Sitting on a post under the the hot sun I stared at the herb garden. It was on around 12 acres of land. If I were still my old self that kind of weeding would seem daunting. As a superhuman gamer it was still intimidating. I couldn't lie, no matter which way I looked at it the weeds at their lowest had a BP of 2k. At their highest was 20k. All of that power came from Od's shit. Maybe she should quit the farm business and just sell her feces. If it could do something like this, it must be incredible. Rolling my eyes at my own thoughts I hopped off the fence.

Something was nagging at me. A thought in the back of my mind that I couldn't quite grasp. Condense, compact, and compress those words came to mind from a half-remembered story that stuck with me. The story was on fanfic.net but that wasn't important. What was important was the concept. Instead of growing the fire outward and making a shower display, I had another option to advance. There was more to it and the words I used were just synonyms of each other.

In my hands was the small spark of my Dao flame. It had no shape it was fire extending upwards towards oxygen and to the sides drinking in my mana. Neither of those fuel sources were quite right. I knew that since I learned the technique. Qi was what the fire needed but I had none or no experience using it. Maybe if I removed the collar. I still didn't know what would happen.

My first step in my experiment was to isolate the Dao flame from oxygen. I formed a bubble of mana just far enough away from the flame to keep them from touching. Mana still flowed in feeding the flame. The fire changed from the flame of a candle wick to a fire that burned in multiple direction. Slowly, I altered how I fed the flame. Instead of feeding it through several drips, I turned my mana into a more gaseous state. This in turn made the flame burn hotter. All of this happened in moments. The flame quickly adapted and settled into a more stable state.

Dao Skill level up: Wyrmling lv20; active cost 20MP; +2INT/WIS

New power skill: Compress lv1; passive; +5INT/PER

New skill Mana Manipulation lv1; passive; +0.5INT/PER

Abstract kill level up: Set A Course lv2; passive; +20INT/WIS

Intelligence has surpassed the first milestone 50

Rolling a random Intelligence based skill

Power Skill: Dominate lv1; active cost 500MP; +10INT

Personal BP 884.99

Never in my life had I thought fanfiction would come in handy. I quickly backed up my thoughts and tried that again. Never in a thousand lifetimes had I thought fanfiction would come in handy. It had or it had given me the start of a good idea. It was the next step on my path to power or I thought it was. The concept, I stole from fanfiction was from a half-remembered bleach fan exploration on Ichigo's compression type soul cutter.

With my increased intelligence it was easier to keep the small fireball stable. Keeping it like this was a mana sink. I was losing it much faster than I could recover it. My mana wasn't infinite, and I didn't know what the spirit stones would do to me. Then there were the weeds. I needed to destroy them without destroying the herb garden. I needed to ask one of my fellow slaves for help.

There was a mule centaur out in a nearby field pulling a plow and grinding away at the earth. I hoped the fence and went to interrupt her work. As I grew closer, I gained an appreciation for her appearance.

She was tall but much shorter than Od. Her skin was tanned darker with a Tai complexion. Her skin was dark borderline orange and glowed healthily with a thin sheen of sweat. She wasn't the same mule centaur that Gantalga visited. She smelled of the field, manure, horse sweat, and fresh oats. On her head was a rice hat. It was made of bamboo and thanks to her height it covered most of her horse back. She spotted me and slowed down at my approach.

"My name is Li Jing a pleasure to meat you human what is your name?" She asked politely in a soft voice.

"Greetings my name is Melchior Nimrod Od. I wanted to ask you if you had any rope or knew where I could find some." She reached into her bag of holding and pulled out a ring of silk rope.

"I don't mind parting with it this rope can easily be replace tomorrow but what do you plan to use it for. You wouldn't be the first to look for an easy way out of our predicament." Li Jing said in a sad tone.

"I bet Salena eats well in those events. Sweet woman she was earnest about painfully devouring me. I had no plans to let her crush my bones and devour my body. No matter how pleasant she claims the experience." I said. Li Jing raised a fan to her face hiding her smile. I hadn't seen her pull it from her back of holding. It was simply made of bamboo like her hat with a few symbols carved into it. It looked heavy enough to be expensive in a gift shop.

"Oh, I would hate to gossip but she tries that with everyone who looks small enough. She loves her hugs as Gantalga calls them. That stallion relies too heavily on his Dao of Iron Body. Why do you have that ball of flame hovering beside you? I can't feel the heat from it." She said and waved her hand over it.

I had enough mana to expend it around my body and keep it grouped there like a dam. The fireball was covered in my mana which acted like a soap bubble moving within my mana. I could control it with practice.

"Just training, I need the rope to pull some weeds. I would rather pull them far from the herbs before burning them." She looked at me with sympathy. She patted my face with her rough hands.

"No matter how hard you train Dao cultivation without true cultivation is limited. But you are doing an admirable job for one with such low cultivation. Are you 1st stage qi condensation?" I shook my head and her frown deepened.

"I have no cultivation to speak of. I'm just a dreamer with an admirable body and keen senses." I said sadly. I wondered when it would be appropriate to give her my back story. I was meeting so many interesting people this was so much fun.

She saw my smile and returned it with a sad one of her own. "Take the rope. What sort of senior would I be if I didn't help my junior? If you ever need to talk come to the servant's quarters at the southern gate. I'm there most nights after work.

"Thank you, senior sister." I said bowing as Od had taught me. Now all I needed to do was pull the weeds out of the ground and burn them alive. Easy right.