At four in the morning, Rui woke up and went to the bathroom.
He had awoken to a pungent smell and found himself covered in a black, sticky liquid, so he took a bath to remove the gunk. He couldn’t understand where the filth came from.
Thankfully, the bathroom was big enough for two people to fit in, as their tavern was rather large, and they spent most of their extra money making their house better.
Looking at the mirror, he was stunned at what he saw. His skin was incredibly white, like white jade; it even glistened in the light a bit. What’s more, it wasn’t the only change. His pupils had become white!
‘What sort of changes were these? Did it have to do with the awakening? However, he wasn’t like this yesterday. Was it due to the physique awakening?’
It was the only explanation he could think of. As he had just awakened yesterday, maybe it would take some time for his physique to actually change?
Brushing his teeth with salt, he sighed, thinking about how different this world really was. Compared to the earth’s exquisite brushes and toothpaste, he could only brush his teeth with fine salt and crude brushes. However, it was still better than most mortals, since they couldn’t even brush their teeth.
Although he was pretty sure that salt would instead harm his teeth, it was better than nothing. He could probably recreate homemade toothpaste since it wasn’t that hard to make; however, there was no easy method to get baking soda, and he had no idea how to make it.
Washing his face, he went downstairs to start preparing for the opening. The tavern was a two-story building, and their house was located on the second story.
He looked around and said “progress” in a small voice.
A status window appeared showcasing the progress of the bloodline awakening; he still had quite a bit of time left.
Just as he was about to grab the broom and start cleaning, a notification came up in front of him.
[Quest has been created]
[Clean the tavern
Rewards: 10 XP]
Rui was shocked. What was this? Just as he was about to do something, a quest appeared.
Taking a deep breath, he clicked accept and proceeded to test other things, finding that nothing created a quest.
He couldn’t comprehend why cleaning created a quest but other actions didn’t. Was it just a coincidence?
Disappointed, he cleaned the tavern as best as possible. At this time, his family came downstairs and greeted him.
Rui would always wake up earlier than them and start cleaning; this, of course, put less stress on the parents operating the tavern.
The tavern wasn’t big; however, it was more than enough for 30 people to fit in and sit freely. Their tavern shockingly mostly served rune masters and traveling merchants. It has been running for a few generations and has been well known in the capital; even though it is relatively small compared to its other businesses, it still has a lot of customers.
The reason? The cooking techniques of his father and mother were a unique experience for everyone. It was a family business and was protected by the government, so no one dared attack it or cause trouble.
“Cause trouble,” however, depended on the situation. For example, killing someone inside wasn’t allowed, but they could kill anyone on the streets. Damaging the property would be cause for a fine.
Thankfully, the country had a small number of rules that protected commoners.
Looking at Rui clean the tavern so early in the morning, even though he had just awakened as a rune master, his father smiled while his little brother came to help. His mother shed tears of happiness at this family scene.
After cleaning and eating breakfast, the tavern was opened. First thing in the morning, many rune masters came in to take breakfast, and then they would head out for their missions or jobs.
Rui didn’t work in the tavern today, as he was given free time by his parents to settle down and get ready to enter the academy tomorrow.
Looking at his status, he found that his XP bar was up by 10 XP after completing the quest. Surprisingly, the next level required only 90 more XP.
He sighed and got up from his bed to work out. When he was looking at his status, he found that his body’s stats were much lower than his intellect-based stats.
Since he had the impression that balance was important, he thought increasing those stats would be possible if he worked out.
As soon as he was about to start warming up his body, a quest appeared.
[Daily quest]
[Daily quest has been successfully activated.
100 push-ups (0/100)
100 sit-ups (0/100)
100 squats (0/100)
10 km run (0/10)
Quest rewards: 50 XP, 1 free stat point, mild recovery
[Upon quest failure, the user will lose one random stat.]
Looking at the new quest, he first read it seriously before a laugh came out of his mouth.
What was this? Some sort of joke? You already know who this routine belonged to; how absurd!
After laughing for a while, he couldn’t help but look at the quest's failure conditions. It was rather harsh; however, the rewards were plentiful. He would grow much stronger with this quest, especially if it was daily, like it said.
Making up his mind, he started working out. However, to his surprise, he found it much easier than it should have been. He had already completed all the on-the-spot exercises, and all that was left was running.
Exercising in this world was not weird, as survival of the fittest was the rule; however, most cultivators didn’t need to do things like run to get stronger.
As he was regularly working in this harsh world, his body was already full of muscle and incredibly lean. Such was the life of a commoner in this world. Especially after awakening, he felt that most of the excess fat in his body was gone. This, of course, made him much stronger than the average adult on earth, and the reason behind it was probably his 10 points in constitution, as all the other physical stats were rather low.
Informing his parents that he would go out for a bit, he went out to run in a place that not many people would usually frequent.
After spending around 45–50 minutes running the 10 km, he was exhausted and returned home.
Laying in his bed, he claimed the rewards from the quest, instantly feeling as though his whole body was reborn.
A notification sound was heard.
[Congratulations to the user for completing the daily quest.]
[1 free stat point has been obtained; mild recovery has been activated.]
[1 point in dexterity and 1 point in strength have been obtained due to the user’s hard work.]
Looking at the system window, Rui smiled and checked his status, seeing that his stats had indeed updated and he had one free point. Not knowing if he should just invest it in the constitution or something else, he kept it in case he thought of a better distribution plan in the future.
He never expected something like this, so he was pretty happy. After he started cultivating, he would probably be much stronger than he is now. This made him excited for the future.
He spent most of that day fiddling with the system and familiarizing himself with it.
His XP bar was already at 60; he needed 40 more XP to level up, and he was sure he could make it happen tomorrow if the daily mission was actually daily.
Once again, he whispered "progress,” and the progress bar of his bloodline analysis was shown. He couldn’t help but ponder why it had taken so long to analyze, while his physique and talent were easy and fast.
It was probably a different thing all together. Since it was able to check his talent and physique easily, it just meant that analyzing his bloodline was much harder than just analyzing his talent and physique.
Even knowing that, it meant nothing since he had no knowledge of how physiques and talents were ranked to begin with.
Most of the day was spent with him pondering his future. He had to somehow hide the fact that he had the system. He still didn’t know if the system could be detected by others, and if it was exposed, he would probably become a prisoner and be experimented on.
So he had decided to use the system in the most discreet way possible.
When it came to his talent and cultivation speed, since the system ranked it as EX, he could deduce that it was probably extremely high, since EX ranking on earth usually meant either unique or at least higher than the A rank or even the S rank.
He would rather restrict his talent, if possible, to a lower level since then he could be a bit lower profile, but he didn’t know any methods.
On the other hand, physique was a completely obscure thing to him. He had no idea whether his physique was good or bad, or even if it was unique. He hoped that this physique thing wouldn’t cause any trouble for him.
He had no idea that the statements of the sage had already given the capital high expectations of him, so he did not need to worry as he was under his protection at the moment.
This was Lady Luck smiling down at him, but of course he was ignorant of it.
The time had soon arrived for his bloodline analysis to be completed. His little brother had already fallen asleep, clearly being far more excited than Rui himself and spending all his energy running around and helping his parents. He even worked out and trained with a wooden sword afterwards.
Rui smiled and saw the percentage go up, and it was finally complete.
A notification sound was heard once again, this time more resonant than the others.
[Bloodline analysis is complete.
Ancient human bloodline, 0.5% diluted
Runic human bloodline, 5% diluted
Unique ancestral bloodline: determined to be of 9th rank rune master lineage, 50% pure
Celestial bloodline, 25% clear
Ancient god bloodline, 15% pure
Uncertain bloodlines, 4.5%...]
[Talent, physique, and bloodline have been analyzed; the skill tree has been activated.
Skills corresponding to Physique have a chance of being unlocked.
Skills corresponding to Bloodlines have a chance of being unlocked.]
Rui became dazed. A large amount of information had flooded his vision, and he didn’t know how to take it in.
He understood one thing, though: the skill tree window was unlocked. This meant that he could acquire skills.
Instantly, he whispered “skill tree,” and a menu window popped up.
However, just like the shop menu, the skill tree window required level 10 to be accessed. This disappointed Rui, but at the same time piqued his interest. He couldn’t wait to reach level 10.
Too many things were happening at the same time, so he had no time to calm down. Tomorrow was academy enrollment and talent testing, so he needed a good night’s sleep. He didn’t have time to ponder over the results of his bloodline, and it wasn’t like he could really understand what they meant.
Closing his eyes, he fell asleep after a few minutes, his exhausted mind relaxing. As he was sleeping, energy was surrounding his body, clearly refining it.
Waking up once again thanks to the disgusting smell, he was shocked to find that he was full of black, sticky gunk once again.
Rushing towards the bathroom, he took a shower, returning to the room to calm down his little brother, who had been woken up by the smell.
Taking the smelly sheets, he directly washed them, finally removing the pungent smell.
Yesterday there was only black sticky stuff on his body, but today there was a lot more. He hoped that it wasn’t anything serious. The smell really was horrible; even his family woke up from it.
Going to the mirror to wash his face and brush his teeth, he found that his skin had become even paler, almost transparent, to the point where it looked more supple than a baby’s skin. His already white pupils were now shining white with a bit of light, and the blue color of his eyes was becoming whiter, resembling an extreme light blue color.
The rune on his forehead shone constantly with a blue light, seemingly doing something.
Returning to his room, he calmed himself down. He wasn’t going to clean the tavern today, as he had to go to the academy, so he didn’t want to sweat while cleaning. He had already washed himself once to remove the gunk, so he didn’t want to waste more water.
Laying on his bed, he once again looked at the bloodline results and pondered over them.
It looked like all the humans here weren’t of specific descent but rather were mixed between different bloodlines. He found the names of the bloodlines a bit overbearing, such as the celestial bloodline and the ancient god bloodline.
Who would name their bloodline something like that? What intrigued him the most was the largest margin of bloodline—the unique ancestral bloodline.
‘The description says that it originates from a 9th grade rune master, which would mean one of my ancestors was a rank 9 rune master.’
Rui sighed and looked at the ceiling.
Honestly speaking, this world was pretty boring, especially compared to the earth’s entertainment methods. At least he had a sibling he could pass his time with, but of course he was an adult mentally, so he felt embarrassed when acting like a child.
Looking at the clock inside the room, it was almost time for the academy ceremony to be held.
The clock wasn’t like the clocks on earth and was far more archaic in appearance. It used rune energy to determine the time accurately; it was a commodity not owned by many.
Saying goodbye to his family, he headed towards the academy.
After walking for a while, he stopped at a stall that was selling bamboo hats. Purchasing one and wearing it, he continued towards the academy once again.
There were two reasons he bought the hat, the first being to at least hide his identity for a bit since a commoner with the Ansuz rune would attract a lot of attention. The other reason was because it looked cool, like a lone master hiding his identity.
Arriving outside the giant academy gates, he was stopped by the guards, who said that mortals weren’t allowed inside.
Lifting his bamboo hat, he showed his rune, shocking the guards, who promptly moved away to let him pass.
After passing them, he had a smug expression before promptly turning serious. Although he felt badass at the moment, it was just something miscellaneous to those guards, so his excitement died down once again. He needed to keep his cool; after all, from now on he would become a true rune master.
Looking around, a lot of people had arrived early, having made groups and talked with each other. Commoners were grouped with commoners, while people from clans and sects were in their own little groups.
