The cracked parchment was ancient. So old that the edges had begun to decompose, turning brown and jagged. The rest of the crinkled paper was an aged yellowish colour. And old old mahogany wooden strip kept the piece of parchment together, allowing it to be rolled up and stored away.
Running his hand along the aged paper affectionately, the librarian gestured towards the scroll excitedly. “This is what we humans are capable of,” he muttered feverishly.
Sarah and Will leant in eagerly, scanning the parchment which displayed a humanoid figure standing naked, their private parts absent. Countless strings ran throughout the figure's body, all of them collecting in the centre of the person's chest.
‘Are those energy veins?’ Will wondered as he read through the parchment.
Although he couldn’t speak the language it was written in, he could figure out from the pictures and labels that this was meant as an instruction manual of sorts.
“I can’t read what it says,” Sarah said in frustration.
The librarian smirked and picked up the Rosetta stone, allowing the glowing light it emanated to wash over the ancient paper of the scroll.
Before Will’s eyes, the foreign hieroglyphic symbols morphed into words he could read and understand. As the words changed, so did the colours on the parchment.
The person's figure had thousands of strings running throughout their body, which the scroll labelled as meridians. These were drawn in white and ran throughout the androgynous figure's body like rivers, with countless tributaries branching off in every direction.
Next, Will noticed a series of colourful nodes across the figure’s body, labelled as life gates. These life gates were scattered throughout the persons in strategic positions related to the flow of energy and a person's connection to nature.
Finally, a third eye had opened up in their forehead, revealing a swirling kaleidoscope of infinite colour and light. This was known as Insight and seemed to lead to a different system altogether, one which wasn’t detailed on this particular scroll.
Will read the scroll intently, enraptured by its contents. Many of the things happening in his new body could be explained by this, clearing the fog that had settled over his mind. With this scroll as guidance, he could understand himself far better than ever before.
It described the process of absorbing mana through your life gates and channelling it through your meridians to your dantian in the centre of your chest. However, Will didn’t have a dantian, and instead, the glowing green sphere that spun within his chest filled the spot where his dantian should have been.
If you absorbed enough mana into your dantian, in a process the scroll called cultivation, you could break open life gates of different grades, allowing you to absorb more mana and break more life gates. The ultimate goal is to advance to create a perfectly balanced cycle of mana within your body.
Will felt around inside his body. The meridians were in the same places as within the diagram, the only difference being the core in his dantian. When he felt around for his life gates, they were quickly revealed to be elusive and hard to pinpoint, although he felt as though they were definitely there.
After sensing the condition of his body and memorising roughly where his life gates should be, he slowly opened his eyes and noticed that Sarah was sitting bolt-upright on the ground, her hands clenched into fists over her chest.
Will went to speak but the librarian grabbed his arm, dragging him away while holding one finger in front of his mouth, “Shh, she’s trying to open her first gate.”
Will’s eyebrows shot up and he followed the librarian away from the meditating girl. “How long do you think she will take?” He whispered.
“It took me a couple of hours for my first one, but she found the life gate far quicker than I did,” The librarian whispered.
“Right, can you lead me to where the information on biology is kept? I’ll clean up the bookshelves and look for some clues on the changing wildlife,” Will asked, since he thought it would be a waste of time to just sit and watch Sarah meditate.
“Sure thing, just follow me,” the librarian whispered.
Will followed the slight man through the collapsed bookshelves, carefully stepping over any fallen books so he wouldn’t damage them.
Eventually, he arrived in the far corner of the library where the damage to the bookshelves wasn’t quite as severe. Although they had also fallen over here, the bookshelves had retained their shape, the books remaining sprawled on the ground beneath them.
“You should find what you’re looking for in here,” The librarian whispered. “I’ll leave you to it because I want to continue studying the scrolls. I feel as though there is a vital piece of information I’m missing,” He whispered before heading back towards his desk.
Will eagerly set to pushing the bookshelves upright and placing the old leatherbound tomes back into their rightful position. Since he didn’t know exactly which shelf each book belonged to, he used a lot of guesswork, simply spending most of his time looking for books on snakes.
The book he finally found that suited his interests was titled, “Nature’s temptation – Snakes”
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It detailed the lifestyles and habits of innumerable species of snakes, all from the perspective of an ancient explorer who had travelled from one corner of the world to the other. Will found the explorer’s recounting of his adventures and encounters with a diverse array of snake species fascinating and quickly fell into a trance reading the book, burying himself within its aged pages.
Will wasn’t sure how long he had read the book for, but just as he was finally getting a good understanding of his new species and possible abilities, a strong hand landed on his shoulder.
Flinching back, he looked up and saw Sarah standing over him with a grin. “Good book?” She asked with a smile.
“Yeah… good meditation?” Will asked tentatively, not sure if that was the right response.
“Oh yeah, one of the best I’d say. I got my first life gate open,” she said smugly.
Will smiled and gave her a thumbs up, “Nice, what one did you go for?” The scroll had labelled each life gate individually, giving them their own title and meaning.
Sarah jabbed at her throat and Will seemed to remember that there was a life gate just above where his Adam's apple was. He wondered what impact the order in which you opened your gates would have. ‘Perhaps it will affect the direction your cultivation takes,’ he mused.
“It’s called the gate of breath,” she said, her voice taking on a magnetic property that drew Will in as she spoke.
“Doesn’t that mean you’re a fully-fledged cultivator now?” Will asked excitedly. The scroll had listed the different stages of cultivation, and the first one was to open at least 7 life gates out of the total 49 in a person’s body.
It described the process of opening the first seven gates as the life-breaker realm. A cultivator can only advance to the next realm once they have opened 7 life gates and combined them into a Pillar of genesis, advancing into the Fate chaser realm. After that came many other complex processes that weren’t detailed in the scroll.
Even the description of the ascension to Fate chaser was spotty at best. Barely describing the actual steps, a cultivator needed to take to go through with it, instead leaving a cryptic poem that meant little to Will.
If life gates are ideas, then a pillar of genesis is the connection between those ideas, binding them together into a whole creation that places the first step on the stairway to heaven. This thread is a rope the blind man can cling to, guiding them onto a treacherous path brimming with possibility.
Will understood little of what that actually meant, so he decided to cross that bridge when he came to it. For the moment, he would simply focus on opening gates while trying to stay alive.
With the looming threat of the gods, who were not only out for vengeance against the human race as a whole, but also especially hated Will’s old pal Latet who had royally screwed them over back in the day. All Will could afford to think about was finding ways to protect himself.
This made the need to get to Samari all the more pressing, as with numbers came safety. Not only that, but Will suspected that, if the library in a little port town had details about cultivation, then surely a massive city like Samari would have far more information to offer.
Will sighed and Sarah tapped him on the shoulder, “What’s wrong?” She asked, her voice even more entrancing than usual.
Shaking his head, Will sighed wearily, “It’s just… I’ve only been here a day and I’m already thinking about leaving. If what the librarian said was true, we have a lot more to worry about than animals… or Daemons I suppose, getting stronger,”
Sarah frowned, “I suppose, but now that I can see a solution, things don’t feel so bleak,”
“A solution?” Will muttered.
“Yeah!” She said, jabbing Will in the side, “If humans of old could cultivate and drive the gods away, that means we can do it too. I already have my foot in the door and all I need to do is open it,”
Seeing what she meant, Will asked an important question that had been on his mind since he found out Sarah had opened the gate of breath, “How does it feel? Having the gate open I mean.”
“Hm, it’s like, if my meridians are rivers and my dantian is the sea they all lead into, the life node is a spring that adds more water and widens the river… or the meridians… I don’t know if that made sense,”
Will frowned, trying to process what she had just said, “So you’re saying that the life gate is like a new source of energy that has widened your meridians, but what changes does that actually bring?”
“I feel stronger I suppose, and maybe it’s just because the gate I opened was the gate of breath, but I feel as though every time I breathe, I’m being energised by the world around me. Aside from that, there’s definitely more mana flowing through me now than there was earlier,”
“I wonder what use mana actually has?” Will mumbled.
“Do you think we will be able to do spells and stuff?” Sarah asked with a grin.
Will shrugged helplessly, he had no idea what abilities mana would bring with it in the future and to be honest, he was already happy enough with his strengthened body, something that had been massively helpful on his long walk to Port-Vale.
“I’ve just had a thought,” Sarah said.
“What?” Will asked.
“Well-“
A crash interrupted her and they both turned to look over at the library's entrance where a figure had just kicked open the heavy wooden doors like they were made of paper.
Teal strode in, wearing ripped clothes and bleeding from small scratches all over her body. She scanned the room like a hawk and zeroed in on Will and Sarah instantly.
“New kid!” She shouted.
Will looked around but found nobody else she could be referring to. “What could she want from me?” He whispered to Sarah as Teal strode over, her curly black hair hanging in a tangled mess across her stormy face.
"I have no idea," Sarah whispered back, "She never really talks to me about anything, aside from asking me to go hunting,”
“Shit, but she looks pissed,” Will cursed.
“Yeah… she does,” Sarah whispered before quietly sidling away from Will, leaving him to fend for himself.
Teal stormed over and grabbed Will’s shoulders, “You’re coming with me,” She commanded and tried to drag him away with her.
But Will didn’t budge, He stayed rooted to the spot in a display of strength that became all the more impressive when you consider the massive doors Teal just kicked open with ease.
She grunted and stopped trying to pull him with her, “Huh? Why are you so strong? you’re as thin as a twig.”
Will stuttered, intimidated by the older girl’s aggression while also being more than a little annoyed. He felt subtle anger begin to build within his chest, anger that he had never really known before.
He brushed her hands off his shoulders and asked her plainly, “What do you need my help with?”
Teal was still frowning at Will, she looked both confused and thoughtful, “I need to ask you about a few things, but first… what sort of training have you gone through?”
“None,” Will said simply, he couldn’t lie and pretend even if he wanted to.
“Then how are you so strong?” Teal repeated herself and to Will’s dismay, he began to feel compelled to answer.
“I-I” He started to say before Sarah cut him off.
“We found a manual on cultivation that I think you should check out,”
Teal turned around to stare at Sarah intently, “Where is it?” She asked bluntly. Her eyes seemed to burn intensely with blatant desire.
All Will and Sarah could do was point at the Librarians desk, where the thin man was sitting, completely unperturbed by the commotion as if he hadn’t noticed it at all.