Living Life As A Game: Through And Through

Unfortunately, to the crowd that mostly remained unchanged of the opinion that the Cooking Occupation was nothing but inferior trash, the thought of exchanging Warrior and even King Stage Monster Cores for mere "food" was comparable to burning money for fun. Most people scoffed and scampered off, calling Master Chef Kim and Elizabeth greedy frauds, while a small minority of financially well off pract.i.tioners, decided to take the gamble and exchange for a serving of Elizabeth"s food.

Initially, those willing to buy Elizabeth"s food felt it was worth the cost if only for the taste. But slowly, as the effects of Elizabeth"s Spiritual Cooking started to set in, those very same financially well-endowed patrons become frenzied as they engaged in a bidding war to buy the rest of Elizabeth"s food. To be as well off as those that came to take the gamble on food that could very well have been nothing but a glorified meal, one had to come from a relatively large background and after having a taste, these enlightened patrons wanted to give the members of their factions the chance to receive the same effects. After all, Elizabeth mentioned that the effects would last a couple hours and the tournament was only a couple hours away from reaching the main event. For the Martial Event where only combat prowess mattered, it didn"t matter what a pract.i.tioner used to prepare. Pills, Food, Enchantments, Artifacts… Everything was fair game and if their side had access to the relatively scarce resources of true Spiritual Cooking coming straight from Elizabeth"s hand, it was impossible to tell how big of an impact it could have on their faction"s performance.

Thus, Elizabeth ended up taking not just Warrior and King Stage Monster Cores, but also five Saint Stage Monster Cores. Even she couldn"t believe how her Jambalaya, who"s most expensive ingredient was a single King Stage, managed to sell with such a ridiculous markup. It came off as ridiculous even to her as she had shown the entire process of her cooking to the very same people who fought tooth and nail to procure her food.

Elizabeth picked up her rewards from the department of resources before leaving the arena to find June already waiting for her by the exit. To her side, there was a relatively healthy-looking young man who couldn"t be much older than twenty years old. At least, that was the case until Elizabeth activated her Lifespan Watch ability to see a bleak amount of death energy escape from the pores of the man as if he were leaking his lifespan. June introduced the man to Elizabeth as Henry; her nephew.

With only the rate of death energy known, Elizabeth didn"t need much else to understand that Henry probably only had at most another two or three years before he died. Thus, with a face that expressed the seriousness of the situation, Elizabeth did away with the formalities and told both June and her patient to follow her. Then, after taking the two of them back to the Inn where she rested during her first break, Elizabeth told Henry to take off his shirt to begin a round of serious probing.

As she waited for Henry to get ready, she picked out a new Fire-type herb to feed her Clearlight Sparrow. Not one to waste time, she had summoned her Tamed Beast while walking through the Tournament Square and she had to trade away some time cultivating, her Clearlight Sparrow wasn"t as restricted. Feeding it a Red Flame Lotus, Elizabeth materialized her acupoint needles and returned to the sitting Saint Stage patient.

As expected, the seasoned pract.i.tioner didn"t make a fuss as she pierced his skin in dozens of places, though his face did change as he watched Elizabeth"s expression devolve as the time pa.s.sed. Eventually, he couldn"t help but ask, "Ms. Ultimatia… are you also unable to cure my illness?"

Hearing his words, Elizabeth couldn"t help but chuckle as she helplessly said, "Illness? What Illness? Don"t you know you"ve been poisoned?"

"Poison! But he"s obviously suffering from Qi Deviation! What kind of poison could replicate that?!" June as a Grandmaster of Medicine felt ill at ease listening to Elizabeth"s diagnosis, as even she had yet to encounter a poison that could cause Qi Deviation; an affliction pract.i.tioners would get from practicing incorrectly or forcing their cultivation past the limits of their foundation.

"What poison? I don"t know, but it"s probably some low-level trash if it only encourages the likelihood of this guy developing Qi Deviation. After all, all you need is a poison to affect the body"s ability to manipulate Qi to develop Qi Deviation, and that"s only the most direct way a poison may cause the symptom. There are probably hundreds or even thousands of other ways a poison may cause Qi Deviation, but the reason I can tell so easily is because there are still traces of the source poison still corroding his acupoints and meridians." Although she called it "low-level trash" of a poison, if even a Grandmaster pract.i.tioner of medicine couldn"t deal with it, it goes to show how archaic the system of medicine was on Earth.

Covering her hands in hyper-condensed Neutral Magic, Elizabeth activated the formation of acupoints on Henry"s body to extract a small bit of the remaining poison. Showing June, she said, "You might want to take this to an alchemist to see if they can reverse engineer how this poison was formed. Perhaps you"ll find out where it came from or who it was that wanted to ruin this guy"s martial path."

"Mhmm… Thanks..." Materializing something eerily similar to a test tube, June manifested True Qi to take the poison sample out of Elizabeth"s hand and store it away. After she dematerialized the test tube, she asked, "So… What"s the process now? He"s been afflicted with the symptom of Qi Deviation for months now, so could you estimate how long it will take for him to readjust his Dantian to continue cultivating?"

Using only a tenth of her focus to continue speaking, Elizabeth burned away all the poison she extracted from Henry as she said, "Huh? How long? I plan to have him perfectly healthy before the Martial Event arrives..."

"B-but he has Qi Deviation… How are you going to treat Qi Deviation?" Ignorant to the extent of versatility Elizabeth"s methods of Acupoint possessed, June couldn"t even fathom how treating Qi Deviation as an affliction directly was possible. Qi Deviation being an affliction of the Dantian led virtually all the pract.i.tioners of medicine on Earth completely out of the know-how with regards to how it was treatable. Usually, anything harming or leading to an unhealthy Dantian was utterly incurable. Thus June thought that after Elizabeth extracted the poison from her friend"s body that he would have to wait out the negative consequences.

"Mhmm… it should be a simple operation of the Dantian. After I get rid of all the poison in his body and drain him of his Qi, as we discussed beforehand… He and I can work to correcting his Qi flow after keeping his Dantian condensed." Elizabeth spoke of the operation to Henry"s Dantian as a doctor would about applying a bandaid. Putting it lightly, both June and Henry were more than a little bit disturbed.

"You what? Operate on his Dantian?!" Forget Henry who was due to undergo the surgery, June was the one who screeched as if it were her that was put on death row.

"It"s not a traditional operation, I just need to activate an acupoint formation to condense his Dantian; nothing major..." Again, it would seem that operating on a Dantian, something unfathomable to the medical pract.i.tioners of the Martial Society on Earth, was nothing but a cakewalk for Elizabeth going by the nonchalance in her tone.

The looks of skepticism and unwillingness Elizabeth received hit her like puffs of air as she continued driving the poison hiding in the remote corners of Henry"s meridian and acupoint circulatory pathways out of his body. In five minutes flat, Henry was essentially cured of the poison that had caused his Qi Deviation, but seeing the hesitance Henry had once messing with his Dantian was involved led Elizabeth to say, "Look… If you don"t want to do this, I won"t force you. I mean, it"s not like I could if I wanted to. You"re probably strong enough to fight me off even without Qi and with a Spirit Realm cultivator by your side, I could only dream of wanting to force either of you to do my bidding. But, missing out on this chance will leave you unable to operate Qi for months as your body gradually affixes its Qi flow to normalcy. Take the time I spend draining your Qi reserves to consider the offer and I"ll ask for the last time when I"m done."

Without another word, Elizabeth went into a cultivation frenzy as she made use of Henry"s reserves of Inner Strength which stood in the range of tens of millions of units as he was a Peak Phase Saint. Using just over half of the energy available to her from draining Henry"s reserves, Elizabeth completed her cultivation of hidden potential within the Warrior Stage.

Now possessing just barely enough extra Inner Strength to complete her next three Chaos Seals, Elizabeth spent a total of half an hour converting Neutral Inner Strength to Origin-type Magic, before finally generating the equivalent of 1 million units of Inner Strength to fill the 4th Chaos Seal, another 5 million units of Inner Strength to fill the 5th Chaos Seal, and a final 20 million units of Inner Strength to fill the 6th Chaos Seal. The final dregs of energy still left over in Henry"s body was used for internal refinement to elevate the weakest link among her stats.

[Status

Name: Elizabeth Ultimatia

Bloodline: Human 100%, G.o.d (Fallen) 100%, Ancient G.o.dslayer Fiend 0.0028%

Level: 20 (22/25)

Rank: Peak Warrior Stage (100%) [Perfect Chaos Mage Warrior]

s.e.x: Female

Strength 230

Endurance 255

Speed 308

Defense 234

Intelligence 333

Luck: 10

Inner Strength ~3.1 Million]