Cosmic Misfortune
"Kyaaaaah! All the goods I barely restocked in the warehouse!!!"
"Oh, right."
I'd queued up a mountain of construction orders, so most of the items and spirit stones in the warehouse had basically evaporated—and right then Cheon Nan-cho's scream hit me, and I smacked my forehead.
"Hee-a, you! Do you know how hard I worked restocking that warehouse?!"
"We were stocking it to use it anyway, right? And I used it to put up buildings… sorry."
I was rambling excuses, but Cheon Nan-cho looked like she was about to cry, so I immediately threw out an apology.
"Because of me the warehouse got cleaned out… I… I worked so hard… restocking it…"
Ah. So she'd been carrying the total invasion failure from the raid boss this whole time. She'd been thinking it was her responsibility.
Unlike me—who'd figured that with a raid boss popping out of a massive luck event, and me unable to even use Slaughter Tribulation because of the debuffs, failure had been inevitable either way—Cheon Nan-cho, who'd been managing the base at the time, had clearly taken it hard.
For a prisoner, her sense of responsibility is ridiculously strong!
I scooped up the sniffling Cheon Nan-cho, cradled her in my arms like a doll, and just stayed like that for a long while until she calmed down.
Of course, midway through she started thrashing and throwing punches to get free, but Cheon Nan-cho's bare fists—without a scrap of spiritual power mixed in—couldn't deal even 1 damage to me, whose physical stats alone were over 1400. Zero impact.
"Hee-a, what's your goal?"
"First I gotta hit max level."
In any game, you had to hit max level first before you could do anything worthwhile. Sure, this trash game originally only had the Abyss as max-level content, but with the mods, all kinds of endgame content were definitely waiting for me!
Though the problem was that the max level of Xianxia Mode couldn't even be estimated!
I mean, the class literally had No Level Cap stamped right on it.
So for now, the level I'd roughly aimed for wasn't Evil Spirit Mode territory—just around level 800, Nightmare Mode's standard—but looking at how my leveling was going, even that seemed like I'd set it too high, which was worrying.
That said, after pouring so much time into this trash game, even with the reality patch, I couldn't exactly be satisfied stopping at vanilla's max level of around 500.
Of course, confidence armed with every mod and this trash game's signature bugs played a part too. Plus I had the Status Window as an innate talent—as long as I put in the time, I could level up as much as I wanted.
"I see. My goal was just ascending to the Upper Realm…"
"? What's that?"
Weren't the Upper Realm and Lower Realm just like game servers? Upper Realm as the veteran server, Lower Realm as the newbie server kind of vibe.
But why would you leave the newbie server to climb into a veteran server crawling with hardcore players? Did the veterans give you newbie treatment if you went up? Looking at the personality of those neutral NPCs who were mostly cultivators, they'd just cut you down rather than treat you like a newbie.
"The Upper Realm has far denser and higher spiritual energy than the Lower Realm, and of course that means all kinds of cultivation resources influenced by that energy, so training is better and raising your realm is much easier."
"!"
Aha—so once you hit a certain level, going to the veteran server meant way higher exp gains plus better item quality!
"But can you ascend just by having a high enough realm?"
"Uh… you can do it from Nascent Soul onward, but you need a specific location or Dharma Treasure to go up. Around Spirit Transformation you can probably go up on your own? But once you ascend, you basically can't come back down."
Ah, got it roughly.
As expected of the Help system!
"If you leave materials or goods in the warehouse, anything that isn't locked will all disappear into the queued construction materials, so put your own food in your bag, okay?"
"Lock? Ah, you mean sealing them. Got it."
"Alright, I'm gonna train at the training ground for a bit. Don't come looking for me no matter what happens? And, uh… never mind."
I was about to tell her to watch out for neutral NPCs, then stopped. It'd look like I was making a big deal of it, and I figured even a newbie like Cheon Nan-cho needed to experience the eok-kka of neutral NPCs to build up a healthy distrust.
You need to get even stronger, Cheon Nan-cho!
And so, while Yu Hee locked herself in the training ground and worked her magic—exploiting a bug-like loophole where a second basic cultivation method wouldn't register but still gave training exp, diligently duplicating training experience—Cheon Nan-cho watched materials from the invasion event fill the warehouse, then vanish on their own as buildings rose in real time in a corner of the base, and her mouth fell open in a daze.
Just what kind of ability was Hee-a's innate talent?
Innate talents were powers that ignored realm, so she'd only ever heard rumors of the destructive kinds that were both envied and shunned—but watching from right beside it, bound by that innate talent herself, Cheon Nan-cho's impression was a bit more ambiguous.
I mean, on this barren land with zero spiritual energy, buildings overflowing with spiritual energy were springing up from just spirit stones and miscellaneous materials like they were being pulled from somewhere—it was an utterly nonsensical ability.
And she said this was no big deal.
Hee-a had warned her, but she'd also said you could burn spirit stones to slash construction time to extremes—so you could even raise a building on the spot by sacrificing dinner.
No matter how she examined the process, it defied understanding. Maybe that was why innate talents had been passed down as powers bestowed by the stars.
Thinking that, Cheon Nan-cho fiddled with the blue window that now floated familiarly at the edge of her vision.
Minor Misfortune!
An Invasion Event is activating.
The texture and feel under her fingers were so vivid—yet when she swept it with spiritual sense, nothing was there. A phantom that would vanish like an illusion once enough time passed.
"A game… a game, huh."
According to Hee-a's explanation, it was nothing more than entertainment.
Was that transcendent gaze and mindset—seeing this world as mere entertainment—the driving force that let a little kid cultivator who'd been mere Foundation Establishment when they first met complete her Golden Core in a little over a hundred years?
Unlike herself, who'd merely aimed to reach Nascent Soul and ascend, Hee-a tossed out the end of the cultivator's path so lightly that her confidence was almost intimidating.
Thinking of her small master still diligently training locked away in the training ground, Cheon Nan-cho began moving the decorations that would intercept the invasion event, to restock the nearly empty warehouse once more.
The most powerful giant puppet that fired spiritual energy beams and the steel puppet that rode a spirit horse—smashed by the powerful enemy that had appeared from what Hee-a called an eok-kka event—still hadn't been restored, but most of the puppets were back online.
Of course, restoring them had been thanks to Hee-a, who'd diligently wandered the map and harvested all kinds of rare materials strung together like dried croakers.
Rummaging through her bag, she pulled out a spirit stone, popped it in her mouth and chewed, feeling spiritual energy swell full within her as she began injecting her power into the puppets to set them in motion.
Watching the misshapen puppet dolls—fashioned from Slaughter Tribulation and moving along threads of spiritual power—battle the monsters, Cheon Nan-cho savored the slowly rising slaughter karma.
It was a system message that forced me to cancel the resting emote and scramble to my feet in the training ground. I bolted out in a panic, and the entire sky was flashing a vivid yellow.
That overwhelming ocean of spiritual power was beyond majestic—terror was sprouting and growing thick.
What the fuck is that.
"Help! Cheon Nan-cho!! What the hell is that!"
Help system!!! What is this situation?!
With no answer from Cheon Nan-cho, I frantically checked the minimap—a green dot was right nearby, and when I flew over, Cheon Nan-cho was collapsed, white smoke rising from her whole body like she'd been half-cooked.
Wait—she'd taken a Small Heavenly Tribulation hit in the brief moment between me seeing the system message and leaving the training ground?
That's ridiculously unlucky!
"Eekya?!"
And then I immediately got hit by lightning from the sky myself. True to the system's description of undodgeable and undefendable, I didn't even have time to pull out my wheel to block or dodge—in an instant my whole body was engulfed in the Small Heavenly Tribulation's lightning.
Amazingly, even though I'd raised Slaughter Tribulation and still got the undefendable judgment so I couldn't properly block it—for fixed damage that had swept over my entire body, it felt like a brief full-body massage from a stinging static shock.
…?
Huh? Why am I fine?