Author’s Note- Hi. Linklight2 here. Sorry I couldn't submit this yesterday, I don't actually have internet. But can that stop me from writing a chapter? No! So here you guys have it.

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World Background

The earliest recorded event of our empire starts at about 3,000 years ago, the end of the dark ages. The first cultivator, Thomas Geotard, was a great man of opportunity.

At first he was the son of the mayor, a drunk. But one day, while he was working in the field when a tragedy for his village occurred. A volcano erupted without warning in the territory of the Mulyer family. Unlike the others, Thomas ran to get his most valued belonging, beer, from his cave at the foot of the volcano. A foolhardy attempt in most cases but not for Thomas.

When he reached his cave, he frantically gathered as much as he could carry, but it was all for naught because he ended up getting hit on the head with a cup of beer. But that was his fortune, for when he woke, he knew he had survived the volcano eruption with minimal injuries. However, before he got the chance to celebrate, Thomas realized that the only exit to the cave was holed over by an avalanche. With nowhere to go except deeper into the cave, Thomas had to try his luck at finding another cave exit.

While walking, he happenstanced upon a mysterious stone that shined with a golden glow. Thomas went to pick it up only because it was a source of light, but when he did, he fell into a trance that lasted 10 years.

Unknown to Thomas at the time, when he picked up that glowing stone, he picked up an electricity core that awakened all others who had an affinity to electricity.  Primal knowledge was sent to those who were awakened as well, creating the first true cultivators.

When Thomas awakened again, he was no longer himself. He had gained primal knowledge surpassing his identity, changing his outlook over the whole world, and he was no longer known as the drunkard named Thomas Geotard. So he fashioned a new name for himself. It was, Theren, and after establishing himself as a new entity, he blasted away the cave with a wave of energy. Using his newfound powers, he put himself above the world of barbarians, and created the Lightning empire.

One of the biggest things Theren was credited for was unlocking the cores other than lightning with limit break. For the first time, elements other than electricity awakened giving everyone above 12 years old an element specific to them.

These elements were water, fire, earth, air, light, and darkness. Every human now had an unlocked core, but not everyone had the talent to become great.

Only 1 out of every 10 people had the talent to guarantee going past the 0th rank and achieving the basic realm. For talent to guarantee going past the basic realm into the intermediate realm, the chances were 1 out of every 100 that had the talent to move into the basic realm. However the advanced realm was much more rare.

1 out of every 1,000 that had the talent to move into the intermediate realm had the talent to move into the advanced realm. But the perfect realm talent was heaven gifted. About 1 in every 10,000 people that had the talent to move into the advanced realm had the talent to go above and beyond into the perfect realm or the 10th rank. That meant in total 1 out of one hundred billion had the talent to reach the tenth rank!

Of course it was later found out that people with talent had higher chances of giving birth a child with talent equal to one of their parents. However, the element acquired was always completely random, with a 1 in 10,000 chance for someone only able to use natural energy. This was found to be constant throughout the whole population through Theren’s repeated testing.

During his 500 year reign, Theren also found out about the ranks and realms and classified them as such. But he himself was the one exception to the rule of the ranks, but in estimation he was half a step into something greater, something that transcends the classification of ranks.

The great emperor went into seclusion researching this realm, and theorized on how to get to the realm. However, his findings were not recorded before his death, and he died at the staggering age of 1037. With the emperor dead and everyone claiming to the public that they were the recorded successor, a war of attrition came into being.

Each element grouped into a sect with one head claiming to be the successor. In all there were 7 sects and they fought for over 100 years. But at this time, a new era was about to take place, and at it’s head would be Mark Cyan.

At the measly age of 11 years old, Mark was a slave with a specialized task. He was to polish the great statue of the emperor, Theren. One day, Mark had finished his job on the statue and was going to get a meal, when he heard a strange humming sound.

To his surprise, the forehead of the statue looked unpolished, yet he had just polished the whole statue! As a slave, if he didn’t do his job right he would be killed.

Hurriedly, Mark went back to the top to finish up his job when something shot out of the forehead of the statue and into his chest. It was Theren’s heritage, the divine ligning core. But due to the short passage of time between the inheritance and the death, Mark’s awakening was much faster than Theren’s, and he also got all the knowledge from Theren’s life.

After Mark awoke, he made a monumental choice that changed the history of the world forever. He awakened the beast cores.

Any beast that was larger than the size of a fist turned into a magical beast, and it was a catastrophe. Although the beasts could not manifest their primal knowledge, as it needed a spoken language, they used their element in another way.

Since the way they moved was already in tune with the natural world, each movement with the addition of energy influenced the world around them. Their energy was used to create an external manifestation other than spells! Although Mark may have caused an absolute catastrophe to the human race, he did partially make up for it.

He publicized Theren’s findings on the Saint realm of legends and encouraged the multitudes to reach the godly realm. Although not many cultivators were willing to gamble with their lives, the commoners who wanted revenge on the beasts for killing their families were numerous in number.

The mass breakout of experts looking for revenge fought back for the human race and also tried to kill Mark. Of course he went into hiding, but when one person reached the saint realm, Mark’s tirade was over.

The Saint realm can expand or contract their magespace far enough to cover a whole continent, so Mark was found and assassinated by a darkness saint. Mark’s lifespan was cut short at 576 years and his reign of terror was over.

The new ruler, the killer, was a saint realm expert named Ardai. He ushered in a new era. The beasts were a lot more numerous than the humans and Ardai had his fair share of bloodshed.

So Ardai made areas of giant spatial distortions which constantly consumed his own power and feeded from the environment. They also were eventually powered by the light cores of magical beasts that he personally wiped out.

He made 8 areas in total, the giant center area was for the commoners and there were seven areas protecting the center for the sects. He personally decreed that whichever sects made a war with another shall have their distortions removed until they made peace.

He then went into seclusion, with his magespace keeping watch on the events in the continent. Therefore a forced peace was obtained. However, this did not resolve all the issues.

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Yes, no beasts could ever get in the barrier, but that also meant that the humans could never get out. But the humans could never beat the beasts based on just pure power alone, there were just too many of them. So we resorted to other methods.

This was the period of advancement, where new things were created. Many people watched the movements of magical beasts, and created the things we now know as martial art skills. By imitating the movements of different creatures and circulating energy in a certain way, we created certain movements that when performed, a portion the energy prevalent in the world would move into an energy attack.

A martial art skill was ranked by first, the perception and skill of the creator, and second, the beast the skill was based on.

The three weaknesses of martial skills were one, they took an extended time period of failure and adaptation to get the skill to work, and even when used, the strength of the cultivator decided the skill strength.

Two, the skill had to be performed in the same fundamental stance every time, which wasted time and energy. And third, unlike spells which return all the aura after the spell, martial skills always expended a certain percentage of aura which was only fully returned after a period of time.

An expenditure of aura was one of the worst things that could happen to a cultivator, as it decreased the total amount of power a cultivator could use during a period of time.

If a cultivator had no aura, they would fall into a meditative state until they fully recovered the aura used. So using a martial skill was usually only used as a last resort to acheive a special effect.

Also, there were new weapons created. Instead of the standard weapons that were made up of tempered pieces of a certain metal, they now were operated with energy veins.

Mimicking the meridians, a special metal was sent throughout the weapon in veins that the cultivator could run his energy through. This insured that the weapon was able to be protected, as well as allowed a monster core to add an element to the weapon of choice.

As long as energy was sent through the core, an elemental sheet would cover the veins running throughout the weapon. However, like everything, it had its advantages and disadvantages.

The veins were only as strong as the energy running through them, and the energy transformed by the monster core was not controllable by the cultivator. As such, the design of the veins was impeccable, because a wrong vein somewhere could lead to damaging the weapon or the cultivator.

The last major development to fight the beasts was made in medicine. Many realized that after the beasts, other things could absorb the seemingly infinite energy flowing through the planet. Herbs, metals, and crystals could absorb a portion of the energy flowing through them into their materials, strengthening and improving their latent energies.

Crystals had the purest form of energy, they could be absorbed with no problem, but it took a long time to extract the energy.

With metals, it was impractical to absorb the energy within because it would take so much longer than cultivating normally. Combined with the impurites contained within them, it wasnt worth it to cultivate with metal. But they could be made into armors or weapons instead.

So the multitudes turned to the herbs. Herbs had an almost immediate effect and they could be consumed directly, speeding up the process.

But the only problem with the herbs was, consuming most of the herbs would be detrimental to a cultivator because of the harmful energy within. To harness the energy, you would have to change the harmful energies into ones that are beneficial to the human body, and only then could you absorb the energy.

This could be done by mixing and refining different herbs together, so the energies would combine in a way that would advance cultivation progress. This created the alchemists.

They would document and record effects of doing different things to herbs, and they eventually created a network of formulas that boosted the amount of cultivators.

Suddenly, instead of blaming your natural talent, you could instead use herbs to breakthrough. And this was also beneficial to the people with higher talent too because they could use medicine to speed up the process of accumulating energy.

Finally with all these new advances, it became apparent that a cultivators currency was needed to keep prices adequate. So the logical solution was using the spirit crystal.

It comes in many different forms of quality, and it accumulates a small amount of energy over a period of time. The longer or more potent the energy accumulated, the greater quality the spirit crystal becomes.

If you use the crystal to absorb energy for cultivation, the crystal reverts back to lower qualities.

With this you could either directly use your wealth to advance in cultivation, or you could exchange it for other treasures. However, absorbing energy from the crystals is slow due to the nature of the material.

Therefore, cultivation resources like pills or naturally beneficial herbs still had their value.

These 3 technologies were perfected in the span of 500 years, and the humans finally started to truly reclaim the territory of the beasts. But the beasts had not lied in wait for the humans to finish perfecting their technologies. Their numbers were now even more overwhelming.

Even though numbers don’t count for much when it comes to cultivation, the pure exhausting amount of beasts was enough to slow down any efforts to reclaim territory, and you didn't know whether you had encountered an extremely strong beast or a weak one before going into their territory.

Although the saint ranked experts of the human race could have defeated these beasts for their descendants, they did not want to interfere. Eventually, the human race cleared out the areas surrounding the barriers, and made paths connecting the 8 safe areas.

They employed a regular sweep of mercenaries to kill off the lower ranked beasts, and they pushed the stronger beasts far away from the safe areas. Although the places surrounding the 8 safe areas were not truly safe, they were not able to have a beast greater than the intermediate realm before the routine sweeps were initiated and the beasts were wiped out.

This stabilized the empire for a while, and this state has lasted until present. However, the looming winds of things to come are forcing the empire of the 7 sects into a state of restlessness. Trouble is blooming in the empire…

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