Too Fragrant

With a hint of sadness, he tried clicking on the empty skill slot.

It didn't say there were no skills available. Instead, it immediately jumped to a familiar "Storage" interface. It displayed three round stones, seemingly wreathed in blood, yet with a fruit-like appearance. At the same time, they pulsed like beating hearts, each throb seemingly inhaling and exhaling Yokai Power...

These were indeed the spoils he had obtained earlier: the Soul Cores of Yokai. Their essence was the core of power solidified.

Two of them had dropped in the Ancestral Hall of Thirteen Cherry Blossom Village, belonging to the Ape Fiend and a regular Yokai, respectively. As for the third, it was the Soul Core of the Horse-Headed Demon who had met a rather tragic end. He had quickly gathered it as loot while clearing the battlefield before bringing the girl down the mountain.

Hmm... can I just equip Soul Cores as Skill Badges?

Gu Mo's eyes flickered. This was quite similar to how it worked in the game. Attaching a Yokai's Soul Core to a Guardian Spirit allowed the Guardian Spirit to gain the Yokai's skills. And since he himself was possessed by the Guardian Spirit, allowing him to use its power, he indirectly gained mastery of the Yokai's skills as well.

He tried switching back to his own skill page and clicking the empty skill slots, but found that Soul Cores couldn't be manipulated there...

He tried unequipping his only Skill Badge, putting it into storage, and then switching back to the Guardian Spirit's skill page. He found that he could only select Soul Cores, and the "Life Potential" Skill Badge he had just unequipped didn't appear.

So, the System's annotation about Yokai Soul Cores "being usable as Skill Badges" actually meant they could only be used on the Guardian Spirit? In his own skill bar, this operation wasn't possible; only proper Skill Badges could be equipped there.

And the reverse was also true? Guardian Spirits couldn't use the Skill Badges provided by the System, only Soul Cores?

Figuring this out, Gu Mo felt a slight sense of regret. However, after thinking about it for a moment, he felt he was being too greedy. Putting everything else aside, just the fact that the Guardian Spirit could attach Soul Cores, allowing him to indirectly master those Yokai's skills, seemed to already hold considerable value.

Because if there was no way to increase skill slots, then based on the current situation, Gu Mo could equip a maximum of about ten Skill Badges. If he exceeded this number, he would have to choose among the portable Skill Badges...

He needed to bring offensive skills, right? Otherwise, how would he deal damage? Defensive skills were also necessary, to properly strengthen his own survival ability.

Then there were control, buff, movement, item usage or crafting skills, and so on. He thought about it with a classic gaming mindset and realized that if he only had ten slots, the skill selection might actually be quite tight... But the Guardian Spirit's functionality effectively doubled his skill slots.

Even if the selection of skills was limited, if he combined them well, it could allow his own skill slots more flexibility, rather than being so cramped.

Having figured it out, Gu Mo suddenly felt much better. He shifted his gaze to the lower left, where there were two tab-like icons. As soon as his attention focused on them, the tabs slid out, revealing the hidden sub-page information.

—"Divine Protection: Having the protection of a Guardian Spirit provides the host with powerful permanent blessings and special abilities (Fire Resistance +20, Luck +70, Fire Damage +15%)."

—"Possession Summon: Actively summon the Guardian Spirit to appear, or allow the Guardian Spirit to possess you, in order to utilize its powerful strength (Consumes 1 energy per second, cannot be used if energy is below 10)."

These seemed to be the Guardian Spirit's own Inherent Skills. One was a constant blessing effect, similar to an aura that was always active. Although he wasn't quite sure what level of protection those numerical values represented, it was still a good thing.

The second Inherent Skill was also within his expectations. In this world, those who could receive a Guardian Spirit's protection were not simple individuals. Perhaps not everyone could realize this, but those who could often actively unleash the Guardian Spirit's power, rather than just having the passive permanent blessing.

Like Saika Magoichi gaining the ability to fly through possession by Yatagarasu;

And Shibata Katsuie and Asai Nagamasa merging themselves with their Guardian Spirits, thus transforming themselves into powerful Yokai;

As well as the "First Archer of the East Sea," Imagawa Yoshimoto, who during the Battle of Okehazama actually actively created the abnormal weather with dense clouds and heavy rain, summoning lightning to attack the enemies on the battlefield, also utilizing the powerful strength of his Guardian Spirit, the Six-Tusked Elephant.

"But if it requires energy..." Gu Mo rubbed his chin and pondered for a moment. He felt that it might not be a big problem, after all, not everyone in those examples of actively using Guardian Spirit power necessarily possessed special powers like Spiritual Power or Yokai Power.

He could try it himself when he had the chance. Maybe stamina, Mental Power, or something similar also counted as part of the mana bar?

He opened the upgrade page again and found it was different from what he had imagined. There was only one Guardian Spirit Level, currently LV1, and the progress bar was also empty. Below it were four somewhat special attributes: "Life," "Yokai Power," "Armor," and "Resistance."

After each attribute was a row of neat progress bars divided by rectangular grids. Most of them were dashed empty boxes, with only the first box after each attribute appearing as a bright, solid shape, as if it had been "lit up."

The Guardian Spirit's level should be about choosing to improve these attributes. Initially, all attributes were only level one, and he needed to choose the corresponding path for specialization later?

Gu Mo nodded with some understanding. However, he still needed to grind.

As for the final "Equipment" and "Appearance" interfaces, there wasn't much to say. They were indeed empty. After exploring everything and gaining some understanding of the Guardian Spirit's functions, he switched back to the initial interface.

He remembered that he seemed to have obtained some achievement, but where could he view it?

He looked around and found no related buttons to enter a page. Finally, his gaze slowly moved down, looking at the row of garbled options below his reflection. These seemed to be the most suspicious suspects, but their functions were temporarily disabled, and he couldn't click on them at all.

Thinking this helplessly, he tried randomly clicking on each of the garbled options. To his surprise, the garbled options that had been completely unresponsive before now had a reaction – although they still displayed garbled text, he could actually click into them! After a moment of愣了一下后, Gu Mo's eyes instantly lit up.

Sure enough! The Idiot System wasn't just hanging in the background doing nothing, but also working hard to self-repair?

Great! It wasn't in vain that he trusted it so much! From today onwards, it was his most trustworthy and powerful golden finger again!

Suppressing his excitement and nervousness, Gu Mo quickly browsed the first page. He found it was a very simple interface layout, with only "Friends," "Blacklist," and "Mail"...

So the first option below was actually the friend function?

Gu Mo didn't have time to investigate carefully, after all, the friend function's presence in games was usually quite limited and didn't seem to have much use. Therefore, he just quickly browsed it and immediately tried to open the second option. A new page then replaced the friend list page and appeared before him.

Unexpectedly, the second option seemed to be the Achievement List. In an interface layout filled with dense gray question mark icons, the top two icons in the upper left corner were lit up, and their content was revealed.

The first icon was a bronze-colored badge, named "Beginner." Gu Mo had no recollection of when he had obtained it. Although it was an achievement, it was also a title. The badge effect was activated by default, and the description was:

"Beginner (Bronze): A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Before Life Level or Profession Level reaches 10, the experience gained by the player through any means is increased by 25% (Active)."

The second achievement was a golden icon, which was the achievement he had remembered earlier.

"First Blood (Gold): All great works require sacrifice. Your enemies do not need to understand, but they will obey. Experience gained by the player through combat and killing is increased by 100%, and cannot stack with other limited-type bonus effects (Active)."

Gu Mo was immediately excited. This was the good stuff, and it was indeed the reward he needed most right now.

For a complete novice player like him, who had nothing, everything else was superficial. Only leveling up and the efficiency of leveling up was the hard truth! If he had already reached level twenty before, no, even if it was just level ten, would the situation in Thirteen Cherry Blossom Village have been so messy and dangerous?

Suppressing his excitement, he browsed the other gray question mark icons again, knowing that these should be other ununlocked achievements or title badges. Perhaps they all corresponded to some particularly useful buff effects, but unfortunately, he couldn't see or touch them now, and trying to click on them yielded no response.

After some fiddling, he could only sigh and back out, continuing to browse the other options.

In the subsequent tests, opening the third and fourth options both failed. Along with the piercing electric current running through his nerves, a line of text flashed on the interface reflected in the water, clearly stating the reason:

"You cannot use this function during a mission."

This didn't disappoint Gu Mo. Instead, it made his imagination run wild.

After clicking the fifth option, it worked normally, but what appeared before him were several different sub-options - "Graphics," "Audio," "Game," "Display"... And beneath these sub-options were densely packed various child options.

Things like "Clarity," "Resolution," "Background Music," "Dialogue Volume," "Subtitle Toggle," "Language"...

The interface was too familiar, too classic, leaving him utterly speechless and unsure what to say for a moment. He could only confirm that this Idiot System probably had some serious issues.

Holding onto a vague hope, he clicked the last option.

——"Do you want to end the game?"

A somewhat cold and different prompt from the others clearly told him what this option corresponded to.

Hesitating for a moment, Gu Mo's expression changed strangely. He wasn't entirely sure if "ending the game" meant aborting the quest, exiting the current Dungeon, or completely ending the entire "game." If it was the latter, how would all of this end?

Waking up and finding himself back in reality, with the System and everything from the Dungeon gone, as if it were just a strange dream?

Or would the game-like rules and power simply disappear, and he wouldn't even be able to leave the Dungeon and return to the safety of the real world? Even more sadly, perhaps he would "end the game" and also end his entire life.

Thinking of this, Gu Mo suddenly became disheartened. This Idiot System always played by its own rules, and he really didn't dare to take a risk on this point.

"Uh, Brother Gu Mo, are you okay?"

It wasn't until Tokichiro's somewhat anxious voice came from behind him, pulling him out of his gloom and back to reality, that he realized he had been crouching by the river for too long. So Gu Mo quickly reined in his thoughts, waving his hand behind him without turning around: "I'm fine, I'm fine, I just squatted for a bit too long and my legs are a little numb. I'll be right there..."

Fine, he just wouldn't touch that last option.

At least for now, everything was developing in a good direction. The Idiot System had gone from being completely unusable at first, to partially functioning to a certain extent later, and now it had even fixed some bugs that were still present yesterday...

Gu Mo thought as optimistically as possible, feeling that maybe in a few more days, his golden finger might be able to complete its self-check and self-repair, and completely return to normal. Then he wouldn't have to be so high-strung all the time.

He re-equipped his only skill, then picked up the leather water skin filled with water from the ground, turned around, and left the riverbank, returning to the carriage.

The long night passed without a word.

There was nothing worth mentioning, except that while rushing through the wilderness overnight, they inevitably encountered attacks from Aragami Yokai. However, the few waves that came were just experience fodder; they were beheaded and killed before they could even clearly see the girl's sword light.

The sun rose from the east, then slowly moved to its highest point in the sky, and then slowly set as time passed.

As the sun set in the west, and the afterglow stretched all the shadows long on the ground, the party of three, who had been traveling continuously for two days and one night, finally arrived at Inabayama Castle in the Mino Province. The castle, built against the mountain, had three layers both inside and out, and its iconic building, the entirely white three-story, five-tier Tenshu, could be seen from miles away.

Looking at everything before him, Gu Mo felt a bit emotional. Although it had fantasy elements, the customs and culture of this historical period were vividly present.

If his phone hadn't automatically shut down because it hadn't been charged for two days, he would have really wanted to take pictures of everything along the way.

When entering the city, it was clear that Tokichiro was indeed a familiar face, perhaps even with a bit of status, so the soldiers guarding the city all recognized him. After a few words and a few coins exchanged, they were directly allowed to pass.

"I'm going to see Lord Saito Dosan now, Brother Gu Mo, Miss Axiu, do you want to come with me? If not, you can rest here first, but I still hope you'll come with me, at least to let Lord Dosan get familiar with you and leave an impression..."

Leading the two to a clean and simple longhouse in the inner city, Tokichiro chuckled as he rubbed his hands, inviting them to sit and rest while saying this. His eyes seemed to be glowing, as if he could already see that everything was ready and he only needed the eastern wind, just waiting for the lord of the Mino Province to give him an opportunity to make his mark.

"..."

"..."

The black-haired girl frowned slightly, looking in a certain person's direction, and then at Tokichiro.

"Oh, oh, oh, look at my memory... Let's go see a doctor first, come, come, Brother Gu Mo!" Immediately reacting, Tokichiro cursed himself for being slow. He had used this reason to persuade Miss Axiu to come in the first place, how could he forget it now?

Of course, he couldn't be blamed for it. After all, after another day and night had passed, Gu Mo seemed to be perfectly fine.

Even though he had slept for a long time again on the way, there were indeed no problems, and he had clearly said so before falling asleep.

"No need, no need, really no need, I know what my situation is, you don't need to worry..." Gu Mo waved his hands repeatedly. He didn't want to see any doctor. Not only was he fine, but even if he were sick, the medical standards of this era were truly a bit hard to accept.

"Let's go see that... cough cough, let's go see Lord Dosan first..."

He said, then seemed to remember something and looked at the black-haired girl.

"Right, Axiu, don't cover your face later, that's not very polite..."

Politeness was just an excuse, of course. The main reason was that in the original plot, Axiu seemed to have her face covered, so Saito Dosan didn't recognize her... Otherwise, since Hidechiyo and Yoshitatsu were actually twins, how could Saito Dosan not have noticed?

It was fine not knowing this, but now that he knew, Gu Mo naturally had to make use of it. After all, connections were also a very important advantage. Regardless of Axiu's combat strength or her own background and status, she was undoubtedly a strong support.

This was Mino Province, and Axiu was originally the Princess of Mino.

Well, it wasn't that he wanted to keep relying on handouts, and only from one person. It was just... too good.