I woke before my alarm had the chance to ring.
Alarms were tools for the weak, designed for wage slaves and mortals who feared the wrath of a middle manager for being five minutes late.
A man of my caliber did not let a piece of cheap plastic dictate his morning. I arrived precisely when I intended to, and the world simply adjusted its schedule to accommodate my presence.
Sitting up, I swung my legs over the side of the narrow dorm bed. The mattress groaned under my weight.
Across the room, the three useless lackeys the academy had assigned to me—Russel, Dove, and Sky—were still dead to the world. Russel snored with a high-pitched whistle that offended my delicate sensibilities, while Sky drooled onto his pillow like a common village idiot.
Frogs in a well, I thought, shaking my head. To think my great destiny is currently tied to such low-grade trash.
I stood up and walked over to the tall mirror attached to the room's wardrobe. It was time to assess the damage of this new body of his.
Cardin Winchester was, looking at him objectively, a brute. The boy was built like a repurposed refrigerator, all broad shoulders and thick limbs with zero refinement. But the physical bulk wasn't the tragedy. The true crime was the styling.
It was atrocious.
My hair—a burnt-orange mop—was spiked up into a messy pompadour that screamed 'delinquent extra number four.'
My armor, sitting on the stand nearby, was scuffed and poorly maintained. Even my natural resting posture was hunched, giving off the vibe of a mindless thug waiting for a protagonist to punch his teeth in.
Negative Aura, I tutted, resting a hand on my chin. A truly maidenless appearance if I ever saw one.
How could my innate greatness shine through such a poor-quality appearance?
How could the various Jade Beauties of this world ever recognize my superiority and fawn over me if they were practically blinded by this terrible fashion sense?
It would be unfair to blame the peasants for not kissing the ground I walked on when they couldn't even perceive my true Mount Tai.
A transparent blue screen flashed into existence before my eyes.
[Daily Task Triggered: The Refinement of the Young Master.]
[Host, your current appearance brings shame to the Dao of Aura Farming. Rectify your grooming and maintain a pristine appearance for at least one week.]
[Reward: +10 AURA, +5 Positive Impression from the Beacon Academy student body.]
My eyes shone with delight. What a fitting task from a truly wise system. Without wasting another second, I spent the next thirty minutes rectifying this tragedy in the attached bathroom.
I couldn't change my face—I was stuck with these sharp, somewhat villainous features—but I could change the presentation.
I washed out the cheap, crusty hair gel, grabbed a finer comb from my toiletries bag, and set to work. I slicked the orange hair back, smoothing those ridiculous spikes into a sharp, sleek undercut.
It was a style reminiscent of an anti-hero or a mafia boss from old school movies. It framed my harsh features instead of fighting them.
Much better, I whispered to my reflection. It makes me look at least fifteen percent cooler. I am finally starting to look like a Young Master from a top-tier sect, preparing to slap the faces of some blind dogs.
Stepping out of the bathroom, I grabbed a polishing cloth and went to work on my breastplate. I rubbed the silver metal until I could see my own smirk reflected in the steel. I adjusted the leather straps on the greaves, ensuring they sat perfectly. Then, I practiced my resting face in the mirror.
Eyes half-lidded to show a lack of concern for the mortal coil. Chin tilted up exactly fifteen degrees to establish dominance. Mouth set in a firm, bored line of supremacy.
I glanced at the system mission interface. The counter already read [1/7 Days].
Even without my gracious system offering me points, I would have ensured a flawless appearance anyway. A true cultivator of the Aura arts did not stop grooming just because a quest was completed.
Still, relying on system prompts alone was a failure's mindset.
Where was the initiative? Where was the starving hunger for coolness?
An Aura Farmer didn't just farm when it's easy; he harvested Aura whenever an opportune moment appeared. Even in the most lethal danger, he could spin the situation to reap prestige, just like I had done with that foolish cat-girl yesterday.
The best way to ascend quickly was to constantly dominate the minds of the masses.
Unfortunately, the social media landscape of Remnant was primitive. Back in Shanghai, a single post of me standing at the bow of my luxury yacht with the sunset framing my silhouette would generate millions of engagements. Here, I had to do things the old-fashioned way.
I already had the necessary background. The son of a Councilman—an elder of this kingdom's ruling sect, in proper terms. It was time to evolve into a true, blue-blooded Young Master.
It was time I taught these peasants what true Aura Farming meant.
Another ping echoed in my mind.
[Host, you possess the correct mindset! A true Aura Farmer does not wait for opportunities to be handed to him on a silver platter. They harvest Aura whenever and wherever they walk, ensuring dominance in all realms! The System has truly chosen a worthy vessel!]
[A new Daily Mission is created to reward the Host's proactiveness! Let us build your foundation, Host!]
[New Daily Mission!: The Path of the Unrivaled Flesh]
[Run 10 Kilometers, complete 200 Push-ups, and perform 200 Sit-ups every single day for at least one month.]
[Reward: Every day the Host fulfills this mission, gain +1 Stat Point to allocate freely, and a free single use of the active skill {MR. COOL}.]
[Skill Details: {MR. COOL} grants the host a free, instantaneous self-healing and cleaning effect. It allows the Host to rise back up in pristine condition as long as the Host is still alive, no matter how severe the wound. This is a supreme Aura Farming skill, primarily used to demoralize an enemy by shrugging off their ultimate attack as if it were a gentle breeze.]
[NOTE: {MR. COOL} is a {RESTORATION-TYPE} skill. It does not mitigate the initial pain of an attack. Enduring the pain with a straight face is up to the Host!]
[Penalty: If the Host fails to complete this daily mission, a random {SEVERE-RANK} Penalty will be applied for 24 Hours. Do your best, Host!]
[Daily Progress:]
[Run: 0/10KM]
[Pushups: 0/200]
[Sit-ups: 0/200]
My eyes widened slightly. What a tyrannical skill. It even possessed an imposing, profound name. {MR. COOL}.
A truly mighty system, fitting for an expert of my stature.
I could stand there, let some arrogant protagonist dump their entire ultimate combo into my chest, get blasted through a concrete wall, and while the dust settles and they think they've won... I pop the skill. I step out of the rubble, my hair perfectly slicked back, my armor shining, totally unbothered.
The sheer amount of AURA I could harvest from the despair on their faces would be astronomical.
But looking at the requirements, my jaw tightened. Ten kilometers. Two hundred pushups. Two hundred situps. Every day. It was basically that bald comic book hero's workout routine, just slightly adjusted.
With my current F-rank Agility and F-rank Strength? It was going to hurt. It was going to hurt a lot.
But I couldn't skip it. A {SEVERE-RANK} penalty from the system sounded like something that would ruin my day completely. I couldn't risk a penalty making me stutter in front of a crowd or something equally devastating.
I let out a slow breath. If I was going to temper my body to such an extreme degree, I might as well kill two birds with one stone.
I turned my gaze toward the snoring lumps of useless flesh occupying the other beds.
I could not allow their inferiority to drag me down. If they did something stupid once again and then caused me to fall into Aura Debt, it would shame my ancestors across dimensions. Therefore, I had to forge these soft pieces of trash into worthy, productive members of my entourage.
Without a hint of hesitation, I stepped forward and delivered a swift, brutal kick to the frame of Russel's bed.
The metal shrieked. The bed launched sideways, crashing hard into Dove's mattress, which then slammed into Sky's bunk. A chorus of yelps, thuds, and tangled blankets followed as all three boys woke up in a panic, thrashing on the floor.
"What the hell?!" Russel gasped, rubbing his bruised elbow.
"Are we under attack?!" Sky yelled, looking wildly around the room.
I stood over them, my hands clasped behind my back, looking down at them like a disappointment of ants.
"Wake up, sunshines," I declared, my voice echoing off the stone walls. "Starting today, we all wake up at four in the morning and exercise until seven. Get up."
Dove groaned, squinting up at me with sleep-crusted eyes. "Cardin... man, it's pitch black outside. Class doesn't start for hours."
"You have five minutes to put your training gear on," I said, ignoring his pathetic whining entirely. "If you fail to do so, I will magnanimously kick all three of you out into the courtyard in your pajamas. I need to practice how to best stomp on weaklings, and you make excellent targets."
Sky blinked, staring at my newly slicked-back hair and polished armor. "Did you... did you do your hair?"
"Four minutes and thirty seconds," I stated, tapping a finger against my bicep.
They scrambled. Fear was a wonderful teacher, and my cold, unblinking stare promised pain. Within minutes, they were throwing on sweatpants and Beacon t-shirts, tripping over their own boots in their haste to line up by the door.
"Now," I began, opening the dorm room door and stepping out into the chilly hallway. "Let us run for ten kilometers. After that, two hundred push-ups and two hundred sit-ups. We had better finish by seven. I have a new hobby I wish to plan for at eight. If I am late because of you, I will sadly need to drag you three along as my targets..." I paused, offering them a polite, sinister smile. "I misspoke. What I meant was, participants of my hobby. Yes. That was what I meant."
They swallowed hard in unison.
"Move," I commanded.
My lungs were on fire.
Huff... Huff... Huff...
We were barely three kilometers into the run, winding along the outer paved paths of the Beacon Academy grounds. The sun hadn't even begun to peek over the horizon, leaving the campus bathed in deep, pre-dawn darkness and freezing mist.
My base Endurance of 19 was the only thing keeping my chest from caving in on itself.
A rank of F+ was terrible for a cultivator, but the passive times-four multiplier granted by my active Aura was just barely enough to let me push through the burn without dropping dead on the cobblestones.
Of course, outwardly, I looked as cool as a cucumber in a jade pond.
I controlled my breathing with extreme prejudice. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. I kept my face locked into a stoic mask of boredom. Let the heavens fall, my expression would not change.
I was running in my full armor. Breastplate, greaves, gauntlets, and boots. The steel easily added an extra forty pounds of dead weight to my frame, dragging at my shoulders with every heavy stride.
But an Aura Farmer never compromised his outfit for mere comfort. Comfort was the enemy of looking imposing. An expert always arrived to a fight looking his best.
Besides, if I was going to be wearing this heavy armor while fighting shadow monsters and rival cultivators from now on, I had better get used to its weight.
Behind me, the situation was much, much worse.
"I... I can't... my lungs... are bleeding..." Sky wheezed. He sounded like a dying dog.
"Cardin... please... just a water break..." Russel begged, his footsteps dragging through the pavement.
"Keep moving, trash," I barked without looking back, my voice steady despite the screaming in my thighs. "If you stop before the ten kilometers are done, I will tie your legs to a Nevermore and see how long you can fly."
"You can't do that!" Dove cried out.
"Test me," I replied coldly.
They didn't test me. The unbothered cadence of my voice terrified them more than the threat itself. They kept running.
We turned a corner, jogging past the massive stone statue of the Huntsman and Huntress that dominated the center courtyard. The only sound was the clanking of my armor and the desperate panting of my team.
That was when my eyes caught movement near the fountain.
Two figures were already out in the cold. One was a tall, athletic girl with vibrant red hair tied back in a high ponytail. She held a spear and a shield, moving through a series of complex thrusts and parries with a fluid grace.
The other was a boy dressed in a green and pink martial arts uniform, standing a few yards away. He was moving slowly, his hands sweeping through the air as he performed some sort of Tai Chi-like breathing exercise.
Pyrrha Nikos and Lie Ren.
My mind analyzed the situation instantly. These two were elite, named characters. Pyrrha, the 'Invincible Girl,' was arguably the strongest student in our entire year.
My eyes narrowed. The boy's breathing techniques were laughable compared to true Xianxia cultivation methods, but for this world, it showed discipline.
More importantly, this was a prime opportunity for some early-morning Aura Farming.
"Straighten your backs!" I hissed at my team, dropping my voice so only they could hear the sudden venom. "Stop mouth-breathing like dying fish. Form a tight, single-file line behind me right this second, or I am burying your breakfast in the dirt."
Fear remained the greatest motivator known to man. My goons scrambled, terrified of missing a meal after this torture. They snapped into a surprisingly neat line behind me, forcing their jaws shut and trying desperately to match the heavy, rhythmic thud of my armored boots.
I squared my shoulders, pushing the pain in my chest aside, and readied myself for the performance of a lifetime. I ran with perfect posture, my chin tilted up, my eyes focused dead ahead as if the mere act of running was a sacred duty, completely ignoring all other distractions.
I knew exactly what Pyrrha and Ren were seeing.
They expected Cardin Winchester to be a lazy, fat-headed bully. The sort of arrogant team leader who slept in until noon, coasted through his classes, and relied entirely on his size to get by.
Instead, they were witnessing the massive, imposing leader of Team CRDL up before sunrise. He was running a grueling stamina exercise in full heavy plate armor, his face filled with determination, leading his team with strict discipline.
It shattered their preconceptions entirely.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pyrrha pause mid-thrust. She lowered her shield, her green eyes widening in surprise as she watched us jog past the fountain. Ren stopped his hand movements, his usually passive face flickering with genuine curiosity.
I did not look at them. I did not acknowledge them. A tiger does not nod to the sparrows as it walks through the forest. I simply kept my gaze forward, setting a grueling pace, the very picture of a seasoned leader leading his troops to hell and back.
Once we rounded the next corner and passed behind the library building, completely out of their sight, the familiar blue box pinged in my vision.
[Aura Farm Successful!]
[Target(s) Impressed: Pyrrha Nikos, Lie Ren.]
[+15 AURA]
[Title Modifier: +1.5 AURA]
[Total Gained: +16.5 AURA (Rounded to 17)]
I almost pumped my fist into the cold morning air.
Yes! This was exactly how you beat the fraud allegations. You didn't run around telling people you had changed your ways. Words were wind. You forced them to watch you suffer through an anime-protagonist training montage and let their own imaginations draw the conclusions for you.
"Cardin... I'm going to puke..." Sky gagged behind me.
"If you vomit on my boots, I will make you lick them clean," I replied smoothly. "We have seven kilometers left. Pick up the pace."
I collapsed backward onto the damp grass behind our dorm building.
The ten-kilometer run had been agonizing. The two hundred push-ups, performed while still wearing my breastplate, had nearly popped my shoulder joints out of their sockets. The final two hundred sit-ups actually made me dry-heave bile into a nearby rosebush.
I was lying flat on my back, staring up at the sky. The sun had finally risen, painting the clouds in shades of pale gold. Every single fiber of my new body was screaming in fiery agony. My muscles twitched uncontrollably.
A few feet away, Russel, Dove, and Sky were scattered across the lawn like corpses left behind after a massacre. None of them had spoken a word in twenty minutes.
It didn't matter. The pain was temporary. Aura was eternal.
The notification I had been waiting for descended like an immortal fairy from the heavens.
[Ding!]
[Daily Mission: The Path of the Unrivaled Flesh - COMPLETED!]
[You have conquered the weakness of the mortal body today. You have pushed past the pathetic limits of a generic background mob.]
[Distributing Rewards...]
-> +1 Stat Point Added.
-> Hidden Milestone Reached: For pushing past your limits on the very first day, gain an additional +1 Stat Point to END.
-> {MR. COOL} Charge added to Active Skills (1/1 Uses available).
[Please select a stat to upgrade with your hard-earned free point.]
I didn't even need to hesitate.
Add it to Strength, I ordered the system mentally.
Endurance was fine for right now. The extra point the system had generously rewarded me with pushed it a bit higher, and the times-four multiplier from my Aura was what kept my heart from exploding during the run.
Agility was useless to upgrade at the moment. I would need to invest at least five or six points before I noticed a real difference in my speed, and even then, being fast was meaningless if I couldn't hit hard enough to finish a fight quickly. A mosquito was fast, but nobody respected a mosquito.
But Strength? Strength translated immediately into hitting power. Hitting things really, really hard was the cornerstone of the brute combat style this body was naturally designed for. If I was going to carry around a massive, heavy mace, I needed to be able to swing it like a professional golfer teeing off.
[Confirmed. Adding +1 to STR.]
[STR: 14 -> 15 (F) -> Passive Aura Multiplier adjusts to: 60 (D-)]
I took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing myself to sit up. The grass rustled beneath my armor.
My body felt just a fraction lighter. The soreness didn't vanish, but there was a new, subtle power coursing to the muscles in my arms. It was a minor change, the sort of thing a normal person might write off as a good stretch, but to an expert cultivator like me, a single digit was the margin between life and death.
I pulled up my master status screen, wanting to review the fruits of my labor.
[STATUS]
[Name: Cardin Winchester]
[Age: 17]
[Buffs/Debuffs: Extreme Physical Fatigue]
[Title: For I Am An Aura Farmer {Gain +10% More System Rewards}]
[AP (Aura Points): 214/480 (D-)]
{STATS}
[STR: 15 (F) -> 60 (D-)]
[AGI: 13 (F) -> 52 (D-)]
[END: 20 (E-) -> 80 (D)]
[AURA: 88]
{SKILLS}
[Passive Skills]
NONE
[Active Skills]
{MR. COOL} [Restoration-Type Skill] [1/1]
I stared at the Aura value. Eighty-eight. It was a massive leap from the pathetic six points I had started with yesterday. My presence was no longer that of a back-alley bouncer; I was slowly approaching the swagger of a true martial arts senior brother.
"Hey," I rasped, my throat dry.
The three bodies on the grass flinched.
"Get up," I ordered, pushing myself to my feet. My legs wobbled for a second before I locked my knees, refusing to show weakness. "Shower. Change into your uniforms. We leave for breakfast in twenty minutes."
"Cardin..." Sky whimpered, clutching his stomach. "I can't feel my legs."
"Then crawl to the showers," I replied, smoothing down my still-perfectly slicked hair. "If you are late, I will assume you have excess energy and assign you another hundred push-ups."
I turned and walked toward the dorm entrance, ignoring the pathetic groans echoing behind me.
What a truly productive morning this had been. The sun was up, the birds were singing, and I had successfully traumatized three teenagers while increasing my combat power.
Truly, the Dao of Aura Farming was a beautiful path.