How to Cultivate a Game

Ping! -180 quintessence.

And then... the system did its work, and quintessence flowed from my being.

Mysterious veins appeared in the Dragon Bones as they aligned and molded into the shape of a human's skeleton. The Kirin's Eyes floated and adjusted themselves at the hollowed eye sockets of the skull. The Songful Pearl levitated and descended into the skeleton's supposed-to-be throat. The Phoenix Ash danced in the air as sparks of red and orange surrounded us, blood and flesh proliferating.

Lastly, the Stardust recreated its nerves, the Ether Steel became its skin, and the Shadow Fog merged to become its shadow.

Ping! Acquired Puppet.

Fuck… Was I too hasty?

So what if it was a... baldy?

"Bald is the new trend anyway. Who knew, maybe this guy could one-punch villains, right?"

The puppet looked so human that you would think of it as one. The only indication that the puppet wasn't human was the lack of nipples and genitalia.

Old Fu Shi knew a Perfect Immortal who liked to create puppets, so I knew what a high-quality puppet would look like if I saw one. In Western fantasy, what I have created was essentially a homunculus without a soul.

This baldy lying on the hard cold pavement was positively of high quality.

Now, a new problem arose. How was I supposed to control it?

There were many methods, but all of them required the use of qi. The possession technique, puppeteering threads, mind link, artificial consciousness implantation, etcetera.

"Hmmm… I have an idea…"

I took a hefty amount of rare metal essence from my stash. I also needed something like an energy source. A high-quality Spirit Gemstone would definitely last a long time.

Ping! -30 quintessence.

Ping! Acquired Personal Computer Ver.1.

I was poor again. I was spending quintessence like water.

All was well. This was an investment! I convinced and comforted myself with this self-rationalization, and I knew I was right. But truthfully, I missed playing games so badly; that I created a PC of my own!

Wait, if I was gonna control the puppet as if I was playing a game on my PC, shouldn't I have made it into a female instead?

"Hmmm… Maybe next time."

What a rotten bastard. Right? I was truly and enormously sad though that I didn't make it into a female.

Anyway, it was time I did a test drive.

~~~

I double-clicked the only icon on my PC, it was a sword, and staff crossed. Yikes, I was giddy excited. I was playing a game! I miss the oooh-so-many entertainment of my past life that the sight of this PC made me secrete a lot of happy hormones.

"I might be an old man now, but I was still a kid at heart."

[Name:_________ ]

Yes, I should give him a name… Wait, I was thinking, don't hurry me you flickering monitor screen…

Should I stay with the theme, and think of a name that would fit in this cultivation world? Or should I just borrow someone else's?

"Hmm… Let's see. Saitama? Caped Baldy? Kririn? This was a little difficult. In games, it was always the avatar creation and naming that ate all my time."

On my monitor screen, a 3D image of the baldy stood, slowly rotating 360 degrees. He had well-endowed proportions and a manly handsome face.

Bald. Emotionless. Aloof. These were my thoughts about him. Well, he was a puppet. As a sentimental person, I could not bring myself to do this without sincerity. As if I would name him Baldy and be done with it.

Not that I almost did.

Let's do Mindless Monk. It was kind of morbid, knowing that it was a puppet that could not think. It was mindless, as such, 'Mindless Monk' was quite a fitting name for him.

I tried moving him using my cursor key, and damn… it looked scary rigid. It was insanely emotionless. The guy moved as programmed and intended as I clicked with my mouse several more times.

This monk was too rigid. I bet he couldn't even pour his own drink. It looked like a lot of coding had to be done, so I had to finish this test drive fast to get the wheels of progress moving.

Since the guy clearly was too rigid for his own good and was a sight for sore eyes naked, I assisted him in wearing clothes to look more human. The clothes aren't just for show though since they were all Superior Spiritual Artifacts.

[Name: Mindless Monk

Equipment: Crimson Cowl, Onyx Robe, Blood Shawl, Litany Beads]

Now, now, now… This guy looked like a hybrid monk, a mixture of Western and Eastern monks, which looked interesting and ultimately intimidating. The cowl and robe were of Western origin which resembled a cardinal's attire, while the shawl together with the big beads was of Eastern origin typical of a monk's attire.

Sigh… One of the great joys of MMORPGs was dressing your character. But the fun didn't last long as I slowly realized… Wasn't this monk, exuding quite an evil vibe just by its appearance alone?

Y-yeah, I think I overdid it. The cowl came from a fearsome cult's blood sacrifice which cost the vanishing of a whole city. The robe was from a mysterious Sword Demon's shadow manifested physically from his dried blood. The shawl was pilfered from a Vengeful Spirit's corpse retrieved from its exorcising. The beads were taken from an evil Buddhist after the said Buddhist gained enlightenment by killing thirteen martyrs.

This was.

Definitely Evil…

But.

It looked so freaking awesome!

Ping! -1 quintessence.

Ping! Acquired Super Comfy Gaming Chair.

I sat comfortably in my newly crafted chair made from Spirit Cotton. The most important thing about a test drive was testing the product's specs.

This will be easy. The control mechanics were the classic keyboard, and cursor-oriented point-and-click, which was considered the most basic in an MMORPG setting.

Let's see you move, Mindless Monk. It only took a minute for the guy to arrive at the mountain's foot by swiftly jumping and gliding down the mountain.

I watched the monk beautifully move down the mountain in the third person's POV. He moved like a martial artist with years of experience under his belt. It looked like his motor functions were working properly.

While its actions were sustained by the qi inside the Spiritual Gemstone, it could not manipulate qi as cultivators do.

Click, click… With a click, I made the Mindless Monk run at incredible speeds as it rushed to the Butterberry forest.

That was when... Suddenly… its foot mistakenly hit a rock as it ran at full speed… resulting in one devastating crash. It then created an extending trench as felled trees crashed one after another.

"Fuck."

Rather than a super baldy, what I actually possessed was a disabled baldy. I was expecting my game avatar to bump into stuff, and with the physics engine of this world, I was also expecting the disastrous effects of creating craters and stuff...

But I wasn't expecting this.

Tripping into a rock was not within my calculations. I made the monk stand up with a few clicks from my PC. With some clicks with my mouse, the dude stood up all well and dandy. It appeared as if he was not even one bit damaged. The HP bar on my monitor screen though told me otherwise.

The damage though was minimal at best. If you didn't squint your eyes hard enough, you wouldn't even realize the small gap in the HP bar.

I confirmed the Monk's durability, and at the same time, its regenerative powers. It only took a quarter of a second for him to return to full health.

Now that I have seen his stats, I must quantify and adjust them accordingly. It appeared that my Physical Education skills from elementary to high school had to work their magic. I could use BMI as a basis for my Monk's stat system. Or should I use the DnD standards? 

"Hmmm... Now, I'll have to compute this guy's speed, agility, dexterity, long jump, muscle power, and stuff... I also must build apparatuses to help me measure this and put them into more concrete numerical values."

I delved further into the art of puppet making, by concentrating on my first-ever creation.