It had been almost 2 years since he had started this journey. And in these 2 years, he had seen much. He had seen the poverty that pervaded the world and the lives of the people who lived through it. He had seen their sorrow, their joy, their grief and their happiness. The one constant thing that he had seen in all of them, though, had been a strange sense of peace with what they had.

Ironically, this very peace had been lacking in those that had everything. They wanted more than they had so they strived for more than they could afford, lacking the peace with their status that the poor enjoyed. The rich had everything but peace and the poor had nothing but peace.

Maybe this had been the reason his father had sent him to the Ashram. Because he had wanted more for his son and his family than he could have ever provided. And, perhaps, it was for this reason that the inspector had sacrificed his son's wish for an easier life.

Kiran did not know what to feel about this particular realisation. It made him uncomfortable. Yet, it had given him everything he had. If not for this father’s decision, Kiran may as well have been just another [Warrior]. But was that enough to sacrifice his entire life over it?

The [Shishya] did not know the answer to that question. And this had been eating away at his own peace since he first realised it. Though, this realisation had not been the only thing that kept him up at night. The other source of contention had been his attribute, [Reflection].

In these 2 years, he had travelled far and wide. He had healed more people than he cared to remember and he might have had fought with a quarter as many. Yet it hadn't been enough. Despite the multitude of experiences that he had gone through, his [Reflection] had not budged even a single point.

[Reflection] was a rare attribute and yet special amongst them. [Reflection] had no cap on its natural progression, unlike most other attributes that had a soft cap of 7 and could only be raised further by Attribute points. [Reflection] had no such soft cap.

It progressed naturally and indefinitely as long the person kept on fulfilling its conditions. These conditions were 2 in total. The first was the renunciation of the world. The more a person ended their attachment with the world, the more their [Reflection] rose.

The other condition was by acknowledging one’s own nature. The more one knew and acknowledged themselves, their positive and negative aspects, their own hopeful wishes and heinous desires, the more their [Reflection] grew.

This is not to say that [Reflection] could not be increased by using attribute points, it could be. Yet it was not recommended. When a person added an attribute point to [Reflection], the attribute then showed an aspect of the person’s true self to the person. And this aspect could be something innocent or something heinous.

If it were something innocuous, it would be easily acknowledged by the person and the attribute would increase. But if the aspect shown was something heinous, then it became quite difficult for the person to acknowledge it; denial was a powerful force after all.

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If such a case were to happen, then the attribute would fail to increase and the attribute point would be lost forever. To gamble with something as precious as attribute points were never recommended. Thus, most people that needed [Reflection] did so by raising it naturally. And one method to do was tempering oneself against the world by journeying.

As a person travelled far and across, they came across various people, both good and bad, and lived through situations both marvellous and dangerous. This process tempered the person and let them see the parts of their true self. The acknowledgement of this true self, still rested on the person themselves. This realisation and the resulting acknowledgement had been the goal of Kiran’s journey too.

He, much like the rest of the disciples, had decided to journey the world to temper himself. As this journey was something that almost everyone with his Class went through, it wasn’t something that his parents hadn’t known ahead of time. And to make his journey easier, they had gifted him a Sky Case, an object enchanted with the Ghost Sky; the most mysterious of the 5 Ghosts. Thus, it had great storage space within it as it was larger on the inside than its size would suggest.

He smiled as he looked at the gourd hanging from his hips. It contained not much as he was an ascetic and had little in the terms of possessions. But the things that it did contain, he considered them essential.

0.0

Kiran’s undecisive gaze rested upon the massive sea sprawling in front of him as the rolling waves caused his heart to pound. These waves represented life but they also meant death. While it was life for all, mortals and monsters alike, it meant only death for mortals; for deep within the ocean’s womb existed creatures beyond imagination.

Yet he had to tread these waters now. If he didn’t, his [Reflection] might never rise again.

Hence, he had decided to take a radical step. He had decided to journey to the unknown lands on an exploration ship. It was a decision that still made his heart race. Oceans, after all, were not a territory that mortals were meant to touch. The ever-expansive waters held within them the monsters of ages long gone. The true ancients that had been alive for longer than the current civilizations had been around. They were calamities given form and flesh. The Living Fossils they were called.

It was not just the oceans and the seas that held such monsters; for these creatures prowled on the land too. But where the lands were ruled by 1, the oceans were fought over by 10. The waters of the world were the true home of the monsters.

This phenomenon was something that had been known by many civilizations and had always been quite well recorded. After all, monsters were creatures that needed a high density of atmospheric mana to survive, thus the more powerful the monster, the denser mana-current they lived in. And mana-currents were much richer within the oceans than on land. This too had always been a fact well documented.

Kiran turned his gaze away from the ocean that seemed to be threatening to swallow him whole. His apprehensive gaze fell on the ship that he wanted to journey on. And once again he hesitated. This decision would be a brave one. It was, certainly, one of the stupidest decisions he had ever made. He just hoped to come back alive.

-X-

Within a desolate desert, inside a dilapidated shop, on a simple chair, a youth seemingly slept.

-X-