People walked on the streets, hurrying on their own lives, some went to work, some went to their homes, each person carried their own worries, goals, and dreams.

Kids ran happily, playing games of catch, eating snacks; youths ride their bikes and skateboards at the local park, some drank beer while sitting on benches, talking about the latest gossips and news on television.

People hearing music, people playing music, the noises of voices counted by hundreds of thousands coming together into a symphony of life, work, hardships, dreams, and activity.

One could spend their entire life without listening to this concert of noises despite being right in the middle of it and even participating of it, adding one’s own sound to the mix; because when you get used to something and take for granted its presence, you become numb to it.

Yet the absence of that noise can be the loudest scream it can produce, and also the most painful.

Because when silence screams, the scream comes from within yourself.

Ethan watched in horror as the fateful scene replayed itself in front of his eyes; as if reality itself was a crystal screen, it filled with cracks and the image distorted, body parts changed position in sickeningly impossible ways, moving in different directions as their owners were unaware of it.

Then the cracks were gone, but a bloody hell was left behind.

“Haaah!”

Ethan woke up from his nightmare with a shout, drenched in sweat. He opened his eyes and looked around.

He was lying down on his left side, sleeping on a bed inside a small room on the second floor of an Inn.

He was certain he could not go back to sleep now.

He sat up. He was alone in this dark room, he channeled Qi to his eyes almost instinctively, enhancing their perception.

There was a thin, almost invisible layer of something covering the room, it was a barrier put by his Master.

Ethan let out a sigh and hugged his legs, tears started to run down his cheeks.

He was alone inside this dark room, in an alien world full of strange people who spoke a language he didn’t know but understood thanks to his Master’s translation spell.

There were even two moons in the sky.

The people were strangers, the language was strange, the land was strange, the stars were strange, everything was… strange.

He usually liked new things, he was excited when he saw the traits of the people in this world, the new and delicious food, exotic plants, and the cool clothes.

But after the initial awe, when he got time to think by himself about all this, he was reminded of how different it was to his home, and then the pain in his chest started again.

His Master was nice to him, it was fun and interesting to talk with him, Ethan really enjoyed hearing his stories, and was practically becoming a superhuman thanks to him.

But at the end of the day, his Master was also a stranger, some super god-like being from another dimension, they had gotten closer during these past few days, but there was a limit to how much trust and familiarity could be built in such short time.

Sure, his Master was the savior that got him out of the bloody mess his city and his world had become, yet he had admitted he was partly responsible for that situation, the people from his world died because of the war of the deities that his Master took part in.

And they fucked up the cosmos in their freaking war.

The stupid gods killed each other and screwed up entire worlds full of innocent people in the process.

They were mere mortals that got wiped out without any real reason for it, mere ants that were crushed when giants walked over them, just collateral damage, specks of dust in the grand scheme of things.

The anger and pain caused by those thoughts welled up inside Ethan. That frustration, the powerlessness of watching everyone die without being able to do anything but watch…

It hurt, more than anything else.

Navin had said there was a way to save them, but that didn’t change the current situation, Ethan was still alone, without his friends or family in a foreign land, depending entirely on what his Master decided.

What if his Master suddenly decided he didn’t want to waste time with Ethan?

If Navin decided to leave, there was nothing Ethan could do to stop him, he would be completely alone, left to die in this unknown world.

Those thoughts were circling Ethan’s head constantly, he tried to avoid thinking about it, and was grateful that Navin always provided something to keep his mind busy, distracting him from the painful memories.

Ethan closed his eyes and continued to cry, he cried without restraint, venting all the emotions that tightened his chest.

And in the darkness, a light shone.

With his eyes closed, Ethan cast his senses into himself, watching the shining mysterious rune that floated in the darkness.

That was the legacy his Master had given him, the accumulation of knowledge about cultivation that would be Ethan’s greatest tool on his path to immortality.

Inside this rune were the secret arts that gave him power that surpassed any mortal.

Yes… with this, I won’t be weak anymore.

Ethan contemplated the rune within his mind and felt the pain decrease, and a warm feeling filled his chest spreading across his body, he felt the power flow through him, his power.

He knew he was still weak, the numerous beasts he found in the desert proved him that there were great dangers and monsters in this world; his Master said there far worse things in other worlds.

So he was small and weak, just a crying little child trembling in the face of true power.

But so what?

The realization of his own weakness will not crush him, if he was at the bottom of the ladder, then he could only go up, he may be weak now but he will grow stronger.

And this rune right here was the key for that.

“All I have to do is keep practicing, right? Instead of crying, I can do something productive.”

Ethan muttered and got off the bed.

Standing in the middle of the room, Ethan rose his arms over his head and clenched his fists. He inhaled and exhaled a few times, then slowly lowered his fists crossing them in front of his chest for an instant before continuing their descent until they were below his navel.

In that position, Ethan entered a meditative state, forgetting his fears and insecurities to focus on his training.

At least, for now.

50 kilometers southwest from Lauhr City, a group of 10 people rushed to the city riding on horses.

8 of them were from a special escort unit of the Sahbadia Kingdom, wearing matching black uniforms and light armor.

The two men at the front of the formation were the strongest of the group, the older one wore armor protecting his torso, forearms, and legs, looking like a veteran warrior; the younger one wore elegant clothes, robes with the emblem of royalty.

“Attention! Something strange is ahead!”

The veteran warrior shouted to his companions, the group slowed down their ride while watching their surroundings, weapons at the ready.

“Hmph, seems like we were found out, you got great instincts, General Jiten.”

An old voice sounds and a hoary-headed man comes out from behind a rock, he wore black robes and held a wooden staff on his hands, he was a magician.

From around them, figures started to stand up from the sand, a group of 50 people covered entirely in black clothes, wielding scimitars.

“This sand crawling technique… so you have employed quite the group of assassins, eh?”

The prince spoke with a loud but calm voice, he unsheathed his sabre with a neat movement and looked at the sky.

“You even brought Avians with you, have the proud tribes of Formabisia really become dogs of Feld-Ehia Kingdom?”

The prince spoke coldly as he stared at the clouds, 6 figures dove from overhead and circled his group, still in the air.

“Don’t pretend you know anything about us, Amir of Sahbadia!”

5 of them looked like men with brown wings on their backs, but their leader, the one who spoke to Prince Amir, looked like a mixture of a vulture and a man; his body and face were like a human, but he had claws instead of hands and talons instead of feet.

He looked more bestial and far stronger than his 5 companions.

“You seem to know my name, but if you are here impeding my path, then you know nothing else about me, what a pity, you were sent to die in vain.”

Amir calmly talked with them, as if his group was in no danger and he wasn’t surrounded by opponents, but rather by stones on the road, about to be crushed under his horse's hooves.

“General, I’ll let you handle those Avians, I’ll take care of that mage. The rest of you, kill all those stupid assassins.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The escorts moved instantaneously, dashing at the assassins.

The General raised his sight to the 6 men flying over his head and spoke with a bored expression.

“Did you know, birdmen? In my youth, I used to go hunting a lot, especially birds, and my favorite method was throwing sharpened sticks at them. My accuracy and strength of arm earned me quite some praise from the adults back them.”

The expressions of the Avians turned angry at the humiliating comments of this man who disregarded them and held a casual conversation in the middle of a fight.

2 of them readied their bows and shot arrows at him, yet he caught the arrows in a swift movement of his right hand; then he casually threw the arrows to a side.

“What? How did he…”

The Avians were stunned, that degree of strength wasn’t something to be underestimated. However, before they could take any other action, the General attacked.

On Jiten’s hand appeared a long and heavy halberd, the shaft was made of black metal decorated with golden writings of ancient times, the spearhead was a silver wide curved blade, enabling for cutting and thrusting, this type of polearm was called an Arbir.

“[Penta Saeta]”

General Jiten’s arm blurred as he moved it, he threw his arbir aiming at the Avian leader, who quickly dodged out of the way of the speeding projectile.

“Ha! Such petty tricks won’t even—”

The Avian leader stopped mid-sentence as he turned his head right in time to see his 5 companions pierced by the same arbir Jiten had thrown at him, but these ones came from above.

Had the spear multiplied and changed direction after passing by him?

Jiten jumped from his horse, appearing into the air in front of the last Avian alive in the group, his arbir appeared once again on his hand as the ones piercing the 5 falling Avians disappeared as mirages.

“Die, birdman.”

The head of the Avian leader separated from his body the next instant.

Jiten landed on the ground without much noise and dashed to the assassins that fought with the escorts, even if they could handle this, it was better to not leave any chances of his men dying on this ambush.

Meanwhile, Prince Amir rode his steed towards the mage ahead, the last enemy that posed a threat to this group, although he could do nothing alone, this ambush was doomed to fail.

“Those useless bastards… Argh! I don’t need them! [Root Jail]”

Realizing there was no escape the mage cast a spell as he buried the tip of his staff on the ground, making thick and large roots emerge from the ground in front of the riding prince.

On these arid lands, there were very few mages with plant related abilities, and although this man had initially spoken in the language of Sahbadia Kingdom, on his rage he spoke using the language of Feld-Ehia Kingdom, revealing his origin.

He threw various seeds and used his magic to make them sprout and grow rapidly, turning into a group of purple dotted giant flowers.

“Take this, foolish prince! [Venom Mist]!”

The mage channeled his spell through the plants, and the group of flowers emitted thick purple gas, maybe one would not be much, but there were 6 of them, making it cover a wide area, this was a strong poison that paralyzed and painfully killed whoever inhaled it, even letting it permeate the skin would make one suffer its effects in a lesser degree, an ordinary person would fall to the ground in seconds and die in a matter of minutes.

However, Prince Amir was no ordinary man.

“[Fiery Ride]!”

Amir activated a Skill, making a burning force field surround him and his horse, accelerating like a meteor through the mist. The roots on the ground that tried to grab him were crushed and burned.

“For the insolence of ambushing me and for the insult of daring to do it possessing such pathetic strength, I sentence you to die!”

The prince rode forward, unstoppable. The mage’s eyes opened in terror as he watched the approaching figure covered in flames.

“[Grand Tree]!!”

The mage shouted as he spent most of his mana on a desperate attempt of casting faster; his staff which was over a meter long, opened outwards as if it was many branches that had been spiraling, revealing a magic crystal in its center.

The crystal shone with power and started to turn the staff into a giant tree that would fight to protect the mage and could even turn into an Ent-like creature to help the mage escape.

Alas, he was too slow in his cast.

Before the spell could be completed, Amir rode past the mage, decapitating him with a [Flash Cut] of his sabre.

The spell canceled and the magic dispersed, making the staff return to its original form.

The prince group reunited after killing all the assassins, inspected the bodies, taking anything valuable or that could serve as identification, then they burned the bodies and continued on their march towards Lauhr City.

“These people were just a distraction, Your Highness.”

“I think the same, General. They were just dogs sent to die hoping they could delay my arrival for a while. The question is, what is the Kingdom of Feld-Ehia planning? If these guys were to buy some time, then there’s something else that another group is doing.”

“And that action, involves our destination, Lauhr City.”

“Indeed, let’s make haste.”

“As you command.”

The two finished their conversation and continued their ride to the City, their objective was important, but if the Feld-Ehia Kingdom and even tribes from Formabisia are involved, then the importance might have just risen quite a bit, but also the difficulty of their success.

In the sky directly over Prince Amir's group, far above the clouds, a semitransparent golden-crimson Phoenix hovered watching them, then he flew at high speed towards the west, to a marching battalion of 300 people.

Their destination, just like the prince and his escorts from before, was Lauhr City.

“An invading force? But that city is guarded and full of monster hunters, this small group is not capable of taking the city, even if they have strong soldiers.”

Navin mused as he watched the attire of the soldiers.

“Good quality armors, some even have special effects, attuned according to their own specialties, 180 melee fighters, 50 archers, 50 mages, 20 healers. And among them, some possess talents in other areas. Not bad, for this world. Should this be considered an elite attack group?”

Navin circled over them, listening to the small conversations among them. There was nothing useful like their objectives or details on the mission, such things must have been discussed long before starting their march.

“Feld-Ehia Kingdom, eh? I don’t particularly care who Ethan chooses to side with, and one can’t judge a country by just these few soldiers but… these guys don’t have good auras and the bad karma of previous actions is chaining them.”

While Navin didn’t really care about the past of people, and he knew there could be all kind of circumstances that drove people to commit acts that they regretted later, there were some things that simply were done because of their perversion, and such things left a mark on people.

Navin saw the perversion crawl in their minds and decided that at least the Prince and his General were men of honor, so if he got involved, he would help the prince’s side.

That is, if he decided to intervene.

The interactions between countries and their military activities were not something he actively wanted to involve with, each world had their own ways and history.

People had their own lives and fates, and while he didn’t care about the decrees of fate, he was not going to go voluntarily meddling in other people’s lives, each person had the freedom to forge their own future.

“Hmm, let’s watch things first, if they actually try to pull some dirty act near me, I’ll just kill them and be over with it.”

Reaching this conclusion, Navin turned around and returned to Lauhr City.

The tides of the change were rising in the cosmos, and for some worlds, that transformation came through war, if that was the case for this world and its countries, Navin will not stop it.

At least not now, since he was not in the mood for it.

Deep in meditation, Ethan projected himself into the dark space inside his mind. A perfect copy of himself holding the spear his Master had made for him earlier that day.

He readied himself as a mannequin appeared in front of him wielding a spear.

This was one of the training methods described in the scriptures of his cultivation art, and one of the most useful meditation methods for a martial artist.

This was called Soul Scape Incarnation Training.

It consisted in creating a space within the mind and project one’s soul into it, then making incarnated illusions to train with, it was especially useful for combat training and for experimenting the use of dangerous techniques.

The dummy figure that Ethan created was one his Master had used during their walk in the desert to tell him about acupoints, meridians and other knowledge about human anatomy.

And it was going to use the same spear Ethan had, it wasn’t that hard for Ethan to program the dummy for sparring, it felt like in a video game, just giving the commands and the dummy would obey, the rest was letting it run on autopilot.

“Ok, let’s begin.”

Upon Ethan’s words, the dummy jumped forwards and delivered a front kick on his chest, followed by a fist on his right temple.

“Fuck!”

Ethan took 3 steps back, but the dummy pursued, using the walking technique Ethan had used to not leave footprints in the sand, a single step of the dummy surpassed the 3 steps Ethan had taken, enabling it to crush his nose with a knee.

“Argh! Stop!”

The mannequin stopped instantaneously and Ethan started to punch it over and over until it was completely broken, full of anger and indignation at being so humiliated; the dummy had not even used its spear, which meant it wasn’t necessary to use it, the thing was looking down on Ethan.

Panting a bit, Ethan refreshed his body, erasing all wounds and tiredness. He remade the dummy and had it ready for round 2.

He knew it had been a stupid thing to just freeze the dummy with a mental command and beat it up when it was unable to fight back. Such a thing was useless for his training even if it helped him vent some anger.

“Okay, so this thing goes machine mode like an arcade knowing the best way to use the moves of a character in a fighting game. Well, I’m gonna beat it, players are meant to overcome the machine anyway.”

He took a stance with his spear in front of the dummy and started to channel his Qi in preparation for the duel, he wouldn’t be beaten again.

“Begin”

This time, both of them dashed forward and thrust with their spears, the spearheads clashed with a ‘clang!’ and the dummy sidestepped while swinging the spear aiming to hit Ethan’s head with the shaft, Ethan blocked with his own but left his lower body unprotected.

Sharp pain above his knee made him realize his mistake, the dummy had stabbed him almost the next instant Ethan blocked the strike to his head.

Of course, if the blunt end of the spear is aiming above, then the spearhead was aiming to the lower body of the opponent; even if it sounded obvious and was stated in the explanations of spearmanship on his cultivation art, during a real fight it was hard to pay attention to everything.

It was something that only experience could provide.

To get used to observing the opponent’s weapon, their movement, to learn to think ahead, trying to read the flow of their moves and predict their actions, it sounded cool for Ethan, but it was hard to put into practice.

Swinging was the essence of using a polearm, a little twist and a flick at the right time could change the whole attack and defense patterns, meaning it made the difference between victory and defeat.

The difference between life and death.

Ethan stopped the dummy, healed his wounded knee, took distance and calmed his breath.

Time for round 3.

“Begin.”

Once again they lunged at each other and exchanged strikes.

It wasn’t until next morning that Ethan opened his eyes, still standing in the middle of the room in the Inn.

A small Phoenix was perched on the window, and Ethan could swear it was smiling.

“Good morning, Ethan. It’s good to see you working hard.”

“Good morning, Master. Yeah, it was hard indeed, but I think it was good.”

Ethan looked at the sunlight coming from outside and stretched with a small yawn.

“Time sure flies when one’s focused or having fun.”

“Hehehe, so how was your first experience with meditative combat?”

“It was good, I was beaten up a lot at first, but I learn fast… Eh, wait a minute, you knew what I was doing?”

“Of course, I created that, remember? I know how your energy moves when using that method. Although I don’t know what you were actually doing inside the Mind Space, I can tell that you were using it.”

“Ah, I see.”

“So, did you learn something good?”

Navin asked with a smile.

Ethan looked at his Master and dedicated him a huge grin.

“Yeah.”

Navin laughed at the confident response.

“Good, because…”

He looked outside the window before continuing.

“…you might have to put it to use soon.”