Attribute Farming System

After taking a few more steps forward, Knox stopped and breathed in a bit of the dry, humid desert air before stumbling forward and crashing into a barrel.

Slurring his words, he drowsily mumbled, "T…Those damned bashtards…! Bah! F-First, they try to poison me, then when that failed because of my System Sight, dos morons sends der menz after meez…!! T…They deserves to bes turned into Attribute Orbs!"

*Thud, thud, thud!*

The barrel Knox fell in carried him along for a ride as he rolled down a relatively busy street of the desert town known as Cactatorn. Uncontrollably, he rolled down the street in that barrel for a good two minutes, constantly gaining speed.

However, totally out of the blue, he suddenly stopped rolling. He didn't gradually slow down; it was an instant stop.

"Wat dis...?" he incoherently murmured as he used everything he had to focus his vision enough to make out the blurry mess of colors before him.

Knox first saw long, slender legs, then he saw the thin waist they were connected to. Shifting his eyes up, two milky-white valleys filled his sight. A little further up, there was a perfectly sculpted face with slanted eyebrows closely knitted together.

"Hot chick Yen?"

*Whack!*

A fair-skinned hand slapped him across the face. The barrel he was in shattered, sending him sailing through the air before crashing through the third floor of a fancy restaurant.

Standing up and shaking all the debris off, Knox grinned, his mind lucid. "Well, that was more than enough to sober me up," he said while cracking his neck. "Yen, baby, I can't believe you'd give me such an affectionate greeting as soon as we meet each other after so long apart!"

Under the astonished eyes of the people in the restaurant, he leapt out of the gaping hole he created in the wall of the third floor. Gracefully, he floated down and landed just a few feet away from his beautiful bride.

"Have you missed me so much these months that you're now resorting to stalking me?" he asked, slyly smirking. "If you're that desperate to get a taste of this man-meat, then just say so. Who am I to disappoint a maiden as fair as you—"

WHIZ!

An arc of sword light whizzed past him. Because he turned his head at just the right moment, it shot behind him and hit an unsuspecting building.

BOOOM!

The building was blown to bits, with a large chunk of the ground razed to oblivion.

"Damn, girl," Knox said while admiring the destructive scene behind him. "If that building wasn't an abandoned one, then you'd be the one being hunted as a criminal right about now. Oh, look, you chipped off a bit of that restaurant; I guess even the best of us become rusty."

"Not me, of course," he continued smugly. "But you average folk, sure—"

SHING!

Another sword arc!

This time, even stronger and more destructive than before!

"Wow," Knox remarked in awe. "To think you'd be so aggressive toward your soon-to-be husband. Have you no sense of modesty~?"

Instead of evading the sword arc, he grabbed it with his right hand before squeezing and dispersing the energy with a form of energy of his own.

"Sword Intent!?" Yennefer asked, finally speaking up. "How have you cultivated a Sword Intent in less than half a year?? It took me three years…!"

"Ho?" Knox mused, his smirk widening. "There are many, many things you don't know about me, my love."

Sneaking his hands to her hips while she was taken aback by his awesomeness, he pulled her close and leaned his face toward hers. A scarlet-red blush formed on her cheeks as she hadn't in any way foreseen something like this!

She wanted to push away, but for some reason, her stupid body wasn't listening to her commands…

"S-Stop," Yennefer said softly, showing off a meek side that was rarely seen. "G…Get off of me…"

Ignoring her, Knox leaned all the way in.

Yet, at the very last moment, his lips and face passed by hers. "It didn't take me less than half a year to cultivate my Sword Intent," he whispered seductively, his grin too corrosive for viewership. "It took me less than a month."

"!?!?"

Snapping back to her senses because of this information, Yennefer forcefully pushed him away. Neither her uncharacteristic shyness nor her indifference was present. Only a doubtful glare remained to appreciate his handsome self.

"You're lying," she said, her coldness returning in full. "There's no possible way that you cultivated a Sword Intent within a month. It doesn't matter what sort of genius you believe yourself to be."

Knox laughed mysteriously. "Who knows, then?" he said. "Perhaps I'm lying, perhaps I'm not. Who can say for sure? Anyhoo, why are you here in Cactatorn? Wait… are you actually here to see me!? I knew our love wasn't a lie—"

*Thwack!*

A kick to the gut!

"Oof," Knox groaned, wheezing. "I deserved that…"

However, in the very next second, he straightened his back and erased the grimace on his face. He then walked around his fiancée and looked her up and down with a curious gleam. "I see that you've broken through the Half-step Core Formation Realm and reached the Early Core Formation Realm. To think that my waifu was so impressive, haha."

Yennefer clicked her tongue, rolling her purple eyes. "That's a joke coming from you," she said, a little ticked off. "What Realm have you achieved by now, anyway? I heard from your family that you were in the Qi Condensation Realm just before you were banished. But what stage are you at exactly?? For some reason, I can't determine your cultivation base."

Of course she couldn't!

Did she honestly believe that he wouldn't cultivate a Cultivation-concealing Technique as soon as he started his cultivation journey?

Ha!

'One can never be too cautious in this world, and making sure no one knows precisely what they're dealing with is key to one's survival!' Knox thought. 'Thanks to my Affinity Attribute—which improves not only my Cultivation Talent but also every other type of Talent as well—I became capable of rapidly advancing my proficiency in every single Martial Skill or Technique I picked up. This, of course, included the |Baseless Cultivation| Earth-rank Technique that I was lucky enough to snatch (steal) before being banished from my family!'