Calculating Cultivation

The tower shook again as the various forces fought each other. Thankfully no one came into the small room we were hiding in next to the main staircase. “Clear, three down, five up,” I repeated what Bones told me. I really wish I had my own cutter and illusion projector. This was a great opportunity in my mind to get stuff, but Rhiza wanted a wider margin of error.

She insisted on having ten floors in the direction we were moving and 5 floors in the other direction. Normally she would have waited until things quieted down, but with me around and knowing where people were in the tower, she was willing to take some small risks.

“I want to move as well, but Rhiza is right. If we get caught in the conflict, it won’t end well. It will be attack first, ask questions second. Anything less than five floors is risky. Hold on, forces below are moving up, and they appear to be sweeping the floors,” Bones said.

“Forces below us are moving up and sweeping the floors,” I repeated.

“Let me know when they get close, I will close us in,” Rhiza said, and I nodded at that. Using a slab of tower material to block off the opening of the nook she had cut would block Bones’ ability to keep an eye on things, but it would be near impossible to detect.

I let her know when the forces came to this floor, and she released the slab of material from her spatial item while we were silent. I heard movement and shouting outside of our nook and remained quiet. There were explosions, more shouting, the tower shook a bit, and then back to silence. After waiting for ten minutes, Rhiza removed the slab.

“Fighting six floors above us, nothing for at least ten floors down, but hard to tell,” I replied.

“Alright, we move then, downwards,” she said. I let her take the lead as we left the nook. We quickly came across a corpse that hadn’t been desecrated. Rhiza quickly got to work taking out the implants the person had. I swept the area for weapons and other stuff Bones’ picked up on. Rhiza and I had agreed to split everything we found.

Once Rhiza was done with the corpse, it was still incredibly fresh. I pulled out the coffin I had from Aoyin a long time ago and tossed it in there. While there would only be a small amount of cultivation remaining to extract, there were still some unlike other corpses. That meant they had value. The resulting blood crystals could be sold for far more than the corpses themselves. Everything of value had to be taken, and fresh corpses had value.

We moved through the floor, taking a staircase set up between floors to keep going down, finding the occasional corpse and lots more damage than when I had been scavenging here before.

“Leaving the tower is important and soon. Eventually one faction will take it, or a battle line will be created. Then each side will check their portion of the tower and clear it out. They might strip everything out, but that is unlikely. The most valuable thing in the Forever City for factions is real estate.”

That had been how Bones had explained the current conflict to me. Having more floors, meant more production and growth facilities, which could be used to fund more conflicts. Very rarely did factions fight to the bitter end. Normally a ceasefire was called after a certain point to stop losing resources and to digest gains.

This conflict we were in the middle of had progressed to this point since it would send ripple effects out through several linked factions. It was do or die for both competing factions, and there was even a chance faction members themselves might get involved.

“If faction members join in the conflict, then it is about to spiral out of control. Normally it ends up with several towers heavily damaged as the core faction members fight themselves, instead of proxies. It will be win or die for both sides,” Bones had explained.

“That fact that both sides attacked from the outside of the tower instead of pushing up or down, shows the desperation is increasing. Doing that maneuver gains a slight advantage but also signals weakness. Not sure which faction created this chaos first, but it doesn’t matter. The entire front will be a complete mess, and leaving the tower itself is dangerous. The best bet is to go very high or low, before attempting to cross to another tower,” he explained.

We were descending, which was not the direction we wanted to go. The closer we got to floor 0, the more intense things would be. Those were the more lucrative floors, since there were more connections between towers, which were used to transverse the Forever City.

“Another blast weapon,” I said and picked one up and put it away. We were raking in the credits. Each corpse we came upon was worth about 20 to 100 credits depending on their gear and if it was intact.

“The elites are fighting now, we need to keep moving,” Rhiza said after she took out some implants and put them away. We went to the next floor.

“Stop,” I said as she went for another corpse. “It has been moved, look at the blood,” I pointed out to her, and she paused. I had spotted this not Bones.

“A trap?” she asked.

“I can’t spot anything, but there is a high chance. Clearly didn’t drag themselves to this spot. Maybe a friend trying to get them to safety? But that seems unlikely,” I replied.

“Let’s check. Move to the next room,” she told me. Once we were out of the way, Rhiza pulled out a metal ball. She tossed it back the way we came. There was suddenly a loud explosion. “Trapped. We will need to be careful.”

“Good catch. I completely missed that. Probably a physical trigger. Rare, but they do exist,” Bones said. We continued more carefully, specifically around corpses. Several more were trapped. Rhiza had a small directional force bombs, the metal balls. They would blast things away when they detonated, could be reused, and highly durable. They didn’t do much damage but were great for disturbing areas and setting off possible traps.

She had support gear as did I. Just that mine was less capable in this environment. Flash bangs weren’t that useful. If there was a fight, I would be completely outclassed. The destruction on the floors we passed through was clear evidence, that attempting to join any of these fights was a bad idea.

Another thing that was unfortunate was that there were no spatial items. While the fighters would waste too much time stripping their companions of cheap weapons and modifications, spatial items tended to be compact and easy to pick up. Even if there was only one survivor, they would pick up the spatial items left behind.

That was why being a fighter, if you survived was so profitable. But with the sheer number of corpses I had seen while scavenging, it was clear that surviving was much harder than it appeared. Bones was firmly against joining any kind of conflict, since they were meat grinders. The casualties were just numbers at the end of the day for the people running the faction. If I was strong enough to not be on the front lines, there were better options.

“Forces coming up from below, a large group,” I said after checking the main staircase in the center of the tower. “They are breaking off into groups on the floors below us.”

“We need to hide,” Rhiza said and she proceeded to cut out another tower section to make a nook which we hid inside.

I had asked Bones why towers didn’t have labels or numbers, and he said there were things like that, but for people like us they didn’t matter. Each tower was the same as the last. Knowing the ring and the level was enough. Combined with a pad that showed key areas, general layout, and could be updated, there was no need to label towers. It all depended on which faction was controlling which tower.

That brought up the question of manual transportation instead of using spatial items and vehicles. It was a cost issue on larger shipments and trade caravans. We weren’t strong enough or had the backing to use the faster methods of traveling the Forever City at the middle levels. But if you needed to move millions, upon millions, risking a vehicle could lead to large losses. Also trade caravans would only sell a portion of their goods to the various factions they passed by while purchasing goods to trade, making loops about the Forever City. It was an entirely different culture in the middle levels.

As for not moving stuff out, that was tried, but there was only so much room things could be moved and neither side expected they would lose. Also, the equipment and the set-ups on the floors we passed through had the least valuable stuff. Weapon’s production, food production, and other key resources would be produced in a faction’s core area.

Also, there was the sheer scale of it all. Sure, clearing a floor of a couple key components ahead of time was simple. But clearing out hundreds of floors worth of stuff in the event you might be attacked, was just not worthwhile or practical.

The value each floor produced in this tower was miniscule, but they added up over time. That was why it was worthwhile to leave so much stuff behind, but still fight over the space. The stuff could be replaced, but it was the floor space that mattered to the factions. Also leaving stuff behind, like the walls, meant that the faction who had knowledge of the layout would have an advantage, however slight. Also equipment could be booby trapped against any invading force.

Once the large group swept by, there were no more useful corpses or high value items. It had been a fast scavenger group from a faction. They probably were gaining control of this section of the tower and thought too much wealth was lying about. We continued downwards and reached the floor above a tunnel to another tower.

“Time to make a run for it,” Rhiza muttered as she got to work cutting through the side of the tower. There was no one nearby. Once she removed square section to the outside atmosphere, I was ready to move. I went out first.

“All clear, I think. But there are things in the distance that I am concerned about.”

“Might be stuff at a distance,” I said and quickly left. The narrow gray connector was easy to transverse across using my skills. Rhiza was much slower as her boots secured her, so she wasn’t swept off. Still, she made decent time and we reached the next tower, which she began cutting a small hole into.

Once a small hole was cut through the tower’s exterior, she extended a small narrow rod through it. “No good, occupied,” she said.

“Nearest open floor is around this tower on another one, up two hundred levels, across another tunnel, up about a thousand levels,” I said.

“Let’s go,” she said through her mask. I took the lead during this part of the trek, having to go slower so Rhiza could keep up.

“Someone is checking the exteriors,” Bones told me.

“Some is checking us out,” I repeated, and we kept moving while looking about. Luckily, we were deemed unimportant enough to be left alone thankfully. We circled around the tower and then crossed over to another one. Then we had a climb up outside to the open floor.

There were several bulk traders set up and a couple of freelancers in one corner, but a lot less than before. Apparently, several were caught in the nearby conflict or had left. We got some glances coming in from the outside, but no one said anything.

We found spots, while Rhiza was struggling to breathe. The outside atmosphere really did a number on her. I noticed her pop a potion from the supply she kept on hand. The toxicity was no joke. Those yellow clouds were floating death. There was no renegade interlink set up, or any kind of tap into the local information network.

That would be a pain, trying to find out where the front was shifting. Thankfully we had picked up quite a bit. After resting for a day, Rhiza and I began carefully going through the loot we had picked up to clean up before selling.

“Welcome back, my favorite scavenger,” Glorp said once Rhiza and I went over to sell what we had recovered. The slime in a suit jiggled, which meant he was probably happy about making some credits.

“Mostly weapons and modifications this time,” I said.

“Just lay it out, I will give you a fair price don’t worry,” he replied. Rhiza and I lay out our haul that we had gathered. While it wasn’t as much as previous times, the value was much higher. The most valuable item was a penetrating eye, which could see through basic walls.

Glorp handed over the pad he had marked down the prices on. “The blasting rods, you are only offering 5 credits, instead of 8 credits,” I pointed out.

“Market saturation. Everyone is bringing weapons here to sell, and the conflict has been going on for a while. The price is lower here. I would have to carry them around for a long time to get more than 6 credits in this area,” Glorp countered.

“Everyone needs weapons and they are all mostly charged. Make it 6 credits,” I countered. Glorp thought about that for a moment before agreeing. There was nothing else that stood out as a concern. Rhiza and I both earned 387 credits each once the transactions were completed. A decent amount, but a far cry from the amount I needed to earn.

After getting her credits, Rhiza went to rest some more. I stayed behind to speak with Glorp. “The items, I ordered. Still on track?” I asked.

“Word has been sent, they will arrive, don’t worry. Tenth of a cycle before they come in on the next courier transport, you get your components and I get your credits. You wanted something else?” he asked.

“A low end repair station. With a basic database. That should run about 250 credits,” I said.

“I don’t know where you got that price, but you are looking at 400 credits,” Glorp said.

“That is a scam. They easily cost only 200 credits. Another 50 for transportation,” Bones complained.

“That is high, normally they cost around 200 credits,” I countered.

“But you aren’t a faction, and this is a warzone. There will be questions asked, and you probably don’t want questions. Transport fees need to be paid. Also, it is on the restricted list for this conflict by the faction running this tower. I should charge you more, but 400 credits is the friend price,” Glorp said.

“What a scam. But we need a proper repair station with a database. That is the best way to earn some money. Using what we scavenge to build better items. Ask about the material recycler,” Bones told me.

“What about a low-end material recycler?” Glorp titled his suit away from me.

“You and what faction? Those cost 1,000 credits. Out here, at least five times that, around 5,000. Everyone wants a material recycler. You should look at going to a central trade nexus for stuff like this. Sorry,” Glorp said. We left him and went back to our area.

“We should have left Rhiza behind, or killed her,” Bones said.

I shook my head and spoke very quietly under my robes, the rustle of the cloth and my mask hopefully covering up my reply. “It isn’t worth the risk. She might not have your sensory abilities, but she is capable and doesn’t let her guard down.”

“I am just frustrated. You are doing a good job and listen thankfully. But it will take cycles upon cycles to even get close to earning enough at this rate. Even when we got the good stuff, it wasn’t worth that much more. The only option is to make custom gear and rob factions,” Bones said.

“Is that even possible with immortals watching their towers?” I asked.

“For almost anyone else, yes. But your weakness is a big help here. The observation absorber will need to be modified and improved. There is also other equipment. But we aren’t getting enough for the risks we are taking. We break onto a floor. We can easily steal enough stuff to earn thousands of credits instead of hundreds.”

“Why don’t more people do this?” I asked.

“All comes down to the equipment. I have been working through everything I know for a while. I haven’t just been sitting around just observing. The faster credits are earned the faster I get my body back. And there are two factors like I said. You are weak enough, that most scans will miss you.”

“Then the observation absorber is for?”

“For more localized searches. But if the threshold is set too low, then an immortal checking over a tower will have a lot of false readings. Especially this far out in the Forever City. If we were near the center, we would be found based on individuals with specialized techniques, like looking for spatial items. We aren’t going to go after a faction’s core tower either.”

“And then the equipment. How much?”

“If we had a recycler and a repair station, I could do quite a bit. Enough to get us outfitted well enough not to worry. Normally someone of my power would be too big a risk to steal from a faction. And someone as weak as you wouldn’t have the knowledge or equipment.”

“It would be discovered quickly, and once a theft is spotted, there would be a lot more scans,” I quietly replied.

“A concern, but that is why we would be careful about what to steal and hide well enough. The factions would think it is just sabotage or some kind of internal conflict. There is risk, but the same with scavenging. Better to go for more value,” Bones said.

While I didn’t like the idea of robbing factions, I liked scavenging less. “We couldn’t set up a legitimate business?”

“Again, without any kind of faction backing us, it would be expensive. I can fake having backing, but factions live and die by their reputation. Faking backing from an actual faction would lead to them disavowing us and we would be captured and killed quickly. Making up a faction has the same issue. While factions might compete, they hate when people scam them in any way. Our credentials would be checked.”

“This means we would have to purchase backing from a faction. There are factions that do this, but the prices aren’t cheap, and there is already a tremendous amount of competition in the crafting sector. People prefer crafting over fighting, lower risk, but also lower margins.”

“And your technical expertise can’t get around that? Be high end?” I asked.

“At best it is low end. Basic field repairs are something I can do, with trash tier equipment. But anything more valuable requires specialized knowledge. Also, that kind of stuff is often reverse engineered or dismantled due to the risk. Reputation matters for anything above trash tier.”

“And the equipment I would need to rob factions is trash tier?” I asked.

“Yes. Again, you are so weak, it is fairly easy to sort out this issue. But getting the equipment to build the equipment is a huge hurdle. The only thing we can do is wait and save up.”

“What about checking out the edges of the Forever City?” I asked. There was silence at that question.

“It is an alternative. But the danger there is much greater and more varied. With the factions, I know how they operate, and their thought process. If we run into another super-organization, then there is no telling what might happen. While trafficking in those kinds of goods is something I know well, going into that kind of situation without strength is not a good idea.”

“Or I can sneak by and earn more?” I asked.

“Different detection methods. Cultivators sense the changes in the energy around them, being in tune with their Dao. But as you have seen eyes, there are other methods out there. Dispersed biological scanning is just one. There are countless others. Countering all of them is much more difficult than working around what cultivators do.”

“The other super-organizations don’t take advantage?” I asked Bones.

“How to explain this. The Forever City which is run by the Heavenly Alliance, focuses on cultivation science and techniques. That is what I know. Countering cultivation scanning with cultivation equipment is far easier than countering other forms of scanning. The same is true in reverse. Cultivators have a range of scanning methods, but they fall into the same category of cultivation.”

“It is a mismatch in technology then,” I worked out what Bones was trying to convey.

“Exactly. I know the factions won’t care about someone as weak as you, or scan at that level. The false readings would be too much and hard to work out from other beings in and around a tower. But more visual scanning, or spatial scanning are just two methods that would locate you very quickly. That is not counting other methods that I might have no knowledge of. Anyone at my strength that engages in stealth has to be very good,” Bones explained.

“And if we pull all this off, selling the stolen goods?” I asked.

“There will always be someone willing to buy. I am not saying it is easy, but there wouldn’t be more risk than there is now, just a different kind,” Bones answered.

“Which brings us back to the issue of getting enough credits. We have about 500 at the moment, but we need thousands more. I guess once we have the tower cutter and illusion projector we can try without Rhiza,” I said quietly.

“Exactly. Also we can move outside easier than her. Don’t get me wrong, she is a nice person, as nice as you get in the Forever City, but she is immortal. Unless she gets incredibly unlucky, she will eventually earn enough credits to pay to have her modifications removed and a cultivation pattern imparted onto her.”

“Its that easy?” I felt cheated by how easy it seemed.

“Don’t sound so depressed. The cultivation methods sold are trash. Your cultivation is the kind of thing that would make a faction take note of and keep to themselves. With enough credits anything is possible, but she would need to save up a tremendous amount to pay for a cultivation method that has potential after reaching immortality. At best she would become a low level officer inside of a faction, with almost no prospect for greater power,” Bones explained.

“She couldn’t leave like you did?” I asked.

“I left my faction for this reason. Once you reach immortality, advancement is incredibly difficult. The simple explanation is that, your foundation is immense. Stupidly immense. So immense that it will probably collapse horribly. But at the higher levels of cultivation, having a larger foundation is invaluable.” That did make me feel better at least.

“And you can’t just pay to get ahead?” I asked.

“You can, but the price becomes too much. Far too much. And then there are other setbacks that occur, like losing all your flesh. Also, the greater the threats become and the competition. There are a limited number of resources to push forward. That is why venturing out into the wider Firmament was my plan to get stronger.” I could sense the frustration coming from Bones, so I stopped asking. None of this information would really help me. I just wanted to know.

I had a real challenge. When I had been born, I had a silver spoon in my mouth and a loving family, helpful masters. That was easy mode. The Forever City was difficult mode. I had gotten lucky allying with Bones, but there was a clear limit to our cooperation. He would be getting his body before I attempted to break through the first bottleneck.

After that he would be off doing his own thing and I would be on my own. Factions weren’t bound by perception like the Imperial Sect had been either. Without backing here, no one would say anything if I was killed. That was why I kept pushing Bones to explain things to better understand how things worked in the middle class of this society, which was where most factions were.

The upper class was the Heavenly Alliance. While the rest of the beings in the Forever City was the lower class, struggling to rise up and not die. Backing was everything in the Forever City, for travel, survival, knowledge, and resources. Even if I got past the first bottleneck, I would still be incredibly weak, compared to the factions.

Bones had no idea what would happen if I survived, just that my base would be incredibly strong if I didn’t die. He had no advice, since cultivation science wasn’t a big part of his studies. He had a track of progression laid out for him by his parents. While he deviated later on, there was very little public information about the beginning stages.

Some factions offered advice to their foot soldiers, but it was expensive and Bones had warned me that their utility was questionable. Most factions had seven to fifteen templates they used exclusively, with another three to five reserved for elites of their faction. The goal was to create a strong base, which could reach the level Bones had without issue.

But a different method like mine, they wouldn’t have information. While the efforts on the various continents could be considered research, it was either classified, or there was just too much. If I wanted answers, I would have to pay for a specialist, which would be incredibly expensive on its own. That was the kind of thing a faction leader would pay for, millions of credits.

Since creating a larger foundation was seen as creating a future competitor, it was very expensive to hire any kind of specialist to lay out things step by step and work out any issues. My cultivation while impressive, was just not cost effective or proven. All of this meant I had to get more credits, somehow.

That was the real bottleneck. Everything was done between factions and their proxies. Like massive icebergs crashing into each other, while the small boat that was me struggled to survive. The coffin would take a while to process the corpses, but there was no rush. It wasn’t like any more corpses would turn up any time soon.

I pulled out some food and water from under my cloak. My supplies were still solid. I had decades worth of supplies as long as I rationed them. I also had enough credits that I could survive for quite a while and even return home if I wanted. But that would be the end of my cultivation journey. It was a mental balm to have a plan to leave if I ever needed to.

Bones would probably kill me, or do something, but once we were separated, that would be an option. Also, once we had enough credits, I could begin drinking potions regularly to draw in condensed energy into my cores. That was a long term plan, for now I needed to save up credits in order to earn more credits. Even if that was by theft. It would take a lot of theft, or something valuable enough to get a faction excited.

I knew Bones hadn’t thought through the entire plan from start to finish. The first step was equipment, then the second step was finding a target. Hopefully, once I had my own tower cutter and illusion projector, I would be able to get a lot more credits.

Once I was done eating and drinking, I checked my pocket watch. Time was ticking steadily away. While things didn’t feel urgent, I had a feeling it would be a major hassle to complete my cultivation before my life ran out.