Chapter 60 - Rewards [1]
The nth round had finished in the afternoon. Cale had surrendered to sleep while Rexa went for training, promising to bring ;brunch’ when she returned. Unlike someone, other people actually needed to train themselves.
The ’godly’ blonde-haired man opened his eyes to find his entire body drained. His spirits were gone, his balls were gone—Rexa had thoroughly dried him up that morning alone.
’Sigh, what a worthy portable dildo I am,’ he thought with dark amusement.
He sat up and reformed his lower pants using clothes from his spatial ring, then cracked his neck as a system screen materialized before him.
"Oh right. The fucking rewards. Well, the quest should count as complete since we handled the major threat. All that’s left is herb gathering."
Ding!
The screen expanded, notifications cascading across his vision:
[CONGRATULATIONS HOST FOR ADVANCING TO PEAK ADVANCE STAGE]
[CONGRATULATIONS HOST FOR ADVANCING TO PEAK LOW MASTER STAGE]
[HOST HAS STEPPED INTO THE REALMS OF REAL CULTIVATION]
[UNPRECEDENTED ACHIEVEMENT: TWO-STAGE SIMULTANEOUS ADVANCEMENT]
[+50 BLANK POINTS GAINED]
[BLANK POINTS: 193]
’Huh? When did—oh right. We did kill a shitload of them last night.’
The notifications continued, flooding his consciousness with rewards that made even his exhausted mind sit up straighter:
[QUEST REWARDS ARE BEING CALCULATED...]
[SWORD SPIRITUAL ROOT OBTAINED (NORMAL)]
[VIOLET SHADOW PHYSIQUE OBTAINED]
[RACE EVOLUTION: Human 18% → 30% (Awakened) | Elf 12% → 25% (Awakened)]
[MANA CAPACITY HAS LEVELED UP TO Lvl.19]
[QI CAPACITY HAS LEVELED UP TO Lvl.19]
[CULTIVATION SPEED MULTIPLIER: +0.2]
[REWARDED A BODY MANIFESTATION FROM THE AGE OF GODS!]
[DEMONIC YIN SOUL REFINING BODY: A BODY NATURALLY ATTUNED TO YIN AND SOUL ENERGY. THE PURER THE SOUL, THE MORE EFFICIENTLY IT CAN BE REFINED. EVEN CORRUPTED SOULS CAN BE FORCIBLY PURIFIED AND TRANSFORMED INTO NOURISHMENT FOR THE USER’S SOUL.]
[PEAK ADVANCE STAGE REWARD: ’WILL’ GRANTED]
[WITH YIN BODY INTEGRATION: Yin and Yang energies will cultivate as one henceforth]
[ABILITY UNLOCKED: ’GENESIS’]
[LOW MASTER STAGE REWARD: ’WILL’ upgraded to ’DIVINE CONSCIOUSNESS’]
[TWO-STAGE ADVANCEMENT BONUS: INNER SANCTUM GRANTED]
’Inner... what?’
[INITIALIZING MIND REALM OPENING]
[FORMING BASE SOUL BODY]
[MERGING DEMONIC YIN SOUL REFINING BODY TO HOST’S PRIME BODY]
[3...]
"Oi oi... wait. The fuck are you talking abo—"
The words caught in his throat as his body went rigid. Not just tense—completely, utterly frozen. Ice crystallized across his skin, spreading to the bedframe beneath him as the temperature plummeted into something inhuman.
First came the headache. Sharp and splitting, like something was tearing through his skull from the inside. Then his bones cracked—an audible sound like breaking glass echoing through his frame. His entire body locked down, muscles seizing as an internal tempest began reshaping him from within.
[2...]
His muscles tore and reformed in sequence, each fiber being systematically destroyed and recreated as if by some invisible god’s hand. Slowly—agonizingly slowly—he regained fractional control of his body. He tried to sit up. Failed. The bed was completely encased in ice now, a frozen prison for a body undergoing metamorphosis.
The headache intensified. Purple veins bulged across his skin like living tributaries, visible beneath pale flesh as his circulatory system rewired itself.
[1...]
Boom.
His veins burst outward violently. Blood sprayed across the room in violent arcs, painting the walls and ceiling crimson. Everything tilted into dizziness, and he kept groaning—a sound pulled from somewhere deep, from a place that transcended pain.
He understood what was happening. His body was too weak to contain this inheritance, this ancient power being forced into mortal flesh.
But only an idiot would refuse this.
Finding a body from an ancient immortal, refining it, reforming it to match his cultivation and physical parameters, then discovering a technique to inherit it—this was something you couldn’t acquire even if you lived a thousand years. He was getting it so easily!
’Heh, if I die once more, so what?’ he thought with grim acceptance. ’I’ve lived long enough. At my total age, I should’ve been playing with grandkids by now.’
His dantian—or rather core—shattered completely. But it wasn’t reforming. It didn’t need to. His entire body could now store profound energies directly, turning itself into a vessel for power itself.
The agony receded slightly, just enough for coherent thought to form, though the pain remained a constant, suffocating presence.
’No way.... right? No, no, no, no fucking way! That "Refining" in this body’s name... it actually means making my body a fucking cauldron? This shit is possible?’
He’d read about it in novels, but experiencing it firsthand was something else.
’I’m a literal cauldron for refining? Can I actually just touch herbs and create pills? Damn... I could make a fortune as a merchant...’
He tried to move. Nothing responded. His eyes worked, tracking the room around him, but his body refused even the slightest motion.
[INITIALIZING FORMATION OF NEW BRAIN]
’Huh... oi... seriously???’
FLASH.
His brain burst apart and reformed. Burst and reformed again. The cycle continued in an endless cascade of destruction and rebirth, each iteration reshaping the very seat of his consciousness.
The door creaked open.
Rexa stood frozen in the threshold, the tray of food suspended in her hands, her entire face draining of color as she processed the scene before her.
Blood everywhere, and Cale suspended in ice, unmoving, his body violated by forces she couldn’t comprehend.
"Y-Young Master?!"
The tray crashed to the floor, plates shattering. She ran toward him without thinking, wrapping her arms around his frozen form despite the cold searing through her own body. The freezing temperature was beyond what she could safely endure, and her qi burned like wildfire just to maintain the embrace.
Her eyes grew moist. She didn’t understand what was happening—only that he was suffering, and she couldn’t help him.
Cale’s eyes widened, and he felt it.
Her worry, panic, her desperate need to do something, anything. Only able to move his eyes, he tried to look at her, but her head remained pressed against his shoulder, her whole body trembling against his ice-locked form.
He tried to speak. Only a muffled sound emerged, barely audible.
’H-how do I even tell her?’
She pulled back slowly, her body pale and shaking from the cold, and looked directly into his eyes. Understanding flickered across her features—not full comprehension, but enough to know she needed to listen.
He moved his eyes deliberately, trying to communicate without words.
Move away.
She hesitated, her expression warring between obedience and instinct. But after a long moment, she made her choice and stepped back, her body still trembling.
’Sigh, she worries too much,’ he thought, watching her retreat to a safer distance.
The system chimed one final time:
[HOST HAS ACQUIRED AN INHERITANCE]
[OPEN NOW?]
’Fucking hell, can’t you see my body’s current state? If I accept anything right now, I might actually die.’