The Nascent Soul Seed
Once I realized special-grade skills could be learned through skill books, I tore through the warehouse looking for more. There were a few Epic and Legendary skill books lying around, sure — but not a single special skill among them.
So they really were that ridiculously rare?!
In the entire time I'd cleared six Ancient-grade drops from the hidden dungeon, only one special skill had ever come out. The drop rate was so abysmal you could practically call it quasi-Mythic tier.
"Guess slaughter-based skills really do have to be built from scratch."
Once a skill was registered in the skill window, I could force-activate it with either spiritual energy or slaughter energy without the system caring which one I fed it. Of course, you still needed the proper foundation to get the coefficient bonuses — and for that, slaughter-based was always best.
With that thought, I unfurled my newly acquired skill again inside the Training Ground, this time rebuilt on a slaughter foundation.
The Sea of Slaughter began to flow. A sunset rose over it.
Clouds of killing intent bloomed like fog, syncing my surroundings with the Mental World. The radius of the world I managed to project was barely half the Training Ground.
And even that was only because the skill level had climbed fast from the start. At first, it had barely filled a single room's worth of space around my body.
The reason was obvious — the limits of my cultivation method. But I already knew how to fix that.
Back when I'd forced a temporary Mental World into reality, I hadn't been able to construct it on its own. I'd used my True Name Dharma Treasure — the Wheel — as the axis. That was the method.
My Mental World wasn't just a Sea of Slaughter, after all.
I raised the pillar.
The Wheel, my True Name Dharma Treasure, spun above my head and reinforced the cultivation method. Behind me, the halo of Chopsticks rose and revolved with it, adding its power.
From the Sea of Slaughter, a tower slowly rose.
My tower, built of slaughter.
Proof that I had achieved the Transcendent species. Proof that I had stacked Laws.
As the tower erupted behind me, the Wheel surged upward, swelling into a vast red sun of pure slaughter.
And just as rapidly, the Mental World pushed its influence outward, shattering past the skill's limits. The slaughter energy burned off at a insane rate — and as the price of that, the skill level rocketed upward just as fast.
Forcing the skill into overload made the slaughter cost balloon with every level gained, but inside the Mental World my slaughter regenerated automatically. I could tank a fair amount of overload without breaking a sweat.
Running the Chopsticks and the Wheel at the same time meant I wasn't fully recovering — more like slowly draining — but even that was more than enough. It was overflowing, honestly.
For skill training, at least!
The skill level climbed like I'd hit some Training Ground bug exploit, and for once the grinding actually felt rewarding.
Just deploying the skill and holding it steady in the Training Ground was enough to copy skill levels?
While Yu Hee was cheerfully lost in training her new skill, the Humanity Clones inside the Golden Core's inner world were fighting a last-ditch defense in a mansion that had shrunk to almost nothing — barely holding out against a round, soft-looking octopus.
The only thing still letting the Humanity Clones stand against the octopus — against Reality Denial — was the rental house Yu Hee herself had built for them from her past-life memories. It was the sole structure in the inner world that still belonged to them.
"How long do we have to hold this?!"
"If we keep this up, we're actually going to die!"
"We can't let that happen!"
"Just a little longer — just a little more!"
"Until I-seong takes down the octopus?!"
"Before that, we're all goi—?"
The tentacles that had burrowed all the way into the rental house — so many of them no one could even guess the number — suddenly stopped writhing. They trembled, then vanished in an instant, gone somewhere else entirely.
"Did I-seong pull it off?"
"But she didn't even have a weapon, and she couldn't use her finishing move. How'd she manage it?"
"Yeah, seriously."
"I just beat the crap out of it with my bare hands."
Yu I-seong pushed the door open, looking exhausted. At her words, the Humanity Clones immediately opened the memories of the two clones who'd come in with her.
What rose up was the image of Yu I-seong mercilessly pounding a round, blank-eyed octopus with her bare fists until its eyes crossed into X's.
While the two clones who could handle spiritual energy had used absorption and emission to cut off the tentacles, she had just kept swinging both fists without pause.
One thought shared itself across every Humanity Clone's mind.
She's not just good with a spear — she's just good at fighting, period, isn't she?
She'd learned a spear-like cultivation method, mastered it, transcended it, then applied the principles so thoroughly she could punch Reality Denial into submission with her bare hands. The Humanity Clones shivered.
"So how's the main body doing?"
"The spiritual energy stacked in the Golden Core has cut us off from the outside so hard it's nearly impossible to make contact — not unless the main body uses your conscience, I-seong, to reach us."
"Did you tell her about that, then?"
Yu I-seong's hand pointed to one corner of the rental house's living room — to an egg the size of an ostrich egg, wrapped in blankets and quilts on top of a massage chair.
"Oh, right."
"I totally forgot!"
"The octopus crashed in the second that thing showed up!"
The Humanity Clones had been diligently packing slaughter energy disguised as spiritual energy into the Golden Core, covering every outer wall of the inner world and then some — filling nearly everything except the area around the rental house and the passage out to the Mental World. That was when the main body lost consciousness, and the egg had popped out from the center of the Golden Core.
The Humanity Clones were other selves Yu Hee had shaped from her heart, based on her past-life memories, and entrusted with her conscience.
Same soul, same essence — only their fates were different.
That was why, before instinct even kicked in, the resonance of the soul itself told them the egg was one of "us."
A tiny seed of the Nascent Soul, raised atop death after reaching the end of the Golden Core through slaughter built from countless lives.
And the thing hunting that seed was Reality Denial — Yu Hee's skill that rejected the Humanity Clones, the very reason she saw the world as a game.
The clones guessed it was a skill granted as Law by some higher-plane being. Nothing else explained how Reality Denial could revive even after being hit by Yu I-seong's finishing move, Aurora — a technique of someone who had already achieved Transcendence.
To stop Reality Denial from riding the passage into the Mental World and going after the egg, three Humanity Clones had physically blocked the way with their bodies. Later, as the tentacles multiplied through the surrounding spiritual energy that was really disguised slaughter, everyone except Yu I-seong and the two clones who could handle spiritual energy had barricaded themselves in the rental house to protect the egg.
"We protected our youngest!"
"But when the youngest is born, doesn't the Golden Core disappear?"
"Then what happens to us?"
"Eh, it'll be fine either way."
"Tsk! No ominous flags! Banned!"
The Humanity Clones sat in a circle around the egg. The Nascent Soul that would be born from it would take the form of a newborn infant — the shape they'd worn when they reincarnated and were born again.
Unlike the Humanity Clones, who had already died once.
And it would carry the memories of a past life.
"If you've got a problem with it, transcend yourselves — or disappear."
"Yeah. Not much we can do about it."
The Humanity Clones assessed the situation quickly and accepted it. Since they could share all their thoughts anyway, each of them had a rather thin sense of individual personality.
"Let's each find something we're good at."
"Even I-seong couldn't handle spiritual energy, and she still reached Transcendence with nothing but spear techniques. Why couldn't we?"
"Exactly. Strictly speaking, every one of us has the same growth potential as the main body!"
"That's true! Okay then — maybe I'll try painting?"
"Talent show time? I'm in! It's not like we can leave anymore!"
They had sealed the entrance to the Mental World completely with slaughter and spiritual energy so the octopus couldn't get back in. The inner world may have expanded, but the tiny rental house was now the only space the Humanity Clones could move around in.
And they were fine with that.
Because they could still watch the outside world through the living room screen.
How, when the entire interior of the Golden Core was sealed off? Because one conscience was still outside.
The Spear of Reason — Yu I-seong's exclusive weapon and True Name Dharma Treasure, embedded in Yu Hee's heart.
Knowing that a conscience remained to slam the brakes on the main body as a last resort if they ever failed to hold the line, the Humanity Clones settled in to tend the Nascent Soul seed inside the Golden Core and wait out the time.
And so Yu Hee — the only one who still had no idea a Nascent Soul seed had formed — trained her new skill until the rate of level gain slowed to a crawl, then finally stepped out of the Training Ground.
"That's a solid amount of skill levels right there!"
I had no idea how to apply it yet, but I could just watch Auto-Battle use it and learn from that!
Running the numbers on consumption versus regenerating slaughter, it was almost safe enough to leave on permanently like a passive. The range had gotten pretty wide, too — and I already had a method to expand it even further.
Most importantly, the Laws I couldn't properly control as an unstable Transcendent species worked as complete Laws inside the Mental World.
I'd borrowed the power of my cultivation method to handle, at Golden Core level, a reproduction of Laws that should only have been possible at Nascent Soul.
"Alright. Time to hit the map again for the first time in a while."
I'd fire up Event Probability Mode again, clear a ton of events, and push my stat caps.
A Training Ground spawn would be ideal, of course!