Crystal core 2 a litrpg.., p.1
Crystal Core 2: A Litrpg Cultivation Adventure, page 1
Crystal Core 2
License Notes: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Crystal Core 2
Copyright © 2024 by David Burke
Cover art copyright by David Burke
Table of Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Story Up to This Point:
Index of Characters
Chapter 1 - The Taste of Freedom
Chapter 2 - The Problem with Cultivators
Chapter 3 - Settling In
Chapter 4 - Inside the Ring
Chapter 5 - The Pull of Destiny
Chapter 6 - Elites?
Chapter 7 - Never Far Away
Interlude 1 - Suppressed Feelings
Chapter 8 - Back to the Woods
Chapter 9 - Defiance
Stats 2.0
Interlude 2 - Poison and Fire
Chapter 10 - Assumptions and Reconsiderations
Chapter 11 - Stupid Spiderman Logic
Chapter 12 - Dinner with Crazy
Chapter 13 - Great Potential
Chapter 14 - Tree Walking
Chapter 15 - Settling In
Interlude 3 - Fear, Loyalty, and Hope
Chapter 16 - Stepping Up
Chapter 17 - Let Fly
Chapter 18 - Psychological Warfare
Chapter 19 - Surprises
Interlude 4 - Mine
Chapter 20 - Damage Management
Chapter 21 - Growing Closer
Chapter 22 - Round Robin Training
Chapter 23 - After Dinner
Chapter 24 - Never Alone
Chapter 25 - Plans
Interlude 5 - Different Counsel
Chapter 26 - Following and Leading
Chapter 27 - But… I Don’t Want To!
Chapter 28 - Divine Touch
Chapter 29 - Afternoon Delight
Chapter 30 - What Lies Underneath
Chapter 31 - The Poison of Life and Love
Chapter 32 - The Mind’s Eye
Stats 2.1
Chapter 33 - Travel
Chapter 34 - Yeti
Chapter 35 - Endless
Chapter 36 - Man of Destiny
Chapter 37 - Battle Joined
Chapter 38 - Lock and Key
Chapter 39 - Making an Entrance
Interlude 6 - Complicated
Chapter 40 - Three Way
Chapter 41 - Winter Comes
Chapter 42 - Stronger Together
Chapter 43 - Clean Up
Chapter 44 - Searching the Mine
Chapter 45 - Confrontation
Chapter 46 - Domestic Confusion
Epilogue - Future Problems
Stats at the End of Book 2 (including the growth for the girls with the last battle)
THANKS FOR READING
Other Books by the Author:
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The stat sheets are put into their own chapters. They are entirely optional. There are a good portion of my readers who, like me, enjoy these in their LitRPG. But by putting it into its own chapter, I hope to give you the option of seeing Ryan’s growth or jumping ahead to the next part of the story. You can easily skip this section whether that is in eBook or audio, and you can just as easily find it to reference the crunchy numbers.
Ryan had to undergo some significant change in book 1 and will likely have more in book 2. Writing him has been a bit of a challenge. He is twenty-two, but most of his life has been lived in a hospital bed. Sometimes he has the emotional maturity of an 11 to 14-year-old and other times of a grown man who has been hardened by distrust. Neither extreme is very useful to him, but that doesn’t keep him from defaulting to them at times.
Ryan will have growth, and at times he will regress. That is the nature of humanity. Personal growth is generally always two steps forward, one step back. There is a cycle of how we behave and improve ourselves. I hope everyone can understand this and connect with some part of Ryan’s struggles.
As the story progresses, he will reference his past less and less. He is making a new future for himself.
The Story Up to This Point:
Ryan’s disease first struck around age eleven. He was diagnosed with a radical, new version of a very rare disease. Instead of causing small crystals to form in his cells, the disease began to slowly turn his entire body into crystal. The doctors couldn’t explain it and after a couple of years, Ryan had to live in the hospital.
The disease slowly stripped him of everything. First, he lost the use of his legs, then his arms. Despite the fact that even his internal organs were turning to crystal, they continued to function. By the age of twenty-two, his eyes had glazed over with crystal and his ears had crystalized, making hearing difficult.
There were many times that he wanted to die, but the doctors insisted they would find a way to cure him. At some point, he became more of a test subject than a patient, and those very same doctors came up with a variety of medical advances derived from studying him. Over time, his friends and even his family abandoned him, leaving him helpless in the hospital.
That was when a portal opened in the ceiling above his hospital bed. At first, he imagined he was dreaming. But instead of a dream, the portal was part of a hero summoning ritual that brought him to the Divided Realms. The ritual itself sought out the proper hero and wasn’t directly controlled by the sect heads who cast it. Ryan was summoned to save this realm from an expected horde of monsters which was invading through incursion portals.
Bas-Tuon, head of the Yandao clan—a sect of earth cultivators—along with Jinwae, head of the Baku clan—a sect of sky cultivators—used their own daughters as the spiritual anchors to hold the hero in their realm. As part of the ritual, the summoned hero was married to the two sect heads’ daughters. Eluanshi and Lianhua were both gifted cultivators and considered to be prodigies. Neither was thrilled to have their blood used in the ritual, but both were prepared to meet the obligations their clans demanded of them.
A third sect head, Rurren of the Ninjamae clan, snuck the blood of his daughter Shikumo into the ritual, causing her to become the summoned hero’s third wife and anchor. This created tension between the clans, but the die had been cast. Ultimately, an extra anchor was a good thing—if the hero ever lost his anchors, his soul would be cast out from the Divided Realms and lost in the space between it and Earth.
For his part, Ryan distrusted all of the sects. But he soon realized that the Divided Realms was a dream come true for him—once he accepted it. Here, he could move and see clearly. Better than that, his body was considerably more powerful than that of a normal human. He learned that he was in a cultivation world. And while he resisted initially, he did learn to cultivate and grew stronger.
Ryan’s primary advantage came from his crystal core. Mana concentration was a primary part of cultivation. It started with vapor and increased in grade from mist to cloud, then liquid, and finally solid. Crystal was rumored to be the mythical endpoint beyond solid, but any old masters who discovered it took their secrets with them to their deaths or their ascensions. Ryan, however, proved it was possible. This gave him some unique abilities.
He was also discovered not to have a mana affinity. Normally, cultivators had from one to three affinities. Ryan’s core stripped the affinity from any mana he absorbed and created the purest neutral mana that anyone had ever seen. Ryan was mana neutral.
This was considered impossible and impaired his ability to master cultivator techniques. Techniques were broken down into augmentations, which enhanced the body of the cultivator temporarily at the cost of mana, or projections which push the mana of the cultivator out of their body. Cultivators used projections to create various effects, ranging from attacks to summonings.
Eventually, Ryan developed relationships with a few of the people in the Yandao clan where he started his training. The deepest connection he formed was with Elu, the daughter of the sect head and one of his supposed wives. She became his Sabum, or cultivation training master, and she pushed him to excel. Their relationship was awkward at first, as Elu feared the loss of her freedom but was culturally compelled to defer to her husband. Respect and eventually a budding romance grew as they both saw how hard the other worked. Ryan convinced Elu that he wouldn’t hold her back or force her to stop cultivating and growing stronger just because she was now his wife.
During his training time with the Yandao, there appeared to be several attempts on Ryan’s life. These turned out to be attempts by Shikumo to mark him as her own, She swore to kill any woman who tried to touch Ryan—at least any who wasn’t one of his ritual anchors. The summoned hero learned a bit about Shikumo’s troubled history, but Elu only knew so much about her.
It turned out that Shikumo was mentally unstable, which had something to do with her now dead mother. It seems, Shikumo still hears from her mother, although it isn’t clear yet whether she is being haunted, possessed, or is simply delusional.
In the end, Ryan won a tournament and gained
Ryan then escaped with Elu’s and Dara’s assistance. The aunt of the clan head, who was also their chief healer, sent him to a small, non-cultivator village, called Eno. There, Dara owned a home, and he posed as her nephew. When he first arrived there, he bumped into a serving girl at the largest tavern named Pozei.
Ryan felt drawn to the petite beauty with a doll’s face, though he wasn’t sure why. This is because Pozei is really Shikumo in disguise. Book two starts with Ryan waking up after his first night in Eno.
Index of Characters
Ryan Wilson - MC, bearer of the crystal core, a man from Earth and now in the Divided Realms. He has awakened the beginnings of a draconic bloodline.
Eluanshi Yandao (Elu) - Daughter of the clan head of Yandao, anchor and wife of the hero. She has broken into low D-rank as a cultivator and is a prodigy of her clan. She cultivates Earth, Metal, and Gravity Mana.
Lianhua Baku (Lian) - Daughter of the clan head of Baku, anchor and wife of the hero. She experienced a breakthrough in the final match with Ryan, which pushed her mana concentration from mist to cloud. She is called the Ice Princess by many, as her beauty is almost too perfect, but her personality is frigid. She cultivates Sky, Ice, and Sword mana. She is now a Peak E-rank cultivator.
Shikumo Ninjamae (Kumo) - Daughter of the clan head of Ninjamae, anchor and wife of the hero. She finally managed to place her mark upon him, in which she infused a part of herself into a spot on his low back. The effects of this are as yet to be determined. She is mentally unstable but highly gifted. She cultivates Poison, Death, and Spider Mana. She is a High E-rank cultivator with a large repertoire of techniques.
Bas-Tuon Yandao - Head of the Yandao Clan. He is an A-rank cultivator.
Jinwae Baku - Head of the Baku Clan. He is an A-rank cultivator.
Rurren Ninjamae - Head of the Ninjamae Clan. He is an A-rank cultivator.
Meana - Handmaiden to Elu. She had some romantic encounters with Ryan, but nothing went too far. Under clan law, she can fill in for her Mistress in any way that Elu requires of her. She is a failed cultivator with affinities for Earth and Fire mana.
Niri - Handmaiden to Elu. She liked Ryan and enjoyed serving him at first until she saw some aspects of his status sheet and was threatened by Dara with death if she divulged the information to anyone.
Neman - The head of Ryan’s security while he was at the Yandao command. He was punished by being sent to the front line to close down incursion portals for failing to stop repeated attacks by Shikumo upon Ryan.
Valdoc - A peak C-rank cultivator and the master trainer for the Yandao clan. He has a good relationship with Ryan.
Dara - Bas-Tuon’s aunt, and a high B-rank cultivator. She specializes in healing. She was responsible for helping Ryan escape because she believes that the hero requires freedom to grow strong. Owns a cottage in the mountain village of Eno.
Chapter 1 - The Taste of Freedom
I stretched out in the bed in Dara’s cottage. My feet stuck out over the end of the surprisingly soft down mattress. But this bed was Dara’s, and she was at least a foot shorter than me. I’d slept in later than I should have.
I shook my head. Nope. I wasn’t going to chastise myself for getting up later than I should have. I’d been working my ass off ever since I’d been summoned to the Divided Realms. The world wasn’t going to end if I slept in for an extra hour or two.
Last night had been fun—mostly because it had felt organic. I’d escaped the Yandao clan from their compound in Senetra, the meeting city of the major clans, three days ago. The first two days after that had been me running the hundred plus miles out of the desert, across the scrublands, and on to Eno in the foothills at the base of a rather imposing mountain range.
Eno village spread across the foothills for miles in every direction. The people here were farmers. They grew grain, corn, various beans and fruits, and an assortment of vegetables. They likewise raised cows, chickens, pigs, and sheep. Because we were near the mountains, there were men who produced much of the wealth of Eno by digging for rare metals or even higher tiered iron ore in a number of small mines.
And then there was the town proper. It was home to up to 5,000 people at any one time, but often less than that. It had general shops, tanners, weavers, an herbalist, a doctor, and a few inns. In many ways, this place was everything I could have imagined a late Medieval village might have been like back on Earth—if you threw in some bits of magic.
Of course, I’d learned all of that at the inn last night when I was buying drinks for everyone. Farmers, merchants, and craftsmen alike were eager to talk about the place to the new guy, buying them a drink.
The most pleasant surprise of the night had been meeting Pozei. She was a petite woman, not more than an inch over five foot, if that. Her doll-like face made her look even younger than her nearly twenty years and was framed by rich, jet-black hair. Her skin was so flawless that it might as well have been porcelain.
I’d felt oddly drawn to the petite barmaid from the moment I accidentally bumped into her several steps inside the Starlight Inn. I was usually more alert than that but chalked it up to a combination of travel fatigue and being excited to be around people who didn’t look at me like some kind of savior. Of course, after causing her to break a bunch of dishes, I’d offered to pay for the breakage and then bought her dinner.
She still had to work, but made time to come over and visit with me a few times over the course of the evening. Maybe it was because this was the first authentic interaction I’d had with an adult female, but I’d flirted a bit with her. Of course, I made sure never to cross any lines. I saw more than one patron attempt to pinch her pert bum, which looked cute in the leather pants she wore under her apron, but she always managed to deftly avoid their clumsy efforts.
As I lay here stretching on the bed, I had to admit that I was hoping she’d be on duty when I went to eat breakfast at the inn. I briefly felt a twinge of guilt, but it wasn’t like I was actually cheating on Elu. As much as I cared about the Yandao cultivator, I didn’t think it was wrong for me to talk to another woman.
Heck, I supposedly had not just one, but three wives. I still had trouble understanding how any man could stay sane, keeping that many women happy—one woman had seemed to be enough to keep a man on his toes back home. Not that I knew from personal experience… that was just the way all the television I’d watched in my hospital bed had made it seem.
With a sigh, I pushed such idle thoughts away. Thinking about Elu had caused a pang of loss to grip my heart. She’d been my first love and was legally—in this world at least—my first wife. I had come to care for my Sabum, or Instructor, deeply over several months of hard training in the Yandao clan.
With any luck, she’d be able to find me here in a month or so. Then, we could start exploring the Divided Realms properly. Well, and exploring each other properly, too.
Our physical relationship, as well as our relationship as husband and wife was new and exciting. I wasn’t going to lie, my wife’s hard yet soft body was very appealing. Though we’d only had one night—well, and into the morning—together, I missed her.
I stood, stretched again, and then got dressed. My storage ring, a gift from the head of the Ninjamae Clan, was filled with items that I had yet to take the time to check out. But one of the most important things I had come across, were the several dozen outfits that Dara had put into the ring. Half of them were fighting robes like cultivators wore, while the other half were simple, common trousers and shirts that the people of the land wore.
‘People of the land’ was the polite term for non-cultivators—with mortals being the more dismissive term.
Dara had stressed that if I wore cultivator robes, I’d draw attention—some of it good and some of it bad. I was still torn about how much I wanted to reveal to the people of Eno. I ran a hand through my hair. For now, I was going to get a meal and then see about finding some work to do.
