Orion’s eyes flew open, and he jerked up into a sitting position. He looked down at himself, and instead of seeing a skinny figure covered by a blanket, he saw a built physique with some light and dirty clothes on it. It was immediately clear to him that he had been transported into the boy he had seen in his dream. He tried forcing himself to wake up every way he knew. He slapped himself, pinched himself, and nothing worked. Worse, this felt very, very real. A suffocating panic was starting to sink in on him.
“Okay, what the fuck is going on!? I want to go home; this isn’t funny!” The only response was his own echo. Suddenly, his eyes rolled back into his head as his consciousness was flooded with information. He saw a crying woman laying him under a bed; he remembered a poor-looking man taking him from there and bringing him to the slums; he remembered being raised there; he remembered the man who raised him dying of a sickness, he remembered learning to steal, he remembered all the chases through the streets, all the fights and scuffles, and of course, he remembered the slaughter in which his clan was annihilated.
Panic was seriously starting to set in now. In a flash, he thought about what had happened to his body at home, if his family was okay, if he could ever escape, and thousands of other such thoughts. Unfortunately, his only conclusion was that this was now his life and he had no choice but to live it. He wiped his tears and forced himself to calm down. Orion had always been a fairly logical person and saw no point in freaking out, instead deciding to try to make sense of his situation.
A robotic voice sounded within his mind with no warning. [Welcome, host. Begin system initialization?] Orion jumped out of bed, his heart beating at speeds he never thought physically possible as adrenaline flooded his bloodstream. He got into a fighting stance that he assumed he knew from the boy and looked around the dusty hideout.
“Who’s there?!” The metallic voice once more echoed in his head. [Welcome, host. Begin system initialization?] After scanning his surroundings some more, Orion realized that the voice was coming from within his head. As he focused on it, a translucent blue panel appeared in the air. On it was the question ‘Begin system initialization?’ and the options ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. Not knowing what else to do, he visualized pressing ‘Yes’. The button lit up, and the tab disappeared. Still very confused, Orion looked around to see that nothing had actually happened. Just as he started to sit down on his bed, the floor dropped out from beneath his feet, and he felt himself falling until he landed on his face on a floor that looked similar to the panel from before, but with no words. After getting up, he saw that he was in a seemingly endless world that looked a lot like the loading screen of a video game. The floor was light blue, although not translucent, and the sky was dark blue. As his heart slowed down and his breathing steadied, a genderless, faceless figure sprouted out from the floor in front of him, making Orion jump in surprise.
[Greetings, host. I am the embodiment of The System, and you have been chosen as the host. You are destined to be the sole ruler of the Omniverse and all of its denizens. Congratulations.] The figure started morphing, and in a couple of seconds it mirrored Orion perfectly. For the first time, he saw what his new body looked like. He still looked to be around 16, and his face resembled his old one, but looked much better. His hair had been buzzed, his eyes had turned from brown to deep green, his cheekbones were higher and more prominent, and his jawline was more chiseled. His physique had improved vastly as well: he now had wide shoulders, built arms, a triangular back, and especially developed legs.
[The system has now been integrated. Initialization complete.] The blue world melted around Orion, who still couldn’t really process what was happening, and he once more found himself in his previous environment. He mustered up the willpower to close his gaping mouth and try to calmly understand what was happening. It seemed he had been placed in a world with magic, and now a system resided inside him that would give him quests and hand out rewards. He found that if he concentrated, he could sense a blue dot in the back of his mind. He focused on it, and a new panel popped out. On it, he could see his stats and information. At the side, he could see a tab with the word ‘quests’ on it and another with the word ‘store’. For now, he focused on the stats page.
name: Orion Yu
age: 16
level: 1
physique(s): n/a
race: Griffin Pureblood (level 3)
skills: true form, flight, all-seeing eyes
dao: n/a
aspect(s): n/a
strength: 20
dexterity: 20
speed: 20
vitality: 20
endurance: 20
intelligence: 20
luck: 20
available skill points: 20
“First things first: where the fuck am I?”
[You are in the kingdom of Rane, which is the most powerful kingdom on the Diamond Continent. The Diamond Continent is the largest continent in this world, the Divine Stream World.]
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“What do you mean, worlds? Also, how can I go home?”
[The collection of all existence is called the Omniverse. The Omniverse is made up of innumerable multiverses, each with trillions of universes and each of those contain trillions of worlds. There’s also an underworld that exists outside of space and time, which houses the souls of the dead while they look for bodies in which to reincarnate. You can only go home if you get powerful enough to cross multiverses.]
Although Orion was scared shitless and very confused, he decided to calm down and get a sense of his new existence.
“What do dexterity, endurance, and intelligence do?”
[Dexterity basically gives you coordination. It makes you good at shooting bows and throwing knives, gives you rough skills like skinning animals, and gives you precision with your strikes. Endurance does two things: first, it gives you stamina. The higher your endurance, the longer you can fight. Second, it helps you take less damage. While vitality is your total HP, endurance is like a shield. Intelligence also does two things. First, it actually makes you more intelligent. Second, it makes your spells and skills more powerful.]
After looking over his stats again, Orion felt a twinge of disappointment.
“Why am I so weak?”
[The average stats for someone who doesn’t cultivate are all 10. With every level you gain, your stats, aura and lifespan increase. First, they double, then triple, then quadruple, and et cetera. The only stat that doesn’t do that is luck, it stays the same for normal cultivators, usually between 10 and 15. The only way to improve it is incredibly expensive treasures. Before you gained the system, you were unable to cultivate, so all your stats were 10. When you took in the system, it placed you on the cultivation road at level 1. Every cultivator has stats of 20. When you reach level 2, that will double. At level 3, it’ll triple. As for the available skill points, that’s another present from the system. Normal cultivators don’t have access to their stats; they just see themselves grow stronger with every level. You, however, get free skill points when you grow, and they grow just like stats. Now, you have 20, but when you reach level 2, you will get 40, then 120. You can choose where to allocate them.]
“What’s aura?”
[Every cultivator has the ability to release the energy that exists within them and turn it into an aura. This aura is basically just the manifestation of your cultivation. It can be used to infuse strikes to improve their attack power, it can be used to reinforce an area for defence, or it can be used to weaken or even entirely suppress an opponent. The aura power gain between levels is tremendous, but the improvement that comes with steps is still quite significant and becomes much, much greater at a higher cultivation.]
“Why? Also, what do you mean, steps?”
[Every level is divided into 10 smaller steps, so just because your cultivation level is equal, that does not mean your actual cultivation energy is. As for the aura gain with steps, think of it like this: one stat point in every stat is one unit of power. Between level 1 and 2, you get 20 power points. However, between level 2 and 3, you get 80. The reason this affects the aura gain between steps is that that power gain is basically distributed amongst the nine steps. Although you don’t actually get the stats with every step, your aura increases as if you did.]
“How does cultivation actually work. How do I raise my level?”
[There are many ways to cultivate. There’s artifacts, pills and elixirs, skills that let you cultivate, special zones, and traditional cultivation. You also get cultivation from winning fights. Traditional cultivation is basically meditation. As you meditate, you instincively take in the energy around you and use it to boost your strength. This is the least efficient but most available method of cultivation. However, it can be improved with cultivation methods. Those are ways to speed up traditional cultivation and sometimes grant other benefits, and they also help you cultivate aspects and Dao, which can only be cultivated with meditation.]
“Okay, cool. Now tell me about race, physiques, aspects, and Dao.”
[Well, the race is pretty clear: it’s your bloodline. Theoretically, there are the same amount of race tiers as cultivation levels, so infinite, but no one knows what bloodlines lay beyond level 50 as no one has ever reached it. Perhaps they stop evolving at a certain point. Most people are stuck with the race they’re born into unless they get really lucky or have access to incredible resources, but thanks to the system, you can change your race pretty easily. You’re a Griffin Pureblood, a level 3 race. Some races give you abilities and skills, and that’s how you got your ‘True Form’ skill, but if you change your race, those skills disappear.
Physiques are sets of abilities that you merge with your body. For example, the Darkest Night physique gives you darkness-related abilities. Some physiques give better than abilities than others, which is decided through low, middle, high and astral tiers. This ranking determines the quality of the abilities given by the physique. Physiques, like races have infinite tiers. These tiers don’t tell you about the quality of the physique’s abilities, but about their raw power. A level 3 ‘Darkest Night’ physique would be 3 times more powerful than a level 2, although it would have the same abilities. Also, physiques evolve with cultivation. This means that although you can have a physique higher than your cultivation, a physique lower than your cultivation will evolve to match it. Same with skills. Mastery of physiques is divided into the nascent, controlled, and absorbed tiers. Each tier lets you use a greater share of the physique’s might.
Aspects are your ability to utilize the building blocks of existence. Aspects are divided into four levels: lower, higher, mighty, and absolute. An example of a lower aspect is fire. A higher aspect would be nature. A mighty aspect would be light. There are only six absolute aspects, the most basic building blocks of existence: life, death, truth, time, and space. All other aspects came from these. Mastery of aspects is also divided into nascent, controlled, and absorbed. However, one can only absorb one aspect, as absorption of an aspect essentially makes a cultivator the embodiment of that aspect. However, if you reach absorption in an absolute aspect, a new step is unlocked: sublime understanding. Once you reach the sublime understanding tier, you can begin the absorption of a new aspect until you reach sublime tier in all absolute aspects. This will essentially turn you into an embodiment of every fundamental truth in existence.
Now, the Dao. It is the most important thing for fighting within your cultivation level. Your Dao is your soul. It must be mighty and unbreakable and represent you as a person and as a cultivator. A Dao can only be developed at level 7. Dao are also divided into the same four tiers as aspects, and a Dao’s tier depends on both its stability, and how much it drives you. Absolute Daos’ might is unthinkable, but the will needed to acquire one is, of course, earthshaking.]
Orion digested this information and focused on the quest page.