Cultivating As A Side Character

A Spirit Grade treasure! Oh man, I am going to show this off so much! Back in the Dive Gaming days, one thing I'd really wanted to do just once was to be one of those people to score a rare item no one else had ever found before. This...wasn't quite a substitute but it was close. There had been a lesson giving an overview on treasure grades, and at least here in the Low Heaven, Spirit Grade treasures required materials that were extremely rare, and they usually took a master of no small expertise multiple years of non-stop work to craft. Even a single Spirit Grade treasure represented a substantial investment by a cultivation sect or family.

Probably they weren't as important to a faction on the scale of the Dimension Governors, but still...this was very good news for me. I went into the Inner Spiral to test out the new weapon, and it sent arrows flying at such extreme speeds that I had to adjust my aim by no longer leading my shots at all.

Over the next 3 days, I kept up killing as many magical beasts in the Inner Spiral as I could. Between my 5th Earth Realm Cultivation and my new bow, none of what I killed was left in good enough shape to salvage parts, let alone cores, but I'd absorbed almost 50 million Qi with my Experiential Physique when I killed the Master of the Spiral, and I was able to kill the normal beasts with so little effort now that by the time the call for assembly came, I'd gained enough to break through to the 2nd Stage.

I covered the entire spiral in just one day—unfortunately, because of the bear I had to stop near the start of the Outer Spiral. The next day, I dashed through the Dark Forest completely unopposed and reached the camp with plenty of daylight to spare. As I was putting up my tent for the last time for a while, to stay in for the last 5 days of the trip, a familiar voice interrupted the finishing touches. "Yo, Zuhui!"

"Jong! How'd you make out with the river? The special challenge there involved fishing, if I remember?"

"Trying to land the King of the River so that it would even fight me was pretty frustrating," he admitted, "even if I'm an old hand at fishing. But check this out!"

A magnificent silver sabre appeared in Jong's hand. "It's Spirit Grade, called a Narhorn Blade. My class' instructor said that it can pierce things quite a few weapons at the same Grade can't."

"You too, eh?" I said, trying to sound nonchalant as I summoned my own treasure. "This one, I got for killing the Master of the Spiral. It's called a Lamentation Bow. It shoots arrows as fast as bullets—I'll need to invest in arrows that won't break so easily being fired from it."

Jong nodded approvingly. "Nice, nice. So...what do you think our pal Mr. Talent is gonna bring back?"

"If I had to guess? Probably something Divine Grade. The mountain is supposed to be harder to conquer than the other 3 challenges put together."

"Yeah...I wouldn't be surprised. So, what was your 'boss' like? Mine was a giant fish, and Shokoya and his group fought some kind of giant octopus thing, only it had 9 tentacles instead of 8."

"Mine was like a sea serpent, it tried blasting me with superheated water or maybe some water elemental kind of thing. I had to shoot it in the mouth a lot. What did Shokoya and his group get?"

"A spear. Then, according to him, his teacher showed up and explained that since they took out the Ascended Beast as a group, everyone would get 30 Contribution Points except for the person who kept the treasure, who'd get none. Shokoya willingly gave it up to Qilong Ding. Said he's betting on getting something even better next year. Ding's the only one of us top tenners who uses a spear anyway."

With over 5 days to simply relax, I was feeling really good. When I got bored, I'd either cultivate or play some kind of Nine Heavens board game with Shokoya, Jong, or surprisingly, Qingling Mei. She'd grinded in the same area as Shokoya's group, and accepted his invite to join them fighting the Nonimari. So, she'd warmed up to her fellow top 10s a little bit.

The day before the last, Jue Zhu finally got back to camp just as the sun began to set. He'd stayed as long as he could to keep fighting the strong monsters at the mountain and especially the temple at its top, finally reaching Stage 4 of the 5th Realm before rushing back. The Lord of the Mountain had been a fairly strange Ascended Beast called a Frostbull. He'd told quite a tale of the fight against it, but when it came to what he'd gotten, he was strangely tight-lipped. He did say it wasn't a weapon or a protective gear treasure, but he said he couldn't tell us what it actually was, or if it was Divine Grade.

The next day was the last we'd spend in the reserve. No one was missing—Jue Zhu had actually been the last to return, since everyone who lacked ability or motivation to strive for a high class ranking hadn't even camped outside the main camp in the first place. So, the instructors basically let us have a big celebration.

The next morning, we all finally warped back to the campus. I was no stranger to roughing it, but previously only in situations where I could log off and go to a real bed any time I wanted. I spent several minutes burying my face in the real pillow on the small bed in my room. There was only the one day to relax on campus before classes resumed, so even us top tenners were determined to make the most of it.