100x Rewards As A NPC

[Ardenox]

The whole of the Nine Heavens watched with bated breath as the Ten Great Sects closed in around the Demon King of Obsession.

"Put down your sword and surrender, you vile wretch," someone barked.

My little sword won't stand up in this situation either, I'm not an exhibitionist…maybe.

"This is your end, you can't run now."

Who'd run away from a bunch of kids?

"You should have thought about this day when you slaughtered others for personal gain."

Uh oh, don't slander me.

Pain knifed through him when he spoke, but his voice cut clear across the ring of enemies. "It was you who massacred the innocents while searching for me."

His voice was hoarse, but still clear to everyone who was looking his way.

"Didn't you torture all of those people for information because your incompetent methods couldn't pinpoint me?" Kaizen taunted, laughing despite the blood that soaked his lips.

Like the shameless lot they were, the attackers ignored him.

"All this…for what? Only to die like a dog."

A dog? Fine. A dog who pissed on everyone's head for centuries.

"Your fate was set in stone when you dared to go against the entire world. Surrender."

No one's fate is fixed. Anything and Everything is possible.

He truly believed that.

No amount of curses or taunts could move the man in front of them.

While everyone was standing with their weapons out and guards up, the man sat.

No one dared to approach him, not even in his current state.

He sat while a hundred weapons pointed his way. No one dared step close. One hand clutched the hilt of the sword driven into the ground; the other braced against the rock he leaned on. Blood tracked along his body, staining blade and stone a deep, accusing red.

Kaizen bitterly looked up at the heavens, cursing it for not letting him breakthrough.

He had failed to break the limit of the world, and had been injured in the process.

The blood? It was because of his own failure. No one else was qualified to injure him.

With labored breath, he stood up, using the support of his sword.

As he rose, the assembled crowd instinctively recoiled, stepping back further with each of his movements until they had retreated a full hundred steps.

Frustration rolled through him like a bitter tide. What had it come to?

He finally couldn't help but raise his head, glancing at everyone who had surrounded him.

"Hahahahahaha."

Manic laughter escaped his mouth, as he threw his head back. His body trembled at the sheer absurdity of the situation.

With a deranged glint in his eyes, he looked at everyone.

"Surrender?" he said, each syllable poisoned with contempt.

He spat. Blood flecked the earth. "None of you rats are qualified."

One of them couldn't help but shout.

"Dog, do you not recognise your current state?"

Bravery leaked into them drop by drop, fed by the illusion of strength in numbers.

"You fucking wretch, what is that arrogance for?"

"Let's kill him, does he think he is the strongest? We have all the strongest people at one place, there would be no better time to kill him than now."

"Yea, let's rid the world of his evil."

Kaizen let a slow, bloodied smile spread across his face. "Done with the circus? Clowns."

He raised his sword. It was a single gesture, nothing extraordinary.

Yet, every blade shifted, every stance tightened.

"If there's anyone who is qualified to kill me, that would be me. Not rats who I could trample beneath me."

Kaizen took a last bitter look at the heavens, which obstructed his breakthrough.

He knew his life was coming to an end, but he refused to go down like this.

Kaizen was fond of betting on the unknown. Maybe a miracle would take place?

"I curse the entire Nine Heavens." The words left him like a sealed verdict.

Then he swung.

*****

"That day came to be remembered as the Black Day of Cultivation."

The professor looked at the students in his class and continued.

"It was the day the path of cultivation was severed," he said. "The peak was knocked down from the Celestial Emperor realm to the God King realm. One sword shattered the Nine Heavens, sundered the path, and dragged every Emperor from their throne to the level of Kings."

The students said nothing. Every one of them had heard the story—Heaven's Cry, an event that had unfolded only hours ago.

The professor's gaze swept the room. "This is why it's necessary to never let such a demon grow."

Later, as the class filed out, one young man tilted his head toward the sky, the memory of those words heavy in his chest.

So it's just been a few hours since that incident took place huh.

Kaizen thought while looking around.

His eyes narrowed as he walked. It had been no more than an hour since he had come back to life, wearing the shell of a mortal with no power at all.

The original owner of this body choked while drinking on water from the university's purifier.

The empty husk of a body was probably what allowed his soul to fill the gap.

His former self carried many names now, each one whispered like a curse or a legend:

The Black Crown of Unbeing. The Final Scream of Creation. He Who Laughs in the Ashes. The One Who Stood Alone. The Last King of the Peak. The Shadow Over the Nine Heavens.

Kaizen couldn't help but feel frustrated when he thought back to the scene. His memories were as clear as sparkling water.

Clenching his fist, he promised himself, his will still as unwavering as ever.

This time for sure. This time I'll break through to the Cosmic Realm to revive her.

There was just one unexpected thing.

His current world wasn't the Nine Heavens. It was a normal world which was about to be bestowed with a power system soon.

Kaizen didn't have any idea if Nine Heavens began in the same way. He was hundreds of years old, but he wasn't there to witness the beginning of the cultivation world.

His dao companion might've witnessed it, given that she was older than him.

At home, he sat cross-legged on the bed and closed his eyes. Inside his heart glimmered a shard of aquamarine colored crystal.

Did I get it when I slashed at the heavens of the cultivation world? Maybe this is what helped me to reincarnate?

Kaizen named it the Fragment of Heaven.

No matter what, it was a major benefit to him. Kaizen noticed that it allowed him to cultivate even in this other world.

The crystal was dim, probably because it had used up its energy to reincarnate him.

Kaizen couldn't wait for it to recover and explore if it had other functions and advantages.

In a few days he would once again step foot onto the path of cultivation after becoming a Body Tempering realm cultivator.

This would provide him with a massive benefit in the game world.

Apparently, his slash had opened up some kind of film covering the Nine Heavens. That tear let the other worlds, including this one, realize such a world existed, and even find fragments of its information.

This was also how this world got to know about his latest feat in the Nine Heavens, the name of his cultivation world.

Currently that was also the only thing known here since it was the most impactful, influential and popular topic.

As others absorbed tales of the Nine Heavens, Kaizen too sifted through what he could. The memories of his new vessel gave him scraps of this world's knowledge, and his own means filled in the rest.

When a new world crossed a certain threshold of time period, they would be randomly bestowed a power system.

This one was on the verge of receiving its own.

The good thing? Progress there would tie directly to the body here. Strength, speed, endurance, whatever you had in reality would carry over. That was why gyms and bodybuilding had become so popular. People wanted to stack the deck, to carve out an advantage before the rules even began.

But Kaizen smiled at the thought. Once he broke through to the Tempering Realm, he would already stand leagues ahead of the rest.

The itch to grow stronger gnawed at him. He could hardly sit still.

He headed home after eating a cheap meal on a roadside stall, then put on the headset sitting on the study table.

Virtual reality games were incredibly popular since it allowed everyone to get a feel of what their actual power system would be like.

It allowed people to practice their skills, and develop thinking habits required to excel in such games.

It took only a few moments for him to log in to the game, and a couple more before he already got into trouble.

"I will definitely avenge my brother."

A young man clenched his fist, proclaiming in front of the dungeon he just escaped from.

A handful of players nearby turned their heads. A few even stepped forward with offers of help.

Paladin: "Here, take this shield, I don't use it anymore."

Mage: "And this mana stone. Might come in handy."

Berserker: "My old helmet as well."

Necromancer: "And your brother."

The air froze. Silence stretched for a beat. Then the young man let out a furious cry and lunged straight at the necromancer.

Kaizen, who happened to be playing necromancer class, bolted for the jungle, shouting over his shoulder.

"Look, you misunderstand me. I am just… a really late healer."

But the young man wasn't hearing a word of it.

A few hours later, Kaizen logged out from the game.

My thought process seems to have become a bit chaotic.

Kaizen mused, wondering why that was the case.

Games like these had been designed as preparation, training wheels for the power system that would soon awaken in their world.

Normally, a world didn't allow outside power systems to take root. Otherwise, with the Nine Heavens now revealed to the greater universe, this world would have already been flooded with cultivation techniques.

Of course, the Nine Heavens had only just opened, so it was doubtful anything so valuable as a true cultivation scripture would leak so quickly. But plenty of other worlds had long-established power systems, and many of them were already in contact here. Practice methods to those techniques would've long circulated if they were valid in this world.

Kaizen looked at the aquamarine colored crystal hovering in his heart.

Just its existence allows me to defy the laws of existence and cultivate in this world. What would happen if it absorbs energy?

But wait, will I still be able to practice the power system of this world?

His eyes drifted around the modest room—the one his body's previous owner had rented after aging out of the orphanage. The university offered no dorms.

Despite being from the cultivation world, he was quickly able to grasp the nuances and terms of this modern world due to memories of the person this body belonged to.

Kaizen circulated Qi through his body, stopping only when he felt tired.

This time, he was operating a completely new cultivation scripture.

He chanced upon it while exploring a ruin. It was even better than his cultivation technique back then, but the problem was that this cultivation technique had a strange requirement, one he had never seen in other techniques.

It required one to start from a mortal level, which meant if someone had already walked the path of cultivation, they would have to abolish their realms of power to cultivate this technique.

He couldn't do so back then because he had way too many enemies.

Now was the perfect chance to do so.

With a month to go before the world's power system awakened, he had time to secure a massive head start.

After taking a rest, he resumed cultivating.

Just a bit more.

Finally, he felt an otherworldly amount of power within his body as an illusory sound of glass breaking echoed in his ears.

Finally entered the Body Tempering realm.

However, before he could even think further, his vision darkened.

A moment later, Kaizen found himself over a planet.

His first instinct was to take a defensive stance, but he quickly realized he had no powers here. No movement, no air, no presence of anyone else

I can't move.

He tried to drift closer to the planet, but nothing happened.

Being a mortal, how can I breathe in outer space? Or am I not here with my physical body? Just what is this place?

Just as he was in the midst of his thoughts, he heard something echoing.

'Adaptation is the only permanence……'

'The cosmos writes itself in revisions…….'

'Evolution is the pulse of existence……'

Kaizen's brows furrowed as he carefully listened to the echoes. The three lines kept repeating over and over.

Just what is this place? Did this happen because I practiced that cultivation scripture?

As Kaizen was scrutinizing the planet below, something caught his attention.

A tree.

Its size was beyond comprehension, visible even from outer space. Yet Kaizen's attention wasn't on its scale, but on the translucent screen that appeared the moment he fixed his gaze on the tree.

//Basic Information//

[Name: Kaizen Aeonhart]

[Race: Human]

[Titles: None]

//Attributes//

//Status effects//

//Shop//

//Inventory//

Thanks to the memories of his host body, Kaizen immediately recognized it for what it was: a system interface.

Still, he didn't expand the menus. His attention was drawn instead to the fruits hanging from the tree.

His sight had zoomed in by the time he finished reading the system interface, therefore he could now see the tree from up close, allowing him to spot the fruits.

It wasn't just one fruit, but a variety of them, as if that single tree could bear everything. Yet most were grayed out. Only two gleamed with color.

Information popped up when he looked at the two.

[Tier 1: Foundation - Brawling - Basic punches and kicks.]

[Tier 1: Foundation - Parkour - Basic vaulting and climbing over small obstacles.]

Kaizen's brows furrowed, before they smoothened out, anticipation glowing in his eyes.

I'll acquire these abilities after I eat the corresponding fruit?

Towards the later years of his life, he had neglected the basic things because he was just that overwhelmingly powerful.

It was rather convenient that he would be able to learn these without much effort.

Next, he went through the interface again, and confirmed that there was no new element. Everything was already covered by one or the other RPG game of this world.

How do I exit?

Immediately after he had that thought, Kaizen found himself back in his room.

After doing a brief check of his power, he went to sleep as the exhaustion crept in.

…

… …

… … …

[The System has detected another power system trying to attach itself to the host.]

[Proceeding with a merger.]

[Merge successful.]

[With enhanced capabilities of the system, it can now further assist the host.]

//Basic Information//

[Name: Kaizen Aeonhart]

[Race: Human]

[Titles: None]

[Bloodline: Low-Tier Time Path - Time Affinity +5] <New>

//Class// <New>

[Slot 1: Cultivator]

[Slot 2: Empty]

//Attributes//

//Status effects//

//Skills// <New>

//Shop//

//Inventory//

[…]

[Detected an Awakened ability.]

[Temporarily cannot discern its complete information.]

//Awakened Ability//

An exquisite card marked as The Fool shimmered across the system interface, with lines of information unfolding beneath it.

[Domain: Probability]

[Name: ???]

[Description: ???]

[Price: Chaotic thought process]

[…]

[Due to an overlap of power systems, the host shall be benefited with a multiplier of a hundred times for the experience received on all their tasks.]

[...]

[Hehehe…]

[I'm finally back.]

The next day when Kaizen opened his eyes, he was in another body, yet again.

This time back in the cultivation world.

As an NPC.