Hunt at Sea

Meng Tian had collected a lot of precious herbs over the past few days sent by his second clone, but he could not use them to perform alchemy- his new occupation, as he had no recipes to make any pills. All of the knowledge that he got was on how to perform alchemy, rather than the medical formulae. As his level of occupation increases, he would be able to control the flames better or make better judgement with respect to the quantities, qualities and order of different ingredients in a recipe. But he could not conjure medicinal formulae out of this air, unless he had seen them at least once before.

This was a similar situation to his Rune Master occupation, where the odds of successful inscription of runes had increased as he leveled up his occupation and he could clearly judge what effects normal runes produce. But he had never engraved runes on anything, let alone weapons and pills. However, unlike an Alchemist he did not need an exact formula for runic inscription, he could just make them up as individual runes themselves have their effects on the items that they were being engraved on.

Meng Tian was happy to have obtained two occupations which could prove to be useful later on in his cultivation journey but he currently had no plans to actually do anything about them. However, he did spend energy points to level up the occupation of Alchemist to level 4.

100 Energy Points spent... [Alchemist Lv.2 (0/100)]

1000 Energy Points spent... [Alchemist Lv.3 (0/1000)]

10000 Energy Points spent... [Alchemist Lv.4 (0/10000)]

He could feel a lot of knowledge being pumped into his mind every time he leveled up an occupation. The current situation was in no way any different. And this time he felt that he understood the clear classification of pills based on ranks which also corresponded to the level of the Alchemist. So a level one Alchemist can utmost produce a rank one medicinal pill... and the quality of the pill varied based on the skill of the Alchemist. As such, an experienced level one alchemist can produce a rank one pill of more than 50% medicine efficacy at least.

The pills at any rank can be classified into five types- Novice, Earth, Heaven, Peak, and Perfect... each with varying medicine efficacies of 30%, 50%, 80%, 90%, and 100% respectively. Perfect level pills are said to be non existent because alchemists that could achieve such a feat have not been found in this world as yet. Naturally, with the help of his system, Meng Tian was one of who can produce such perfect level pills although he had not done it even once yet.

Lamentably, Meng Tian was currently not in any position to refine any pills using Alchemy. As a result, he naturally shifted his attention to the leveling up his two new talents- Earth and Metal. He had so many qi cubes with him at the moment in his consciousness space, it was just an issue of spending a few hundred of them to get the required energy points for leveling up these two talents. Although he was also accumulating energy points by swallowing the cores of beasts, it was not much yet as he had not killed ones with higher cultivation levels in large numbers.

100 Energy Points spent... [Elemental Earth Affinity Lv.2 (0/100)]

1000 Energy Points spent... [Elemental Earth Affinity Lv.3 (0/1000)]

10000 Energy Points spent... [Elemental Earth Affinity Lv.4 (0/10,000)]

100 Energy Points spent... [Elemental Metal Affinity Lv.2 (0/100)]

1000 Energy Points spent... [Elemental Metal Affinity Lv.3 (0/1000)]

10000 Energy Points spent... [Elemental Metal Affinity Lv.4 (0/10,000)]

Once he was done with this, he made a goal to clear as many beasts as possible during the next month using his second and third clones, especially the third clone which was in the ocean where beasts with higher cultivation levels were just way too many. So, the concern regarding how to obtain energy points for his cultivation had been solved... he just had to kill as many as he required. On the other side, this exercise of his could help the human race in reducing the number of beasts on land... and killing a bunch of them in the oceans would not be much of a big deal due to his clone body being able to disguise as a sea creature as well.

However he did not have any information on any kind of treaties that could have been made between the humans and the beasts. It is a proven fact that the beasts have improved intelligence even above the level of normal humans as their cultivation levels increase. So, it stands to reason that the beasts also have ruling super powers which could have come into and kept contact with their human counterparts... resulting in a seize-fire of sorts where an outright extinction of a given species is not on the agenda of any of the races of this world.

Even after having all of these thoughts, Meng Tian did not have any scruples in massacring the beasts once he was sure that they could improve his cultivation speed. Although such agreements could prove to be good placeholders for some time, but sooner or later, a beast tide or some other such event could happen... risking huge amounts of population of the human race. So Meng Tian felt that it was pointless for him to think too much about all of these things. If he could increase his personal strength before the enemies could make their moves, he could crush them without having to resort to any other methods.

Once he decided to do this, all the doubts in his heart vanished and he laid down in his tent and had a good night sleep. Although he was sleeping, any small disturbance that was out of the ordinary was enough to wake him up as his spiritual sense had always been in place, monitoring the safety of his team members. To be on the safe side, he even used his Shadow of the Devil skill to mark his six team members and his school teacher Tiao.

So, even if any untoward incident does take place, he could be ready to step in without having the need to take any extra steps. Some of his team members... obviously the three guys... had certain degree of jealousy, envy, wrath or that sort of attitude towards him, but Meng Tian thought all of it was completely pointless in this world. However, he had no opinions on them and even if their attitudes were not that great in the beginning, Meng Tian completely ignored them... most of it could be attributed to the fact that they were not in the same league as he was.

Nonetheless, as the main body was chilling out in the woods, the third clone was also leisurely travelling in the ocean as an octopus. He gradually descended to great depths, occasionally killing quite a few sea creatures and to his surprise, he was already fighting enemies at his own cultivation level... upon which he stopped moving completely and remained at this depth. If he dives further, he would have to face something completely above his cultivation base and he did not want to lose this clone just yet. So he made a plan to begin the mad massacre of sea creatures above this depth for some time.

killed a Core Formation level-1 Brute Spiked Manta... [Kill Points: 10000]

Qi and Blood Absorption Complete... [Blood Carnage Clone #3: All Primary Stats +1000]

[Core Formation level-1 Beast Core] x1

...

killed a Foundation Establishment level-5 Sword Mouth Fish... [Kill Points: 5000]

Qi and Blood Absorption Complete... [Blood Carnage Clone #3: All Primary Stats +500]

[Foundation Establishment level-5 Beast Core] x1

...

The more he killed, the more his clone powered itself up with the Qi and Blood absorption which automatically activated by the runic inscriptions on the chest. Meng Tian thought that he could do this continuously and level up his clone but when after killing for a certain time, he observed that the runes on his chest stopped activating after each kill. When he checked the status of his clone, the system showed that all the five primary stats reached 8000 and could not increase any further. This was at the same level of physique as the main body... so a reasonable conclusion can be made that the clone cannot have a powerful body than the main body.

But the skills from the system were aimed at genuinely extracting all that they possibly could from a single kill. As his clone body could not absorb the qi and blood of the killed sea creatures, he just kept on storing the dead bodies in his consciousness space... thereby transferring them to the main body's consciousness space. When the third clone continued this process of killing and accumulating bodies of sea creatures, the main body was fast asleep.