A Vein of Lightning

Regardless of grade, a spiritual land was single-use.

More precisely, once a cultivator entered one, trained their spiritual power, and came back out, the land would have its spiritual energy sucked dry and become unusable forever. That was the rule.

The only real difference was that the higher the grade, the longer a cultivator of a higher realm could squeeze use out of it before it died.

"...Cheon Nan-cho?"

I'd handed her a supreme-grade spirit stone and told her to make a supreme spiritual land. What the hell had she done instead?

I spread my spiritual sense at once and swept the surroundings. Right beside the training ground, from the spot where Cheon Nan-cho had been hard at work building a spiritual land with that spirit stone, dense spiritual energy was gushing up like a fountain.

"Ow—hot?!"

The moment I stepped out of the training ground, my body slammed into the spiritual energy and recoiled on pure reflex. At the same time, a searingly vivid yellow lightning crackled and leapt into the air.

What the fuck is that?!

"Hee-a! Hee-a! Help! Yu Hee?!"

At what looked like the center of the spiritual land—no, of the random spiritual vein—Cheon Nan-cho was tumbling desperately across the ground. Floating alone above her head was the supreme-grade spirit stone, spitting lightning in every direction.

"What did you do, Cheon Nan-cho?!"

"I didn't do anything! That spider tricked me!"

Only then did my spiritual sense catch the fingernail-sized spider clinging to the lightning-spewing spirit stone. Maybe because I hadn't been properly training spiritual power for long, my spiritual sense—that sixth-sense, qi-sense kind of perception—was still trash-tier. Still, how had I missed that thing?

I glanced at the minimap. A red dot sat almost ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠overlapping a green one. Hah. So even the minimap had its limits!

"Cheon Nan-cho, remember this! You're my prisoner!"

"What does that have to do with this situation right now?!"

"It means that if something isn't a green dot like me, every kind of eok-kka event starts popping out! Hah!"

A halo of chopsticks bloomed behind Yu Hee's back, and the chopsticks poured forth in a torrent, meeting the downpour of lightning head-on and batting it aside.

"Especially if they're not a quest NPC—every gray dot is a potential red one."

The wheel spinning above her head accelerated. The halo of light behind her back was dragged along by that wheel, its rotation climbing higher, until a tidal wave of chopsticks swallowed the lightning rain and then punched straight through it.

"KRA-KOOM!"

Thunder swallowed the world.

"Village, city, fortress—doesn't matter. If it isn't green, it's a mob. Kill it and you get experience."

A single bolt of lightning punched through the chopstick tide and hit me dead-on, but it didn't matter. I'd been planning to tank it on pure regeneration anyway—except Cheon Nan-cho had thrown herself in the way first.

"So you don't even need to get your hopes up. If you already know they're going to betray you or backstab you, striking first deals more damage."

The double damage from Ambush and Defenseless judgments wasn't a simple two-times multiplier—it stacked as a final multiplicative factor on total damage. That made it especially efficient!

Which was why Cheon Nan-cho, who'd gotten blindsided while building a spiritual land and been forced to scream for help, couldn't really be blamed. Even a former field boss would get crushed if the fight opened with that double combo.

I watched the spider wall itself off with a yellow spherical magnetic field, holding back the chopstick tide. Then I grabbed the wheel spinning above my head with both hands and hurled it straight at the thing.

The Wheel of Slaughter smashed the magnetic field to pieces, crushed the tiny spider flat, and shattered the supreme-grade spirit stone along with it. I felt a twinge of waste as I scooped Cheon Nan-cho up into my arms.

"Remember that hairless monkey that went berserk before?"

"If you mean Mumo Castle, that idiot went crazy after swallowing your slaughter energy, didn't he?"

"No. The opposite. He was already scheduled to go crazy, so he swallowed my slaughter energy."

That was how this piece-of-shit game was built.

"The colors of NPCs on my minimap mean events."

Green: an NPC with no misfortune-event trigger.

Gray: an NPC with a random-event trigger.

And red: an NPC with an eok-kka-event trigger.

Naturally, green meant my wariness could drop. Even neutral gray was nothing I could relax around. And the moment red showed up, I could make the snap call to strike first and kill them before the event even fired.

"Huh?"

That tiny spider from earlier had been a higher level than me? For something that high, it'd died in one hit from my exclusive weapon. Wait—maybe that spider hadn't been a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠monster at all. Maybe it'd been flagged as an NPC.

"Trait window."

I kept Crafting equipped so I could use the crafting window, but I wasn't really using any of the other traits I owned. The drop rates for acquiring them were so garbage that I couldn't remember ever getting a good one.

Spiderweb applied a debuff that cut movement speed and attack speed by 50% on hit, and if the target already had it, the effect increased by another 50%.

Yeah. Completely useless to me!

In terms of pure convenience, Crafting was basically top-tier among the traits I had. A 50% chance to refund 50% of materials on craft—if luck was on your side, high-tier consumables effectively became 1.5 times more plentiful!

Weapons had already become consumables thanks to Spoon, armor needed consumables to restore durability one piece at a time, and certain consumables were required just to clear some eok-kka events and misfortune events. So yeah.

"Hee-a, so what are you going to do about that?"

"Hm? About what?"

"The spiritual vein. That thing doesn't match either of us at all. Thanks to that spider, it's stuffed full of lightning attribute—I don't think we can do much with it."

"Before that, can you explain what a spiritual vein even is?"

"Right. We should've started from there, huh? Sorry—my bad for assuming you already knew, Hee-a."

"Uh... why do I feel like I'm being insulted even though there's not a single swear word in there..."

"Must be your imagination?"

"Must be my imagination!"

If I ruthlessly compressed the wall of help-text Cheon Nan-cho launched into after that, it came down to this: if a spiritual land was ground where the spiritual energy of heaven and earth had pooled, a spiritual vein was ground where that energy flowed.

"So a spiritual land is done after one use, but a spiritual vein lasts permanently unless you dig the whole thing out. That about right?"

"Hee-a, if you cut it down that far, what does that make me after I talked my throat raw for hours?"

Honestly, I'd tuned out more than half of it! I always felt this way, but Cheon Nan-cho talked way too much. Enough that even my word count started climbing!

Anyway, after listening through her entire explanation, I opened base management mode—and sure enough, a new terrain tile had appeared.

Lightning, huh. Lightning.

"So now that you've hit Golden Core, you can make spiritual veins too, Cheon Nan-cho?"

"The dead spider did that on its own."

"So you can't. Still—isn't there some way to put this to use?"

Training experience coming in as a percentage boost of fifty percent? Of course my eyes lit up with greed. Unfortunately, I didn't have a scrap of lightning in me.

Even after Core Formation and Golden Core had unlocked spiritual power for me, that spiritual power had naturally come packed with killing intent and slaughter energy.

"What if I dye this spiritual vein with my slaughter energy?"

"...Why would you waste something like that?"

"If we can't use it anyway, why not experiment? This is my sect ground, and more than anything, I need to find a use ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for it after blowing a supreme-grade spirit stone."

By base warehouse appraisal value alone, I'd just vaporized an item worth a hundred million. Of course it stung!

The wheel rolled above my head, and slaughter energy billowed out like a slow fog, wrapping the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠entire small spiritual vein.

Lightning crackled and spat, thrashing to shove the slaughter energy back—but it didn't stand a chance. Even a spiritual vein born from a supreme-grade spirit stone was hopelessly outmatched in total power.

If this place hadn't already been stripped of spiritual energy until it was practically ownerless waste ground, it might have been a different story.

Once the lightning had been completely driven out by the slaughter energy, I reeled that slaughter energy cleanly back into the wheel. The grade had dropped one tier, but a perfectly functional low-grade spiritual vein had popped out.

Low-grade at 20%, intermediate at 50%—so high-grade or supreme would be over 100%!

Training experience was already absurdly efficient because it came in as a percentage. Now it was getting inflated on top of that!

"Cheon Nan-cho, is there any way to artificially create a high-grade spiritual vein?"

"Hold on. Let me eat this and take a look."

I watched Cheon Nan-cho scrape together the shattered remains of the spider, open her mouth wide, and chomp the debris down whole.

Ah. So that was how Cheon Nan-cho read memories.

I wonder if I could learn that too?