《Travel Through The Lands》 Chapter 1. The Rift A young child woke in a strange humid cavern with no recollection of how he ended up here. He immediately started checking his immediate surroundings and realised he was trapped with no exit, so he checked for any signs of movement. He didn''t dare make any noise; he may only be in the Mortal realm, but he was not without training in many different things. Despite being 10, he knew many things from Alchemy to Assassination. There were few things he had not trained to the level of Grand Master if it were any other child of his age training any skill to the novice rank would be a great achievement however for this child, he could master a skill within mere weeks! His learning speed superior to any Genius recorded in any of the Lands at any point in time. In front of this child, any Geniuses learning speed was nothing, but it came at a price... A huge price, his meridians made him unable to cultivate! Stuck at the Low Mortal Realm it wouldn''t be hard for any Middle Mortal Realm to crush him, but this doesn''t mean he would go down without a fight! Only after making sure he was alone in this old cavern could he relax and look around for anything that would help him to escape as of right now, all he has are the clothes on his back. At this point, even a strangely shaped rock would ignite hope in this young boy''s heart. Unfortunately, all the oddly shaped rocks he picked up, pulled on or pushed in ended up just being regular old rocks. Until he pressed one rock oddly shaped like a fist into the wall. *Click* The sound of mechanics echoed around the cave! Slowly, a piece of the wall started rising into the ceiling of the cavern revealing an old wooden door that instead of a handle had a fist sized hole. As soon as he saw this, his eyes glittered, but he didn''t rush up. Instead, he slowly tiptoed up to the hole and peeked inside; only he couldn''t see anything when he looked into the hole it was as if he were blind! His could only open the door and hope for the best. As soon as he tried to open the door, he heard an aged voice. "Child, I have no idea how you entered this room, but since you managed to open this door, I suppose I can let you through."The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The voice sounded ancient but with that voice came a feeling he didn''t even feel from the top Cultivator in his City! Could this voice be above The Heaven Realm?! The young boy entered the room, a lot less cautious than before because if someone even close to the God Realm wanted him dead no matter how far he ran his entire being, soul and body would cease to exist with just a snap of his fingers! Upon entering several things came into view, a clear glass full of a thick red liquid, several bottles of multicoloured potions, glowing holy weapons, weeping devil weapons, old scrolls, many books and even a small open rift! As the child saw these things he knew what every item there was, apart from 4 of the 10 scrolls and the red liquid, but he could somehow feel that the liquid was some unfathomably strong person or beasts blood! "Child, I can see in your eyes that you actually know some of these things! Impressive! For such a young age you''re pretty talented! Alas, with your meridians your barely a match for normal Mortals! Forget about the mortal realm, Hahaha! Am I right in thinking that you wish to fix them? Hahaha.. "I suppose you could take one thing from this treasury! I recommend you take the blood, hehe, take that and I assure you will have meridians that are above everyone but me! Well every human that is hehe of course if you take that, I can''t say that you will survive and even if you do live through the process I would be shocked if you kept even a little bit of your sanity! Hahaha..." As soon as the young boy heard that his meridians could be fixed, he was overjoyed even after he heard that he might die or lose his sanity! In this world the strong rule and the weak serve, even if he carried on how he was he would never rule over the city at most he would have to protect whoever his sister would be forced to marry when she was of age! He blissfully skipped along to the red liquid in a highly happy manner. "Haha child before you drink that, what''s your name?" "Sir this little one is called Lief" Lief bowed. "Lief, huh. Well a word of advice child, if you survive past the first hour, drink every single potion in your view! Even the poisons!" "I will do as you ask, Sir! " Lief promised. Even though Lief was concerned about consuming the poisons, when the time came, he would do it without any hesitation if it allowed him to gain power. However, if he could see the voices face, he wouldn''t be so trusting. On that ancient, wrinkled face lay an insane smile, hanging ear to ear." Without hesitation, Lief drank every last drop of the blood, although it was slightly hard to swallow it didn''t taste that bad and he only felt a slight stab in his stomach as if pricked with a needle. He started to feel as though the voice tried to trick him into choosing something else when an unbearable pain assaulted his entire body! Chapter 2. Escape Lief swallowed every last drop of the blood, although it was slightly hard to swallow it didn''t taste that bad and he only felt a slight stab in his stomach as if pricked with a needle. He started to feel as though the voice tried to trick him into choosing something else when an unbearable pain assaulted his entire body! "Arrgh!" Leif screamed. The sudden pain was unbearable! He felt as if his body had become a battleground of fire and ice! One-half of his body felt as if he was close to being burned to ashes, while the other half felt as if both his blood and bones had been frozen and on top of all that he also felt a pressure that was as if he had been buried inside the centre of the planet! He couldn''t cope with the pain for more than 5 seconds before he collapsed. "Haha! He actually survived for 5 seconds that''s pretty ama- WHAT?! The old man''s eyes bulged out as he stared in shock, He only fainted, tha- that''s amazing! I may actually get out of here! Nomore weakness, no more being at the mercy of mere humans! When I get out of here I will have to kill this thing or he may become a problem in the future.." Luckily, Lief hadn''t fainted and only looked like he had, the old voice didn''t bother to check! However, right now the only thing on Lief''s mind was not the immense amount of pain surging through his veins but he was thinking about how to live after he survives this! He was no longer thinking about how small of a chance he had at surviving but how he could continue to survive after he survived! 55 minutes later, mist gathered three feet in front of Lief and started to form the shape of a human until it took the form of a skinny old man. He smiled kindly before speaking softly, "Child, you must wake up and drink the poisons and the potions, if you don''t you will die!" The old man had a reluctant glint in his eyes when he said this because if Lief drank the potions with the poison it would indeed help him survive by nullifying the pain by 70% but it would also make him advance far faster in the future and also grant him an instant boost in Cultivation! These were precious herbs even within several kingdoms! If Leif was lucky he may even be pushed straight through to the Earth Realm! By some miracle, Lief was able to sit up and drink all the Poison and the Potions! As soon as he managed to force down the last drop of the potions, he fainted, hitting his head on the floor. Four days soon pass, Lief slowly sat up and felt strangely normal. However, as soon as he tried to stand up he ended up throwing himself straight into the roof of the small room! "What?! How did I jump so high? Why didn''t that hurt! What?" Lief''s mind was blown, he even pinched his arm to check if he actually woke up. After asking many unanswered questions, he checked his body and was shocked to discover that his muscles were now as hard as stone! After further inspection, he realised that not just his body changed. He even jumped all the way from the first level of the Mortal Realm all the way to the Low King Realm! He skipped the entire Earth Realm, this was something that even that mysterious elder couldn''t imagine!Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. This of course also meant that his meridians have to have healed right?! He instantly sat back down and tried to Cultivate using one of the techniques he had learned before he lost hope. As he did a golden glow formed around Lief and a faint white mist would occasionally seep into him. He was not as joyful as most would be because he knew that he had to stabilize his current realm, if he skipped this he would never pass the next realm. if he was new to Cultivation he still knew a lot about it. Even though he was new to Cultivation, he still knew a lot about it. When you break through to a new realm it''s important to stabilize your Realm as soon as possible or it could lead to huge problems in your near and far future! Several hours later, he had finally stabilized his qi and started to relax but as soon as he opened his eyes, he was greeted with the misty old man staring in shock. "H-Hey Sir.." Lief stuttered nervously. Wiping the shock off his face the man sighed, "I hadn''t expected to come back and find you at the King Realm, It''s rather hard to believe!" "Thank you for your generous gifts, Sir" Even though Liefdoesn''t trust this man, he would definitely not let it show! "Although you cannot leave right now, I will gift you with these scrolls and this bracelet here." "Thank you I wonder how to leave this place, sir?" Lief asks cautiously as he takes the gifts. The old man glanced at Lief strangely and muttered, "Oh it''s easy you just need to jump into the portal while thinking of where you want to go, but as of right now you are not strong enough to use it so just put on the bracelet and follow me, child." Lief was about to place the bracelet on his wrist when he saw a cryptic symbol on the inside of it. A chain around the world, He knew he had seen this symbol from a book. Thinking for a moment, he remembered it! This symbol represents a slavers guild that ruled through fear and blood during the time his City moved, he only knew this because he was interested in learning about his City''s history. He sure was happy he spent time learningabout it, the bracelet in his hands right now was one that bound its self to your body and slowly digs its way into your body! By the time you realized what it was doing it would already have control over your arm! Even someone of the Heaven Realm would find it difficult to get free! It was at this point that he realised the only choice he had was to hope that what this old man said about the portal was the truth... Lief had to jump into the portal and hope for the best... He turned and ran for the portal faster than he had ever run before, he felt as if he was flying as every time his feet hit the floor he glided through the air, but as soon as he was about to go through the portal the old man appeared in front of him with a crazed smile! He spat as he yelled, "WhErE ArE YoU gOiNg CHILD!?" The old man''s voice was sinister and demonic, his body was enlarging at an incredibly fast speed! Just as Lief was about to slam into the giant old man, instead of ramming into him like he had thought he went straight through him and into the portal! When he realised what was going on he immediately started to think of his bed! ''My bed, my bed, my bed'' Chapter 3. The Different realms ''My bed, my bed, my bed!'' That''s was the one and only thought going through Lief''s mind since he obviously didn''t want the portal to mess up and send him somewhere else. He kept this thought repeating in his mind what seemed like hours even after he felt the soft sensation of his royal silk bed. After assuring himself he is indeed on top of his own bed, he opened his eyes and sat up. The room was just as he left it, his family are already used to him leaving for long periods of time, he once left for an entire month just because he wanted to find a rare fruit he wanted at the time. Even after the craving for the fruit left he didn''t leave until he was sure he wasn''t going to find it unless he went deeper and he clearly was not crazy enough to do that! He felt a strange stinging in his hand, as he looked at his left hand he noticed on his wrist he had a strange symbol, on that symbol was a rift with a 10 on his skin! He had no idea how but he somehow sensed that he had obtained the ability to teleport where ever he wanted! It turns out that it was even easier then the old man said, it is as easy as picturing the place you want to go and well, you''re there! He decided to forget about it for now and he would first go and get something to eat and then go to tell his father of what happened to him, although he was excited to start cultivating he hadn''t eaten in ages. If he had not progressed past the Mortal Realm he wouldn''t have left that room alive. As he progressed through the hallway towards the kitchen he passed several servants who all bowed their heads and just as he was about to reach the kitchen door a maid appeared, "Good morning Young Master, your father has been looking for you." A middle-aged woman dressed in a maid uniform greeted. "Oh, okay thanks, I''m just going to get some food so tell Father ill be there shortly" "Of course, Young Master. Have a nice meal." The maid seemed to enjoy her job. With that the maid left, Lief entered the kitchen and asked for some chicken to be prepared and brought to the courtyard. Lief would often eat his meals in the courtyard as he liked sitting in the shade whilst looking up at the sun shining on the aged footpath. After eating his meal he immediately started to walk towards the library, as most of the time his father would be reading some old book. Upon entering he noticed that the library was empty for a change, the library usually had at least 10 people inside as it was a giant place with hundreds of technique books! The techniques kept in this seemingly ordinary library were useful all the way until The High Heaven realm, currently, Lief has no idea how high that is but he knows it is an incredible realm that could allow a human to live 750 years! "Son, you have arrived. Come, I have something I must discuss with you." he sighed. "Ah, yes father." Lief followed his father towards a room he had not been allowed in before, the librarian''s storage. As he walked inside the storage room he could see stacks of books that had glowing seals on the covers that made him shiver! Placing a seal was an exhausting thing for anyone to do, he heard that it drains a Low Sky Realm master to the point of passing out! To put it on techniques... They must be forbidden techniques! Lief sat at the table with his father and waited silently to hear why he was called here before he would tell of the good news. "Hmm, you seem different for some reason? No, never mind that, the elders of the City have been pressuring me for too long now and it seems we are going to have to give Frieda''s hand-"This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. "No father that''s not needed! I am now at the King Realm!" "Don''t be silly, child!" Although he reprimanded Lief he still sent a slither of Qi over to check on his meridians clinging onto any hope he could get his hands on. "Wha- How? You''re actually, quickly tell me how you did it!" "You see..!" Lief explained everything from waking up in the cavern all the way to teleporting back and he even told him about his strange new ability. His Father, Darko rushed Lief into showing him the tattoo but he could sigh dejectedly as he himself had no idea what it was. "Father, could you please explain to me the Realms of Cultivating? I have not seen a book on the Realms before.." "Haha, of course, you haven''t that''s taught in the school. It''s not as if I would waste your time going there for something that I could teach you easily, now listen carefully." Father explained to Lief in detail about the ranks and they were as followed: Low Mortal Realm Mid Mortal Realm High Mortal Realm Average people usually surpass this realm by the age of 15, of course, you get geniuses. One child actually passed this realm at the age of 4! Then it went on to: Low Earth Realm Mid Earth Realm High Earth Realm Earth realm people are usually under 30 Average people usually pass this stage when they pass 30 years old, however, the same genius that passed the mortal realm when he was 4 also passed this realm when he was just 9 years old, that child''s name was Allard! Then to the realm Lief''s rank. Low King Realm Mid King Realm High King Realm Peak King Realm Most people stay at the Low king realm until they reach 50, the Mid King Realm until 55 and get through the High king Realm at 60! However, when someone reaches the Low King Realm the amount of time they can live is doubled! So because the average human lives 200 years, upon stepping into the Low King Realm they will now live to be 400 so long as they die of old age. The Peak King Realm If Compared to the Low, Middle or High King Realm even 10 High King Realm masters couldn''t win against just one master in The Peak King Realm! The King Realm as this is the bottleneck to get into the Sky Realm! Some people can spend as little as 1 year to 50 years trying to break through! Though some people can completely skip this they are either supreme geniuses or someone with godly luck! Allard, however, died during an assassination while being at The King Realm at just 19 years old! Then we have The Sky Realm! Low Sky Realm Mid Sky Realm High Sky Realm People within these realms are usually older than 60 but there have been several geniuses who were just over 35! The Low Sky Realm is also the minimum requirement to be an elder for large sects! The Peak Sky Realm Just like the Peak King Realm this is a bottleneck where some people can spend a lot longer than others! Although, just by reaching this realm your life will go from 400 to 800!! Though even with all that time only about 70% of them will ever get to the next realm! Low Heaven Realm Just to reach The Low Heaven Realm you must understand at least one of the rules under heaven! Upon understanding the rule your lifespan will increase to 850. Mid Heaven Realm If you reach this realm, your life will be raised to 900 IF you can pass the Trial Of Endurance! High Heaven Realm If you pass the trial your lifespan would be raised to 999 and there is no trial! But then, there''s the Peak Heaven Realm. This realm is the realm of some of the strongest kings and adventurers! Upon reaching this realm your strength, speed, Endurance, stamina, Intelligence are all doubled! Although, this is another tough bottleneck! You''re lifespan also gains 1 year. Low God Realm Reaching the God realm raises your lifespan to 2000! Middle God Realm Reaching this Realm raises your lifespan to 2500! High God Realm Reaching this Realm raises your lifespan to 4000! The Peak God Realm Reaching this realm raises your lifespan to 5000, it isn''t a bottleneck! All of these are not including potions that raise your lifespan! Some of these can raise it by as much as 100,000! Now the Foundation stage... Low Foundation Stage Reach this realm to be on the same level as the Emperor! No lifespan boost! Mid Foundation Stage Reach this Stage to be able to destroy the emperor, and increase your life span to 8000! High Foundation Stage Reach this stage to be able to force Middle Foundation Realm into running away with just a strand of qi! The Foundation Realm You can live to 10000! Darko did not tell him the average age of these Realms simply because there is no average, the ages differ far too much! Darko also mentioned that there are Realms above this but if one were to learn about it too early it could bring problems. What kind of problems wasn''t explained. Darko also didn''t say any of the ability boosts past The Heaven Realm because it differs depending on cultivation method and some masters don''t want people knowing so there are gaps in public knowledge. "Haha! I would like to see the elders argue with me now! Son, go to the deepest part of the cultivation vaults, the one that has the alchemy cauldron , I will be down shortly." "Yes, father!" Chapter 4. The Cultivation Vault "Haha! I would like to see the elders argue with me now! Son, go to the deepest part of the cultivation vaults, the one that has the alchemy cauldron , I will be down shortly." "Yes, father!" Lief set out to the Cultivation Vault so he could begin training his Qi. After leaving the mansion''s grounds he walked towards the city center to purchase some food. He wanted something tasty as he would probably be eating food pills during his time in the vaults. Lief decided that he wanted something sweet so he headed towards Sugar Palace, the Sugar Palace was the most expensive dessert shop in the city. One cupcake there would cost 200 gold, this kind of money could allow a commoner to live carefree for 50 years if they kept to their current spending habits. As Lief walked in he was immediately greeted by a beautiful young woman wearing a pure white dress. "Young Master Lief, what do you desire today?" Lief smiled and replied, "Hmm, today I''ll have five cupcakes and one honey delight." The young woman wrote down his order and passed it through the wall behind her and stated, "1000 gold for the cupcakes, 5400 gold for the honey delight. With your discount that makes it 3200 gold coins please. "Charge my dad." Lief said casually and walked away with the food, wolfing it down whilst walking towards the Cultivation Vault. After several minutes of walking, he arrived at the Cultivation Vault. Its double doors bigger than most of the trees in the city yet Lief casually pushed the plain obsidian doors open and began to walk towards the However, as he passed the rooms in the corridor he started to feel the pressure of Qi leaking out from some of the active rooms, the amount of Qi leaking out may have only been a tiny amount but the pureness of the Qi was on a whole different level than what he recently grown used too from being outside it made it harder to breathe. After walking for about 10 minutes he finally arrived at the end room. This was the most secure room in the entire city, the top tier cultivation room! Although this room didn''t leak it was almost never used as you needed to be a Grand Master in alchemy to make full use of it, the amount of Grand Master Alchemists in the city was just 3! The first being Lief, the second being his father and the third being one of the elders! Lief did not enter the room but instead waited for his father outside.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. After around half an hour, his father was finally in his view, slowly taking his time to walk towards Lief with a kind smile. "Son, I have announced that you will be in secluded meditation for some time, so take your time and don''t rush it! Remember it''s important to stabilize your Qi each time you break through a realm! Take this, this spatial ring holds all of our current Ingredients! I expect that when you finish this training you will have refined many pills and many potions for our city! Don''t use any of the pills or potions you create inside because the qi collectors would consume all the Qi you take from the potions before you can say Master!" he explained slowly. "Yes, father I will not let you down!" Lief swore sincerely. "Good! Good, that''s good to hear!" he smiled Darko hands a ring out to Lief which is accepted without the slightest hesitation. Inside the Cultivation Vault, the first thing that came into Lief''s view was a small, simple looking Cauldron. Lief had seen this tier Cauldron on one occasion, That was during a demonstration of creating the Thousand year life expanding pill! In each of the corners of the Vault lay a strange pitch black cube that hovered in place. This was a Qi Collector, these strange machines sucked in the Qi from the area and stored it for more efficient use. Of course, it could overdose you with Qi if you were not careful. Causing you to explode from the inside while also causing major damage to your surroundings. Glancing inside the high-grade spatial ring he was shocked to discover at least 25,000 of every single variety of rare ingredients and at least a million of each variety of common ingredients! If someone had heard about this before his city moved, no one would doubt them, they may even think it was a small amount for them because the city was once home to over 30 different Great Master Alchemists! However, if the word were to somehow travel out of the Forgotten Forests at this point in time, the current Emperor would without a doubt send all his armies to "accept them as a gift"! If you were to compare Thright''s ingredient storage with the Emperors the emperor would fall short... So short in fact, the distance would be further than heaven and earth! However, compared with their old Kingdom the amount they just handed to Lief wouldn''t amount to a single percent of their storage! This shows the obvious change brought by time! Lief sat next to the Cauldron and added several different kinds of herbs and mixtures before setting a flame simply by pressing down on the cauldron''s lid, this was one of the many special features of this Cauldron. As soon as the fire lit, a surge of mist filled the air before being sucked into a smooth pitch black rock, this rock was the Qi Collection stone! If he were not making pills in this room he could have either used that mist to further his cultivation, strengthen his body or even send it back into the cauldron to enhance the pill. A month flew by with Lief solely creating pills and potions without even touching the Stone he had used up just 2,436 common ingredients and even unknowingly forced the Qi Collection Realm to compress the qi it had gathered in order to continue to store more! If Lief''s father knew of this his jaw would drop to the ground as one of these Qi Collection stones had never even become 10% full even when the cultivator spent hundreds of years inside! Even Grand Master Alchemists couldn''t hope to get 100% even if they spent a million years, however, somehow Lief''s Pills and potions forced it to compress at least 10 times?! Liefs level of Pill Concorting must have reached an unthinkable level! Unfortunately, Lief didn''t realize that was full and as soon as he placed his hand on the rock, he became numb to the point of not being able to stand and then he passed out! Chapter 5. This Cauldron is special As Leif placed his hand on the black cube, he became numb to the point of not being able to stand and then he passed out! Lief finally regained consciousness after an unknown amount of time passed to find that he has advanced past the king realm and is now in the middle sky realm! From The mid king realm all the way to high sky realm... An unbelievable amount of energy was stored in just a month and with just 2,436 common ingredients! After stabilising his realm, he felt that there were no obvious bad effects to doing this so he decided to spend the next month creating pills and potions using common ingredients! Lief finally came to after an unknown period of time, he was amazed to find out that he had not only broken through from the Low King Realm all the way to the Middle Sky realm! He not only skipped through a realm, but he also skipped through a bottleneck and became the youngest ever Cultivator of the Middle Sky Realm! The amount of energy that would be needed to advance to this realm would be impossible to place into mere numbers! Is the Cultivation Vault really this good? He only used 2,436 Common ingredients! What if he were to use rare ingredients? Although he had a lot on his mind right now, he still knew that the most important thing right now was to stabilise his Qi! He was actually worried that because of his insanely fast speed he may have damaged himself in some way, luckily after a thorough search, he came to the conclusion that there had been no damages! Upon coming to his realisation he couldn''t hold in his joy anymore! "Oh yeah!" he screamed at the top of his lungs and broke out in a little dance where he flailed his arms around whilst doing what looked like a march. After a quick celebration and an unsightly victory dance he opened his storage ring and pulled out 10,000 of each variety of rare ingredients from his spatial ring, if you were to add up all of the variety''s you would easily have over a million rare ingredients littering the floor! He ate 6 of the food pills that were inside of his Spatial ring and began seriously preparing several herbs to start on creating Pills and Potions of the highest quality, using rare ingredients with no substitutes! For an ordinary Alchemist creating just one rare pill would be a struggle whereas, if you can became a Grand Master the only Pill/Potion''s that could cause you troubles are ones that boosted Cultivation, gave a permanent increase of an ability or ones that needed a more Qi than you had! Lief was overwhelmed with the purity and amount of Qi that flowed into the Stone after he created his first pill, it was as if he wasn''t allowed to breathe in its holy presence, but this wouldn''t stop him! Even if it hurt him each time he successfully made a pill he would still continue! The benefits greatly outweighed the pain. By doing this for a week, he started to get bored of repeating the same old Rare pill, so, he decided to start on something a little harder... He wanted to make a Potion that increased strength, simply because if he practised this enough he would become a much, much better Alchemist than any other Grand Master as he would gain knowledge of deeper levels of Alchemy and possibly unlock some secrets! Why is Lief so sure he will be the best Alchemist after he finishes his secluded meditation? Simple, there''s no other Alchemist that is able to practice like he is doing right now! Usually, an Alchemist is drained after creating pills but because he''s in the vault and is constantly being replenished with pill essence, Lief creates them and almost instantly regains he used energy so he will continue to be improving at a steady rate until he runs out of ingredients!Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. He hasn''t touched the Qi Collection stone yet either so all of the Qi that would usually dissipate into the air is being condensed into the Qi Collection stone when he finally comes to collect on the stored Qi his knowledge of Alchemy and strength will rise at a unprecedented rate! After refining at least 200 potions of Strength, he decided to start on making a equal amount of Intelligence, Agility, Speed, Stamina, Endurance potions also on top of all of those, he wanted to make a Pill that had a 80% chance to succeed,by using this 1% of all absorbed Qi will be separated and combined with the consumers flesh! If this pill succeeded, every bit of Qi he absorbed would strengthen his body, usually this pill would be used while you take potions that boost your cultivation realm so that the consumer becomes abnormally stronger than people of his own realm whilst also lessening the pressure on the users meridians, however, Lief would use this pill before touching the stone! The amount of Qi that this would end up using to strengthen his body was giving him the power to be able to defeat someone an entire realm above him with ease! Of course, this was considering they hadn''t been born with a special body type like The Heavenly Gift. After spending what seemed like months refining all of the Potions, he finally created the final Endurance potion! It was finally time for him to make a start on the Pill! Refining this pill, however, would use at least 500 of each variant of every ingredient in his possession, but even this was shockingly lower than he had been told while he was learning how to make this pill! When he was taught about this recipe it had told him that it would need one thousand of each variant including two Dragons Scales, but Lief discovered for some reason didn''t need to use the other 500 of each variant. Lief was lucky since his father had only given him one of the Dragon Scales as they are extremely rare! The Heavenly Gift was a special type of body that instead of helping the user cultivate Qi, it would actually make doing so 100% harder! The upside of this, however, when ever someone with the Heavens Gift body trained their strength to pass a realm they would gain more Qi than the average cultivator and have enough strength to kill those a level higher! Even with this body, though, if they encountered Lief now... He would be able to beat them into a bloody mess within 5 moves as long as they were at the same point of cultivation as him! Lief was slightly worried about this pill as he would need to use so much of his ingredients but this would certainly not stop him from proceeding with his plan! He lifted his hand above the small, simple looking Cauldron and after a faint glow hundreds of thousands of ingredients fell from the ring on his finger into the Cauldron which was, at this moment was slightly emitting a black glow and looked like a black hole, constantly consuming the ingredients without looking the slightest bit full! This proceeded for several minutes before a giant scale flew out of the ring, this scale was smooth to the touch and was as black as the night''s sky, the Cauldron looked as if it were going to be crushed by this shield sized scale but before the scale could land on the cauldron it shrunk down to the size of a spec of dust and gently drifted into the Cauldron! Seeing this, Lief could help himself but stare into the Cauldron for a few seconds and after doing so, he was amazed to find out that inside he could make out all of the different ingredients he dropped in but, all smaller than even a spec of dust! If he hadn''t ranked up to the sky realm he wouldn''t have even seen them, this Cauldron was amazing, he had grown used to expensive cauldrons by now, but this, this was something he couldn''t have even hoped to imagine! He had seen many Cauldrons but none of them could even compare to the Cauldron in front of him right now, this Cauldron held many secrets. Putting aside his amazement he began to refine the pill, he had no idea how long it could take and he hesitated, he was thinking about taking another food pill but before he could even start refining, the Cauldron made a low rumble and a small white pill was spat out, landing on his lap.... Chapter 6. Uh, I remember something about a trial? The Cauldron made a low rumble and a small white pill was spat out, landing on his lap.... "This pill?" Lief could not contain his confusion, he wore a complex expression that was a mixture of both doubt, fear, confusion and most of all, anticipation. He reached down and placed the pill on top of his hand gently as if he were handling a precious thin glass sculpture, and as soon as he sent a strand of Qi into the pill he was dumbfounded and could only stare at the pill in utter confusion. The pill was in fact, the pill he had been about to refine, but the Cauldron for some reason refined it instantly?! If Lief had gone along with creating the pill it would have taken him at least a month to complete, but right in front of his eyes, it had been completed within 2 breaths... It really was too much to take in for a 10-year-old child... He sat there in a daze, for no less than 10 minutes just staring at the pill that was sitting in his hand. When he finally came out of his daze, he decided that he would now consume the pill and immediately go and consume the Qi Stored in the Qi Collection Stone, he currently did not know but that stone had become full to the point of bursting more times than it could count but strangely instead of blowing up, it compressed all of the Qi each and every time, without fail. Swallowing the pill, he waited about 3 seconds before he could feel it take effect and as soon as he felt his body throbbing he placed his hand on the Stone this time, however, he didn''t pass out. Instantly after placing his hand on the stone he could feel his hand lock in place. He could no longer control his own hand! Suddenly, several thick, silky, golden strings of Qi discharged out from the cube and mercilessly forced its way into the defenseless Lief! Wave after wave of the Qi was followed by an indescribable pain, he could not resist the pain no matter how hard he tried, then as if wanting to cause him more pain, the effects of the Pill took effect! He could feel an immense amount of golden Qi force its way through his entire body, it felt as if it was eating away at his flesh and bones, but before completely destroying them they changed their minds and started rapidly healing him only to then decide they wanted to eat him again! This insane pain went on for what seemed like years but in reality was only 3 hours before finally stopping. Lief couldn''t stand as soon as his hand was released from the stone he slumped onto the cold hard floor wanting to sleep however, as as soon as he reached the floor he felt a strange pleasure and actually wanted to stay awake to dwell in this feeling for an eternity, unfortunately, it seemed like today any pleasures would be taken away as he passed out after relishing in the pleasure for just a few seconds. Days flow by and soon 2 entire months pass, before Lief, at long last, woke up. As he woke up he didn''t move at all and lay there, unmoving as if a fallen statue. Although he wasn''t moving, he was silently checking to see if his body was okay. When he realized he was totally fine, he slowly sat up before sitting crossed legs and meditating. Even though he did not know what realm he was currently in, he could easily tell he had passed a realm, but he wasn''t going to use even the slightest bit of Qi until he had assured himself that his current realm was stable, just what would happen if his Realm wasn''t stable and he used Qi?! Would he feel pain similar to the pain he felt while he absorbed it? Whether he would or wouldn''t, there was no way he would risk it. He meditated as if his life depended on it for several days before he finally felt safe to check his realm, but to his surprise, he was currently unable to check! Confused he looked down, only to see himself, still sitting down in the meditation position! ''What!? D-Did I die!? Am I a ghost?!'' As soon as he thought this he refused that it was true and rammed himself into his own body, moments after Lief rammed into himself, he was relieved to find himself back inside his own body. Lief was relieved when he was inside his body again. He couldn''t imagine being forced to live as a ghost! Who knows how long ghosts even last? What if he was forced to stay as one forever?Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! Only after making sure he was actually inside his own body with a few pinches was he readied himself to attempt to look at his realm, he wanted to at least get to the Low Heaven Realm because after reaching this realm he would be above everyone in the city bar his father, with this he could rest assured that no one could force his father to marry off his sister, and she could find someone she liked in the future without being forced into marrying for the Clan. He couldn''t help anticipating what Realm he would be in after all of the work he had done these past months he had forgotten how long he had even been here! He could wait no longer! He looked into his Sea of Qi in order to find out his current realm, but it wasn''t how he expected it! He expected that upon entering he would be floating in front of a gate that leads to an empty city sitting on the clouds as this is what indicated you reached the low heaven realm, even if it wasn''t that he expected to be within the city but... Instead of what he had expected he was floating above the City of Cultivation! He was flying above heaven, he could not believe it! This was The God realm! He had no idea what level of god realm he was in, however, for some reason instead of being like when he was in either Low, Middle or High realms he was unable to see the words that indicated this... It was just like this one time when he heard some kids talking about their class a while ago... "Today''s class was so boring! Why do we even need to learn about how realms look? We can just ask someone to check for us as they can easily see the words but we have to look for the signs?" "Haha doesn''t be so lazy, James what if we are in the mountains or something? Knowing this could be beneficial for our future!" "As if! *Sigh* It''s so boring it takes ages to learn this crap!" "But now we know that the bottleneck stages are all similar so it''s easy to tell! Isn''t that a good thing to know? I already knew how the Low King Realm was when you stand as if watching the throne from the audience, whereasin the Middle Realm is where you stand where an adviser may stand whilst giving advice to the throne. I was able to guess that the high king realm was when you was sitting on the throne, but I had no idea that each time you hit the bottleneck of a Realm you was flying above looking down at the realm you was just in!" "I guess." As soon as Lief remembered this he was astonished to realize he was in The Heaven Realm! The bottleneck to break into the Low God Realm! "Wait, So, Was all that pain part of the endurance trial followed by the doubling of my strength?!" But even though he thought this was the case he had doubts, the Endurance trail was supposed to be full of waves of the elements that you had to survive but he had none of that happened to him! After a few moments, he also realized that he hadn''t had the doubling of his Strength, Speed, Endurance, Stamina, Intelligence and had the ability to trigger that at will! He sensed that it was like a button in his Sea of Qi that he could press whenever he wanted! At this moment he decided that he would wait as long as possible to press it, as the longer he waited the stronger he would be, and the stronger he was, the more that would be doubled! You may wonder why he didn''t have to go through the endurance trial? He actually did, do you remember that pleasant feeling that he wanted to dwell in, well, that was the trial that killed an immeasurable number of people trying to pass the Mid Heaven realm! This shows just how painful absorbing all of the Qi was for Lief, he wanted to dwell in something that stops most people from even trying to advance the Mid Heaven Realm! If news of this were to get out Lief would be thought to be crazy even by masochists! After preparing himself he was ready to leave and go back to his father, but as soon as he got to the door he realized that inside of his clenched hand was a tiny little Cauldron, the same Cauldron that was in the center of the room had somehow shrunk and even came into his clenched hand? After placing the Cauldron back on the ground it immediately grew back to its original size as if nothing happened. Lief again turned and began walking towards the door when yet again, the Cauldron was in his right hand! However, this time when he tried to move it and put it back onto the floor his hand got a shock that completely parallelized his right hand for a good 5 minutes! Shocked, Lief stared at the furnace sitting innocently on his right hand, only to see that straight red lines had come off of it and ran up his arms! Alarmed, he immediately pulled up his silky, long whiteshirt, however, instead of seeing long straight lines he realized that the blood red lines formed words! Words not of English, but some strange kind of scribble that, if shown to anyone else on the planet they would think of it as a child''s unusually neat and straight, fake language that was made up of scribbles, but could still changebased on how it was read after they assigned words to it, but for some strange reason when Lief saw this he felt familiarity, no, not because this was a language he made up, but for some other reason he couldn''t make heads or tails of... The words read, Human, this Cauldron has grown attached to you, take it. If you say no ill order it to destroy your little city, but if you saaaaay yeeeeees ill tell it to show you its original form AAHND do a little Cauldron dance on the spot ,Haha! Hmm? Oh! Surprising, hold on a second don''t answer i''ma come to you real quickzies since your the little kid who had the balls to drink my blood!" As Lief saw a familiar voice was also reading it in the back of Liefs head Lief watched the words and listened to the voice, his face constantly changed from a ha, your shit at spelling look to shock, dread, then to surprise and finally horror as he realized that the blood he drank a while ago in that cave was...This Cauldrons owner? Chapter 7, a strange youth. As Lief watched the words, a familiar voice was also reading it in the back of Liefs head. Lief watched the words and listened to the voice, his face constantly changing, from a ha your shit at spelling look to shock, dread, then to surprise and finally horror as he realized that the blood he drank a while ago in that cave was...This Cauldrons owner? Lief stared at the ever changing , blood red words on his arm as many questions filled his mind. ''Who is it? Whoever it is, are they mad at me for drinking the blood? Is it even Human? If it wasn''t, why did it say Human?!'' Lief decided that his best option would be to act as if he hadn''t heard the voice and head home and ask his father about it, so he allowed the Cauldron to continue to sit on his right hand, then opened the door and sprinted out of the Cultivation Vault storage building. As he reached the outside, he continued sprinting towards his City, at his current speed, he could reach it within 5 minutes whereas if he was walking with his old speed, it would have taken him several hours. However, as he reached the halfway point his right arm started to sting and another string of red lines slithered out of the Cauldron and formed into the words "Slight warning kiddo If you keep running your gonna run into a-" Before the word could even fully take place, Lief rammed into an invisible wall that shot him back 100 meters, straight into what felt like a brick wall! Lief ignored the pain and turned around to see how a wall could have appeared behind him after he had run in a straight line through plain fields. After he turned around he was astonished to see a black clothed youth no older than 16 yawning with his palm out in an uncaring manner! "Cmon kid don''t go flying into strangers! Hahaha" "You''re not much older than me, what right do you have to call me a kid! What did you just use to stop me?" Lief was annoyed and baffled by this strange teen. "Haha, kid don''t be stupid! I''m almost 16 billion in human years. Anyway, I told you I would be coming so it''s not like I''m unannounced." The youth smirked. Lief stared at the strange youth, gobsmacked. He wasn''t so gullible as to believe everything this kid said but as he sent a string of Qi to check his Realm he was greeted with an uncountable number of blood red eyes staring back at him! Scared, Lief looked at the youths face only to be terrified. The youth had completely black eyes without the slightest bit of white, but after staring into his eyes for a while, Lief noticed there were several thin red cracks separating parts of the black! The strange thing was, apart from his eyes and his strange smile, everything else seemed completely normal as if he was plucked out from a common city and told to stand in front of Lief! "Child, you drank my blood and used one of the Cauldrons I made, this is slightly interesting to me, and seeing the memories of the Cauldron it seems you have a pretty useful ability unique to like, I don''t know like uh, four-ish living creatures in this universe? Five including you of course, luckily for me it''s also one of the ability''s I haven''t regained yet... Tell you what kiddo, lemme grab some of your blood and ill tell you most of the uses of your ability." The youth stated as if it was a natural thing to do.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Before Lief could even reject the suspicious the youth grabbed him by the arm however instead of taking blood or squeezing, all he did was gently hold onto Lief,''s arm? "Ahhh, that''s the ability! There it is, I missed you didn''t I little guy, Heh heh! Oh yeah, the ability allows the holder to go out of their body like a little ghost, uh when you reach god realm you can pretty much make yourself immortal by cloning yourself and, well fleeing in ghost form the moment your about to die, for example, if you were ''bout to be executed by beheading, you really wanna ditch your body as you feel the wind from the blade, though it''s not really needed it saves you the trouble of having people think you fainted before you were killed...Yeah, that would be embarrassing... Well anywho, I don''t dislike you yet so I guess I''ll let you keep the Cauldron, I said I would order it to do a few things but eh... I just can''t be bothered if I''m honest with you..." "Eh, uh. Thanks...?" Lief was clearly mind boggled and could barely form a sentence Lief couldn''t grasp the situation at all his mind felt like it would collapse at any moment, the man was leaking energy that made the ground beneath him crumble! Suddenly, the air behind the youth distorted and begun to separate forming a giant rift that looked like it was big enough to swallow entire country appeared from nowhere to reveal a giant, grey eye! The eye glanced at everything before enthusiastically speaking. "Damion, sir! We have had the fortune of catching your favourite meal today!" "Ohh! I assume you mean my favorite food in this Universe or did you actually take the time to travel into the 53rd Galaxy of the 85th Universe?" "My deepest apologies for being unclear sir, we have tried traveling through Universes on multiple occasions but even Gelienth has been unable to breach. I did indeed mean the Angel of this world, I''m sorry if I were unclear. Allow this one to take his life in apology!" "No need. Just give me your next born, that shall be enough of an apology as I''m quite happy with eating Angel today! Unlike last week I desire it to be well done." "Sir, my next born is yours, well done it will be Sir! Please come along at your earliest convenience." "I''ll come with you. Oh, and Child, yah know that rift symbol on your right wrist doesn''t have any severe bad sides right, apart from only being usable 10 times anyway... Walking everywhere would surely get boring, oh, Cauldron make like his rift and become a marking... I feel like his rift needs a buddy, go ahead and become a cool little Cauldron marking on his right hand! Bye kid!" As Lief watched the rift close he felt a pain in his hand as the Cauldron lowered into his hand, he realised his mouth was agape and he was slightly drooling! Wiping himself off he decided to ignore the tingling sensation in his right hand and try''s to remember everything he just heard. When he remembered how the eye told the youth, Damion? That his favourite meal from this world was Angel he forgot everything about Universes and galaxy''s because in this world, Just one Angel was rare and where ever they went and whoever they saw, everyone saw them as gods and powerful beings. They also had an ability that made people weaker than them only able to think pure thoughts about them. In this world, Lief hadn''t even thought that a cultivator could even think of harming an Angel, however, this man had lackeys that would kill and cook an Angel FREQUENTLY?! This was way too much for Lief and he even felt like throwing up! After several hours of thinking about everything that had previously happened, Lief decided to teleport to his father! H ''Fath- In front of fa- In a safe place outside of where ever my father is.'' Lief wasn''t a hundred percent sure that he wouldn''t teleport literally inside his father, and he sure as hell didn''t want to scare him by appearing in front of him so he took the alternative. His hand tingled and the number changed from 10 to 9. Even though Lief didn''t blink, in an instant the entire world went black and then in the next instant he was outside of what seemed like a cemetery. This was weird because no one in Lief''s family had died since they moved and only a small handful of City commoners had died and none of those had even been acquaintances of his family. Several steps ahead of Lief was his father, staring down at a gravestone. "Father?" "Son?" Chapter 8. Returning from meditation. "Father?" "Son?" Lief and Darko stare at each other for several minutes before Darko jumps up and hugs Lief! "Son what happened!? How are you here?!" "What do you mean? I just came out of my Meditation." Lief answered casually. Darko hastily stands up, his wide eyes staring at Lief intensely. "B-But.." Darko stuttered "But what, Father what''s wrong?" Lief asked, worry obvious in his tone. "Son, after a year passed I decided to come and check on you but you never replied and when I came back later with several elders even with all of our combined attacks... The door stayed standing and the energy coming out of the room hospitalised an elder for an entire year! We all thought you died... I even closed the Cultivation Vaults..." Darko''s voice trembled with the slight disbelief of their reunion. "Closed the meditation vaults, thought I died? Leaking energy? I don''t understand?" Darko sat down with Lief and slowly calmed down before explaining to Lief. After around an hour of important details and some unnecessary rambling, Lief now knew that he spent a lot longer than he had thought, he had actually missed 5 birthdays, five! He was 15... After finding that out he looked straight down at his clothes. His clothes clearly showed his growth. He looked like he had been unable to afford new clothes so that he was forced to wear his old ones for years. The only reason he didn''t realise that he had outgrown his clothes was because they had ripped to the point of holding together by small threads! He also found out that his Sister had been able to avoid findinga future husband due to his father''s rage and mourning, it seemed as if everyone would be patient and wait for his father to calm down beforehand. After all, no one would dare to push the king too much unless they were completely sure of their plan. Lief wanted to explain everything that happened but his father pulled him away first telling him that he has to reunite him with his sister because she had locked herself in her room for 2 entire years before she would even think about leaving! She only allowed her father to come inside after the first month passed. As his father Darko dragged Lief towards the palace the City streets were strangelyempty. When Lief enquired about this he didn''t get an answer. Perhaps Darko hadn''t heard him? After running through the city streets for several minutesthey finally arrived in the castle''s courtyard. Darko immediatelyyelled: "Kaitlynn, come down! Your brothers returned!" Several hushed voices appeared around the courtyard before the sound of rushed steps echoed throughout the walls.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. You couldn''t even count to 20 before you heard her voice. "Truly?!" a sweet excited voice came from behind one of the wooden doors before it burst open, barely holding onto its hinges. An energetic young woman burst through the doors, as she laid her eyes on Lief she froze, giving him a great view of her face. She was truly a beauty. No girl in the city could match up to her, she had brown hair, a well-proportioned body with pure eyes and an innocent smile, truly a woman Lief himself would have chased if she was not his sister. "Brother Lief its truly you!" Kaitlynn jumped into Lief''sembrace and stayed without moving for several breaths. Leading Lief and Kaitlynn into the castle Darko wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, his small action went unnoticed by the large crowd whose attention was all on the young lord. Several hours later inside the Princesses main room, Lief had finally explained everything to his father and his sister. Their shock was evident on their faces as the conversation dragged on. "Son, if you see that mysterious young man again doesn''t aggravate him. Based on what you told me, he should be a cultivator from another plane and he should even be far stronger than the Emperor!" Lief was not surprised when he heard that. He had left out the part about eating Angels as he knew that both his father and sister deeply adored angels to the point of having a small carving on each of their bedsides. How devastated would they be if they knew the truth? "Lief you must be careful in the future, if people find out what those two markings actually are I''m sure even the emperor would have you surrender them, *Sigh* Anyway enough with being so serious! Let''s go set up a feast for the whole city in celebration of your return!" Later that day a humongous feast was set up inside the throne room and every noble in the city was invited. Of course, if anyone invited didn''t come, they would truly have to be physically unable to as this was probably the most magnificentfeast they will ever attend in their entire life. Some of the main courses were even cooked with phoenix feathers, a speciality that was usually only for the royal family once a year! The room was filled an entire hour before the feast was even set to begin. This showed how important this feast was, not only could they taste phoenix flamed delicacies but they could show concern for Lief earning them points in Kaitlynn''s good books! At exactly 7pm, Lief, Darko and Kaitlynn appeared at the doors immediately drawing all eyes. Lief wore a Black suit that could only be explained with one word, Expensive. Just looking at it made you feel as if you was looking at gold bars, it was jet black with a single gold crown sewn into the back. Kaitlynn drew the most attention with her long white dress, beautiful brown eyes and her enchanting smile as she walked beside Lief. Darko, however, wore his usual Kings attire with a crown and lead the two towards the main seats. Everyone in the throne room immediately bowed/curtsied"Your majesty''s" "Everyone this is a joyous occasion please sit!" the king laughed. Many people began to eat, drink, laugh and some even shouted. Clearly having a good time. After the Darko spoke, various different members of the young nobility greeted Kaitlynn whilst some Elders spoke with the king. Several young women also attempted to speak with Lief but he politely declined each one as he had a lot on his mind and had no time to talk to a girl right now. The girls all left quietly, some with disappointment and some with slight anger in their eyes. Abruptly, a loud young voice was heard "Princess, have you considered our engagement any further?" Upon hearing this many people wanted to teach the kid his place as he was currently attending a feast made for Lief yet this young man was going to bring up something like that? Everyone knew Lief didn''t like the way people tried to force her to marry for the clan, but when they saw the speaker was Dew, the head Elders "chosen" child they all lost their nerve. Rage exposed itself in the king''s face as he slammed the table, instantly making a hole the size of someone''s head in the thick solid oak dining table. A loud "bang"shocked everyonein the throne room, but before he could get a word out, faint footsteps begun echoing throughout the throne room... Chapter 9. A blessing, or a curse? Faint footsteps echoed throughout the throne room. Everyone''s gaze was drawn to the figure, it was a young man donned in a black suit embraided with a golden tiger. His eyes were as black as the abyss, unending and mesmerizing. Lief''s eyes widened as he saw the same man who ate angels, he couldn''t help but shrink down in his seat in fear. "Heh, don''t bother hiding kid, have you not seen your friends?" The youth laughed whilst looking towards Lief. Lief looked around in fear at the man''s words. Everyone was still, unmoving as if they were stone! Lief wavered and asked with obvious fear, "What did you do to them?" The young man smirked and spoke slowly like he thought that Lief wouldn''t understand him "I just froze them, they are borin'', I''m sure you can entertain me better, come with me." Lief barely hesitated and obediently stood up and followed behind him, knowing that even if he fought with all his might, he may not be able to harm even a single hair on that man''s head. After several minutes of walking, the man stopped at the courtyard. "Sit" he commanded like one would to a pet. Lief sucked up his questions and sat down on a plain stone bench. "In a few years, I''ll be changing some world laws. I''ll be changing quite a lot, but you don''t need to worry about that. I will be watching you for a while. I won''t help you, you should understand this. I am watching you for entertainment.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Think of it as if you had a dog, and you let the dog free but had it followed by a Eyes of Greed spell. I won''t help you if you are ever in trouble, however, me and a few people will bet on how long you survive... Haha, anyway Ima give you a gift. Enjoy it." After he pet Lief on the head once he disappeared, as if he was never there... "Eh?" Lief sat in a daze the words took a while to soak in... After all, if you heard someone talking about the world''s laws in such a simple manner would you not be confused? The world''s laws, such a thing had never been changed before, at least it has never been recorded in history, not even in legends! Lief guessed that the man was lying or maybe stretching the truth. Even though Lief knew the man was strong. There was no way he was strong enough to change something even gods could change, right? Lief thought back and remembered that the man spoke of the "Eyes Of Greed" spell This spell was something even the ancients of the Huzina kingdom locked away. They demanded the king do so, they said that such a spell shouldn''t be used, ever. It was rumored that the spell needed 100 lives to be activated along with another 50 every week it was active! If anyone used a spell like that to watch a dog for entertainment they would have to be the ruler of a Kingdom or lord of some extremely big slavers association, but any King that used this would surely not last past the starting day. As Lief was contemplating he heard his father yell, " YOU DARE TO BRING UP THIS MATTER IN THIS KINGS PRESENCE?YOU SEEK DEATH!" Lief ran back towards the celebration to find Dew with an arrogantsneerstaring at the king whilst shouting "King! Don''t do anything stupid all the elders are on my father''s side, just because your son is powerful now doesn''t mean squat! I could easily crush him between my fingers, the princess will marry me sooner or later so why prolong it?" An old man stepped forward when he saw that the king was ready to explode, "Darkolisten to my child, he will stay miles ahead of your son! He will soon fly through the heavens and bring our City to new heights!" The king''s eyes grew red and he roared, "OH, HE WILL BE FLYING THROUGH THE HEAVENS SOON? ILL HELP HIM ON HIS MERRY WAY!" As Darko yelled, he vanished, everyone in the room paled as they could easily guess what was about to happen. The Head Elder stood in shock as he watched everything happen. "Thud" the sound of Dews head dropping silenced the celebration. All the elders and nobles stared in shock as this happened, the princess ran out of the room, this was her first time seeing a death so, to stop everyone see her throwing up she dashed out of the room. Lief watched from the back in silence, he had not noticed that he had left a trail of, something... Chapter 10. The Wedding The throne room is silent if you listened carefullyyou could hear the thumping sound of your own heartbeat. All the eldersstared in shock as Dew''s lifeless head hit the ground. The Head Elder could not believe what happened in front of him, the passive king he had challenged all this time finally snapped! He had always thought that when this happened he could just force the king back after him and some elders had a war with words with him... Alas, how many plans go exactly the way they were planned out to be? It was at this moment that Darko decided to speak, "It seems that when a king decides to be passive, everyone forgets the strength of his bite. *Sigh* Some of the Elders in this room should remember my strength from before, do you think that I for some reason allowed myself to get weaker? Could you truly not use common sense?" Several Elders that were with The Head Elder gasped they had truly messed up, what kind of cultivator would ever allow themselves to get weak? "This king has decided that all Elders who have helped The Head Elder will be spared. I have always been merciful, don''t make me regret it. Everyone may leave" After the king''s speech everyone left, the head elder included. That old man left while carrying his son''s head as some of his servants carried the body. He was clearly angry but he wasn''t stupid enough to act on it while the king was like this. Revenge is best served cold after all. "Lief, my son. Now that you are strong enough you can truly stop your sister from being forced into marriage so long as you marry in her place. We need to keep our family going after all. Lief was prepared for this, so he wasn''t shocked and just nodded. "I have arranged for some servants to send every noble household an invitation to bring their daughters with the condition that they are under 20 years of age." "Okay, father." - 2 days later, the throne room is back to celebration order, as if blood had not littered the walls days before. Crystal chandeliers placed equally around the ceiling, royal red carpets, new stainless table cloths and even silver cutlery . Lief sat on a table on his own in the center of the hall, Darko sat on his throne overlooking everyone and his sister Alice decided to sit out this celebration. She was probably worried in case her father decided to set another example today. The king reached down the right side of his throne and rang a small golden bell, *Ding ding* a high pitched ding sounded and the doors slowly opened, revealing a long line of women. At first glance, all of the women wore expensive dresses coupled with expensive jewels, some were gorgeous, some were pretty and a small majority could even be described as average. Of course, some of these women would have horrible, spoilt personalities and some would have nice personalities. Every one of them looked different and every one of them had their own personality. Lief smiled and waved to the one at the front of the line, she was truly beautiful, daughter of one of the most powerful clans inside of the city''sclans. The Swift Clan. This clan had been formed after the city moved but they had quickly taken root and became the 2nd strongest clan in the city. Armed with immense riches it was simple to get supporters. This girl in front of him had probably been fed food that raised her looks since birth. It was obviously chosen from birth that she would not be a pillar for the clan and instead become the "gift" that created a strong alliance, many clans did this. She sat at his table and started talking just when Lief was about to talk. "Hi Lief, my name is Alice as I''m sure you already know."Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. "Next." Lief said immediately, he has never liked people who were like this. There was no way he would marry someone like her. Alice blushed in shame whilst looking down, her eyes filled with an obvious trace of anger After 3 hours of going through an uncountable amount of women, he had finally got the end of the line. Instead of being happy, though Lief was nervous. Not because she was beautiful or anything, but because if he didn''t say yes to this girl he would have to have even more come. "Hello." A young woman broke Lief''s thought and he looked up at her. She was a brunette with brown eyes, she wore a white dress with sequins in. She was quite surprising as her clothing didn''t look nearly as expensive as everyone else. Lief replied with the same smile he had used to greet all those before her as he offered her the seat in front of him. "Hi, please sit." "Thank you," After the two talked for around 20 minutes Lief had learned that she was 17 and actually came from an average family her name was Sophie. Her family had spent quite a lot of their money to buy the dress she wore today. Sophiewas not the first girl to say a story like this, there had been many before also. How many families wouldn''t try to get their daughter to become a Princess? Lief had decided that he might as well pickSophie, after all, she wasn''t bad looking and she had a decent personality. He truly didn''t want to do something like this again. Besides if she turned out to have been lying today she would have broken the rules of the arrangement and would be immediately divorced and being fined 10,000 gold. Several hours after,Sophie''s family had came and left after talking with the king and deciding that the wedding would be held in just 4 days. Being only 4 days away shocked Lief, he had thought that he could get to knowSophie a little better but being so short he had to make sure the entertainment would be good. He called Sugar Palace and arranged for them to make the wedding cake and many treats. The total bill from the Sugar palace was 135,000 gold even with the discount! He also sent an order for the marketplace to be cleared of all stores as he would be having the wedding there. All citizens of the city were invited and expected to attend. 2 days to go and Lief had a surprise visit from Tybalt, Sophie''s brother. He mostly complimented Lief on his good choice but there was a lot of compliments for his sister too, of course, he also talked about himself a lot. Obviously trying to get a job as a Royal Guard as he had talked about them for 30% of the visit. After Tybalt left, Lief started to think to himself, ''Is this really okay? Maybe I should ask father to prolong the wedding so I can get to know her better... '' After going over the advantages and disadvantages in his head he decided it would be best to keep going. After all, this way his sister didn''t need to worry about anything and she could take her time finding someone she could love. A day before the wedding his sister actually visited him saying she was sorry and telling him she didn''t mind if she had to marry, but Lief persuaded her this was what he wanted. The day of the wedding. Everything was set up beautifully, there were plants running along the backs of each seat and on top of each plant was a beautiful flower that was scheduled to bloom as Lief and Sophie would be leaving. This would be a truly amazing day. There was a harp playing a soft melody as Lief stood at the alter. The Priest smiled gently as he looked towards the curtains were their future princess would emerge from. In the front row, the king sat next to the princess, they both smiled towards the Alter. Sophie peered through the curtains before walking towards the alter, one step after the other. She wore a wedding dress that her mom once wore, even though the king asked multiple times her family and her were adamant on her wearing it. It looked average, the bridesmaids actually had to buy cheaper clothes so that they didn''t outshine her! As she stood opposite Lief, he couldn''t help but feel this was right. That he had made the right choice, maybe, he could even enjoy life with her? Lief was about to say his vows when he saw the angel eater in the back. He remembered that the giant eye called him Damion? Him being here surprised Lief, he thought he should say something when he heard him inside his head... "Your power should fully awaken soon." Before Lief could question the meaning he vanished. ''Why does he always vanish?'' Lief couldn''t help but be slightly annoyed by the way that guy acted. That man talked differently almost each time he saw him and seemed to love to disappear on him. Lief decided he would look into it later besides, it''s not as if he couldn''t control his power. He had nothing to do for the past few days so he had gotten used to the feeling of going out of his body. He was sure he had slight control over it, at least to the point where it wouldn''t randomly go off or anything. Lief snapped back to reality, it was his turn to say his vows. "On this special day, In the presence of God and all those around, this is my sacred promise to stay by your side as your faithful husband, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, through the good times and the bad." The priest smiles at Liefs vows. "I now pronounce you husband and wife, you may now kiss the bride." Sophie and Lief lean in and have their first kiss before... "AHHHHH" Sophie pushed Lief back in terror, Lief noticed as she pushed him that her lips seemed to be cracking and turning black, it spread across her face whilst everyone stares in horror after she screams for several seconds before dropping to the floor. Dead. Lief stares in disbelief at what just happened. So does the audience. "Doctor!" the king yells After a moments of hesitation a man jumps up from his seat and rushes towards the bride, as he arrived and checked her pulse he turned pale and yelled, "She was poisoned" Chapter 11. Sleep. "She was poisoned!" The doctor declared loudly. The courtyard fell into silence... "Whooosh" the king appeared in front of Sophies body and yelled: "WHO? WHO POISONED HER? BRING ME EVERYONE WHO HAD CONTACT WITH HER WITHIN THE LAST 12 HOURS!" Men in silver armour stormed out from the castle after the king''s order and begun rounding people up. Within moments there were 23 people lined up before the king, each bowing as low as they possibly could. The king looked at the knights and asked, "Is this everyone?" "Yes, your majesty!" the knights replied in unison. The king glanced at his son, Lief who was in a daze. -- Lief was extremely confused at this moment, thousands of thoughts whizzed through his mind. ''Why would someone kill Sophie? I hadn''t spent much time with her but I have been around her long enough to know she wasn''t a bad person...'' Lief simply couldn''t wrap his head around the agenda of the killer. Why? Lief heard his father giving orders whilst he was thinking. The king also started using a spell called "Seeker" this was quite an uncommon spell, it was often thought of as a spell that would follow someone but in reality in searched through people''s memory. The spell isn''t passed around much and is banned in several kingdoms as there is a 1/1000 chance of an error where the spell will actually reverse the brains age. This results in a grown man/woman with the brain of a child. The king patiently placed his hand on each of the 23 people''s heads. There were 18 women and only 5 men. After several minutes, the king finally passed the 22nd person. There was only one left. A woman, she seemed to be around 30 years old, she had only been around Sophie for a moment. She had only passed her on the street yet she was still brought in front of the king today. Who would have thought that something as simple as waving would bring her into such a dangerous situation? The king placed his hand on his blade that was on his right hip as he placed his hand on her head. He couldn''t have her running away after he found out she was the killer, could he? However, shock flashed through the king''s eyes. Hadn''t this woman poisoned Sophie either?The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. "Are you sure this is everyone that had been in contact with Sophie?" The king asked one of the knights. "Yes sir, we are one hundred percent on this. The only other people that have been near Sophie was you and Lief." The knight replied whilst on one knee. "I don''t understand..." The king muttered. -- At this moment Lief was staring off into space whilst thinking about what happened. *Tap* Lief felt someone tap his shoulder so he turned around. However, as he turned around the priest was pale with his eyes wide and staggering back yelling "DEMON!" Everyone in the courtyard immediately looked at the priest as if he had gone mad. The prince, a demon? Hardly. Lief also looked at the priest as if he was mad, but then he felt the wind on his bare shoulder. Glancing at his shoulder he saw that the suit he was wearing now had a hole the size of a hand! His eyes drifted back towards the priest hand that had touched his shoulder to Liefs astonishment, the old man''s hand was turning black and cracking! The old Preist shrieked whilst waving his arm around and yelling "Demon! demon! Hellspawn!" It was spreading, the old priest''s skin was starting to turn into what looked like charcoal! It started spreading slow but the speed was picking up, everyone watched in terror as it happened. The disease spread up his arm and even into his white gown! His clothing barely lasted a second before it turned into dust. Revealing the old man''s body, not one person glanced at his body, though, everyone was watching the disease pick up in speed and spread to his torso, legs and finally his head. The man''s arm didn''t last through this process, no, it cracked into little pieces before falling onto the floor and shattering into tiny pieces, fading along with the wind. It hardly took 20 seconds before the man''s body completely cracked into tiny little pieces. Everyone in the audience, the noble''s, the knights, Liefs friends and even Lief''s sister took several steps back. The king was the only one to step forward, "Son... What did you do to Priest Jefferson?" Lief stared blankly at the charcoal like corpse on the floor before replying " I... I didn''t do anything... He patted me on the shoulder before, before this happened..." "Son, for right now please make your way towards the hospital, it may not have been Sophie who was poisoned, it may have been you..." The king whispered to Lief before facing the audience and speaking with a heavy voice . "Please don''t worry. We will find the one responsible, please stay behind so that we can check what you have done in the past week. Failure to stay behind will result in death, no excuses. Lief nodded to his father before moving towards the edge of the stage. However, before Lief took his second step he felt a crushing pain in his chest and collapsed to the ground groaning in pain! The king rushed towards Lief before stopping several steps away from him and asking seriously "Is the poison acting up?" Lief opened his mouth to say something but as he did the pain amplified by many times! "AARGH" Lief cried out in agony, clutching his chest in pain before finally passing out. As Lief yelled everyone saw a strange black mist pour out of his mouth and soar into the sky. Everyone cried out in horror as they saw a piece of the mist rush towards them, however, no one could outrun the mist. Men, women, children, cats, dogs anything breathing ended up being a host to whatever the mist was. 10 seconds later... *Thud, thud, thud" The king must have heard hundreds, if not thousands of those same sounds. People truly dropped like flies. The animals went first, they went without much noise. The children second, they went with painful screams, they echoed throughout the city. The women followed the children, some cried, some screamed and others silently sobbed to themselves. The men went last, some lined up their families and lay next to them, some went screaming and some even went drinking believe it or not. The king watched his city die, he held his dying daughter as he watched all his friends die. He felt truly useless, he couldn''t save anyone. He couldn''t save his daughter or even himself. In his final moments, he lay next to his daughter, hand in hand and asked himself... "Was I a good King?" Chapter 12. Tomb City. "Ugh..." Lief groaned as he moved his arm towards his eyes to block the sun. He slowly opened his eyes and sat up, the view before him was truly horrifying... Corpses. There were corpses of young children, corpses of adults, corpses of the elderly and even corpses of dogs and cats! Theirashlike corpses littered the courtyard, some were lucky enough to keep their body parts whole whereas some had lost half of their bodies. The putrid smell made Lief gag. He looked around him, Lief thought that it looked like someone was having a celebration of sorts, maybe a wedding? He looked around and saw what looked to be the bride, her body was so infected you could not make out any of her features. Not just her, everyone around Lief looked like that. Their bodies looked charred, though Lief could tell they weren''t burned. Lief was finally starting to get used to the smell. At least, it wasn''tas bad as when he had first woke up. He glanced at his surroundings. "Wait... Why am I here? I should be in the vaults right?" Lief tried to recall what had happened but for some reason, it seemed like he couldn''trecall anything recent! He decided he should go and find his father ask what happened to these people. Lief felt something on his face and went to wipe it with his hand. As his hand was reaching up towards his face he noticed that his hand was actually trembling, this was quite strange as Lief has seen many situations of death. Not first hand or anything, he has seen them through memory crystals of other people so that he could strengthen his mind. To tremble from this is quite normal, though, how can memory crystals compare to the real thing? Lief wiped his face and realised that whatever liquid it was, it came out from his eyes. Glancing at his hands he saw it a deep red liquid, blood. "Why... Why are my eyes bleeding?" Lief was at a loss, he had only ever heard of someone crying blood once and that was when a deranged alchemist used a little boy as an experimentand caused thousands of scenes where the child went through life losing people each and every moment the child eventually cried blood from grief and the alchemist, happy with his experiment finally disposed of the boy after months of experimentation...This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. But Lief wasn''tgrieving for anyone nor had anything sad happened to him. In fact, everything''sbeen going well for him, right? Lief wiped the blood off his face and decided to head towards the library to find his dad. However, after his first step, he kicked something. *Clang* Lief''s attention was drawn towards a golden crown. The kings crown. Lief suddenly remembered everything. His wedding, the old priest and the black gas that he coughed up... His vision blurred red, streams of blood ran down his cheeks, he started crying blood again. "N-no... This... This isn''tpossible, right? There''s no way... Ju-..No!" Lief dropped to his knees and stared at the infected corpse. Missing its right arm, laying on several charcoal like pieces of a royal red robe. It was laying next to another body, a slimmer body, a female''s body. Its identity was confirmed when Lief saw the pendant wrapped in its hand. The pendant that the queen had given the king just before she vanished. "I... I''m sorry... I''m sorry everyone, dad, sis, Sophie... everyone..." "AAAAAAARRGH!" Lief''s howl sounded beastly, nothing like a humans cry, the amount of grief contained within... --- He stayed kneeling for several hours silently sobbing to himself until he finally forced himself to stand up. He began to walk to the shop with an oak sign outside. The Crafters Den. This was a place for designers and crafters to get together and make partnerships, deals and maybe even friendships. However, right now, Lief was going to use its stockpile of tools and materials to dig graves. Not just for his family, he would dig a grave for every life he took, animals included. They would be buried with their families and pets first before Lief buried them, he wouldn''t bury his father. He didn''t know why he was doing it this way, it just felt right to him. --- One by one, Lief went up to each body and checked its pocketsfor the Civilian or noble ID. The ID was a small iron or silver plate that all members of the city had to carry. The ID told you the owners name,date of birth, and address. Lief was surprised when he found out that quite a lot of people had already laid down inside their own homes. Instead of making him happy, this made him more depressed. "Does this mean that they were in pain for a long time? Was it painless? Either way, it couldn''t have been quick for them to go to their homes, right?" It took Lief an entire week to carefully move each body to their homes, another week to dig the holes and two weeks to bury all of them with their treasures. Each one of them was buried in the front of their homes. The headstones all stood in a line going down each street, spreading from the entrance to the king''s mansion. Lief had also buried his father, sister and fiancee. His fiancee was buried with her family whereas his family was buried outside the mansion, facing all the other graves. Lief hadn''t rested for a moment, if not for his cultivation he would have probably died of exhaustion. He kneeled down in front of his fathers and everyone else''s graves and stayed there for a while whilst he said, "I have buried you with your treasures and gold, I''m deeply sorry for what I had caused. I am unable to give you anexplanation.I wish each and every one of you wealth in either reincarnation, the other worlds or wherever it is you believe you go in the afterlife." In this world, although the majority of the world believes in the church and god, everyone has different beliefs on how you pass. Some believe that you go to heaven or hell, some believe that you get reincarnated, some believe you roam small radios above your burial grounds as a ghost and some even believe that nothing happens. No one knows what happens, perhaps all of those things can happen, perhaps none of it does. The only way to find out would be to die, and it''s not like there''s a way back from that, right? -- After silently kneeling, Lief stood up and turned towards the mansion. His previously gloomy face turned into a smile and he casually walked into the mansion. He walked straight down the hallway, up the stairs and through the first door. In the bathroom, he hopped into the shower and washed all the blood off his face and the dirt of his body before grabbing his clothes he uses for gathering from the forest. His clothing was slowly deteriorating but he pretended not to notice before walking towards the front door and yelling, "Father, sister, I''ll be leaving for a while, I''ll see you later!" It was something he had once said on an almost daily basis, such a casual way of speaking, yet this time... It was sad. With that, he vanished. Teleporting to the entrance of the Forgotten forests, using up one of its now 3 uses. "I suppose it uses up more of it when you teleport to somewhere you have only seen in memory crystals, huh?" Walking past the sign, Liefs vision turned black for a moment before... [Warning: If you continue progressing along this path you will trigger a system change] [Cultivation will be lost and converted into skill points] [Skills will be lost and converted into skill points] [Exta longevity will be converted into skill points] [You will begin at level 1] Do you wish to continue? [Yes] [No] Chapter 13. Stat Points [Warning: If you continue progressing along this path you will trigger a system change] [Cultivation will be lost and converted into skill points] [Skills will be lost and converted into skill points] [Exta longevity will be converted into skill points] [You will begin at level 1] Do you wish to continue? [Yes] [No] "Huh?" Lief stared at the plain text that hovered in front of him for a moment before reacting, "Lose my cultivation, my extra longevity and all my skills, does that mean my alchemy?! I have spent my whole life learning skills and you think ill just give it away?" At this moment another piece of text popped in in front of Liefs eyes. ¡¾Not giving your cultivation up is fine, just turn back.¡¿ As Lief read this he seemed to be complementingseveral choices as his facial expressions constantly shifted. "I...Can''t turn back." At the same moment Lief finished speaking he dashed forward attempting to get past the "tabs" that were open in his vision! Alas, no matter how far he ran the text stayed where it was and not only that, after running for several seconds he immediately found himself back at the sign that looked as if it was regularly replaced. Warning: Past this sign resides the Forgotten Forests. Entering this region may cause: Death, nausea, insanity and WILL not allow you to leave. [Do you agree to the System Change?] [Yes] [No] Lief realised that he truly had to choose so, he asked two simple questions. "What are levels and skill points?" [Skill points are points that can make you stronger, faster and much more.] [Levels are like this previous worlds Cultivation with differences.]Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. "What are the differences?" [That information was deleted to save space. Old data is pointless therefore takes up pointless space.] "The information was old, that''s what you mean right? But my city only moved to the forests a few hundred years ago..." [Incorrect. Based on the data gathered from the "Forgotten Forests" time moves 100,000 thousand or so times faster inside of the forests.] [This is one of the reasons it is impossible to leave through normal means.] [I must thank you for answering the question the system has had regarding the forests, before you, wehad pondered how age worked in there.] "Does that mean there is no longer anyone who used to cultivatealive??" Lief asked currently quite overwhelmed. [That should be unless there are cultivators who left the earth three to four million years ago and are still living.] [Do you agree to SystemChange] [Yes] [No] After hesitating for many minutes, Lief knew that hecould not return to his City so his only choice was to comply with the "System Change". Whatever that meant. He poked the "Yes" with his index finger. Lief was quite surprised when it actually felt like he was pushing something, he hadn''t heard of magic that could do something like that before. ''I guess that the kingdoms will be more advanced now huh?'' he thought to himself. After pushing the[Yes] it took a moment for anything to happen but then letters started to appear in Liefs eyesight. [Calculating....] [The Heaven Realm Cultivation will be lost and converted into... 353 skill points] [All Skills will be lost and converted into 265 skill points] [Extra longevity will be converted into 400 skill points] [You will begin at level 1] "Are skill points rare, I only got 1 for every 2 years of my life... I feel cheated..." Lief mumbled to the text but no reply came forward. "So, how do I use these?" Lief asked after realising that he was ignored. [There are many commands to say, the most commonly used ones are "Menu" or "Start". You may select an option with your voice or by picking them.] "Huh... Um, Menu?" After saying that several rectangles with text inside popped up. [Magic] [Perks] [Stats (1018)] [Items] [Customisation] Lief clicked on "Stats" because it had his points on it. [Lief] (Level 1) (Class: Not yet chosen) (Job: Unemployed) EXP: 0/100 Karma:Neutral Titles: None Mental State: Sta-Unst-!???! Skill Points: 1018 Perk Points: 0 Strength: 10+ Defense: 10+ Endurance: 10+ Dexterity: 10+ Intelligence: 10+ Charisma: 10+ Perception: 10+ Luck: 10+ Stealth: 10+ "Oh, So its based on numbers? How high is high though... I want to be strong but would leveling up stealth make me hard to see? Oh If I made myself lucky would I not just get strong really fast... Probably not... Ill go even it out a little but go into strength and stealth most... Lief decided very quickly on how he would put set up his skills... His new skills were as follows: Strength:200 Defense: 100 Endurance:100 Dexterity:150 Intelligence:90 Charisma: 50 Perception:100 Luck: 100 Stealth:200 Lief was thinking about his future jobs, at level one he is probably behind a lot of people so he was thinking he would become an adventurer until he had enough gold to purchase alchemy ingredients so he would be able to increase his skills back to their previous levels. "I wonder how far that boost got my from regular people? I hope that my current "Stats would enable me to do battle with a level 2. maybe even a level 3. That would make the 800ish years of my life stolen worth it, besides Ill be able to make longevity potions within 10-20 years so it should be fine." As Lief was about to say ''close'' he noticed something strange. "Whats wrong with my mental state?" Chapter 14. Candleglow City. "Whats wrong with my mental state?" [Mental State currently: ERROR - Unable to judge current Mental State.] Seeing the text in front of his eyes, Lief figured he would ignore it besides, who can judge his mental state better than he himself? Looking forward he sees nothing but grassy fields, stretching as far as his eyes could see. After taking a deep breath Lief decided he would head towards a small village that he had heard about inside of a memory crystal. Candlelight Village, a small Village with a population of about 200, of course, the most recent knowledge he has is a few hundred million years old, so he has to hope that it''s still there. It''s the closest village to the forests and it should be about a two-day walk. It should be quite hard for Lief to make it on foot and with the lack of food he will be starving when he reaches it unless he can find a wild animal or a berry bush. Currently, Lief only had the clothes on his back and a small knife that he had grabbed on his way out. As he reached for his knife, a small menu popped up: [Cooking Knife] 2 damage He didn''t take a special weapon because he didn''t want to bring trouble to himself. Luckily so as now he is nowhere near as powerful as before and he may have been killed for it. All of the weapons in his city were worth 1-2 thousand gold back when they moved. They all had enchantments of some kind on them too so if Lief had taken it with him powerful adventures or maybe even nobles would have stolen from him. Several hours of walking on plain fields later... Lief saw a gravel path and a direction sign. He quickly jogged towards them in order to get a bearing of his location. The direction post read: North- Candleglow City East- Ordon Village (Warning: Level 90 - 4-month sprint) West- Old goblin den (Filled in) South- Forgotten Forests (Warning- zero survive!) Multiple thoughts came to Liefs mind at this time, some were thoughts about how similar Candlelight Village and Candleglow City were. Maybe they prospered and changed their name? Some surprised at the level and amount of time it would take him to get to "Ordon Village" if it takes a "Level 90" 4 months to sprint there it must truly be a long way away.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. One was even mad at how someone filled in a Goblin den, why would they be so cruel to such kind creatures? Putting aside his thoughts he knew that he must keep walking. Every minute he''s not walking is another minute he will go hungry after all. As he was about to continue walking he noticed movement in front of him. It was subtle, but Lief saw it. Something in camouflageseveral meters ahead of him. Lief stared at the spot for several minutes before it finally moved again, this time it was darting towards Lief at a snail''s pace. It was a lizard, about 7 feet long. It''s scales a dirty green. It was a funny sight, its tiny legs moving rapidly as it scampered towards Lief yet, even with its legs moving so fast it was like it was pulling itself along the floor. Lief smiled and walked towards the lizard-like creature. "Heh, here I was thinking I would starve. How nice of you to deliver yourself to me!" The creature seemed to understand Lief''s words as its eyes shined red for a moment and words appeared above its head. [Lizard] Level 2 Seeing the words Lief became cautious and wondered, ''It''s a higher level than me, I should be able to beat it though right?'' [Quest - First Kill] -Kill your first enemy (in-progress) Reward: 50 Exp Pulling his knife out from his side pocket, leaping forward he easily landed on top of the slow Lizard and begun to ruthlessly dig his blade into the back of its head. The blade went in easily and the lizard ceased breathing in moments. ''That easy? But it was a level higher than me?'' [Lizard killed. Exp gained 10] [Quest - First Kill] -Kill your first enemy (Complete) Reward: 50 Exp [Current EXP- 60/100] ''Maybe I hit its weak point? Like the eye of a cyclops?'' Lief pondered to himself. Pulling his knife out of the lizard''s head, he started to skin the lizard. He decided against carrying the scales as they would be extremely cumbersomeand probably not worth the hassle. Lief efficiently cut up the Lizard and collected its meat. [Picked up: Lizard meat] Lief looked around for some trees but there was none around so he had little choice but to wrap the meat in some of the skin as a sort of bag and continue walking until he found either a fire or was hungry enough to try it raw. -- Lief was beginning to get tired, he was struggling to keep his eyes open he would have tried sleeping if he hadn''t heard the sound of wolves earlier. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. In the distance, Lief could see his destination, Candleglow City. The city truly lived up to its name, along the city''s walls hung hundreds of candles. Making the entire city seem as if it were glowing. Lightly slapping his face, Lief walked towards the two guards who were sitting on either side of the city gates. "Halt!" the two guards shouted in unison. Lief immediately stopped where he was and looked at the two guards. [Albert] [Clark] Age: 35 Age 29 Level ??? Level ??? Guard Level ??? Guard Level ??? ''It doesn''t show their levels?'' "Whats your business in Candleglow City?" The guard on the right called Clark asked. "I''m looking for work." "In that attire, you sure you''re not a beggar?" The guard asked with an eyebrow raised. Surprised by his words Lief looked down at his clothes. They looked as if they had been burned, however, his leather shoes seemed fine. "Ah, the journey here was difficult, I''ll get some clothing as soon as I get a job" Lief replied with a slightly embarrassed expression. His clothes were barely covering his body. "Eh... Okay, go in, don''t let me catch you begging or anything or ill throw you out." Clark opened the gates kindly. Walking through the gates, Lief saw several shops however 90% of them were obviously closed due to it being night time. The inns were open and conveniently placed close to the entrance. Although Lief needs clothing there''s nothing he can do if the shops are closed right? So he walked into an inn, the bar area was empty. Probably due to the sign that said "Out of beer" luckily, Lief wasn''t here for the beer so he walked towards the bar. [Chow] (Lvl 4 Warrior) (Level 57 Inn Keeper) (Lvl 4Warrior) (Level 57 Inn Keeper) Age: 54 Lief noticed that some non-combat jobs he can see their levels but if its combat levels or class levels you need to be within a range? "Young man, we don''t give out rooms for free so if you''re not paying your not staying." The chubby middle aged man spoke after glancing at Liefs clothing. "How much for a room?" Lief asked. "10 silver per night." The old man finally looked at Lief. Without a word Lief placed 20 silver on the counter. "Two days then? Okay here''s your key, oh, please make sure to get some more clothes tomorrow. Don''t want you scaring people away. With that, Lief picked up the key with "4" engraved on it, walked upstairs and stood outside his room, number 4. Chapter 15. First Equipment Walking inside his room, Lief first noticed the size of the room it was really quite small, barely fitting a bed and a small bathroom. "Although it''s small, at least I''m not staying outside... It''s not like I could afford anything better I only have 80 silver left, I should have brought more coins." Lief mumbled to himself as he lay on his bed to sleep. [Would you like to set an alarm?] Before Lief closed his eyes he had another plain piece of text pop up in front of him, glancing at it for a moment he tapped yes and almost immediatelyafter fell asleep. --- [System Alarm Commencing.] *Zzst* Lief stumbled out of bed in a hurry, grabbed his knife and flailed it around for several seconds before he realised there was nothing there. "Uh, What?" He was sure he was just attacked, his whole body had a shock! [Alarm completed, good morning Lief] Plain white text appeared once again in Liefs eyesight. "Wait, so it was this thing?! OH! So does alarm mean wake up, you could have done it gentler..." Lief complained towards the text. [Alarm changed to light electric shock] Mumbling in aggravationLief decided that he would probably not use the "alarm" function again. Lief decided to make his bed before he left, however, as he approached his bed he saw that there was a charcoallike human silhouettedug into it. "It seems that for now ill have to buy leather clothing, hopefully, I will be able to find an alternative, though. I may freeze without winter clothes..." After doing his daily stretches he wore his shredded trousers and boots before sprinting as fast as he possibly could towards the clothing store. It was about 5:55, so there were no people outside yet. They were probably setting up the store or still sleeping.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Lief reached the entrance to the clothing store just as its front door opened, [Alice] (Level 1) (Shopkeeper Level 5) Seeing her name and level Lief came to the understanding that not everyone selected classes nor did everyone focus on their main levels. It''s understandable, how many shopkeeperswould risk their lives for strength? ''But wouldn''tCharisma help her sell to people? The [I] on Charisma told me it increases several things but one of them was your interaction with other people...'' "Ehh? Pervert?" a young woman asked as she saw Lief standing there almost nude. "What? No, don''t be silly I need to buy leather clothes, fast!" Lief tried to rush the woman into opening the doors. "Oh... Um, please come in ill go and fetch some from the back..." The woman blushed as she leads Lief into the store before walking into the back. Glancing around the store, Leif came to the conclusion that this was probably quite the popular store. The prices were reasonable and they seemed to sell every type of clothing you could want. Whilst Lief was nosing around the store the young woman, Alice, called him over to the counter whilst holding a box. "Heres your...Leather clothing, sir." Opening the box to check Lief was flabberghasted! "Wh..I told you I''m not a pervert..." Lief reminded Alice seriously. "Ye-" "I WANT LEATHER ARMOR NOT A GIMP SUIT!" Lief cut Alice off and furiously yelled. "I- I''m sorry sir I truly misunderstood, please accept my apology,I''ll go retrieve some now please excuse me!" Alice completely flushed red as she ran into the back once again. ''Wow... Cities are not as I had imagined them being at all... The people here have such strange hobbies...'' Lief wouldn''t have known what a "Gimp" was if there wasn''t a picture on top of all of the leather depicting it in detail with a title and everything. Alice cautiously walked back towards the counter, she was obviously afraid to approach incase Lief yelled again. Lief looked at her as she approached, she was a small girl. She had brown eyes and she was brunette she looked similar to a lot of the girls from his home. She placed a box on the counter and waited for Lief to check the contents. [Leather Hood] (Light) [Leather Amor] (Light) [Leather Belt] (Light) [Leather Leggings] (Light) [Leather Boots] (Light) [Leather Cape] (Light) Seeing the bundle of clothing in front of him Lief couldn''t help but smile. "Take away the Cape and the boots and then tell me the price." Lief requested. "Without the cape or the boots, the total is 80 silver. 20 silver per piece of armour." "..." Lief helplessly handed over his last silver coins, to think that one piece of armour costs as much as two nights in an inn! Lief wasted no time, he walked into the shops small but convenient Changing Rooms and put on his new armour, it all fit well! [Leather Hood] (Light) Equipped, No bonuses. [Leather Amor] (Light)Equipped, No bonuses. [Leather Belt] (Light)Equipped, No bonuses. [Leather Leggings] (Light)Equipped, No bonuses. "No bonuses? Does that mean some armours give bonuses?" Lief asked himself as he pulled his hood down, waved goodbye to Alice and left the shop. His current destination was the Adventurers Guild. It was located in the centre of the City, about a five-minute walk. The streets were a lot more lively now. There were people of all different classes walking around, Lief even thought he was quite lucky he wasn''t a higher level than everyone. Can you imagine being forced to see so many names and details? There must be a way to change that... As Lief was walking he noticed that he was getting stares from quite a large amount of the passersby. His armour wasn''t unusual, he had seen several other people wearing similar leather armour.... Then he started to overhear some of their chatter... "A level 1 with no class?" "He doesn''t even have any titles..." "Do you think he came from the mountains?" It seemed that his level was normal but not having a class or titles made him strange? Hmm... After enduring countless stares he had finally arrived at the Adventures Guild. Surprisingly the Adventurers guild resembled a Castle, it was just a smaller version, its doors were made out of stone. It was time to sign up. Chapter 16. New job! Lief pushed the surprisingly light stone doors open and was surprised by the sight. He had been expecting an expensive interior to match the outside, however, the inside looked almost exactly like a mead hall! There were bundles of men and women sat at their tables chatting and drinking, above some of their heads was a[Party]word that was joined to some adventures by a white line. To Lief''s left and right were tables for Adventurers, however straight ahead housed a giant golden counter with several young men and women behind. Lief guessed that that was where he would sign up so he walked up to it and looked at the young man in front of him. [Adam] Age 18 (Level 5) (Receptionist Level 9) "Goodmorning, would you like to place a request?" The young man asked with a slight smile. "No, I would like to sign up to be an adventurer." "Eh? You don''tmeet the basic requirements. Unless you would like to take the test please fulfil these requirements and come back." Adam sighed as he handed Lief a piece of paper. -Adventurer Guild Requirements. -Must be at least level 5. -Must have a class selected OR be able to beat someone at his level who has a class. -Must have a full set of armour. After reading the paper, Lief helplessly sighed, said goodbye to Adam and left to find a temporary job. Trying his luck Lief walked straight to the Inn he was staying at and asked if they needed staff but he was rejected with a casual "Nope". He tried all the popular shops like the Jewelers, the Potion shop and many others but all of them seemed to be used to rejecting people and Lief got many "Nope''s".This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. He then went on to the middle-class stores like the bakers and horsecarriagerides, blacksmiths and a few tailors. "Sorry sonny, I already have an apprentice working, I can''t afford another one." "Have you baked before? No? Why are you applying then, leave." "Sorry pal, family run business we use our own horses and pay our own way, we haven''t and won''t hire anyone." *Sigh* At this rate, Lief may have to risk getting thrown out and beg... However, it seemed that Lief wasn''t forsaken to become a beggar. "Young man, you''re looking for a job right? If you don''t mind getting your hands a little messy it''s your lucky day." The speaker was calling to Lief from a back ally, although he was in a suspiciouslocation and advertised the job a little strangelyit turned out that down the ally was actually a Butchers! They buy farmers animals, slaughter animals and sell their meat for profit. The man was 74 years old and explained that he was too old to do the work himself so he needed to hire someone young to do the work for him. The pay was good,Lief would be assigned to pigs for every pig Lief butchered he would get 5 silver. Lief decided he would take the job, he had to make money some way... [Job - Butcher] Job Level 1, Exp 0/1,000 Skill- Butchery - Level 1, Exp 0/500 --- Inside the butchery, the old man,Desmond had given Lief simple instructions, that came as a quest. [Quest - First Job] - Subdue the pig. - Slice the pig''s throat. - Hang it by its back legs to bleed. - Remove organs. - Cut down the middle. - Send to the next room Reward- 1,000 Butchery EXP [Job Item Acquired: Butchers Knife] - Cuts through body easily. (When job levels up, more uses will surface.) The first part of the quest was beyond simple, Lief just walked up to it and lifted it by its two back legs. It struggled, flailing its body around in Leif''s arms whilst squealing madly, however, Lief just hung it on a sturdy bar that was dangling from the ceiling and easily slit the pig''s throat. After doing so the pig squealed much more, it threw its body around trying to get loose. Doing so seemed to open its neck more and it splashed its blood around the room. It took just moments for it to pass on. Lief then cut down its belly and emptied its guts out into a bucket he had prepared earlier, and waited for the blood to drain before proceeding. Several hours later, he used the Butchers Knife to cut the carcas of the pig down the middle, leaving the head on the right side since it wasn''t specified. There was a saw for bone, but Lief found it easy to cut through with the Butchers Knife. Probably due to his 200 Strength, after all, it''s just a pig. After placing the two halves onto two separate hooks, the hooks began to move and it carried them along into the next room. [Quest - First Job] Completed. +1,000 Job Experience. [Butcher Job Level Up!] Current Level: 2, Exp: 50/5,000 [Pig Butchered!] Butcher Skill Experience gained! +100. Current Level: 1, Exp: 100/500 +10 EXP gained! Current Level:Level 1 - EXP: 70/100 "Killing pigs is pretty useful... If I butcher just 3 more I''ll become level 2!" Lief happily giggled to himself. Before Lief could go and find Desmond, a pig stumbled in through an old metal gate as if it were pushed. ''I guess I just keep going?'' Chapter 17. Level up! [Job experience gained!] Current Level: 2, Exp: 200/5,000 [Pig Butchered!] Butcher Skill Experience gained! +100. Current Level: 1, Exp: 400/500 +10 EXP gained! Current Level: Level 1 - EXP: 100/100 [Level up!] You have gained skill points! Lief butchered three pigs earning 30 EXP causing a level up, as soon as he set the pig up on the hooks he whispered "Menu" and tapped on [Skills]. [Lief] ¡¾Class: Not yet chosen¡¿ ¡¾Job: Butcher¡¿ Level 2 - EXP: 0/200 Reputation: Neutral ¡¾ 0 ¡¿ Titles: None Mental State: ???/??? Skill Points: 15 Perk Points: 0 Strength: 200 Defense: 100 Endurance: 100 Dexterity: 150 Intelligence: 90 Charisma: 50 Perception: 100 Luck: 100 Stealth: 200 Skills: Butcher (1) Lief stared at the text in front of him and exclaimed in disbelief, "...Only 15 skill points?" If you only gained 15 skill points per level and you started with 10 in every stat would that not mean that currently, Lief could battle a much higher level? "There may be something I''m missing, maybe you earn a lot more skill points at higher levels? Maybe "Perk points" make a big difference... Either way, I should be able to do battle with a level 10 after I get used to my weapon, I had noticed when I killed that Lizard that although the blade went in easily, I couldn''t use the blade skill I once had. Perhaps I''ll have to learn all over again but this time level it up like what I''m doing with my skill "Butcher"..." Whilst Leif was thinking to himself, Desmond strolled in and stopped in front of Lief. "Have you done this kind of job before?" "No." "Hmm, well keep up the good work. Any of the other butchers who started today made a huge mess of each carcass they processed but you have done it perfectly, keep it up and I''ll raise your pay." Desmond spoke with a smile placing 50 silver coins next to Lief, "Your pay plus a bonus, for the perfect work." before walking off.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. Lief thanked Desmond and grabbing the coins. However, as he touched the coins he felt each one vanish from his touch, luckily before Lief panicked, a small piece of text appeared at the top right of his eyesight. [Picked up (50) silver) added to inventory] Lief checked his pockets but they were empty! He had a suspicion and said "Inventory" and a screen popped up. [Inventory] Silver: 50 0/25 slots filled. "Oh, interesting... " After understanding that he could pull out coins and probably items with just a thought, he decided that he would spend his coins at the Market since he would probably earn more tomorrow and he had already paid for tonight''s stay in the inn. --- The Market, a place of trading for any and all social statuses, there were stores owned by nobles, mercenaries, commoners and you could even find some owned by a poor family. The Market was owned by the current ruler of the City, it is estimated that he earns around 300-400 thousand silver each week since the market became "public" the City has been expanding greatly due to all the money the King is investing, within several years it may even become a kingdom! The Market wasn''t all good, though, as many illegal activities went by the patrolling guard''s eyes. Activities such as theft, dirty dealings, prostitution and rumour has it that the entrance to the black market is even situated within the Market area. One truly has to keep their wits about them whilst browsing. -- "FRESH FISH RIGHT HERE!" "We have two of the finest bred Horses for sale here only 1 thousand silver!" "Down the street is the Potions master, all potions are 50% off for one month!" Vendors were desperately yelling about their wares and deals to bring in customers, Lief listened to each of them and decided he would visit the "Potions Master" and see how good his wares are. It took Lief 3 minutes to get to the outside of the potion shop, if not for the constant flow of shoppers he would have got here a lot sooner. The shop had 2 big windows showing off magic hats and wands, however, Leif wasn''t in need of Wizard clothing or anything like that. He is currently only interested in Potions. The inside of the shop was spacious, it had a dark purple carpet covering the floor with the walls a light purple, the owner of this store must really like purple... Even the shelves and the counter was purple! "Ah, young man, as you have not browsed the shelves I assume you want potions, no?" A wizard who had an enormous hat covering his eyes appeared behind the counter. [Huydor] Age: 173 Level 67 (Class: Wizard, level 93) (Job: Alchemist- Level 21) Huydor didn''t look anywhere near as old as the text said, but Lief believed it when he saw the man''s level, it by far the highest level he had seen so far! "Ah, yes. Sorry." Leif didn''t know why he apologised, he did it without realising. "No need to be sorry, we have a 50% deal in the store right now, these are all the potions we have in stock." With a wave of the man''s arm several potions appeared in front of Lief, each with a title, Lief was able to tell the potions just by seeing it but he was surprised when the text showed its degree of purity and level of the potion. [Low Health Potion] Purity 35% - Heals minor cuts instantly. - Slowly heal stab wounds, but several potions will be needed to fully recover. [Low Mana Potion] Purity 50% Recovers mana by 1% every second. [Low Stamina Potion] Purity 87% Recovers stamina by 5 every second. "Are these your only potions?" Lief asked, clearly confused by the low quality. "Ahh, none of a higher grade, unfortunately, I''m not yet at that level yet, maybe one day." Huydor sighed emotionally. "You don''t have any failed attempts from higher grades?" "I don''t even own a recipe for a Medium level potion yet..." "Um, If I were to present you with a Medium level potion recipe would you consider trading for 100 Carliec grass and 50 Oeka drops?" "YOU HAVE A MEDIUM GRADE POTION RECIPE?" The man''s eyes bulged as he stared at Lief in the eyes. "I do, I found it inside of a tree I cut down." Lief lied professionally. [Lying Skill Gained] - You are an extremely good liar so your skill level will be changed to suit you. - Lying Skill maxed (100) to raise higher please unlock the required perks. - Unless you want someone to know your lying, the chances of them knowing is extremely slim. [Title Gained] Spinner of yarns Earned for being a horrifyingly good Liar, careful your pants don''t combust. ''Eh...People can''t see the description of my titles right? I hope not... And why would my pants combust?" [Acheivement Earned!] Teller of Untruths- Max out Skill: Lying. EXP earned - 5,000 [Level up!] Current Level 3, EXP: 4,800/400 Skill points earned: 15 [Level up!] Current Level 4, EXP: 4,400/ 800 Skill points earned: 15 [Level up!] Current Level 5, EXP: 3,600/1,600 Skill points earned: 15 Perk points earned: 1 [Level up!] Current Level 6, EXP: 2,000/3200 Skill points earned: 15 Having so many notifications pop up Lief could barely make out the hilarious face on Hurdor, he seemed to be thinking he was lucky that he could get it at such a low price but angry that he wasn''t lucky enough to find it and get it for free. Lief X''d the notifications pushing back upgrading his stats until he decided what his class would be since they seemed to be very valuable. He didn''t even notice the perk point he had earned. Chapter 18. Elixir Of Life The old wizard Huydor leant over the desk and whispered, "If you keep the transaction between us, ill give 200 Carliec grass and 100 Oeka drops." "Really?!" Lief looked at the man as if he were crazy. "Yes. I don''t want people to know I have this." Liefsuddenly thought of something and asked, "How much would 100 Carliec grass and 50 Oeka drops cost usually?" Lief couldn''t bear not asking this question. "Around 100-200 silver total, think of the deal you''re getting from this!" Huydor obviously thought that 100-200 silver wasn''t a lot so he reminded Lief about the "good" deal he was getting. Liefs eyes widened in shock and he began thinking... Can time really change so much? I remember once when I watched a memory crystal that simulated the Kingdom, the prices for 100 Carliec grass and 50 Oeka would total around 250 gold! Could it be they lost the recipes for pills and potions that extend lifespan!? "I agree to keep our matter secret." Lief smiled and replied after thinking. "Good, good! Go and get the recipeand bring it back to me and ill prepare the ingredients." Lief walked outside grabbing an "EmptyParchment" and an "Ink pen" on his way out. [Skill Gained!] Theft, Current level 1 - EXP 25/500 EXP gained differs depending on the value of stolen item. "Haha... So theft counts as a skill too?" Lief laughed to himself as he placed the parchment against the wall outside and wrote out the process of making the Medium Health Potion. After he checked it once he walked back into the potion store "Potion Master". "You''re back so soon? Haha, you must have known I would have made the trade and hid it around outside right? It''s lucky no one found it." Hurdor smiled as he pulled out a bag full of ingredients. "Check it if you would like," Lief says after he saw the text above the sack. [200x Carliec grass, 100 Oeka drops] Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. The old wizard gently picked up the parchment that Lief wrote the recipe on and stared at it intently as if memorising it in case the paper crumbled to bits. "Haha, I will only know if I have been tricked once I attempt this potion If you have tricked me... Don''t expect to live well, I''llbeat you down and take you to the local slave trade." The wizard would obviously follow through with his threat, so Lief didn''tbother staying around much longer. After purchasing four glass bottles and smiling to the Wizard, he picked up the sack and headed towards the inn he was staying in. -- Unlike the last time Lief came into the inn, this time it was packed with drinkers and waitresses. They were all having a good time and none of them even noticed Lief walk in, the highest level in the inn was a level 34 but Lief wasn''there for looking at people so he walked towards the Bartender and owner of the inn. [Chow] (Lvl 4 Warrior) (Level 57 Inn Keeper) (Lvl 4Warrior) (Level 57 Inn Keeper) Age: 54 Chow noticed Lief, "Hey kid, your rent runs out tomorrow, so either pay up tomorrowor make sure you''re packed by sunrise." Lief smiled at the old man and asked: "How much is your biggest room?" "100 silver a day, second biggest is 50, the third is 25 the other seven rooms are 10 and are the same size." Chow bluntly replied. "Oh, I guess I''ll swap my room out for the third biggest then, will it be 15 since I have already paid for the smaller room?" Lief asked curiously. "Eh, we usually don''t have people swap rooms. I suppose Ill do it for 15 for you for tonight, every other night is still 25 though." The middle-aged man replied with a kind smile. "Great! Let''s swap the keys then, I have already packed up. Oh! Before I forget..." Lief willed his whole 50 coins into his hands behind his back before placing them onto the counter: I accidentally burnt part of the mattress in room four so I gave you 35 silvers, that is more than enough right?" Lief asked apologetically. "Sigh, I don''t see how you can accidentally burn the mattress but 35 silver is indeed enough, heres your key." He handed Lief a key with a 3 imprinted on it. -- Lief opened the door to room 3, the inside was definitely a lot roomier, it had a bed,a bathroom, a desk and even room to move around! He had decided that now that he had a room, he would first make the Elixirs of Life and then goand ask the adventurers guild on how he would go about getting a class. Rubbing his right hand revealed the cauldron picture that had faded not long after Lief left his home, he hadn''t noticed it disappear but he remembered it when he thought about the cauldron. Lief tapped the cauldron and before his left hand had even left right, the cauldron started to expand before landing gently on the floor. "You will work with potions too right, you wouldn''t try to turn this into a pill right? I''m pretty sure that would be bad..." Lief nudged the cauldron and asked his voice filled with both hope and doubt. The cauldron emitted a blackish glow before a tap-like pipe appeared, coming out of the centre of the cauldron. "I guess that''s a yes...I hope." Lief mumbled before throwing in 50 Carliec grass and 25 Oeka drops, enough to make a single Exilir of life. Lief had to be cautious in case it didn''t actually work if that were the case he would have to buy a regular cauldron... The ingredients began to swirl around the cauldron before the lid sealed itself with a slight humming. Lief hurriedly placed one of his glass bottles at the end of the pipe, luckily he did it then because as soon as the bottle touched the tip of the pipe the pure white liquid began pouring into it, it took seconds for the cauldron to drain and open its lid again. Lief looked at the Potion which he created. [Elixer of life] Adds 10 years of longevity to the consumer. (This recipe has been lost for exactly 64,723,219 years.) Due to it being an ancient recipe its effects will be doubled. (Will add 20 years longevity to consumer) During the 10(20) years, your body will not age, If you take this pill when you are 20 you will stay 20 for 10 years. This potion willNOT make you younger. "..." Lief stared at the description in shock, will the other four he''s going to make have the same effect? He was planning on using one and selling the other three... He would have charged 100 gold per potion but now it would be worth 200 gold! That''s a total of 600 gold, or in silver 600,000! Lief calmed down relatively quickly, he would have to think of how to use this kind of money to make him stronger faster. He has seen many people higher levels than him, it bothered him a lot more than it should. Since Lief was a child, he has always enjoyed learning, he read a lot of books, watched an uncountable amount of memory crystals and most of all learned many skills, when Lief first lost these skills he was upset but, after thinking about it he became happy. He is able to learn it all over again, this time he can see his progress in the art clearly, perhapse he will even learn more skills than before! Whilst Lief was thinking about learning new skills a small notification popped up. [You have unused Skill points!] [You have an unused Perk point!] "Perk point?" Chapter 19. Liefs first perk. [You have unused Skill points!] [You have an unused Perk point!] "Perk point?" Liefthought for a moment before mumbling "Menu". [Magic] [Perks(1)] [Stats (75)] [Items] [Customization] He tapped on Perks, and his eyesight was blocked, many "perks" popped up in front of his eyes. Reading through several of them Lief realised that some of these could be incredibly useful! They were organised into an order Lief didn''t yet understand but he had found many perks that caught his eyes, a small amount of them were: [Skilled] +5 extra skill points per level. Cost: 1 perk point. [Overpower] Increasesstrength by 10%. Cost: 2 perk points. There was much more, but right now Lief liked these the most. Lief really liked[Overpower]but after he gave it some thought he knew that that Perk would be best used when his strength is a lot higher to get the most benefits from it. Lief had already decided when he saw the[Skilled]Perk, he would obviously pick that first as it would enable him to become stronger faster. He didn''t even look through the rest of the perks once he saw [Skilled] it was an obvious choice for him, so he tapped it. [Perk "Skilled" gained.]Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! Every level up from now on will now grant 20 skill points. "So for ever 3 level ups I get it will be like I have levelled up 4 times" Lief was visibly happy with his choice, but now was not the time to celebrate, he had to sign up for the AdventurersGuild before it shut. So he began to walk towards the Adventurers Guild. "Wait, does that place even close?" Lief realised how silly he had been, why would a place that gives missions out to Mercenaries/Adventurersclose? Naturally, something like that would stay open all through the night, right? Lief would have to ask when he arrived. It was starting to get dark, the streets were still packed with people and shopkeepers were still advertising their wares, however, they were a lot quieter during the night. After dodging several merchants trying to pull Lief towards their shops, Lief finally arrived at the Adventurers Guild. The sun was down, it was around midnight yet the lights were still on in the adventurers guild and the noise was no quieterthan his last visit. Walking up to the counters Lief noticed Adam, he looked tired but other than that he still looked the same. [Adam] Age 18 (Level 5) (Receptionist Level 9) "Oh, you again. I told you, youhave to go and get to level 5 before you can join the guild." he reminded when he saw Liefs face. "Yes, I remember, I''m level 6 now and I''m just wondering how I go about getting a class." "S-Seriously, so fast? Are you an otherworlder or something?" He whispered behind to counter so that no one but Lief could hear him. "Anotherworlder, what''s that?" Lief looked at Adam curiously. "You don''t know? 10 years ago, 100 people were summoned from another world, rumour has it that they were brought here from the far future." He explained to Lief. "I have lived here my whole life, I have not travelled back in time." Lief mentioned truthfully. "If that''s true, you could probably get enrolled in the guilds elite training school for free with that speed, it''s completely up to you. I''m not allowed to report anything you say unless it puts the guild in danger." He whispered to Lief. "I''ll pass on entering a school, for now, there''s a lot of things a school can''tor won''t teach, plus by the sounds of "Elite Training School" I doubt there would be much more than training to fight." Lief sighed before asking again: "How do I get a class?" "Oh, Of course sorry, allow me to explain. Classes determine what special skills you will have. These are not like stats or woodcutting, these would be special attack moves. It''s recommended that you only have either one or two classes as if you have two it takes a lot longer to level them up. However, there is no limit to what we know about, the most someone has had was 5 classes. He maxed each class out before he added a new one but in the end, his final class was his limit and he eventually died at the age of 3,845 years old." After talking for quite a while about the old man who lived for a long time he finally passed over a sheet of parchment that explained some Classes and the location of wich you can get them. Adam explained to Lief that some classes are "Secret" and rare so even the Guild doesn''t know their locations. There were still a lot of classes to choose from here. [Knight] [Duelist] [Berserker] [Wizard] [Summoner] [Necromancer] [Illusionist] [Ranger] [Bard] [Monk] [Priest] [Druid] [Rogue] Lief patiently read through the long list of Classes, there were truly too many to choose from, he wanted a good portion of these. The knight, Duelist, Ranger, Summoner and wizard all sounded soo good. The Illusionist sounded fun, but most of all Lief liked the Rogue class. The rogue class focuses on stealth, theft, assassination, infiltration and much more. Lief liked to learn things, he was, of course, good at fighting but that doesn''t mean he has to like it. If possible Lief would like to lay traps or sneak up and kill someone fast. This is why the Rogue was so appealing to Lief, It gave bonuses that helped that and its skills would probably help. The only problem was the location of the class was:The Black Market. Perk/Achievement Suggestions. Hello! This is not a chapter for the novel. This is for people who either want to suggest a Perk or an Achievement. Perks will be gained every 2 levels, at level 10 two perk points will be gained. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. If you post a Perk suggestion, please tell me its: Required Level. Required Perk points. And of course, its name and use. If you''re here to post an Achievementsuggestion, please tell me: How it''s earned. It''s rewards. You can add extra details if you please, its your comment! :D Thanks for reading/suggesting/commenting! Liefs details up to chapter 18. [Lief] ¡¾Class: Not yet chosen¡¿ ¡¾Job: Butcher(Lvl:2)¡¿ Level 6 - EXP: 0/200 Reputation: Neutral ? 0 ? Titles: Spinner of yarns, Mental State: Sta-Unst-!???! Skill Points:75 Perk Points: 0 Strength: 200 Defense: 100 Endurance: 100The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Dexterity: 150 Intelligence: 90 Charisma: 50 Perception: 100 Luck: 100 Stealth: 200 Skill- Butchery - Level 1, Exp 100/500 Skill- Theft - Level 1, Exp 0/500 Inventory: Copper- 0 Silver- 0 Gold- 0 [Job Weapon: Butchers Knife] - Cuts through bodies easily. (When job levels up, more uses will surface.) [Acheivements] Teller of Untruths- Max out Skill: Lying. 100 copper to 1 silver 1000 silver to 1 gold ¡¾Poision-like body (so far doesn''t seem to harm Leather)¡¿ ¡¾Strange Cauldron in Liefs right hand¡¿ ¡¾Marking of a rift on his left hand¡¿ ¡¾Ability to go out of hisbody. (Has not been used much, out of fear? Or maybe he has just lacked a reason to do so...) (Currently not trained in)¡¿ Chapter 20. 5 seconds remaining. The black market was one the hardest place to find if you didn''t have connections, full of corrupt officials, assassins, slave traders and all around bad people. Of course, there were some good people there, however, it wouldn''t be long before they change. "Sigh, how am I supposed to find the black market? Its not as if I could ask random people, maybe I should follow suspicious people? No, hmm..." Lief thought as he walked out of the Adventurers Guild and headed towards the market. Lief was so engrossed in thinking he had zoned out whilst walking and bumped into something rock solid and he almost lost his standing! "Ow!" a feminine voice rang through Liefs ears. "Huh...?" Lief''s thoughts were interrupted by the person he had just bumped into. The "rock solid" thing Lief had bumped into was actually a girl about 5.4, she had fiery blonde hair and was dressed in a red tinted set of "Heavy Armour". [Wilma] (Otherworlder) Age:28 (Level 45) (Hero Level 51) ''Hero? I haven''theard about that class, I wonder what it does?'' As Lief was thinking that he had a pop up: [Hero] Restricted to Otherworlders- Condition not met. Can use all armour,weapons at 75% power but no gear at 100%. Can gain skills used for all Classes if "Hero" has sufficientClass points. Gains 5% extra exp. You will be unable to max out any skills. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. ''Oh... Even if I was an otherworlder I probably wouldn''t want a class like that, never being able to max a skill? That means that you wouldn''t ever reach the apex.'' Adam had already explained to Lief about Class points earlier, in short, they are only earned through doing certain missions from your class and are used to unlock your classes skills. "Watch where you''re going, kid!" She yelled as she scowled at Lief. "I''msorry, it''s my fault." Lief sincerelyapologised The womanlooked at Lief for a moment before smiling cockily and saying: "Have a good day, fucker." and walking off. "Um, bye! My names Lief, not fucker though!" lief smiled back before continuing to walk towards the market. Wilma flinched and turned back in shock at his words but soon continued to walk away whilst thinking to herself ''He must be a rural person,haha, idiot.'' ---

The Market.

Lief watched the crowds of people as he thought about how he would get to the black market, he could think of many, many ways but the chances of those succeeding were low and they would be tedious. However, at that moment, Lief remembered something. The ability that had scared beyond beliefduring his time in the Cultivation Vault. The ability that allowed him to go out of his body. He hadn''t used it since his first time but, if he used it now and flew underground would he not find the black market then? Lief really hoped that the black market was underground because if it wasn''t, Lief had no idea of where else it could be. However, if Lief were to do it this way how would he navigate when he was down there? Would he just fly in circles and gradually increase the size of the circle? What if the black market ended up being really low down, he would spend a longer than he would if he tried following people wouldn''t he? Lief decided he would firstly go somewhere he couldn''t be seen, he couldn''t leave his body unattended in the middle of the street, what if someone thought he died? He decided he would go to the inn and soak himself in a tub of water. The trip back was uneventful, Lief unlocked his door and grabbed a cheap metal tub that was already placed in his bathroom by the Inn and filled it with cold water before slowly lowering himself into the tub. After enjoying the feeling of being immersed in the water he began to think ''Separate, separate'' however, even after several tries it just wouldn''t work. He thought back to his first time going into his ghost form but he just could not remember how it started... [inherent ability force activated] Due to forcing it to appear before you were meant to, it has been changed from Lvl: Max to Lvl: 1. [Skill Gained!] [Out-Of-Body] Current level- 1 Exp 0s/100s Can currently stay out-of-body for 25 seconds. Current cooldown- 12.5 seconds. To level this skill you must spend the required time Out-Of-Body. Due to the excitement of activating his ability he didn''t realise the popups wich automatically minimised as he flew straight through the floor, passing through another empty room before going through the ground. The sight was unexpected to Lief, there was no dirt, no stone, anything natural seemed to be invisible! He looked glanced around and noticed a few coffins and a few unrecognisable blocks in the far distance. Lief ignored these and flew down towards the huge open rectangle like space that was pretty deep down, it was the only place underground that had living people so Lief had guessed it was the right place. He neared one of the several passageways to the surface and walked through the wall, however, before he could look around and take in the sights he had another notification. [Warning: Out-Of-Body skill ends in 5 seconds, to avoid death please go into body] Chapter 21. Entry. [Warning: Out-Of-Body skill ends in 5 seconds, to avoid death please go into body] "What?!" SeeingWarningLiefs eyes were drawn to the text. His head instantly turned towards the direction of the inn, ''can I make it back?'' but he knew it would be impossible, he had spent too long getting here... Maybe, maybe he could try going into someone else''s body? Acting on that thought he immediatelyflew towards the closest human and rammed into the hooded figure, however, he was refused by another text box. [Your skill is not strong enough to possess humans yet.] Lief was rebounded back, unwillingly performing a backflip. ''If I can''t possess "humans" does that mean I''ll be able to possess something else?" Lief asked himself, clinging onto his only hope. He scanned the area with his eyes, there were actually several animals around. The most useful one would have been the dog, but that was at least 8 seconds away. The closest one that Lief thought he would be able to barely manage to throw himself into was only a few meters away from him, it would take him under a second to reach it in his ghost-like form, obviously faster than he would in his real body as he is able to fly. Lief immediatelyflew his way across a fence into a ploughed space of dirt and threw himself into the closest creature around. A pig. [Possession of (Pig) successful] "Oink!" Lief involuntarily oinked. After trying yet failing at saying "Menu" he tried several more times. Unfortunately, the only sound that came out of Liefs mouth were "Oink". At this moment he felt a force lift him up from behind! Lief had been picked up from behind, he struggled but it was to no avail. "Calm down piggy, it will only hurt for a second" a muffled voice travelled into Liefs pig ears.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ''What?! NO! I won''t get butchered, I''m the butcher, I don''t get butchered!'' "Oink oink OINK!" Lief yelled at the top of his lungs. Being taken into a room with a metal counter similar to the one he had used not long ago, Lief would not resign to his fate. He constantly struggled as he was lifted up and had his two back legs tied tightly onto a hook. ''NO'' "Oink!" Leif kicked his legs wildly. However, it didn''tbother the butcher, he agilely brought his knife towards Liefs tender neck. ''NO! OUT-OF-BODY!'' Lief screamed inside of his head ''OUT OF BODY OUT OF BODY'' However each time he was coldly declined by a text box. [Unable to use skill for...3 seconds.] The knife was getting closer. Closer, closer, until, Lief felt the cold blade at his throat. He was helpless to it, however, inside of his head, he was still screaming to activate his skill. [Unable to use skill for... 0 seconds.] ''WHAT?! HOW DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE?'' Lief screamed at the top of his lungs as he felt the blade pierce his neck. Lief felt the blood gushoutafter the blood passed through his neck. ''Am I really going to die this way? NO! OUT-OF-BODY!'' Lief closed his eyes and screamed a final time inside of his head. The pain disappeared. Lief opened his eyes, his ability/skill had activated! Lief wouldn''t dare waste time in this form again until he had levelled it up a lot, he chose to fly back at top speed towards the Inn. As Lief was flying at his top speed instead of checking for ways in and out of the black market Lief managed to get back a lot faster than before, safely combining with his body. After spending a few moments enjoying the feeling of being inside of his body he opened the minimised tabs... [inherent ability force activated] Due to forcing it to appear before you were meant to, it has been changed from Lvl: Max to Lvl: 1. [Skill Gained!] [Out-Of-Body] Current level- 1 Exp 35s/100s Can currently stay out-of-body for 25 seconds. Current cooldown- 12.5 seconds. To level this skill you must spend the required time Out-Of-Body. "...I have to remember to check these as soon as I get them, the results could be terrifying if I continue to neglect this." Lief exclaimed with an awkward expression. --- Lief was feeling quite hungry so before his trip to find his class he decided to grab some food downstairs. It was packed with adventurers and tenants again, although it was rowdy, problems rarely occurred,so Lief was able to pay for and eat his chicken soup without gaining any attention. If possible, Lief would like to make some new friends, however, how would he do it? He has never had to approach someone and ask them to be friends before... He couldn''t think of a way to do it, maybe it was just the wrong kind of crowd for him but everyone seemed to have their own groups of friends already. It didn''t take Lief any persuading to give up on making friends for now and continue with his current objective. Find the Rogue class. This wasn''t hard anymore, he knew how to get in now. After leaving the Inn, Lief travelled towards the market and then towards asmall, grey tent-like shop calledFortune and Demise. Not a shop many would visit, who would want some stranger that may or may not be making up random crap to tell you your future? It fit in with the other shops, as quite a lot of the people selling their wares wouldn''t want to waste their money on a shop if they were only here temporarily. As Lief arrived at the tent but before he arrived he heard an aged voice from within, "Ah yes, yes, and would you happen to know the password before we begin with the "seeing"?" "Password? Sorry, I don''t know it...It won''t prevent me from sending a message to my late wife though right, "messenger?" another aged voice replied worriedly. Lief stopped listening here as he could gather what happened but, if he needed a password to enter that would cause quite the problem, maybe he could sneak past? Lief begun to slip into his own world of thinking once again... ''Maybe I could cut a hole in the back and crawl through? Or, or maybe this, or that." Lief''s thoughts raced through his mind as he pictured each outcome. After thinking for a short period of time, Lief zoned back into reality only to find his face masked with his hood covering his face in a new location. He was now in a torch lit, stairway leading down. Behind him was what seemed to be the grey cloth door flop from the Fortune and Demisestore in front of him seemed to be the entrance to the black market. "But how did I get past, I didn''t even try any of my ideas yet..." Lief tried thinking back but he could only remember thinking. He definitely didn''t move! Liefs head began to trob and hurt, it almost brought him to his knees but he withstood the pain and stayed standing... "Naive brat, just wait till I br-" a voice from the back of Liefs head mumbled. "W-who!?" Lief gravely asked back to the voice. Chapter 22. The black market "Naive brat, just wait till I br-" a voice from the back of Liefs head mumbled. "W-who!?" Lief gravely asked back to the voice. Lief''s eyes skipped around the old stairwell, the walls were empty and bland and no matter where he looked there was not one person in sight, but he definitely heard someone... "Hello?" Lief asked as he slowly stepped down the stairs, if there was someone here they could have only gone upstairs, it was the closest exit. Lief was sure he would have seen him if he had tried to escape downwards. Other than the muffled sounds coming from down the stairs the only sound Lief heard was his own steps. Every time Lief stepped down he made sure to check behind him. Like this, he continued down the stairs without hearing another peep. ''Surely I hadn''t imagined it...'' But the chances of someone appearing out of nowhere just to call him naive was a little... As whoever it was that scared Lief is gone, Lief decided that he should hurry with his business and find the Rogue Class. Liefs foot left the last step, in front of him towered a tall steel door. It had what looked to be a slider at eye height. *thud, thud, thud * Lief knocked twice on the door. *Shhllt* the sound of steel sliding drew Liefs eyes towards the gap. "Occupation?" a deeply modified voice clearly questioned from behind the door. "Oh, Butcher," Lief replied almost immediately before the voice asked another question... "Reason?" Although the question was vague, Lief understood that he wanted to know why Lief was here. "To gain a class," Lief replied honestly. ''I can''t lie. If he''s the doors guardsman, its best to be honest just in case he has a special skill that detects lies. Green eyes peered through the gap at Lief, his eyes felt like they looked into Liefs soul. The man stared at Lief for several seconds before asking, "Hm, okay, the two of you can go through." Heavy metal locks were heard as the door opened. "two, what do you mean "the two of us"? Lief paled and turned around.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. "Huh?" Lief was confused, there was no one there... "Excuse me, door guardsman. Did you say the two of us could go through?" "Yes, that''s correct. Please hurry through, I have to close the door." Lief glanced at the towering man, he was at least 7 foot tall. The only part of his body you could see were his eyes, the rest was covered in a black tainted iron armour, however, the block of text still appeared: [(Concealed)] Age: 28 (Door Guardsman Lvl 83) (Level 75) (Knight Level 51) The man''s name was concealed, Lief had expected it to be so, however, his level still surprised Lief. He''s level 75 and he''s just a door guard? ''What would I amount to here?'' Although Lief knew far more than most of the people here, without the level he wouldn''t be able to use it properly... Lief spared a moment to think before stepping inside and asking the guard "I didn''t see the other person, where are they?" The armored man smiled before replying in a deep but no longer modified voice "If you don''t know yet, you will soon. Although I can see more than most doesn''t mean I''m able to disclose everything. With skills like mine, being a guardsman is one of the best choices, I don''t need to explain to others why I don''t allow people entry, I just decline the people who will cause problems inside." Before the man finished speaking he had made his way back to his chair and began to read from a scroll. ''Able to see but not tell, there are indeed many spells like that, I suppose the skill would be active at all times, right? Anyway, thats not the important thing, the important thing is that I now know that I need to heighten my senses more if I am to become a rogue. I can''t have others be able to sneak up on me like that again. All that was separating Lief from the black market was a hanging curtain, he just needs to push through. Lief walked up to the curtain and noticed a side table beside it holding a bundle of maps. [Map of Candleglow Market] It wasn''t specific but just by opening it Lief could tell that the "market" it was talking about was the black market. Several places had simple names that clearly stated what they sold, places like: Weapon store for Knights. Potions. Terminal. The list went on, this place had several "Official" shops including shops for specific classes, however, unfortunately, it seemed that there were no shops for Rogue classes, so, Lief would have to use the "Unofficial" shops made by regular people who paid for their spot. ''But what''s a "terminal"'' Lief asked himself as he finally walked through the curtains, taking a map with him. -Guardsman- Picking up my book, I couldn''t help feel bad. ''Shame for that poor kid, he must have gone through something shitty.'' "Sigh, Oh well, nothing to do with me anyway. -Lief- The black market. Truly a strange place, it was completely underground, you could see the roof, yet there was sunlight. ''There''s still a lot to learn...'' Lief marvelled at the sight, he had only ever been underground a few times in his life, yet seeing something lit up without a torch or the real sun was new to him. The market stretched out further than Lief could see, it may even be bigger than the city above, even with the map Lief would be unable to find the Rogues domain or even an unofficial shop. Luckily for him, there were many official and unofficial sign posts pointing the way for him, there were some things marked that Lief didn''t yet know, however, he could follow them and learn at a later date. The black market wasn''t anywhere near as crowded as the world above currently, Lief didn''t know why. Maybe he just came at a strange time. There were many paths Lief could take, all of them looked pretty similar. They all had many store owners standing behind counters or just regular looking tables, some had used a lot more money on their space whereas others had just thrown together a small shop. The whole place was quite silent, there weren''t many people yelling and the shopkeepers seemed to just watch you. Lief followed varies different signs that had [Rogue] carved into them. It wasn''t detailed but Lief assumed if he followed this he would find a part of the market specifically for rogues, when Lief came here using Out-Of-Body he had seen many entrances, the one he entered was the entrance right in the middle, maybe a kind of visitor entrance? Lief hadn''t seen anything that caught his eye. Even if he did he didn''t have the money to buy anything. After walking for about an hour through many unofficial shops, Lief''s scenery changed. The previous sunlight turned dim, looking up the roof of the underground was now a dark orange. It gave Lief a strange feeling of unease... As if he was currently in danger... In front of him lay a large sign: [Rogues/unchosen only.] If you continue and you are not a rogue you will be trespassing. Surely your not stupid enough to trespass on a class such as ours right? If you want to submit a request turn back and submit it to the correct people. Ask around if you don''t know. Even if you''re a king, if you trespass thinking your request is too important to do it the proper way, your end will be the same. Special message to anyone under the church. We are not a completely dark guild like some think, we don''t only accept assassinations and kidnappings, we also do demon subjugation. Before thinking that we need to be cleansed you should remember the times you have requested help, and how we can make that impossible. Although confusing Lief understood their meaning, Lief felt strangely about the special message, after all, his city was once part of the church. It was before he was born so he doesn''t owe anything to them but Lief felt that their way of talking to the church was a little to the negative side... If possible Lief would prefer not to anger the church. Since he is able to continue Lief passed the sign and walked towards the building in front. The reception. Chapter 23. Liefs other side... The Reception. The building was surprisingly similar to the Adventurers guild, looking just like a miniature castle with large double doors. Unlike the Adventurers guild, the Rogues receptions doors were opened by two strange metal creatures. The metal creatures had holes all over their bodies, its body seemed to be held together by tiny little pieces of string. It was tiny, about the size of Lief''s leg, they were exactly the same as one another. Lief looked at the text above their heads, their text was exactly the same: [Robot] (Age: 6,371) (Level 99) (Champion Level 97) ''So old... What race do they belong too? It feels weird to go through a door opened by these two... Is it okay?'' As Lief was about to ask the robots if it was okay a calm voice came from the inside, "Get in here. Waste anymore of my time and I''ll make you wait outside for a week." It snapped Lief from his thought as he realised he had spent a little too long looking at the robots stats... Lief apologised to the robots for wasting their time before timidly walking into the Reception. ''Don''t get killed'' Lief constantly worried whilst walking towards the woman sitting leisurely at the counter. ''Is she as strong as the creatures at the door?'' [Shell] (Age 500) (Recording level 673) (Level 43) (Mage level 1) ''Wow, she must make a lot here to buy 400 extra years, unless someone bought them her because she is a value to the Guild? She is a level 673 Recording after all... I wonder what job that is.''If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. After finishing that thought Lief realised that the inside of the reception is almost exactly the same as the Adventurers guild. Lief would have thought it was copied exactly if they hadn''t removed the tables, chairs and even replaced the floor with pure white tiles... The young woman at the desk definitely didn''t look 500, she seemed to be around 20, she had long white hair down to her shoulders, white eyes, white clothes and even pure white eyes. Lief had not thought that the inside of the Reception would look so different to the outside, it was like comparing a funeral with a wedding. Interrupting him from his thoughts the woman began to speak. "It''s good that you didn''t dally much further. I shall now send the order to start the recording, please wait a moment." Although the woman spoke Lief couldn''t help but feel uncomfortable as although the woman had a small smile on her face her eyes seemed dead and uninterested in anything... "Hello, welcome to the guest entrance to the Rogue''s paradise. If you are here to become a Rogue please poke me on the forehead, if you''re here to request a mission please hit the desk loudly. If you happen to be anofficial or unofficialbusiness of the church please also hit the desk loudly. If you''re here to complain about one of the Rogues please also hit the desk loudly." "Uh... O-Okay..." Lief replied nervouslyas he gently poked her forehead. ''Why does it feel so cold?'' Lief thought to himself as he felt the coldness on her forehead, it was as if he had poked ice. As soon as Lief''s hand touched the "Shells" forehead his vision went black for a moment before he awoke to a terrifying sight... The pure white woman was gone, Liefs finger was now placed on the forehead of a disfigured female corpse wearing the Churches uniform! Staggering back in fear Lief realised he was no longer in a clean haven... The walls were covered in thousands of bloody eyes, each following Liefs movements. *Sludge* Hearing a strange sound as he moved, Lief looked down at the floor. Blood. The smell finally hit him, he heaved to no end but he couldn''t allow himself to throw up, what if this were a test!? *Drip, drip* Lief finally noticed the rain... The red rain... Lief unconsciously looked up to the sky ''It''s not from this world, it couldn''t be, right?'' Lief''s legs trembled in fear, he could barely stand. There was no longer a ceiling, Liefsaw the new sky... The sky seemed black and infinite, like the sky without stars. A giant eye replaced the moon, although it was looking away from Lief he still felt like it knew everything about him, even things that Lief himself did not know about himself. Lief was struggling to stand, he felt like he was close to collapsing but then, he saw a mirror... Its edges were simple, gold with straight lines. It was out of place, like the sign that was next to it but that wasn''t Liefs concern. His reflection in the mirror wasn''t mirroring him. It was.... Laughing at him. "Hahahaha, you''re such a stupid brat, I can''t believe I have to share my body with you! Hhmpf, so weak you couldn''t handle it so you had to throw all the blame on me? You idiot, it''s my turn to play." Liefs reflection actually spoke! "W-hat?" Lief''s legs were close to giving in, but then. He felt fine... He looked down and he could see nothing but pure white ''Did I pass the illusion? No...NO!'' Lief suddenly realised he had switched places with the person in the mirror! "GIVE ME MY BODY BACK!" Lief screamed in horror. "Calm down, as much as I would like to be rid of you I can''t. Yet."*Sigh* I casually reply to the idiot before reading the sign beside the mirror. [If you can read this even with the Illusion Mirror beside it please enter Paradise by walking into the door.] Tip: Look around. "Hahaha, nice tip! I like that.." It takes me a moment, but I notice that there is a small sphere-like knob hidden within some of the eyeballs along the left wall. It''s shame to leave this room, it''s quite a nice place... I wonder who made it? Oh, and let''s not forget the Illusion Mirror, if my thoughts are correct I may not be able to use magic mirrors for a while... Whether this is a benefit or not I''m unsure. Well, time to go and get my class. Chapter 24. A rogues life... This isn''t what I had expected. When I grabbed the knob, my vision warped. I managed to keep my eyes open through the warping process, but I don''t like this place at all... Its too normal, too quiet... The white carpet I walked on muffled my steps as I walked around the office. My eyes were drawn to the man sitting behind the desk. His eyes constantly follow me, assessing my movements. He smiled before asking, "You here to become a Rogue?" "Yes." I answered while taking in my surroundings, there''sone window behind him and the door behind me. If the door locks, I will have no choice but to pass through him if any troubles arise. "Mhm, since you''re here you obviously got through "that" room... How''d you like it? Answer honestly, I''ll know if your lying." He clearly said as he produced a small ball of light from the tip of his fingers. "If you lie this will turn red." "I liked it, it would get annoying over time without a roof, though, have you considered putting one in? If you only use materials that scare people, I would suggest stretching human skin and using glass in the middle." I honestly replied whilewatching the light in his hand. "What?" he looked at his hands to see if I was lying. "You... Wasn''t disturbed by what you saw?" he looked at me with wide eyes. "Disturbed? Not at all, did it bother you?" I couldn''thelp but ask him. He sat up straight in his chair."Of course not! How could I be disturbed by such a thing?" He looked to be telling the truth, he was quite a good liar. *Ding* The light on his hands turned red, it seems he can''t control who''s lies it detects, ha. "Hoh, not disturbed by that huh?" I chuckle to myself when I see the anger on his face. "YOU! *deep breath* I''mthe one who decides on whether you become a Rogue you know!?" He calmed himself down before slowly replying.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. "Oh, so you make me one now?" "Hmpf, you''re lucky that anyone who passes that room gets the chance to become a rogue. Here." He threw me a scroll. Huh, is it really so easy? I caught the scroll but before I could read it a bunch of text appeared in my vision: [Quest - It''sa Rogues life] - Purchase a dagger. - Purchase Poison. - Accept assassination, kidnapping, theft or any other kind of mission. - Complete a Rogue Mission Reward: Rogue Class. "When you complete it come back, I''llsign your name here and then you will be a rogue!" The man laughed. If I killed him could I just sign my name there? He wouldn''t expect it, It would be quick and clean... What''s his level? [Modi] (Age: 43) (Level: 54) (Class: Rogue, Level 50) (Job: *Unable to read, please raise needed skill.*) Ah... It''s good that I wasn''trash his skills are probably far higher than mine. This quest seems like a lot of work, I would need to sell the potions for money then buy weapons and poison AND complete a mission before coming back here? "I want more rewards," I say as I continue to stare at him. "Haha, a small person like you? Get reputationfirst." He sneers. Before I could speak, my vision warped and I was transported back to the market above ground. [Rogue''s Class required] I immediately rushed away, If anyone saw me suddenly appear in the middle of the market what would they think? They would probably that I was trying to assassinate someone... I hid in an alley not too far from the market to decide what I would do first, sell the Elixirs of life or accept a mission? "Hey, how about you empty your pockets?" I hear a muffled voice around the corner, I decide to sneak over there, there may be a profit. "Please no! This is all I have for the month, my family will starve if you take it!" I hide behind a discarded carriage and watch the scene play out. There''s a group of 4 men. Three large men and one scrawny looking one, they continuously threaten a middle-aged man who stands in front of what seems to be his family. "Mommy I''m scared!" the little girl in ragged clothing whines to her mother. "It''s okay honey, daddy''s got this under control." the father reassures her. Looking at the scene, there''s no profit in interfering, besides they seem like they will be here for a while. They have said the exact same things several times already its weird... I think I''ll leave these people to their fate and head towards the Adventurers Guild. As its the adventurers guild they have missions for all classes so its easy to find one, it''s just a matter of deciding on what mission I want... Assassination - Begerath the mercenary. 100 G when the head is brought to the Kings Guard. Theft - I require a certain scroll from a certain Merchant. Ask behind the desk for details. Dungeon - Rogue required, find the Enot party for info. Anyone - Auction buying slaves of all kinds, see receptionist for prices. Hmm, most of these seem simple enough. There are truly many missions to choose from, I can''t decide which is the most worth it... I will have to ask behind the desk. The adventurers guild was practicly empty, only several people were inside. The rest were probably on their missions somewhere. "Could I have some information on some of the missions?" I was quite polite in asking the granny at the desk however she just handed me several pieces of paper that explained each one of the missions I had looked at. I was curious how she knew what I had looked at, but I guess there is probably a skill for it to make their job easier. Looking through the paper I''m not even slightly surprised with the contents... Slavery makes the most money by far. Although I''m sure, there are many other missions that make a lot of money. Out of the ones I have seen so far, slavery is the best. It says that prices change often, but some of the prices made me smile: Women aged 25-35 - 50 gold each. Girls aged 8-13 - 100 gold each. Strong men - 25 gold each. Weak men - 5 gold each Why did these prices make me smile? Haha, it''s simple really... I ran into a small family and a few strong men earlier and if my calculations are not wrong that''s an easy 255 gold. ''NO! YOU CAN''T DO THAT'' An annoyingly loud voice rings from the back of my head. "Are you going to cause me problems? Just shut up and fade away until I can get rid of you" I reply to my other half in my head.