Chapter: Welcome to the 10 Realms

A blue light appeared in front of them. They hastily grabbed at the object heled within that blue light.,

Glancing around they saw a few sets of eyes thrown over in interest.

Not wanting to attract more questions, they both headed out of the square as quickly as possible, making use of streets and clusters of people to disappear into the city once again.

They found themselves at a restaurant sometime later.

They had both ordered some food and got a secluded booth.

Erik opened the screen that had come with the object he'd opened. It was a simple looking ring with a line of lettering on the inside of it.

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Tutorial: Storage items

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The minor storage ring like many storage items, contains a special set of formations that allow one to store items within a space that is larger inside than outside. The size of storage space varies on the quality of the ring of holding.

To bind the ring of holding, one must erase the mark of the user before and apply their own mark by dropping blood onto it. Once bonded, the ring of holding will be accessible only to the user if their mark remains.

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Erik quickly priced his finger and put some of his blood on the ring.

He felt a connection establish between him and the ring. He sent out a thought and he was able to see everything that was inside the ring.

There were the minor potions for stamina and mana recovery, though the thing that drew Erik's attention was the Guide to the Ten Realms book.

Erik looked around in the city it was easy to see that several people had these storage rings or other items that allowed them to store more items on their person.

Erik tested it out, holding his woobie that he'd wrapped up. It disappeared into his storage ring. He summoned it out again and it reappeared in his hand.

"With this we can sort out all of our supplies," Rugrat said to Erik in a low whisper.

Erik looked at how much room was in the storage ring.

"We'd need to get larger versions," Erik said.

That's just a problem of money, and two silvers seems to go pretty far," Rugrat said.

Erik and Rugrat's food arrived a short time later.

Smelling the food, it was heavenly after being on rations for half a week. Rugrat and Erik had a deep aversion to anything that even looked like a ration now.

They spent the rest of the day wandering around the city, getting to know it and seeing where different stores and places were.

Rugrat took them to the smithing area of the city, looking over different places there.

"Are you interested in becoming a smith?" Erik asked.

"Well with our gear right now, if any of it breaks down, we've got some replacement parts, but nothing else. Also, if we lose our brass then we're going to be screwed if we need some more. If one of us was able to smith out those parts, then we wouldn't have to worry about it," Rugrat said.

Erik nodded, Rugrat's thinking made sense, they had a limited number of resources right now. When they used a round they might have the parts to reload it, but they only had a limited supply. Eventually they would run out.

After touring the city for a long time. Erik checked on a few places, the different apothecaries which were the closest that people in the first realm, unless they had a strong background, came to touching alchemy.

The healers were swamped, there was always people needing healing. Though healers weren't ones to waste their time and mana.

There were two healing houses and then several different apothecaries.

Erik only looked over the different things that they were selling including services. What he saw on the healing side, made him shake his head.

These people knew how to use a few healing spells, but they clearly didn't care to learn anything about a persons' biology.

Why would you need to when the healing spell worked just fine? Rugrat's knowledge of the human body was greater than their revered ancestors through a rigorous first aid training he'd undergone.

Erik who had been a combat medic had greater knowledge, could only see their abilities and shake his head. If medics back on Earth had these abilities fatalities would plummet.

As it was getting close to night the two of them headed out of the city and moved for where their gear was hidden in the forest.

They stored their gear in their storage rings and set up camp.

While Rugrat was on first watch, Erik pulled out his sleeping bag and a glow stone he had bought. He used the sleeping bag to block the light and pulled out the thick book in his storage ring.

It was a simple looking book with the cover showing the ten realms totem with it's ten rings. Above it written in gold were five simple words.

Guide to the Ten Realms.

With a deep breath and a sense of anticipation he had since getting the storage ring he opened the book and started reading the first page.

There was basically two ways of increasing one's strength in the ten realms. Body cultivation and the mana gathering system.

Body cultivation walked down the path of enhancing their body through rare resources, alchemy concoctions or being tempered again and again to increase the basic strength of their body.

As one increased the strength of their body, their agility, strength and stamina would increase in leaps and bounds. Walking this path, they would have to endure great pain, destroying and reforming their body repeatedly to advance their strength.

This required healers, or healing concoctions to keep the body cultivation practitioner from dying. They could also use concoctions created by alchemists to increase their bodies abilities. Using too many pills could weaken one's foundation though.

The cost was not simple, and Alchemists were incredibly rare in the second realm, in the first realm they were nearly nonexistent.

The second system, the mana gathering system could be improved in a couple of ways. The simplest was increasing mana regeneration, if one had more than ten mana gates open, or their mana regeneration stat was at ten points or higher, they would step onto the path of a mana gathering practitioner. Erik had already taken this step as he had acquired the first level, mana Vapor. Once his stats increased to twenty, then he would automatically gain the mana like mist, at thirty, this mist would condense into mana drop. Increasing past this level would require the practitioner to intervene as the next stage was forming one's mana core, five drops had to be compressed until they formed a core within their body.

With each increase, their bodies would gain a greater affinity towards mana, their mana pool would also undergo an increase.

This was the simplest method, other ways that people could advance down the path of mana gathering practitioner, was to, as body cultivation practitioners did, alter their body so that they could increase their body's affinity to mana or control over it.

Alchemy concoctions could alter one's body to increase the mana that they could hold, artificially increasing the density of one's mana, or it's purity.

Also, one could take pills or undergo training, to advance their own path to power at a faster rate.

As the body was the foundation of the body cultivator's path, the mana gates were the foundation for mana gathering practitioners.

At birth people would find that they had different number of mana gates open. The more mana gates they had open, the higher their comprehension and control over mana, they gained a natural advantage in the amount of mana they could pull into their bodies and were tempered from birth with mana running through their bodies.

As one progressed through the realms becoming higher, the natural density of mana was greater, with this the children were blessed with having more mana gates open naturally. Some healers and alchemists were able to open the mana gates of others artificially.

The higher the realm the greater the treatment it seemed.

Now while these two paths were taken to strengthen most people, they were meant to augment and compliment the main system that ran the ten realms. The Experience system.

Experience was the essence of everything in the ten realms. As every action created entropy, the ten realms created experience.

Creatures could increase in level by just existing, absorbing the experience of the ten realms, or through killing one another and consuming their flesh and monster cores.

As a humans' skills increased they were rewarded with experience, for building, or destroying they gained more experience and more power. Killing another creature, they gained a portion of it's lifetime experience. Creating a sword, they gained experience for improving.

Humans could also increase their experience over time without killing or creating, they would need to undergo meditation, drawing in the energy of the ten realms. It was much harder and took longer, but it was possible.

One might have hidden injuries that was keeping their body back from absorbing more experience from the world, healing these hidden wounds could directly increase their fighting strength and their overall level. Taking pills that were made from items with concentrated experience could directly raise one's level. Though the ten realms weren’t simple, alchemy concoctions would only be effective one or two times and they would accumulate toxins in the body, one needed to remove these toxins so that they would be able to get the full benefit of later experience enhancing concoctions or resources.

Erik closed the book as Rugrat tapped on his shoulder. Erik put the light stone and the book away carefully.

He took his watch, filled with more questions than when he had started reading.

Rugrat got under a cover and started reading the guide book as well.