Awarang, a small elven town in Gretharea Kingdom, 47 Gearro 3982
When he was just a few steps away from me, my uncle opened his mouth. And the first thing he said was…
“KHAEL?!”
Huh? How had he known my name already? And why did he say it in that angry tone?
“Er… yeah. That’s the name I chose. How…”
“Why?” interrupted my uncle, in his usual short grumpy way of talking, yet in surprisingly scary tone which I had never heard from him.
“Why? Er… do you mean why… why I chose the name? Well, uh… because it’s cool… also er… short, and simple enough? Um… how do you know that I picked that name, Uncle?” I said awkwardly. I was always bad in having conversation with this uncle of mine, but today… it was much worse.
He snorted and simply answered in one word, “Laertreon.”
Great! I should have known that it was that silly talkative guard. “Uh… is there anything wrong with my name, Uncle?”
“Fool!”
“Huh? Fool? Me? I am a fool… er… because I chose the name? Why?”
“It’s CURSED!” My uncle roared angrily.
“Wait, what?! My name is cursed? Really?!” I said in a shock.
I knew that elves believed in many things that people of my old world would call superstitions. One of those beliefs was that some names were cursed. In my old world, I would simply laugh at that silly nonsense. But here, in the world where magic and curse really existed, of course I wouldn’t ignore that.
My uncle snorted again. “Come!” He said and moved quickly to his tree-house. Even when he carried a big heavy barrel full of weapons, he easily climbed up to the house. I quickly followed him.
My uncle dropped the barrel he carried randomly on the table in the living room. He then did a quick search to one of the two medium sized bookshelves there. Soon, he took out a book from the bookshelf and flipped the pages quickly.
I could see the title of the book, ‘Blessings and Curses’. I had read that book. In fact, I had read all the books in those two bookshelves. Did I really miss some information there? I was pretty sure that I had memorized all the cursed names.
“Here!” My uncle shoved me the book.
I took the opened book and quickly read the title of the page, ‘Blessed yet Cursed Names’. Wait… blessed and cursed at the same time? I didn’t remember there was something like that. Did I really miss this? There were only a few names written here, and… Damn! There it was my name down there… How could I miss something like this?
Khael (thorn or tusk) - the name was blessed with unexpected luck in acquiring power by Neira, the Goddess of Wild Life, but, at the same time, was also cursed by Arze, the God of War, with ill-fated destiny of always attracting stronger opponents .
What the heck was this?! Luck in acquiring power? So that was why I got three extremely rare choices in magic specialization. But… this… always attracting stronger opponents? How the hell could my luck be useful then?! What good was it to get strong power when the enemy was always stronger? Did I have to always run away from my enemies?
I frantically flipped the pages further to find any information on how to break the curse of chosen names. I knew I had read something like that before. And, here it was…
Curses on names and titles could not be cleansed by normal means such as dispelling magic or purifying rituals. The only way they are broken is when the possessor of the cursed titles reach the pinnacle of mortal power in the domain related to the titles; and when the possessor of the cursed names reach the pinnacles of mortal power in all three domains.
I felt weak immediately, as if the whole power in me disappeared from every single cell of my body. This was ridiculous. Reaching the pinnacles of mortal power in all three domains… Shit!
I tried to calm myself down. I needed to think about this carefully. The good news was that the curse on my name could be purged. The bad news was… it would probably take me more than a hundred years to do it. That was if I were extremely lucky.
Reaching the pinnacle of mortal power meant that I needed to reach level 100… whereas I was now still in level 1. And, worse yet, I needed to reach level 100 in all three domains: soul, mind, and body. Well, it was indeed in line with the first stage of my existing plan since at that stage I wanted to level all domains equally, but still… reaching level a hundred in all three domains of power would be… really hard. In my original plan, I wanted to hit fifty in all domains before focusing in one domain only, mind. That was because leveling up in the upper level was much… much harder. But looking at my current situation, it seemed that I had to change the plan.
Level, in this world, was not exactly the same as the normal ‘level’ thing introduced by the classic RPG games. In fact, here, it was closer to power rank in Chinese stories. Increasing a level here was not acquired through killing monsters or completing quests. It was acquired through practice and intentional effort to break through the layer of power within one’s soul, mind, or body.
In Raea, there were fundamentally three domains of power which could increase in levels.
The first domain, soul or spirit, would increase in level when the quality of inner spiritual power was improved well enough to break each spiritual layer within. The elves called this inner spiritual power, which was in a way a little similar to ki, rokh. The only way to increase the quantity and improve the quality of rokh was by practicing breathing techniques while circulating inner energy through spiritual channel deep inside the soul core. It was not too different from Eastern’s power cultivation concept in my old world, with its meridian and diantian things.
The second domain, mind, was basically related to mind quality, like concentration, memory capacity, thought processing speed, and the most prominent of all… magic power. It would increase in level every time an acceptable portion of one’s mana was refined to become better in quality. The only known way to refine mana was through mana-refining meditation, which basically was a concept of absorbing mana from the environment and filtering out its impurities within one’s mind by focusing willpower inward.
The last domain, body, was the hardest to increase for elves like me. Exercising or training muscles in regular manner would not make me increase in body level. Body domain involved dyaan, which was akin to stamina-vigor-resilience thing. And it also involved every single cell of my body, including bones, skins, flesh, joints, nerves, blood, internal organs, and even hair.
There were only two known methods for leveling up this domain. The first was through life and death battle against stronger or equal opponents, which I would like to avoid if possible. The second was through body-tempering routine, which basically stimulated, and shivered, every single cell of the body through a tai-chi-like movement. However, unlike the tai-chi movement in my own world, the body-tempering movement here was… extremely painful.
Breaking to the next level in each of those three domains produced similar result, about twenty percent increase in the quality and quantity of rokh, mana, or dyaan, as well as about ten percent increase in the general quality of the domain. This percent-based improvement simply meant that those who were willing to spend more time enhancing their power’s quality and capacity through practice before breaking through the next level would get more benefits.
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This actually created some kind of dilemma. Let’s say that I passed the minimum requirement to break through the next level. Should I break through right away? Or should I spend more time to strengthen myself further before breaking through the next level? If I picked the first choice, I would get less improvement, but I would be stronger earlier. If I picked the second choice, I would get more improvement, but it would take more time to be stronger. Which one should I choose?
The second choice seemed to be more attractive in the long term. But again, this world was not very safe. Who could guarantee that no stronger enemy would attack me when I was trying to strengthen myself? In the case of unexpected earlier attack like that; earlier breakthrough would give me more chances of surviving. But, if the enemy attacked much later in the future, when I was already at the peak of my power, later breakthrough would be much more advantageous. This was the damned dilemma everybody in this world had to face.
My current situation of still being in the first level was actually the case of me choosing the second choice. I had already passed the minimum requirement for breaking through to level two in ‘mind’ domain since about seven years ago and in the other two domains since five years ago. Yet, I decided to postpone the breakthrough to gain more benefits. It seemed that it was time for me to stop postponing and start leveling up.
Alright, my short-term target should be… let’s see… to hit level five in thirty days should be reasonable. Okay, I would do that. With the success of my experiment, it should be an easy thing to do.
My experiment… well, it was strongly related to my practice in three domains of power. As a normal civilian of elven society, I had the simplest, most elementary access for training soul and body… the [Basic Body Tempering Routine] for body, and the [Universal Foundation Cultivation Technique] for soul. For training mind, on the other hand, I had an access to my father’s technique which was somehow higher in quality compared to the basic one. This mind training technique was called the [Blue Sky Meditation].
Outside my regular training practice, for these five years, I had tried to combine all three practicing methods. It was a slow going… and painful process. I had almost given up many times. Trying to stimulate every cell in the body while, at the same time, controlling rokh to circulate in specific order was hard enough. Adding inward focused mind to that mix was like pouring oil in already blazing fire… disastrous.
However, it was good that I didn’t give up. Last Veruna, season of water, I did reach an acceptable degree of success in the experiment for the first time. Now, I had almost perfected the mixed up training technique, which I simply called [Trinity Training Technique]. I should have no problem in reaching up to level thirty using this technique. It might take some time to get to that level, three years at the very least, but I should not face any bottleneck situations yet. Over level thirty though… that would be a very different problem.
Well, level thirty should be comparable to the elven guards. Laertreon once, less than a year ago, told me that he was level thirty three in soul domain, and twelve in mind domain. He said he didn’t even bother increasing his level in body domain, so he was probably level one or two at it. So, assuming that he didn’t lie, I could safely conclude that the average level of the elven guards would be early thirties, since Laertreon’s rank was just a little above average within the guards.
Anyway, what Laertreon did, increasing mostly one dominant domain while abandoning another one, was a normal thing to do, since most people would just choose one main domain to improve and probably just one other for support. Leveling all three would be too time-consuming. Besides, when one’s level was measured, usually for job application requirement, by an [Identify] spell or the gnomish gadget [Appraisal Goggle], only the highest level would appear. Yeah, those without the spell or the gadget would have no way of measuring someone’s level.
Wait… why did I even think about this random info? Damn it! I needed to focus. My problem was not these things. My problem was this damned silly curse on my name. How should I deal with this ‘always-attracting-stronger-opponent’ annoyance?
Breaking the curse would be the ideal things, of course. But it would take years, or even centuries, for me to get to the condition where the curse could be broken. What should I do to deal with this curse meanwhile? Should I isolate myself until I reached the peak of mortal power?
Nope. That was not the answer. Where would I even do that isolation thing? Within a ‘safe’ town?! I was almost die, being chased by monsters in this ‘safe’ town just right after I chose my name. Within a ‘safe’ wilderness?! What was I thinking? There was no such thing like that…
Okay, isolation was not the answer…
I had to survive against stronger opponents, didn’t I? Should I focus on my escaping skill mastery? That would not be so bad, wouldn’t it? I could keep doing my parkour, learn… stealth, hide, teleport. That would be interesting. I could be a… ninja or something like that.
……
Nope. That was just partially correct answer. I wouldn’t mind learning ninja-like skills, but I should not completely rely on run-away mindset. Escapism would really deter my growth, both in power and in personality. Besides, I remembered that in most RPG games and fantasy stories, there was this kind of events where the protagonist was unable to escape from a fight.
Well, I didn’t think that I was a protagonist and this definitely was not a game, but that was not the problem. The problem was… I knew there were at least seven master level magic spells, three special soul skills, and two expensive gnomish gadgets that locked an enemy within one area. If any of those was used on me, it would simply be the ‘BOSS event’ inescapable battle. Therefore, for me, relying completely on escaping skills was obviously… not going to happen.
Damn! This curse was really troublesome. Stronger opponent… stronger… I knew the stronger would not always be the winner. So, how could the weaker win against the stronger?
Numbers! That was the first answer that came to my mind. A party of adventurers defeating a BOSS monster was what I imagined related to this. That meant that I needed to get allies, huh? This could work, but it was definitely not going to be in my top priority list. I had already said that I had a problem with trust, hadn’t I?
Another way that the weaker could win against the stronger was through… equipment. If I could somehow get a single quantum gun from my old world, or even the weaker version… the photon rifle that those people in twenty second century used, I would simply blast these silly ‘stronger opponents’ of mine to dust.
Unfortunately, in my past life I simply was a biologist, not a gun or mechanical maniac. I had no idea how to build gadgets, except the plain-simple-archaic ones. Well here, I could probably get enchanted weapons or something… But, that would be much later, since those kinds of powerful equipment were definitely not cheap. And I had pretty limited fund at the moment.
For now, I would have to rely on simple iron weapons. I had given a pair of weapon designs to my uncle. Er… he said he would make them for me when he had spare time. Anyway, I designed those custom-made weapons for practicality, not power. So, I could not really depend on them to overpower my stronger enemies.
I had to find another way to anticipate my damned curse. What else would let the weaker win against the stronger?
Poison…? Nah, it was too dangerous, not just for the enemies, but also for me.
Alchemy and enchanting…? Nope! Too expensive!
Wait… there was that thing… Martial Art!
Yeah… martial art! Some types of martial arts in my past life were designed to make use of the enemies’ strength to defeat them. Yup, that was right. Judo, jujitsu, some types of wrestling, some styles of kung-fu… yeah, that kind of martial art…
Here, in this world, there were also many different styles of martial arts. Currently, I was learning two of them, the [Tappa], a kind of bare handed martial art which was a little similar to Thai kickboxing, since it utilized fist, elbows, legs, and knees liberally; and the [Loweld], a martial art which specialized in dual-wielding short weapons.
The problem was… these two martial arts I was learning focused on refining and improving my own fighting techniques. In short it was focusing to make me stronger, faster, and more experienced. It had… ‘when I was better than my opponent, I win’… that kind of mindset. Well, there was normally nothing wrong with that. Many martial arts in my old world did that too, like boxing, karate, or sumo. It was the… manly martial art. It was definitely more appealing to me that those kinds of ‘dance-like’ martial arts that focused on the ‘beautiful’ movement. The problem was again… my stupid curse.
I rummaged my memories, searching for martial art styles that were closer to what I needed. And very soon, I found it.
[Ealong]… That would be the martial art that I needed. The dojo was not that far from here. It was actually even closer to this place compared to the dojos of [Tappa] and [Loweld] I was attending. The only reason I didn’t attend the [Ealong] dojo previously was because… well, the students there were mostly girls and the short weak-looking dawn elves. Yeah... It seemed that I had been stupid enough to judge people from their outer appearance.
Alright, I had decided. I would prioritize learning [Ealong] now, although I might need to end my practice in either [Tappa], or [Loweld], or both of them.
Of course, I would still need to practice my free-run. It had saved my life previously. And I needed to spend some time trying to learn [Matjiwa]. Also, I should prepare some time for my level-up, and probably increase the amount of time I would spend for my [Trinity Training Technique] afterward. Wait… I still had some books in the library that I had to read because it might be crucial for my future survival. And I would need more money, so I had to spend some time helping in my uncle’s workshop to earn it.
Gosh! This schedule… Would I even have time for a break?