Chapter One- New beginning

Drip

Drip

Drip

The sound of liquid falling was all he could hear. He looked around, he stood in an infinite emptiness the ground he stood on shone with a slightly silver color. He didn't know when he got here, he didn't know how he got here and didn't know how long he had been here. Taking more notice of what was around him he seemed to wake up from a dazed dream state. Various thoughts ran through his head, he relived the past few hours of his life till now, the last thing he remembered was an explosion as he walked down the street.

As he was trying to figure out why he was standing naked in the void he heard a slight chuckling behind him. He looked into the direction of the sound and for a moment saw nothing, then a man appeared with skin so dark it was if he was looking up at the night sky. The man smiled showing his pearly white teeth, it made sharp contrast with the rest of his body. The as he looked the more things appeared, a silver gold villa appeared behind the man with fountains spilling out a golden liquid, the man himself gaining pants and a robe leaving his chest with lavish definition out in the open. For a while we both looked at each other in silence. The man eventually broke the silence.

“My name is shadow”

I stare at him blankly. He sighs and continues.

“You must be curious to what is happening, please sit and I will explain”

He then speaks again as if suddenly remembering.

“If you could put on some clothes it would be appreciated, just imagine them and they will appear”

I wasted no time in doing what he said and suddenly I was wearing black cargo pants a black t-shirt and a black trench coat, noticing a trend I looked at shadow who had a slight smirk on his face, he shrugged slightly his motions saying he liked the color black.

Waving his hand two chairs and a table appear, we take a seat respectively.

He immediately launches into his explanation.

“Right now you are in your head and my head, sort of a mental world that we share”

I nod, I don't know why but i'm accepting what he's saying as the truth.

“The world where you come from is being subjected to mana for the first time in a long time, I'm not going to explain why it disappeared however.”

“You are here now so I can awaken your magical and martial prowess, this is being done for all humans or at least the ones who can be awakened by various gods, and yes I am a god.”

He noticed my expression when he mentioned gods.

“After I awaken you I will leave you with a ring that contains the basics of the different paths to power. I wish you luck”

With his final sentence he touches the middle of my chest with his index finger,I feel something like a static shock throughout my entire body my entire body vibrates and I feel myself change intrinsically. I feel some sort of round object form in my lower abdomen, then everything goes dark.

After spending some amount of time in the darkness and void I slowly regained my senses and opened my eyes. Grimacing I opened my eyes and stood up, stumbling while doing so due to my body's stiffness. Looking around I looked for any changes in the city around me, I see nothing, life carries on as per usual.

Slightly frowning, wondering if what i experienced was some sort of dream I look toward my hand, a ring rests there. With my other hand I somehow reach into it, the strangeness of this is not lost on me. Feeling around the space I grab something random and pull it out. It's a piece of print paper with some writing on it.

Awakened

This letter is an automatic notice to all who have been awakened. Due to the fact many gods had to rush in awakening some details were left out. Chief among them, mana and martial ki will be slowly introduced into the environment you have a head start. Eventually there will be monsters so when they appear don't die. Second, No attacking each other early on (before the first beasts) If you do well your a stupid prick. Thirdly , remember the books are a guideline, look through their secrets and you will find what you need.

Sincerely

Arlan

Scion of the Great God Wisdom.

Reading through the letter I got the basic gist of it. Train hard or die fast later, don't be a prick( that was clear) and the third point I would investigate when I got home.

From where I woke up, which was a small alley way, That's useful an alleyway in manhattan, I was able to navigate my way back to familiar territory and reached my building block.

Entering the building I reach the third floor, my floor and enter my apartment.

It's a small place, Bathroom, Bed, Kitchen and a small living room with just an armchair and mac on the table. Entering the living room I sit down in the chair, grab the computer and start to check my emails. Looking through them it was just the usual stuff. Facebook notifications and some stuff about the upcoming first year of University. Dismissing it for now I moved onto the ring. Unlike Before in the alley when I reached in and only felt with my hand I stuck my face in. Looking in I could see a bookshelf with about 15 thick books. Bringing my hand forwards I grabbed the books one by one and stacked them in the real world. They all had titles.

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Basics of Mana

Basics Of Ki

Fire

Earth

Water

Air

Light

Darkness

Void

The Path

Formations

Crafting

Illusion

Nature

Soul

Looking at the titles I could tell these books contained things that I once thought were imaginary. Chuckling to myself about the irony, When I was a kid I always wished and hoped for something like this to happen and not when I finally gave that up this happens, Don't misunderstand I think this is awesome but still.

I decide to start with the basics of mana followed by the basics of ki then the path.

The book on mana, well the introduction explained the basic principles. Mana was the life of everything and yet it was also its death. It was the building blocks of every element but it could also be used as its own element. I suspected that studying this would take most of my time.

Ki was simpler, It came from mana but was then refined and then used to strengthen various things about the individual, this I found interesting. In most books you use ki to improve as a whole with some direction, I needed to explore this soon.

Thirdly the path, Essentially for higher levels of power you follow a path, the book about this was very vague and was by far the smallest book, presumably due to the fact the subject was high class.

Closing the last book I sat in my chair reading for a bit, It sounded like I needed to absorb energy from the environment to advance. Both mana and ki. I assume what shadow did to me was allow me to access the energy around me. Both basic books on mana and ki recommend to feel the energy by entering some sort of state in which you could let go and explore, whatever that meant. Another thing was there was no magical technique to help me, I was on my own.

I decide to go to my bed and try and find the state from there. Laying down I close my eyes and try to expand my mind to find anything, I find a whole bunch of nothing, Frowning I try to figure out what was wrong. I then remember the sensation I felt when shadow “awakened” me. I try feeling my lower abdomen with my mind , which is slightly weird, I notice what seems to be the energy I was looking for. Now at this point I realised that some of the stories I had read had some merit. People would have somewhere in their body on which their power converged and then could take the power from, they usually called it a dantian. I tried doing so but when I tried I feel a feeling of...wrongness. I immediately stop and think back to the book on “the path”. Perhaps this isn't what I as an individual needed. Starting from then I started experimenting with the power molding it into different shapes or moving it to new parts of my body. Hours passed.

Over the hours I found out that when the energy entered new parts of my body it tried to stay behind, or perhaps it was my subconscious, I don't know. I gained an idea at that point. I took the energy and expanded it through my body, nowhere didn't have energy and at that moment it felt right, the energy then flashed in my mind and I fainted.

Well I thought I fainted, turns out this was some sort of second part to whatever I was doing. A projection of me appeared in front of me and information I didn't know and would forget later appeared in my head. I needed to reformat my entire body in order to be able to use power. At that point I entered an ethereal state and started designing, perhaps due to my book loving past and imagination I planned for the future. I began with the skeleton, Essentially I made it so when I was absorbing mana and ki the bones would be strengthened by association, I made this change with everything about my body. Muscles I made so that they compounded and strengthened like bones. My organs, using the information which I had due to some weird cosmic power I altered my biology giving myself new and more efficient organs that could also grow with the rest of my body. I did the same general thing with about everything you could think of, yes everything that a man had. I also made it so my entire body was extremely mana conductive, this made my blood change color, from red to silver. I made my power storage in my bones, blood and soul. I don't know why I added the soul but I did.

Looking down at the new me with a chiseled body, black silver shoulder length hair waved slowly like in liquid, my blue eyes shone with a strange new light, my white skin more pale than ever didn't look sickly it looked strangely good. Smiling I sat back and then this time I really did faint.