Quantum Cultivation by Jace Kang (simple e reader TXT) 📕

be able to find and debug the code she’d used to sabotage the system.

Now the hard part. Leaving the local transport station’s EtherSpace, she jumped to the local Peacekeeper’s data node. Like the one she’d visited for the Higashi Honganji area to copy the Tofu-Kozo’s attack, this data node appeared as an old library.

As before, she disguised herself as a horse-drawn cart and entered.  At the archives, she passed the Level Two Sentry and accessed the scrolls.  Here, she brought up her menus and found a piece of code that would seek out and destroy any file that was an exact copy of the one she planned to infect. In her perception, it appeared as an insect infection of the scrolls, and she added them to all data coming from cameras near the Shijo bridge for the last half-hour.

Satisfied, she disguised herself as a peregrine falcon, sped out of the town, and jacked back out.

Her real body ached both from her fight with the Kappa, and now with the additional burden of having used her damaged Avatar. As always, her perception had turned sideways with the resumption of real time. She blinked several times to find Teppin was close to her, collecting the Kappa bowls. Kentaro and Siena hovered above her, looking concerned. And Ryusuke…he’d reached the far end of the bridge, and was knocking the Peacekeeper out.

He turned around. “Hurry, collect the Kappa’s Cores.”

“What do the Cores look like?” Ken asked.

“For a non-ranked being, it’s intangible energy swirling around a grain of sand. You have to sense it.” Ryu dashed over, arriving in one blink of the eye. “Try now, but if you can’t find it a few minutes after death, they’ll dissipate.”

Aya frowned. They didn’t have much time with the Peacekeepers on their way. “How?”

“Close your eyes, establish your stance. Deep breaths. Connect to your Core via the Microcosmic Orbit and sense the water vapor around the Kappa remains.”

Doing as she was told, Aya reached out. Sensing the water vapor had never been easy, but—

“There!” Kentaro said. He reached into the mass of jelly and pulled out a handful of goop.

“Very good!” Ryu said.

Aya chewed the inside of her cheek. Kentaro had gotten it. Why was it so hard for her?

“Time’s up,” Ryu said.

Her eyes fluttered open as he ran and plucked out more of the gelatin mass from the three remaining piles.

He offered one to her. “Eat it. You too, Ken-kun.”

It stank of rot, worse than the toxins she’d sweated out. She recoiled.

Ryu extended his hand. “Hurry, it’s breaking down as we speak.”

Beyond him, Kentaro’s face squished up. Holding his nose, he popped it into his mouth and swallowed.

And gagged.

Ryu turned to him and set the quivering mass he’d originally offered Aya in his hands. “Deep breaths. We don’t have time to process these through the Microcosmic Orbit, so we need to rely on a technique from the Earth Path. Eat the other. Now you, Aya.” He turned back, extending both hands.

She stared at the goop in both of his palms.  With a deep breath, she scooped them up, closed her eyes, and pushed the first into her mouth.

Salty and putrid, it tasted of rotting fish, or at least what she imagined rotting fish to taste like. She gulped it down. The slithering sensation felt almost alive.

Like Kentaro, she nearly hacked it back up.  Instead, she took the second one and swallowed it as well.  She looked up to find the Purebred with his cheeks puffed up. In the low light, it was hard to tell exactly what color he was.

“Now,” Ryu said, “we need to get some place safe.”

“Can you teleport us?” Kentaro’s voice came out as a croak as he looked to Siena.

“It takes more energy than I have now,” she answered, shaking her head.

Ryu looked around. “Where’s the nearest green space?”

Aya and Kentaro exchanged confused glances.

“A park. Some place where there’s soil.” Ryu rubbed his index and thumb together.

“Oh!” Aya said, and understanding bloomed on Kentaro’s face.

“Pontocho Park, a little to the north on the opposite bank.”

“Then let’s go,” Ryu said. “Lead the way.”

Aya held up a staying hand. “Cameras.”

“Can you disable them?” Ryu asked.

Going into the EtherCloud earlier had restored some of her confidence, but it was one thing to hack a data node and plant a virus in files, and another to attack the cameras in the Peacekeeper’s network. Given the fight on this bridge, no doubt the Peacekeepers would be using those very cameras to monitor the area. More security measures would be put in place.

Not to mention, the damage to her Avatar code would cause pain in her real body.

Still, if she didn’t do it now, they’d be identified and tracked.  And there was the inexplicable transfer of her new fighting skills in the real world to the EtherCloud. “All right. You’ll need to carry me part of the way.”

She jacked back in, immediately disguising herself as a Level Two Repairer. She opened a portal from her EtherSpace and studied the network of roads. In the distance, the Peacekeeper’s Castle remained on high alert.

“Ai, scan my combat subroutines and compare to the latest backup file.”

The fox spirit popped into vision. New subroutines found.

“Where did they come from?”

Your neural engrams, translated to code.

How was that even possible?  “Explain.”

The real world combat techniques you recorded were translated into code already. When I embedded them into your neural engrams, I had to first copy to your Avatar as a filter. I had yet to delete them.

Well, that serendipity had saved her life. “What is my combat level?”

Level Three.

From Zero to Level Three was unheard of. Still, it wouldn’t have helped her against the Sentinels in the shocktrooper hovercraft, and it would do next to nothing