"I'm pretty sure he just needs to beat the shit out of somethings. Multiple times. Might be a bad idea if those have a face similar to his mother though." Persephone explained to her worried husband.
"Ok, I'm just going to open the twenty level difference bracket for him. After this round of affinity integration he should be able to not die when exposed to it, maybe cool his head beating shit that isn't hurt by one hit." He said while filling a series of forms under one second and doing exactly that.
*****
"Just go and stab this person repeatedly until you find the way that suits you best from those I gave you. If none really call to you then don't choose anything, I will get more weapon manuals for you to choose from. If nothing appears them, i will look into more complex weapons, because you wouldn't believe how much sense that will make if my intuition is correct." Aki said and dismissed Juny, who followed the frowning bald man ordered to protect him.
"Are you sure that's how you are supposed to teach a child?" Asked Melissa, raising a brown at the man slouching in her basement's couch while laying his head on the lap of his contracted Naiad.
"I'm teaching him to focus his hatred on convicted bad people specifically. The gods know I could have used a model to tell and force me not to use that fury against me and mine." He waved her off. "Besides his actual target, it'd be really messy if he doesn't starts distinguishing terrible ideas from normal ones. Whatever he might actually feel will be more readily discovered after the monitoring is done, so counter measures on it's way no matter what." He exaggeratedly gesticulated with his hands while using the lap top as a base for the book he was reading, sustaining it in the air with his mind.
"Aren't you just projecting on him?" She questioned, seemingly unconvinced.
"Of course I am. My experience is the only one I can compare his to though, so I just try to hear and see more of what he actually says. Generally by use of a jaded and mean bitch." He said, quickly getting hit in the stomach by said woman. "Thanks for being such a mom and remembering me of such sad subjects though. They're easy to forget since humans tend to try and keep then out of mind." He smiled at Melissa, tossing his head a bit back from the thigh pillow he was currently using.
Rolling her eyes, the older woman decided she was thinking too much into it. Even the way the little shit talked hadn't changed, nevermind his personality. It's not like...
Wait, was he trying to act as her shrink as well?
Interrupting the older woman's very correct assumption, Aki suddenly rolled to the side and fell to the floor, launching himself up with his arms and readily directing himself to the his workshop, eyes focused.
"Time's up. Just got another quest, so I'm going to be down there for a while." He announced to the two women in the room, both nodding in understanding.
*****
Receiving a new mythical rating, Aki considered his preparations for the new quest as complete after receiving the new set of recipes for the crafting milestone. It'd been his fastest growing skill, but it seems that he was still not the fastest to level it up in the multiverse.
That might have been because of the fact that blacksmithing actually shared three of it's four principles with his other professions, namely carving, energy resonance and refining, so there could have been some time from his previous grinding added towards the completion time.
It was fair enough from his point of view. There was a reason the rating was written as TRANSCENDENT, in all caps.
Shaking his head, Aki decided to skip to other, more readily solvable problems and inquiries. Like finding out how he looked with earrings and glasses now that he was more handsome and fit.
Turns out it isn't that bad to rip open holes in your cartilage and shove small nails in them, just very uncomfortable. Mainly because regeneration.
"I look fucking strange. I so need to find a better design. Maybe a piercing in the upper side of the lobe? I really wish there was something as convenient as turning armor invisible." He grumbled, giving up on the glasses and deciding to dedicate the time to make a new eye instead.
THAT, was going to be gruesome.
Downing his two new silver rings in his middle and index finger of his left hand and the silver chain with a little shield holding a photo of him and his family over his neck, Aki decided that he'd find a way and time to tattoo his back later. Any other kind of accessory would lessen all other effects currently applied to his body or simply not function.
The only reason he could even use six at the same time was his high level foundation, strange soul format and the fact all these were actually interlinked to work like one big accessory.
Translating to simpler terms, Aki had made set equipment that if equipped all together would not occupy more than one slot.
It was an extra expensive recipe, but he had a couple hundred thousands of essence plus change, so that wasn't really a problem, nevermind that those were beggining to get pretty useless.
Turns out, inventing your own recipes and schematics grants a lot more XP, so recently Aki has only ussed his own creations. Granted, most explode or melt the floor or both, but he'd figured out a lot of things.
An enchantment that can cause objects to induce deep loliness, a drug that can turn a person completly deft to most sounds (currently working on one that blocks all sounds), a drug that makes people unable to focus on anything, memory crystals, granades and others were all created with great effort and unwilling monster subjects, while more recently there have been plenty of chances for training human experiments to better the body.
The torture manual in particular has been of great use in the last endeavor.
He still had some hours before the time was up, so Aki decided he should probably go help raid some more demonic sects. Maybe he'd have the luck of finding someone with diamond or void affinity, since those were basically the only ones he didn't have at the moment and were reasonably easy to find.
Aki might seem like someone that already had it all, but one must remenber, spirit realm cultivators all have stupidly long lives, so while he is a ridiculous monster for having such level, someone with more time on the field will naturally have the time to gather affinities through more common means. The problem for everyone is, there's actually a lot of "sub-affinities". Practically just rare tipes of energy that are nescessary for better understanding of what emcompasses one concepts or another. Fate, chance and time form one temporal affinity. Void, gravity and space form spacial affinity. One more scientificaly atuned combination would be earth, metal and crystal/gem, forming ground affinity.
The only such 'advanced' affinities Aki posseses are the thermal and granule affinity. Yes, granule, the fussion of dust, salt and ash, it is considered an entire comcept and actually mighty useful.
Granule Lv 4:
Energy absorption IV: Allows the absorption and storage of any compatible energy for own use.
Particle creation III: You are able to speed the processes through which minimum particles are formed and have intrinsic knowledge of how to manipulate them
Time resistance II: You are unchangeable
Entropic marrow I: Your basic resilience is raised
Now, this is all fine and dandy, but you probably want to know what Aki's sudden quest is, right? Here it is.
[Main quest: meet and greet.
Requirement: Attend and survive the chosen's meeting.
*You may skip attendance without any penalties in exchange for ten days of extra time.
*There may not be any kind of violent action directed towards other chosen during the event.
Failure condition: Death or leaving the event ends
Reward: 2 good quality elemental affinity stones.
Penalty: - 10 days
Bonus 1: Win at one competition. +1 day
Bonus 2: Win at three competitions. +6 days
Bonus 3: Win at five competitions. 1 great quality affinity stone.]
And so, he decided he needed a lot of affinity levels so he can use those stones on the ones he actually will have a hard time finding.
One might think the unpleasant and torture like stones are not something looked for since there are less gruesome ways to aquire power, but it is exactly the opposite.
Affinity stones are actually the safer and easier way to obtain affinity. Unless you can keep finding partners several steps or even stages above you, sex just isn't a good solution, even in case of actually having a technique made exactly for extracting other's energy, the efficiency can only be kept to such a standard. Why do you think villains have so many cultivation furnaces?
Normal training? Even if you do find the necessary locations, how are you going to survive? Not everyone's first worry while preparing their build is to be able to survive decapitation.
You know what that means, right? The bare minimum acceptable is 5 wins.
*****
Not being able to find another furnace, Aki could do nothing but sigh and sit on a branch of a random tree of a random forest in finland, resting against it's trunk, waiting the final minutes before he was teleported over to the galatical meeting.
It was over in an instant really. He had his eyes wide open, yet was not able to see anything. First he was there and then he was somewhere else.
"Neat." Was all he said, completly ignoring the mild nausea and looking around, finding himself inside of a velveted room with a sinfully confortable chair he didn't even try to experiment. It wasn't everyday you saw something that literally just screamed confort and leisure on that level, literally making you question if you had ever actually sat on a 'chair', so he'd come back to examine it for information and traps later, but for now he simply left through the door behind the concept.
Ducking imediatly after was aparently not enough to dodge the invitation magically shoving itself in his face, but Aki was ussed to reading things this close when he had worse eyes, so nevermind this invite, he'd be able to read demonic runes no problemo. It could be easily resumed to:
(The gods cordially invite you to participate in the wide variety of events organized for the following week:
Day 1
Beast racing
Track field
Treasure hunt
Day 2
Beast taming
Crafting show
Talent show
Day 3
Free time
...)
Seeing as every tournament had it's own rewards and rules, Aki was more than excited to try and win the most prises even if he wasn't going to win everything.
Some prizes were merely materials and such, but others had special recipes and rituals which would easily be sold (after being copied) for a lot of essence in this tournament full of spirit realm cultivators.
So he completely ignored the even more attractive chair that had again appeared in front of him and reached for the next door while ignoring the various fake attacks.
As if Aki wouldn't assume there's a clausule of self defense or dueling. If any of those arrows were actually dangerous, he'd not be here at all, being the only mortal realm practitioner around and shit.
Reaching a circular room with more normal chairs, Aki sat on the one directly in front of his door, waving at the other three people that had already gotten there.
One was clearly a servant of a chosen, his mistress a beautiful woman, sitting with impeccable posture and mannerism, who besides looking at him, didn't give any other indication of noticing his presence. The other was a red haired boy, who nodded at him.
Even as more people entered the room and greetings were exchanged, no one broke the silence.
Only when the sixtyeth person sat down did any sound even get transmitted. Mostly gears turning and announcing a giant robot appearing out of the seemingly retractable center of the table while being carried by a platform.
It was basically a torso with sixteen mechanical arms, dressed in a tuxedo. And still it had a presence bigger than all of the present put together.
"Welcome one and all, ladies and gentlemen, chosen and guests!" Boomed a deep baritone in the back of Aki's head while a blossom of arms sprung with energy over the room.
Most people seemed to think it a show of power, but some like minded individuals thought it was just showing off as the host.
"I am the game master, your host for the following week. For those unfamiliar with the fenomenom, please do not worry about your home world and obligations to it, time is irrelevant here." It said, clearly speaking in several languages at the same time as it directed it's attention to all present.
Aki wasn't really worried about participating. Other people readily asked the questions he wanted answered, like sleeping and eating arrangements, leisure and training areas, the time table for the events, so on. One person even asked how many questions they were allowed per person.
"Five per chosen. More can be bought with the currency gained from events." The robot transmited, some people imediatly seeming to receive a kick to the gut from having wasted so many questions to the benefits of strangers.
Aki just shook his head and started looking for interesting people. It wasn't like there was some kind of writing over everyone's head telling you who they were, so he was unable to tell even who was from the same pantheon. It was quite clear everyone came from diferent societies though. While a couple of others also wore jeans and tshirts like his, some looked like nomads or dressed like people out of old china, one even dressed like a beggar. Instead of guestimating as he ussualy does though, he decided to procure some actual answers.
'I would like to browse the shop, please.' He swiftly thought while directing his attention towards the robot. Receiving the mental equivalent of a nod, soon a flood of information entered his head and dizzied him again, but with the amount of cultivation manuals he'd already memorized, he had grown quite ussed to recovering from information overload. 'Well now, aren't these interesting.'