18 Enchanted rag

Returning to the lodging that the sect offered to me, was something that I enjoyed way more than anyone else in my place would. Living on my own for years, even going as far as buying myself a summer house near the area of great lakes, I could say that I was already used to maybe not luxury, but some basic level of comfort in any place I would stay.

Sadly, this wasn't the case with the micro-house that I was offered by the sect.

According to the words of my teacher, all the students would receive their meals in the dining hall of the guild, all the crafting work had to be done in specific guild areas, all the training had to be done in specified places around the sect… In other words, all the benefits of working within the privacy of my own place would be gone, if not for how peculiar my situation was!

"Okay, let's start with the basic."

As soon as the doors to my microhouse consisting of a sleeping and living room alone got closed, I whispered to myself in order to prepare my mentality for what was about to come. Just by taking a quick look around this new home of mine, I could tell that houses like this one were in constant use. In fact, just a single glance was enough to identify a lot of marks and stains all over the place, proving how little its previous inhabitants cared for the house.

But that was about to change.

At first, I started the grand renovation by removing every single element that wasn't bolted to the floor and putting it on a huge pile in one corner of the living room. Only once it was done, I sat down on the wooden planks that made up the floor of the house, focusing on this strange power that I felt coursing through my veins. While I could use the insights that I obtained when I used my abilities to improve the circulation of the detergent in my veins, it was something that I could do at literally any point.

What's more, I couldn't tell what kind of potentially devastating effects my training would have on my surroundings. Maybe once I would reach a certain level, all the filth would disappear from my body, removed to the outside world? This was a concept I knew from all those trashy cultivation novels, but it also affected me in a greatly different way than anyone who could ever experience it in any of the existing worlds.

Because for now, I preferred to look at the convenient ways to raise my power. Namely, cleaning!

Once I was finally sitting down on the cold planks of the floor, it took me only a moment to push this strange force in my veins into an actual movement. Once this thick fluid started to properly circulate through my body, I forced one of its droplets to ooze through the skin of my hand, only to fall down on the floor, right beside me.

This time, however, the floor didn't magically clean itself up. Maybe it was caused by the fact that I didn't wish for it to happen, or maybe there were some other forces at play, but that wasn't something that I would bother my mind with now.

Instead, by ripping apart a small part of the blanket that was supposed to keep my warm, I obtained one of the most basic cleaning tools in the entire world. A rag.

Taking a moment to wet the rag in a bail of water that stood in the corner of living room, I properly rinsed it out so that only a small amount of moisture would remain in the cloth, before throwing it perfectly at the droplet of my power still waiting for its use on the floor.

Did I mention that I was a provisional master at throwing thrash across the office to the bin? No? Then at least now you know.

After making sure that the detergent of mine properly diffused with the water contained in the cloth, I fell down on my knees and did something that would make any serious cultivator of any world, laugh at me.

I started mopping the damned floor!

To be honest, cleanliness was the first step towards comfortability. That was something I learned in the years I lived alone. Even in the most spacious house, with the perfect amount of furniture and great decorum, if someone would allow for the dirt to infuse itself in the floor and the walls, the quality of the property would drastically fall. And right in the place where I was supposed to live from now on, it would be more on point to say that there was some wood in the dirt that made up the floor!

Pushing the rag away, I stretched my entire body while my makeshift cleaning equipment left a long trace of slightly less dirt on its path. Pulling the rag back towards myself, I moved my upper body up, using this moment of manually cleaning the floor to additional training for my body.

This was the single lesson that I remembered my parents teaching to me. They called it preventing the empty flights - where one would go somewhere to do something and return only to realise that he had to pick something else along the way. But while this kind of motions was good for stretching and training one's body, it also meant that after just a few minutes, something that was supposed to be an easy task turned into damned torture!

"Gosh… How could this guy ever dream of becoming anyone if he is actually so damn weak?"

The realisation that struck me was so shocking that I allowed my thoughts to escape from my mouth. Even when I finished my part of the fieldwork back on earth, I never dared to neglect my body as much as the previous owner of my current one did!

Obviously, I couldn't tell that I was fat or anything. Once a small area of the floor was perfectly clean, I could confirm from the reflecting of my body in the polished planks that I was handsome, or at least, above average in terms of looks. But how the heck could I lack nearly any form of physical power?

*Congratulations!*

*Repeated use of the simple rug and infusing it with host detergent force led to the creation of basic systemised item*

*Basic Cleaning Rug obtained*

*Basic Cleaning Rug - thanks to the repeated use of a simple rug while infusing it with host power, the item developed the ability to contain all the dirt it cleans and turn it back into detergent. Cleaning with a rug increases the chance of obtaining objective skill points.*

Reading the content within the new set of messages that appeared in my vision, I continued to move my new, enchanted rug to and fro, cleaning more and more of the floor. And soon enough, the next message appeared!

*Congratulations!*

*Thanks to the repeated attempts at cleaning the surface of host lodging, host objective cleaning ability increased by one point!*

*Objective Cleaning - level 5 (3/4)(Skill: Object purifying)*

*Reminder - Host still has five ability points to use*

Not daring to stop even for the moment, I suddenly realised one thing. As my fingers pressed the enchanted rug against the face of the floor to grind all the dirt away from it, I just achieved the true form of grinding my abilities!

By grinding the damned dirt off the floor!