As I oozed under the roof door, I flooded down two floors before slipping along the floor and oozing into an apartment near the stairwell. I did not see anyone in the large apartment although it was all furnished. I turned back into a drider and moved over to the bathroom on shaking legs. As I reached for the door, the door opened and a man stared me in the face. He looked like he was in his mid 20s. I was startled, but he was scared out of his mind. He was also totally naked aside from a towel. He tried to slam the door in my face, but I got in the way. "Calm down! I won't hurt you if you just talk to me. I need a place to stay." "You! Y-you're the monster from the park!" he said. "Yeah, I am. That's why you need to relax and be quiet." I snapped at him. He shivered, but nodded. I was more irritable now that everything was sore and hurt. If it was part of the debuff, that was pretty good game design. "Talk to me about yourself. I am not going to kill you." I encouraged in a gentle voice. My vision was swimming so much, I could not fight him off even if I wanted to. Especially if he was a blessed human.
Milo was 24 years old. While he was the child of two blessed humans, he was not chosen. His two younger siblings were. Treated as the shame of his family, he went to college for nursing. He had gotten his degree and his certification in cardiac nursing. With a job in an city clinic, he was actually an upstanding member of the community he lived in. He played an important role in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cardiovascular conditions. That meant working directly with patients experiencing heart attacks, angina, coronary artery disease, arrhythmias, and other conditions. Another thing that he was really good at was acupuncture. It was something he liked to do as he was able to help out his brothers when he was younger. He got his license for acupuncture really young due to his parents influence. They were part of a family of established Dragon blessed. Milo had to go to work, but he promised to rush home as soon as he could. He got dressed and collected his belongings. He then walked out the door and locked up. I was left alone. The only thing for me to do was to look around.
Peeking on the bookshelves, there were Wood Qi spells and a trio of cultivation manuals. One of them was called "Regal Rainbow Poison Seals" and the other one was called "Crystal Orchid Void Lover". The third was simply called "Lamented Shadow Child Cannibal". Cultivation manuals showed how to cultivate faster and become stronger than just simple meditation. I read them both and it gave me a checklist of ingredients and actions I would need to fulfil in order to pull them off. It was not meant to be easy and it was locked until you reached the Core Formation stage. For the Regal Rainbow Poison Seal, you needed to gather cultivators of all five elements and take their blood. One melted down into a cauldron with a set of required ingredients, it will become an potent poison. From there, it could be applied to a person's skin to make them slowly convert their naturally occurring Qi to begin to form the Golden Core. In return, they were unable to use magic or transform. Crystal Orchid Void Lover needed one to distill the Crystal Orchid into a tea. After drinking, you had sex and killed the partner.
It was supposed to allow the soul of the murdered party to help fuel the cultivation. It hinged on you not cumming first. The risk was that if you killed someone too strong, they could revolt in your body and either kill or possess you. The very same could happen if they held too strong of a grudge. Lamented Shadow Child Cannibal referred to developing your own genetic material into pure Qi. The child resulting from a pregnancy would have superb spiritual roots. This basically ensured that they would be a blessed human from a zodiac animal. It also gave a 10% chance to have a special ability. Following the manual to its conclusion, you could kill and eat the flesh of the newborn child to gain the added vitality, cultivation and special abilities. The downside was that once it was done, that was the only way to continue any further. It really seemed that Milo was given these evil manuals for some reason. It did not take long to see blood packs in the fridge and several of the ingredients in there as well. The only things that were missing were a peacock feather, 10 rainbow fish scales and snake venom.
