Prologue
The kingdom of Rane had one royal house, and six high noble houses. It had been organized that way for the millennia of its existence and the system worked well, as the combined might and influence of the six high nobles matched that of the king, so the nobles could keep him in check. The weakest of those houses, and the one most opposed to the current king’s tyrannical ways was house Yu, whose palace was now filled with screams of agony as the king’s Poison Cloud Battalion burned and murdered everyone in sight. Blood painted the previously pristine white walls crimson as members of the noble house fell under the royal blades. Among all this chaos, the matriarch of the family, Ari Yu, was running towards her bedroom, holding her wailing newborn baby. As she reached the room, she rushed over to her bed and carefully wrapped her child in some blankets.
A solitary tear fell upon the crying baby’s face. “The soul of the Yu clan lays inside your heart. Carry it well, my beloved son.” She tucked her crying baby under the bed and ran back into the hall in a vain attempt to escape, but as she was approaching the main gate, she heard a horrible metallic scraping and bone chilling laughter echo behind her. She stopped in her tracks with her shoulders slumped, her face a painting of despair. She turned with a sad smile to greet Rane’s Nightmare.
“Hello, brother.” The man standing before her was the most notorious man in all of Rane, Shen Yu. Shen was the shame of the Yu family, as even when he was a child he was known as a depraved and perverted sadist. When at thirteen years old, he had tied a mortal maid to a bed, raped, tortured and killed her, he was stripped of all belongings and exiled. He had found refuge with the king, who saw potential in his cultivation talent and cruelty. Now, he was known as the cruelest and most depraved man in the past, present and future. He had slaughtered, burned and tortured thousands of innocents simply because it pleased him. His battalion, the Poison Cloud, a 200 man strong force, was known for not letting a single person who ever saw them live. Due to this, no one actually knew how powerful they were or what abilities they possessed, but all knew that their cruelty and bloodlust was outmatched by none. Of the king’s 12 elite battalions, they were the most evil and ruthless, though only third strongest.
“So, how have you been, dear sister?” sweetly inquired the most evil man in all existence with a radiant smile as he approached his sister, his bloodied axe dragging on the floor. She gave no response except pulling out a dagger from the folds of her noble garb. A dark purple aura emerged from her and mighty wings of the same hue sprouted from her back as a mighty pressure emanated from her body. Her dagger elongated into a katana covered in the same purple energy as the matriarch. Shen only let out a sinister chuckle at the sight of this terrible force.
“Well done, sister! You finally broke through to level 5. How impressive!” Still calmly walking towards her, he began clapping sardonically as he released his own aura. A domineering, oppressive force leaked out from him and enveloped everything in his immediate vicinity, shattering the Yu matriarch’s power. She fell to her knees and spat blood, her katana clattering to the floor beside her.
“Im-impossible. How could you have already reached level 6?!”
“Well, you never could quite measure up to me, could you, dear sister?”
A haunting grin spread across his face as he lifted his axe and colored the walls with his sister’s blood.
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16 years later, a hooded boy was being chased through the narrow, bustling streets of the capital of Rane by a guard who had spotted him stealing from Andres, the asshole merchant who always ripped off his customers. Andres was the boy’s favorite target to steal food from since he was a giant cunt and in the boy’s eyes, deserved it. A life spent relying on stolen food to survive had made him very nimble and athletic, so he usually had little to no trouble evading law enforcement, but this guard was particularly persistent. The boy looked behind him and saw the guard was about 30 meters behind him, but when he turned back around, a grin broke out on the boy’s face as he saw his opportunity. He had reached the end of the bazaar and the start of the slums. He quickly calculated his trajectory and narrowed his eyes in concentration. He jumped onto a merchant’s stand littered with ripe, delicious-looking mangoes, quickly picking one up and throwing it in his satchel. From there, he had another jump to grab hold of the edge of the roof of a close-by hut, so he jumped and just barely managed to climb on. As he stood on the roof, he looked around to make sense of his surroundings.
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Other than the royal palace, the capital was actually quite poor, and extremely crowded. It was divided into 16 zones, each with a slum, a wealthier habitation district, a bazaar, and a pleasure district. The pleasure districts were full of bars, brawling houses, and of course, brothels. The capital held about 3 billion people, so even though people were packed in very tightly, each zone was still around 300 square km, so an old king had dispersed 10 teleportation circles among every district of every zone to make transportation easier. Since the capital was so crowded, many-tiered huts had been built in the habitation districts, poor and middle-class, resulting in narrow streets and many roofs. The roof the boy was now standing on belonged to a small structure that was at the base of one such hut complex. With a runup, he leapt onto the next level of huts and climbed on top. Just as he was about to run away over the roofs of the slum’s huts, he turned towards the guard, gave him a gloating smile and stuck out his middle finger. He climbed to other side of the wall, his escape having been successful.
He looked around to situate himself and quickly made his way home. He entered a teleportation circle and in a couple of minutes, he reached his hideout, which was located in the core of the slums. Fortunately, all the dangerous criminals and drug lords that ruled over the slums knew him very well and practically raised him, so he had nothing to fear as long as he didn’t cross them. The actual hideout was just a section in an underground tunnel formerly used by the black market to transport illegal goods. It had been shut down when the army discovered it, and the tunnel had been collapsed from both ends, therefore made inaccessible, but the boy had discovered that there was a wall in the slums with a crack in it that he could use to get inside. A small section of said wall was hollowed out, with some swords leaned where the hollowing ended and the wall resumed, so the boy assumed it was formerly used to store weapons. On the floor on the inside of that wall lay a carpet that covered some wooden planks. Under a specific two planks was a ladder down to the tunnel. There, the boy had set up his hideout, which consisted of a dirty old mattress, a rusty dagger next to it, a giant bucket of water and some reserves of food that was held in magic containers so it wouldn’t go bad, which he used if he failed to scour any food on a certain day. He climbed onto his tattered mattress, devoured his hard-earned food and quickly fell asleep.
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In another universe, a different 16 year old called Orion was getting home after a much less exciting day. He was now peacefully falling asleep after having dinner with his brother, who was now 23 and visiting home for a few days. He had recently graduated college and now worked in a prominent law firm. He was tall, handsome, athletic, confident and knew how to get what he wanted. Basically, he was the polar opposite of Orion, who was quite short, skinny, by no means ugly but quite average looking, introverted and a giant pushover.
While asleep, Orion dreamt of strange things. He saw his soul lift out of his body and travel untold distances, to worlds he knew could only exist in his dreams. After what seemed like millennia of travel, he finally entered a world which he could somewhat understand. It was a mystical world, with beings who had the power to erase universes with a wave of the hand, mighty mythical beasts, and spirits floating about the streets.
He felt drawn to this world, and began exploring it. He flew through the bustling streets and saw a man weeping over a table of mangoes in disarray. He kept going until he saw a crack in a wall, which he flew into and floated through the floor, appearing in the tunnel. He immediately saw the sleeping boy and before he knew what happened, he felt himself sucked into the boy. He tried to resist the powerful attraction, but all in vain. He let out one final scream, before -