The Grave Keeper Hatches

"...What the hell is this."

My inventory had been screaming its head off for once, packed to the absolute limit, so I checked—and found a massive gray egg made of grotesque hunks of flesh, writhing slowly inside as if it were alive.

It only took up a single slot, but the reason the inventory was having a meltdown was obvious: the problem wasn't the slot count. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The spiritual capacity on this thing was filthy huge.

Unlike consumables, materials, or equipment, it was more like a living creature—something with a self and spiritual power, the way a prisoner would. Put simply, it wasn't a slot problem. It was a weight problem.

I hadn't been sharing memories with the humanities much lately, so I had no idea what I was looking at.

So... this is Mudeomjigi?

She'd become a cultivator and wanted a body of her own, so she'd grabbed a bunch of material items and built herself one.

Wait—hold on. How did she even class-change into a cultivator? What? She scooped up the experience I'd lost to Heavenly Tribulation and used it to promote? So if I just carve off some of my exp for you, any of you can become cultivators just like that?

Without a class you can't absorb anything, and experience that drops your level cap has to be literally cut or carved out. The chunk that Heavenly Tribulation had sliced off me was so dense that even Yu I-seong had to dump her entire aurora into it just to hack it in half. There was no way to cleanly cut a whole intact mass of my experience, so after a few failed attempts that did absolutely nothing, I'd given up.

"If I hatch this thing, will she be able to go independent like Yu Gisa?"

But from the memories, it looked like the egg was trying to move on its own by sucking up spiritual energy. Injecting my slaughter energy directly wouldn't work either—the giant egg wouldn't survive it.

I bit down, twisted a finger off with my teeth, split one leftover stat point, and let a drop of blood crystal fall with the blood. It gathered itself into a floating sphere on its own.

The pure essence of slaughter energy—something spiritual power couldn't even grip—held its shape under nothing but Yu Hee's raw control over slaughter.

"Gimme that for a sec."

Ignoring the humanities howling in protest, I pulled a golden antenna out of my heart, gave it a light shake to turn it into a barcode scanner, aimed it at the slaughter essence, and hit the button with a beep.

An extreme-attribute aurora wrapped the slaughter essence in a thin sugar-coating, and I kindled a fire of spiritual energy over it to finish a quick refinement.

In the Mental World, Yeondansa went ahem with a smug look that said I'd better remember she'd lent me her knowledge and senses. I nodded and promised I'd ask Elder Togo separately to get this kid a proper body later.

Anyway, it was a slapdash job, but of course the slaughter stone that came out this way was far purer and higher quality than the braindead method of dumping essence blood into the ground and mining the stuff by hand.

I tracked down the material items she'd used to make the egg, ground them fine with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a millstone, dumped in a few extra consumables, kindled the spiritual fire one more time, and tossed the whole mix into the alchemy furnace to combine.

At a barren fringe of the base—a stretch I'd deliberately left empty of spiritual energy for efficient management—I pulled an egg eight times the size of my torso out of my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠inventory and chucked the alchemy-forged purified slaughter essence straight at it.

The gray giant egg, its shell of living flesh, swallowed the slaughter essence whole—disguised on the outside as a top-grade spirit stone—and every scrap of meat that made up the shell shuddered and began to writhe like something alive.

The reaction was getting pretty violent.

There's no way a bunch of material items could overpower a humanity! And I'd even dumped leftover points into the mix just in case!

Not that I was hoping for that kind of outcome.

Even as a brand-new cultivator, something this size should draw Heavenly Tribulation—which was exactly why I'd done it. Yu I-seong had been moping around lately, so I figured I might as well feed her a tribulation while I was at it.

After a short wait, the sky slowly flushed red and opened.

"Hey, Yu I-seong—can you block Heavenly Tribulation if it's fire instead of lightning?"

"I only raised Heavenly Tribulation Resistance and Lightning Resistance. Lightning I'd manage, but fire is a bit..."

I'd only ever seen lightning tribulations, so the sight of this one forming as pure white flame made me ask just in case—but it looked like she was out of luck.

In the brief moment I hesitated, the white fire crashed down, scorching everything around it red, and began to burn the gray egg where it sat.

I watched, half-wondering if I'd have to reload if this failed—but the more the white flames ate at the gray egg, the smaller it got, without ever blackening and burning up all at once.

"Hey, Main Body. Lend me the body for a sec."

I'd been staring at the thing for over ten hours and was thoroughly sick of it, so I handed the body over without much thought. The humanity dug material items out of the inventory and started cooking nonstop, borrowing the roaring white fire of the Heavenly Tribulation as a stove.

"Here—Main Body can eat and watch. Or, you know, stand guard."

The humanity with the Chef class left popcorn and fried meat sitting out, stuffed the rest of the finished snacks into the inventory, and vanished back into the Mental World. I picked up a piece of the fried meat bare-handed and tossed it straight into my mouth.

"Mm. Physically spicy and stingy!"

Being deep-fried in Heavenly Tribulation gave it real flavor, but my body—adapted to slaughter energy—took reverse-affinity damage from the tribulation, so my mouth hurt.

But it was a consumable that raised stats, so I had to eat it.

The Heavenly Tribulation's flames burned for a disgustingly long time. Long enough that Cheon Nan-cho, slaving away at the flying ship, and Elder Togo took turns dropping by to spectate and then left again.

Me, I just sat there roasting the octopus skewers the chef had left and watching the show.

There's a strange pull to pure white fire. The way ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the flames swayed was captivating enough to snare my blood-red eyes—enough to make me think fire-gazing exists for a reason, and pyromaniacs don't just appear out of nowhere.

But my slaughter energy doesn't burn like flame. The slaughter energy in my Mental World takes the shape of a great sea, an ocean—so if you had to assign it an element, it would be water.

You can call that nonsense if you want, but techniques are heavily shaped by a cultivator's inner world, aren't they? Just the fact that my slaughter energy was rooted in a Sea of Slaughter was enough, in this world, to create an elemental advantage strong enough to ignore the techniques of a mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator.

Anyway, I was fire-gazing at something I couldn't do myself when an event message chimed and yanked my attention back.

"...What."

What kind of enlightenment is it if I don't even know what I enlightened? Whatever—it's not a combat stat, but a permanent max HP bump is still good, so fine! Small Luck almost never drops stuff like this. Guess today's my lucky day.

And after months of slowly shrinking until it was only about the size of my head, the gray egg finally endured the Heavenly Tribulation—and Mudeomjigi succeeded in waking up inside it.

"I'm back!"

"What is that look?"

"Huh? What look? Uh—urk."

At my words, Mudeomjigi finally looked down at herself.

Her body had shrunk to the size of a palm. Ash-gray pupils split into a pentagon sparkled in a face framed by horns, wings, and a tail. She scratched her head with both arms, which were covered in something like scales.

"This is way more normal-looking than I planned. Where'd all the extra heads and limbs I added go?"

Complaining, Mudeomjigi awkwardly flapped her creaking arms. The wings—scales on the outside, soft feathers on the inside—lifted her slightly into the air with a clumsy flutter.

"Status Window!"

Hearing Mudeomjigi yell for a Status Window out loud was weirdly awkward. Come to think of it, I hadn't been checking mine much lately either.

Anyway, she'd come through the Heavenly Tribulation in one piece and popped out, so that was a relief.

Though Yeondansa's body had been finished first!

Becoming a cultivator doesn't just make you half as hard to kill as a cockroach for nothing. At Qi Condensation your body toughens up a bit; at Foundation Establishment you can ditch a wrecked body and grab a new one. At Core Formation you stock escape techniques, and once you hit Golden Core you can straight-up build multiple bodies—so killing cultivators is a real pain.

Not that any of that matters in front of my absurd pierce damage.

Either way, more than half a year ago Elder Togo had, between shifts on the flying ship, torn apart an ancient-grade android from SF Mode, remodeled it for Yeondansa, lowered the equip-level requirement, and installed her in it.

And Yeondansa, without even a moment to enjoy having a body, had been grabbed by Cheon Nan-cho and forcibly dragged into the flying-ship construction project.

Well—the Alchemist class can level through crafting mastery, so it was probably a good thing?