Though going back to the potential for a water generating organ, that was actually more tempting to Jason. After all, depending on how it works, one of those organs would be worth its weight in gold to someone making any kind of everflowing vessel. This is especially true if the organ is the same across the Mana/Qi divide as that means the organ just uses power to make water instead of a specific form of power.

So, of course, Jason turns his back on the ponds and lakes, then sets off for adventure of a more reasonable level of danger. Not that the decision meant he was magically in a new area. It took three more days even with basically corner cutting the area to finally get out.

Not that this meant a lack of fights. Just a lack of exciting fights. After all, when there are locals and even players who never reach level 25 this would be a normal area if a little on the high side. Though admittedly for a player to not manage 25 over their life is rare as they have the benefit of infinite attempts. Even with that, the most numerous sorts to pass the third bottleneck is the non-combat types. After all, instead of needing to beat a dungeon, they just have to reach apprentice rank in a non-combat skill.

This still isn't a guarantee, though. Jason may have blown past this requirement with his herb farming skill now many levels deep into the apprentice rank, but a lot of that comes from his unorthodox methods of raising his plants. Even someone with a common archetype like blacksmithing can end up stuck at the bottleneck as ranking up takes more than just knocking out the same things over and over or following directions.

Though despite the relatively low difficulty of the fights, sometimes quantity has a quality all its own and they were enough to push Jason over into level 16. Of course, that also meant Lily easily tipped over into 16 as well. She had been through many fights and had been capped quite a while ago. This prompted Jason to pull up her stats.

{Normal Stats

Strength 37 ( 36[Base] + 1[SP] )

Toughness 35 ( 34[Base] + 2[SP] )

Agility 88 ( 83[Base] + 5[SP] )

Auxiliary Stats

Defense 5 ( 5[Base] )

HP 65

Energy 4

Conceptual Energy

Civilization 3.0%}

And while her Strength and Toughness were a bit low, it was likely they would star soon just because her body's innate fitness wasn't going to allow much more. As for Agility, well, she more than matched Jason now. Sure, he was currently capped and his actual base stats exceeded his current 84, but until he hits 25 that wasn't going to change barring a miracle.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Though speaking of a miracle, the fact Lily was gaining an understanding of [Civilization] with every level was crazy. Not unheard of for Jason, but still, it required quite the special blood line for one's understanding to advance with growth. The normal way of things would be the reverse where advancement would be held back by a lack of understanding.

The only other thing of note was that she received another point of Energy. While such a thing is of some use to Jason, after all, his other auxiliary stats are boosted by twice his Energy total, but for Lily it really provided a boost. Not that Jason doesn't want her to start applying the Energy towards more permanent bonuses, her health and Defense being a bit low for his liking.

It, however, would be a show of hubris to assume whatever method Lily finds to invest her Energy on a more permanent basis would target those stats. The bonus would be just as likely if not more so to land on her Agility. While some people seemed to think rabbits were sturdy fellows, they were very much not. Back in the past people irl would buy pet rabbits for one of the holidays and it always caused so much trouble.

Even back then, most reputable and even semi-reputable places would simply refuse to sell or adopt out rabbits for a week or so when the holiday was coming. Of course there was scum willing to fill in the market gap. Some of them even would do cruel things like dye the rabbit certain colors that matched the holiday. A nasty bit of work since they didn't always use the friendliest of dyes and rabbits shed fur so it would stick around for quite a while.

Just thinking about it caused Jason to feel a spike of anger, though he quickly calmed down. With the move to arcologies, the handling of pets changed drastically. You weren't prevented from having a pet, but you were required to take classes on how to raise your specific pet properly. That and if you didn't regularly take your pet out to the parks where the arcology's system could check on it, a wellness check would be conducted

Not that many people have pets anymore. Since over 90% of the population spend a considerable amount of time in VR, an irl pet was more trouble than it was worth when you could have a virtual pet. Though if you wanted to get really fancy and could jump through the hoops, you could get a VR capsule for your pet.

Even then, it wasn't common even among those who could afford it. After all, even with modern medicine, a creature like a dog just wasn't designed to live for hundreds of years. Though it certainly didn't help that the pets couldn't access NeoRealm. A restriction that always confused Jason in the past, though with his discovery about how NeoRealm was using your soul it sort of made sense.

Of course, Jason wasn't willing to bet one way or another on whether certain animals had souls or not. Since it was possible, some didn't have them, NeoRealm probably banned them all just to avoid confusion. Though thinking this all through, he did wonder if a reversal was possible. Could you export ensouled locals into his world? An interesting idea, but one for another time as Jason didn't exactly have the clout to pull off such an experiment and still have enough control over it to prevent some kind of horror show.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.