33 Two Months

After the first Advanced Illusions class, John found illusions all over campus. All the common rooms and hallways had video camera's hidden under illusions making them blend into the walls and ceilings. There was even a hidden room on his floor where a supervisor lived. When he'd found it, John'd been greeted like a long last cousin by the young man. He'd served him coffee and said he was the 21st person to find him.

"What do you even do here?" John had asked, unable to believe that he'd lived in the building for 2 weeks and never seen the man.

"I keep watch on the camera's and step in when a situation gets out of hand. Originally the school didn't bother with floor supervisor's in the dorm but after a few fatalities wiser heads realized that giving teenagers power and then leaving them alone in a cramped environment is just stupid." The man said, drinking his coffee and keeping watch over the camera's.

"That's it? Must be boring." John said, he couldn't imagine being forced to sit in a room and watch people on camera's all day long.

"Oh, it's not bad. My cultivation method is a bit weird, it increases the more I observe other things. People, especially cultivators, are far more interesting than plants. This job is pretty awesome because I get to cultivate 12 hours a day and it comes with incredible benefits."

John had left a few minutes later, weirded out by the idea of a cultivation method that requires you to sit and watch people. That wasn't all he learned about the school, one day when he opened up the app to check how many credits he had left he felt a familiar sensation that something wasn't quite right and the background music cut off.

Resetting his neural pathways, he realized that an illusion had been embedded into the app using the light from his phone to hide functions. Instead of just listing the school rankings, John found a hidden forum, and secret mission room for those able to break the illusion. There, he found missions much more lucrative than the normal freshman level missions that required the ability to handle illusions.

Time passed quickly, and Winter was approaching. Over the last couple of months, Mike had finally managed to create his rifle and begin cultivating. He'd gone crazy, sinking all 30,000 of his Academic Credits into the process and making his rifle a masterpiece for a low-level Spirit Tool. Unlike John who could only cultivate in a special room once every 12 hours, Mike could cultivate constantly. For the last month, Steven and John only saw Mike during class as he spent every waking moment trying to catch up to.

While this was going on, Steven had managed to earn the movement, stealth, and hand to hand basic qualifications using his credits to buy techniques. John had managed to earn the movement and stealth basic qualifications as well, but had spent almost all of his time studying Illusion Techniques and training Snakey.

The lock down hadn't been lifted which left them with few chances to earn academic credits even with the secret missions from the app. John dropped from 1st place to 8th place in the freshman category as more people succeeded in their cultivation. Most of them were from the Maker's Club, they had the advantage in a lock down because as long as they had materials they could make sell equipment for credits.

However, just a few days ago Quincy had managed to complete the 5th level of the Hunter's Club Challenges earning more than 50,000 credits becoming the first person to surpass John through combat.

This contributed to John's foul mood as he trudged through the snow at 5 A.M. wishing that he could cultivate in his room like Mike. There were special cultivation rooms set aside for every type of cultivation technique that the school provided, but Soul Wave was one of the few that could only be cultivated in the special rooms. Thankfully, after he broke through to the Core Formation Realm he'd never have to worry about that again.

Pulling his cap down over his ears, John winced as a gust blew snow in his face and he remembered a conversation with Mr. Carter a while back. Since April, the school had been hit by several snow storms and tired of trudging through snow drifts up to 5 feet tall he'd asked Mr. Carter, "Why doesn't the school set up a formation to control the weather? I'm still in the beginner formations class but I've learned enough to know that's possible."

Laughing, Mr. Carter stuck his finger in his nose and pulled out a giant booger. Examining it closely for a moment, he tossed it into the lake in the classroom, wiping the remaining snot on his shirt he'd said, "Sure, the school could do that but after reaching Core Formation weather like this means nothing. Unless they're trying to grow a specific plant no cultivator would bother to build, monitor, and maintain such an annoyingly complex and expensive formation."

'Now that it's May, Winter is just around the corner' John thought, shuddering as he imagined how bad it'd be in a month or two. John sped up as another gust of wind slammed into him and he decided to start cultivating as much as possible for the foreseeable future. The Soul Wave could be cultivated once every 12 hours. He'd been doing it once a day because his schedule was so full, but he was about to break through to the 2nd Level of Body Refining. Forget about the increase in strength, every level increase would lessen the impact of the weather on him!

"Snakey, why don't you heat us both up?" John asked his miserable snake who was trying so hard to get close to his warmth that she was beginning to choke him. "You're a fire monster, can't you just attract fire elemental mana or something?"

Snakey perked up immediately, and began attracting mana like she was going to cast fireball but instead just held onto it. She slowly warmed up and stopped choking John as she became comfortable. Unfortunately, she kept attracting more and more fire elemental mana until John cursed.

"FUCK THAT'S HOT!" John threw Snakey on the ground as he quickly pulled his jacket off and started putting the fire she'd started out.

Suddenly, he started shivering as the adrenaline from being burned wore off and he found himself standing in the middle of a blizzard without a jacket. "Fuck this, follow me!" John yelled as he took off, Snakey following along behind him at a sedate pace enjoying how the snow drifts would flash into steam as she slithered through them.

Running into building 3 John entered the training room without saying another word, wincing as he took off the remnants of his shirt. "I hope the training heals cooked flesh too." He mumbled as he sat down stiffly, ignoring the familiar voice counting down as he closed his eyes. By this point he found the constantly changing sounds and lights comforting. A Pavlovian response had been ingrained into him due to the ecstasy he felt every time he finished training. The Qi left his dantian and began travelling in the now familiar pattern....

"Ahhhh!" John groaned in ecstasy as his mind completely clear of thoughts as something inside of him broke and he felt his impurities rushing out of him.

An hour later, John peeked out the door of the training room. Looking carefully in all possible directions, he used his soiled clothes to cover his dangly bits as he sprinted to the showers.

'PHEW' John thought just as he put his clothes in the fast cleaner and jumped in the shower only to jump in surprise as Mr. Carter poked his head into the previously locked room and said, "Make it quick!"

15 minutes later, John walked out of the bathroom with his hair and clothes still slightly damp thinking, 'At least I don't smell anymore.' He would've waited longer, but Mr. Carter had been yelling every couple of minutes for him to hurry it up.

Jogging out of the training area, John ran into Mr. Carter and couldn't believe what he was seeing. Mr. Carter's appearance was impeccable. His beard had been shaved, his hair cut, his clothes were pressed and clean. It was all John could do not to yell, "HELP! MR. CARTER'S BEEN POSSESSED!!!!!"

"Come with me, we need to talk!" Mr. Carter was saying as he grabbed John's arm, guiding him towards the usual classroom.

After using the technique to break free of an illusion for the 10th time, John opened his eyes and stared at Mr. Carter in complete shock as he came to realization that he was real. Turning from the door to the classroom, Mr. Carter asked "Where's Snakey?"

"I'm not sure." John said, frowning as he concentrated on their bond, "Ah, she's playing around in the snow. She figured out how to attract fire mana and turn snow into steam this morning."

"HAHAHA," Mr. Carter laughed, a brilliant smile on his face, "That sounds like fun, maybe I'll have to try it out sometime." The smile on his face dimmed a bit as he regained his focus, "You broke through, I'm pleased with your progress even if you have fallen out of the first place."

John scowled when he heard Mr. Carter say that, "What am I supposed to do when we can't hunt? I've done all the challenges, but the remaining missions pay so poorly they're just a waste of time. I'm better off just training and living off what I've already collected."

Mr. Carter smiled even larger when he heard that, "You're just pissed that Quincy managed to complete the 5th level of the Hunter's Challenge while you're still stuck at the 4th."

John snorted in disgust, unable to keep himself from saying, "I still don't know how he managed that, the 4th level is nearly impossible for a 1st level body refiner."

"Yeah, it's pretty impressive isn't it." Mr. Carter really enjoyed rubbing John's failure in his face but had other more important things to talk about. "Enough of that, we have something serious to talk about. You remember the first day of classes when I said in a few month's there would be an opportunity?" Mr. Carter asked with a giant smile on his face.

Uploading from mobile, doesn't let me use the authors note section for some reason....

Anyway, this was programmed to be published 2 days ago, I'm on a trip and didn't realize it hadn't come out until now. No idea why the timer in ink stone didn't work, probably my fault.

Chit