Cultivation Struggles of a Lowly Fox

It was a while since she walked around and many things were changing rapidly.

Instead of mud houses, there were now a mixture of stone and wood houses. It was not something that could be dubbed as modern or what Aiko was used to, it felt very foreign to her, which was only natural.

These buildings were mostly in the Middle Ages and were not part of the usual climate.

However, their sturdiness and versatility was pretty much guaranteed.

Pretty much everything was based on sturdiness first before other things came.

The roads were also foreign, since Aiko was used to either mud roads or carefully laid tiles as floors.

To describe this scenery to those that wish to understand.

The roads were of Romanic nature. They were sturdy and could easily last hundreds of years.

The side-walks were carefully placed rocks that didn't include as many highs and lows as you might expect. It was quite easy to walk on them, and they were smooth too, but not to a point where you would feel like you would slip on them, even if it rained on them.

The houses were mostly ground floor, but the closer you got to the centre of this place, the bigger they got.

The first floors would always be out of sturdy rocks, while anything above it was mostly out of wood. The second floor was almost always slightly protruding outside, making the floors above the ground bigger and more homely.

Each home had its own chimney with everything you could want. A warm hearth was installed inside, making it a perfect sleeping spot for anyone who wished to be warm during the night.

The insides were primitive, but very homely, so much so that Aiko felt very good about it.

Most buildings were built like this, but there were inns, mostly made out of wood, or bars, which had both inner part and outer part.

It honestly didn't matter that this place didn't have anyone walking around as the mere presence of these things put Aiko's mind at ease for some reason.

Walking further in, mansions started to appear. They were huge and well decorated, with elaborate gardens and water works.

Living fences were pretty much the best thing about it, but Aiko despised the living mazes.

Moving along, a huge castle was erected. Most of the parts were filled with a humongous library, while the rest was for invaders to approach and be 'judged' in.

The design was a piece of several mixtures, there were even some side palaces from all kinds of architectures, making this place both bizarre and awe-inspiring.

From the mansion to this point, most things were piled with huge smooth rock tiles. As if someone carefully cut them in size, polished them and placed them down.

The colours were still dull, but it was obvious that the castle, palace, whatever you want to call this monstrosity, was the most colourful out of them all.

The colours were not out of place, it was more like the colours were more vivid compared if you were near the protective wall.

Aiko walked around the palace, but most rooms were empty, even the library was empty with only a few books inside.

Aiko was familiar with those books as those were Cultivation Manuals and Techniques that she already knew or was owner of. It seemed like this place would slowly fill up over time the more she acquired.

There were also techniques and stuff from the time she visited the former Fox Village library, but all of them were in the lowest quality section, even the more impressive ones.

Aiko was unable to judge why they were placed in there when some of them were judged as high-quality by Cultivators.

However, her attention on this place didn't last long as she saw a 'Throne'.

[This [Throne] is not yet finished, please return during the DLC- Ahem -Please return later once things are settled down.]

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'I wonder how long that will take.' Aiko ignored the strange words and focused on something else.

She could still hear something banging on her walls, which disturbed her exploration. She still wanted to visit the mansion and many other things, but the banging was too distracting.

Walking back to the wall and towards the huge doors, a smaller pair of doors was on the side of the huge doors, as if that was for those who wished to enter without actually opening the huge doors.

The craftsmanship was immaculate, like something out of fairy tail. It was pretty much screaming "Open Me! Open Me!".

[You are entering a hostile area.]

[This area has the level of: Beginner]

[It's suitable for training your Soul, but do not stay outside too long.]

Aiko looked over her system. The Soul was now displayed as HP and she only had permanent 160K

Well, her Soul was 22+million strong, but that was only if you considered the fact that all of that strength came from her Bloodlines.

Every Beast had a somewhat powerful Soul thanks to Bloodlines, but only Foxes and few others could naturally grow their Soul and make it stronger.

Her HP was displayed and the moment she opened the doors, she was slowly losing them. The rate was a bit iffy since it depended on how far outside she was, but she knew she would have to be careful.

Her Soul was being consumed as HP, so once she hit 0 it would start consuming her Bloodlines, which she would like to avoid.

Getting back inside, Aiko needed a weapon, so she visited nearby smithies.

Those were mostly hard weapons, but there were shops around also 'selling' fans, whips and kind of like soft weaponry.

First she observed the cold weapons. Swords, maces, spears, that kind of thing.

She didn't really like those weapons, and she would rather use bows, but maybe this place was a good place for testing things out?

First she picked a normal double-edged sword. Most Cultivators would use some kind of variant of this, making it the most widespread weapon.

However, after just swinging it a few times, Aiko didn't like anything about it.

It was too heavy, too slow and overall burdensome to wield.

Another sword was too curved, making it harder to use. Another had only a single edge and so on.

Aiko didn't like them.

There was one sword she kind of liked, but wielding it was more difficult than she expected.

The sword was very thin, easy to break, but also very flexible, making attacks more varied and difficult to predict. The sword itself was very light, due to the thinness, but at the same time, if you imbued it with Qi, it could deliver a significant impact.

Aiko would keep this weapon for testing for now and look over the other ones.

Another was a sword-breaker. Aiko was already acquainted with it, but it was not time to make enemies out of every Sword Cultivator, so she would keep it on the back burner for now.

There was also a hook sword. It was kind of a peculiar sword, but she wouldn't comment on it much, since she didn't have climbing tendencies.

The next weapon she was interested in was a fan. This one required dance-like motion, but Aiko felt like such a slut during it that she just couldn't bring herself to use it.

How was she able to know what she should do to use it? Aiko had no idea why, but it came to her naturally.

Needless to say, fans should be used only for fanning and not fighting, but she would gift Mei one, since this might be a good- Ahem...

The next weapon was a whip. This kind of excited Aiko, since this unassuming weapon could deliver quite the lethal impact.

It was able to tear through things like they were made out of butter, but in a different way to swords.

The impact zone was completely obliterated all the time, and it would make it difficult to recover from, which excited Aiko.

A weapon that would always give your opponent a debuff was a good weapon in her books!

Not to mention, these whips have several iterations. There were whips with sword-like parts, making cutting easier, but at the same time harder to control.

Then there were whips made out of chains. As you might expect, those kinds of whips were so destructive that you shouldn't call them whips, but their durability was low, due to the extreme forces.

Wind and Fire Wheels were also a thing, but it was not interesting enough to attract Aiko's attention.

There were also defensive weapons. Like shields with pointy parts, making it great for both defence and as a weapon.

Aiko didn't like these at all, since she felt like they were too unwieldy, but it was also because she didn't like melee.

Then there were some strange wooden weapons, or rather tools that allowed you to wield weapons better.

This one was called Atlatl, it was kind of like a wooden stick with a few bands of leathers and that was about it.

It was a very simple weapon, but it extended the range and force behind your spears.

Of course Aiko didn't care much of it, since her tails were much more powerful than these tools, but not all of them were useless.

The Needle Blower was one of such things. It could deliver needles by just blowing into a tube. The needles itself were fluffy, which Aiko liked, and she considered using this weapon later on when she was stealthily hunting.

There were also iterations of slings and bows with crossbows. And then even more elaborate bows with additional features.

One bow interested Aiko the most, since the drawing force was high up to a certain point. This would make endurance hunting a lot easier, since holding the arrow down was easier with full draw instead of waiting and drawing at the last second.

The mechanism was also not too difficult, but making the materials behave like this was the difficult part.

Aiko took this bow and a few slings, and she then went into the armour-smithy. She wouldn't take any risks for the time being so it was better pick some-

"Heavy!" Aiko immediately complained since most cool armours were so bulky and heavy that she hated it.

"Ngh... It's soo cool though..." Aiko whined, but it didn't make the armour lighter.

There were other armours, but the most interesting one was the scaled armour. It was created by many smaller scales, making it both lighter and more defensive(?) against common weapons.

Of course, it couldn't match full plate armour, but this was the best of both worlds.

Aiko kept browsing for a while, but since she was still at it, maybe she should look over clothes too...?