Over the next couple of days Jason continues his wool gathering about cultivation. In the end though all he can figure is the next time he is out of his pod he needs to test things. Not that all he did these few days was walk and think. A couple creatures annoyed him. However, a snake with a sloths head isn’t exactly threatening. Now though he is out of things to focus on and is skimming through the wasteland. The spires pass by on his right beyond counting and the grass waves never ending on his left.

This scenery lulls Jason into a thoughtless mediation. Movement without intention crossing distances at a walking pace. Each step passing by the mundane. Never stretching too far yet traveling full distances. Most of the day passes without conscious notice when a ding breaks Jason out of it and he stumbles. Not a normal noise of course as his trip wasn’t exactly silent but rather a System notification.

Where the ding didn’t cause him to fall over this message did. While skills breaking through because of someone’s understanding isn’t unknown. A beginner skill doing so is unheard of. Beginner skills are thought of as just that, skills to use at the beginning. While solid and something you can always fall back on, they generally are passed by for newer skills. To advance one in rank through knowledge and a deeper understanding, even to the point of changing the rarity? If any other player has managed it they haven’t said a word about it. Besides that the effect gained from the breakthrough was quite a high level. Any ‘ground shrinking’ effect is rare below level 100. Sure the skill will not let him travel miles with a single step, at least not yet. But you have to start somewhere.

“Besides, this is my first Apprentice rank skill! With how things were going I was certain it would be Blast Punch that ranked up. Even if it didn’t, farming seemed in line for it next with how fast it is growing. Not that I get anything for reaching Apprentice rank. That is after all only the rank at which for a crafting skill you can work in a shop on actual products. Everything before it can be seen as purely practice. Even if you lived in a small village, it is hard to make a living off of an Apprentice rank skill. Though I guess that does make sense. The natives learn a trade skill from around puberty so by the time us players come into the picture we are way behind. The only reason farming is doing so good right now is I am growing alchemy materials and experimenting with the process. If I had tried to grow wheat, it would take me over a year just to reach the Initiate rank let alone Apprentice. I fear that us players wouldn’t be able to keep up with the natives if we didn’t come back from the dead. Without the boost that danger gives to skill advancement there is no way we could keep up.”, Jason shakes his head at these thoughts. Even with their advantage of always coming back player still aren’t able to completely pull ahead of the native population. That and it doesn’t help that there are old natives running around keeping things in balance. You can’t ‘catch up’ to some monster swordsman who has been training for the last couple millennium.

After a quick check of the area Jason realizes he progressed further than expected. While not mile wide steps his breakthrough took him far. With that in mind he tests the new skill effect. The first few steps are awkward. Trying to step farther doesn’t seem to work with his steps just going wider. Then he gets the feel for it. Instead of activating it on purpose the skill just works. He facepalms after the realization because duh, the skill was still a passive one. In the end though practice makes perfect, so he continues his tests.

Night comes before he settles down, happy with the results. Not only can he travel twice the distance at a normal walking speed but another aspect of the skill effect showed itself. While the skill directly calls out being able to step further it actually says “each step travel just as far as it needs to”. This shows itself in that he can take a full step yet not move forward. Though the real benefit comes from his close observation of it in action. Other movement skills known to him will put energy into the hands and feet. Maybe a little into the limbs for strength but that is about it. While that is also happening here the real surprise is that on an almost unnoticeable level his whole body is being affected by his Energy. Instead of a better grip on a surface or a small push against the ground for more distance it goes so much further. The very Energy of his body is grabbing the natural energy and air then pulling. His steps look normal because they are. The extra distance comes from pulling himself through the air a short distance. At a higher level and a better understanding Jason even dares to hope this will let him fly or at the very least step on air. However the skill isn’t there yet. He can’t even boost his jumping power with it yet. Well except in the dead obvious method of pumping energy out of his feet but that is inefficient. A Qi user might manage it with their large pool of energy to work with but Jason wants to follow this skill further. Getting to the heart of efficiently moving places feels right to him. Satisfied with his new ability Jason settles down for his nightly cultivation. All the while in the distance a silver horned jackalope fumes.

Akhier

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This isn’t important or relevant to the story or at least won’t be for a very long time. However, I have had some thoughts of how cultivation works in this specific multiverse. I think I have figured out how to explain things like spirit roots and such in a physical sense without being too crazy. Also, it would explain why it is unknown or impossible for us in the ‘real world’. Meridians in this multiverse are just nerves. After all, we already send power through them to do things. However, they aren’t regular nerves. It would be hard to blast someone with a Qi punch if your arm is spazzing from having way too much power being shunted through it. Instead, as a matter of evolution the humans in a cultivation type world will have had extra ‘useless’ nerves form throughout their bodies. These nerves would not be attached to muscles and such but rather just extra sturdy bundles that seem to go to nowhere. It started with some human ancestor having just the barest thread of a useless nerve and through happenstance being able to ‘cultivate’, likely through a body cultivation technique. Those rare mutations happened to be quite successful and thus spread out to humans as a whole. Eventually the ‘false nerves’ or rather at that point meridians would have spread through the body enough to allow more classical cultivation methods to form. Things like spirit roots are just the formation or nerves that are dense in just the right area to facilitate cultivation. About the only thing going beyond the physical with this is if you want to include a leaning towards a ‘Dao’. In which case the spirit root and the bloodline in generally would have needed to be aligned somehow. Then again my ‘false nerve’ theory of cultivation doesn’t explain Qi in the first place. Rather it explains how a cultivation world could form in a multiverse that also contains a near future Earth which does not have it. Though, and this isn’t a canon explanation (yet, I don’t know what will happen in the future) but the VR pods themselves might work using Qi. I think I mention it somewhere but I tried to keep the technology of this Earth close to reality. The biggest leap is the VR pods. Even fusion power used to well, power everything isn’t as big an advance. If I haven’t explained it, what the VR pod does is intercept the signals a brain sends out and is receiving with a counter signal canceling it out. Then it sends a new signal in place of any expected result that matches the VR space. This is ‘technically’ possible as far as I understand but not really. Qi as an energy might allow for this to happen. After all, it is not harmful to nerves except in large quantities and likely just a part of the background radiation, anyway. It is possible that another person reincarnated to this world who was a specialist in formation and used that to develop VR technology. That isn’t what happened that I know of but one of those maybe in the future depending on how the story develops kind of things. Quite possible that none of this VR through Qi is real for the story though or Jason might never find anything out about it. Still an interesting little thought path to follow.