Chapter 12: In need of new threads

The most pressing problem right now is to find clothes to wear before someone sees me. When I looked at Max for help, I noticed that aside from having a puffball body and a beak, he also now has one long and intricately designed tailfeather. This must have appeared after he was reborn. I then asked Max for help. He seemed confused since clothes are purely a human construct that we used to wear for protection but now, it is also being used for fashion. I remembered that people left behind some clothes in the sleeping quarters the night when the apocalypse happened since most were dirty and bloody. I then headed in that direction and saw that the instanced spaces in the building were removed. All I saw when I entered was a clean and pristine classroom. Not good.

When I was going down the building of my high school classroom for which the exit was the canteen, I saw two SWAT looking guards talking to each other. I hid behind a giant wall that cannot be seen from the canteen. After hearing them leave, I headed to our old CAT office to get some PE uniforms left behind. Our old CAT office is in the middle of the two exits of my school. These two exits are located in the first and second streets of the subdivision where the school is located. When I snooped through, I found a PE shirt that had the same design as when I was a student. I wore it and noticed that I slimmed down. Before being reborn, I was a pretty heavy fellow, that I had to use XXL shirts but now, I am wearing a medium-sized one. That would explain why I did not get tired from running around our school to not get caught. Also, when I look down my body, there is no bulge in the stomach area. What a nice perk of being reborn. I also found pants. not the perfect fit but I found a garrison belt that prevents it from falling off. I still don’t have underwear though.

Now is the time to leave to start cultivating. I should leave the school already. When I was about to leave, I saw some guards posted on both exits of the schools facing the outside. This should mean that rather than keeping people inside, they were there to keep people outside. Since Max is too small to fly me out, I may need to cultivate within the school first so that I can execute movement techniques that can help me leave this place.

I went back to the CAT office to look for a sword I can use. I did find one. It was an ornamental sword with a tamaraw on the bottom of the scabbard with red and blue tassels on the handle. I also assimilated the Sword art of the Heavenly Path as preparation if something untoward happens to me. I asked Max to protect me as well. After my resurrection, my mind felt clearer. With that, I asked Max to only incapacitate those who would attack us and not kill them since unlike the chaos of the apocalypse, there is order here. Surely if we kill people here, we would be in great trouble. Max readily agreed and told me that I don’t need to worry because he could protect me.

I then started to cultivate the physical body which helped me tremendously. After cultivating it for around 30 minutes, I could now control every muscle of my body to change shape and locations. An example of this is my ability to change the color of my skin through my knowledge of melanin. Right now, I have complete control over my body. Afterward, I started my mana cultivation of the Heavenly Way. In the first rank of this cultivation, it would involve being able to sense mana in the air and guide the mana present all around us into my body. This was tough considering that it is like generating a sixth sense. Thankfully, the books compiled by the library was complete and pointed directly to the essence of the matter. I was successfully able to do this after an hour. Then, when I finished absorbing the first wave of the mana into my body, the SWAT looking guards from earlier ran towards the room I am in and pointed their shining blue rifles towards me.