Depthless Hunger: A Progression LitRPG, page 41
The flirting was interrupted by the sound of someone being violently sick. Everyone turned to see a large man vomiting into a bin, which prompted a mix of laughter and scorn. But no one said anything when he uncorked a healing potion and drank the entire thing. Even from a distance Kai could feel its potency... that potion had been worth hundreds of Goralian Eagles and the man had just used it to get over a little sickness.
As his stomach turned a flip, Kai put a smile on his face and wrapped his arm around Kalliay Corinin's waist.
.
..
.
Alone in the garden, Zae Zin Nim reflected on the differences between celebrations in Deadwaste and in Cloudspire. There was no shortage of debauched revelry at home, but there it was something inflicted on society's inferiors. Here, everyone seemed happy to degrade one another. She was supremely relieved that her foreign status and reserved disposition allowed herself to separate from the crowd.
If she hadn't known Kai Clanless better, she might have thought that he enjoyed it. He was a young man, after all, and in her experience young men were extremely predictable when it came to certain subjects. Yet she knew what he looked like when he smiled, a fierce grin that came out of nowhere, and this didn't even deserve to be called an imitation.
She couldn't watch him the entire time without drawing attention, of course, so she looked away and tracked the qi of the group. Eventually they left with Kai, the old woman half-supporting him as he pretended to stumble. Zae Zin Nim was glad there was no one to see her face.
The guards had stopped paying attention to her and simply patrolled the garden, so she easily slipped into the shadows. Keeping track of Kai's movements, she moved in parallel outside the estate. They must have given him an invitation to the interior, but if it didn't go how Razzagah had said...
Just when she began to worry that the situation had gotten out of hand, Kai broke from the others. She wasn't sure what excuse he had made, but his qi approached hers rapidly. Then she caught just a glimpse of him in the window of the balcony indicated, beginning to stumble through.
"Kai, not that way!" An attractive woman pulled him back into the estate with a laugh. The balcony doors closed and she couldn't hear them anymore.
While waiting long enough to ensure that they had moved on, Zae Zin Nim prepared herself. Her essence had been obscured from the beginning and now she fully shrouded it so she would be nothing but a ghost to spiritual senses. She took more time than she might once have, because mana users had proved less incompetent than she expected.
Eventually she took the chance. In a single silent leap, she reached the balcony where she had last seen Kai.
A metallic square lay just in front of the balcony doors, just as they'd discussed. Zae Zin Nim picked it up and examined the unusual mana formation. No traps, just a form of identification. Gripping it in one hand, she passed into the inner estate. Just as had been promised, no alarms rang at her presence.
With the first two steps of the plan complete, the rest was up to her. She had memorized the estate map, so the only difficulty in traveling to her location was avoiding the occasional servants passing through to the outer party. They all used their own squares to open the doors, but theirs were attached to their sleeves instead of in the form of invitations.
When she tested her own, it worked in the same way. Not all of the doors within were sealed with mana, but she followed the procedure anyway. Soon she left behind all signs of the party as she moved deep within the Corinin estate. That brought her to the vault door, exactly as Razzagah had described.
It might have been a major obstacle in Deadwaste, but Zae Zin Nim wasn't particularly impressed. She could have overpowered the mana binding the great stone slab and a real cultivator could have simply punched through it. Instead, she was forced to use a crystalline device that slowly undid the seal.
This "crystal cultivation" ...she could admit that some of the techniques were similar, but it seemed like such a cheap copy. Perhaps the inhabitants of this Krysal place were immigrants from Cloudspire, or shipwrecked sailors who had washed up on shore. She had no real evidence for the theory, aside from the fact that the Krysal City States were across the ocean from Cloudspire.
Eventually, however, the device did its job. The stone slab opened silently and Zae Zin Nim walked into the Corinin clan vault unopposed.
Compared to what she had been expecting, there wasn't much. No sacred treasures with mystical powers, no millennia-old ingredients? The vault was basically a cube carved out from the stone that served as a storage chamber. Dust covered various containers stacked along the walls and there was even a set of paintings no doubt moldering and losing their value. Only a section with shelves and documents looked to have been used recently.
Then she spotted the mana pool and she forgot about the rest.
Technically she should have looked for the documents first, but Zae Zin Nim barely considered this. She had what she wanted within her grasp, so everyone else could go to hell. Kai was the only person she owed anything.
The circular pool had been covered by a slab of metal, but when she pulled it aside, the entire chamber was illuminated by sapphire light. Mana flowed underneath and she was surprised to see that it wasn't truly a liquid. This was no mana-charged water, as with the potions favored on this continent. Instead the power flowed in pure form, like a flame burning without fuel.
Zae Zin Nim took a careful breath and sat down beside the pool to prepare herself. This was her chance to overcome what had blocked her cultivation for so long. She needed to take the leap as soon as she could possibly do it right.
Kai had told her there was nothing to it but instinct. She suspected that what he said was true for him and would not be for her. Technique analysis had never been her strength, so she had only slowly been developing her understanding of Classes. Her teachers had told her that advanced essence management was unnecessary until her cultivation had broken free from the first realm, but now it might prove critical to her survival.
Still, she could only prepare so long. Eventually she would have no choice but to trust herself to abstract danger and instinct. Hopefully the tension sustained as they fought their way in would be enough for her to awaken.
She stepped into the pool and immediately fell to the bottom. The mana swirled around her soul, beginning to suffuse her... and then it began to conflict.
As fragments of her soul ground together, Zae Zin Nim let out a silent scream within the mana. Her cultivation had advanced too far, occupying the space within herself that her new Class was awakening. It was as if an alien seed had been planted in her dantian, now spreading roots that would crack everything she had struggled so hard to gather.
Zae Zin Nim desperately tried to reach to the edge to pull herself free, but her hand fell into an abyss of mana and the power pulled her back down.
Chapter 74: Turning a New Page
As the mana attempted to drown her, Zae Zin Nim desperately choked down panic and focused on facts. She had only seconds to avoid a permanent deviation. Escape was impossible. The only path was through the mana flooding her.
Instead of trying to manage it like qi, she screamed directly into the mana. The roots that had been invading her dantian evaporated into raw power. It threatened to escape her entirely, then responded to her will and formed a ring around her dantian.
Just like that, it was over. Zae Zin Nim realized that her body had crawled back out of the pool despite not having consciously decided to do so. She lay on the side for a while, marveling that she had somehow reached a stable state never discussed in Cloudspire. Her dantian remained where it should be in her lower stomach, a bit drained but unharmed. A ring of mana burned around it, a halo from one angle and an eclipse from another.
Her cultivation was unharmed, but had she acquired what she needed? She slowly sat up and searched within herself. All her polished cycling techniques didn't work, as she'd predicted. Instead she reached for the mana exercises that Kai had taught her.
Blue flames flickered to life around one of her hands, slowly spreading to outline each finger. It began to spread up her arm, not only not burning her but strangely cool. When she reached for the power, all the flames snuffed themselves out.
There would be time to discover the truth of that later. All that remained was to see the truth of her essence.
<
Name: Zae Zin Nim
Total Power: 152
Cultivation: Body Refinement 91% (100)
Novice Coldfire Corona: 1 (1)
Blackblood Physique Level: F-6 (42)
Soul Level: 3 (9)
>
The new power settled in just beneath her cultivation, declaring itself to be "Novice Coldfire Corona." That was not what Kai had said should appear, but she was unconcerned. Her years of cultivation had adapted the mana into a form more appropriate for her. Once that would have been intimidating, but she knew they could find the appropriate path together.
On that note, she had what she wanted, so it was time to stop being selfish. Zae Zin Nim swiftly began to inventory the vault, evaluating everything not compared to the treasures of her expectations, but by how useful they could be to him.
Even though it seemed the most petty, she forced herself to examine the papers first. Razzagah Lantrian had been a trustworthy ally and helped her reach this opportunity, after all. She was surprised how many papers had been stored, in compendiums instead of proper scrolls. At least they were very easy to search, even if all the mercantile details eroded her will to persist.
When she reached the specific records that Razzagah had wanted her to search for, she simply took the entire book. It would take too long to find the exact evidence he needed, plus this would make the goal of the theft less obvious.
That complete, she could look for anything that might be useful. She left all the gold, since it usually meant nothing compared to cultivation. When she happened across a large number of Krysali crystals, however, she swept all the most potent ones into her sleeve. Even if she couldn't use them to create a proper flying vessel, she had a theory about their potential use.
Aside from the completely useless items such as the paintings, there were a large number of marginally powerful items. Magical swords, armor, and the like... all of it pathetic. Only the Irunians who had made Kai's weapon spheres could create anything that wasn't an insult to the very concept of a magic item. He was better off fighting with his internal monstrous power than using these crutches.
Only a single item displayed any kind of spatial manipulation whatsoever, but she couldn't define its proper usage. The outer appearance was a dense wedge and it could clearly expand into something larger. Since she didn't know how large it might become, she simply took it without further experimentation.
Careful examination revealed that two of the most valuable items were left to gather dust in a corner. Two stones with dense elemental mana, buried so deep that perhaps their purposes had been forgotten. She suspected that they would generate fire and water, not at a combat level but in large enough quantities to make their journey less unpleasant.
Just when she thought there was nothing left worth taking, Zae Zin Nim noticed a safe in a corner. It wasn't locked to keep anyone out, but warded to keep something in. When she forced open the door, she was surprised to see a monster core throbbing inside. This one was a sphere of bluish flesh that was larger than her hand, far beyond any of the other monster cores she had encountered in Deadwaste. She'd seen more potent and refined cores before, but never any that had this strange twisted nature.
Whatever it was, it might potentially be useful to Kai. Instead of dirtying her robes, she tore a painting from its frame and used it to wrap up the core. The constipated-looking man on the painting couldn't object, after all.
Loaded down with everything she had stolen, Zae Zin Nim was even more cautious leaving the estate. There was no way she could hide everything from the vault and no way to explain what she was carrying to anyone who looked for more than a moment, so she needed to leave as soon as possible. Her only stop on the way out was the balcony, where she dropped Kai's invitation emblem in the exact position he'd left it.
Then, a single jump over the estate's outer wall and the theft was complete. If the entire city came down on them the next day, she didn't really care.
.
..
.
"The mistress has no more need of you."
Kai woke up to someone dragging him upright. He very nearly attacked before he remembered what was going on. The guard was just a man with a total strength of 10; one solid punch might have accidentally decapitated him. Having come so close to murder put Kai off balance, long enough for him to be pulled out of the room. The sheets entangling his legs nearly tripped him up, then he was pushed out.
His pants hit his chest, then the door slammed a second later.
Memories flooding back, Kai ashamedly tugged his pants back on. What he'd experienced might have been a fantasy for some men, but he felt like a toy. Maybe some of the women had felt physical lust for him, but he'd seen plenty of scorn as well. Kalliay Corinin certainly had viewed him as someone to be used and discarded. Now that he stood outside the well-guarded inner estate, he just felt tired.
Currently he was wearing only pants, and he doubted he was getting his tunic back unless he fought the guards for it. It wouldn't be difficult, just pointless. A few of them snickered, as if he should be ashamed of himself. Kai wasn't sure what he felt, but he decided that he didn't care what they thought. He squared his shoulders and resolved to walk out shirtless.
Was his musculature changing? He'd always sought a leanly muscular body, wanting to balance strength and agility. Somehow he'd become significantly more top-heavy even though he had been wandering through the wastelands and cultivating instead of doing any focused upper body training.
What surprised him, now that he had time to think about it, was that the night hadn't even been very physically gratifying. He'd take a lazy afternoon with Juray a thousand times over an impersonal orgy. Even though he tried to tell himself otherwise, he did feel a little slimy for making the decision. If Zae Zin Nim hadn't been able to awaken her Class, he would feel even worse.
On his way out, he saw that the party was essentially over. There were a few drunks collapsed across seats and a number of broken chairs as if a brawl had broken out. Several serving women were gathering all the remaining mana-charged wine on a cart, and when they saw him walking through shirtless, they tittered behind their hands.
Kai grabbed one of the wine bottles, tore off the top with his teeth, and drank it while he walked past.
So many of his thoughts had been focused on making everything work for Zae Zin Nim and Razz, he hadn't really thought about what it would do to his reputation. Back in Monskon City, he hadn't paid attention to that sort of gossip because he'd always been training. Here, he had a bad feeling that people cared more about that sort of thing. If people started throwing this in his face... it might be easier just to leave Rayakan. They had what they needed, hopefully.
Kai sped up as he got into the city, hoping for answers. They couldn't meet Razz at all that night or even the next day, since they needed to avoid drawing any more connections between them. Maybe longer, depending on if the theft was discovered and investigated. But he should be able to meet Zae Zin Nim at their inn unless something had gone terribly wrong.
By the time he got back, there had been no shouts of alarm or pursuit by hunters. The innkeeper shook her head when she saw him, but didn't say anything.
When he finally got back to their room, Kai saw Zae Zin Nim sitting almost motionlessly on her bed. Definitely unharmed, though her shroud was up and so he couldn't see if her awakening had been successful. Had this step been meant to cure her physical condition or not? If she'd collected anything, she had sensibly hidden it away.
"Kai. You are well?" She blinked when she opened her eyes, but said nothing about his condition.
"More or less." He moved past her to go look for another tunic in his pack. "I really hope you awakened a good Class, otherwise all this trouble was for nothing."
For the first time he had ever seen, Zae Zin Nim blushed. The expression was strange across her scarred face, but it was unmistakable. To make things even weirder, she rose to her feet and gave him a deep bow.
"You gave up your chastity for my sake, Kai Clanless. I will not forget this."
"Wait, that's not-" She pushed past him and was gone before he could figure out what the hell he was supposed to say to that.
He hadn't even gotten his question answered. Kai sat down on the side of the bed and just stared for a while, then collapsed backward.
Chapter 75: Hangover of Loot
In the morning, Kai didn't feel like discussing anything that had happened the night before. He saw Zae Zin Nim wrapped up in all her blankets, so she must have returned at some point during the night. Since she seemed to be sleeping soundly, he crept out of the room for his usual morning training, breakfast, then second training.
When he returned, it seemed Zae Zin Nim had been cultivating for some time. Her eyes flickered open and this time she was all business. The previous awkward moment might as well have not existed.
"We cannot meet with Razzagah Lantrian today." She placed her hands on her knees firmly. "I would like to discuss our future cultivation."
"Sure, but I still don't know if we succeeded last night." Kai sat down on his own bed and leaned back propped up by his arms. "You did get everything, right?"
"The financial records are beneath the bed for now. I believe they include what our ally wanted, but I cannot say for certain. In any case, only he can tell you how successful such political matters were."
"Fair enough. But when you say cultivation, you do mean your Class, right?"
