Author's Note: This chapter is an unimportant one: I'm basically explaining some things, it's seriously not important. It just sums up what happens in the first 16 years of his life in Hell, and some of the layout of the 9th level. It's just about him leaving.
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The world around me distorted, and a circle flared up around me. Everything had gone black, and I found myself flailing around and crying. Everything was bright, so bright, and I was used to the peaceful dim. There was so much noise and stimulation, I was overwhelmed. Then I realized that my eyes were open, a woman in a white gown was holding me, and I was looking up. I wriggled my head around, to see a woman panting. To see my mother panting. It looked like reincarnation happened as well. I was a baby.
Calming down, I stopped crying and examined my body. Whew, I wasn’t female. I’m glad this wasn’t that kind of story. I had wisps of black hair on my head, my skin was slowly becoming less blue, and I was a lanky baby, with long arms and not much baby fat. Internally groaning, I mumbled to myself, “Aw, man, I’m going to be one of those kids? The ones that are really awkward looking no matter what they do, and everyone assumes they’re nerds instantly just looking at them? Sure, it’s what I was on Earth, but I at least didn’t look like it!”
I’m going to skip the next 16 years of my life because they’re so~ boring. I’m going to summarize all that happened here in about a page.
I already knew the language, it just kind of converted itself into English in my head, so no problem there. Also, I could just speak and they understood me, which I didn’t understand at first, but now I get that it’s because I subconsciously started speaking in the language they were, Erotopian. Of course, I could only talk fluently once I had all of my teeth, at about 3 or 4. I trained my body ever since I was 1, and could move my limbs around well enough. By the time I was 10, I looked like I was 15 without the pimples. I made no friends, sticking to the idea of training at a young age, and I copied what I had read in light novels, trying to build of qi and mana. I found that meditation worked for building mana, but exercise naturally built up qi. However, my talent for qi building was a lot less effective than I was with training mana. I assume it’s because I only have a minor spatial affinity for becoming a warrior, but I had a high earth affinity for becoming a mage, according to the gatekeeper. What did the mana and qi feel like? Imagine qi being like a rock in your stomach, but not painful or solid, and mana being like a well of water in your naval, but not really there. You could feel it and where it was, but it wasn’t really in your body. Our bodies are divided into two segments, spiritual and physical. Our physical body is what keeps our spirits grounded to the world, while our spiritual body is our thoughts and feelings. Our spiritual body has no substance, and contains our qi and mana, as well as our soul. I can’t describe it any other way. It’s like it was there without really being there. So yeah, I continued my training, occasionally hunting magical beasts in the forest and mountains around us. Magical beasts are exactly how they are described, beasts that possess magic powers, whether they are physically enhancing or mentally enhancing varies. By the time I was 16, and considered an adult, I was the most powerful person in the city, by far, as in I could defeat any one of them with just a flick of the wrist.
So I’m going to quote a xianxia I read called Coiling Dragon, and say something that anyone who read Coiling Dragon will laugh at. 16 years passed in the blink of an eye, and now, I was ready to go adventure the 9th level of the Necropolis. For those of you who haven’t read Coiling Dragon, the author of it overuses ‘in the blink of an eye’ to an extent that is practically a joke. But it wouldn’t be funny to you people who haven’t read it. Sorry. Anyway, I didn’t care if I was being foolish. It’s not as if I won’t get another chance eventually.
If we continue the analogy with a pool of water being mana and a rock being qi, my qi would now be like a 10 kg stone, and my mana would be like a kitty pool. Considering that the strongest warrior in the village had a 1 kg stone as qi, and the strongest mage had a puddle of water for mana… I think I was powerful enough to leave. So I did.
I’m going so summarize where I was reincarnated. Basically, it’s a new world with only one huge continent, Erotopia, with the rest being an ocean. Erotopia used to be vast and powerful, a mighty kingdom, but it broke apart into a bunch of separate territories. Bandits thrived in these conditions, moving from territory to territory. Magical beasts were even better at cooperating than we were, resulting in occasional raids that brought chaos. Wars were frequently waged over petty squabbles, and our great continent was on the brink of collapse.
I live in a territory called the Kallign Territory, and was leaving my town, Rena. I was going to head for Carnel, which is west from here, then go north to the capital of Kallign Territory, Raeburn City. There, I would join a sect or school of people that practice martial arts or magic and use their resources to gain power. Simple. From all of the xianxia I read, I would most likely have a fortunate encounter and end up either gaining a power, a skill, a talent, or an all-powerful item that allows me to swiftly take to the skies in cultivation.
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Oh yeah, more on my power that I forgot about. I told you about my cultivation levels for mana and qi, but never what I could do with it. Warriors are ranked into levels, 1-9. A stage 1 warrior is someone who has at least a 1 kg stone for qi. I’m a stage 2 with at least a 5 kg stone, and a 15 kg stone is a 3rd stage warrior. Stage 4 warriors have 30 kg stones, stage 5 have a 60 kg stone, and stage 6 have a 100 kg stone. Stage 7, 8, and 9 are all included together in 200, 300, and 400 kg stones. There is also a way to break through the 9th level and become a Saint class warrior, who has their stone melt into a liquid similar to qi, but flows through your blood, strengthening your body.
As for what qi does, it’s like manual adrenaline. You know the stories of grandmas lifting cars to save grandchildren, or other stuff like that? This is doing that manually, but safely. Normally it would tear up your muscles, joints, and your body in general, but qi protects your body while you unlock its power. The further you are in cultivation, the more you can push your bodies limits. A 2nd stage warrior like me can force his body to lift about 700 pounds, while a 1st stage warrior can life 550.
Mana is like Harry Potter minus the incantations. We just think what we want to happen and it happens. If we don’t have enough power to cast the spell then it draws on our life force. Life force is powerful too, so a beginner mage has the capability of casting an intermediate spell. The rankings are beginner, novice, intermediate, advanced, master, grandmaster. There are no spells, really, but magic is ranked by three factors. Complexity, range, and power. Complexity, how much do you have to imagine to create the spell. For example, a weather changing spell, you have to think what causes what weather, and imagine what needs to happen to cause that weather. Of course, that is for long range and lasting weather change, like making it snow for a week in July. If you want it to snow for a few seconds in a small area, you can of course just imagine snowfall, but it is easier to cause small changes that snowball into a large effect. That’s why most mages are seen as sages and wise men. Range, how large do you want the effect to be. Adapting the earlier example, do I want it to snow in all of the Kallign territory, or do I want it to snow in my town? The larger the effect, the greater the mana consumption. Finally, power. How long do you want this effect to last, or how powerful will it be? Again with the snow, do I want to cause it to happen for a day, a week, a month, or even a year? Or with the stereotypical fireball, how much power do I want it to have? Do I want it to be a candle flame or do I want it to be a sun? The greater the power the more mana required.
Have I talked for too long? Or actually, wrote too much? Whatever, you don’t have to read that if you don’t want to, but later you might be confused. And that won’t be on me, this chapter is literally just about explaining stuff.
Looking back on it, I have more to tell you regarding this stuff. I did I forget to talk about the attributes? Well, so there are 8 different attributes. Fire, water, wind, earth, light, dark, spatial, and time. Your attribute can change your proficiency for a mage and your abilities for a warrior. For mages, you are most proficient at manipulating your elemental affinity, so I would be best at manipulating the earth. For warriors, it means much more. Qi powers your body, and strengthens it so that it can endure the strain. So what happens if you strengthen a body with fire? Don’t you think that you might gain some fiery characteristics, like, I don’t know, lighting on fire and burning everything you touch? Or say you have my attribute, spatial, you might just start being able to teleport your weapon forward or have your enemy’s weapon suddenly appear next to their own head. Time, though, is the most complex of all of the elements, and the hardest to control. Although it is super powerful, because you can randomly fast forward and either see what will happen in the near future, know what might happen in the far future, or put your spiritual body in the future to be able to move faster than normal. But you can also accidently teleport into the past or future, touch something, create a paradox, and die. So, yeah. Done.
The area around my village was rocky and hilly, with small patches of forest every here and there. There were mountains to the south and a large river running to the east. I had only one plausible path, so West I shall go. I need to get stronger.