Upon returning to the city, I made my way over to the commercial district. Having spent my first week in the Midnight Abyss World roaming around the streets aimlessly, I more or less knew where all the relevant places where.
"Hey, uh… Do you buy Demonic Beast corpses?" I asked the vendor of a stand with one of the more aggressive sounding Sect names I'd seen so far. The vendor's stand had a banner that read, "Death Sword Sect."
The vendor shot me and the Nejo corpse I carried a look and snorted, "We don't buy fodder trash like that, kid. But you can try your luck with those chumps of the Crescent Arrow Sect over there," he pointed dismissively at a stand across the street.
Offering him a nod for at least pointing me in a direction, I went over to the stand he had suggested and asked the same question.
"Hmm..." For a time, the vendor at the Crescent Arrow Sect's stand divided his attention into staring at me and the vendor from the Death Sword Sect; he had probably heard our conversation.
Eventually, he sighed and said, "I would refuse you out of spite for that arrogant bastard, but business is business. I'd rather not create any bad blood between us or our Sects without a good reason," the vendor said before he asked me to hand over the corpse for inspection.
"Oh?" The Crescent Arrow vendor paused as he turned his sight from the Nejo corpse to meet my eyes, "There is actually minimal damage done to all the valuable parts, including the most precious F Rank Demon Core."
"That's good, right?" I asked, unsure of why it was so surprising to him.
He must have understood my confusion as he opted to clue me in by saying, "Of course it is. It may not be anything impressive in the grand scheme of things, but usually the newbie Cultivators that kill these baby Nejos tend to me a bit more, let's say, messy…
"In its current condition, I'd buy the Nejo Demon Core for five Fractured Spirit Stones; ten Fractured Spirit Stones for the whole corpse."
"Fractured Spirit Stone?" It didn't even sound like a monetary bill.
"What? Do you want to trade for a different type of Monster Core or something?" The vendor asked.
"Er… What is a Fractured Spirit Stone?" The vendor squinted his eyes at me, probably looking for signs as to whether or not I was trying to bullshit him.
I wasn't.
"Fractured Spirit Stones are the least valuable type of Spirit Stone. They, along with all the superior kinds of Spirit Stones, are the closest thing to standardized money we Cultivators use when we aren't directly bartering. Of course, aside from being money, First Realm Cultivators like you can consume them to assist in your cultivation."
"Good to know," I muttered to myself before accepting to trade the whole Nejo corpse for ten Spirit Stones.
"Here you… Where is your Bag of Holding?" The vendor once more looked at me like I had just done something beyond stupidity.
"Do I even have to ask?" I sighed.
"Ok… How about instead of just dumping all the Spirit Stones in your hands, I give you five Spirit Stones and hand them over to you in an F Rank Bag of Holding? It's carrying capacity is exactly two cubic meters."
"Sure…"
After I suffered the humiliation of having the poor vendor explain how I'd use what looked to me like a card-deck protector, I received my five Fractured Spirit Stones. Then for the first time, I used literal magic — actually it was just my Nameless Umbra Spirit — to make my "card-deck protector" Bag of Holding grow to the size of a backpack. I filled it with the five marble-like stones the vendor gave me, and our transaction was finally completed.
"Say, before I leave, what's your name? After I return from hunting again, I think I'll continue selling my spoils to you; if you'll still have me," I asked the vendor.
"My name is Osen Divyl."
I gave him a nod and went on my way… back to the Harbinger Sect Compound.
…
I sighed as I returned and found not a trace of evidence to suggest that the others had returned. Oh well, at least the trip back wasn't going to be wasted, seeing as I now had five Fractured Spirit Stones to play around with.
I pulled one out of my Bag of Holding and thought, 'Osen mentioned Collection and Saturation Realm Cultivators can use these to boost their cultivation, but… How the fuck am I supposed to do that?'
I could have asked him before I left his stall, but… Yeah, there was no need to cause him any more secondhand embarrassment for having to teach me all this supposedly common-sense stuff. Besides, someone had to have discovered these things could help cultivation without the instruction of others first, so I should be able to do the same, right? How hard could it possibly be?
I sat down and eventually entered a meditative trance, priming myself for cultivation. As always, a fog of dust distorted the air around me as Heavenly Air was pushed in my direction for consumption, and that's when I felt it.
Coming from my hand which held a Fractured Spirit Stone, there was a heat which felt like molten lava in comparison to the merely "warm" passive Heavenly Air in the atmosphere. Alas, the minutes would pass and nothing I did would draw the Heavenly Air within the Spirit Stone out and into my body.
Hours passed, increasing my frustration to no end, until eventually I shot out of my seated position and cursed the stone in my hand. "How the fuck are you supposed to breath in air that is locked inside a stone?!"
I was tempted to eat the thing, after recalling Osen specifically said cultivators "consumed" Spirit Stones. But the thought of being wrong and eventually having to "expunge" the whole marble out of my body stopped me from making any potentially idiotic and painful decisions.
'This shitty fucking stone, just looking at it makes me want to hunt another Nejo and—' I was struck with enlightenment.
The Fractured Spirit Stone was just a stone; it was a soft and fragile feeling thing, really. Compared to the neck bones of the Demonic Beast I shattered, I could probably pulverize the Spirit Stone.
I sat back down after properly calming down to a reasonable level and looked at the Spirit Stone in my hand for just long enough to realize that even if I was wrong, I still had four Spirit Stones to experiment with. So, I gripped with hardly half my strength and instantly shattered the marble into several dozen smaller pieces.
Picking up one of the much smaller pieces with my thumb and index finger, I squished and grinded down what was left until a fine powder remained. As far as my Umbra Spirit was concerned, this powder was a dust of Heavenly Air concentrate and immediately, I knew I'd just found a way to elevate my already cheatsy cultivation strategy.
Now I didn't even need to push Heavenly Air. I could just crush Spirit Stones to dust and directly carry the Heavenly Air in them into the unprimed cells in my body.
'Who ever decided that Dust was the weakest derivative element or whatever, needs to get their eyes checked. This has to be the most efficient way to cultivate,' I thought, having absorbed what felt like half a day's worth of Heavenly Air from the Spirit Stone dust in under an hour.
Of course, maybe they had considered this and simply decided to prioritize the other aspects of the elements. From what I understood, combat prowess and personal strength was the most important thing in this world, so it made sense to think of something as harmless as dust as the weakest.
At least compared to fire which could burn, water which could change properties and drown, air which was traceless and could cut, and even basic earth which could cause blunt trauma, dust really did seem like the weakest. All the other elements I'd heard of so far, I could at least conceive of ways to implement them in a fight. Dust on the other hand… Maybe I could chuck some at the eyes of my enemies?
Maybe that would work against the normal humans I knew from Earth, but against the superhumans of the Midnight Abyss World? I was still a bottom of the barrel reject, in the first Stage of the first Realm of Cultivation, and even I probably wouldn't flinch at having dust thrown in my eyes; and that was not just because it was in my Affinity.
With my meager cultivation base, my body was already transforming into something more impressive, something profound, something… divine. I could run faster than I imagined being possible for a human, I was stronger than I thought possible, so it would follow logic to assume my defense was also rising to that of something beyond the norm.
Could something like Dust ever compete with that?