Chapter 24

Chapter 24. Tower - Slime Summoner (1)

Quite some time had passed since I reached the Third-Rate stage, and I had turned four.

By now, the Third-Rate stage had been completely internalized, so I could freely strengthen my body with internal energy.

Unlike before, when I could only hop about thirty centimeters in place, I could now jump more than a meter.

I checked my Status Window.

[Name: Han Ji-woo (Slot 2 avatar) / Age: 4]

[Strength: 6 / Agility: 9 / Stamina: 8 / Intelligence: 17 / Mana: 23]

[Status: normal, growth period]

[Abilities: Multidimensional Avatar Lv 10, martial arts Lv 19]

[-martial arts: Bluewood Sword Lv 18, Bluewood Step Lv 18, Bluewood Combat Lv 18, Bluewood Art Lv 23, Muscle-Bone Building Art Lv 4, Yoga Qigong Lv 10]

My Status Window stats and martial arts ability had grown enough for me to climb the Tower.

In particular, after reading all kinds of difficult martial arts texts and papers, my Intelligence and Mana had grown rapidly.

On the other hand, Strength, Agility, and Stamina had barely grown.

Of course, even if their growth was slow, through spiritual medicine and training, my physique had left the normal range for my age and was almost comparable to early adolescence.

In truth, it did not matter if my basic physical abilities were lacking.

As long as I strengthened my body with a cultivation method.

[Strength: 16 / Agility: 16 / Stamina: 16 / Intelligence: 17 / Mana: 22]

By consuming internal energy, mana, I could temporarily strengthen my physical abilities.

If I increased the amount of internal energy consumed, I could strengthen myself further, if only temporarily, but because my underlying body could not support it, my flesh might be damaged.

Being able to see the effects of martial arts directly with my eyes really did make the Status Window convenient.

After I learned several martial arts, they were integrated into “martial arts” in the ability field, and when I focused on martial arts or pressed it, the things I had learned appeared underneath, as if I had pressed “See More.”

The reincarnation clone did not have the Spirit Arts that the Tower clone had learned.

While moving back and forth between my clones and my main body, I had researched the functions of “Multidimensional Avatar” in various ways.

It seemed that no matter what world it was, when I first created an avatar, I could only create it with “Multidimensional Avatar.”

From there, in order to copy my main body’s other stats or abilities into the avatar, it seemed I had to consume “Avatar Points.”

The reason I could not confirm my hypothesis by absorbing and recreating the reincarnation clone was simple.

[Warning, the physical age of this avatar differs from the physical age of the main body. If you recreate the avatar after absorption, it will be recreated with the main body’s physical body. Absorb avatar?]

If I absorbed the clone, I could not return to childhood.

Naturally, if I created a new clone, I would lose the house, the inheritance, and Si-woo, my teacher, so I could not choose that option.

It would’ve been a disaster if the kidnappers had killed me!

I thought that if I kept climbing the Tower, just as “Reincarnation” and “Third-Person Avatar” had appeared, an additional ability that could resolve my current situation in some way might appear.

However, for now, not being able to use the power of my strongest reincarnation clone was critical.

I needed to use the clone’s power to climb the Tower smoothly, but to use the clone’s power, I had to climb the Tower.

What kind of shitty setup is this?

The problem was whether the function to adjust a clone’s age would appear on the 20th floor or the 30th floor.

No, perhaps I might need to raise the level of Multidimensional Avatar.

After worrying and worrying, I shifted my thinking in another direction.

If I could not use the clone’s power directly, then I simply had to receive help from the clone.

Fortunately, I had the spiritual medicine ingredients I received as customary gifts from the land I had inherited, as well as the spiritual medicines I had received as a reward thanks to Si-woo’s good response last time.

If I could not use the power of the reincarnation clone, then I could simply raise the Tower clone with spiritual medicine.

Of course, using the spiritual medicines I had received as a reward on my current main body or Tower clone would be no different from putting a pearl necklace around a pig’s neck, or making expensive shit.

So I asked Si-woo and began studying spiritual medicine preparation.

“As a martial artist, it is good to take an interest in spiritual medicine preparation. I will look for lectures right away.”

Saying that, Si-woo discovered a positive function of the internet and decided to postpone restricting my internet use.

After the kidnapping incident exposed my secret investment account and double ledger, Si-woo had been looking for an angle to reduce my internet time for the sake of cultivating proper character.

Tsk. Maybe I shouldn’t have made a double ledger after all?

Or maybe I shouldn’t have made jokes when I was kidnapped? Which one was the problem?

Separate from my worries, Si-woo had no information on spiritual medicine preparation, so I naturally took classes through internet lectures.

Among spiritual medicine preparation methods, beginner-level medicines that were good to take from the Entry Realm to Second-Rate had long since been released to the public.

Of course, without a professional medical license, it was illegal to sell or gift spiritual medicines one made personally.

People could not be allowed to die from eating bootleg spiritual medicine, could they?

Even so, since I had been born as a direct descendant of the Cheon Family, and thanks to my grandfather being the Outer Hall Head, even though I had never met him, I could learn preparation methods for medicines above Second-Rate.

Of course, even if I could learn them, I lacked the basics, so naturally, I had to start with preparing Entry Realm spiritual medicine.

Well, what I needed was exactly spiritual medicine at the Entry Realm to Third-Rate level, so that was quite fortunate.

The spiritual medicine ingredients I had were the finest of the finest.

Naturally, they were not used whole. I had to buy other low-grade ingredients to reduce their medicinal properties.

Medicine and poison were two sides of the same coin, so if eating something with medicinal properties that were too strong only ended with me making expensive shit, I would have to thank the heavens.

If I made even one wrong move and my qi center burst because of spiritual medicine, or qi deviation occurred, I would not be able to handle it.

“Aren’t these herbs way too many? We have a limit on the money we can use each quarter.”

For my pharmaceutical practice, Si-woo purchased several sacks of spiritual herbs and medicinal herbs that were taller than me.

“Hehe, do not worry. They are ingredients used to neutralize medicinal properties and increase volume, so they are not that expensive. Also, I purchased them cheaply through connections as a member of the family and as the landowner.”

Si-woo showed me the purchase details.

She had used only twelve million nyang to buy all these piles of herbs.

Looking at the purchase details, it seemed they were cheap because they had been purchased through the Cheon Family’s Pharmaceutical Hall.

The Pharmaceutical Hall under the Inner Hall was one of the customers leasing my real estate.

“And since they are for learning, approval was granted to use funds outside the set quarterly budget. Of course, whether it is within the budget or not, it is still your property, young master, so we must save it.”

I felt pressure from Si-woo’s smile, as if she was telling me to work hard.

Maybe it was just my imagination.

---

After diligently practicing making spiritual medicine in between martial arts training, I finally produced usable spiritual medicine.

After making spiritual medicine, I sent a component analysis request to a professional institution, the Cheon Family’s Pharmaceutical Hall.

In the beginning, there were failures where all the medicinal properties died, or I failed to suppress the herbs’ toxicity and ended up completing poison.

The failures were disposed of through a professional disposal process, and I even received inquiries asking if they could research them, since they had never seen someone draw out toxicity this way with these ingredients before.

Maybe I have talent in poison-making?

After failing over and over again, once I had made around twelve hundred, the quality gradually reached the point where it could be sold.

During the creation of twelve hundred failures, twelve precious top-grade spiritual herbs and twelve sacks of medicinal herbs disappeared, but I still had plenty of sample spiritual herbs and sacks of herbs Si-woo had purchased as if she were hoarding them.

I was truly glad that I had samples received by custom from before I was even born.

According to Si-woo, my parents had no interest in preparing spiritual medicine, so if they needed spiritual medicine, they would sell the spiritual herbs and buy spiritual medicine instead. They did not use the herbs directly.

Of course, it seemed they earned enough money to buy spiritual medicine without selling the herbs, so they had not bothered to sell the spiritual herbs either.

In that way, one hundred Entry Realm spiritual medicines and one hundred Third-Rate spiritual medicines made by my own hands were completed.

Naturally, I, the reincarnation clone, would eat not this shoddy spiritual medicine, but the spiritual medicine given to direct descendants of the Cheon Family. All these spiritual medicines were for me, the Tower clone, to eat.

---

My consciousness entered the Tower clone.

The sight of the somewhat unfamiliar inn room gave me a slight sense of dissonance.

I had spent four years as the reincarnation clone, and since I had sometimes sped up time with “Third-Person Avatar,” the actual amount of time should have been shorter than that, but I had still spent quite a long time in the reincarnation clone’s body, so the inn room felt awkward.

“Even though I had all that time, not even a single second really passed here.”

If time had not passed here, then time on Earth probably had not passed either.

Thinking that, I looked at the setting sun visible outside the window.

From the Tower clone’s perspective, it had only been three or four hours since I had recreated the clone, so there was almost no physical fatigue.

I got down from the soft bed, sat on the hard floor, and crossed my legs in the lotus position.

“Ow. It was easy to sit in the lotus position with a child’s body, but this body is all stiff, so it isn’t easy.”

Sitting in the lotus position, I took an Entry Realm spiritual medicine from Inventory, chewed and swallowed it, then cultivated Bluewood Art.

Even if I was lacking in other things, my qi sense was excellent, so I quickly drew out the energy of the spiritual medicine, performed breathing circulation, and circulated qi throughout my entire body.

Perhaps because this body was different from a child’s and had accumulated impurities, moving qi was not easy.

I had expected that.

It had been the same with my main body, so of course the clone would be the same as well.

One might ask, then couldn’t I do it with the main body and create the clone again afterward? But the method I was using now had one big problem.

Was it because, according to my hypothesis, points were needed to give the main body’s abilities to a clone?

No.

It was because when I ate spiritual medicine and performed qi circulation practice, impurities were discharged through my pores.

When I performed qi circulation practice normally, the amount of qi absorbed through breathing was not that great, so impurities did not come out. But when I took spiritual medicine, a large amount of qi was absorbed at once, and the impurities in my meridian pathways were washed away to some extent.

The first time my main body sweated from that, I nearly had a heart attack.

I had prepared a portable shower stall, but the Tower’s first floor was not an environment where I could shower comfortably.

Therefore, I had to do this with the clone’s body.

And there was also one experiment I wanted to try.

After using up all the power of the spiritual medicine and expelling impurities through sweat, my meridian pathways became a little cleaner, but my qi center had not even formed properly.

There was no problem.

I immediately ate another spiritual medicine with water.

I had plenty of Entry Realm spiritual medicine. I could keep making more.

As I repeatedly ate spiritual medicine and performed qi circulation practice, the movement of qi became somewhat smoother, and at the same time, a rotten smell began coming from my body.

“Mm. Now it’s qi center formation... Absorb.”

I absorbed the clone and created it again.

My dirty body disappeared, and I became clean again.

I sat down again, ate spiritual medicine, and observed my body.

“Hahaha. The clone’s condition is clean?”

I was currently conducting an experiment.

This “Avatar Absorption” absorbed the positive aspects of the clone and applied them to the main body.

Then what would happen to the main body if I absorbed a clone whose meridian pathways had impurities removed?

The main body’s body also received the effect of having its impurities removed.

Then what if I created a clone from the main body whose meridian pathways had become clean?

The cleaned meridian pathways were maintained as they were.

Ah, of course, there were a few more hypotheses here.

Later, if Slot 3 was created and I made a clone in a new world, would that clone have impurities in its meridian pathways? Or not?

If each slot inherited its previous state when its clone was recreated, then perhaps the Slot 3 clone might be created based on the moment I first registered in the Tower and obtained the ability. It would be a different story if I used “Reincarnation,” though.

For now, I could not know that. I could not absorb the Slot 2 reincarnation clone, so I could not experiment.

“Well, as long as the parts I worked on are maintained, it doesn’t matter much for now.”

I ate Entry Realm spiritual medicine and attempted to form and expand my qi center.

By the time the sunset sky had turned dark and dawn began to break, I smiled in satisfaction.