"Spirit Gem?" Alex wondered. "First time I hearing the term. Will have to look it up back at home." He mumbled to himself.
Having completed his task, Alex returned to the base and sold the carcasses. There were no pearl drops to sell this time around, but the carcass of the ferocious looking rabbit surprised the stall owner who Alex had become a frequent customer of.
"Is this a Gusty Rabbit? First time I've seen such a ferocious looking one." The bearded man asked in a shocked voice.
"It seemed like it was the leader of this pack. It had a weird attack skill and is ferocious unlike the others of this species. My guess is that it probably mutated!" Alex replied.
"Mutated! You can sell me the information about its skill, I'll pay you in star coins, or you can inform the Defense Corps and get some intangible benefits." The shopkeeper replied thoughtfully.
"Alright, I'll inform the defense corps and see what they have to say on the matter." Alex replied, taking back the carcass of the oversized rabbit and walking to the defense corps tent.
---
Back at home, Alex finally found an opportunity to rest. He sold the mutated rabbit carcass as well as the information about the attack skill it employed and its behavior as well as his tactic to beat it in great detail.
Alex took out a conical flash filled with a pale yellow solution from his bag. This was a potion that he had received as reward for the information. A calming potion.
The calming potion was a very expensive potion that wasn't commonly available. It was manufactures using materials from very rare monsters and its formula is a trade secret. The calming potion has a miraculous effect in that it puts the user into a state of absolute calm and helps fortify and compress mental power and raise awareness to a new level.
At the ordinary rank, few if any cultivation techniques focus on cultivating the mind and thus mental acuity levels remain rather low. However, the earlier one fortifies their mental power, the higher the peak in mental awareness can be reached in the future.
Meanwhile, Alex also looked into what the spirit gem is. Spirit gem was an item that dropped on extremely rare occasions. While the calming potion fortified the mind by compressing it, the spirit gem improved the mental capacity by nourishing the mind.
In the online guides to use the calming potion, there were many tips on using a spirit gem along with the potion to have an exaggerated effect. Alex thought it was really lucky for him to get both items at the same time.
After meditating quietly to ready himself, Alex calmly drank the calming potion and closed his eyes, the spirit gem held in his hand. Once he began to feel the coolness of the calming potion enter his blood stream and flow towards the brain,causing cold prickly sensations in his head, Alex placed the spirit gem onto his tongue and quietly chewed on it.
The spirit gem was tasteless and slowly dissolved into a fine mist within Alex's mouth, wafting directly towards the brain where it began to simultaneously nourish the mind while the potion worked on fortifying the mind.
The process was painless and smooth. The chilling effect helped Alex calm down and contemplate over the events of the last few days that had hastily gone by, contemplate about his transmigration, the state of the world and what his purpose was. He quietly felt himself going through memories of the previous owner of his current body, assimilating them on a deeper level than he had before, fusing the two identities until they became one.
Alex no longer dissociated from the person of the past. He was that Alex and he was also the transmigrated Alex. A sense of peace washed over him as the final grief of reluctance passed away. Alex suddenly felt like he had finally conjoined with the world and fused with this reality. He was no longer an adjunct observer but a participant in the happenings of the world.
At once he felt his sense of self diffuse from himself and he felt his ego come in contact with a gigantic presence, one that encompassed the entire world and made him feel like an ant, a participatory ant belonging to an entire colony of ecosystems. He felt the thin webs that connected every part to every other part of the whole.
After a while Alex opened his eyes. He felt his perception had strengthened a lot and his mental capacity had also increased by a significant amount. How much his mental fortitude had improved could only be judged by his reaction in times of momentous trouble. However, he felt like he just lost contact with another different feeling, like it was at the tip of his tongue yet he couldn't recollect it anymore. However, something had indeed changed within himself, as if he had come into contact with some greater truth.
"What a mysterious feeling. I wonder what that feeling was." Alex thought to himself.
However, now that he was feeling refreshed, he quickly went back to Guns of Glory. His physical and mental strength had both achieved massive improvements and he was eager to restart his rapid learning spree. Opening the tutorials he had stopped midway,Alex began listening attentively and watching carefully every move of the army soldier.
[You observed the basic shooting practices with attention. Your familiarity with the gun has risen. Gun Technique + 1]
[You observed the basic shooting practices with attention. Your familiarity with the gun has risen. Gun Technique + 1]
...
[Gun Technique 1000/1000]
[Congratulations, You have upgraded skill - Gun Technique (Uncommon)]
Finally, after finishing the tutorials for the uncommon rank Gun Technique, Alex managed to upgrade his knowledge and familiarity with the gun thanks to his broken system.
Excited to test his new found proficiency with the gun, Alex entered the Shooting Tower and began testing the 23rd level where he had remained stuck for a while. This time, it didn't take him long at all to blitz through the levels until he reached the 35th level without any struggle at all. Gun Technique at the uncommon level combined with the terrifying capability of Precision Accuracy made any open moving target an undefended sheep out in the open.