She'd already consumed everything out of the pork refrigerator, so next was the one for beef. Elizabeth prepped all the equipment necessary for cooking, borrowing various items from the dojo's kitchen before she started another hour's long cooking session and left yet another amalgamation of dishes scattered around her. Around the halfway mark of her cooking session, a notification from her status functions alerted her of her crossing into the rank of Basic Chef, and after she completed the last dish of the amalgamation, a more detailed notification displayed itself automatically before Elizabeth's view.

[+2,500 Cooking Exp

Cooking Level 4 (3,555/3,750) → Cooking Level 5 (6,055/6,785)

Current Effect: Increases the buffs received from Low-Mid grade Mortal-tier meals by 50%

Name: Amalgamation Of Beef Dishes

Grade: Low-tier Mortal Grade Meals

Description: Crafted by the user, these are a series of magical meals imbued with Inner Strength and some Basic level principles of the path of cooking. Included in the bunch, there are Beef Stew, Stir-Fry, and Stroganoff to name a few...

Effects: For Level 10 or below: + 10 Strength + 10 Speed + 10 Endurance + 10 Defense + 10 Intelligence for 4 hours, and + 11,500 Inner Strength recovered.

Hidden Quest: Chef's Rank Milestone #1 (Complete)

Difficulty: D

Degree of Completion: Excellent

Objective: Reach Basic-tier Proficiency in all Principles of Cooking ✔

Description: Very impressive to see someone enter the official ranks of chefs without even preparing 100 spiritual dishes… Of course, there have been many, many, …, many exceptional geniuses in the past that have become Basic chefs after creating their first spiritual meal, and those that have reached Perfect and Transcendental ratings have even established themselves as Novice Chefs after just one try...

Reward: Cooking Skill: Magic Integration

Bonus: a.s.sortment of Mortal-tier Cooking Knives (Unenchanted)]

"Oooh~" Elizabeth was wowed by the description of her new cooking skill. Basically, after she developed her magic, she could start to add "flavored" energies into her cooking to make the buffs she received even more ridiculous. A good example would be adding fire-type magical energy to make a spicy dish both, better tasting and more impactful in later fire magic use. In any case, Elizabeth was done with cooking for now, so it was back to trenches so to speak, as she still had around 3.6kgs of Quartzite to refine.

Elizabeth picked up a chunk of Quartzite and a long night of refining began. Now that her Inner Strength reached 4,750 units, she could refine about 600 grams every seventy-five minutes, and with the stockpile of food she prepared for delving back into the refinement process, Elizabeth got through just over half the amount of Quartzite remaining. She was hard at work for over 4 hours, and on top of all the training she had piled on while she was on the ground floor, exercising and sparring, Elizabeth was satisfied putting an end to today's work after exhausting the last bit of Inner Strength she had after eating all the food she prepared.

She took a quick shower in the bathhouse, no one else was there to bother her this time, and after returning to her room, Elizabeth took her Demonic Beast egg into her embrace before drifting into a pleasant slumber. Given the innate potential of her "useful" partner in cultivation, with Elizabeth current strength it would take a depressingly long amount of time to hatch the Demonic Beast. Fortunately, Elizabeth's strength was increasing at a staggering pace, so perhaps her little pet would hatch before too long.

…

Five hours later, Elizabeth woke up feeling refreshed and even a bit hyper as she had slept for as long as her body naturally could. It was still quite a ways to the dojo's opening hours, so after cooking up another refrigerator's worth of food and creating an [Amalgamation Of

Chicken Dishes] — with effects and a description practically identical to the [Amalgamation Of Beef Dishes] — Elizabeth finally finished all the refining work required to upgrade her current armor with Quartzite plating.

Of course, in the close to 6 hours spent cooking and forging, daylight had struck. Thus, like always, Elizabeth couldn't help but finish her business in her room and leave to get her physical training done for the day, while the dojo was up and running.

Everything was business as usual. Elizabeth gave her acquaintances greetings before she started internal refinement and that now-familiar pain of icy-hotness invaded her body. She practiced her Muay Thai against her sandbag and her body's potential rose at an unbelievable pace. However, about an hour and a half into her static training, an alert from the status functions caused her to cease her plans once again.

[WARNING!!! The user has postponed breaking through while still acquiring inordinate amounts of cultivation potential. Unless a breakthrough into the next stage occurs, all further attempts to acquire cultivation potential will increasingly depreciate. If the user ignores this message and continues without heeding this warning, all training will yield less and less experience when compared to normal until absolutely no potential is gained. Should the user ever find herself in the case where absolutely no more cultivation potential can be gain as excess…. The user's body will implode and their soul shatter!]

"WHAT?!" Elizabeth verbally exclaimed as she swiftly called upon her Status to check if her dreadful thoughts had any merit. In short, they did…

[Status

Name: Elizabeth Ultimatia

Level: 5 (9/12)

Rank: Peak Mortal Stage (100%) [Legendary Pseudo Soldier]

s.e.x: Female

Strength 56

Endurance 80

Speed 60

Defense 59

Intelligence 68.2

Luck: 10

Inner Strength 884/4,750]

'What the f.u.c.k is this?' It honestly looked like Elizabeth's face was on the brink of melting as she couldn't comprehend what had happened to her stats. Everyone around her stopped and looked her way as her outburst wasn't exactly quiet. But, Elizabeth, too preoccupied with talking to P, didn't have the means to care about the attention she received.

'Isn't this a little too extreme? I mean, I know that the Book of Ice and Fire mentioned that the internal refining method would hasten physical cultivation. But come on now… Getting over a dozen stat points in all physical parameters? In less than two days as well?! Isn't experiencing that kind of change in such a short period of time almost certainly fatal?'

P said, 'This is a G.o.dking's legacy we're talking about here… I know you've yet to broaden your horizons and can't comprehend what it means to be a G.o.dking, so just try to follow along. Yes, it is most definitely extreme and virtually fatal for people at your level to grow so quickly, but you aren't just any random cultivator. You're my chosen! And as my chosen, my requirements in asking for perfection from you naturally allow you to do what others can only dream of doing.

Normally people would only be able to start with the method's of a G.o.dking much later down the road of cultivation, but your status as Transcendental have let you cut in earlier in line, if you catch my drift. Not to mention, the fact that you already have Ice and Fire Fusion, making the effects of the internal refinement method all the more spectacular, it's no wonder why your stats seem to be increasing so dramatically.'

'Ok… This is a good thing….' Elizabeth calmed down as she stared down at her hands. As crazy as it seemed, she could tell that her strength was indeed as exaggerated as her stats indicated. Her punches after stopping Internal Refinement felt almost as light on the p.a.w.n-Specific sandbag, as they were the day before when she used a sandbag for regular people…

However, it seems that the realization of her new-found talent for becoming stronger somewhat scared her as Elizabeth repeatedly chanted, 'This isn't much' and 'chill the f.u.c.k out,' at herself to stop herself from becoming c.o.c.ky. She'd learned from her time creating world-cla.s.s MMO RPG builds the importance of staying humble, as every single time she thought highly of herself for making an outstanding accomplishment, there would be someone else to rain on her parade and take the limelight; if it wasn't sooner it was later, but it was inevitable.

Elizabeth's goal was twofold. One, she was to survive in the G.o.d's game, or the Cataclysm as they called it. And Two, she was supposed to finish the game she herself had created that had started this whole mess. Elizabeth didn't know where she would be when the Cataclysm ended, but one thing that was definitely confirmed was that she needed to become a G.o.d if she wanted to get revenge for her character's counterpart; a pretty powerful one at that! If she were to get sn.o.bby at this "decent" rate of advancement in just a mere Mortal Realm, what was she to do later when she'd need to cross into the Spiritual Realm, or even higher?

It had only been about a week into her new game-like life, so there was no need to be up in arms with glee just yet. After all, who's to say she wouldn't advance even faster after a bit more time pa.s.ses?