Alex decided to go for it, confirming he'd be back quickly and running off to grab things from his inn room in a flurry of flashsteps and inventory shuffling. By the time he got back, Zack's organizational skill had rapidly surpassed actual words and commands, intuitive understanding bubbling off his rogue-subtle aura like will-o-wisps from a bog. Lightballs describing what needed to be done were tossed at adventurers like money at strippers, and some mechanist or another managed to rig up a massive motor-carriage from sun gems and sheet metal. The end result was something like a train that didn't need rails, or possibly the lovechild of an armored personnel carrier and a mobile home. Apparently the technologies available in this world were very inconsistent, and imbalanced magical progressions just made the stratifications more confusing, but it was something.
"Hey, c'mere." Zack said to Alex, deigning to be physical with his voice. "Figured out a trick to handle all the dumb requests. You get to be the centerpiece of the back room, hook you up to the spiritual reactor, and it's fat fuck beer-kegging 'til we hit the immortality-seekers. No dumb fights, all the passive seduction."
Information floated into Alex's head from his own awarded memories, of the Pink Mage's tanky support option as he climbed into the back pod of the tank in question. Beer kegging gained its name from certain pink mages taking a submissive role as half-bartender half-decoration 'kegs', mounting the bar and letting people use their cock as a magical soda fountain (sometimes allowing drinks to be sucked from their nipples as a bonus), and it had apparently spread as a tradition. The offer of a free drink compounded certain charm tactics immensely, especially as mentality became comedically pornographic for a while. The calm that washed over Alex as he communed with the solar magecraft of the vehicle fuel supply wasn't the pleasurable submission of Lord Luck's absolute dominance, but the energy provision of projected spirits merely deigning to interface with material shells of jewel and man. Bodily arousal and mental placidity came with condensed energy, which Alex adapted to by fattening up. A leisurely bulking occurred as body parts became slightly bigger, flexed sizes becoming passive sizes, belly growing notable as mysteries of the sun played across his skin in elegant slowly-drifting runes translating mostly to variants of 'fuck toy', 'free drinks', 'official replicator', and 'suck this'. Well, guess the sun was slutty too. Alex dematerialized his clothes and turned about, flexing his arms up to shake his newly notable pecs a bit, while giving Zack a wink and a cock twitch as he stepped back into the holding cradle. He grew taller to accommodate for further increasing mass with only moderate density, as he reclined onto something between a throne and a lounge chair. Alex spread his legs wide as his cock caught up proportionally and then some, becoming thick like a beer can and long like a water bottle before it really popped a boner. Alex felt up his enlarging balls as he relaxed further, wondering how much was a side effect of the nutsack being efficient for energy density like the inner seas and how much was just for the hell of having something big for the adventurers to play with. The solar will shared control of his body and grinned wolfishly at the nearby adventurers, prompting some cheers from the random dudes packing into the vehicle alongside him.
Alex himself opted to slither his soul-form out of his mouth like an exhalation of smoke. His angel-halo blinked disconcertedly at the experience of seeing himself much bigger in third person and getting a wink from the devilish sun spirits he had lent his body to. Alex directed some physical action to stroke his cock, reassuring himself he was still in control but didn't need to be, and opted to drift spiritually about the rest of the vehicle for a look-see (seeing as he would be mostly lounging in the back physically for the journey, plugged and getting touched). His phantom self phased through walls and coiled about random handlebars, occasionally passing through someone's pants on the way to the various seats and tables to give them a friendly grope. Mentally flicking through the guide, Alex summarized the information further as the vehicle started moving out of base.
The cultivator class raised its stats through consuming things and meditation: where other classes might get temporary buffs from items or actually have to wear their armor, cultivators permanently integrated food buffs stackably and could consume gear items to gain their abilities. They built panoplies within themselves, becoming worlds of emanations and ways of being that built a whole reality around themselves and wielded it as a weapon. Transformations were as candy to them, taking on and discarding elements of forms and curses like so much more sorcery. To charm a higher-realm cultivator was to become the sex icon of whole cultures, to slay one to battle nations. Admittedly the border between realms was a fair bit less exponential than usual for this sort of fiction, but it still mattered (a one-realm difference beatable with a prepared adventuring team or a special technique, two realms with a very large party of specialists or a small army depending on how much you could get in quickly). It was a pretty strong progression class, but its windows of specialization and bursts of growth often left them non-competitive against those with superior talents. Or rapidly facing down some unfair bosses, given the will of the heavens (not that they held that against the children of angels, luckily enough).
While there were many varying progressions, the most common theoretical framework throughout the Pretentious Name Region was the following:
1. Qi Condensation, fortifying the body and mind. Accumulating generated magical energies and extruding a spirit sense for remote sensing and kinetic manipulation. Most people at this level were young trainees and early cross-classers who just wanted the scaling abilities to deal with slower natural progression from divided areas of focus.
2. Foundation Establishment, fortifying the body and soul. Building spiritual structures to generate then channel energy more effectively, such as for automated spellcasting techniques. It was basically starting adventurers and people who hadn't yet figured out what their passions were to specialize in more generally.
3. Core Formation, fortifying the mind and soul. Choosing a Dao to embody as a path to power and way of life. Then, building a 'core' that would become the heart of the future world and a keystone of concentrated mystical power in general. The 'average mature cultivator' tended to be around here, since even accelerated mastery in the chosen arts took time to obtain. Given that there were infinite possible paths to take and variations could be established upon that, a cultivator's variety was quite customizable if the effort was put in to develop it or if particularly expansive themes were chosen. External effects around this level tended to be more 'intuitive manipulations', such as weaving the elements into martial arts or performing supernatural feats with various skills, being able to take symbolism and curses as garments of power or service familiars. Middling adventurer level, at least compared to the Timeless Dawn's bracket of fighting, and the average rank of competent soldiers in the Pretentious Name Region like the Decrypted Sunset Sect. Alex himself was apparently equivalent to the upper middle of this bracket despite most of his direct statistics being charitably the start of the stage below, though realistically speaking as a charmer with a noncombat focus he'd started off with a pretty nice package for such and hardly needed those stats.
4. Nascent Soul, embodying the way and manifesting it. The powers of this stage were often relatively individual-path-specific, save strong association with the way of being and the ability to externally project one's fighting spirit in effective whole long-distance, or as a 'sphere of reality pressure' as opposed to mere lesser forms of adopted aesthetics. Practitioners at this level were often somewhat talented or fairly experienced, but not at the extremes of either nevermind both. Most of the combat-oriented senior guild members and upper-end adventurers that passed through town could 1v1 cultivators of this level like the Decrypted Sunset seniors or early elders, but they'd prefer a group anyway because some of them were better against single targets than crowd control on familiars, and those who were crowd control had the singular cultivator and their aura to deal with.
5. Dao Immortalization, becoming as realm and everlasting. The cultivator's inner world became a consistent place persistently connectable rather than mere mindscape metaphor for themselves and their powerful way of being, while otherwise-mortal cultivators became immortal until slain and even then easily revived. Subordinate familiars were easily as powerful as adventurers, the better ranks or personal sub-deities competitive with the main cultivator, even in distinct specializations or possibly exceeding them in some areas. At this point, people really could be called 'masters' and tended to build realms of themselves, and while there was a substantial population of them it wasn't particularly world-shaking (after all, they were nontrivial reality warpers but so was an early pink mage if you fucked him enough, or a djinn with enough magical energy stuffed in them, or frankly any class after it had good stats, skills practiced, and some prep time). A few of the most monstrously powerful guild members and guild monsters could fight at this level reliably (Zach apparently among those members, hence being stationed on guildhall defense), and the upper echelons of bigger guilds' combatants were likely similar. Still, there was the issue of specialization and areas of expertise at this level, so while the Decrypted Sunset leadership was at this level they couldn't just march on whatever issue at hand was outside their talent and expect results.
Past this, the information Alex gained from Zach was a bit fuzzy and speculative, or based in only the words of a few questionably trustworthy people. Zach had even appended a note in the data pack to the effect of 'After all, it's not like a rogue keeping defense of the treasure hoard has more than an information gathering network to go off of, right?'
6. Mythos Gathering, warring with powerful beings to obtain more distinct powersets and difficult-to-synthesize realms. At this level it tended to challenge the heavens, so assorted gods threw tribulations and boss fights at particularly annoying adventurers. The kinds of cultivators at this level basically were the boss fights relative to other people, and so rarely went out in the open if they had the dislike of any particular deity lest they face a fair fight. Deities whose key domains had nontrivial combat applications like Lord Luck sometimes deigned to send combat avatars and warrior angels at this level, though what the gods' 'main bodies' were like wasn't quite clear beyond being bigger, weirder, and into weird emanation-body sex. A few self-made kings and emperors stood at this level of power and decided the flow of the world practically personally when they put effort into it, since the gods tended to focus on more messing around having fun then things like 'domain management' (after all, that was what angels were for!).
7. Cosmology Unification, making sense of the principles of power and aligning accumulated worlds even as more could be brought on. Mostly a predicted theoretical state of some current powerful people finishing their projects, a historical state of the very powerful, and equivalencies to some of the most terrifying world bosses and combat-focused great gods, it was the top power that could be considered 'remotely plausible to obtain'.
8. Alchemical Celestial, utilizing transcendent mastery of principles to craft realms much more simply, universes on command, world-breaking treasures on whims, existence-defying techniques. People who ran those shady world-changing-magic-item shops were apparently these or were very personally backed by these sorts of people, which explained a lot about the state of magical technology. That guy who apparently shared Alex's kinks was the shining example of this tier, and with typical behaviors to boot being a nigh-omnipotent figure. Puzzling, but most people who hit this rank skedaddled and left to start their own universes because of their own kinks. Typical.
9. Escalate Endless, power beyond meaning. There wasn't anyone meaningfully individual at this level who bothered to act relevant to others (really, better to take such power in isolated super-god ways somewhere quiet to not bother with intervention) and it was really more a matter of the kind of things it took to keep bureaucracy handled and things running in a multiverse-building society acting collectively, but some multiversal clusters themselves held the title distributed among various governments.
As Alex wondered about what phenomenal cosmic power got off to, he was brought back to his bulked-up main body getting its first blowjob of the road trip, as someone wanted snacks. Deciding not to be left out on the fun, his phantom self passed back through a wall and over to a hooded magician alternating between licking Alex's shaft and pouring miscellaneous packaged food into a popcorn bucket while Alex's body gazed idly out at the passing countryside roads through the large doors' window. Apparently Alex had himself a branding scheme going when it came to sexually providing food, stylized candy pictures of himself on a pink background that took well to stamping random sun logos on it and calling it a collaboration. The sun spirits deigned to have Alex's main body wave at the incoming ghost-blob and headpat it affectionately beneath the halo (a weirdly comforting experience, coupled with a blowjob), to which Alex's soul responded by licking his body's nipples in a silly pass-by maneuver (meriting a spiritual mouthful of easily-absorbed milk, strangely satisfying and tasting faintly of added sugar). Not used to musclegut, his soul rested on top of the warmth of his bodily belly and reclined in a neat curl at relatively plush physical consistency.
"Thanks again for being public food guy." the hooded magician said, face mostly-concealed by shadow in such a way Alex was pretty sure he was actually getting a blowjob from some physical darkness itself. "There's gonna be a few other guys clamoring in here once they realize you all are up for direct snack handouts instead of it being some bar-type macking-on orders affair, so brace for a good time."
Alex's soul-self nodded and vocalized a suitably spooky gently-reverberating "Yeaaah, I was hoping for that.", halo of eyes closed to indicate being pleased. It was going to be a nice few days of beer kegging alright.