Gaston had been very surprised at seeing what the Mage Orb was capable of. The last thing he thought he'd see in the cultivation world was high-tech looking objects like this.
Throwing his surprise aside however, he took quite a liking to the object and how neatly it had displayed all of his information for him to see. He could already imagine the help it would provide him in developing a "scientific" training plan for himself.
Aside from using resources, this was one of the first things he had thought of when her royal highness Marika brought up the topic of him having to catch up to his peers.
Looking at his status panel which was displayed directly in his mind, which he thought was a measure taken by the Mages in order to prevent people from spying on someone's information, Gaston was quite satisfied with what he saw.
Of course, it had to be mentioned that while this measure could prevent people from secretly spying on one's status panel, if someone didn't mind being discovered, they could still attempt to barge their spiritual consciousness into the Mage Orb while it was actively being used and see everything they wanted to see.
Such was the case with princess Marika, who didn't even bother to ask Gaston for his permission before accessing the orb.
Not that he minded the action. On the contrary, Gaston believed that seeing was believing for his captor, and he wanted her to see for herself that he was capable of doing what he claimed to be able to do. It could only increase his chances of agreeing to a deal with her after all.
Looking over his stats, he was quite satisfied with everything, seeing no major surprises.
Despite not being a massive gamer himself during his time on Earth, Gaston was still vaguely familiar with the meaning behind the terms displayed on his status screen. They were fairly self explanatory, at least that's what he thought.
Princess Marika, maybe in a display of demeaning him, still took the time to properly explain to him what each term meant and represented.
"Normally Gaston, humans at the 1st level of Qi Refining such as yourself have a score of 10 in each individual category, and a potential score between 50 and 100, depending on the physical foundation one has set for themselves whilst at Stage 0.
"With that said, most humans would do well to have a potential of 75 considering the difficulty in acquiring a decent foundational manual. As for a potential of 100? That is something practically unheard of even amongst royalty. The only way to achieve such perfection was by consuming treasures that improved one's potential."
Giving him a look that told him not to even bother thinking about achieving such a feat in his lifetime, she shifted topics. "The six physical attributes are important for all cultivators, but will be even more important to you Gaston, considering that you are likely to delve into the TItan path.
"Of the six physical attributes, Strength shows you how much weight you can move with your muscles, as well as how fast you can move it. The more powerful and explosive you are, the higher the number will be."
Princess Marika looked over at Gaston's 6'2 dense and well-built looking body, and lightly nodded to herself.
"Agility is related to how fast you can move and react, while Dexterity on the other hand, reflects the manual control you have over your body, and in particular your hands. Constitution displays your ability to ignore pain and it reflects how quickly you recover from an injury. Endurance should be easy enough to understand, as it reflects how long you can perform physical labor of any kind. Lastly, Coordination is related to your overall control of your entire body and is particularly important since it enables you to bring out the most of your physique."
Once she saw that Gaston was keeping up with her little lesson, she continued from where she left off.
"Intelligence shows you how fast your brain can process information, as well as recall information, which you would be right to assume is particularly important for Mages. That doesn't mean that it's useless for beings on other paths however, far from it.
"Your Perception describes your awareness of the physical world, which entails both your physical senses and your spiritual consciousness. Resilience is your ability to resist mental attacks, and is an attribute I would suggest you don't ignore if you don't want to leave yourself vulnerable to Mind-specialists of both the Mage path and the Cultivator path.
"Sensitivity is as you would have guessed, your affinity for sensing the magical energy in the world. An attribute useful both for making progress regardless of the path one has chosen, but also for detecting abnormal energy movement. Capacity is also as it sounds, it reflects your ability to contain magical energy. And lastly, Soul, which reflects the strength of your soul."
Once she brought up Soul, she arched one of her eyebrows at his abnormally low potential in this particular attribute, but didn't make much of it.
"You don't have to worry about your lack of potential when it comes to the Soul. You have no chance at ever becoming a soul-related cultivator, but other than that, this is the attribute that means the least to you."
Gaston saw his past self want to question why this was so, but the princess interrupted him before he even said anything.
"If our deal is satisfactory, once you reach the 7th level of the 1st stage, I will reward you with a method that will tie your soul down to your physical body, enabling you to take all soul-related attacks with your body. This way, your weak soul will have no effect on you, and once successful in using this method, you might even discover that the Mage Orb will no longer detect your Soul."
The fact that such a method even existed almost left him speechless. It also made him more wary of this magical world he was stepping into however, as he was learning quite quickly that he was still very ignorant when it came to this world.
Focusing back to his status panel however, if 10 was the number on which all new Qi Refining cultivators began on, then seeing his physical attributes all quickly increase by at least 1 in a manner of a few months, brought a smile to his face.
Looking at his magical purity, and then at the numbers in brackets next to his current physical attributes, he found that there was a direct correlation between them. Though it was something he was expecting, it was still nice to see it be confirmed. His future was indeed looking bright.
At least when it came to his physical path that was, since his mental attributes although still quite good, paled greatly in comparison, and only further cemented the idea that he would have to delve into the TItan path as his secondary choice in cultivation.
He was not too surprised to discover that all of his mental attributes were still stuck at the beginning and hadn't increased by even a little. Gaston would've been more surprised if this wasn't the case.
Because of the fact that he lacked a proper cultivation technique that he could use at the Qi Refining stage, so he had been expecting this.
In fact, the only reason his physical attributes had increased, was both because of his great physical exertion while escaping from the Thrustan Kingdom's kind, and also due to his consumption of the flesh of magical creatures, which was extremely beneficial to him.
What he and his men had lacked in food variety during their journey through the forest, they more than made up for when it came to quality and even quantity. Looking back on it now, Gaston doubted that other cultivators had such ready access to such quality food, so the rapid physical progress didn't come to him as much of a surprise.
He did take note of the variance in progress however, as his Agility had increased almost twice as much compared to his Strength. Which made sense to him since they had been doing a hell of a lot of running, and not too much lifting.
Gaston remembered this for the future when he would try to come up with the most efficient way of training for himself.
The only thing that came as a slight surprise to him, was his extremely poor aptitude in the Soul attribute. Considering that he came from a completely different world, he would've thought that his soul would benefit in some way from such an experience.
Looking at the Trash-tier level of potential in this said attribute however, it looked to be the complete opposite. Either his Soul had been damaged in some way whilst entering this world, or he simply had no talent for it.
Thankfully, the Soul attribute was not necessarily all that important to Gaston. From what he had learned from princess Marika, it simply meant that his future as a Mage was practically nonexistent, and that he would find quite the diminishing returns in practicing any soul-related magic techniques.
The only thing he was concerned about was if this made his susceptible to soul-related attacks, but after listening to princess Marika's thoughts on the matter, he was surprised to find out that this was not the case.
As long as he reached the 7th level of the 1st stage and got the method she had spoken about, and his mental resilience didn't lag too far behind, he would be just fine in dealing with both soul and mental techniques.
Gaston was extremely interested in the method that allowed one to tie one's soul to their body, which would enable one to resist attacks on the soul with the body. For someone like Gaston, this seemed like a very good alternative to having to invest in training his soul, which he had extremely limited potential in.
The downsides to this method of course, was that if a cultivator's body was destroyed, at the later stages of cultivation this didn't mean that they were eliminated, since they could continue to survive in their soul form and could even take over another person's body and almost completely recover!
Their strength would drop, and their path forward would become a hell of a lot more difficult now that they were occupying someone else's body, but in comparison to true death, these were trifling matters.
By tying one's soul down to the body however, this was no longer possible, and the destruction of one's body would result in a true death.
Marika had explained a lot of things to him, which made him quite wary as this was the same person that had been skinning him alive for two weeks, and eating his skin with delight on her face, the actions of someone that was far from kind.
Sure enough, right on queue, the alternative methods of ensuring he was to remain loyal to her appeared. To his great dismay, what she had thought of would indeed prove quite effective in both evading the discovery of the humans in the Wright Kingdom, but also in preventing his rebellious thoughts.
The first method was directly related to his cultivation, but it was both a blessing and a curse. "Bone Peak," an evil cultivation technique that was both simple and also extremely complex.
If what princess Marika said was to be believed, which Gaston reserved judgement on, then despite the cultivation technique itself being evil, if inspected by someone using the Mage Orb, they would only discover a benevolent cultivation technique that goes by the same name, that focuses on refining the purity of one's magical energy.
It was particular suitable for Gaston, because as someone with 90.4% purity in his magical energy, he was more than qualified to practice such a technique.
For princess Marika however, this was perfect because she could achieve multiple purposes with one move. By giving him only the 1st volume of the Bone Peak cultivation technique, she ensured that he would have to remain loyal to her if he ever wanted to break through into the 2nd stage.
While one could switch cultivation techniques without too much consequences under normal circumstances. the Bone Peak cultivation technique was anything but normal. Calling the consequences severe would be an understatement, because the cultivation technique itself ensured that if a cultivator ever tried to switch, they would never cultivate again.