Mixed Blessing System

More than three hours after Lothur was supposed to arrive home, he entered through the residence's main door, finding Viktoria waiting for him.

She was not too worried since this woman knew that her husband might be dealing with matters relating to his spiritual professions. But, at the same time, it was common for Lothur to arrive home at unruly hours.

But still, because of the occasion a few nights ago when they were visited by a Transcendent, this woman could not help but worry about her man.

"Lothur, you..." Seeing him enter the house's main hall, Viktoria jumped up from the sofa and went towards him. Still, in the middle of her movement, she stopped as she noticed differences in her husband's appearance.

Lothur had changed clothes and cleaned the blood on his body after he finished collecting the spatial rings from his enemies. So there was no way Viktoria could tell he had fought. But his face and the fit of his clothes looked different.

After advancing all the body transformations of the first stage, a soul cultivator would stop undergoing significant physical improvements since their improvements would be focused on the soul. So while people above level 9 might undergo improvements in terms of appearance, such a thing was not significant.

Since Viktoria only knew the spiritual progress of soul cultivators, she did not think that Lothur would undergo physical improvements since he was already at the 9th Transformation. But seeing him somewhat different, even without sensing his cultivation level, she realized that something had happened given this change.

"Did you consume any resources that improved your physique, or did you advance?" She asked those the only possibilities that could justify a change in appearance.

After reaching the 2nd stage, soul cultivators usually only improve in appearance when they level up a stage or by consuming unique resources. Then, this brunette woman soon thought of these two possibilities to justify the change in Lothur.

Lothur seemed to have improved the quality of his frame as a whole, with slightly more attractive skin and nicer angles, but his breathing and gaze seemed to have changed.

In short, he seemed calmer, more attractive, and more mesmerizing, as one would expect from a predator.

He answered his wife. "I have advanced a stage..."

Upon hearing this, Viktoria was happy for her husband, giving him a hug and a kiss before turning her attention to trying to clear up some of her doubts.

She knew that Lothur only cultivated his body, so the rules of soul cultivation did not apply to him. "How are you feeling? Have you noticed any improvement regarding your spiritual power?" She asked in doubt.

When a soul cultivator reaches the 2nd stage, they undergo six maturation processes that nourish their soul. That would eventually give rise to a core when such a person reached the 3rd stage.

That was the main change in a cultivator during the 2nd stage. Therefore, Viktoria could not help but wonder what happened in a body cultivator like Lothur.

Would he have his incomplete soul altered to some degree? Or was everything different?

Lothur then answered his wife. "My spiritual power has not changed."

In the cultivation world, spiritual power was confused with physical energy for 1st stage cultivators. But for people above that stage, one thing was connected to the Soul attribute and the other to Constitution.

A soul cultivator like Viktoria would depend on the energies stored in their soul, that is, spiritual power, to fight. When this ran out, all they would have was the energy in their bodies to fight hand-to-hand battles.

That was the situation for cultivators who followed only the bodily path, like the present Lothur.

So his spiritual power had not risen, but his energy had significantly increased due to the bonus of him advancing through his Physique and Super Regeneration skills.

"But I feel a great improvement in terms of vitality in my body and physical quality," Lothur said, speaking of what had improved.

A cultivator's life force was directly related to their Constitution. Hence, body cultivators like Lothur were little affected in terms of spiritual quality, having, instead of a more refined soul, a more capable body.

A soul cultivator's body could be enhanced by his soul only temporarily. Because of this, cultivators like this had lower life expectancies than their peers who followed body cultivation. At the same time, individuals like Lothur could rely on their characteristics 100% of the time.

Even if Lothur were totally exhausted, the value of his Constitution would not change. That meant that even when passed out, he could not, for example, be hurt by someone with a Strength of 50, while his Constitution was over 200.

That person with a Strength of 50 would be exhausted before they could hurt someone with a Constitution of 200.

On the other hand, someone with soul cultivation could use their Soul to strengthen, for example, their Constitution of 50, raising it to 150. But this would only last as long as they had spiritual power. After being exhausted, such a cultivator would revert to a Constitution of 50 and become vulnerable to anyone with Strength close to that value.

Soul cultivators were most vulnerable when they were not using their spiritual power. That was like an individual who would be vulnerable when taking off their armor!

That was the advantage of not going through an improvement in terms of spiritual power and soul maturation.

So a body cultivator did not go through six revolutions to form a soul core. Instead, they would go through six more spiritual cleansings, strengthening their life force, bone and muscle quality, and everything related to the body.

Lothur explained how he felt to his wife, teaching her a little about the differences between soul and body cultivators.

After doing that for a while, he told her about what had just happened, from his kidnapping to what he had done after moving on.

"What?" She stood up from where she had sat next to him, totally surprised at all that her husband had done in the last few hours.

'One of his father's men contacted him?' She felt unsure but also fortunate that a man from her husband's father had contacted him, not someone sent by his grandfather.

'If it were someone from that man, Lothur would probably be in the empire's capital now, and the family situation would worsen considerably...' She thought about the consequences of having her husband involved with the capital's problems.

The Frost family already had their own problems concerning the current state political game, even though they were not involved in such matters. So things would hardly improve for that organization if Lothur became one of the pieces in the political chess of the powerful in that city.

On the other hand, she could not ignore the problem in which Daemon's subordinate got Lothur involved.

'He has killed several local nobles, and there are many witnesses...' Viktoria sighed, feeling that times kept getting more troublesome for them.

"What do we do now?" She found herself at a dead end and asked her man.

...