Chapter 128: Pay-to-Win Cheat
The outpost gates groaned open as the supply convoy rolled through.
Every single cart was intact. Every soldier was alive. The only things missing were a few canvas covers.
Captain Venus was waiting inside the gate, wearing his usual scowl. He walked down the line of carts, checking every cart like he was bracing himself to find dead soldiers piled under the canvas.
He didn’t find any.
His scowl slipped. Just barely.
The sergeant who had been pinned down in the canyon walked over, still looking like he’d seen a ghost.
"Sir, those academy kids... they reorganized our entire defense in under a minute. The one with the glasses had us forming geometric kill zones I’ve never even seen in training manuals. The girl with the spear sealed six crawler tunnels by herself. And the archer shot down three fliers before I could even blink."
Venus looked at the sergeant, then at Emric, who was standing at attention, looking incredibly proud of himself.
The captain stepped forward.
Emric straightened.
Venus raised his hand and snapped off a salute. The kind of salute you gave to a superior officer, not a sixteen-year-old academy student.
"Good work, soldier."
"Thank you, sir! The defense layout was actually a tweaked version of the Aldric Formation, which I adjusted on the spot to fit the canyon’s natural bottleneck and the predictable way the crawlers attack. So really, it was just basic applied math and"
"Dismissed, soldier."
"Yes sir! Right away sir!"
Emric jogged back to the group, practically vibrating. Renna immediately threw her arm around his shoulders and started loudly announcing to everyone that she had personally trained him, which was a complete lie, but that didn’t stop her.
Lyra caught Holden’s eye and gave him a small, knowing smile.
Holden just smiled back and headed for the barracks.
He needed to open a chest.
The private bunk was small and cold. Holden locked the door, sat on the cot, and pulled up his System Inventory.
The Gold Chest was right where he left it, giving off a warm amber glow that signaled rare loot..
With a thought, He willed it straight into his hands.
The chest was about the size of a shoebox, built out of gold-plated metal and covered in intricate carved runes..
"Let’s see what a Rank 2, 7-Star Lieutenant was carrying," he muttered.
He clicked the latch.
The lid swung open and a wave of warm energy washed over his face. Inside was a single pill. It was about the size of a grape, glowing with a soft white light.
[Ding!]
[Gold Chest Opened!]
[Item Acquired: Rank 2 Aether-Purification Pill]
[Effect: Completely purges all internal injuries, meridian blockages, and lingering physical stress. Optimizes the user’s energy pathways for cultivation breakthroughs.]
Holden whistled low.
He’d read about pills like this in the academy’s advanced pharmacology texts. They were incredibly rare, usually reserved for elite instructors or noble families. A single Aether-Purification Pill could sell for more than most families made in a year.
He popped it into his mouth without a second thought.
The pill dissolved instantly. There was no taste, just a rush of warmth that spread from his throat down through his chest and into every limb. It felt like stepping into a hot bath after a week in the freezing rain.
The dull ache in his left arm from the assassin’s dagger vanished.
The deep soreness in his shoulder from the Lieutenant’s bone blade faded along with it.
Holden rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. He felt clean. Not just rested, but fundamentally restored, like every cell in his body had just been given a fresh start.
"Okay," he breathed. "That was incredible."
He pulled up his full System panel to check his numbers.
[Current KP: 177,890]
[Multiplier: 10,000x]
[Rank: 2 (5-Star)]
Holden stared at the rank line. He’d been sitting at 5-Star for a little while now, and the gap to 6-Star was significant. Normally, a cultivator would need to hunt down high-quality monster cores, meditate for days, and slowly push their energy past the breaking point.
But Holden had a System. And Systems had menus he hadn’t fully explored yet.
He focused his attention on a small icon in the corner of his display that he’d been ignoring. It looked like a tiny shop counter.
It expanded.
[KP SHOP - UNLOCKED]
[Available Categories: Skill Books, Consumables, Emergency Items, Breakthrough Acceleration]
Holden’s heart rate kicked up a notch.
He tapped Breakthrough Acceleration.
A new window bloomed open.
[Breakthrough Acceleration]
[Bypass traditional cultivation requirements by flooding your meridians with System-refined energy. Requires a purified energy pathway for optimal results.]
[Current Rank: 2 (5-Star)]
[Next Milestone: Rank 2 (6-Star)]
[Cost: 50,000 KP]
[Accept?]
Fifty thousand points. That was a lot. He’d just spent eighty thousand on the resurrection protocol, and now he was looking at dropping another fifty.
But the Aether-Purification Pill had just prepped his body perfectly. The System was practically begging him to do this. It would be stupid not to.
"Pay to win," Holden whispered, grinning to himself. "The most beautiful words in any language."
He pressed accept.
The effect was instantaneous.
A tidal wave of pure energy exploded from deep inside his chest. Unlike raw monster power, this was smooth, refined, and impossibly dense, like liquid starlight pumped directly into his meridians.
Holden clenched his jaw.
His muscles locked up, then released, then locked again. Every fiber in his body was being compressed and rebuilt simultaneously. His bones hummed with a deep, resonant vibration that he could feel in his teeth.
The energy flowed through his arms, legs, and spine, pooling in his core before radiating outward in waves. Every single wave pushed hard against his 5-Star limit, testing it and probing for a weakness.
Then it broke through.
WHOOSH.
The pressure in his chest exploded outward. A shimmer of white light flickered around his body for a second before fading away.
Holden exhaled slowly.
He flexed his hand. His fingers moved faster than before, and the link between his brain and his body felt sharper and much more direct.
[Breakthrough Complete!]
[Rank Updated: 2 (6-Star)]
[Physical enhancement: Muscle density increased by 12%. Neural response time improved. Iron-Body durability boosted.]
[Remaining KP: 127,890]
Holden fell back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling.
Six-Star.
If someone had told him a year ago that he’d be sitting in a warzone barracks, casually purchasing rank upgrades like they were snacks from a vending machine, he would have laughed in their face.
Now here he was.
He closed his eyes and let the new power settle into his bones. His body hummed with quiet, controlled strength. The 6-Star energy circulated smoothly through his perfectly purified meridians.
He was getting stronger. Faster than anyone in this world could possibly understand.
And he still had over a hundred thousand points to spend.