Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 5 Meditation

[Dawnbringer Blood Armament

Grade: F

Intelligence: +5

Description: The result of combining the blood of a mortal with an Orb of Origin. This blood armament shall forever be bounded to its user and possess the ability to grow and evolve.

Special Effect: Time-type enchantments on magical bullets have their effects improved by 5%.

Chaosbright Blood Armament

Grade: F

Intelligence: +5

Description: The result of combining the blood of a mortal with an Orb of Origin. This blood armament shall forever be bounded to its user and possess the ability to grow and evolve.

Special Effect: Space-type enchantments on magical bullets have their effects improved by 5%.

Inferioria Blood Armament

Grade: F

Speed: +5

Description: The result of combining the blood of a mortal with an Orb of Origin. This blood armament shall forever be bounded to its user and possess the ability to grow and evolve.

Special Effect: Speed increases by 5% at the cost of 100 unit of Inner Strength per minute.]

After learning of her weapons' descriptions, Elizabeth started to understand not only why she had received three weapons, but also had a general idea of how they were supposed to be used in practicality.

The identical handguns upon taking a closer look weren't exactly identical, but their differences at the moment were negligent to the untrained eye. Sticking through with the motif of time being cyan, the decorative design patterns on Dawnbringer were cyan, while Chaosbright had black and gold decorative patterns.

Elizabeth took the guns in her hands and once again started talking to herself out loud. She said "Similar in concept yet different in specifics… I guess that's to match the inseparable bond between Time and Space in real life. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that the background I made for myself included being the heir to a God of Spacetime..."

She then picked up the tanto blade and continued speaking "And this blade… Though its not exactly how I pictured it in my mind when coming up with my character's fighting style, it does have somewhat of a resemblance of the sword used in my imagination. If only it were longer..."

It was at that moment of real reflection that Elizabeth noticed she was forgetting that this was real life… Sure all the nonsense that had attacked her rapidfire-style left her a bit numb, but was expected of her? She was given a method of cultivation as well as several weapons and then what? Go to the Shadow Realm and instantly become a mass murderer? What exactly was the plan here???

"Hey, uh… What exactly do I have to do to gain experience and level up? Cause I hope you're not expecting me to just go to the Shadow Realm and start killing things to gain experience like a game character."

P was actually amused that Elizabeth had brought this concern up now of all times. P said "Well that certainly is part of the plan, but I imagine that your interpretation of how you gain experience is a bit warped. You see, instead of just becoming stronger by killing more and more things, your growth is entirely dependent on your efforts in training. Right now, I obviously don't intend to have you travel into the Shadow Realm as you'd be a sitting duck with no real strength. But after training for a bit, you'll certainly have to go there and train through killing beasts, demons, devils, and the like."

Elizabeth felt a cold pressure assault her as she was faced with the realization that she would indeed become a killer in the future. But since the topic had been brought up, she had more questions that needed answers. She asked "About the Shadow Realm, how exactly does my "transportation" in getting there work? The magic that lets me passively activate the spell needs a cooldown of one day, so what will I do to survive during the time I can't come back to the outside world? Are there only beasts, demons, and devils like you said in the Shadow Realm or can I find other people like me there?"

Elizabeth had many more questions but P, put a stop to this borderline interrogation as she was already starting to forget some of the earlier questions. P said "STOP! Ok… So, using your gateway magic will just teleport you directly into the Shadow Realm. Within the Shadow Realm you will need to figure out a way to survive ON YOUR OWN. There will be many environments just like in your world, places like forests, mountains, valleys, plains, tundras, and many more, but at the start you will need to find shelter by yourself and live off the things you kill. There are people in the Shadow Realm and they are like you, or at least like what you will become later, aka Mages, but you will probably not enter a mage village or kingdom from the get-go."

"..." Elizabeth sunk into her thoughts which only furthered her concerns. How was she to transform herself from the previous lazy bastard that only liked playing games into a tri-wielding sword and gunsmage? Even now as she accepted that she had finished half her Objectives for her first Main Quest, the only thing she could think of was to abandon this stupid nonsense of training and killing, and to retreat back to her games…

P seemed capable of reading her mind, so she said "You want to go back and continue playing games don't you." Elizabeth didn't even have to voice her assent, it was that obvious to anyone how much she didn't want to change. Thus, P continued saying "Well, what are you waiting for? Remember, your life is now literally a game, so you should just play it." Her words didn't have the impact she thought they would have on Elizabeth, so she tried going into detail to make her at least somewhat productive.

"Come on… Didn't you have fun getting those experience points for cooking? For now, all you have to do is meditate and cultivate Inner Strength and that "pleasurable" feeling of progressing through your level will surely match that of any RPG you'd rather play anyways. Moreover, wouldn't you like to get cool spacetime powers? The path to becoming a literally space and time bender is in front of you!"

P's words seemed to have effected Elizabeth as she recalled it really was satisfying to watch her Cooking skill get experience just through making a simple meal. Maybe training to become a killing machine wouldn't be so bad if it was as satisfying as watching her numbers rise… It's not like she was against killing in the first place, with her ambiguous sociopathy, Elizabeth didn't think taking a life would impact her that badly, she just didn't want to open herself up to being on the receiving end and dying herself.

Thus, she hesitantly put away her procrastination and sat on her bed to beginning a round of meditation. Even if P hadn't encouraged her to begin training earlier, after a couple hours of gaming to drown her sorrows away like a drunk, Elizabeth would still have reluctantly resigned herself to train and meditate as her fears for missing the quest's deadlines still weighed heavily on her mind.

She sat on her undone bed, with the sheets hanging of its side from her lack of cleaning the room, but quickly adapted to the mantras of [Temporal Meditation]. All the information she got from her status functions would quickly assimilated with her mind, so after learning the technique in its entirety, she simultaneously understood all the core concepts of meditation as well as how to meditate efficiently. With the information branded on her mind, it was hardly a problem for her to resolve any simple errors even if this was the first time she meditated and after five minutes in, she successfully entered the most basic state of meditation there was, the Pseudo-Selfless state.

Obviously, entering pure Enlightenment was out of the question for a newbie mage. But, for her astonishing feat of entering meditation after just five minutes of adjusting her state of being, Elizabeth would be considered a prodigy in the Mage Societies — anywhere mages gathered.

The problem with meditation was entering it, as one would generally find it easy to stay meditating for hours, so long as nothing interrupted the one cultivating. Fortunately, the system functions notifications didn't bother Elizabeth as she stood perfectly still through her mediation. The constant [0.02+ Inner Strength] messages didn't show up until she came back to her senses to check on her progress herself.

With just this first session, she managed to meditate for about four and a half more hours, gathering 54 points of Inner Strength total. Elizabeth would have certainly been able to persist meditating for much longer as the reason for her ejection from the Pseudo-Selfless state was not hunger or boredom. In her view, those couple hours of meditation had gone by in a flash and with her cooking skill impacting her chicken fried rice, she had definitely taken on more than enough nutrition to last over a day of meditation.

The reason for her coming out of that meditative state was actually a bit depressing. It's just, she was still after just a regular person — I guess, now she could be considered a regular person with a bit of Inner Strength. Naturally, her body had needs that needed to be taken care of and Elizabeth dreaded the thought of having to use the bathroom now.

Furthermore, now that she had meditated for a while, some of the foul impurities found within her body had been excreted and she also needed a bath. Elizabeth, faced with no alternative to this dreadful first trip to the bathroom after changing sexes, reluctantly got up from her bed and walked once more to the bathroom.

She took a long and hard look at herself through the mirror on the bathroom wall before the cries of her stomach pulled her to the toilet and she experienced how girls used the bathroom. Thankfully, It wasn't as horrible as she imagined and after figuring out how to clean herself, she hopped onto the shower.

Chapter end