5 Meditation (Revised)
From the Orb of Origin, Elizabeth received three weapons she hadn't even considered. Her ideal weapons turned out to be a pair of nearly identical pistols and a short blade.
Elizabeth could only opt for appraising her weapons with her Status Functions to quell her utter confusion.
[Status
Name: Dawnbringer Blood Armament
Grade: F
Intelligence: +5
Description: An ever-evolving armament created from the user's blood and an Orb of Origin. As a pistol of Time alignment, Dawnbringer prioritizes speed over strength. It shall forever be bonded only to Elizabeth Ultimatia.
Special Effect: Time-type Enchantments on Magical Bullets have their effects improved by 5%.
Name: Chaosbright Blood Armament
Grade: F
Intelligence: +5
Description: An ever-evolving armament created from the user's blood and an Orb of Origin. As a pistol of Space alignment, Chaosbright prioritizes strength over speed. It shall forever be bonded only to Elizabeth Ultimatia.
Special Effect: Space-type Enchantments on Magical Bullets have their effects improved by 5%.
Name: Inferioria Blood Armament
Grade: F
Speed: +5
Description: An ever-evolving armament created from the user's blood and an Orb of Origin. Inferioria is a short blade without alignment, an assassin's tool, yet more than suitable for prolonged close combat. The result of combining the blood of a mortal with an Orb of Origin. This blood armament shall forever be bounded to its user and possess the ability to grow and evolve.
Special Effect: In or below the Mortal Stage, Speed increases by 5% at the cost of 100 units of Inner Strength per minute.]
After learning more about her weapons from their Status descriptions, Elizabeth began forming an idea of why she had received the set as her ideal weapons.
'I guess the pistols are supposed to provide long-range support while I'm expected to personally hack things to pieces,' she thought, as she reached to hold her weapons.
Upon taking a closer, Elizabeth discovered that the handguns, which initially looked identical, weren't carbon copies of each other.
After picking up her Dawnbringer, Elizabeth squinted at the desaturated cyan highlights running along the pistol's black body as she thought, 'First, Shadow Realm Gateway came in a cyan-colored tome, then it was Temporal Meditation.'
As she pushed the mag release to check if the pistol was loaded, she thought, 'Now this magical pistol with a special effected related to time also has cyan markings.'
'Must be a motif,' she shrugged her shoulders, also confirming that the pistol had no bullets either in the chamber or its magazine.
Moving on to Chaosbright, she confirmed it also came unloaded. However, its distinctive markings were barely recognizable as golden.
"Hey P, quick question, are Time Energies supposed to be cyan-colored while Space Energies are golden?"
"Correct," P said.
Elizabeth smirked as she put down her pistols and picked up her short blade.
"Whoa," Elizabeth's eyes widened as she realized how light the weapon was.
The short blade was incredibly small and not at all like the longsword Elizabeth imagined when she was creating her Speedy Time Mage. With a simple black and purple-tinted handle and pommel, Inferioria had no guard or blade collar. Its blade was at most thirty centimeters long.
With all her weapons personally handled, Elizabeth finished her first impressions.
"These are all pretty nice," she started. "The pistols are pretty cool. The fact that their so similar makes me think that they were created with the concept of space and time being intertwined in mind. Though, I wouldn't put it past the Gods and Goddess like P to model them this way as a response to my character's background."
"And the short blade is pretty neat. Albeit, way too small in my opinion. I mean, isn't reach a pretty big factor in martial arts and combat in general? Tsk," She was quick to dismiss the train of thought as she concluded, "I guess I just gotta hope the blade's evolutions give it a longer blade… Wait!"
It was at that moment that upon reflection, Elizabeth noticed she was forgetting that this was real life.
'This isn't a game, idiot,' she chastised herself.
'These are real weapons. I have Magical guns and a fucking short blade in my room right now. A couple minutes ago I learned how to cultivate, I also learned a lot about medicine. I have the magic to go into an alternate dimension…'
"Hey, uh… What exactly do I have to do to gain experience and level up?" Elizabeth nervously asked. "Cause I hope you're not expecting me to just go to the Shadow Realm and start killing things to gain experience like a game character."
P was amused that Elizabeth had brought this concern up only now.
She said, "Well that certainly is part of the plan, but I imagine that your interpretation of how you gain experience is a bit warped. You see, instead of just becoming stronger by killing more and more things, your growth is entirely dependent on your efforts in training."
She continued, "Right now, I obviously don't intend to have you travel into the Shadow Realm as you'd be a sitting duck with no real strength. But after training for a bit, you'll certainly have to go there and train by killing monsters and the like."
Elizabeth felt a cold pressure weigh down on her as she realized that she would have to become a killer in the future.
She had more questions that needed answers, so she asked, "About the Shadow Realm, how exactly does the teleportation work? The magic that lets me passively activate the spell needs a cooldown of one day, so what will I do to survive during the time I can't come back to my home dimension on Earth? Are there only monsters like you said in the Shadow Realm or can I find other humans like me there?"
Elizabeth had many more questions, but P was quick to put a stop to her unrelenting anxiety-driven questions.
P said, "Stop, stop! How do you expect me to answer your questions if you don't even give me the chance to speak?"
"Ok," She continued after Elizabeth settled into silence, "So, you already know that using your Shadow Realm Gateway Magic will just teleport you directly into the Shadow Realm. However, within the Shadow Realm, you will need to figure out a way to survive on your own.
"The Shadow Realm is an entirely separate dimension just like the one we are currently in, so it will hold many different planets and environments. But you can rest assured that on your first visit, you'll be transported to the most backwater area with as little threat as possible.
"Of course, that won't change the fact that you'll have to search for shelter and hunt for food at the start. But there will be people and civilizations there as well."
Elizabeth sunk into her thoughts only to deepen her concerns. She thought, 'Out of all the people, why was I the one selected for this? Prior to being transformed, I was a lazy bastard, so just where did P get the confidence to pick me as her Chosen?'
P seemed capable of reading her mind, as she asked, "You want to go back to playing your games, don't you?"
Elizabeth didn't even have to voice her assent, her body language and facial expression made it obvious to anyone how much she didn't want to change.
Thus, P continued on, saying, "Well, what are you waiting for? Remember, your life is now literally a game, so you should just play it."
Her words didn't have the impact she thought they would have on Elizabeth, so she tried going into detail to make her at least somewhat productive.
P said, "Come on… It looked to me like you had fun getting those experience points for cooking. For now, all you have to do is meditate and cultivate Inner Strength and that pleasurable feeling of progressing through your levels will surely match that of any RPG you'd rather play anyways."
"Besides," Elizabeth could almost picture the shit-eating grin P must have had on her face as she smugly said, "wouldn't you like to get cool Spacetime Skills? The path to becoming a literal Goddess of Space and Time has been opened up for you."
Elizabeth understood that P was undoubtedly being manipulative, but then again, she wasn't lying.
'It truly had been a joy to earn experience for my Cooking Skill while making my breakfast earlier.' Elizabeth thought, 'And the chance to play around with Magic in real life would be immensely desirable to no one more so than a nerdy game addict like me, too.'
She was half-serious as she thought, 'Maybe training to become a killing machine wouldn't be so bad if it was as satisfying as watching my numbers rise…'
It was doubtlessly true for when she killed in a virtual space. What about in her life now that it had also been turned into a game? It's not like she was against killing in the first place.
With her self-proclaimed sociopathy, Elizabeth didn't think that taking a life would impact her that badly. She just didn't want to open herself up to being on the receiving end, and end up dying herself.
Thus, she resolutely did away with any other thoughts and cleared her bed. With a suitable environment for cultivation prepared, she sat according to the direction of her Temporal Meditation.
As a complete novice to the practice of meditation and cultivation, Elizabeth was slow to adopt a proper form. It would take minutes before she could get the right posture and even longer before she could empty her mind of all distractions to concentrate on the mantras of her Temporal Meditation technique.
However, since she had absorbed all the knowledge regarding the method through a special Grimoire, she already knew the subject like a veteran with 10,000 hours of experience. She knew all the tips and tricks to make the most of the technique and within the hour she was properly meditating.
That being said, P was considerably impressed as she peered through the void to watch her Chosen. P thought, 'Ho? This one's talent isn't too bad. She managed to enter meditation for the first time in under an hour.'
Of course, to receive a rating of "not bad" from Goddess like P, it put Elizabeth's talent far in a league above that of the Practitioners on Earth.
Elizabeth wouldn't know it as she didn't have any experience with other Practitioners, but the hardest part about cultivating in the Mortal Realm revolved around meditation. It simply wasn't part of natural human nature to sit still for hours. The difficulty of the matter was only exacerbated by the fact that one's yields at the start of cultivation left many Practitioners frustrated.
Moreover, entering meditation was a whole other beast that Practitioners usually took hours, days, or even weeks to figure out. Fortunately for Elizabeth, her Goldfinger's system for delivering notifications wouldn't bother her until after she was finished. It accurately judged when she shouldn't be disturbed, else she might have awakened from messages informing her that her Inner Strength rose 0.2 units every minute.
With just this first session, she managed to meditate for about four and a half hours, gathering 54 units of Inner Strength in total. For a beginner, it was a respectable period of time to have meditated, though Elizabeth believed she could have lasted much longer.
She hadn't faced the two major reasons that Practitioners broke their meditation as she was neither in need of food nor insufferably bored... yet. Her breakfast could have easily carried her for several more hours, while her patience for the grind of gaining experience was literally world-class.
It was embarrassing, to say the least, but the reason Elizabeth was jolted out of her meditation was to answer nature's call. Technically, she could be counted as a Practitioner now that she had cultivated Inner Strength. But, she hadn't cultivated nearly enough to stand above her bodily needs.
Nearly five hours had passed since she had eaten her breakfast. Add to that the untold hours she had been unconscious for after her transformation took place and it was only natural for her body to protest.
Alas, there was no one Elizabeth could turn to, to vent the dread she felt upon realizing she would need to use the bathroom as a girl for the first time.
At least, the trip would serve a dual purpose. Now that she had meditated for a while, some of the foul impurities within her body had been excreted and she also needed a bath.
After scuttling from her room to the bathroom, Elizabeth continued to hold the pressure in her body as she took a hard and long look at herself in the mirror.
"Come on…" She tried to hype herself up to no avail.
"Just fucking do it!"
Her pep talk was all for naught as she would only do the deed when her body gave her an ultimatum.
"Haa…"
It wasn't as horrible as she'd imagined.
