Market Exchange (Edited)

Jayde tapped on skills menu with her finger, the display screen faded and a new submenu opened up. The menu items displayed on the screen were acumen, agility, charisma, coordination, intellect, magic, and physique.

Jayde selected the first menu item acumen. A new submenu opened displaying:

Artist: Making works of art, like paintings, music compositions, musical instrument, and dancing.

Basic Skills: Utilitarian skills such as sewing, farming, and cooking.

Crafting: Creating, fixing, or modifying equipment, weapons, armor, potions, pill refining, rune crafting, enchantments, woodworking, blacksmithing, constructing buildings, and the like.

Disguise: Altering features or clothing to be unrecognizable or to look like someone else.

Gambling: Playing and cheating at games of strategy and luck.

Hiding: Concealing objects, both on oneself and using camouflage.

Searching: Spotting hidden objects or people, reconnoitering, lipreading, or eavesdropping on or watching another person.

Survival: Surviving in wilderness environments, including the ability to identify plants, animals, and their nutritional and medicinal uses.

Tracking: Following the trail of another person, animal, or creature, or keeping after a moving target without being noticed.

Jayde was surprised at the different items available, curious about what sort of items were offered under these menu items, she selected crafting. Reading through the long list of various crafts available, Jayde randomly selected potion making. A new display screen opened up.

Basic Potion Making: Purchase one hundred hours training with trainer Violet ... 5000 points.

Intermediate Potion Making: Purchase three hundred hours training with trainer Violet ... 15,000 points (Basic requirements not met.)

Advanced Potion Making: Purchase five hundred hours training with trainer Violet ... 25,000 points (Basic requirements not met.)

Master Potion Making: Purchase one thousand hours training with trainer Violet ... 50,000 points (Basic requirements not met.)

On the screen, the intermediate, advanced, and master potion making menu items were greyed out. Jayde concluded that she had to complete the basic course first before she would be allowed to purchase more advanced training. Jayde was surprised at how mundane the whole crafting section was. Up until now everything in the Proteus artifact had been so over the top, that she was taken aback at how normal this section appeared. In a way, she had been expecting that the knowledge would have been instantly transferred to her. Shaking her head at her bizarre thoughts, Jayde returned to the acumen submenu and quickly browsed through the rest of the submenu items. All the items listed were for training with different trainers.

Returning to the main skills submenu Jayde selected agility.

Acrobatics: Performing feats of gymnastics, extraordinary balance, and dance, as well as breaking falls.

Fighting: Competence in unarmed combat.

Climbing: Scaling various surfaces.

Contortion: Escaping from otherwise secure physical bonds by twisting, writhing, and contorting the body.

Dodging: Slipping out of danger's way, whether avoiding an attack or a sprung booby trap.

Flying: Maneuvering flying mounts and flying artifacts such as swords.

Jumping: Leaping over obstacles.

Melee combat: Wielding hand-to-hand weapons.

Riding: Controlling and riding domesticated mounts.

Stealth: Moving silently and avoiding detection, whether through shadows or crowds.

Like acumen, the agility items was for purchasing training hours with trainers.

Charisma covered items like animal training, bluffing, charm, commanding, intimidation, mettle, and persuasion. But these items were different, instead of training these were skills that you could purchase. Jayde was confused by this, so she asked Isha what the system meant by purchasing these skills. Isha explained that these were skills that would be given to a contractor. Jayde couldn't wrap her mind around the whole concept of giving someone more charm, it was just a bizarre concept to her.

Coordination had training skills such as lockpicking, marksmanship, and throwing with one of the trainers.

Intellect you could purchase different languages, reading, writing, map navigation, knowledge of different cultures, and trading. These skills were similar to charisma where the knowledge would be downloaded into a contractor's brain.

Magic was broken into the eight different elements, and each element had hundreds of different spells. Under this tab, you could purchase a scroll containing the spell, which you would then have to learn.

Physique was the last item listed under skills and was the one that attracted Jayde's attention. Under physique, Jayde could purchase upgrades to her physical body. Jayde eye's widened, and her heart rate increased as she took note of the numerous different body modifications available. This is more like it, Jayde thought, as she started to read through the list of body modifications items available.

There were so many modifications she was interested in. A level one healing ability would increase her body's natural healing ability by twenty-five percent, while a level one speed enhancement, would increase her speed by fifteen percent, there were body strengthening modifications, meridians widening, skin hardening, while most were pretty easy to understand. There were some really disturbing modifications like dragon claws, hammer fists, and shark skin.

While Jayde was quite happy to upgrade her body, she didn't want to end up looking like some kind of freak. Browsing further through the body modifications, she also noticed that there were some pretty useless modifications, they were purely for physical beauty, from changing one's hair and eye color to increasing one's breast size, there were even modifications that would let your body give off different fragrances. According to Isha the skills purchased here changed the DNA of a contractor.

From all the menu items that Jayde had perused, she had noticed that skills were broken down into different levels and cost anything from three points to thousands of points. When Isha have informed Jayde that she had earned ten points from completing White's test, she had assumed that she had a lot of points, but now she realized that if she wanted to purchase something really valuable she would need a lot more points.

Coming to the realization of how precious her points were, Jayde decided that if she purchased anything, it would have to be something that she really needed. While she found some skills under the combat skills section that she was interested in, her experience on the prairie had given her the confidence that the skills she currently possessed were sufficient for her to survival — for now — at least until she had earned more points.

While debating with herself what to buy, Jayde realized that she had no idea what her elemental affinity was.

Turning to Isha, Jayde asked: "Isha, now that my seal has been lifted, how do I find out about my elemental affinity and Qi pool?"

Slipping one of his hands into his pocket, Isha cleared his throat, his eyebrows furrowed as he responded.

"Ahem... Jayde, I meant to talk to you about that earlier. The first layer of the seal locked away your fire abilities, so right now you only have access to the fire element, as to your Qi pool, with your blo... er I mean .. body your potential should have been limitless, but with your magic being locked way, your dantian was damaged."

"Damaged?" Jayde interrupted, "How was it damaged, and how bad is it?"

"Well, from the moment a child is born on Doha, even though they can't cultivate, they still slowly absorb the Qi around them, which helps to nourish their dantian. But as your dantian was sealed away at birth, you were denied this opportunity, so your dantian has shrunk, think of it as if your dantian has been starved for the past thirteen years," Isha explained while looking distressed by this fact.

"But not to worry, it's not permanent, there are ways to fix it," he said hurriedly to reassure Jayde.

Jayde frowned, she had picked up Isha quick correction. Looks like Isha is hiding something about my body, she thought, this only underlined to Jayde that this Protoss artifact couldn't be trusted.

"So as I unlock more layers, I will gain more elemental abilities?" she probed.

"Uh huh," Isha nodded.

After a moment's reflection, Jayde said: "So when will you be able to unlock the rest of my layers?"

"I can't," Isha rubbed the back of his neck. "That is only something you can do," he stated.

"Only I can do?"

"Hmm, I have already bent the rules as far as I can, by releasing the first layer of your seal. I am only meant to guide you, not interfere with your destiny, but I had a little leeway as someone had already interfered by hijacking your soul and locking away your magic, but from now onwards, it is up to you to unlock the rest of your seal."

Jayde was quite surprised at Isha speech. "So can you at least tell me how do I go about releasing my seal and what I need to do to fix my dantian?"

Isha was quite happy that he could at least answer this question.

"Oh yes," smiling brightly Isha continued.

"For your seal, you will need to find pure elemental pearls. Only by absorbing the pure elemental Qi stored within the pearl, will you harness enough elemental power to break through the seal — there are other ways to unlock your seal, but you will have to discover those methods on your own."

Isha further went on to explain to Jayde that pure elemental pearls were created by emperor level spirit beasts, and it could only be formed by a spirit beast who was about to ascend to god level — a state that a majority of spirit beast yearned for as only by entering god level could they gain their human form.

Elemental pearls were formed when a spirit beast compressed all the Qi in their dantians.

Oh great, Jayde thought sarcastically, not only do I need to find one of these mythical beasts, I then have to somehow survive running into it (this was due to most spirit beasts hating humans, and they had a tendency to kill first and ask questions later). And then somehow convince it to give up all its cultivation to create one of these elemental pearls for me, putting it back thousands of years from gaining its human form.

Giving up on the idea of gaining more elemental abilities — at least for now, Jayde decided to concentrate on healing her dantian.

"Well then, what do I need to heal my dantian?" she asked Isha.

Producing a piece of parchment from thin air, Isha started writing down a list of items that Jayde needed to gather for him to help repair her dantian. Once finished he handed over the list to her.

Look through the list that Isha had written down, Jayde eyebrows shot up.

"I need to acquire all these items?" she asked dismayed at the long list of items that Isha had produced.

"Hmm," Isha confirmed. "But it not too serious."

"Most of these are common herbs and plants," he said pointing to a quite a few of the items written.

"And as for these spirit stones, it shouldn't be too difficult for you to find, as most of those beasts are in the Dark Forest."

Turning the parchment over he pointed to a small list, "but these are going to be difficult."

Jayde read the list out loud: "Mermaid's Tear, Dragon Scale, Branch from Tree of Life, Medusan Venom, Dwarven Black Gold and Blood of the Phoenix."

"Ah I forgot, you don't need the blood of the Phoenix, since ... well, we luckily have some on hand," Isha said hurriedly grabbing the parchment he looked quite flustered as he produced a piece of charcoal, then he scratched off Blood of the Phoenix of the list.

"..." Jayde's eyes narrowed as she looked at Isha, suspicious why he was so flustered.

"You have some blood of a phoenix available?" Jayde asked suspiciously.

"Uh huh," Isha said, nodding his head, looking at the parchment in his hand.

"Really, and just how did you manage to get your hands on some phoenix blood?"

Isha head jerked up, he could hear the suspicion in Jayde voice.

"Well, this artifact has been around for eons Jayde, there are many secrets locked away, which you will discover in due time."

Although not happy with Isha evasion, Jayde let the matter drop.

"I need ALL of these items to repair my dantian?" Jayde clarified as she pointed to the list in Isha hands.

"Well not all in one go," Isha stated.

"Right now, your Qi pool is at the stone level, I will need these items to create a potion to repair your dantian so that you can advance to the copper stage."

Marking some of the herbs, as well as the low-level spirit stones with a small cross mark, Isha handed back the parchment to Jayde.

Noticing the distressed look on Jayde's face, Isha tried to think of a way to cheer her up.

"Not all those items are difficult to find," he said, smiling sympathetically. "Dwarven black gold, shouldn't be that hard to acquire, you should be able to find at the auction house in Arvia."

Taking back the parchment, he then made a different mark against a list of herbs and spirit stones.

"These are the items that I will need for you to upgrade your Qi pool to the bronze stage."

"Although these high-grade spirit stones will be harder to get," he mumbled, tapping his nose, Isha pondered on how to help Jayde with this dilemma when he suddenly remembered something.

"Ah, I just remembered, in the cave, there was a pile of spirit stones."

Jayde cheered up recalling the pile of spirit stones, and there was that strange pile of metals as well, that she hadn't shown to Isha yet, maybe there was a piece of dwarven dark gold in there as well, she thought. Jayde had no desire to return to Arvia, not at her present strength. She couldn't afford for the Freehold clan to find her yet.

Although not happy that she had a long way to go, Jayde was at least satisfied that she had a plan to move forward, taking the parchment from Isha, Jayde turned back to the screen to continue browsing when she realized that she had no idea on how to cultivate.

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"When writing the story of your life, don't let anyone else hold the pen."

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