by Pegaz
Sarah remembered the warning at the back of the book. The Dual Cultivation Technique took all the possibility of future lives the users would create together and boosted the absorption speed during their first time by a massive amount.
Without the systems, then, both John and Sarah could never have children. That was why the technique was forbidden because if too many people used it, then the whole human race could get affected.
A few seconds later, a pop-up showed up displaying that Sarah was sharing the skill Life Toxin, Molecule Creation, and Molecule Storage. John looked at his stats.
Life Pool: 98.1B
Toxin Pool: 100,000
Oh, only a few seconds and it’s already transferred 500,000 Life Pool to Toxin Pool. Might take a few months to transfer the rest, though.
In the fifth tab, on the right side, the number changed from 0/20 to 3/20, below the numbers were the skills.
Shared Skills:
Life Toxin.
Molecule Creation.
Molecule Storage.
John rolled to his right and was on top of Sarah now. He lowered his head and kissed her.
“I didn’t hear your response to my confession last night.”
“Oh?” Sarah smiled. “I told you I was staying by your side even though you’re hunted by the strongest assassin sect in the universe, but you want me to say that?”
John nodded. “Yes.”
“Fine. I love you, too. Happy?”
John had a silly grin on his face.
“Very.” He kissed her again.
“We need to talk about our plans.” John switched the subject. “Do you want to go to the Sword Sect from here, or go wandering? We have to reach the Sword Sect before we turn forty. The hotel we stayed at still has a month and a half reserved before we need to check out, too.”
John’s eyes lit up as another thought hit him.
“Then there’s your new beauty, too…” he mumbled. “If you go anywhere without covering your face, it will bring trouble now.”
“What do you mean?” Sarah tilted her head.
“You ever heard of the term ‘Kingdom Toppling Beauty’?”
Sarah’s face flushed, and she quickly turned her head away. John couldn’t tell if she was flustered in a good way or a bad way, but he leaned for the former.
“W-well,” she stuttered, trying to regain her composure. “What about you? I’m sure all the women are after you because of your looks and body, too, right?”
“Wait, what?” That one actually confused John. “Me? I’m not that good looking.”
“Please.” Sarah laughed. “Humility doesn’t suit you.”
Both breaking into light giggles, they decided that it would be a good idea to get out of bed. Standing up, John changed his clothing back into his black shirt and trousers. He looked through his maps in the Storage Space and asked the system to show which maps had already been scanned. He then placed all the Life Stones in the room back inside his Storage Space, exchanging them for quite a few maps. As he removed the maps, he turned around to see Sarah using her shape-shifting clothes to get dressed, too. She made them change into jeans and a t-shirt.
“Sarah.” He pointed at the maps. “You have the Directions and Storage Space skills. Put these maps inside your Storage Space and see if the system scans them to update the world map.”
Sarah nodded and tried it out, only to confirm what John asked.
They spent the next four hours transferring maps. The sheer amount of maps almost overwhelmed Sarah—and John said this was only 60% of the total amount! As they transferred, Sarah and John began discussing about creating their own signature look. Sarah, in particular, was being persistent about it.
“Rogue sect has a black and silver mask, Anti-Assassins has green and red masks.” The excitement carried through in her voice. “Let’s make our own that we wear outside and only take them off for each other!”
“Won’t you get sick of wearing the mask all the time?” John scratched his chin. “What about eating outside like at a restaurant? We can’t have a normal date that way...”
“You can make the mask have a hole for the food.” Sarah grinned. “I won’t get sick of wearing it, either. After all, we wouldn’t want to topple any kingdoms on accident, would we?”
“Okay, okay.” John laughed. “But, depending on where we are and what the masks look like… You never know, it could bring us a different kind of trouble instead.”
They spent the next few hours training and polishing their martial arts moves while talking about what masks to use. Since Sarah’s transformation, John had no chance to mess around and it took everything he had not to lose. It wasn’t until after they were both worn out that they finally decided on the masks.
With Sarah’s medical knowledge, she changed her mask to replicate her skull with her silver, curly hair growing on it. John did the same after seeing what hers looked like. The skulls were not white like bone but coloured the same shade of silver as their hair. The iris of the mask glowed yellow, surrounded by a black eye hole. It looked like a real silver skull.
Looking at each other while wearing the skulls, they both smiled underneath. John spoke first.
“This mask will scare most people with no real backing,” he said. “Even those with backing might think twice before causing us trouble.”
“Functionality over fashion.” Sarah giggled. “We can eat food out of them, too!”
“All right, so we’ve got the masks sorted out.” John rubbed the back of his head. “Now we need to create a uniform to go with it... But what shall we do after that? Do you want to travel or go to the Sword Sect? Keep in mind that if we go to the Sword Sect, we could get stronger sooner, which will lead us to immortality. If we travel, we will curb our adventurer side for years, then when we go to the Sword Sect, we won’t be so eager to leave after a while. Both options have their pros and cons.”
Sarah was thinking, and after a few minutes, she spoke.
“Let’s go on one date on a random planet, then head towards the Sword Sect.”
“All right!” John laughed. “No problem. You want to pick the planet or the date? Oh, yeah… I forgot I made this for you.”
He got a rune out from his Storage Space. During these four and a half months of training, he’d secretly practised drawing the Rogues key rune. A few weeks ago, after he drew this on a blank rune, the system detected another one in the area so he knew it was a success. The system recognized the rune as “Sarah’s key” from then on.
John explained the rune to her, which was a very short-lived conversation, surprisingly. Before long, they were back on the topic of their outfit.
“So, you want to use a silver Daoist robe as our uniform? Make it all one colour.”
“No, that would not look good,” Sarah protested. “If we’re going with a standard Daoist robe, we can just use a dark blue colour since none of the top sects use that.”
Both John and Sarah made their clothes change to dark blue Daoist robes. They smiled at each other.
“Ready to go?”
“Yep.” Sarah nodded. “You pick the planet and I pick where we go. Then we’ll go to the Sword Sect.”
John and Sarah held hands as they walked out of the caves.
Chapter 13
The Date
John and Sarah came out of the chest in the corner of the hotel room. John turned around and picked up the stone which had the teleport rune on it.
‘Ding!’
Created Molecule. Storing Molecule.
Oh, I can use the poison or venom Sarah’s created to make my own? Then it should work the other way, too. If we go on separate adventures and find some rare poison, then we can share it.
John conveyed the information and Sarah helped John make as many poisons as they could. In exchange, John gave Sarah hundreds of Grade 9 Life Stones and thousands of other grades of Life Stones and told her about the cultivation method he used with five parts of his mind.
&nb
sp; With some practice, Sarah got the hang of keeping the Storage Space open, as well as breathing and absorbing Life Power. She had trouble with the merging part though; she could only use three parts of her brain without trouble.
“You’re doing better than I did at the start,” John encouraged. “I took over six months getting the merging right.”
Spirits lifted, the two went to the front desk to pay for the room. Arriving at the front desk, the people who saw them had one of two reactions: 1) They stared at the masks they were wearing in shock; 2) They turned around pale or scared, avoiding eye contact.
John paid extra and told the staff that the bed and chairs got destroyed. At those words, Sarah blushed under the mask. He had left the furniture in the cultivation caves but the staff would misunderstand. When they were finally ready to leave the hotel, John made a sword only two feet long but nine feet wide by using his threads. They both stepped onto the sword and flew off.
John did a simple test with the bullets back in the cultivation cave. Using the same amount of Toxin Power as Life Power, the branches in his body could handle the same amount. The difference was, the bullets made from Toxin Power were five times stronger. He could use a maximum amount of fifty Life Power in each of his fingers without the skin splitting apart and peeling. It was the same amount with Toxin Power so he had five times the strength of attack he had months ago now.
Arriving at the twenty-mile mark of the teleport room, John slowed down.
“I don’t know if the Rogue key I made will work,” he said, turning to Sarah. “It’s the first time testing it, so be on your guard. If it doesn’t work, then there are runes that can attack us both.”
Sarah nodded and then walked with John to cross the twenty-mile mark.
Waiting a few minutes, nothing happened. They both sighed in relief and carried on.
Three months later, they arrived at the planet John had chosen for their first date. On one of the area maps of this planet, it showed there was an amusement park outside the capital city.
During the travel, John had gotten two levels in Max Workers and Max Idlers. His Life Power had finished transforming into Toxin Power, too. The next level of those skills would take over a month each, so John put the Idlers in the Shrink skill.
Welcome to the Idle System 3.9
Name: John
Title: A Selfish Punisher.
Age: 33
Idlers: 0/227
Skill Points: 0
Life Pool: 4
Toxin Pool: 19.6B
Sin: 100M
Immortality List:
Shrink Neurons - Idlers 227/227, Shrink - 0/9, Time - 6d 19h 8m 24s
Misc List:
Maximum Idlers - Idlers 0/227, +1 Max Idlers - 226/2159
Maximum Workers - Idlers 0/227, +1 Idler Workers - 128/2061
The time for the first Shrink level started at 7d 6h. Each minute while cultivating with five parts of his mind would earn him six Toxin Power. That would give him three hundred eighty Toxin Power an hour. The recovery skill stopped giving him the fifty Life Power when he reached the highest amount of Life Pool he’d ever had; the skill would only work when he used Life Power or Toxin Power from that point on.
Arriving in the capital, John told Sarah about the amusement park on this planet. If it wasn’t any good, there were also plenty of other things to do, too. John still scanned the city. He didn’t want to ruin the date by killing, but he still wanted to know the situation of their surroundings. The highest person here was a Rank 7 Level 7, so John hoped that their paths didn’t cross.
John booked the best room he could at a hotel. It was a room on the twelfth floor with a king-size bed. He then took Sarah to the room to check it out. Ten minutes later, they were on the balcony, admiring the view of the city.
“I picked the planet,” John said softly. “You get to decide what we do.”
The next morning, they got ready for their date. John asked what Sarah had in mind but she kept it close to her chest. They went out with the silver skull masks still on, headed to the amusement park that John had mentioned.
Sarah dragged John all around the amusement park. All the rides were wooden instead of metal and had trained beasts pulling the machines to make the rides move. There were all sorts of rides, both new and familiar to the couple. They even had monster cores that could take a photo while on the rides, but each core could only take the one photo. They were expensive, too, but sparing no expense, John paid for two photo cores for each ride they went on. While on the rides, their masks reverted back to earrings so their faces showed up in the photos.
John made sure the staff selling the monster cores didn’t look at the photos inside. If they did look, then he would kill them to avoid rumours of Sarah’s beauty from spreading.
After going on over ten rides and buying twenty photo cores, they left the amusement park and Sarah took John to a restaurant she had heard about.
The meat being served was from Rank 5 or higher immortal ranked creatures. Of course, John ordered the highest ranked meat possible. It was delicious but expensive; each meal was worth a Grade 4 Life Stone and John ate plenty. The meal cost twenty-five Grade 4 Life Stones which John paid for; Sarah ate eight of the meals. Everyone else in the restaurant was staring at them while they ate, trying to see where the food went.
After paying for the meal, they walked around the city for a while. Sarah told John that she overheard another couple that the amusement park and other things were invented by the first king thousands of years ago. They turned the first king’s tomb into a museum that was open to the public. This was where Sarah took John to end their date.
Walking towards the museum, they held hands and talked. When they arrived there, John paid the entrance fee for them both and went inside.
All around them there were posters with the words: ‘10,000 years since the founding king’s death!’ John read the poster, turned to Sarah, and asked if she knew when the anniversary was. Sarah shook her head, so they found a staff member to answer him.
Walking back to Sarah, he said, “It’s tomorrow. We should come back then, too.”
John’s words confused Sarah, making him laugh.
“It’s a hunch.” He grinned. “If it works out, then brilliant. If it doesn’t, then we lose nothing.”
They walked around for a couple more hours, admiring the displays. When it was time to head back to the hotel, they spent the rest of the night trying out a different Dual Cultivation techniques.
The next day, they went back to the museum, but this time it was packed with hundreds of people. The staff shouted that the records showed there were less than two hours until the anniversary of the king’s death.
John and Sarah waited for the two hours with the rest of the crowd.
‘Ding!’
Found a signal from another System. Would you like the direction on the map?
John laughed.
Chapter 14
Loophole
John’s laugh echoed throughout the whole museum, causing people to look over. Everybody else was silent, mourning the anniversary. When people saw John in the silver skull mask, they turned back around as fast as possible.
Opening the world map, John found the icon was in the middle of the giant museum. It was under the mausoleum that got placed ten thousand years ago, but it was a few hundred feet underground. John grabbed Sarah’s hand and walked out with her. When they got back to the hotel, he explained.
“Remember when I told you about the man called Danny I got the Sinners System from?” John looked directly into Sarah’s eyes, a look of seriousness penetrating through. “It took ten thousand years or more for the system to start dying. That’s when we’re able to absorb it.”
‘Ding!’
Tooltip - The system will die after 90,000 years.
John paused, blown away by the sudden notification.
So that means we can absorb the systems as long as the user died between 10,000 and 90,000 years?
He told Sarah what the system told him.
Wait! The counter Tim McNeil created to start on his death had 90,115 years... Does that mean I missed the Tech System by 115 years? Tech System could have been useful! Man...
“So what are we going to do?” Sarah asked from her seat on the hotel bed. “Absorb the system?”
“Yes.” John sat down on a chair. “You will absorb this system. I’ve already absorbed one and have all twenty skills shared. If you absorb this system and there’s a useful skill, you can share it with me.”
“All right, then. What’s our plan?”
“Teleport inside, you absorb the system, I teleport you out.” John kept it simple. “In and out as quick as possible, causing no noise. Nobody should be able to sense or see us. Oh, but I have to warn you. When I found Danny, he had turned into an undead because the system wanted to live. Hopefully, this system hasn’t turned the host undead yet because it has only started dying today.”
“Is that like a zombie movie, then?” Sarah cracked a grin. “We need to destroy their brains?”
“Not at all.” John laughed. “I destroyed Danny’s heart to stop him. I don’t know about the brain.”
“Figures.” Sarah sighed. “Most of the things in movies turn out to be lies. Wish I read more novels…”
“All the movies I watched followed the same format.” John rolled his eyes. “Get the girl, fight a war, plot revenge…”
“Well, you’ve already got the girl!” Sarah laughed. “You’ve fought a war by yourself, and I feel like you’ve checked the ‘revenge’ box off pretty well.”
“Guess you still need to fight in a war,” John responded with a smirk. “Then we can head off on different adventures.”
Sarah’s smile disappeared. “I don’t want to go on different adventurers, though.”
“What? Won’t you get bored?” John quirked an eyebrow. “You want to be with me twenty-four hours a day, 336 days a year, for eternity? We’ll run out of things to talk about! You’ll get sick of me.”
Sarah’s expression grew a bit sad, and John suddenly wanted to take his words back.