After returning home, Alex logged onto Guns of Glory. He had 100 glory points which was enough to view some tutorials about Gun Technique at the Uncommon grade. After encashing all the glory points, Alex spent his time carefully observing the tutorial. It was the same army guy teaching more sophisticated insights into anticipatory guesses, perceptions, mentality, trajectory physics. Meanwhile, system updates continued to appear in Alex's line of sight.
[You observed gun technique. Your familiarity with the gun has risen. Gun Technique + 1]
[You observed gun technique. Your familiarity with the gun has risen. Gun Technique + 1]
...
While he gained a lot from the tutorial, it clearly wasn't enough to upgrade Gun Technique to Uncommon Rank. At some point he stopped receiving experience from.observing the tutorial.
"What happened?" Alex wondered. "Why am I no longer able to get experience, and Gun Technique is stuck at 80/1000 of Ordinary rank?"
[System informs that your strength is too weak to improve any further. Improve your strength beyond Ordinary Grade 2 to continue your learning experience.]
Alex decided to continue on Shooting Tower. Levels 11 onwards to Levels 20 were still in the realm where ordinary rank gun technique was useful in getting high completion rates. The only difference was that earlier the targets only shifted in distance, while this time the targets were moving in constant speeds. As he rose from 11th to 20th level, Alex realized that it was becoming increasingly difficult to obtain 100% proficiency, because his strength was only Ordinary Grade 2 and it was insufficient. By the twentieth level of the shooting tower, Alex had attempted the level eight times to end up getting 100% proficiency.
After completing the 20th level, Alex was spiritually exhausted and logged off. He felt a heaviness from exhaustion, yet seemed physically fine. Alex dragged himself to the training room and began performing physical exercises to lose weight. After he finished his chores, he returned to his room and immediately fell asleep.
Alex's father looked at his changed routines and then looked at his wife. "He's working hard." He said eventually.
"That he is. But... I wonder what he will do after he reaches Ordinary Grade 9?" Alex's mother asked, her face looking lost as she wondered about a future. She was afraid that her son would lose all hope again when he realizes he cannot cultivate beyond ordinary grade 9.
"I have been asking around for advise." Alex's dad replied. "Nothing yet, but we need to keep looking. Just like there was a way to save our son from illness, there could be a way to help him cultivate further." He said after some thought.
---
The next few days the routine continued. Alex would cultivate in class, then go to the Monster Zone to hunt for Gusty Rabbits on his own, return to practice Gun Technique.
In these days, he still hadn't improved to Ordinary Grade 3, and thus couldn't improve his gun technique due to inadequate strength and also reached a bottleneck on the shooting tower on the 23rd floor. Eventually, Alex decided to enter the Versus mode.
The Versus mode reminded Alex of games like counter strike and call of duty, that he used to play back in his time on old Earth. However, in VR, the realism was absolute and it was like entering a real life duel of guns.
The first few games, Alex would constantly lose. However, after twenty games, Alex finally started to get a hang of tactics and how to use terrain and extraneous variables to aid in a gunfight.
Five days later, Alex finally improved from Ordinary Grade 2 to Ordinary Grade 3 while cultivating in class. As he improved his grade, Alex once again began to feel an incredible suction of bad luck funnel into his body and energize every cell, creating a synthesis of an unexplainable energy.
At the same time, Alex felt like his vision suddenly shook, and the colors that defined his vision inverted for a split second. This was accompanied by a powerful thumping of his heart. Alex felt like his heart began to throb with abnormal strength and the bizarre energy being produced during breakthrough began to circulate within his body like an engine, beginning to form a complicated circulatory path, constantly rotating in motion.
Alex was stunned. When he closely looked at the shape of the circulatory path, it looked like a triple helix. Each cycle of the bizarre energy along the triple helical path seemed to throb with his heart like a powerful engine and he could feel his body constantly get stronger - far stronger than what an ordinary grade 3 would suggest. Alex felt, that just with body alone he could compete with an Ordinary Grade 6 or grade 7 warrior. And with each heartbeat, Alex could feel his body was slowly becoming stronger as well.
After a hundred cycles, the bizarre energy finally returned to the cells and became dormant. Alex also felt that the bad luck which had accumulated within his body disappeared. His strength finally stabilized and he now felt that his fleshy body was comparable to that of an Ordinary Grade 9.
What kind of concept was that? This kind of leapfrogging was almost inconceivable! Alex finally calmed down and thought carefully. Now that he was practicing the Crazy Immortal Sutra, he had done considerable research into it. From all his studies, he had found absolutely no similar experience mentioned anywhere.
Crazy Immortal Sutra being able to cure the Congenital Weakness Physique was already a big enough discovery. Alex wondered why it was not mentioned in publicly available information. At the same time, he began to suspect that his Congenital Weakness Physique characteristic had something to do with this bizarre phenomenon. However, Alex was flummoxed by the situation. Who could he ask for guidance on the matter?
For now he set the matter behind, and settled his cultivation. His breakthrough had initiated a huge flux in the bad luck in the school. A significant portion of the bad luck accumulated in the school had been absorbed by Alex.
The disappearance of bad luck meant that lucky events were more likely to occur in the school. Suddenly people discovered that they were obtaining lucky epiphanies into cultivation, or gaining new insight that had previously been just out of their grasp. Usually, this would be counteracted by a heavy instance of bad luck.manifestation on Alex, however, the bad luck that had concentrated within him had been consumed by that mysterious energy which had formed within his body.
"Crazy Immortal Sutra... just what is it?"