"Arghh! Finally done," Alex thought as he put away the cauldron and the formation plate. The spirit stone behind the formation plate had gone dull after losing all of its Qi.
He picked it up and threw it away after realizing it was worthless to him now.
Suddenly, the space shifted around once more. This time, the hole he had been standing on top of was gone. "What the?" Alex thought. "Why is the hole gone? It was there with me the whole night through multiple space shifts."
He wondered if he missed anything and took out the instruction to the formation he had inside his storage. After reading more than what he had last time, he noticed something that he had overlooked that time.
"Oh, no wonder. It targets Qi signature rather than actual people caught inside. So anything with my Qi signature and a little more around them all gets teleported around randomly."
"So that's why the hole went around with us. The formation holds my Qi signature even after releasing it huh?" Alex thought.
He looked at his bag with a bit of happiness when he realized that he had successfully managed to make nearly 40 pills, all of which hovered around high Earth Grade and some of which even crossed the Heaven Grade threshold.
"Now that I know alchemy works, I should start learning how pills actually work. I need to learn about alchemy on a fundamental level," he thought.
He decided to try and understand formations and pills for a while longer before logging out to get his food.
Afterward, he went to his university and learned whatever the teacher taught them with barely any students. There were more than yesterday, but still half of them were missing.
Even the teacher was flabbergasted when he saw this. "What are your friends doing? Are they still at home playing the game? Do they think they can make a living by just playing that game?" he said angrily.
"Not to mention, there is a field trip coming up very soon for your first years. Tell your friends to come back to classes so that they don't miss it," the teacher said.
"Professor, Where are we going?" a student asked.
"I don't know. There are still a few more days before the faculty will decide on the location. Just look out for it," the professor replied.
'A field trip huh? I should be able to make it,' Alex thought.
After the classes ended, he and Hannah went to the driving range. Along the way, he told her about the field trip he had coming up soon.
"Oh, yeah, we had those too. I hated that we had to wait until halfway through the second semester to even go through," Hannah said.
"Oh, why?" he asked.
"I don't know? Maybe they don't like setting field trips every 6 months, so they do it every year," Hannah said.
"Where did you guys go?" Alex asked.
"Umm… I think it was… Ember wood city? Wait no, that was the second year. First-year we went to a crappy museum out in Evergreen city in the east," Hannah said.
"You guys should be different. Maybe they will take you someplace quite fun," Hannah said.
Alex was hopeful. Although it would be a lie to say he hadn't experience going to another city with other similar-aged people, that was only in the game.
It would be the first time for him.
"Urghh… why is the university still open right now? Nobody is coming," Hannah complained.
"You got missing students too, sister? My class has more than half missing too," Alex said.
"More than half? That's nothing. We have over 90 students absent in a class with 110 students. It's practically a ghost town in there," Hannah said.
"Woah, is the game causing that much problem for your guys?" Alex asked.
"Yes, and no. Did you know my university class will end in 3 weeks?" Hannah asked.
"In 3 weeks? I knew it was getting close, but not so close," Alex said.
"Yeah. And since there are only 3 weeks left and all of our assignments are complete, we just want the classes to end already," Hannah said.
They talked the rest of the way through and got to learn how to drive a car for the next 2 hours. After that, they had dinner nearby and caught a cab home.
After returning back, they both went to their respective room and logged back into the game.
After Alex appeared back in the game at around 7 pm, he didn't immediately start to make pills or learn about formations. There was another thing he had been neglecting for a while now.
That was cultivation.
"Come out, Pearl."
Pearl came out in a flash of white light. "Meow!"
Alex took in a deep breath and sucked in all of his cultivation base to only have his body cultivation left.
"Let's fight," he said.
Pearl was confused for a second, but followed his order immediately and started attacking. Alex didn't do anything else and just fought for the next 3 to 4 hours.
Pearl hadn't fought for over 2 weeks, so he was very happy to get to fight right now. Without his cultivation, Alex's strength was pretty much the same as Pearl's.
After cultivating for a while, Alex's body strength would always match the same as Pearl's. So, if he ever wanted to know how strong his physical body was, he could just check Pearl's status page for the most part.
Alex felt like he could break through once more since he had enough days for his cultivation base to be stable again. So, he brought out a monster core and ate it.
Surprisingly, there was nothing for him to fight and he easily got all of the Qi.
"That was convenient. If only that happened every time, I could have Pearl start eating the monster cores too," Alex thought.
"Here, eat this for now," Alex said and tossed a bone tempering realm monster core to Pearl.
Pearl jumped and caught the core in his mouth, and at that exact moment, space shifted again.
