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[Raincall successfully cast. Glowmist Grass maturity +8.] [Soften Earth successfully cast. Glowmist Grass maturity +5.] [Pest Ward failed. Glowmist Grass maturity -18.]...

"This is ridiculous. How is this so hard?" Elara Lin crouched slowly beside her tiny spirit garden. She had spent the entire day tending it, only for a pest infestation to wipe out half her progress. A dozen stalks of Glowmist Grass rose from the dark soil in front of her. Each stood a little over a foot tall, its slender emerald leaves wrapped in a faint white haze. Their maturity bars hovered barely past the halfway mark. [65/100] At this rate, the grass might survive another three days.

Elara was far less confident about herself.

"How is anyone supposed to survive in this world? I can barely afford to eat." She rubbed her forehead, exhaustion dulling her usually bright eyes. Elara looked sixteen or seventeen, with a slender build and soft features. A faded brown tunic hung loosely from her frame, plain enough to mark her as someone without money to spare. Which, unfortunately, was exactly what she was. She had been stranded in this world for more than two weeks now.

Before all this, Elara had been an ordinary girl back on Earth whose greatest ambition in life was to do as little work as humanly possible. Then she had decided to try Seed of Ascension, the hottest new full-immersion cultivation game. For the bargain price of $99. 99, she had apparently purchased the most immersive experience ever made. So immersive, in fact, that the developers had forgotten to include a logout button. Elara was starting to suspect the universe had a grudge against her.

If she had arrived as the heiress of some ancient clan, the chosen disciple of a legendary master, or even the pampered daughter of a wealthy cultivator, she could have worked with that. Instead, she had apparently selected Nightmare difficulty. No parents. No relatives. No money. Average aptitude. Her only assets were a Level One Qi Refining cultivation base and the dubious title of Spirit Gardener. That was it.

"This tiny plot and the shack cost two Spirit Stones and thirty Spirit Coins a month. Twelve Glowmist Grass seeds cost sixty Spirit Coins. Food is at least five Spirit Coins a day..." Elara counted on her fingers, muttering under her breath. Then she checked the nearly weightless coin pouch at her waist. The math was painfully clear. She was going to starve. With a miserable sigh, Elara opened her interface. It had become a habit by now.

Whenever reality got too depressing, she combed the menus for the logout option that had to be hiding somewhere. After another fruitless search, she muttered, "Amazing game design. They even gave the logout button an invisibility spell."

[Elara Lin] [Cultivation: Qi Refining Tier 1 — 70/100] [Race: Human] [Fortune: 1] [Talents: None] [Skills] [Basic Arts] [Raincall — Level 2: 12/100] [Soften Earth — Level 2: 40/100] [Pest Ward — Level 1: 35/100] As an amateur Spirit Gardener with no teacher and no family tradition to fall back on, Elara knew exactly three basic cultivation arts. Strictly speaking, calling Pest Ward one of them was generous. Most basic arts had nine proficiency levels.

Levels one through three covered elementary mastery and offered only an art's most basic effects. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

At levels four through six, and again from seven through nine, an art grew significantly more refined and could develop entirely new effects. Raincall and Soften Earth were manageable. Even with mediocre aptitude, Elara could improve them simply by using them every day. Pest Ward was another story. She had been here for more than half a month, and the damned thing was still Level One. Technically, she had learned it. In practice, the spell seemed less convinced.

That was why every pest infestation in her garden turned into a gamble. Glowmist Grass was a Rank One spirit herb and one of the easiest varieties to cultivate. Once mature, it served as a secondary ingredient in several common healing elixirs. That made it one of the most widely traded low-level herbs in the cultivation world. In Valehaven, it was also the lifeline of countless poor cultivators.

Plenty of people at the first or second stage of Qi Refining survived exactly as Elara did—by renting a tiny patch of spirit-rich soil and growing whatever they could sell. With proper care, Glowmist Grass took roughly a week to mature. A healthy stalk sold for around twenty Spirit Coins. On paper, it sounded like easy money. Reality was less generous. Each seed cost five Spirit Coins. That alone was an entire day's food for Elara.

Then came the hours spent casting cultivation arts, recovering essence, pulling weeds, and chasing off birds and other pests. The profit margin shrank fast. Elara let out a long breath. After resting for a few minutes, she left the garden and stepped inside her rented home. Her little courtyard sat on the western edge of Valehaven, in a district built almost entirely for cultivators too poor to live anywhere better. Calling the place a courtyard was generous. The spirit plot took up nearly all of it.

What remained was a single cramped room. As someone who had spent plenty of time renting cheap apartments in her old life, Elara had to admire the landlord's dedication. Every inch served a purpose. Mostly because there weren't enough inches to waste. Inside, the furnishings were equally impressive in their complete lack of luxury. A narrow bed stood against the left wall. A wooden table occupied the center of the room, surrounded by a few stools. On the right sat a washbasin and a small bronze mirror.

Elara picked up a jade token from the table. It served as both proof of tenancy and the control key for the courtyard's tiny essence-gathering array. The formation drew in traces of spiritual essence released by the plants outside and concentrated them inside the room. It wasn't much, but it helped her recover faster while meditating.

"I still have half the garden left. I need to recover before the best tending window passes." Her days had become so busy that she barely had time to curse the developers responsible for her situation. If she didn't recover now, she would miss the ideal window to finish tending the remaining herbs. Elara sat cross-legged on the bed and formed the hand signs for her Spiritbreath Method. She settled her breathing. Pale blue mist gathered slowly around her as spiritual essence flowed into her body.

Warmth spread through her core. Little by little, her depleted reserves refilled. Nearly an hour later, Elara opened her eyes. She hopped off the bed and hurried back outside. Her proficiency was still too low for any of her cultivation arts to cover the entire plot at once. Each cast affected only three to five plants. That meant tending twelve stalks required at least three rounds of spells every day. Her essence reserves, meanwhile, were barely enough for two. A meditation break in the middle was unavoidable.

Elara stopped beside the remaining herbs and raised her hands. She formed the signs for Raincall. A small gray cloud gathered about three feet above the ground. It was almost comically tiny, but just large enough to cover several plants. Rain pattered softly onto the leaves. [Raincall successfully cast. Glowmist Grass maturity +8.] Next came Soften Earth. Elara switched hand signs and circulated her essence again. The soil around the plants shifted under an invisible force.

Clumps of earth broke apart, turned loose and rich, then settled evenly around the roots. [Soften Earth successfully cast. Glowmist Grass maturity +5.] The herbs she had treated were now visibly fuller and brighter. [83/100] Elara crouched and lifted one of the leaves. Several hair-thin black lines clung to its underside. Blackiron Threadworms. Exactly what she had been afraid of. She could choose not to cast Pest Ward.

Unfortunately, Seed of Ascension had been designed by people who apparently hated players who tried to cut corners. If she left the infestation untreated overnight, the affected plants would suffer a fifty-percent maturity penalty. Not a fifty-percent reduction in growth. The game simply chopped their current maturity in half. And, because the developers were apparently sadists, it always rounded down. So if Elara did nothing, those plants would drop from— [83/100] —to— [41/100] —by morning.

There was no clever workaround. She had to use Pest Ward. If I don't try, I definitely starve. If I do try, there's at least a chance. Elara steadied herself. She took several slow breaths, focused, and began forming the required signs. Essence spread outward from her fingertips. The invisible energy swept across the Glowmist Grass in gentle currents, brushing over every leaf. A notification appeared. [Pest Ward successfully cast. Glowmist Grass maturity +18.] [101/100] [Pest Ward proficiency +5.] [40/100] Elara stared at the interface. For a second, she forgot to breathe. It worked. Not only had all three remaining plants reached full maturity, Pest Ward had gained five proficiency points in a single cast. That was far more progress than she could ever squeeze out of poring over spell manuals.

"Yes!" She nearly laughed out loud. Elara immediately reached for the mature Glowmist Grass, intending to harvest and store it before anything else could go wrong. Then she froze. Three motes of light had appeared above the plants. Two were white. One was green. They floated just above the leaves, glowing like loot drops. Elara stared. Then she cautiously touched one of the white lights. A notification appeared. [White Random Reward collected.] [Reward: One Day of Cultivation.] The light flowed into her body.

Warmth spread through her core. Elara immediately opened her status screen. [Qi Refining Tier 1: 70/100 → 71/100] Her breath caught. Now she was wide awake. She had never imagined that successfully cultivating spirit herbs could trigger random reward drops. She reached for the second white light. [White Random Reward collected.] [Reward: A small amount of spiritual essence restored.] Another warm current entered her body. The essence she had just spent casting three arts was instantly replenished.

Better yet, her hunger had faded. Her whole body now brimmed with strength. Elara stood motionless for a moment. Either reward would have been a lifesaver. One full day of cultivation was especially valuable. Cultivation wasn't the same as simply recovering depleted essence. Because she spent so much of each day tending the garden and meditating just to refill her reserves, she could usually devote only half a day to actually advancing her cultivation.

Which meant one rewarded day of cultivation was effectively worth two normal days of progress. And restoring spiritual essence directly? That saved her nearly an hour of meditation. Then Elara's gaze shifted to the final drop. The green one.

"If the white rewards are already this good... what does green give me?" According to Seed of Ascension's original loot system, green rewards sat one grade above white. Elara reached out. [Green Random Reward collected.] [Reward: Talent acquired.] [Practice Makes Perfect — White] [Effect: You possess above-average comprehension when learning most basic cultivation arts, allowing you to grasp and improve them significantly faster.]"A Talent?" Elara's eyes went wide. It was only a White-grade Talent.

Right now, she couldn't have asked for anything better. With Practice Makes Perfect, Pest Ward might finally stop being the bane of her existence. And if she could raise it to Level Two... Maybe she wouldn't starve after all.