Chapter 1 - Alone

‘Wha- what the hell is happening to me?’ A lost soul awakened due to an intense shaking. ‘Damn, it is as if I am riding a roller coaster! I can’t even gather my thoughts.’

After what seemed to be an hour, the shaking didn’t stop, but the lost soul got accustomed enough to start thinking about its situation.

‘Who am I? and where is this place?’ A lost soul wondered amidst the darkness and shaking.

‘Did I die? But I can’t seem to remember how.’ Although it was in a seemingly perilous situation, it was oddly calm and tranquil.

‘I can only remember pieces of information from where I lived, but no names, no relationships, no… people. From the bits and pieces that I remember, I can’t form a logical conclusion about my situation other than it being the afterlife- ‘its train of thought was suddenly cut as it noticed something approaching,

A presence…

‘So massive!’

It only found one word to describe it within its memory,

‘A Star?!’

BOOM!

The presence erupted from within the earth, and…

The lost soul wasn’t the only one to notice this collision, as the whole world seemed to have stopped for a second, as if someone pressed the stop button, but it soon returned to its normal flow, with everything but normal.

If someone were to ask the lost soul, how much time did the collision last, it would have definitely sworn that it lasted a couple of minutes!

During those minutes it felt… connected, to the whole world.

People, birds, animals, bugs, microorganisms, and even mountains and oceans, it was connected to the core of this planet.

And it saw… everything!

Everything marked by this planet.

It now recognized the massive presence that just hit, it was the planet’s Energy awakening.

This awakening started because of the lost soul’s intrusion upon this planet. ‘It has surely taken its time awakening; I have been here for who knows how long? Huh? It has been only a few seconds since I arrived here?’

After this sudden out of the body experience, the lost soul was able to recognize its unique situation!

Its current body was a ‘seed’… travelling to its destination inside a woman’s body, and it was a ‘HE’.

The time flow for ‘him’, was many times slower than the outside world.

After the world returned to normal, he lost his connection to the outside, but he kept his vision. He could see the roller coaster he was riding for a couple of seconds.

Millions upon millions of bodies similar to his, all travelling in one giant wave, stretching as far as he could see.

Two seconds ago, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything about this situation, but now? ‘I can see it, all around me, the energy is… flooding me. For a while I was worried because of how vulnerable I’m in this state, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore. But just to be safe I will remain in the middle of the pack till it is moments away from the end of this marathon.’

It usually takes about 30 minutes for the sperm to travel all the way to a woman’s egg, but for him this would translate to a couple of days and, with his future on the line he decided to curb his desire and, do less experimenting with more observing, of how energy interacted with him.

And after a day of observation, ‘There doesn’t seem to be a limit on how much energy I can absorb into my soul and body. If I consciously try to control energy, I seem to be able to stop my absorption, which I won’t do for now. On the other I can exert my soul and my energy on the surroundings to absorb energy at a faster rate. Hmm, my passive absorption is enough for now. I don’t want to screw things up before reaching the egg. I’ve also started noticing clear differences in my body structure, is the energy affecting my DNA? I this needs to be studied thoroughly’

Second day, ‘My energy is still growing, and my absorption rate is increasing at an absurd speed, I guess it has something to do with how the energy is adjusting my DNA, I think it is creating something that is more suitable for it. But more interesting is that I seem to have perfect control over my body and my energy, with a slight push I can even exert this control outwards onto the surrounding energy and… bodies. I need to focus on this, if it works out it means that I no longer need to worry about my life in this race.’

‘It’s a glaring success, using my soul to brand the surroundings with my mark, allows me to control all the cells around me, hmm… I’ll just call it a domain. I can control all the cells around me in a wide radius that is hundreds of times my total length, I can even control Erm… my mother’s? this will be for emergency cases. anyway with how much the numbers are dwindling, I will be able to control all the sperm cells around by the time we reach the fallopian tubes, now I can focus more on my body.’

Third day, ‘The energy has been changing my body at an incredible rate for the past two and a half days, I think it have stopped for now, I want to control this or at least have a semblance of control over this kind of change, but at the same time, I can’t mess things in my own body. Well, I can just use the other cells around to try it out first.’

Stretching his domain to a sperm cell next to him, he started to slowly push his energy into it. At first there was no change, so he started to wield his energy in a similar way to how it is circulating inside his body, noticing similar changes to his, he was delighted. ‘Now, what can I change?’

‘After circulating my energy in its body, I can leave it alone to circulate in this body and it will automatically start absorbing the surrounding energy to aid in the transformation as long as I wish it, but with a rather limited speed of about 75% of mine. Using all my energy and focus to increase the transformation speed, I can push it to almost 100% of my transformation speed, but I don’t need that for now, I have more interesting things to work on now.’

After circulating energy in his body enough times, he can now guess, no, he can “tell” exactly what effects these changes will have on him. ‘This is very strange; it is as if I am in some kind of a character creation panel with elaborate setting options. Hmm, WTF is blue hair?? I have always wanted white hair! Or did I? I can’t actually remember; I’ll try and change that.’

‘There are actually limits on how much I can change? Welp, the energy is here to destroy these limitations, I need none of this in my body. Now I have what I’ll be doing for the next day’

After more than half a day, there was about five thousand sperm cells in the wave, and it finally reached the fallopian tubes, and waiting for them was a surprise. ‘I can sense it There are actually two eggs!’ Sperm can pick up biological signals for the position of the egg when it reaches the fallopian tubes, but he was picking up two of them. And after scouting ahead using his domain he can now confirm this. ‘This is exceedingly rare, but more importantly, what should I do? If I ignore the other one, and steer all the sperm cells away from it, it will die on its own, and if I allow one of the cells to Enter, I will have a fraternal twin!’ This was a soul’s first existential crisis.

‘This is tiring, I’ll just give the chance to the other cell I’ve been working on. Well actually there is no need to rush anything. I will continue my work on this twin “sister” of mine, and I will start the same on these two eggs. Although they are far apart both are in my domain still, and by the looks of it, they will remain in it even if I’m faraway at one of them, and I still need more time to break my genetic locks, or to bring them under my total control.’ As for his appearance he decided to let energy run its course, other than his white hair of course.

He started working on the two eggs, discovering that he can work on them with no loss in concentration on his part, he figured that he might as well see where his limitations lay. And the results were shocking to say the least.

‘As long as they are in my domain, I can passively improve them with the percentage dropping from 75% to 50% of my own speed, at the edge of my domain. If I try to go further, it becomes rather inefficient.’

After another day, the pack reached one of the eggs. ‘After I’m done improving my sister and the two eggs, I can reach the other one in practically no time, and with my energy as a fuel, it will be fairly easy.’

It took him more than a week to completely grasp his genetic locks, after which he discovered that he still has more room for improvement, ‘I would’ve missed out on that if after entering the egg I discovered that I can no longer improve my body. I have decided, I won’t enter till I’m 100% sure there is nothing more to improve, no holding back.’

At this point the other cells has all been improved to their current limit, and with his newfound understanding over genetic locks it took him only one more day to fully grasp his sister’s, in the mean while his body was continuing to evolve. ’Moving on to the eggs, this is going to take even more time, the difference is bigger than between me and my sister.’

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The first one took him four days, with the last one taking only half a day, a testimony to how fast he was improving. ‘Now that I’m done with this, I can focus all my attention on improving my body, with my focus on that I can increase my improvement speed even further.’

‘Hmm… this is practically TEN times the speed! I think that I can go faster, but in order to do this I need to focus my soul into this, a meditative state of some sort. Since I already can kind of program my energy to do all kind of things, I think I can make it warn me if something out of the norm happens, no? I’m going to do a quick test. I will enter meditation and make it awaken me after, say ten minutes. I still don’t feel safe about this, what if it can’t recognize minutes? Will I be in meditation forever? This is so annoying; I’ll add another alarm for abnormalities and go at it anyways, I don’t think that my soul can go on forever and-

Wait! I’m so stupid, I can test the alarm first, it can alert me while I’m conscious, no need to be in meditation to do that. Ok, if one of the sperm cells moves, stir me up.’ Sure enough, after controlling one of the sperm cells to move around, a signal of some sort started to go up in his head. (AN: What kind of stupid sperm has a head?! Lol ’One-punch man reference.’ Conceptual head, I guess? AKA his soul.)

Next, he decided to try another alarm, this time setting the trigger to ‘After 2 seconds.’ But this time something gone wrong.

‘It didn’t go off. Why did this happen? Good thing that I didn’t start without testing, I don’t even want to think about what would have happened -shiver-, I’m feeling a shiver in my nonexistent spine.’ After some distracting thoughts he gathered himself again.

‘Ok, I need to focus again. I’ll do another test, good thing that I left some of the cells without improving them. This time it will be, After the improvement is done, stir me up. Now I’ll wait and see the results. In the meantime, I will focus again on my impro-’ just as he was about to go back to it, he felt a slight tug in his soul! ‘What the hell, how did it end so fast?’ Examining the improvement target he found that it was still going at it, taking the time to think about it, he figured that it must’ve been the other alarm.

‘So, it is working but, it calculated the seconds according to the outside speed! Means two hundred seconds passed in here. This is very interesting; it seems that my energy can extract meaning to my commands not just from me but from the surroundings as well. I need to assess the limitations to this ability if it has any. This can easily become my most convenient ability.’

Testing the alarm one last time, with it set to 2 hundredth of a second, it worked just fine. Next, he adjusted how he set the alarm to remind him of its content, instead of just a tug on his soul, so that he won’t need to remember which one it was,

‘Now the real deal, I wonder just how fast will the meditation increase my speed? Set it to thirty seconds, that’s five minutes in here.’

And it started, not only his circulation speed increased to unforeseen speeds, but the other cells speed increased as well, maintaining the 75% of his speed, even the faraway egg.

After five minutes have passed, he woke up to a tug on his soul and his voice saying, “Wake up lazy ass, it’s been five minutes, and don’t forget to take out the trash” ‘???’

‘Is this my inner self showing off its comedy talents? So unlike me, I guess I am being overwhelmed by all that happened to me so far, and my soul getting exhausted, even if it was a little, didn’t help as well. I’ll need to sleep eventually, but not now. My only solace is that vision of the outside world that I’ve seen before, I can’t wait to explore every nook and cranny of this world.

Let’s see, my speed shot up to a hundred times my normal speed, and the other cells to seventy-five times my normal speed maintaining the sacred 75%- Wait, wait, something here is afoot! Oh yeah, it’s my domain, why did the faraway egg maintain the same speed? My best bet is that, my domain expanded when I was meditating, considering that I can increase its size if I focus enough, it doesn’t seem that surprising anymore. (AN: Got that Kamikaze-Eminem reference? lol)

Now when it comes to my soul, this meditation session I’d say, exhausted only 0.05%?! How am I even able to calculate it this accurately? (AN: ‘cause ur the MC bro!)

‘I think it has something to do with my willpower, the stronger my willpower, the more I can exhaust my soul without fainting? But with my control over my body, can I even faint? This is going nowhere; I need to recover first. I exhausted my soul because I’m trying to focus on my body, next I will focus on my soul, this time will be ten minutes.’

After ten minutes of meditation, he woke up as lively as he could get, no, even more. ‘This can seriously replace my sleep! I’m not only recovered, but I’m even stronger now, my control over my body and my surroundings is stronger, this translates to a bigger domain and a higher cultivation rate.’ (AN: Ok people, I give up, I’ll just call it cultivation from now on, I’ll check the Tag later.)

‘This is some kind of soul cultivation; I don’t know If the other cells are benefiting from this though. Last but not least I need to figure out, where my limit lays. I’ll just keep repeating five minutes of normal meditation.’

The more he cultivated the more agony he felt. It took him about two hours to hit 1% of his soul energy, at this point he was already exhausted. ‘Haah, (imaginary breath out) I feel like I have just run twenty marathons in succession. I think this is my limit for now, but since I made it so far, I’ll do another push.’

2%

‘How am I still going? Every time after I stop, I’ll be hit with a wave of pain stronger than the last, and just as fast as it came, it goes away when I enter another session. This is just pure escapism at this point. But I can’t stop! I need to figure out where my limit is. I am ninety percent sure it is 3%.’

.

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3%

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4%

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4.92%

4.96%

‘I can do it!’

5% ‘Arrrghhh’ after flailing around for a second, he started another 5 minutes.

5..01%. This time he didn’t get to complete the 5 minutes, waking up after 2 minutes to an agonizing pain through out his soul. He was paralyzed in place for a couple of moments before he was able to move again, and with some quick thinking he entered meditation again, this time though, to recover his soul energy.

After 3 minutes, the alarm rang in his head, he was still in great pain, but not as much as before. ‘I feel like an idiot for forgetting to change the alarm, I’ll do 8 hours, this is about the total time I spent meditating before. I’m excited to see how much stronger my soul will be after this.’

But luck wasn’t on his side this time around.

8 hours later.

‘Damn it, I feel bloated as fuck! As if I was in a fucking open buffet in a five-star hotel.’

Instead of getting buff, he gained fat.

‘So, after recovering my lost soul energy, I improved a little, just as expected. But after a while of improvement, it stopped and instead I started accumulating excess energy. Hmm- right now this excess energy is seeping out of my control, I think that if I exert myself a little- yeah, I can hold onto it for an extended period of time, but it isn’t worth it, for now at least, maybe I’ll find a use for it in the future.’

After taking another look at the meditation’s effects, and doing some math, he decided to do a session of normal meditation till he can’t hold on any longer, followed by a soul cultivation session for 4 hours, to strengthen his soul.

And all of sudden, he started to hear a voice, vast an ancient, coming out of the depth of his memories. “Our purpose here is to strengthen what is weak, make hard what is soft, this will take time. Soul must be master of the body; strong soul can separate the body from its suffering.” <1>

‘Yes, Master… Hmm- what was that? Anyway, I have as much time as I want in this state, and I won’t be leaving till I’m 100% sure that I reached my limits on Energy, soul, and willpower. If I have limits in the first place. If not, I’ll continue till the end of this body’ life span.’

He stopped one of the sperm cells from absorbing any more energy, for it to function as a death alarm of some sort, if it dies, he probably won’t be further away.

But… these preparations were for naught, because after a month of continuous cultivation, he hit a wall in his energy cultivation. Not a solid one per say, but due to his control over his body, he knew that he won’t even try passing it. This wall is called breakthrough, AKA Evolution.

‘If I evolve right now, I lose my chances of being a human, I’ll be a whole new species adopting to this environment. No thanks, I don’t need that. I’ll just cheat a little and borrow some of the ideas in those cultivation novels I read in my past life. Well, I had this feeling for a while now, I will continue to refine my energy to increase its purity, and to condense it further. This reminds me of the people in Chinese novels, where they condense a core, the issue is, energy is fucking ethereal, it is not a gas to turn into liquid then condense! It is actually more similar to liquid than it to gas. This is so stupid and misleading. I’ll go at it the science way, by rotating my energy to generate more pressure’

After another week, the other cells followed in his lead to refine their energies even further. He was able to cover all of his mother’s body with his domain for a while now, but for some reason or the other his domain couldn’t go past it no matter how he tweaked it, so he decided not to force it. He also didn’t start helping her cultivate. ‘I don’t have any experience with a full-grown body, if I mess things up, and she gets some kind of cancer cells, I won’t have tears to cry. Actually, with the amount of energy I’m attracting here, I doubt it would be long before mother starts cultivating herself.’

The more he strengthened his soul and willpower the more he could refine his energy, as for the other cells they had already stopped absorbing any more energy. And he can’t increase it without focusing on these cells 24/7 so, he left them at their current cap.

It took him 6 months to hit his limit on his willpower, at 50%. ‘I tried it several times and every time I have the eeriest feeling that if I try and push past this limit, my soul will leave this body. After all this isn’t a body designed to house a human’s soul. my only remaining aspect is my soul energy. Although it is fully developed, I’ve yet to refine it, and I’m afraid to do so. If I refine it and it comes back to bite me in the ass, by making increasing my willpower harder…’

And he had the right to be afraid. Imagine an onion with multiple layers as his soul. By refining his energy, he is essentially condensing his inner layers and pushing more energy into the core, the 50% he had yet to control… but,

‘But using my refining rotation motion to essentially grind at these willpower barriers, I can decrease the difficulty of increasing my willpower by a little bit, although it would still be more difficult than it was, I’m not someone who can’t accept a challenge.’

After one week of trial and error, with multiple recovery sessions in between, he finally figured out how to safely refine his soul without having his memories all over the place, or to lose connection with his body. His first time was the most dangerous, and he had to rely on his passive recovery for more than an hour, to be able to enter meditation to recover, and try again. A decision that took endless courage, or… foolishness.

Using his new technique to cultivate his soul proved to be extremely rewarding. The amount of energy he could hold in both his soul and, in his body, increased exponentially with no clear sign of stopping any time soon.

…

And finally, it was time.

It took him…

A full year, a full year of endless cultivation sessions.

‘Haah,’ a lonely sigh sounded in his soul.

He had already got rid of the other sperm cells some time ago, except for his sister.

‘The only thing remaining is to let my sister enter her egg first, on one hand I can observe the prosses, and on the other hand, I can watch over her and intervene if necessary.’

1. Jonny English, Tibet training.