Upgrade Specialist in Another World

    ……

Word by word, Bai Yunfei read the information slowly over the course of several seconds. The more he read, the more his eyes widened, and by the time he was done reading, the grin on his lips was practically splitting his face.

“Whew…”

He exhaled. Slowly trying to regain his calm after reading the stats of the Core Stone, Bai Yunfei started to mutter to himself.

“No wonder it’s a Regalia, its stats and effects are utterly ridiculous…”

“Yunfei, what’s wrong? What kind of stats does the Core Stone have?” Xiao Qi chirped curiously. He, of course, knew one or two things about Bai Yunfei’s Upgrade Technique and how an equipment could have stats and effects.

“It’s a space-type soul armament, so its effects are related to that.” Bai Yunfei replied, “There’s a total of three effects, the first being…”

He could hardly stay calm as he explained the stats to Xiao Qi, and Xiao Qi could hardly believe his ears as he listened.

“You—what? How...how do you know all that?!”

Xiao Fang was even more shocked than Xiao Qi. He had never told Bai Yunfei or Xiao Qi about his abilities, and yet here Bai Yunfei was, telling the entire room exactly what it could do.

“Hold on!” 

But then Xiao Fang’s ears caught onto something else. “What did you say? +10 Additional effect? Send any target into a sealed dimension to avoid being attacked?! How come I didn’t know I had that ability?!”

“Hehe, that’s the result of my Upgrade Technique.” Bai Yunfei smiled. He was very proud of his technique. “Xiao Qi, come here. I want to try it out.”

“Okay.” The bird flew obediently over to Bai Yunfei.

Still holding onto the stone, Bai Yunfei activated the +10 additional effect. He felt the stone vibrate for a second in his hand before the space around Xiao Qi started to twist and turn. Then without warning, Xiao Qi’s aura disappeared!

But the strange thing was…

Xiao Qi was still right in front of him! Despite the space around him distorting his figure by a little bit, Xiao Qi was still right there for him to see.

“Are you already in another dimension?!” Bai Yunfei reached out to grab at Xiao Qi.

To further add to his amazement, Bai Yunfei watched as his hand simply went straight through Xiao Qi! It was as if he was waving his hand through a mirage of some kind! Somehow, his hand had gone straight through Xiao Qi’s figure!

Two seconds went by before Bai Yunfei jerked his hand back just in time to watch as the distorted space around Xiao Qi disappear and return the bird back into the real world.

“A fold in space?!”

Right as Bai Yunfei was thinking about the wonders of this additional effect, Xiao Fang chose then to pipe up, “The layers of space folded onto each other, perfectly and instantaneously too! How…how did you do that?!”

“It wasn’t me that did it, but you…” Bai Yunfei laughed. “That’s the +10 additional effect. Dimensional space…that’s probably what you’re referring to. This is huge…it can dodge any attack? I can use this to hide from any attack that might kill me then…”

“How…how is this something I did?!” Xiao Fang bellowed, “That’s something I can only do inside the world of the Core Stone, how could I ever do something like that in real space?! And additional effect? Is that what the Planar Laws changed in the Core Stone?!”

“Did you feel anything different, Xiao Qi?” Bai Yunfei asked the bird rather than answer Xiao Fang’s question.

“It did feel like I entered somewhere different. I could see you, but my soulsense wasn’t picking up anything. I even saw your hand go through my body. How weird…”

Bai Yunfei nodded in satisfaction. “In that case, I have one more thing I need to test…”

“What kind of test is that?” Xiao Qi asked.

“That moment of ‘crossing’ over into it. We’ll look into it right now.” Bai Yunfei looked back to the stone.

Once the cooldown time was over, Bai Yunfei waved his left hand to have two soul armaments appear within a bubble of elemental energy. It was just an ordinary hammer and rod, nothing special about the two of them.

Bai Yunfei focused on the wintermelon-sized hammer first. Activating the +10 additional effect, he watched as the space around the hammer grow faint before grabbing onto the small rod and stabbing at the hammer with it.

The rod went straight through the hammer’s outline as he expected. But instead of pulling the rod back, Bai Yunfei held it there and waited.

When two seconds was over and the additional effect wore off, the space around the hammer returned back to normal, but the hammer itself was half a foot to the left of where it used to be.

“I get it now…” Bai Yunfei nodded sagely. “The dimension the target is sent to isn’t the same as the original location the target used to be in. If something else is standing in the place where it used to be, then the target will be moved away once the effect wears off to the closest possible space…”

Now with a much clearer perspective on the details of the Core Stone, Bai Yunfei looked at it with a happy smile. “And the soul compatibility is at 85%....it’s another soulbound armament. Does a Regalia swearing fealty just mean a soulbound armament? I thought it’d become a lifebound armament…”

“That’s wishful thinking.” Xiao Fang replied. “Swearing ‘fealty’ as you say is what you of the Crafting School call ‘soulbound armaments’, but it’s not as simple as you think. Soul Unity—or what you call soul compatibility isn’t something you can normally increase like with ordinary soul armaments. Without the consent of us spirits, you’ll never increase the unity between us. Of course, this ‘Upgrade Technique’ of yours is an exception to this.”

But Bai Yunfei was already thinking of another exciting prospect. “Xiao Fang, you never told us about what kind of things are in the ‘Core World’, did you??”

“Core World?” Xiao Fang replied. “Well fine then, you can come in and take a look for yourself…”

“Come in?” How do we go in?”

“You’re the master of the Core Stone. You just need to think about it.”

“Oh…” Bai Yunfei nodded. “Then…aside from me, can other people go in that world? Also, if I go in, what happens to the Core Stone?”

“As long as they’ve your permission, anyone can go into the Core World. The Core Stone can’t go in itself, of course, so when you enter the Core World it’ll drop to the ground.”

“I see. Then it’s similar to how a space ring works, right? I just need to wrap the object in soulforce to store it?”

“No, you just need to confirm it with your soulsense and have the other person accept it to go in. But if the surrounding elemental energy is too chaotic, then it’ll take some time for people to be sent in.”

“Oh, really?” Several thoughts crossed into Bai Yunfei’s mind. He was reviewing the Core Stone’s abilities, or rather, the ‘effects’ of what it could do.

Now that he was clear on what the Core World was and the inner details about it, Bai Yunfei was ready to enter the Core World. 

With just a thought and a sliver of soulforce, he and Xiao Qi blinked out of sight from the room...

“Thud.”

The Core Stone fell to the table. The hologram of Xiao Fang receded into the stone and the bubble of energy that used to be glowing from the stone was no longer there. It was for all intents and purposes just a regular rock now.