Closing the third book on formations that I had read that night, I looked out the window to see that the moon was getting close to the horizon.
At this point, I was starting to get most of the same information that I had read for the first few books written in a slightly different manner.
This was making the entire night's worth of research useless, and the joy from watching Yuki's reaction at dinner was fading. Not wanting to waste any more time on this, I walked out of my room and down the stairs.
I was about to leave the house when I heard someone moving around down the hall where the rooms were. Pausing for a moment to see if I was hearing everything correctly, there was no more sound, and I quietly left the house.
From here, I made my way to the workshop and the carpool to continue working on the project.
With that, a few hours passed as I put the different parts together, and the sun started to rise over the horizon.
Soon, Mom came into the carpool with Yuki following behind her, holding a few plates of food. She then pulled out a table from her spatial storage device where Yuki placed the food.
This confused me as she would normally come to find me and then drag me to the house to eat food and not the other way around. This thought was soon forced out of my mind as I watched her walk toward me and then grab my tail.
This caused me to panic initially and try to pull my tail away, but I was not able to get her to release and she forcefully dragged me over to the table.
With that, I learned again that my tail was hyper-sensitive and that mom was not someone I wanted to mess around with.
Quickly eating my food I get back to putting the project together as Mom goes about adding a few more formations to the other components. This meant that a few more hours had gone by, and most of the parts were now put together, with some of them already on the frame.
Sadly, I was not able to go any further with the project as Mom dragged me out of there to do combat training in the garden. Thankfully, it was not by the tail this time, but that did not change how I felt about it, as I was still beaten black and blue by her sword.
After that, I was told to go get the ores from the mines before returning for dinner. This also meant that I was able to watch Yuki's continued wonder and confusion at the taste of the food. Though, I did have to admit that this was the best-tasting chicken that I have ever had.
Regardless, Mom was not as distracted by this meal so she noticed Yuki's oddity as well, but thankfully decided not to comment on it.
From here, I choose to spend the rest of the night cultivating in the shrine and not doing more useless research. This was definitely not because I had now taught Yuki the technique, and she was more diligent in cultivation than me, thus meaning she would surpass me if I did nothing.
That was not part of my considerations at all.
Mom's quiet laughing off to the side brought me out of my thoughts and caused me to look at her, wondering what she was laughing about.
She only smiled at me before getting up and leaving the room, which felt strange as it was always me who left first. However, I quickly followed her out of the room and watched as she went down the hallway to her room before leaving the house through the front door.
I swiftly made my way over to the shrine where I positioned myself in front of Elinaria's statue and sat down to meditate. The natural Qi formation made my already monstrous cultivation speed three times faster. This meant that by the end of the night, my cultivation would be the same as if I had spent three days here and pushing me past the halfway mark to the next level.
Thankfully, by the time the morning had come around, nothing interrupted me, and I was able to advance my cultivation by a significant margin.
When I opened my eyes in the morning, I was tempted to go to the workshop to finish the project, but I remembered what happened yesterday and decided instead to save my tail by going back to the house.
This meant that while I was present for breakfast, I was also there to be beaten up in the morning under the guise of training.
After all of this, I was able to go to the workshop to finish the project. This was something I had been looking forward to since I saw that I had the tech unlocked for it.
My excitement was so obvious that no one would be able to mistake it, thanks to my tail wagging around at near-sonic speeds. It almost caused an issue, though, as my tail nearly swept a few fragile parts off the table near our work area.
This showed me that I needed to calm down before working, which took a solid ten minutes to accomplish. However, my tail was still wagging around, just not fast enough or in the proper arc to knock things off as a cat would.
With this, I was able to start putting the last few things on the frame before I would need to attach the wheels and handlebars. I was about to attach them when Mom tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to hold off before doing that.
My confusion showed as my head tilted to the side with my tail stopping its wagging motion to form into a question mark.
Thanks to this, Mom already knew what I was going to ask and answered, "I want to give you a little gift, and it will take a while to make it. So I need you to leave the workshop while I make it. Don't worry about finishing your little project either, as I am going to make a few modifications to it that I am sure you will love.
"Now go do some more research or something while I work."
With that said, she quickly took the front forks out of my hands and pushed me out of the workshop completely.
I turned around to complain, only to have the door closed in my face and doors locked before I could do anything.
With no way to actually complain and nothing to do, I walked back to the house dejectedly with my ears flat and my tail hanging low, but it was still somewhat snapping about in agitation.
Yuki was in the courtyard cleaning the training equipment when I entered by throwing the door open. This attracted her attention to me and soon to my tail and ears as well.
I did not really care about this and was about to make my way to the library when I felt someone patting my head like I was a kid.
Snapping my head to the side, I looked up at Yuki, who was standing there, patting my head with a smile on her face. I was slightly angry about this before my mind caught on to something that should not have been the case.
If I remember correctly, I was taller than Yuki, so why was I looking up at her?
Slightly unsure If I was just going crazy, I asked her, "Yuki, were you always taller than me?"
My question clearly caught her off guard and made her think for a moment before she said, "I think you were, but then how could you be shorter than me now?"
Her response, while unsure, helped me to realize that something was wrong so I chose to check my status next.
Name: Valaria "Vale" Lockheart
Race: One-Tailed Kitsune (One-Tailed Fire Saintess)
Height: 1.75 Meters (5' 9" Ft)
Physique: Primordial Empress Body (60% Awakened)
Spiritual Root: Heavenly Ten Element Revolving Spiritual Root
Realm: Qi-Gathering (Stage 3/9)
Qi pool: 62.5%/100%
Survival Level: 25
Stats:
STR: 100 (Limit)
END: 100 (Limit)
AGI: 100 (Limit)
INT: 100 (Limit)
SEN: 100 (Limit)
ENE: 100 (Limit)
Traits:
[...]
Blessing's:
[Champion of Elinaria]
Abnormal statuses:
[Deageing Curse: A curse placed upon you by the immortal origin realm cultivator Raina Lockheart.
This curse makes it so that as you cultivate to higher realms, your age decreases until you reach a specified age or the one who placed it removes it.
The age specified is 10 years of age. Your current age is 16]
Most of my status was the same as I remember, excluding my stats, which have quadrupled since last I saw them. The part that concerned my though was the since last one.
Since when did Raina curse me? And why did she do it?!