Between a Rock and the Dreamscape

A/N: So if you guys aren't aware, Webnovel has been 'shadowbanning' comments recently. This means that any comment that contains profanities in any form, will be automatically deleted.

So words like: Fuck, Shit, Bitch, Bastard, Cock, Bollocks are all nonos. Even words such as: Sex, Hell, and Damn are out too. Basically, if you want to comment using forms of those words, you will need to get creative.

Well, Enjoy the chapter...

-----------------------------------

It was mid-afternoon in the humid forest, Shane was languidly floating around in the cool water of the pool and staring at lines of text on a transparent blue window. He was taking a moment to confirm his Cultivation Realms and check all the system notifications that appeared after he killed the Wyrm.

While Shane was obviously aware that his Profound Cultivation had reached the peak of the [7th of Nascent Profound] but there was also something about just seeing it floating in front of him that tickled his fancy.

No, the part he was having some difficulty with was his Body Cultivation Realm. It was something that definitely didn't exist in the ATG novel and unlike his Profound Cultivation, he was unable to get a solid feel for the difference in realms just yet.

His eyebrows rose a little, as expected, the Orchid was very beneficial to his Body. Well, that was obvious, considering his Body Cultivation had caught up with his Profound Cultivation, reaching the peak of the [7th of Nascent Profound].

'Hmmm, I guess this means that my knowledge of ATG is not absolutely solid. That or Body Cultivation is like some kind of secret lost method from the age of the Gods. Anyways, there's no point fretting over something that only helps me. System, show me those notifications!'

[System: Hidden Quest Completed]

Defeat an enemy with a cultivation higher than the host by one Great Realm

~ Reward - {Basic Inventory}

[System: Hidden Quest Completed]

Defeat enemies of higher cultivation than you using two different weapon types

~ Reward - {Hand-to-Hand Combat mastery (Tier E)} >> {Combat Mastery (Tier D)}

[Combat Mastery (Tier D) - Host will naturally be able to wield all types of weapons in combat]

Shane's eyelids fluttered a little and he felt a momentary spike of pain shoot across his temples. A basic understanding of a myriad different weapons and their stances were crammed into his brain and integrated with his knowledge and experience of hand-to-hand combat.

"That was unpleasant." Shaking his head a little, he thought about the knowledge he just acquired. 'Combat mastery is pretty awesome but it doesn't actually make me a master with weapons, it just makes me a natural at wielding them. I wonder if my hammer swings will be smoother now?'

Combat Mastery was undoubtedly a good thing but Shane was much more excited about the inventory! An inventory was something every certified Isekai Protagonist needed to survive a foreign world.

As the information regarding it entered his mind, he couldn't help but laugh out loud! This inventory was extremely similar to the Holy Grail of all inventories, Satou's inventory.

The space inside was infinite and although certain restrictions needed to be met, almost anything could be placed into it, including corpses and plants, although living beings could not be stored inside. Time also didn't flow in there, meaning he could put a bunch of hot food in and never have to worry about fresh meals again.

On a more gruesome note, corpses wouldn't decay either. That wasn't all however, there were greyed-out functions including the sort function and the time control function that he assumed he could unlock later.

Overall, the inventory was a huge gain that would help tremendously with the next part of his money-making scheme, and Shane couldn't help but drool a little over the thought of all of the stolen*ahem*... acquired treasure he would eventually store inside it.

After relaxing for a while, Shane decided that it was time to absorb the energy from the Wyrm and then get ready to leave the forest. And so, he made his way back to the cave, the wind surrounding and drying him off as he went.

Once he got back into a meditative state, Shane probed the Wyrm's energy with his intent. He found that although it still gave off a considerable amount of pressure, the energy now felt almost welcoming. Dusty also sent him a feeling of yearning through the bond and materialized in her small form around his neck.

He urged the energy into action and just like last time, it ran a cycle through pathways in his profound veins before flowing into Dusty for a few moments and then coming back to him. He noticed that whenever a full revolution was completed between the two of them, his cultivation would benefit immensely.

The cycling of energies continued for several hours until Shane heard a pair of *Peng* sounds as both he and Dusty broke through the barrier into the True Profound Realm in the same instant.

Sometime later, the energy had all been absorbed with not a drop wasted and when Shane opened his eyes he was now at the peak of the[1st of True Profound].

Despite breaking through so many times in a single day, Shane's realm was rock solid and he felt amazing. He clenched his fists in determination as he sensed the abundance of raw power coursing through his body. He could also now feel an intrinsic connection to the earth beneath him that would need to be explored over the coming days and weeks.

Glancing at Dusty who was frolicking about in his lap and using Appraisal, he was overjoyed by what he saw. [Dusty: Forest Wind Wyrm: True Profound 2(peak) - Contracted (Shan Long)]. Her scales and spines had taken on an even more beautiful emerald hue and above her eyes, she had started to grow a boney crown and a pair of stubby horns that faced back towards her neck.

All in all, she was very Cute! "Who's my beautiful girl Dusty? You are, yes you are" Shane cooed as he ran his fingertips along her scales and received a couple of excited chirps before she swiftly climbed along his arm and reverted back into the tattoo around his neck.

Shane had, by now, realized that his cycling of energy with Dusty was not reducing the benefits he would gain, and instead it was refining both of their energies further and so he had become especially fond of this cute little serpent.

He wished she would grow big though… How on earth was a beautiful little emerald snake ever going to make young masters piss themselves in fear?

Noticing the lack of impurities this time, Shane checked his body cultivation and found that it had reached Nascent Profound peak and wondered whether he would only experience the 'cleansing' after each Great Realm. He flopped down onto his bedding and his last thoughts before falling asleep were… 'I can't wait until I get to sleep in a real bed again!'

-----------------------------------

The next few days were spent acclimatizing himself to his newfound strength and speed. Shane was both a lot faster and a lot stronger than before but he had improved too much in a short time and needed to be aware of his new limits. During this period, his control over Profound Energy had also improved considerably.

The ever-present minimap had upgraded again too, its maximum range was now 30m, making it easier than ever for him to find profound herbs and beasts within the forest.

The day after breaking through to the True Profound Realm, Shane made his triumphant return to the field of profound tobacco plants and swept the entire thing clean. not even the soil or the saplings were spared! If anyone else were there, they probably would have seen drool on his lips and dollar signs in his eyes.

The area, 15km in every direction of the cave, had also been cleared of all profound herbs and beasts, both going into his storage for later use instead of being devoured. He even found a pair of late, Nascent Profound, 3m tall, Water Bison to use as food for the journey.

The energy from these herbs and beasts would barely affect him anymore and although meat from a mosquito was still meat, there was another reason he hadn't devoured them yet. Said reason was the upgrade his ability received when he reached the [1st of True Profound].

[Abilities:]

{TreasureBody: Tier D (0%)}

{Characteristics

Organic Material (Profound Beasts, Corpses and Flora):

1) Devour - Can directly convert and refine organic matter into their most basic forms of energy before assimilating with the host. Benefits gained are directly related to differences in profound realm and physiology between target and host. ((Organic Constructs - Organic lifeforms can be absorbed by the host and used to create living weapons and armor that exist symbiotically with them))

2) Bestowal - Energy refined with Devour can be separated from the host and formed into a profound pill that can be bestowed upon anyone. Profound pills created by this ability are extremely stable. Anyone listed in the companions' tab will gain greater benefits from these pills. (NEW!)

3) ???

With This ability, there were so many possibilities. Shane could start his own sect and very quickly turn it into a powerhouse or even facilitate his own army as long as there were resources around.

Maybe in the future… but for now, it didn't interest him in the least compared to the possibility of aiding the cultivation of the people he cared about and would come to care about one day.

Now that he had finally accomplished his goals, reached a level of strength where traveling between Cities should be of no consequence, and gotten a good grip on said strength, Shane decided it was time to leave.

He liked it here in the forest, he felt free and unfettered whenever he was running through the undergrowth or hunting profound beasts but all things must come to an end.

Not only were the beasts and resources within his daily travel range far weaker than himself now but he was also running out of time. It had been 6 days since he last spoke with Qingyue and he only had 24 days left to get to Floating Cloud City.

After that, he still had to enhance some of the Profound Tobacco Plants before the meeting with her father was due to take place.

He decided to sleep early and head out before dawn the next day but before that, he was going to try and pull Qingyue into the dreamscape for a little cuddling session to recharge…

------------------------------------

Shane awoke early in the cave. He only managed to spend a short while with Qingyue in the dreamscape. It had been late into the night when she finally joined him and she looked absolutely exhausted.

She didn't want to talk about it and Shane hadn't pushed her as he already had a pretty good idea what the problem was.

'She is feeling the cold pains caused by her profound arts huh, gotta fix that by absorbing the ice from her entrances when I see her. My control over devour is good enough now to attempt it and it won't work on a living human so there is no risk.'

Qingyue for her part had immediately jumped into his chest and started discreetly sniffing him again when she thought he wasn't paying attention. That was until she sensed his cultivation realm...

As expected, what came next was a barrage of enthusiastic questions to which he told her that he would explain it in person and would prefer to just relax and spend time with her in the dreamscape considering the journey he was about to undertake.

She looked as if she were about to protest, ...until he created a stupidly comfortable couch with a single thought and dragged her down onto it with him. Without giving her a chance to resist, he moved her head down into his lap and started to brush his fingers gently through her hair.

She got extremely flustered at first and it was super cute! Honestly teasing her was the best! Unfortunately for him, Qingyue must have really been exhausted because it wasn't long before she relaxed and closed her eyes.

Within 15 minutes, he had her sleeping on his thighs and purring like a cat as he hummed a tune and gently massaged her temples...

Coming out of his thoughts, Shane stretched and sighed with contentment. "That was some damn good spiritual healing, come out Dusty! It's time we were on our way."

He had decided to keep Dusty out for the majority of the journey as all the little brat did was sleep inside of him and absorb energy. Shane was determined to have her be useful and although her overall strength was lower, her cultivation was higher than his and her senses were also on par or even better as well.

He was lamenting on the inside though. 'Why couldn't she be big and intimidating as well as cute and cuddly? It's. Just. Not. Fair. What happened to my dreams of riding a huge Dragon???'

-----------------------------------

Shane didn't consider himself a very sentimental person. Sure he was emotional, he was quick to love and slow to hate, he could laugh in almost any situation and when he cared about someone he could very easily get angry for their sake.

Having an attachment to and caring for a small cave that had been nothing but a temporary residence? Not a chance...

"*sniff sniff* Wow, a piece of dust in my eye." Those were the manly tears of Shan Long okay! That also definitely wasn't his pile of hides and everything else from the cave in a corner of his inventory.

Shane turned away from the cave and a few sparkles danced in the air as he withdrew his presence, extended his senses, and coated himself in the wind. He crouched down and the familiar feral grin returned as he shot off into the forest like an arrow loosed from a bow.

Clearly, this man had too many faces. Staying alone in a forest was probably affecting him in strange ways, he needed to get to civilization ASAP!

Between himself and Cyan Forest Town, there was a relatively small mountain range, well small for this world anyway. Most of the mountains were between 1500m-2000m tall but there were around 150 of them altogether and they covered over 350km of distance. The crazy thing was, this 'small' range wasn't even part of the main Scarlet Dragon Mountain Range!

Deciding that It would cost him a lot of time to skirt the 'small' range, Shane instead opted to go over it. He would only need to cross 3-4 mountains this way and if he remembered, Ben Nevis was around 1350m and it took half a day to climb over. He was also much faster and stronger than any mountain climber that ever lived, though they didn't need to watch out for profound beasts so it was a fair trade-off.

At first, Shane covered a good distance and traveled almost 100km in two days. He breezed through the forest like a phantom, picking it clean of any profound herbs or beasts that were unlucky enough to cross his path.

Dusty, well she just slept around his neck all day long, looking like some gorgeous emerald choker. She may not have been large and intimidating but she was damn cute!

At the end of the second day, Shane found a grove of over 20 SteelOak trees and set about absorbing them into his Organic Constructs. When he had absorbed 10 trees worth of essence altogether, he felt full, as if he couldn't absorb any more. He then got a wild idea and decided to form a new Warhammer from the SteelOaks.

As the silvery essence poured forth from the back of his hands, he focused his Will and put together an image in his mind. When it was done, he had formed a 6ft long shaft with a huge rectangular block on the end. The shaft was as thick as his wrist with a ribbed grip big enough for both his hands and had an intricate snake scale pattern along its length.

Shane tried, he really tried but in the end, he couldn't resist and the head of the hammer had a Wyrms head motif on either side and was shaped just like Mjolnir from the Thor movies, except it was probably 3 times the size. He may have ripped it off but goddamn it if it didn't look awesome!

Altogether it weighed around 150kg and it fit very well with Shane's new strength. He would forever keep his first hammer in a corner of his inventory but recently, it was starting to feel like a toothpick in his hands. The essence was tougher and heavier and would suit him well for a while to come.

The harder and much more painful part was separating the Organic Construct from his body while keeping its shape, and boy, did that hurt like hell! He was essentially severing a part of himself while concentrating to the maximum, so he felt everything.

Good news, he managed it. Bad news, 10 more SteelOak paid the price of filling the uncomfortable emptiness that followed.

He now had a good weapon and enough SteelOak essence to form his usual gear, headband included, from that instead of the leather. He had also absorbed the scales from his old gear into his Organic Constructs. Even now, he still couldn't put a scratch on them and when absorbed, they seamlessly mixed in with the SteelOak essence, giving his new armor a snakeskin effect.

There were two changes in his new armor and one of them was that the Vambraces had now merged into half gauntlets that protected the back of his hands but left the fingers free so that he could still make dexterous movements.

The tunic had also reformed into a pair of Gothic shoulder pauldrons with a Dragon head motif that was strapped up to a pair of faceted octagonal plates that protected his heart from both the front and back.

All in all, the new armor not only had a higher defensive value than his old stuff, and it was also technically a part of him, making it exceptionally easy to move around in.

-------------------------------------

The third and fourth days were when things started to get tough. Shane had encountered a number of profound beasts along the way including a pair of Savage Bears at the [6th of True Profound], which he killed with the help of Dusty's incredibly sharp wind attacks and his new shiny hammer.

He also removed the cores and stored them for selling later. The only problem with devour was that it breaks down every part of the corpse into energy and if Shane wanted to stay somewhere that wasn't the forest or the street in the future, he would need some coin.

However the beasts weren't the main problem, the closer to the 'small' range he got, the more uneven and unstable the terrain became, and by the end of the 4th day, he had frustratingly only managed to cover another 50km, making him just over halfway towards Cyan Forest Town.

Absorbing the corpses of the Savage Bears had allowed Shane to break through again, bringing his Body Cultivation to the [1st of True Profound] and consequently causing another nasty session of impurities cleansing. Good thing he brought literally thousands of liters of water from the pool with him inside his inventory! Oh, how he yearned for a warm bath or shower!

His Profound Cultivation had also reached the peak of the [2nd of True Profound] and Dusty's had reached the [4th of True Profound]. Many different profound herbs had also made their way into his inventory as they had ended up taking a strafed path across the rough terrain instead of a straight one.

Traversing the mountains wasn't difficult per se, it was just incredibly time-consuming. The terrain was rough and the profound beasts gave off a huge aura. Thankfully, they were scarce and were mostly spotted from afar, so Shane was able to avoid them without any problems and press on without many interruptions.

As his foot touched back down onto the forest floor on the other side of the range, Shane sighed with relief. It had taken almost 4 days to cross the mountains and get back to the beautiful green, leafy paradise.

The minimap had been going crazy almost the entire 4 days, what with the amount of low-level profound herbs that were growing everywhere like cabbage, not to mention all the mineral veins that were just under the ground!

Naturally, as a greedy hoarder, Shane had abused his meager skill in earth manipulation to the maximum and extracted hundreds of kilograms of different ores.

By the end of the mountain crossing, there were even quite a few spirit grasses and herbs that were equivalent to Nascent Realm and a very small amount of Purple veined heaven crystals sitting in his inventory.

Shane however, was rather numb to these profound herbs and ores but now he was just glad to be rid of the migraine that had plagued him day and night due to all the constant pings appearing in his head.

He paled a little and almost tripped when he thought of how his minimap would interact with the herb finding ability of the Sky Poison Pearl. Shaking that one off before he could despair, that was definitely a problem for future him.

Shane began looking all over for a nice hollow tree where he and Dusty could take a well-deserved rest and where he could visit the dreamscape in.

It had been 8 days and he missed her…

Lying lazily across a couch under the old willow, with a piece of long grass in his mouth and wearing nothing but baggy shorts and a basketball jersey, Shane sensed her approach...

He cracked open an eye and flashed a teasing grin then said in a singsong voice. "Qingyue dear, it's your turn to spoil me today~"