System

CHAPTER 26: System

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Ethan woke up in his room, his head pounding insistently.

The morning light filtered through the curtains, casting dancing shadows on the walls.

With an effort, he sat up and tried to focus his thoughts.

After a few seconds, he finally recovered and looked around to understand what had happened.

'What happened to me?' Ethan wondered, massaging his aching temples.

Slowly, the memories began to resurface.

He remembered attempting to bind himself to the artifact in his sea of consciousness and being overwhelmed by a powerful energy that caused him to faint.

Gradually, his headache eased, leaving his mind clear to think.

"You could have told me it would be this painful," he said, feeling a bit resentful towards Bai Yu.

'I suppose the saying "no pain, no gain" applies quite literally here.'

Apart from the headache that had somewhat subsided, Ethan felt no other pain.

He thought it might be better to return to his spiritual sea. He prepared to close his eyes and concentrate, but at that moment, a metallic sound echoed in his ears, making him jump.

The noise didn't seem to come from any specific direction; it was almost as if it was in his head.

Ethan opened his eyes to see if it had been produced by something or if it was just his imagination, and that's when he saw it.

When Ethan looked up, he was faced with an incredible sight: a thin blue rectangular screen floating in the air in front of him.

The blue rectangle emitted a soft light, and in the center was written: "The system has been successfully installed."

"W-wait, what?" Ethan stammered at the surreal sight before him.

'This can't be what I think it is, right?' he thought, pinching himself to see if he was imagining it.

"That's a system message," he said incredulously.

Ever since he ended up in this world, he had tried to see if he had obtained some sort of special power that would help him in this world, but he hadn't found anything.

He had no powerful background to support him, no special abilities or talents, and none of the ultimate tools of all MCs in the isekai novels he had read, namely the system.

He had come to accept that those things were just the product of the perverse imagination of writers and had resigned himself to finding a way to get home with his own strength.

Obviously, he had failed.

So, of all things, he didn't expect to see this familiar blue screen.

'Has life finally started to smile on me?' he wondered, but suddenly a thought calmed him and brought him back to reality.

"Wait, this appeared after I tried to connect to the cauldron. Could it be that this is part of its powers?" he wondered in vain.

He knew he couldn't find any answers on his own, so he decided to ask the person who knew more about this artifact than he did.

Ethan was also curious to try something.

If what Bai Yu had said about the sea of consciousness and his control over it was true, then he could converse with her mentally, without transferring into his mind each time.

So he tried to see if it worked.

"Senior Bai, can you hear me?" he asked mentally.

After a moment of silence, Bai Yu's voice echoed in his mind, calm and serene as always.

"Yes, I can hear you. I see you've finally recovered. How do you feel now? You've been unconscious for the entire night," she said with a slight hint of concern.

She was worried about what had happened because it didn't seem normal. Although she didn't know much about this artifact, she knew, thanks to her vast knowledge, how the process of connecting with an artifact usually went, and in none of them had this kind of event ever occurred.

At first, she thought that perhaps it was different for primordial artifacts like the Amphora of the Seven Sages, but the more she thought about it, the more she felt that something was wrong.

She decided to ask Ethan directly what had happened.

"What happened while you were connecting to the artifact?" Bai Yu asked.

Ethan described the overwhelming sensation and the message he had seen on the blue screen.

"I'm not entirely sure. I felt a strange energy spreading through my body, and I could perceive a subtle bond with the artifact, but then, this energy intensified, and I couldn't bear it. You know what happened next," he said, hesitating whether to mention the system or not.

"Indeed, that event was a bit unexpected. It's normal for the artifact to send some of its energy to create a stronger bond with it, but the energy being so overwhelming that it overpowered you was a bit unexpected. Perhaps it's because you're still a mortal and haven't even reached the first level of body refining, that even with the artifact sealed, you were still overwhelmed?" This was the only explanation she could think of for this phenomenon.

Ethan decided to explore the system.

He thought of the most obvious command: "status". Immediately, the blue screen changed, displaying a series of information:

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Name: Ethan 

Cultivation: Mortal. 

QI: 99/100 

Physique: Heavenly Body of the Sacred Flames (sealed) 

Strength: 5 

Agility: 4 

Intelligence: 6 

Soul Strength: 100 

[Shop]

[Storage]

[System points]: 0 

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"It's really how I imagined it to be," Ethan murmured.

The screen was similar to those in the novels he had read, but with a difference: instead of a level, there was cultivation, and instead of EXP, there was QI.

And seeing his QI value, Ethan confirmed his doubts.

His QI was stuck at 99, just one point short of breaking through.

He had felt this sensation for a long time, that he was on the verge of breaking through but couldn't due to something.

He thought it was a bottleneck, but discovered that normally no one has a bottleneck before entering the first grade of cultivation.

He wasn't sure what the cause of this was, but seeing the next statistic, he got an idea.

"Heavenly Body of the Sacred Flames, sealed"

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FRANK_LEE_JUNIOR:

After 26 chapters, I've finally managed to introduce the system.

I know, it arrived a bit late, but I didn't want to start right away with him waking up with the system in front of him, explaining in two words who he is, what happened to him, and why he's here, and so on...

It seemed too rushed that way, so I decided to draw a line that explained how he came to obtain it, although I admit, I drew a longer line than I initially thought.

Anyway, here's the chapter, I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have comments, criticisms, or errors to report, you know where to do it.

See you tomorrow.