The Internal Energy Pouch

"Hey, hold on — you use a cultivation method for like a minute and already start polluting the chat?"

I'd only been running the technique for about a minute, and they couldn't even hold it in before trash-talking the chat window.

"What? Five hours?"

I pulled out my phone and checked the time. Sure enough, five hours had passed.

Judging by what the Constellations were saying, I'd apparently been running the cultivation method in a state of complete self-forgetfulness.

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"Get the fuck out."

He kept sexually harassing me.

At Not Charcoal Not a Witch's comment, I felt my chest. With the camera off, of course.

Yeah… it does feel a little bigger.

The bra didn't feel tight, though. Well, that made sense — I was wearing custom-fit underwear.

I slipped a hand inside and felt around. There was definitely a difference. What used to fit in one palm was now… harder to cup?

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me."

I straightened my clothes and turned the camera back on.

"No, wait. Hold on a second."

My chest got bigger because of the cultivation method?

"Does that even make sense?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

"But does that mean it keeps growing every time I use the cultivation method? That'd be a real problem."

If my chest got too big, it'd be a nightmare. It already bounced around enough during fights to be annoying. Honestly, I wished it were a little smaller than it was now.

"Get the fuck out, all of you."

First the old-ass boomers, now the young forties were crawling out of the woodwork. "Young Hero" as a username? Real young people don't pick names like that.

Being a Constellation already means you're ancient.

These troll bastards always give themselves away with their usernames alone.

"Well… someone I was thinking of specifically… ah."

There was someone.

The original master of this cultivation method. The protagonist of the eroge who'd used the Sow's Battle Cry Cultivation Method.

Adriana von Bickenstein.

A playable character from an adult game whose unrealistically massive chest had split the player base into love-it-or-hate-it camps. Since she was essentially the originator of the technique, her image had naturally floated up while I was using it.

"There's someone who inspired the creation of this cultivation method. I must've been thinking of her, and that's how this happened."

"Don't you get a word in? You got punished because you constantly say weird shit. If you'd behaved yourself, you wouldn't have gotten banned."

I gave the newly unbanned My Mom Looks Like a Woman a curt reply and kept going.

"I can't introduce her. She's not from this world."

She wasn't even from the world I'd originally lived in. She wasn't a person at all — she was a fictional character.

Nothing else could explain a chest that size.

Even Han Nami would look flat-chested standing next to her.

"I told you no fraternizing. Out."

I really needed to set up stream rules soon. Without them, people just kept buddying up and making a mess of everything.

"Anyway — so if I just hold a mental image while using the cultivation method, that should work?"

It probably would. The core principle of the technique was that anything I could achieve through martial power would manifest in me.

"Alright then — let me try the cultivation method again real quick."

A chorus of sighs flooded the chat.

"'Internal energy pouches,' my ass. You're dead."

My internal energy pouch was my dantian, thank you very much. Maybe if it were a mana heart I'd let it slide. I'd rather my hips got wider, honestly.

I settled into position again and activated the cultivation method.

My original body…

Reciting the technique's formulas, I pictured how I'd looked since arriving in this world. Especially the chest area. I roughly knew the size — it was my own body, after all. Four days of showering had made me plenty familiar.

…I hadn't only looked while showering, but let's not go there.

There is nothing that cannot be resolved through martial power. Everything that occurs within the world I perceive can be resolved through martial power.

I recited the formulas for a while. When the cultivation method finished, I looked in the mirror.

Thankfully, I was back to normal. It had taken about an hour. Time really flew every time I used the technique properly.

"Good thing everything went back to normal."

Come to think of it, that was a thing. In martial arts novels, people would ambush cultivators mid-session to trigger qi deviation, or the cultivator would fall into a mental demon and go off the rails. Now that I was the one doing the cultivating, it was only natural.

"Get the fuck out, you bastards."

Honestly — is bigger always better just because it's a chest?

I finished training and ended the stream. A few midair flips as a reaction bit and they ate it up.

Anyway, I still had something left to do.

A one-on-one chat with Wheelchair Best Driver. I'd already bought the items — I just needed to talk.

"Let's see… if I do it like this… there we go."

Humming the kind of nonsense that lives in every Korean's DNA, I tapped the screen and opened the chat window.

A reply came the instant I said hello.

"Uh… huh?"

Hephaestus. The blacksmith god from Greco-Roman mythology. The one Zeus had thrown off Olympus, leaving him lame. And also the original owner of this goddamn weapon of mine.

Hephaestus continued.