Hours later when the darkness of the night came down on the land, I lay in the trees at the edge of the forest and looked to the sky thinking about my new life.

My first lesson with Omnikia was enlightening to say the least, about the culture of this world, or at least this part of the world, summons, magic or Ki as he called it and some little tidbits about souls.

Our talk hasn't really been about the socal things in this world, but I had picked up little things along the way. This world was highly power based, to the point of might makes right was taken on a global scale through making the one with the most powerful summons or Ki abilities, the term Omnikia uses to say magic powers, basically the king of any area they are in. Of course I think that this is all a bit exaggerated, but that is the feeling Omnikia gave off.

And then there were the tournaments themselves. Apparently, throughout the history of this world there were five different very powerful people who made what Omnikia called the five sects.

There was the sect of the spirit, which I just happened to be in and specializes in summons. The sect of the mountain, who specializes in earth and rock magic and blacksmithing. The sect of the forest, that specializes in monster taming, which was surprising given how summons were a thing, and nature magic. The sect of the wind, which obviously specializes in wind magic, along with flying monsters apparently. And finally, the sect of the volcano, which specializes in lava and fire magic.

But, because of the whole martial and personal power focused culture, these five sects were always fighting and going into battle with each other. Until one powerful monk decided that he had enough of it and took over the five weakened sects and declared himself as emperor and established his imperial government over the five sects. Of course this took a long time and was full of war, but he did it in the end.

But because of the whole battle and fighting focused culture the emperor knew that war would break out again if he left things as they were, so he basically created magic monk olympics for the five sects. This is obviously the tournament.

How this tournament works is there are three levels of the tournament, the Local Tournament, the Inter-sect Tournament, and the Imperial Tournament. All these levels of the tournaments involved rounds of fighting one VS one battles until one victor comes out on top after a few weeks, and they move up to the next level of the tournaments.

This continues until the Imperial Tournament, where the five victors of the Inter-sect Tournament basically do a free for all hunger games style fight to decide the Champion of the Tournament.

And I was going to be participating in the Local Tournament which in this case involves the nearby city and the immediate surrounding villages, with my first fight in four days. I was honestly shocked when I found that last bit out. But, I guess I dont have much of a choice but to give it my all and hope for the best…

But that's about it for the cultural aspect of this world as the focus was mostly on magic, or Ki, as apparently this is the most important thing about any of the forms of magic, even summon fighting.

The first thing that I had learned about magic is that there were three types of monks, apparently monks are this world's equivalent to wizards, Body Monks, Elemental Monks and Battle Monks. Body Monks are basically monks that use summons and their own body to fight things, through using Ki to empower themselves and their summons. Elemental Monks are pretty self explanatory, as they are basically what you would imagine elemental focused wizards would be, they use Ki to manipulate different elements to fight. Then there were the Battle Monks.

Basically what they are is a combination of Elemental and Body monks, and while that might seem overpowered, it really was not. Well, kind of. A Battle Monk style can become extremely powerful if it is used right, but it is very hard to do that. Imagine trying to become a professional wrestler while getting a doctorate in theoretical physics. That is not even exaggerating, and in fact is very close to what actually happens.

Then Omnikia tells me that he is going to be teaching me to be a Battle Monk, because that is what he was before he retired. I honestly don't know what that old man is thinking, I really don't.

As for Ki itself, there was a long talk about what it is and how it does what it does but I got most of what he said pretty easily. There are two types of Ki that humans can use, Body Ki, and Elemental Ki. Apparently there is a third type of Ki that is called Spirit Ki because it is generated by spirits and can be used by summons to take on a physical form and transform into both Body Ki and Elemental Ki, but humans can't use it for some reason.

Ki itself is basically magic, it's a form of energy that can be harnessed and used by people, and monsters/magic beasts apparently. But within Ki, there are three different of Ki types that some apparently have argued make them completely different from each other. Body Ki is produced by living bodies, including monsters and people, and it can be used to effect the form of people and monsters, an example of which would be to increase strength or height.

Elemental Ki is weird because nobody is exactly sure how it is produced and some people think it is made from the actual elements affecting Body Ki, but nobody is sure. However, Elemental Ki can be also used and cultivated by people and animals, giving more elemental effects and powers be used, an example of this could be a jet of acid from a lizard, or an energy shell around the horns of a deer.

Then there is Spirit Ki, which is almost entirely an unknown besides the fact that summons naturally produce it along with being made of it and use it in their various natural effects, like getting a physical form or channeling there Spirit Ki essence into the body of whoever owns them to sort of change their body to become more like their physical form.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

That little fact towards the end, about channeling the summons essence to change the summoner's body, left me surprised. As Omnikia told me more about this, how it can be used to change the summoner’s body to become bestial, the more I realized that what he was described was exactly what happened several times before, though I never noticed what exactly happened. I had just thought it was an adrenaline high… But now that I think back, specifically to my fight with the nemean lion, I realized that was what had happened to me. I had basically became a werewolf during that fight.

But besides that little bit, there wasn't much about it that was known.

Then he told me about how Ki is used, and that left me laughing for a bit. To use Ki, you have to make a Ki pathway inside the soul of yourself or your summons. And what a pathway was… It was basically an electrical circuit for magic. You had to first gain mental control over some Ki first, to basically carve out a bunch of lines into a soul which made me really nervous about trying it, and then use the Ki to form nodes inside points of the pathway that had to be infused with a strong and highly focused mental intent.

Of course because of this pathway forming method, there is an extremely limited amount of pathways that people can have, specifically five total. Apparently, that is universal. There was a stipulation about that however, that summons can have five pathways along with the number of pathways that they had before they became a summon, which was weird.

That was the main reason that Summons are actually used quite a lot by all types of monks, either as fighters or basically mobile elemental spell pathways, or both.

There was also an interesting method that Omnikia mentioned that involved taking pure Ki and infusing your intent into it directly to get an effect, but he also told me that it was very rough and inefficient most of the time along with usually slow. Basically he told me that I shouldn't even try it out because it was stupid. I wasn't sure about that, but I decided that I would trust him about it for now, maybe I could pick it up later though.

Then we had a talk about summons. It was rather awkward, as I was sure that this stuff was child level knowledge for people in this world and I am sure that he was internally questioning how I was raised for most of the time, but it was worth it.

Summons are basically the spirits of monsters and beasts that were killed, and from what he said they were basically parasites from the way they existed. Once a monster dies, it turns into a ball of Spirit Ki, that needs a living body with a human soul to survive, specifically a human because something about human souls are different. Omnikia didn't know exactly what the difference was, but I assumed it was probably something to do with the soul space that the summons go to, and he agreed.

The reason that it needs a human body to survive is the reason that I compared them tentatively to parasites. They needed a grounding point first and foremost, but they also needed a source of Spirit Ki, which human souls naturally generate. The summons then use the connection that is formed to the summoner's soul to feed on that energy to stay alive. Without that bond, they basically just dissolve into energy.

But because of the way that they functioned, I realized that they were more symbiotic. Apparently, humans don't need the Spirit Ki that they produce, and they can't even sense it no matter what, so it is perfectly fine for the human to have summons.

But a more important fact of this topic is that because they have to feed on Spirit Ki, the number of summons have to be ten or below, or the soul of a summoner starts to erode and become an unholy fusion abomination of the human and all the beasts that roams the land trying to kill all human life to eat there Spirit Ki to sustain its existence.

I wish that I was making that up, and I made sure to ask if Omnikia was making it up, but he was not.

I was so close to becoming one of those things that I shivered when I heard it.

I have exactly ten summons. Exactly ten.

But besides almost becoming a soul sucking abomination, I learned something that made me cheer up. When a summon is defeated in battle, when it appears to be killed, it actually just loses its physical form and while it considerably weakens the summon, it does not die, simply makes it fall unconscious and makes it blip back into the soul space of the summoner.

When I was told that, I was actually really guilty. My bear summon was killed by the nemean lion in the fight, and I nearly forgot about it. I had thought that it was gone for good, and I didnt even remember about it after the fight… Well, I suspected that I did know it subconsciously, but I still thought that it had died…

I did check on The Pack in my soul space quickly, just to make sure, and I found out that Omnikia was actually right. That was a relief…

It also made the option of leaving my summons to fight a monster while I tried to save myself as a less guilt inducing option, but that doesn't really matter right now.

And that was where our talk ended. It was getting dark by the time we finished our discussion and while I didn't really notice, I was really hungry and tired. So, I gave Omnikia the meat I had gotten from my journey in the woods and he made me a really delicious steak that made me question how exactly I cooked the meat in the forest to make it be so bad comparatively. Then I had to sleep, so I left the hut and I went to the trees on instinct, my rough backpack heavy on my back, and I looked for a familiar tangle of branches.

Surprisingly there were none, but I did see that there was one great spot that looked almost perfect to be woven together into one so I shrugged and climbed the tree to try to make myself a bed in the tree.

Naturally, it wasn't as simple as it sounded and it took me at least an hour to make something that would work, but it was worth it when I took out all my furs and made myself a bed on the platform I had woven together.

It was a warm night, but the occasional breeze introduced me to the chill of the night every so often. For the first time in forever, the sky was open all around and I looked out at the stars and the mountain that I had been looking for, both covered with bright pinpricks of light. The two moons were a surreal sight, they reminded me that home was far away from here when I first saw them, but now… I couldn't help but feel differently.

They were no longer a sign of being lost in the universe… They were a sign of a new opportunity. A new life… A fresh start… A new home.