Chapter 35 – Medicine Bath

Aiko was carried by the Queen away to a nearby cave. The Queen would confiscate any food that she would bring from her pouch, making Aiko upset.

"You really can't eat that!" The Queen reprimanded Aiko. "You need to purify your Core!"

Aiko hmpfed away. There was something she had not done yet.

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 10?]

'I completely buried that in the back of my head.' Aiko thought, shaking her head.

[You have received Meat x20]

'...'

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 20?]

'Please be any better than the previous one...' Aiko prayed.

[You have received Meat x40]

'...... Seriously?' Aiko thought that the system was playing games with her.

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 30?]

'It better not be more meat!' Aiko glared at the system.

[You have received Meat x60]

'God fucking dammit!' Aiko cursed.

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 40?]

'I don't even care any more.'

[You have received A Skill Coupon][Skill Coupon][Allows you to get 1 Skill for free]

'Never mind! I do care! Give me that shit!' Aiko giggled inside her head, completely forgetting that she was scammed 3 times.

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 50?]

'More Amazing rewards please~!' Aiko hummed.

[You have received A Skill Combination Coupon][Skill Combination Coupon][Allows you to make 1 combination for free]

'Yes! That's what I'm talking about! Let's do the most expensive Skill Combination EVER~!' Aiko was really happy and her tail swayed left and right.

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 60?][You have received A Skill Coupon and Meat x50]

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 70?][You have received A Skill Coupon x2]

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 80?][You have received A Skill Combination Coupon]

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 90?][You have received A Skill Coupon x2 and Meat x100]

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 100?][You have received a Cultivation Gift.][Cultivation Gift][Gives you the most suitable Cultivation Technique/s.]

'OOOOOOOOOO.' Aiko almost took off with her tail how fast it whizzed. 'Should I wait or should I use it? I still have the [Duality of Cultivation] problem so I should probably wait till I solve that, having 2 Bloodlines would make it difficult for me to find a suitable Cultivation Technique. Yeah, let's do that.'

The Queen was looking at that little windmill Fox and shook her head. She figured out that since this little sweetie is so strange she probably has something on her to help her. She Wouldn't pry into Aiko's secrets unless Aiko would tell her. Of course that is only a privilege for Aiko, if it was any other bastard she would try to extract every single secret out of them.

The Queen was slowly cooking meat for Aiko while observing her. She would never separate from her until they got into the 'Fox Village'.

Let's first look over what I have and can do.

Items: [Introduction to the Mortal Realm], [Meat x250], [Skill Coupon x6], [Skill Combination Coupon x2], [Cultivation Gift]

'Six Skill Coupons, I should probably get some really good skills for me or something that would improve my Survivability.' Aiko Thought. 'For Example...'

[Vitality Recovery][Recovers one Vitality per Hour and additionally 0.01%pH of Max Vitality.][Cost: 10,000 Skill Points][Cost: 1 Skill Coupon]

'I will definitely get this one!' Aiko bought it immediately. 'And this.'

[Linguistics][Costs: 1,000 Skill Points][Cost: 1 Skill Coupon]

'It doesn't have a description, but that should be alright. It cost a lot so it should be good.' Aiko thought. 'But there are quite a lot of skills to choose from, some are really good while others are useless... I don't know what to pick... let's hold on for now, maybe I can get some "Skill Combination Book" or something, that would allow me to see the Skill Combinations.'

The Queen brought her the food and munched on her own.

'It's tasty, but the Palace one wasn't all that bad either...' Aiko thought. 'I wonder what that Princess is up to.'

Aiko shook her head as it was pointless to think about someone whom she would probably never meet.

She finished her meat and went to sleep. That night she had a nightmare of being chased by a strange Lunatic on a sword, another on a Ship and the last one running on the ground...

...

"We will travel most of the time, so I will be teaching you a few things along the way." The Queen said gently as Aiko finished her food.

She strapped Aiko on her back with her Divine Sense and left that cave.

"Every beast can evolve, but not every beast will be able to. At that stage, everyone is just a mindless animal that doesn't know any better."

"We would eat anything that comes our way, unknowingly polluting our Cores with impurities."

"Those impurities will make it harder for us to obtain better Evolutions as we won't be able to gather as much energy as needed and the possible bloodline would suck us dry because of it."

"That's why it's important that whenever you Evolve to have enough energy around you that you can consume." The Queen smiled bitterly remembering that [Earthen Shard].

Aiko nodded and Queen continued.

"The easiest way to make your Evolution successful is to gather natural ingredients, Natural Qi Formations or Spirit Stones."

"The easiest would be natural ingredients like herbs, Shard and like."

"But we can bypass all those hard steps since we will be joining the 'Fox Village', you will be able to gather resources much more easily as you will only need to go on missions."

"That means that even if the reward that you gathered along the way was insufficient you would still get some more from the 'Village'."

The Queen dashed along the plains. There probably would be few stops with Natural Qi Formations, since it seems this land was quite rich from it. The amount of ambient Qi was higher than when she was starting back then. This would allow her much quicker ascension this time.

...

They arrived around another sparkling pond.

'This is good, let's do some tweaks on my little sweetie.' The queen nodded in her head. She would use quite a few herbs and dump them inside here and circle the energy in a certain way to make a medicine bath.

What she used as medicine was for [Body Tempering] bath. It would cause excruciating pain to the User, but as a reward, their body would be strengthened greatly.

'But this would make your skin hard, which is not ideal for Foxes, nice soft and spotless skin is the best for us, who use beauty and illusions.' She smirked. 'Those old fools called my methods crude, but this little tweak to the prescription would make it so that the [Body Tempering] is ignored and it would pull a lot of impurities out.'

She prepared the herbs one by one and Aiko was curiously watching her.

'The only problem is that this bath is extremely expensive. I have to use most of our herbs, but it would allow her to Purify her Core from the worst to not so bad.' She carefully washed the herbs with her Water Qi. 'It will also boost her beauty each evolution, which means the sooner one bathes in it, the greater the benefit later on.'

She was almost finished with the bath, the quality was comparable to Perfect. It needed a few touches here and there to reach Perfect, but this was good enough for someone not yet in Magical Beast Rank.

Aiko was watching the pond change colours, from pellucid to green to blue... It was very nice to look at, especially when the colours started to mix, it looked almost like those star Nebulas.

"In you go." The Queen chuckled and threw Aiko inside.

Aiko was cursing at her since she had never before swam in the water as a Fox. The previous one doesn't count as she almost drowned and didn't have time to learn to swim properly.

Aiko panicked and quickly bought [Swimming] with her Skill Points. Surprisingly it cost her only 1 point.

But she noticed that she was floating on top of the lake? How was she able to float? She knew for sure that Skills weren't as magical as one might think, so it's not like Level 1 swimming would make her a professional swimmer.

The pond was very warm and nice to lay in, she almost left like she would-

*Zzzzzz*

"This..." The Queen sighed. "How is she able to sleep in such weird places." She remembered that time Aiko slept on her tail. "Seriously... if you look away for a second she would be asleep." But Queen was still smiling towards Aiko, unknowingly to her.

She prepared another piece of meat for Aiko while observing her closely. Since she was asleep it meant that she was completely relaxed and would get the best benefit from this.

'Last time I bathed in it I was awake and uneasy." She sighed. "That caused me to only absorb about 12% of the medicine bath, why have I not thought about sleeping?" She shook her head, slowly roasting meat.

Aiko was slowly dirtying the pond with her impurities, which the medicine bath pulled out of her.

...

Aiko woke up and yawned, almost gulping water.

She was startled awake and realized that she was still on that pond, but this pond was strangely black?

The Queen pulled her out of the pond and Aiko was shivering. She used [Clean] on Aiko and put her on her tail. That tail was near the campfire and was nice and cosy. Aiko almost immediately dozed off again, if it was not for the deliciously smelling meat.

She munched on the meat while being completely stunned.

[You have entered the medicine bath.][All your [Stats per Level] increase by x2][Your [Beauty per Level] increases by 50][Your Core has been purified!][Beast Core Purity: 1% -> 10%][Current Beast Core Bonus: 6 -> 62]

[

Name: AikoGood/Evil: 380 - 620 -> 420 - 580Species: [Shadow Fennec Fox Cub(Female, Peak of Unique)]Species: [-]Age: 0.23/100Bloodline: [Shadow Fiend Fox(Awakened)]Bloodline: [-]Beast Rank: BeastLevel: 8 -> 27 -> 28 (2nd Evolution)Title: [Foul-mouthed], [Agile], [Brave], [Courageous], [Thief Who Robbed Immortal],

Stats: (*2 Shadow Enhancement)

HP: 271/271 -> 280/519 (1pH & 0.05%pH)ST: 285/285 -> 303/685 (2pH & 0.07%pH)

Vitality: 136/157 -> 145/301 (1pH & 0.01%pH)Vigour: 171 -> 467Beast Core(1%->10%): 620 -> 1,000 (1,120)Toughness: 148 -> 272Strength: 173 -> 413Agility: 273*1.5 -> 1,089*1.5Dexterity: 134 -> 238Mind: 206 -> 742Insight: 30Beauty: 206 -> 2,142Luck: 274 -> 378

Stat Points: 126 -> 172Skill Points: 73 -> 119 -> 118

Elemental Affinity: [Shadow - 3], [Earth - 9]

Martial Arts: [Lightness Technique]

Divine Ability: [Duality of Cultivation], [Jaws of ####]

Ability: [Shadow Walk: Mastered]

Passive Ability: [Desert adaptation: Lv.2], [Shadow Enhancement: Mastered], [Agility Mastery: Lv.1], [Intention Perception: Lv.1]

Skills: [Burrow: Mastered], [Crushing Bite: Mastered], [Scratch: Mastered -> Lacerate: Lv.1->3], [Sprint: Mastered], [Tracking: Mastered], [Quick Jump: Mastered], [Climb: Mastered], [Camouflage: Lv.1->3], [Meditation: Lv.1],

Passive Skills: [Stealth: Lv.1->3], [Enhanced Sight: Mastered], [Health Recovery: Lv.4->5], [Stamina Recovery: Lv.6->7], [Prehensile Tail: Mastered], [Dark Vision: Mastered], [Enhanced Smell: Mastered], [Temperature Regulation: Mastered], [Intimidation: Lv.1], [Weakness Detection: Lv.1], [Hunting Mastery: Lv.1], [Vitality Recovery(NEW): Lv.1], [Linguistics(NEW): Lv.1], [Swimming(NEW): Lv.1],

Blessings: [Blessing of the Ancestral Nine-Tailed Fox], [Blessing of the Ancestral Phoenix],

Items: [Introduction to the Mortal Realm], [Meat x250], [Skill Coupon x6->4], [Skill Combination Coupon x2], [Cultivation Gift]

]

Aiko was very happy with this turn of events, now she just needed to reach the appropriate Level and Evolve again. She has that rock called 'Moon Stone' she would definitely use that, but it might attract some attention so she should be careful.

She would only evolve once she found a very deserted place.