Cyl and Byrth decided to let Luckas rest after finishing the conversation. Soon Luckas was left alone, and his breathing grew heavy as he looked dazedly at the notification window in his vision.
'Congratulations on achieving the 1st level of Qi Cultivation, one talent point was rewarded.'
Luckas stared at the message for a few seconds, he felt his heart beat rapidly, he finally activated the system.
-" Hey system, do you have an AI or something like that?" Luckas tried to communicate with the system again, now that he activated it he felt there was a chance of the system responding.
After waiting for a minute Luckas sighed, it looked like the system didn't have any intelligence at all so he decided to open the talent tree to check if there were any changes.
He opened the system interface with a thought just like the last time and selected the Jing talent tree, he checked it and noticed that the tree still was locked, so he closed it and checked the middle one, Luckas already had his suspicions that this talent tree was locked too.
As he checked the Shen talent tree and confirmed that it was locked he turned back and choose the Qi talent tree, he thought that if he wanted to use the other trees he needed to start cultivating too.
This made Luckas headache, it looked like he would gain 1 talent point for each level he advanced, but, as he learned from Byrth it was almost impossible to cultivate two paths at once.,
-' If I want to take full advantage of the system I need to cultivate my body too, at least till the 8th level, this way I can acquire 8 more talents points.' Luckas always liked to plan ahead so he decided to think carefully about his future plans. ' As for the Shen tree, I don't know what it is, but from its illustration, it could be soul cultivation.'
Luckas was deep in thought as he finally decided to check the contents of the branches of the Qi talent tree, he noticed that after the first two levels the branch reunited into one path, and after that separated again.
-' Qi absorption rate I, Qi Control I, and Qi Purity Rate I. It looks like each path represents an area of augmentation.' Luckas was in deep thought as he analyzed his system. ' So, the first branch represents quantity, the second control, and the third quality.' Clarity came to Luckas as he tried to understand how his system functioned.
Finally having a better understanding of the branch he decided to check the second and third branches, only those 3 levels weren't blacked out. The second branch continued the same for two of the branches, only the second one changed.
-' Qi Absorption Rate II and Qi Purity Rate II are a direct continuation of their previous choice, Elemental QI Control I still follows the pattern of Quantity, Control, and Quality pattern, but, does this mean that elemental Qi and normal Qi are completely different?' Luckas felt that his understanding of the cultivation world was too low to reliably choose which branch to choose.
Luckas pushed his doubts to the back of his mind and decided to check what would happen if he selected one of the branches, he was afraid of wasting a talent point, but, he still decided to select the second branch.
To Luckas relief, another interface popped up as he selected the branch. The window had a better explanation of the selected "aspect" and two buttons, one written "CONFIRM" and the other "CANCEL".
Just above the two buttons, the interface gave a deeper explanation of what Qi Control I meant. The Qi Control aspect gave the user more ability in controlling his Qi, but its effectiveness was halved when using Elemental Qi.
Luckas tried to open the second aspect of the control branch, as he read the tooltip he confirmed his thought that Elemental Qi and normal Qi did have differences in the form of control and use.
Luckas was euphoric as he checked every tooltip he could, he already had a pretty good idea of what the Qi Absorption Rate and Qi Purity rate meant, and he was proven true as the tooltip confirmed that Qi absorption Rate influenced the speed in which he could gather Qi and the Purity one affected how much clear his Qi was.
From the system information, it looked like the murkiness in the Qi affect not only the amount of Qi that the cultivator used to cast spells, but it also influenced the effect of the process of nurturing the dantian and refining the body.
Luckas biggest surprise was the third branch, all three aspects converged into a single one, the number of augments in the third aspect was incredible. Luckas was anxious to reach it in the future and see their effectiveness.
The third aspect bonuses were Qi CIrculation Speed I, this bonus affected how fast one Qi would travel through the meridians channel, Luckas knew first hand how important this effect was when he began to cultivate with Cyl's help, he noticed how slowly the Qi flowed through his meridians channels.
The second bonus of the aspect was Qi Mastery I, Luckas thought that this was the best, Qi Mastery gave the cultivator more Elemental and normal Qi Control and Qi Sensitivity, the last bonus looked especially useful for Luckas, as it affects the cultivator's ability to sense Qi in its natural state and thus facilitating its gathering process but could also help the user sense changes in the Qi in the process of casting spells.
The third aspect was Qi Density Rate I, Luckas was conflicted about this one, the density of the QI affected how much Qi a cultivator could gather at one point, the denser the QI gathered in a point the harder it was for the cultivator to control it, but on the other hand, the power of the spell would be a magnitude higher.
Luckas felt impressed by his system, the array of augments was incredible, and the tooltips even gave Luckas deep insights of the inners workings of Qi, the only downside was the low quantity of talent points he gained, he was praying that advances thought a major realm would give him more points.
Luckas was thinking if the other paths would follow the same pattern, his curiosity only grew, he thought about asking Jeffrey for the Body cultivation too if entered the army, he could use the excuse of wanting an exit if he found QI cultivation too hard.
Feeling tired after studying his system Luckas decided to sleep, after all, injuries still filled his body, he needed rest for a speedy recovery.
Quite an exposition-heavy chapter, I hope you guys don't mind this infodump it's just that I didn't find any other way to explain the system. (Now I understand why people created AIs for their system, doing this through dialogue would be way better.)
As always, Thank you for reading my work! If you would like to support my work you can vote with your power stones, leave a review, and a comment.