Augus woke up at 4 in the morning though considering his cultivation he could have slept only 3 hours by now. A full night’s sleep tended to do wonders for the mind that normal meditation couldn’t, by now all the confusion from recent events had faded.
As such there were things to consider, like his immediate plans. While he could focus on learning techniques from World Makers, if he considered the advantages cultivators at higher realms had, Augus must reach Nascent Soul sooner rather than later. What were this advantages that seemed so important? While Augus didn’t know what they were at higher realms, from his interactions with Jean he knew quite well what they were in the Nascent Soul realm.
Your very own spirit assistant, who opened the door for so many options as a World Maker. From what he talked with Jean during their assignment, your weren’t a full World Maker until you got your spirit assistant. They were the main reason why higher leveled Worlds are so valued, with their help a Maker, regardless of profession, could make bigger and better creations. An Alchemist could create a personal garden which the spirit could tend to, as natural growth was necessary for some herbs.
In the case of a World Maker, they made the tittle make sense. They allowed for big creations that earned the name of World, instead of ones earlier creations that were more like sections of a true World. With the help of some techniques that Augus had browsed one could even miniaturize this Worlds, though this wasn’t that popular of a technique as it couldn’t be maintained inside a small World.
The main reason Augus wanted a spirit assistant was to brainstorm, as he could throw ideas to it and the assistant would give him an answer on it’s feasibility without having to simulate each one of them. And he had ideas that would put to shame anything he had done until now, the main one was “The Pyramid”, but the design of it was so complicated that he didn’t know if it was possible even at Nascent Soul.
The main idea of The Pyramid is of selected massive growth of combat techniques, a one on one fight against an opponent of higher mastery in the selected technique that the cultivator can learn from. The main difficulty is how to create a puppet, for example, with adaptable mastery in any technique, this difficulty, Augus could guess, was the main reason why nobody had managed to do something similar, it wasn’t that unique of an idea.
The advantage Augus had was the one Sargent Williams mentioned, a perfect environment for growth, he could access any and all knowledge and techniques that remained. That’s when Augus actually realized what the Sargent wanted from him, from his companions. Cultivators already had an ideal environment for growth, what they lacked was the time and chance to convert that potential into actual strength.
Augus couldn’t give them more time, but he could give them a chance. The Pyramid was supposed to cover the combat techniques portion, but he couldn’t even try for now, so Augus had to think of improving cultivation. He could do a limited version, for Foundation Establishment and Golden Core realms, Qi condensation didn’t benefit from a specific environment as it was mostly absorbing and condensing Spiritual Energy (aka Qi).
A Foundation Establishment cultivator would benefit of sensory deprivation and enhancement. While dampening the five common senses, sharpen the spiritual sensing so that cleaning the meridians is less taxing on the mind, less focus needed. That space would need a disposal method for the impurities but that could be figured out later on.
The Golden Core space on the other hand would be of use to Augus even, as he planned to center it around the elements; Fire, water, earth, air, metal, lightning, light, darkness. The only complicated ones to design would be the latter two as Augus barely knew of them, just their names if he was honest.
His planning was ground to a halt though, as he got a call.
“Good evening, is this Augus, ID number 146.###.###-7?”
“Hello, yes, it’s Augus.” Even though he answered, he wasn’t sure how they could confirm it was actually him.
“Perfect, we called from the Central Government to inform you of your official inscription in the Emergency Contact program. Can you confirm your willingness to be a member of the program? It’s the last step to make it official.”
Augus took a few seconds but he finally said. “Yes, I confirm my willingness to be a member of the Emergency Contact program.”
“Excellent! As a member you will gain access to all the World Maker techniques the Central Government can gain access to, special cultivation resources and cultivation techniques at a 10% discount while you are a Golden Core cultivator. When you reach Nascent Soul that will upgrade to a 20%, the discount will increment as your realm advances until 40%, which is the maximum discount.”
“Though the currency the program uses is not common currency but the currency gained by completing assignments issued through the program. As a Golden Core you will not receive assignments but will receive a monthly allowance of 10 points. Your first task will be an official mission issued by the Central Government when you ascend to Nascent Soul and will function as a ranking test of your capabilities.”
“A laptop will be sent to your domicile that can connect to the intranet of the program where you can check your profile, the shop and in the future, your assignments requested by external entities. Missions issued by the Central Government are treated separately from external assignments and do not incur into points being rewarded but in your standing in the ranks.”
“That is all, if you have questions or doubts there is a tutorial in the intranet, for any additional questions you can call the support number that the intranet will show. Good luck!”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
And the call ended, Augus didn’t get a chance to ask the caller, they didn’t leave a window for interruptions. Though Augus was caught by surprise to all the Emergency Contact program, he expected some of it’s aspects, like the reward system.
Pure civic duty would benefit no one, a rewards system assured active participation and a classification of tasks, what did caught Augus by surprise was the ranking system, as it needed sufficient people to be of use. He was sure there wasn’t that many people in his city to form a satisfying ranking system, so that meant other cities would be lumped together in the same ranking, maybe even all the cities. Augus didn’t know how many were left but considering the grimness with which Sargent Williams had talked about their situation, there couldn’t be many.
Shaking off the conversation from his mind, Augus refocused on his situation. He wouldn’t continue to plan, as he had established a framework he could later use. What he would do is create a personal cultivation chamber, where he could accumulate and strengthen electricity and even lightning for his Golden World cleansing.
Augus divided the chamber in modules, one for catching lightning or released electricity, another for storing that electricity and lastly one for absorbing it. This way he wouldn’t need to interrupt his cultivation to produce lightning, and could focus fully on cleansing his Golden World.
Augus was close the first 10% milestone and he hoped the cultivation chamber would only accelerate his progress, as further cleansing would only get harder in terms of controlled strength. The intensity of the electricity would need to increase when he reached 50%, as the remaining impurities would be seated at a deeper level than before, but so would the control needed to avoid damages need to increase. He could implement those in the cultivation chamber, exercises to improve control, maybe wires where to pass strong currents without burning anything?
Regardless, that would be his immediate task so that Augus could focus on reaching Nascent Soul as soon as possible.
*
The laptop arrived 15 minutes later, after login to the intranet he checked his profile.
Quite simple, all information he had submitted when he participated in the military's assignment.
There was nothing out of the ordinary so he checked the shop next, here he browsed through the items. He found cultivation techniques that focused on each of the elements and found he could rent them for research at a fraction of the price, instead of purchasing them at full (full less the discount of course) it offered a limited access to the technique and focused on the theory rather than any practical application. That would be of use when designing the elemental cultivation space, as he would need one or two cultivation techniques of reference for each element, regardless of how much he knew about each of them.
After browsing the other alternatives for cleansing a Golden Core, he realized the actual differences between elemental cleansing and pure spiritual energy cleansing. While the first focused on attuning the cultivator to a certain element while he cleansed his Golden core, the second one didn’t have a specific focus. One amplified the maximum spiritual energy capacity, other the recovery speed by strengthening the meridians even further than Foundation Establishment. A peculiar one made it so the newly entered spiritual energy was absolutely clean, while the exiting one would be charged with as many impurities as possible, achieving a passive cleansing through the bodies apertures.
Even though this path offered quite the advantages, not many took it, judging by the publicly available purchases. This probably stemmed from the problem that was later in cultivation attuning the body to a specific element, as future cultivation heavily encouraged so.
But it seemed like even this problem was solvable as the shop offered many ways for elemental attuning that would return a cultivator’s progress to a normal pace, instead of the snails pace of an normal body.
Augus also checked the techniques and he actually found some combat ones, though they were fairly limited with small purchases but a lot of rentals. He left the World Maker’s techniques for last and checked the treasures, there were all the way from natural treasures to concocted ones. There were also Artifacts and even Machines, the machines were, as expected, for fast transport, meanwhile the artifacts offered a varied array of options that left Augus astonished. There were the classic weapon artifacts but the stars of the section were the World Makers artifacts that Augus had only heard about before.
There were mostly artifacts that upgraded a cultivator’s control inside their world and this left Augus puzzled, he had always assumed everyone had a near omniscient level of control inside their Inner World but this artifacts seemed to imply the contrary. He would need to ask if he ever encountered a high realm World Maker, as he doubted his professor could answer why there was a difference between Augus’s control of his Inner World and others control of theirs. Saving this mystery for now, Augus focused on the other types of artifacts the shop had to offer.
After he finished browsing everything the shop had to offer, which included techniques, treasures, pills, artifacts, machines, formations, battle arrays, treasure puppets (puppets made from special materials instead of common iron), talismans and even beast eggs. He circled back to the World Maker’s techniques to either shop one (if he could afford them) or pin the for future shopping. After checking some he found out he didn’t have a frame of reference for their prices so he checked on he knew the price of, “Enlightenment”, which cost 15 points, with 10 points per month that made it a bit pricier than the outside version. That made sense if he considered that the cheaper techniques had to cost the burden of the pricier ones, as gaining access to them wouldn’t be cheap or easy in the outside market.
This price meant he would need to wait at least a month to purchase anything valuable as he didn’t really need a technique for helping his aesthetic sense that was offered at 5 points or one that gave a slight efficiency increase in the conversion of spiritual energy to material for 8 points.
With everything checked out (as there were no assignments nor missions active) he jumped back to cultivating and building his personal cultivation chamber.
