다차원 아바타로 탑 공략 24화
Chapter 24. Tower - Slime Summoner (1)A fair amount of time had passed since I reached the level of a third-rate martial artist, and I was now four years old. The third-rate realm was completely ingrained in me, allowing me to freely reinforce my body with internal energy. Unlike before, when I could barely clear 30 centimeters jumping in place, I could now leap over a meter into the air.I checked my current status window.[Name: Han Ji-woo (Slot 2 Avatar) / Age: 4]Strength: 6 / Agility: 9 / Stamina: 8 / Intelligence: 17 / Magic Power: 23Condition: Normal, Growth PeriodAbilities: Multidimensional Avatar Lv 10, Martial Arts Lv 19[- Martial Arts:] Azure Wood Sword Lv 18, Azure Wood Steps Lv 18, Azure Wood Combat Lv 18, Azure Wood Art Lv 23, Muscle and Bone Forging Art Lv 4, Yoga Qigong Lv 10The stats and martial arts skills on my status window had grown enough for me to climb the Tower. My Intelligence and Magic Power had grown particularly fast from reading various dense martial arts manuals and academic papers. On the other hand, my Strength, Agility, and Stamina hadn't seen much growth. Of course, even with this "slow" growth, thanks to elixirs and training, I was already way out of the normal range for my age, boasting physical capabilities nearly on par with a teenager.Truthfully, a lack of basic physical abilities didn't matter much anyway. When I reinforced my body using cultivation methods:[Strength: 16 / Agility: 16 / Stamina: 16 / Intelligence: 17 / Magic Power: 22**]**By consuming internal energy (Magic Power), I could temporarily boost my physical stats. If I increased the internal energy expenditure, I could reinforce them even further for a brief moment, but doing so risked damaging my physical body since my base foundation wouldn't be able to handle the strain.Being able to visually confirm the effectiveness of my martial arts made the status window incredibly convenient. After learning several martial arts, they had all been consolidated into a single "Martial Arts" category in my abilities list. Focusing on or pressing it acted like a "View More" button, bringing up a dropdown list of everything I had learned.My Reincarnated Avatar didn't possess the Spirit Magic I had learned on my Tower Avatar. Switching back and forth between the avatar and my main body, I had conducted various experiments regarding the functions of the "Multidimensional Avatar" skill.It seemed that no matter the world, when you first create an avatar, it is generated possessing only the "Multidimensional Avatar" skill. To duplicate other stats or abilities from the main body to the avatar, it appeared you had to spend "Avatar Points."The reason I hadn't simply absorbed and recreated my Reincarnated Avatar to test my hypothesis was simple.[Warning: There is a discrepancy between the physical age of this avatar and the physical age of the main body. If you recreate the avatar after absorption, it will be recreated using the physical body of the main body. Do you wish to absorb the avatar?]If I absorbed the avatar, I wouldn't be able to return to my childhood. Naturally, creating a new avatar meant I would lose my house, my inheritance, and my teacher, Si-woo. I couldn't choose that option.It would have been a disaster if I had died to those kidnappers! I figured that if I kept climbing the Tower, I might eventually unlock additional abilities to somehow resolve this situation, just like how I had unlocked "Reincarnation" and the "3D Avatar." But for now, being unable to use the strength of my most powerful Reincarnated Avatar was a critical bottleneck. I needed the avatar's power to easily climb the Tower, but to use the avatar's power, I needed to climb the Tower.What kind of garbage setup was this?The real question was whether a function to adjust an avatar's age would appear on the 20th floor or the 30th floor. Or, perhaps, I just needed to level up the Multidimensional Avatar skill.After mulling it over, I shifted my perspective. If I couldn't directly use the avatar's power, I just needed to receive the avatar's help.As it happened, I had the elixir ingredients I customarily received as gifts from the land I inherited, along with the elixirs I received as a reward for Si-woo handling the recent incident so well. If I couldn't use the Reincarnated Avatar's power, I just needed to use those elixirs to power up my Tower Avatar.Of course, using the reward elixirs on my current main body or my Tower Avatar right now would be like casting pearls before swine; it would be no different than producing extremely expensive feces.So, I asked Si-woo for help and began studying elixir pharmacology."It is a good thing for a martial artist to take an interest in compounding elixirs. I will look into lectures immediately."Saying he had discovered a positive use for the internet, Si-woo decided to hold off on restricting my internet access. Ever since he discovered my secret investment accounts and double ledgers during the kidnapping incident, Si-woo had been calculating how to reduce my screen time to foster my "moral character."Tsk, should I not have made the double ledger? Or should I have held back on the jokes when I was kidnapped? Which one was the problem?Regardless of my worries, Si-woo didn't have any information on compounding elixirs, so I naturally had to learn through online lectures.Methods for compounding basic elixirs—those meant for beginners up to second-rate martial artists—had been released to the public ages ago. Of course, without a professional medical license, it was illegal to sell or gift homemade elixirs. After all, you couldn't have people dying from drinking bootleg potions.Still, having been born into the direct lineage of the Cheon Family, I was able to learn recipes for second-rate elixirs and above—thanks to my grandfather being an Outer Hall Master, even though I had never met him. While I could learn them, I lacked the foundational knowledge, so I naturally had to start by learning how to make beginner elixirs.Fortunately, beginner to third-rate elixirs were exactly what I needed anyway.The elixir ingredients I possessed were the absolute best of the best. Naturally, I couldn't use them whole; I had to buy lower-grade ingredients to dilute their potency. Medicine and poison are two sides of the same coin. If the potency was too strong, you'd have to thank the heavens if it merely passed through you as expensive feces. One wrong move, and the elixir could blow up your Dantian or cause Qi Deviation, which would be an unmanageable disaster."Aren't there way too many herbs here? We have a limit on how much money we can spend each quarter."For my compounding practice, Si-woo had purchased several sacks of spirit grass and medicinal herbs that were taller than I was."Haha, do not worry. They are ingredients meant to neutralize potency and increase volume, so they are not very expensive. Plus, I utilized your connections as the landowner and a family member to purchase them at a discount."Si-woo showed me the purchase history. To buy this massive mountain of herbs, he had only spent 12 million nyang. Looking at the receipt, it seemed he had gotten a good deal by purchasing through the Cheon Family's Pharmacy Faction. The Pharmacy Faction, operating under the Inner Hall, was actually one of the tenants renting my real estate."Furthermore, since this is for your education, I received approval to use funds outside the set quarterly budget. Of course, budget or no budget, this is still your wealth, Young Master, so we must be frugal."I felt a subtle pressure to work hard radiating from Si-woo's smile. It was probably just my imagination, right?Crafting the ElixirsAfter diligently practicing my elixir compounding in between my martial arts training, I finally managed to create a usable elixir.Once I crafted an elixir, I would commission a professional organization (the Cheon Family Pharmacy Faction) to analyze its components. In the beginning, there were many failures where the medicinal properties were entirely killed off, or I failed to suppress the toxicity of the herbs, resulting in literal poison.The failures went through a professional disposal process. I even received inquiries asking if they could study them, saying it was their first time seeing someone spike toxicity this high using these specific ingredients.Might I have a talent for poison crafting?After failing again and again, making around 1,200 batches, the quality finally reached a level where they were good enough to be sold. During the creation of those 1,200 failures, 12 precious, top-tier spirit grasses and 12 massive sacks of herbs vanished, but I still had plenty left from the samples I had been receiving since before I was born, as well as the herb sacks Si-woo had hoarded.It was a real blessing that I had those customary samples. According to Si-woo, my parents had no interest in compounding; if they needed elixirs, they just sold their spirit grass and bought them ready-made, never using the raw ingredients themselves. Of course, they earned so much money that they could afford elixirs without even needing to sell the spirit grass, so they likely hadn't bothered with the hassle.Just like that, 100 beginner-level elixirs and 100 third-rate elixirs were completed by my own hands. Naturally, I (the Reincarnated Avatar) wasn't going to eat these shoddy elixirs—I would be eating the premium ones given to the Cheon Family's direct descendants. All of these handcrafted elixirs were meant for me (the Tower Avatar).Return to the TowerMy consciousness entered the Tower Avatar.The somewhat unfamiliar sight of the inn room felt slightly alien. I had spent four years as the Reincarnated Avatar, and though the actual time passed was shorter because I occasionally sped things up with the "3D Avatar," I had still lived in that Reincarnated body for a long time. The inn room just felt awkward."All that time passed for me, yet not even a single second has passed here."If time hadn't passed here, it meant time hadn't passed on Earth either. Thinking this, I looked out the window at the setting sun. Because I had recreated this avatar just three or four hours ago (in Tower time), I had virtually zero physical fatigue.I climbed out of the soft bed, sat on the hard floor, and crossed my legs in a lotus position."Ugh, sitting cross-legged was easy in a child's body, but this body is so stiff it's tough to get into position."Once seated, I pulled a beginner-level elixir from my inventory, chewed and swallowed it, and began cultivating the Azure Wood Art.If there was one thing I was exceptionally good at, it was sensing Qi. I quickly extracted the elixir's energy, entered a state of breathing and meditation, and circulated the Qi throughout my entire body. Unlike my child's body, the accumulation of impurities made moving the Qi quite difficult.This was to be expected. It was like this in my main body, so it was obvious the avatar would be the same.One might ask: Why not just cleanse the main body and then recreate the avatar? There was one major problem with my current method. According to my hypothesis, it requires points to transfer the main body's abilities to the avatar. Wait, no. That wasn't it. It was because when you consume an elixir and circulate Qi, impurities are expelled through your pores.Under normal Qi circulation, the amount of Qi absorbed through breathing isn't large enough to force out impurities. But when you consume an elixir, a massive amount of Qi is inhaled all at once, sweeping away the impurities blocking your meridian pathways.The first time I sweated out those impurities in my main body, I was horrified. While I had installed a makeshift shower booth, the 1st floor of the Tower wasn't exactly an environment where you could comfortably take a shower. Therefore, I had to do this in my avatar's body.Besides, there was something I wanted to test.Once I exhausted all the elixir's energy and expelled the impurities as sweat, my meridians were a little cleaner, but I still hadn't properly formed a Dantian.That wasn't an issue. I immediately washed down another elixir with some water. I had plenty of beginner elixirs. I could always make more.As I repeatedly ate elixirs and circulated Qi, the flow of energy became somewhat smoother, and a rotting stench began to emanate from my body."Hmm. Now it's time to form the Dantian... Absorb."I absorbed the avatar and recreated it.My filthy body vanished, replaced once again by a clean one. I sat back down, consumed an elixir, and introspected my body."Hahaha. The avatar's internal state is completely clean!"I was currently in the middle of an experiment. This "Avatar Absorption" takes the positive aspects of the avatar and applies them to the main body. So, what happens to the main body if it absorbs an avatar that has purged the impurities from its meridians?The main body also experienced the effect of having its impurities removed.Then, what happens if I create an avatar using that cleansed main body? The clean meridians are maintained.Ah, of course, there were a few more hypotheses left to test. Later on, when the 3rd slot is unlocked and I create an avatar in a new world, will that avatar have impurities in its meridians? Or not? Whenever I recreated an avatar for a specific slot, the previous state of that slot was inherited. It was possible that a 3rd slot avatar would be generated based on my state when I first registered in the Tower and gained my abilities.It might be a different story if I used "Reincarnation," but there was no way to know that right now. Since I couldn't absorb the 2nd slot's Reincarnated Avatar, I couldn't test it."Well, as long as the results of my hard work are maintained, none of that matters right now."I consumed another beginner elixir and attempted to form and expand my Dantian. By the time the sunset sky had turned pitch black and dawn was just about to break, a satisfied smile spread across my face.