After one hour of doing the same thing over and over again, Clark has finally called it quits. It got so boring and monotonous in spite of the fact that he was under a constant spell of bliss.
Even before, Clark scoffed at addictive things like this which was why he took his distance away from alcohol, drugs and smoking.
While those vices may give some fleeting facade of heaven but it was after all, not real.
After the haze of satisfaction was gone and in rare moments of sobriety, one would realize that nothing truly changed in their lives.
"Is there no other way to cultivate faster, Nancy?" a handsome middle aged man lazily dropped on the bed. He stretched his numbed body and forgot anything else about maintaining a lotus position.
Not that he cared much of that though at this point.
"There are two general ways to speed up one's cultivation, host."
"One. You could purchase a better spiritual vein from the system. With an upgraded vein, you could absorb the world energy much faster than your current speed right now."
"Second. You could also purchase a stronger cultivation manual. Other ways are absorbing the pure world energy stored in spirit stones and another is eating the myriad heavenly produce of the earth."
Nancy laid the choices down but to buy something from the system at this point was absolutely out of the question.
Clark did not even have a single spirit stone on his hands, much less convert the said nonexistent treasures to shop points and then take his pick on the myriad of goods inside the system shop.
Nonetheless, it has not at all discouraged the young dreamer. Clark scanned the first option and found out a few tasty selections to hopefully purchase in the future.
"Chaos Physique"
"Yang Physique."
"Yin Physique."
"Dragonian Physique."
"Immortal Physique." The list was long and varied but the top of the list were all priced at 1,000,000 shop points. Clark checked the cultivation manuals and he saw that the same pricing system applied.
"World Devouring Supreme Law. Cost: 1m sp."
"Eternal Dao Heart. Cost: 1m sp."
"Heaven Destruction Scripture. Cost: 1m sp."
"Blood Sovereign Secret Art. Cost: 1m sp."
'A million shop points for the best shop items. Pretty steep.' Clark moaned in lament as he could only dream of obtaining such expensive goods today.
"I need to have a stable income of spirit stones. Well, scratch that! I want to have at least a million shop points within a week!"
He set an impossible goal for him because he knew that it would at least give him surprising results rather than moping pointlessly in circles.
Clark thought for several minutes on how to tackle this task at hand.
"Can you the scan this xianxia world for magical plants and fruits for me to consume?"
Since he was dirt poor in spirit stones, Clark tried to search instead for the myriad heavenly produce of the earth that Nancy said earlier.
"Negative, host. That is currently not within the system's abilities but you could always buy an upgrade to get that specific function."
"Let me guess. That upgrade is also priced at 1 million shop points."
"Affirmative, host. You are correct. Your wisdom really knows no bounds!" Nancy's lovely voice rang in appreciation to her master.
Alas, it brought no joy to Clark as he continued to think of ways around his problem.
"Do you have an inventory space i could use, Nancy?" Clark asked the system after six minutes of silence.
He was thinking that perhaps he could order his summons around and take the body parts of his prey to gain him some money in return.
But to be able to do that efficiently, he would need to have a storage facility or something close in purpose. Else everything he had would rot before he could even find a buyer to sell it to.
"Affirmative, host. Do you want to open your inventory?"
"Sure. sure. Please, Nancy." he replied.
'I'd completely forgotten about this very important aspect in rpg games.' Clark smiled and gently tapped his forehead in dismay.
'The transmigration process must have jumbled up my brain like crazy!' Clark sighed as he remembered how he broke down the first time he had met the system.
Asking Nancy to take him home because he really did not want to stay in this world any moment longer.
"Inventory feature initializing...
1%
2%
.
..
...
100%
Inventory featured activated." Sixty breaths passed and Nancy brought the good news in time.
"Now let me see what we have in here."
"Please open my inventory, Nancy." Clark was thrilled as he expected something out of the ordinary to grace his eyes.
"BOINK!" A rectangular interface appeared in front of Clark's eyes. Therein, he could see various items that already filled every slotted surface of his inventory.
And on the bottom portion of the magical screen was numerical symbols that usually indicated a next page of the spatial construct. Clark pointed at the number two and his hands shivered with anticipation.
"HA!"
He did that with the 3rd.
"HAHA!" And of course the next few options visible on the screen. It ended with 10 but then within a short refresh, the eleventh until the twentieth button materialized thereafter.
"HAHAHA!"
"EUREKA!" Clark threw a fit of booming laughter as he really could not help the outburst of mirth at the moment. Not that he wanted to stop it in the first place.
Tears of joy sprang from his eyes which he easily wiped out using his bare palms.
"Aldabran Werewolf, Incomplete Remains."
"Fake Zombie, Incomplete Remains."
"Common Vampire, Incomplete Remains."
.
..
...
These were just some of the loots that the system had automatically picked up for Clark's use.
'If i could have a market to sell this in bulk then i assume it would give me my starting capital to build my own forces in this world.'
The positive attitude in Clark was overflowing right now but he neither cared whether his hasty calculations were true or not in the least.
All he had in mind was how these boons would give him money in the end. And for him, that was more than enough indeed. After all, Clark was only too aware of how empty his pockets were right now.
All he had was a few pathetic pieces of gold coins and as he was, that trifling wealth wasn't enough to support one needy cultivator in the family.
"Does the inventory space provide infinite slots for my use, Nancy?" Clark wanted to make sure of his advantages to better exploit every little thing in his arsenal.
The answer to this question was indeed pretty important to our humble protagonist. Especially because the strategy he used would deliver him vast amounts of loots nonstop for 24/7.
"Affirmative, host. The system provides unlimited space for your usage." Nancy stated.
"Perfect!" Clark rejoiced once more and planned to benefit from this knowledge pronto.
'I need to sell all of my finds in exchange for spirit stones.'
'But i can't do that in here.' Nexus may be big and bragged a population of a hundred million people but the cultivators that settled amongst those millions was only some miserable thousands.
The number hasn't even reached 10 thousand cultivators for that matter. These sorry guys and gals had already reached their potential and had no more hope in reaching a higher realm of cultivation.
This was the reason why they chose to stay in the city of Nexus in the first place.
'And i, as a newly accepted disciple of the Demonic Sword Sect, was not even given a freebie of a single spirit stone after i joined.
Seems like those old wise men really orchestrated this scheme to consolidate the power of the sect.' Clark was flabbergasted at how tricky these aged monsters were.
A scene of a recent past came unbidden in his mind and he could not help but shiver in response.
The memory of one lone boy exterminating an entire city of millions was still pretty fresh on his consciousness.
'If i get PTSD from this, I'd be sure to repay this favor someday!' Clark noted this experience with great clarity and vowed to take revenge at the evil young boy who may have already traumatized him for life.
"Find me a place that accepts most of what i have, Nancy. I want a market that doesn't have any level 9 cultivators on its vicinity." Clark instructed.
Although he was about to level up in less than 10 minutes and also reach the 9th level but he still has no confidence in facing anyone on the same level as he was.
He knew that he lacked many things and these could not be rectified in just a mere day.
So unless Clark's enemy was a level behind him or worse wherein he could absolutely crush them without suspense, he would never be stupid enough to engage anyone else in a fight to the death.
"Location acquired, host." Nancy announced after a beat.
"Good. Thank you, Nancy." Clark said and opened the map interface of the system. He could see that there were at least tens of places highlighted in distinctive yellow dots.
"Can i also teleport to any place in the map?" Clark was curious since his summons could actually do that amazing cheat.
If he could also do the same then wouldn't he be like fish in the waters that his enemies can only glimpse at his slippery shadows and no further?
"Negative, host." and of course, Nancy had to turn Clark's wishes into dust.
'Well, i guess the bargain i got can be considered good enough as it is.' The hopeful gamer sighed and whistled some popular songs in his past world as he waited for time to do its job.
Moving eternally forward and never looking back.
Seven minutes went by and the anticipated notification finally rang on Clark's ears.
"Congratulations, host. You gave gained a new level. Please visit the system menu for further details." Nancy announced with her usual lovely voice.
"Level 9. About time." Clark smiled then stood up from his cozy position on the bed.
"Blood Twin, my good evil partner... go to this place." He commanded his necromancer bone friend and the green dot that indicated the Blood Twin's location changed instantly.
"Body Switch." Clark intoned and immediately thereafter, a whole new world welcomed him in full.