Chapter 50 – Evolution limit
"Alright." Said Noah first thing as he got to his dream realm. "Let's evolve to level 3."
*Ding
*Starting evolution. Evolution complete.
Noah checked his CS to see what changed.
"So what's new, system? I don't see any changes."
*First thing the user should know is that your soul connection to the CS has become stronger. This will cause an after effect that we will see only after some time.*
"Alright, I get it. However, we now know what to expect."
*Yes. Unless the people there find another way to surprise us.*
"That…is a scary thought."
*The second change is within the search function in CS, please check it.*
Noah pressed the search tab and saw something new there.
"These are?"
*These things are called TAG. If we had to search for stories that we found recommended in CS before, now we can open a list of stories that correspond to the certain searching criteria.*
"I see. So martial arts are probably stories that tell about lives of some martial artists. This is indeed very useful. We should check this one first thing to see if we can find useful attack and defence skills there."
*I agree.*
"Hmmm. What is this cultivation I wonder? Are they stories about gardening or something?"
*It might be or it might be something else entirely. I would like to remind you that the common sense of the people of that world strongly differ in some cases.*
"You are right. We might open something that sounds innocent and get an emotional trauma for life if we don't know what this is. Maybe we should consult people in CS before that?"
*That is indeed logical*
"Alright. Let me try. Short and efficient. What was it called again? Tag?"
What's cultivation tag about? Wrote Noah in his post.
Growing plants. Answered someone immediately.
"Hmm. Was I right?"
Pffft. Lmao.
"Huh? What's this? A code?"
Cliche shit.
Trash
Cultivation is about stealing each other's ideas and repeating them 10 000 times.
No! Don't listen to them. It's about slapping faces!
"What the hell? I don't get a thing from their explanations."
*They might mean that many stories in that tag are repetitive.* Said system.
"I see. That makes sense. Still, what's with the face slapping?"
I don't agree with you people. There are certainly many cliches, but there is a lot of gold too. You can't say they are all trash. Wrote someone
Yeah, right. Said a person, adding a picture of a kid standing at a huge dump the size of town with a bag that had gold written on it and a huge word of cultivation written all over the garbage.
At that moment a strong smell of rot hit Noah's nose, almost making him puke.
"System! What the hell?!"
*I assume we have learned our new after effect.*
"Huh? I can smell it? But they are just pictures?"
*That is not entirely so. We are connected to libraries that contain certain information. And smell is a kind of information too.*
"Can you filter it?"
*I have a bit of another suggestion.*
"What?"
*Get away from CS."
"Huh? Oh. I see." Said Noah and moved away from the CS screen in his mind. "You were right. It doesn't smell now."
*That proves a certain theory.*
"What theory?"
*User, do you remember the after effects of second evolution?"
"Oh! I see. I heard them speak in my mind. I forgot it as you've been blocking it. So now I got the smell? Does that mean we will be connected with more and more of our senses after every evolution?"
*It looks like that. Which also brings a certain concern for our future.*
"What concern?"
*User. How many senses there are?*
"Hold on! Are you implying that I get only 5 levels to my system?"
*The great library indeed has mentions of systems with a much lower limit of levels that are commonly available to normal systems. Lowest one is known to have only 10. However every level of such systems also brings far greater benefit to the user, than usual systems.*
"So you are saying I might be a new anti-record in level cap?"
*There are a lot more senses than the usually mentioned ones. For example, a sense of balance or sense of dimension. All of these are senses people don't commonly put emphasis on. They are indeed less than the common 100 level cap, however they are not so low as to be somewhere close to make an anti-record.*
"Oh. I see. So what's your concern then?"
*Well. Imagine if in the future when you get all senses connected to the CS and we get one of these senses stimulated in an unexpected way from information we get from that world. Like for example one of them agitates users' sense of magic, creating a disbalance that would kill you from your own body's magic flow turbulation.*
"Oh crap. How do we prevent that?"
*We have to put in some work in a preventive way.*
"Like what?"
*Train you to not be overly agitated by the provocations coming from the CS. For example, enhance your sense of balance. In this case even if you were to lose balance from some kind of stimulus from CS, you will reflexively react and regain it.*
"I see. That puts a lot of stops in my advancement. I need to train myself a lot before I evolve each time."
*Well, the first 5 levels are the easiest. As it looks like they correspond to the 5 basic senses. It is what we'll connect to CS after them that might be of concern.*
"Training all might be too hard. We should start with those that are most likely to kill me if they are wrongly agitated by CS posts."
*Agree. Also please check back on your posts replies. I think we found something interesting.*
Noah came closer and sensed the smell again although it was a lot less now, as his post was going downwards in the list of posts. If this was the case then the smell should disappear once his post was totally hidden on the screen.
Noah read through replies and some indeed piqued his interest as the system said.
"So cultivation is a tag of self-cultivation. Growing one's understanding of body and soul. This might be exactly what we look for, system. There might be information on how to train our senses properly. Let's check this one."
*Agree. This is the best choice to search for needed information.*
Noah opened the cultivation tag and saw an endless list of stories.
"Supreme heavenly demon"
"Tyrant heavenly supreme"
"Demon heaven supreme monarch tyrant"
"Lord of heaven tyrant monarch"
"King lord monarch tyrant supreme"
"Heaven hell demon God tyrant monarch supreme Lord"
"What the hell is this?"
*The names sure sound a bit repetitive, just like we were warned."
"Alright, let's choose any. I don't get any information from these names anyway." Said Noah and opened one randomly.