Wanting to help, Axl turned to [Gastric Cauldron] and found that the spiritual organ was as obscenely useful as Quelling promised. It was a space barely the size of his closed fist, but with a thought, he could mold it into a combining flask of any shape, the flask nucleus. There was also a thin layer around the flask that would allow him to use fire or lightning to activate the flask nucleus, or the quickening layer. Finally, there was also a hazy area around this tighter double-layered core where he could use talismans to activate ingredients, the refinement corona.
It was beautiful, a nucleus surrounded by a layer and a corona, like a small planet all his own.
As much as the urge to experiment with the space was so strong that it burned into his heart, he simply repeated his simple recipe for a healing potion, all of it entering his body as if he were placing something in his dimensional pouch, glad he didn't have to keep swallowing all his ingredients. A short while later, he extracted the healing potion through his index finger into an empty vial Moxlin had left aside.
He gently pried her slender legs from her face and poured the liquid onto her tiny mouth, the mandibles chittering open and closed as she drank instinctively. Only a third of the liquid was gone when she woke up and gently pushed the vial back. Axl left the rest in front of her, relieved to see her wounds were visibly improving.
"I'm so glad you made it!" her manic energy was dampened by her injuries, but she still managed to throw up her forelegs in an extravagant gesture. "Oh! Oh! I got new fangs from my quest, they focus my Mana to let me form glyphs much better, both for talismans and arrays! It’s a real refinement of my body plan too, not just a grafted organ!"
"Glad to hear teacher was well paid for her effort," Axl replied, a smile on his face. "Get some rest now, I'll look over you."
She vigorously nodded, then took a few more sips of the potion and fell asleep, this time her legs splayed out against the ground. Axl had plenty to do, from studying the cultivation manual Olkan left behind to adapting his alchemy recipes to [Gastric Cauldron], but he just couldn't focus.
His mind kept drifting back to how he had almost died completing the alchemy quest, not so much at the sheer stupidity of the risk, but at what it meant. He looked at Moxlin as he thought through the situation for the tenth time in the last hour, putting himself in her point of view as she saw him injure himself more and more severely before finally finishing the quest.
At this point, her quest was complete, and she owed him nothing. She could've simply let him die, and she'd be able to get the [Selsin Clan Glyphic Compendium] for herself, his death causing it to pop out of his soulspace. Even if there were safeguards surrounding her teaching quest preventing her from acting against him directly, he doubted they'd be triggered if he bled out on his own. Instead, she rushed to make potions to help him, a craft outside her expertise that she clearly struggled to complete, and severely injured herself as well.
Sure, having helped him with making the same recipe over the past few days helped, but from his experience with the craft, Axl realized how dangerous the fire component of the concoction really was, and he had substantial Endurance that helped against the inevitable flare-up. Moxlin was basically a small puff of highly flammable kindling with lackluster physical Attributes, and the multiple scorch marks that riddled her body told a story of multiple failed attempts at getting the potions done.
She'd again reminded him too much of his brother, a terrible miner and worst Mana engineer, but he always had his back, no matter what.
Axl couldn't do anything productive as he sat next to the tiny spider, a spear out to keep up the shallow pretense that he was standing guard, instead just restlessly waiting for her to wake up.
A few hours later, Moxlin stirred and started to pack up their mess.
"What do you know about the Shrouded Crescent Valley?" Axl asked, helping by picking up unused talisman paper scattered about.
"Oh, it's quite exciting!" she said, gesticulating wildly, even if it strained against her wounds. "We talk about it all the time at the nest, it’s one of the rare F-Grade sanctuaries that are publicly available. A mysterious high-grade cultivator established it for some reason millennia ago, and it specializes in producing attuned natural treasures and even has rift trials all over the place. Some even think our proximity is why mommy set up this nest here."
He nodded. "What's the catch? What would this mysterious cultivator get out of it?"
"So suspicious!" Moxlin laughed. "Apparently, you gain experience a bit more slowly than usual, but maybe that's because the valley also keeps out anything in the E-grade while providing more chances for F-Grade battles. So maybe the Deep System gives you a penalty for the lower overall threat? Whatever it is, it's still a great deal, and people from all around make their way over, some even with summoning tokens the vale produces itself. A few from the nest went there when they reached the F-Grade and wanted to stake out on their own."
"What happened to them?"
"Well, I don't know, when you leave the nest, you can't come back, you're supposed to start your own cultivation path. Mommy is very strict about that. I've never even been this far from the middle of her territory before."
"What do you want to do now? I can take you back to the nest if you'd feel safer that way."
He was stalling, he knew it, dancing around the question he really wanted to ask. Come with me. He almost blurted out the words, but couldn't bring himself to do it. It would be dangerous, even for a normal cultivator, not to mention one trying to get his quest done. Could he really drag the kind little spider into his mess? He was ready to slaughter whatever beasts or undead armies that stood in his way to Sol's empowerment, but this felt different somehow. And certainly much, much harder.
She paused. "I—Maybe I can at least go with you to the edge? We can go over some more glyphs."
He nodded. "That's right, I still have to show you sections of the book that should be useful to you, part of our bargain, after all. Too bad it's very, very large. It would take weeks for me to show you even the G-Grade stuff on talismans alone."
Moxlin leaned forward, her eyes positively glistening. Axl grit his teeth at his cowardice. What was this talking around the point? Why was this conversation harder to face than the fight with Puppy?
"Seriously now," he said, and sat cross-legged, facing the little spider fully. "I'm on a dangerous quest to establish a new sub-system, something Honorable Mistress Nox thinks is unlikely to work. There is also a time limit on it, so I will be pushing myself beyond the reasonable, if this is to have any chance of success."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Moxlin grew still, her legs tensing inwards, as if in fear, but he pressed on, forcing the words out.
"I know I can't offer you nearly as much as your nest, and it will be dangerous, but I feel it would break something in me if I didn't tell you that I want you to join me. I swear on my rig, slit, on whatever it is cultivators swear on, to help you as much as I can with your artistry, and if I manage to get this subsystem up and running, I'll make sure you're compensated for your effort. If the subsystem itself doesn't do it, I'll find a way to do it myself."
"What you are feeling sounds like a Path compulsion. It's supposed to only happen at the higher grades, really. I honestly feel a bit embarrassed. I don't know what to say. But I have to admit something, I—"
She paused and looked away. "I'm not really any good… I was relegated to transport because I wasn't able to keep up with the F-Grade inscriptions. Most of what I've been doing was only G-Grade, too. You probably didn't notice because I'm the first artisan you really dealt with, but with your talent, you'll be able to recruit far better ones very easily. If I went with you, I'd only drag you down."
Axl smiled at her. "No. I can trust you, which is more important than all that, and I know that we will make each other better as we go along. I'll also do my best to keep you safe, of course."
Moxlin chuckled, the action soft and hesitant. "You brute, of course I wouldn't be joining you in your fighting, I'm a pure support glyphic artisan. In the worst case, I run away or offer my services to the cultivator who manages to beat your shameless cheating."
"To be honest, that makes me feel better," he replied. "Let's go, then, you can think over my offer until we reach the edge. Also, make sure to mention what else you want from this deal. I don't know what kind of things an artisan needs in their cultivation."
The spider nodded, then exploded into a frenzy of putting back her supplies into whatever dimensional storage she seemed to have. Soon, she was perched on his shoulder as Axl ran through the caverns, heading to the F-Grade sanctuary.
The unbearable weight that afflicted him before was now gone, even if Moxlin hadn't made her decision yet. He had done what he could, and his body was bathed in an almost palpable contentment he didn't fully understand. It was more than the relief of having pushed through a difficult conversation, a tangible something, perhaps linked to the path compulsion Moxlin mentioned?
"I want to try something out in battle," he said, the calm clicking something in his mind, and Moxlin nodded in approval.
After a quick search, he settled on a solitary lizard early in the F-grade. Its coiled body rested under a massive stalactite that oozed a thick liquid emitting dim yellow light, the creature's Mana density and complexity feeling like just enough of a challenge for what Axl needed.
Moxlin retreated to a crevice some ways away, and Axl charged in, not bothering with stealth or even activating [Mana Shroud]. His goal here was something else.
The lizard reared up, hissing as it loomed over Axl, ten claws and a wickedly spiked tail glistening. He slowly approached, silently apologizing to the beast for not taking its offer to back away from their home. The creature tensed for a few moments, then lunged, claws outstretched.
Mid-air, it flipped, tail extending for a sweeping strike against Axl's head. He ducked, barely fast enough to dodge, the creature seamlessly recovering to swipe down at him.
His body relaxed as he spread his will, mind focused, and senses narrowing. The sense of rightness he had when talking to Moxlin felt deep in his body, and somehow his body, mind, and soul felt fully attuned to itself, feeling somewhat like when he killed Puppy with the third-step version of [Mana Shroud]. But he didn't want to activate that right now. He focused this strange state of inspiration fully on [Attuned Drill Strike].
Twinned streams of Mana pooled at the knuckles of Axl's index and pinky fingers, then twisted against each other as they rose in a spiral converging to a point five centimeters in front of his fist. His body half-crouched, his empowered fist against his waist.
He waited the sliver of a second the lizard took to descend, claws almost at his neck, and he released the strike. The twinned Mana started spinning as he punched up, the Skill pulling his fist and entire body up with it, tearing at the air as if it meant to break reality itself.
His spinning Mana tore through the air, and the entirety of the lizard's upper chest exploded, Axl's own body charging through, propelled by the cyclone of power driving his fist. He reached halfway up the cavern before his body started to spin as well, cuts appearing in his arms and legs as the furious eddies of disturbed ambient Mana clashed into the force of his fist's rampaging attack.
His tenuous concentration broke, and [Attuned Drill Strike] suddenly deactivated. Axl flopped down onto the bloody mess of his enemy's body, dizzy from the tumbling fall, the air still an onslaught of conflicting Mana currents.
Coughing up some blood, he stood back up, hand to his sword, and looking around, in case there were other threats, then relaxed. This creature was partially selected as his test target since its alcove was rather out of the way, with no other lairs nearby, and it seemed like nothing else was drawn in by the commotion of his rather dramatic attack.
"What in mommy's hole was that!" Moxlin shrieked as she bounced up and down in uncontained excitement. "My eyes got Mana burn just from looking at it!"
Axl grimaced at her choice of words, half expecting a massive spider leg to materialize and smack them both for the disrespect.
"A Skill I got from killing that werewolf," he replied. "I wasn't able to even activate it before, but I think I got the hang of it now."
In fact, he got more than just the hang of it, as the Skills section of his Status showed.
Skills: Mana Shroud (Rare, Proficiency G.3), Mind-Soul Bulwark (Rare, Proficiency G.1), Attuned Drill Strike (Rare, Proficiency G.1)
It was very satisfying to have all his skills at least one step in proficiency. But of course, the true gain was getting [Attuned Drill Strike] to work at all, and oh boy, was it worth the wait. Not only was it far more powerful than he expected, but it resonated deeply with him, as if it were a culmination of his very sense of self. He couldn't wait to practice more with the skill.
However, it was also absurdly expensive, draining a full third of his internal Mana in one go, in addition to the wounds he sustained from using it. They weren't anything a single healing potion wouldn't patch up, but they were still bleeding profusely, and certainly wouldn’t be great to deal with during an ongoing battle. He also got the sense that the Mana storm it kicked up could get much worse, depending on the environment.
There was also one other benefit that he wasn't expecting.
>>Achievement Obtained:
>>Upward-Gazing Warrior (Consumable):
>>Kill a karmic creature one grade above while still in the G-Grade.
>>Reward: One Free Boon
This seemed like a damn good Achievement, especially since he suspected he could combine it with other boons when he got them, and it likely even bypassed the decreasing efficiency of boons that Moxlin mentioned earlier. After all, he didn't have the boon yet, needing to consume the Achievement to get it.
"You're a true monster!" Moxlin shrieked with glee. "Look at this! You ruined an F-Grade carcass with your cheating!"
Axl shrugged. "The claws and tail are intact, and those seem to be the most Mana-dense parts, right?"
"Fine," she rolled her eyes. "You got lucky this time! The real catch is the condensate, anyhow." She pointed up at the stalactite that dominated the cavern.
Apparently, the unusually large stone spike was a rare variant of rock that purified the water seeping down into a rich, Mana-dense liquid that could be concentrated into rather good G-Grade talisman paper. Axl and Moxlin spent nearly a full day extracting and processing the liquid into over a thousand sheets. These had a slightly golden glow, compared to the bone-white ones Moxlin had, which were made largely from her own webbing. He took two hundred of the yellowish sheets to use in potion-making while Moxlin took the rest.
This was another unexpected benefit to having Moxlin around, the [Selsin Clan Glyphic Compendium] not having any information on scavenging for beast parts or making the raw materials necessary for the glyphic arts. He chuckled at that, figuring that the otherwise exhaustive book was clearly designed for rich, well-connected cultivators who could just buy a stack of talisman paper whenever they ran low.
The satisfying diversion finished, Axl hurried to their destination, only occasionally taking a detour to fight some creatures to get used to [Attuned Drill Strike] and generally practice his fighting technique. A few days later, he slowed down when reaching the edge of Nox's territory, feeling a subtle change in the makeup of ambient Mana against [Mana Shroud], forming a neat dividing line.
He stopped right at the edge and turned to Moxlin on his shoulder. But she simply jumped ahead, crossing the boundary without saying a word, and they continued.