Without exception Mana Zones are the most dangerous places in the world. They are home to truly ancient and powerful Mana Beasts that have surpassed even Sage and Divine Beast status becoming something more akin to natural disasters than living beings. Then there’s the various inclement forms of weather and unnatural seeming phenomena caused by the high concentration of Mana itself. So why then do both humans and Mana Beasts seek these areas out? The main reason that they do so is because of the Elemental Mana itself that creates Maa Zones. Both human cultivators and Mana Beasts can absorb this Mana to strengthen themselves much faster than they can anywhere else. Another is the fact that various natural treasures and ancient ruins can be found inside Mana Zones.
-Excerpt from Telram’s notes on Mana Zones
The following morning Telram and his friends started making their way down the hill towards the Mana Zone. As they approached the winds started picking up and by the time, they had reached the boundary of the Mana Zone even walking had become difficult. Telram pulled a rope from his pack and tied it around himself before passing it along to the next person. Since they weren’t planning on fighting anything in the Mana Zone this will hopefully help them stay together.
Once they were all tied together, they crossed into the Mana Zone. As they did the winds increased even further and silent curses spewed from Gerry’s mouth as he created a barrier that blocked most but not all of the winds enough that they could move again. Telram and Gerry had been hoping that they wouldn’t have to resort to doing this because even blocking the wind this much was incredibly difficult and used up a lot of Mana.
To lessen the drain on Gerry, Telram started sharing his own Air Affinity Mana with Gerry causing the old man’s shoulders to relax slightly and nod at his student in appreciation. With these preparations in place the group started their journey into the Mana Zone.
As one might expect the landscape inside the Mana Zone was completely different to what anyone was familiar with and there were a number of rare Mana Beasts that gave them a wide berth thanks to the aura that Ryu was giving off. However, they didn’t allow themselves to be distracted by any of the incredible sights that surrounded them and continued to follow the river.
They didn’t even stop to sleep the following night and about noon the following day they finally reached what seemed to be a massive lake so large that it might as well be called an inland sea. The weather wasn’t any better here than it was anywhere else in the Mana Zone which meant that they could see waterspouts ripping the water of the lake into the air as they passed over the lake.
It was a little hard to tell from the shore of the lake but Telram thought that he could see the island that he was hoping to find in the distance, and he turned to Ryu who was looking at the rough waters of the lake with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“What do you think Ryu?” Telram asked. “Do you think that you can carry us if you need to?”
“I should be able to,” Ryu said after a few more seconds of consideration. “I might need to take a couple of trips and I’ll have to fly pretty close to the surface of the lake which could be dangerous if there are any Mana Beasts that are more powerful than I am living beneath its surface, but it should be possible.”
“Maybe we should make sure that this island actually exists first,” Gerry suggested. Even though not only Telram but Lelland and Warren were also helping him protect the group from the weather Gerry looked tired, but they could all tell that he was determined to continue.
“That’s a good idea,” Warren agreed.
“Alright then,” Ryu nodded as he shifted into the smallest version of his dragon form. “I’ll be back soon.”
While they were waiting for Ryu to return the other five all sat down to cultivate. Since they were in a Wind Mana Zone most of the Mana that they were cultivating was Wind Mana with a small amount of neutral Mana. Since all of them except for Jai could all use Wind Mana this meant that they were absorbing Mana at a rate considerably faster than they normally would. The incredibly pure Wind Mana also meant that their respective Affinities with Wind Mana were also being slowly increased.
Telram was the one who was benefiting from this the most since he had the lowest Affinity for Wind Mana but even then, his Affinity was increasing at a pace that he wouldn’t have even noticed if he hadn’t been looking for it. Seeing that his Affinity was increasing as expected he moved on to take another look at the newest things to appear in his internal world.
“Seriously, what is going on here?” Telram sighed as he looked down at the humanoid figures that had appeared on the small planet that he had created when he’d Ascended. They weren’t the only living beings that had appeared on the planet, but they were the most interesting and confusing.
The humanoids were almost as tall as Telram had been prior to his Ascension but they were far skinnier and had gray skin and four slender arms. At the moment they were incredibly primitive and had barely even learned to make fire. But even that was more than they had the last time that Telram had looked which meant that they were developing far faster than he’d expected. Some individuals even appeared to be cultivating which was even more surprising to Telram.
As far as he could tell what they were doing wasn’t affecting his own cultivation negatively. In fact, they might even be helping him increase his own cultivation somehow but Telram wasn’t completely sure yet. He was about to investigate further when he felt someone shake his shoulder.
“Ryu’s coming back,” Warren said as he pointed towards the lake.
Sure enough, Ryu was flying back their way and from what Telram could tell it seemed that he had an excited grin on his face.
“Well, what are you guys waiting for?” Ryu asked as he landed at the edge of the lake and grew to his full size which was several meters long and wide enough that someone could ride on his back comfortably.
“So, we were right about the island then?” Telram asked excitedly.
“Yeah, there’s a big island with ruins on it about ten minutes flight away,” Ryu replied happily. “I don’t know if they are the ruins that we came here looking for, but it would be weird if they weren’t.”
“Alright,” Telram nodded as he helped Jai up onto the Divine Beast’s back before climbing up after him.
After a couple of seconds Lelland climbed up behind him and Ryu took to the air. Normally flying would be a novelty that would remind Telram of the travelling that he had done in his old life, but this flight was completely different to anything that he had been on before and was far less pleasant. As Ryu had mentioned earlier, he was flying close to the water to avoid as much of the inclement weather as possible which meant that it was only a few seconds before they were completely soaked, and the ride was incredibly rough in general as Ryu was forced to constantly make corrections to prevent them all from crashing into the lake.
Eventually the vague blurry mass that Telram had spotted from shore was revealed to be a large island. As they got even closer Telram could see that the island was covered in broken pillars and walls but not much else. At first, he was disappointed with what he could see but then he noticed something that looked promising. What had at first seemed to be the remains of a broken wall with an arch in it was revealed to have what looked like an altar in front of it. It would be hard to tell until he got closer but Telram suspected that there was something going on here.
Once they arrived at the island, they quickly dismounted from Ryu who shrunk down to his smaller size and flew back across the lake. He was noticeably faster when he wasn’t carrying two humans and a Mana Beast on his back and Telram started his investigation of the ruins near where Ryu had dropped them off while Lelland and Jai watched on with bemused looks on their faces.
“The weathering on this pillar suggests that it’s been here for at least a thousand years, Telram muttered to himself thoughtfully. “But looking at it with my Spiritual Vision tells me that it has been there far longer than that.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Despite the poor state of the pillar that he was examining Telram could see that it had been reinforced by incredibly complicated and powerful Inscriptions that looked quite different from the ones that Telram and Gerry were familiar with. From what Telram could tell these Inscriptions were all to reinforce the durability of the pillar which meant that it could’ve been there up to ten times longer than he had originally assumed.
Telram was still examining the pillar when Ryu returned with the others and had even started taking notes on the Inscriptions in the hopes that he might be able to figure out how they worked since they were different than the ones that he was familiar with. A wide grin crossed Gerry’s face when he saw how captivated his student was by even this crumbling pillar.
“Hey Telram!” The old man exclaimed to catch Telram’s attention. “Why are you still looking at that crumbling thing when there’s a whole island full of better things?”
“True!” Telram laughed in agreement. “Let’s get going then!”
The others all shouted their agreement and with excited looks on their faces they moved out. As Telram had expected most of the ruins on the island weren’t in much better condition than that first pillar that he had examined but the arch that he had noticed earlier was different. Even though the wall on either side was in as bad or even slightly worse condition than the rest of the ruins on the island both the arch and the altar-like thing in front of it were in almost pristine condition.
“Telram, come and look at this,” Gerry said from over by the stone altar. “Is this the same language that you were able to translate when you were a kid?”
“Let me take a look,” Telram sighed as he ripped his eyes away from the mysterious arch and walked over to the others who were all looking at the words inscribed in the altar. Sure enough, the words had been carved in English and what they said caused Telram’s eyebrows to rise farther than they ever had before. “Holy shit.”
“I take it that means that you can read this then?” Ryu asked.
“Yeah.”
“Where did you say you had learned this language Telram?” Lelland asked curiously. “It doesn’t look like anything that I’ve ever seen before.”
Telram paused briefly to take a breath. He had decided that he was going to tell his friends the truth if they ever reached this point. He had been keeping this a secret from them, especially from Gerry and Jai for too long already.
“Because I have memories of a past life,” he said as soon as he’d finished preparing himself. “A life where I lived on a different world where this language is spoken. A world where cultivation doesn’t exist, or at least that’s what I thought before I saw the stone plaque in the Halls of Heavenly Knowledge all those years ago. Now, I’m not quite so sure that is the case.”
“I see,” Gerry nodded.
Much to Telram’s surprise the old man was taking this quite well. He had expected Gerry to be much more surprised by this than he appeared to be. However, that didn’t mean that the same was true of his other friends who were all looking at him with a mixture of confusion and disbelief on their faces.
“You don’t seem that surprised Gerry,” Telram mentioned before anyone else could speak.
“Well, it does make a lot of sense,” Gerry replied with a shrug. “You’ve always been weird and way too knowledgeable for your age. However, the real reason that I’m not surprised is that people with Enlightened Souls have claimed similar things in the past.”
“Really?” Telram asked. “And you didn’t think to tell me this when we found out that I had an Enlightened Soul?”
“No, because not everyone with an Enlightened Soul claimed to have been reincarnated,” Gerry replied. “Of course, that could just mean that they didn’t tell anyone.”
“Well, I appreciate it Gerry,” Telram sighed as he looked around at his friends who still looked a little confused. “It wasn’t easy for me to tell you guys and I still have no idea how I’m going to tell my parents. I hope that you can all forgive me for not telling you earlier.”
“I’ll think about it,” Jai sniffed. Telram could tell this his partner was a bit upset but that he understood why Telram hadn’t told him as well.
“Alright, but what does the writing say?” Ryu asked. “That’s why we called you over remember?”
“Well, they’re instructions,” Telram replied. “They explain how to activate some sort of ‘Gate’ and that’s with a capital G by the way.”
“A Gate?” Warren asked. “What do you think it means?”
“Well, it’s definitely referring to the arch over there,” Telram said as he pointed at the artifact. “And it probably means that the Gate opens up somewhere else like a pocket dimension or something.”
“What do you mean it opens up to a pocket dimension?” Lelland asked. “What even is a pocket dimension?”
“That’s a good question,” Telram chuckled. “Sadly, it’s one that I’m not really qualified to answer. The best that I can do is say that its sort of like a smaller world separate from this one.”
“Like your cultivation technique?” Jai asked as he cocked his head to one side.
“Actually, that’s a really good way of looking at it,” Telram agreed. “Especially since the solar system that I created with my cultivation technique can support life.”
“Alright, but how do we activate it?” Warren asked excitedly as he peered over Telram’s shoulder at the unfamiliar writing.
“Well, that’s actually simple enough,” Telram chuckled. “It appears that you can activate this gate using a perfect mix of all four forms of Elemental Mana. In fact, it almost feels like someone with an Enlightened Soul like me was supposed to be the one who found this place. I suppose that you could activate it if you had several different cultivators who could use all four Elements but getting the mix exactly right would be pretty difficult. However, I’ll have to ask all of you for your help because I don’t have enough Mana to activate the gate myself.”
The others all nodded in agreement and started channeling neutral Mana into Telram. It took Telram nearly an hour for Telram to convert the Mana into the different types of Elemental mana but when he did strands of all four types of Mana streamed from his body and into the correct portions of the Arch which slowly started to light up. A rumbling sound came from the arch like it was the engine of an old car that hadn’t been used in a while as it slowly but surely came to life. Sweat poured down Telram’s face as he continued to channel the correct amounts of each type of Mana into the gate but other than the gate’s glow increasing further nothing much seemed to happen for nearly half an hour.
Since Telram hadn’t had time to examine the specific parts of the Inscription that powered the gate he wasn’t entirely sure why it couldn’t just be powered by neutral Mana, but he was pretty certain it was because each type of Elemental Mana was doing something different that only the Mana of that particular type could do. Mostly because that was the only thing that made sense to him.
Eventually sparks of the four Mana types that he was channeling into the arch began to shoot out of the areas where he was sending them and shooting towards the center of the arch where they collided with a bright flash. As he continued to send even more Mana into the arch these sparks grew more and more common until it looked like four different colored lightning bolts were constantly colliding at the center of the arch.
Telram had long since used up all his Mana and had moved on to draining Beast Cores for their Mana since he couldn’t convert his friend’s Mana into the other types fast enough for it to be useful to him. One after the other the Cores that Telram drained crumbled to dust as he pulled another one out of his bag. The others watched on with conflicted looks on their faces as Telram basically burned money right in front of them. They were confident that they would more than make up for the loss of the Beast Cores if Telram actually was able to open the gate like he claimed but it was looking increasingly unlikely.
The next change finally happened when Telram pulled one of the last Beast Cores that he had packed. The crackly Mana formed into a ball at the center of the gate and started slowly increasing in size. By the time that Telram had drained the Beast Core the orb of Mana had grown until it had almost filled the arch completely.
As Telram pulled the next Beast Core from his bag there was a thunderous crack and the ball of Mana suddenly turned into something completely different.
“Um, was that meant to happen?” Ryu asked as they all stared at the Arch.
“How would I know?” Telram asked turning to look at his friend with a bewildered look on his face. “There’s really only one way to find out.”
Instead of a crackling ball of energy what remained was a plane of pitch darkness. Despite the fact that this darkness had been made from Mana as far as Telram could tell it wasn’t Mana itself but something else entirely.
“Well, what do we do now?” Warren asked.
Nodding to himself Telram cast around for something that he could use to test the safety of what he assumed was a functioning gate. He wasn’t about to try going through without testing that it was safe first and he wasn’t going to risk any of their weapons either. Spotting one of the stunted trees that grew on the island he snapped one of the branches off.
The others watched as Telram carefully pushed the branch through the darkness and then breathed a sigh of relief when he pulled it out after a few seconds. As far as Telram could tell the stick hadn’t been adversely affected by passing through the gate but he still had one last thing that he wanted to test before going through himself.
Unhooking his Kanabo from the harness that he and Dale had made for it he took a deep breath before pushing his prized weapon through the gate. When nothing happened, he pulled it back through and turned to the others with a smile on his face.
“I’m going to put my hand through now,” he told them and before any of them could stop him he did just that. To his surprise he didn’t feel anything when his hand passed through the gate, not even so much as a tingling sensation and when he pulled it back through to look at it nothing seemed wrong. “It seems to be safe.”
“So, are we going to go through it then?” Gerry asked the others who were still looking at the gate nervously.
“Well, no matter what you guys decide to do I’m going through,” Telram told them. “The directions to get here and the instructions to activate the gate were both written in English and I need to find out why.”
Having said this Telram turned and walked through the gate before any of his friends could stop him leaving them staring after him with stunned looks on their faces.
“Well then,” Gerry chuckled. “I guess that’s been decided for us. Let’s follow Telram before he gets in some sort of trouble.”
The others all nodded in agreement and quickly followed Telram through the gate.