, something had badly damaged its spirit, practically crippling the beast. Otherwise it would have torn through him in an instant, long before he’d thought to try his final, desperate gambit.
Calvin laughed nervously, leaning his head back until it thunked against the rough bark of the tree he was leaning against. He was suddenly very worried about the situation Lulu and Wallis were rushing into. The two of them were capable, extremely so especially when fighting together, but if the cultists turned out to have a second beast like this one working with them…
And even if they didn’t, how the hell had they gotten something like this…hound of conquest to work with them? They’d thought they had a pretty good assessment of the demonic cultivator’s strength and numbers, especially after Lulu and Wallis had easily dispatched the Foundation realm cultivator they’d left behind to guard their hideout, but what if they’d been wrong? Calvin couldn’t think of very many reasons a beast like this one would have followed anyone weaker than it, and the idea of a demonic cultivator powerful enough to cow such a powerful demonic beast into submission was…concerning.
Terrifying, actually.
Stowing the core within his robes, Calvin closed his eyes and felt for his spirit. He’d taken a qi recovery pill––the Five Elements Rotation pill he’d received in his goody bag earlier in the month––as soon as the battle had ended and its effects were obvious. It would take some effort later to clear away the impurities it had contained, but for the moment his qi was recovering a full order of magnitude faster than it would have naturally. Some of that qi he used as quickly as he regained it, channeling it into the wood technique of the Eight Peaks Martial Arts to speed the healing of his broken arm and bruised everything. Soon, those injuries would be little more than a bad memory.
The damage to his spirit would take longer to deal with, though thankfully it was not as bad as Calvin had initially feared. The wolf’s––hound’s––howl had flayed the outermost layer of his spirit, an extremely painful but ultimately not too serious injury. Some amount of it had propagated inward, but thankfully the technique had broken before it could cause anything more than surface-level damage to his Foundation. The phoenix figure’s sudden departure and return had also done its fair share of damage as well, but less than he did to himself whenever he created a new qi node or channel.
Not for the first time, Calvin marveled at the difference a stable Foundation made. Had he taken such a technique a few months earlier, it would have likely set back his advancement by months, damage from the howl compounding with instability in his Foundation and requiring a great deal of meticulous effort to repair. But instead he estimated it would take just a few weeks for him to recover fully, and most of that healing would happen naturally, requiring minimal attention and should not overly limit his capabilities in the short term.
Perhaps that was why some of the texts he’d consulted recommended lingering at stable and semi-stable Foundation configuration in between bursts of advancement even though doing so could make it more difficult to continue making minor breakthroughs? Something worth considering in more detail at some point, especially if he planned to advise Gwen on her advancement in the future. Lingering at a three-three Foundation was certainly a bad idea, but perhaps an interim five node arrangement with enough capacity to make the leap to seven nodes in one extended session of secluded cultivation? Though that did depend on your intended Foundation having such a configuration within it in the first place, which wasn’t a guarantee. Maybe—
Calvin shook his head to clear it. Now was not the time to get lost in his thoughts. He was trying to distract himself from worrying, but this was not a productive way to do so right now.
Concern for Lulu and Wallis’s safety was a constant itch at the edge of his mind, but Calvin forced it down. Rushing after them would only slow him down in the end. He didn’t need long––ten, maybe fifteen minutes––and then he’d be able to not just go after them, but be ready to fight when he reached them.
For now though, there was something useful he could do.
“Codex,” he mumbled, and the Scroll’s familiar yellowed parchment unfurled before his eyes.
Calvin swallowed heavily, the lingering tang of his own blood heavy on his tongue. Average quality. He knew it wasn’t exactly an apples to apples comparison, but in some way the Scroll judged that defeating the demonic beast was a challenge on the same level as creating his Foundation and reaching the Core realm.
That was…probably accurate, actually. If he’d fought with all he had from the very beginning with Lulu and Wallis at his side, he thought that the three of them probably could have brought the demonic beast down eventually. They probably wouldn’t have gotten away unscathed, but victory was certainly possible. If he’d fought alone, the chance of victory was much smaller, but perhaps if he had sufficiently weakened it from the start, its howl technique would not have been quite so debilitating.
He took a slow, deep breath and released it. His hands weren’t shaking, but they felt like they should be. He balled them into fists and took another deep breath.
Later. He would deal with processing everything later.
He claimed both tokens in rapid succession. Even if they weren’t immediately useful, he hoped that neither a tool nor an elixir wouldn’t be too difficult to hide beneath his robe. And if they were useful, they could be the difference between life and death. He was willing to take that risk.
He opened his eyes but only glanced at the tokens, quickly committing the symbols on them to memory without studying them in too much detail. He snapped the elixir token first, intentionally not focusing on the great wheel as it spun before him until the last few moments. As fascinating as it was to take in the endless array of available options, he simply could not afford a pounding headache on top of everything else right now, but he couldn’t resist taking a peak at just the last few options he nearly received.
A Blood Ignition Elixir, High quality ticked past, followed by a Stormwind Tempering Draught, Average quality, before the wheel finally came to a stop. A crystal vial filled with milky white liquid within which were suspended countless flecks of what looked like gold leaf fell into his open hand, and information from the Scroll flooded into his mind.
Golden Marrow Tempering Jade Dew, Above Average quality. Calvin parsed through the provided information as quickly as he could, turning the vial over in his hands as he did so. It was not a bad reward by any means, though not exactly what he wanted right now. He was unfamiliar with this particular elixir, but he’d seen and heard of plenty like it. Such elixirs commanded enormous premiums, typically requiring extremely rare materials and an exceptional alchemist to refine them. It might only qualify as an Above Average quality reward––by no means a bad pull coming from an Average quality token if a somewhat disappointing one––but Calvin wouldn’t be surprised if it was worth as much or more than most of the possible Moderate quality rewards.
The marrow tempering dew was a type of permanent enhancement elixir. Such things varied wildly in potency and usefulness, with some only being useful in the earliest stages of cultivation, their effectiveness rapidly fading to nothing as a cultivator reached the Foundation and Core realm, while others limited a cultivator’s future path or required such a specific combination of factors—techniques, special physiques, particular spirit roots, and the like—that they were only truly useful to a tiny handful of individuals.
Fortunately this one seemed to be on the higher end of what Calvin had heard of, discounting miraculous elixirs only mentioned in stories and legends. Those probably did have some truth to them, but any real factual details were closely guarded secrets far outside Calvin’s purview. Its effect was relatively generic, intended to be widely compatible with most attunements, cultivation methods, and physiques, and the benefits it provided were not overwhelming, but would remain useful at least into the Soul realm and possibly beyond—Calvin simply didn’t know enough about such high level cultivation to do anything more than guess, even with the Scroll’s detailed description. One of its few restrictions was that it had to be drunk in the Foundation realm, which Calvin figured was the reason the Scroll classified it as a ‘Foundation Elixir’.
As the name suggested, the elixir was meant to temper the imbiber’s bone marrow, ideally converting it into Golden Jade Marrow over the course of several weeks. Golden Jade Marrow offered a whole list of benefits, some of which sounded rather appealing. Supposedly his bones would become as ‘unyielding as a mountain’s heart and as lustrous as imperial jade’, making them far more resistant to physical trauma and capable of bending slightly under extreme pressure rather than shattering. Blood produced by Golden Jade Marrow was capable of carrying a greater quantity and quality of qi, improving the effectiveness of healing and body-reinforcing techniques. The marrow could also act as a secondary qi reservoir, passively absorbing and refining qi without reducing his regeneration and then using that energy to enhance techniques and other tempering methods.
Apparently, some people were just born with that kind of fancy bone marrow, and theirs would always be superior to what could be acquired from a bottle, but that all sounded pretty good to him! And all it cost him was a measly near-death experience a few weeks of modest discomfort as his mortal marrow was burned away and replaced.
It wasn’t exactly the immediate boost he was looking for, but Calvin wasn’t one to throw away a princely prize like this one just because it wasn’t quite what he wanted.
Without much further thought, Calvin removed the wax seal and drank the whole vial down in a single long pull, grimacing at the gritty, mucusy texture (though at least the taste wasn’t so bad). It would be several days before he’d see any real changes, but the process of converting his marrow should start after just a few minutes and every little bit could be the difference between life and death. He slipped the empty vial into his robe (waste not want not, and it was a nice vial!) and turned his attention to the second token.
Calvin was even more curious about what qualified as a Foundation Tool than he had been about the different elixirs he might have received, but once again he resisted the urge to focus on all but the last few options that appeared on the great wheel. That was probably for the best because from what he did see, the answer appeared to be ‘just about anything’ if what he did get a peak at was anything to go by.
A Low quality Three-Resonance Tuning Fork was followed by a Below Average Talisman Inscription Brush, then an Average quality Meridian Mapping Compass, and finally his prize: a Low quality Dew Collecting Gourd.
Calvin stared blankly at the empty gourd. It was, well. A drinking gourd. A rather fancy one, decorated with geometric designs, fitted with a secure cork lid, and wrapped in a web of metallic threads with multiple spots to which straps for carrying could be affixed, but it was clearly an actual hollowed out gourd of some manner or other.
Well. You win some, you lose some.
The gourd wasn’t actually useless, but it was certainly…underwhelming. If nothing else, he had just hours ago given away his canteen, and even a cultivator needed to drink from time to time. Plus it was designed to slowly refill on its own over time, and the water gathered that way would have a very slight benefit for herbs watered with it and any early Gathering realm cultivators who drank from it.
Calvin sighed heavily. And it didn’t even have the decency to come pre filled so he could get the lingering texture of wet, tacky slime out of his mouth. He had no idea how this stupid thing counted as a Low quality reward, not unless he was sorely misunderstanding the utility of dew water. Maybe the quality of the craftsmanship had bumped it up to the very bottommost edge of what counted as Low quality? There had to be a line somewhere, right? Would scuffing up the painted surface immediately drop it down to Very Low quality?
Calvin tilted his head forward until his chin came to rest against his chest. The gourd seemed to stare up at him, its two bulbous sections like big round eyes. He shook it, but it was still completely empty. The water-gathering function only worked at night and in vegetation-rich areas where it could skim dew from nearby plants. He plucked one of the metallic threads and found it quite sturdy and firmly attached to the gourd. Calvin sighed again and got to work fastening a carrying strap to the stupid thing. At the end of the day it was a Low quality reward from the Scroll. Disappointing or not, it would be a shame to lose it.
And if nothing else, busy hands made time go faster. His arm still needed another few minutes, and then he could go after Lulu and Wallis. Better to do something than sit and fret.
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