After another week of maintaining a routine of hunting goblins, trying to suck-in and hold as much of the esoteric energies as he can, and marching toward the mountains without seemingly no progress toward the actual mountains Sam needed to change something. He was at the point of beginning to doubt if the mountains were actually even real at all or even if they were, whether they were meant to be reached in the first place. The way that things worked in the system made it seem like focused intent and a clear goal mattered a lot. It was, after all, the method that led him to the acquisition of Sagacious Being in the first place and how he was able to archive the Spiritual Narra Tree in his trait. Keeping that in mind, Sam decided that he would stop trying to hunt goblins in the meantime and perhaps revisit his pondering on why exactly it was that he even wanted to reach those mountains.

  Before committing himself to that goal though, Sam would go over his status and all his notifications one more time. He was certain he’d missed out on looking at a few important things because of how excited he had been by everything.

  “Oh right, the utility equipment tickets.” Sam said to himself.

  [Utility Equipment tickets x2] [consume?]

  Knowing that it would just be a waste of what would otherwise be an advantage if he didn’t use them now, he quickly accepted the prompt from the system.

  [Based on your current needs– and a little bit of your preferences– you have been awarded the following items:] [Note that these rewards are improved over what would normally be possible from tickets like this because the system smiles upon you. This improvement consumes the favor you’ve earned from the system thus far and is not a regular occurrence. Continue your growth and find your way.]

  [Received: Evercool Water Gourd, Thermos of Physical Nourishment]

  “The system smiles upon me? Why though?” Well Sam wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. If it wanted to give him better things, he sure wasn’t going to complain about it. The more he interacts with the system, the more it seems like it’s alive. The implications of that are staggering though, so he would think about it another time.

  Evercool Water Gourd

  

  
• This piece of equipment is a mainstay of the multiverse’s desert travellers. As long as there is a sufficient amount of ambient mana, this item can pour up to 10 litres of ice cold water. Once 10 litres have been poured from the mouth of the gourd, it requires at least an hour to recharge by absorbing mana from the surroundings. This time can be reduced by the user actively spending their own mana to boost the process.


  

  Thermos of Physical Nourishment

  

  
• This is a popular piece of equipment used by young scions of cultivation sects during times of pilgrimage, if their families are wealthy and fortunate enough to both afford it and find someone willing to sell it. Once per day, the user of this equipment can pour a variable amount of mana from their mana pool alongside a minimum amount of spiritual power to have the Thermos produce a meal. This meal nourishes, refines, and improves the body over time the more the user eats from this item. The effectiveness of each meal made by the thermos is affected by the amount of mana and spiritual power the user decides to pour into it during each activation of the item. There is a maximum amount per tier that this item can improve one’s physique.


  

  Both of these things were amazing! Looking into the bag that contains his healer’s kit, it seemed like the system noticed before he did that he was finally running out of the rations he got from the starter equipment. Given his food situation Sam wondered what the others who were in the tutorial with him were going to eat once they ran out of rations. He hadn’t thought about it before but now that he was, there must be food that can be foraged around here. Heck there might even be fish in this lake. Although to be fair, it wasn’t like he particularly knew anything about fishing nor did he have what he needed to go and fish in the first place. Having not truly explored deep into the forest, he wasn’t sure if there were other plants around that produced something edible. They probably did, considering Sam was fairly certain that the system didn’t just throw people into this tutorial expecting them to starve to death.

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  Objectively Sam knew that the magical thermos was the better of the two rewards; that didn’t stop him though from celebrating with fervor at the fact that he now had a relatively unlimited source of frigid water. This was a game changer for personal comfort. He really did love drinking cold water. Honestly it was to the point that it felt more like a need than a preference if that made any sense. He was definitely far more irritable when he didn’t have access to ice cold drinking water.

  Done being distracted by the rewards he began to focus on his goal. He did down a few gulps from the gourd first though. From his recent experiences, he was of the opinion that he was getting better at feeling the different energies business. He did notice over the past four weeks of marching toward the mountains that there was this sort of weird sensation in the air as he walked that reminded him of light bending through lenses or the air being all weird above the ground on a really hot day. It was like a mix of both somehow. Knowing that, and knowing that he was able to get the Sagacious Being title by focusing really hard on the desire that magic was real as well as getting his archivist trait to activate in a similar way he decided that he would have to focus his intent and will into the idea that he wanted to reach the mountains more proactively than whatever he had been doing so far. In both cases though, it was apparent that intent or desire wasn’t enough. For either one, he only made visibly significant progress whenever he also spent time pondering the reason for the desire in the first place. The novelty of everything the system represented as being possible was undoubtedly one part things, but it also wasn’t enough. Rather, it wasn’t the only reason nor was it the most significant. At the beginning of this pilgrimage, Sam was attracted to the mountains because they reminded him of his family’s origins. There was a similar attraction and comfort there, the same as he had been getting from the spiritual Narra trees. Beyond that initial instinctual desire to take comfort in something familiar, there was yet another motivator. The mountains, and hopefully the caves beneath them, represented to him a long standing desire he had to become an ascetic; a yearning that he would indulge in from time to time for him to go live in a cave and just pray, read, and do philosophy. This was however, a desire that in his real life he had only ever been able to indulge in the yearning for and had never actually taken action toward trying to make it a reality. The pressures and conveniences of society far too often got in the way. There was a part of him that was afraid to try it out for fear of finding out that he didn’t have the mettle or discipline to actually survive and maintain that kind of life. Here though, with the world all changing as it is and especially with the existence of the system as well as what seemed like the relative isolation of the tutorial, well he didn’t really have any excuses anymore. Additionally, what better place was there to spend time thinking about the fact that magic existed now than to meditate in a cave? It would be just like entering secluded cultivation from the enumerable cultivation novels he’d read!

  Continuing to walk forward, Sam focused on three things–all of which were related to his goal of reaching the mountains. He kept his mind active on pondering the reasons he wanted to reach them, he spent every moment with his intent of reaching the mountains and he maintained an awareness of the odd sensation everywhere around him that he noticed whenever he was actively working toward progressing the particular goal of arriving at the mountains. Whenever he felt that subtle distortion around him, he would push against it with his mind. He thought of it like water and he visualized his desire to reach his goal as him swimming against that current. Every step forward he took felt like his destination moved away from him an equal distance, a movement that only seemed to be abated whenever he was actively pushing against the distortion with his intent.

  Sam was ecstatic! Whatever effort he was putting into this, was working. By the end of the first day after dedicating himself to the task and nothing else, he knew for certain he was actually getting closer. He was, however, exhausted, so incredibly exhausted. Staying that focused for hours at a time while pushing against something that felt so abstract definitely wasn’t easy. He even noticed that his mana had been slowly draining over the course of his march that day so something magical was definitely going on. Luckily by the time he climbed up another spiritual Narra tree, he still had some mana remaining, so before going to bed he gave his fancy new thermos a try. An action which might have been somewhat of a mistake if not actually harmful. Activating the thermos was fine but immediately after he experienced a wicked headache and he was beset with an even more extreme exhaustion than he initially felt he had. Clearly both the walking and his thermos consumed a resource other than mana, one which wasn’t represented on his status yet and that was clearly running dry by the time he was in the tree. Before being able to even inspect the contents of the thermos after activation, Sam fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.