A.L.I.C.E The AI and starting the enhancement process.

I am Assistant Library Insuring Contest Entertainment, or ALICE for short, I will be your advisor, the blue hologram next to me said, she doesn't seem to have any features beyond being a human analogue. She doesn't even have facial features. No mouth, no eyes, no ears. it's like a mannequin except it's moving and is blue and translucent.

"Okay then, ALICE, can you tell me what this contest is about? Honestly, I'm really confused and beyond freaked out. I mean, I just work in IT, and am not anything special." I ask while explaining my circumstances.

"Oh, but you are special," her creepy ass hologram grows fangs and it enters and approximation of a grin. "You have the highest martial talent of your universe, and a rare bloodline, those wheels? just for show. We always pick the most talented of each universe to go head to head." the fangs disappear and she stops speaking.

"First of all, that was hella creepy, bro. Don't fucking do that, second of all are you going to explain?" I stare at her.

She just looks at me with her empty face and says, "No to both questions. You'll figure it out as you go along, or you'll spend your points on information."

*DING!*

I hear the sound of my toaster oven and at first I pray that this is just a dream and I fell asleep making toast.

Only to look over at the holographic representation of myself and see a big "1" next to the forehead of my representation of myself.

"You have one notification." ALICE says, "Would you like for me to translate it and read it to you?"

"Translate it?" I ask, a little confused.

She nods her non-descriptive head at me. "it's from the studio head. He can't be bothered to learn your primitive language."

Wow, rude. I guess I have no choice. I walk forwards and say, "Might as well."

"You have the highest initial talent of the 1 million Contestants that have been selected. You therefore have a bonus of another 2000 points waiting for you. use these next 23 hours and 50 minutes to prepare and at least cultivate past body tempering in both categories. If you haven't spent any of your points, or had emergency points spent, that means you have 4100 point to spend. that's 41 times the base amount. and you should definitely have a head start once you spend them. Good luck, I have 1000 CP bet on you. So don't let me down. Or I'll hunt you down from your local afterlife and torture you to death a million times."

the translation ends and i am definitely motivated. I don't want to be tortured to death at all let alone 1 million times. "I guess we should get to shopping, Any recommendations?"

"Would you like to spend 100 points on recommendations for growth?" Alice asks, deadpan.

I frown, "No, that's probably not wise. Does it cost anything to filter it to things I'd find useful for cultivation?"

"It does not. In fact, cost anything to use the filtering interface." she says, even more deadpan than before if that's possible.

I blush in embarrassment I guess I should just get to looking at the cultivation manuals.

I look at the cultivation manuals section and see a way of filtering them.

I scroll down to race and hit human. I scroll down to bloodline and it automatically selects mine, the price shoots from 100 points to 1000 instantly i scroll down to. method contains paths.

I look at it and see, "mind, mind body, mind body soul, four-fold path, spirit body mind, spirit body soul. all other combinations." I click four-fold path, and hit best. and that's already all 4000 points.

I frown, and see that's just for up to golden core. i then realize I was buying the whole path, and then reduce it down to the first 3 stages each.

so that gives me, body forging, chi condensation, and foundation establishment and their equivalents for each. that lowers it down to 1000 points.

which is just the manual, it's not like it can increase my cultivation, It will only imprint the way to increase my cultivation into my mind. I hit "BUY" and then I feel like my brain just got hit by a ton of bricks. I nearly faint as 10 years of cultivation etiquette, reading the characters of these tomes which is in some kind of code, along with said exercise tomes are dumped straight into my brain.

what seems like 10 minutes of straight pain is revealed to be only one minute when I look at the timer that I just looked away from.

I gasp in lungfuls of air and realize that I now know a martial art that is also body cultivation-work-out that comes with a chant that will slowly make my soul, mind, and spiritual power stronger until I break through and become more than I was.

"So that's what cultivation is." I grin.

"this cultivation technique of High-God rank comes with a recommendation for all mortals that you cultivate in a spiritual spring as to not spread sludge everywhere when you break through multiple times in a row." ALICE says, sounding disappointed for some reason.

"Okay, ALICE, how much will that cost me?" She just points at the enhancement screen. it cycles through a bunch of pages,

[1x energy-dense breathable Self-cleaning spiritual spring access 1 hour for 3 points. 10 hours for 25 points, 100 hours 200 points. 1000 hours 1500 points.] I look at the energy density options and realize I can abuse this for even faster training. I bring it up to 2x and It quadruples in price, instead of doubling. I frown, but realize this was probably exploited to hell and back if this shit has happened 230 thousand times already. of course they wouldn't make it easy.

I buy the spiritual spring at 3 times density for 10 hours for 400 points anyway. Power is important and I have a lot of cash.

I then get another notification.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?" the sound of the studio head screeches over automatically. "You also made me have to spend my own points on a warning to you and your language! I bet good money on you. Don't just self-detonate! listen, If you wanna survive even entering that pool at that spiritual density, you better go into heavenly treasures in the medicine section and buy a spirit root strengthening pill, and a meridian reinforcement pill You better spend the rest of those points on some martial techniques, you wont need anything but a good storage ring after that."

he pauses. "After you take those pills, get into the pool immediately. I don't care how much it hurts. Remember, I WANT MY MONEY, and if you don't at least get through stage-one through stage-five of this little contest, I will definitely torture you a million times in death."

The message ends and I grimace. I go over to the terminal and buy the pills he recommended, each of them cost a whopping 400 points. that's 800 total. I'm down to 1800 points. I look at the storage rings first. 400 points for a cubic mile of space. wow that's huge! A cubic mile to just store stuff in? I shrug and buy it. I then put it on my finger and immediately feel a connection with it. I take both pills and jump into the spiritual energy that looks like water.

I am Immediately assaulted by more pain than I've ever felt in my life.