I tune it out completely. I pull out my scanner with practiced efficiency and lock on to Clara's location in seconds.
Love really does make people stupid. She rides her flying sword at full speed and reaches the frozen wastes in the blink of an eye. Inside, spirit beasts are everywhere. Clara forces herself to charge straight into the heart of the beast territory and throws herself into a fight she has no business being in. Her skills are laughably basic. Several times, she nearly ends up as a spirit beast's meal. The only thing saving her is the pile of artifacts she brought along.
She barely scrapes out alive, scrambling back with the jade spirit mushroom clutched to her chest. On my holographic projector, Clara, drenched in blood, is racing home with a proud grin on her face.
The system suddenly gets a very bad feeling. "Player, what are you doing? What are you doing?"
I let out a cold laugh. "Since love makes people blind in this world, I'm willing to bet that even if Clara loses her cultivation, she'll have absolutely no regrets. Let's find out. Does Eli matter more to her, or does her own power?"
Frost Cliff's barrier is no match for interstellar technology. My mech suit breaks itself down to the atomic level, slips straight through the barrier, and reassembles on the other side. I remote pilot it through the air at full speed. When it closes to within a few yards of Clara, it becomes a streak of light and slams into her chest with full force.
Clara never sees it coming. She lets out a shriek and plummets from the sky, crashing unconscious into the middle of nowhere.
The mech suit extends its mechanical arm and goes through every inch of her body. Her storage pouch is searched thoroughly, multiple times.
The system covers its eyes, its head full of the wrong ideas entirely. "Player, what on earth are you doing?"
"Robbing her. Can you not see that?"
To make sure nothing gets missed, I have the mech run a full laser scan. The scan makes everything crystal clear. Aside from the jade spirit mushroom tucked against her chest, every artifact and spirit item on her body is stripped away. Even the last two low grade spirit stones in her pocket, gone like a swarm of locusts passing through. Nothing left behind.
When the looting is done, the mech's mechanical arm destroys her tendons and energy core without a shred of mercy. Now, unless I use a healing pod together with a jade spirit mushroom, both at the same time, Clara is finished in the cultivation realm. Completely and permanently done.
Once that's all wrapped up, I finally come back to myself. I take the jade spirit mushroom the mech retrieved and absorb it on the spot.
Two jade spirit mushrooms in a single day. Both consumed, both absorbed. My cultivation explodes upward. I'm nearly strong enough to go head to head with Vera.
And now I find myself almost regretting it. I should have pushed more people to go harvest mushrooms. Could have robbed a few more rounds by now. Robbing people is so much faster than going out and harvesting yourself.
Ever since my spirit root was destroyed, Clara had plenty to say about it. So your spirit root is gone, big deal. It's not the end of the world. Why do you have to be so aggressive about it? Too stingy to even share one mushroom. Never once mentioning that I destroyed my own spirit root saving her life.
Now that it's her cultivation on the line, I imagine she must be just as generous and understanding. Surely she won't mind having her path to power cut off forever, reduced to someone everyone can push around.
Before I was sent to this miserable world, my script was never the heroic lead. Just the villain's sidekick at best. You want me to be cannon fodder? A stepping stone? Not a chance. In this world or any other.
My days locked away at Frost Cliff are nothing short of paradise. In just three days, I finish all seventeen newly released films. Every single one.
It's only then that the sect realizes something is wrong. Clara has been missing for three days. Vera, frantic, sends people searching everywhere. No tracking, no surveillance. This is the cultivation realm. The disciples search for five full days before they finally carry Clara back, barely breathing. Her wounds have already scabbed over. Her tendons are a shredded disaster.
When Eli sees Clara covered in blood, his first reaction is to scream and bury himself in Vera's arms for comfort.
Clara doesn't wake until the following afternoon. The pain in her tendons is like being cut open with a blade. Her energy core is bone dry, completely hollowed out. After years of cultivation, she knows in an instant she is finished. She screams and thrashes like someone losing their mind. Several disciples try to hold her down and fail.
Eli forces himself to approach and calm her down, his face stiff with discomfort. "Clara, the master will definitely be able to fix your tendons. Please don't be upset."
Carefully worded. Expertly worded, actually. He sidesteps the question of her spirit root entirely.
Clara shakes her head furiously, trembling hands locking onto Eli's shoulders with a desperate grip, clinging to him like he is her last hope in the world. "Eli, I ended up like this because of you. You can't abandon me. Go find me a jade spirit mushroom. Now my spirit root might still be savable."
There is no universe in which Eli is going to the frozen wastes to die. He is the sect's beloved, everyone's darling. His whole life has been one long stretch of being waited on hand and foot. All he ever had to do was open his mouth and someone, usually the cannon fodder, usually me, would be dragged out to bleed for him.
"Clara, the frozen wastes are way too dangerous. My cultivation is too low. There's no way I could get one. Even the master doesn't go there casually."
"Then what gives you the right to refuse? If it wasn't for you, none of this would have happened to me. You have to go get me that mushroom."
This is the first time anyone has ever screamed at Eli like this. And the one doing it is someone whose power has been destroyed. A backup plan he no longer needs. Two years of being adored by the entire sect, and nobody has ever spoken to him this way.
In an instant, Eli's spoiled temper flares. "You chose to go get that mushroom yourself. Nobody forced you. And even if your tendons heal, your spirit root is gone. Fixing your tendons just makes you a slightly healthier failure."
Before all this, Eli might have kept stringing Clara along as a backup. But now that she is ruined, her path in the cultivation realm finished, he has no reason to keep looking her way. Better to invest his attention in Vera and the master. People with a future.
Clara goes completely rigid, stiff as a wooden post. The little secret she had been nursing in her heart is ripped open by Eli without a hint of mercy.
"You actually think I'm a failure? From the moment you walked through the sect gates, every single time, I was there for you. I even lost my cultivation because of you. And now you have the nerve to look down on me."