As the first rays of dawn shone on Thousands leaves town, the bird chirped and roosters crowed. Opening his eyes, Shesmu basked in the warm light before getting up and stretching his arms. After a night of cultivating, he finally broke through the second stage of ki cultivation gaining a massive boost to his stats.

Rotational Three Tiered Passive Cultivation Method Rank Legendary Type Cultivation Method Stage 2 Level 1(125000/500000 Ki) Description

Passive: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 1500 Ki that has a tier 3 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. Of these 750 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level.

Active: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 3000 Ki that has a tier 4 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. You need to be in a meditation state to invoke the active skill, distraction and sudden movement deactivate it. Of these 1500 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level.

Effect Stage 2 Level 1 +300 all stats

Looking at the stats he gained, Shesmu was pleasantly surprised. He was afraid that his level might affect the amount of stats he gained through cultivating for balance purposes, but it seems that Ashes of Gods stored another future for him.

At this point, Shesmu couldn’t even be compared to the current player base in terms of stats. It would take the top players at least three months in game time to catch up to Shesmu, and this difference will only grow further. Since the moment he accepted the fact that he reincarnated into a timeline where he was younger, Shesmu knew that his path would be special. In his past incarnation, he was already a top player and unofficially recognized as the best competitive one in the game. If he weren’t able to use this advantage to bully some greenhorns who just started playing, he should just jump off a bridge with no will to pass on.

Even though his current power still isn’t close to what he reached in the past, Shesmu was still satisfied. Entrance to the second stage of ki cultivation enabled him to do things he couldn’t do before. One of such is to use his ki to strengthen his muscles, tendons, and bones. In fact, this what the second stage was about; strengthening your body so that it can resist higher inputs of ki through a different mechanism. Before he could go further on his ki cultivation path, one had to first have a strong body to do so. Moreover, one couldn’t reach the third stage before his body reached a certain degree of power. As a minimum, one had to reach 500 points in all stats. However, for someone practicing a legendary cultivation technique, this minimum was set to 1500, three times that of a normal practitioner.

The reason for such disparity is the level of stress one has to go through using the enormous amounts of ki given by a legendary cultivation method. Higher purity ki enforced more pressure and stress on the body, and to avoid the crippling of the practitioners the creators of the method made this restriction. When Shesmu designed this method, he never thought of the limiter as a problem. One had to know that at the time, all of his basic stats were above 50000 and even the new players didn’t take more than a couple months before all their stats reached the 1000 points mark. At that time, Dream Inc. gave new players all the advantages of the world: 300% drop rate, 300% exp and easy ways to turn credit into gold coins. If one was rich enough, he could reach level 100 with 7000 total stat points in a week. Paying someone to carry you, paying for the best items at every level, and as long as your avatar is present and you follow the guides you won’t have any problem.

However, who would have thought that Shesmu would reincarnate. Now, he has to battle against his own limitations and reach a power no player reached until after 6 months passed in his past life.

Taking a look at his stats, Shesmu couldn’t help but smile at the progress.

Name

Shesmu

Race

Human

Class

Swordsman

Level

15 (122000/200000 exp)

Health Points

8100/8100

Ki Points

125000/125000

Stats

Strength

443

Agility

543

Intelligence

330

Wisdom

349

Vitality

400

Stat Points

24

Skills

Sword Mastery

Tier 0 level 8 (Proficiency: 93%).

Thousand Slashes

Tier 0 level 4(Proficiency:43%).

Ki Manipulation

Tier 1 level 3(Proficiency: 20%)

Talents

Quick Slash

Increase attack speed by 20%.

Afterimage

When in combat, sudden turns leave afterimages, rendering the enemy not being able to know real from illusion. Movement speed outside of combat +50%, Movement speed in combat +20%, attack speed +30%.

Silent Steps

Improve Stealth, step sounds cannot be detected when running. Movement speed in combat +50%, attack speed +50%.

Flash Step

Passive: Improve short-term acceleration. Movement speed in combat +100%, attack speed +100%.

Active: Close to instantaneous movement in a 5-meter range, scales with agility. Cooldown 5 seconds. (Note: Use with caution, multiple consecutive uses will degrade its range and apply debuffs).

Strong Grip

Increase attack power by 20%

Titan’s Might

Increase attack power by 30%. Have a chance to knock back an opponent with less attack power.

Controlled Strength

Increase attack power by 50%. Increase sensibility of muscles for more controlled force and a slight increase to the sensibility towards wind movement and earth vibration.

Tough Skin

Increase hp by 20%

Troll's Blood

Increase HP by 30% and increase regeneration of HP by 50 Hp/s when outside of combat.

Minor Life-Force Absorption

Increase HP by 50% and add a life-stealing effect of 3% of damage done to the enemy.

Clear Mind: Magical Damage +20%. Faster analysis.

Clear Mind

Magical Damage +20%. Faster analysis.

Accelerated thought process

Magical Damage +30%. High-speed data analysis.

Knowledge Replication

Magical Damage +50%. Ability to copy certain skills from all classes.

Clear Vision

More accurate vision. Mana regeneration +20%.

Enlightened Vision

Ability to notice minute details in a high tension environment. Mana Regeneration +30%.

Inner World

Ability to create a small inner world with its own rules and make it bigger and bigger until it becomes as boundless as the universe. Mana Regeneration +50%.

“Yes! Finally!”

Looking at his new talents, Shesmu couldn’t help but be elated. Both flash step and Inner world were very strong abilities, a trademark of their respective stats. All swordsman used flash step as their bread and butter, as it could dodge CC and prepare a finisher. It could also be comboed with many abilities, making it one of the more useful and versatile skills in the game.

As for Inner World, mages used it to countless ends. One of the more obvious perks of the ability is its aid in understanding the laws governing the world of Ashes of Gods. It helped many mages create new powerful spells or emerge with new paradigms and rules to understand the world. In fact, in the process of creating the Three-Tiered Rotational Cultivation Method, Shesmu had to use his inner world for a majority of the time.

These were just some of the strengths of the inner world ability. Other perks stretched far and wide, from time dilation to soul strengthening, Inner World dabbled in all categories.

However, Shesmu didn’t want to create his inner world right away. To do so, he had to create the world seed first, and this process takes a long time. To create a stable world seed one had to focus on the task for 16 hours on average. Due to his past experience, Shesmu might be able to shave off a few hours, but he will still stay in the double-digit range. At this point, he didn’t have that much free time on his hands as the expedition will start in an hour. Thus, Shesmu just went and took a bath, had breakfast at the inn restaurant and headed towards the military camp.

On the way, Shesmu contacted Seth so as to set up a meeting point. He already added him to his friend’s list yesterday when he partied with him and thus unlocked the private message system.

Reaching the camp, Shesmu waited at the entrance for 10 minutes before a purple-eyed male figure gestured towards him.

“Yo Seth, how’re you doing?”

“Pretty good. Stayed late at night to make sure I’m consistent with the animation cancels but I got my 6 hours of sleep so I’m good.”

Hearing Seth’s statement Shesmu nodded before saying.

“That’s good. You trained like mad yesterday and I did saw some improvement throughout our farming session. Hopefully, you’ll show me today the result of your solo training.”

Hearing Shesmu’s praise and expectation, Seth panicked and said.

“Hey hey hey, don’t expect too much. I just trained the same techniques you showed me yesterday, you won’t notice any difference.”

Hearing his reply, Shesmu just smiled. He was happy because Seth was taking the opportunity to train by himself, going as far as to cut from sleep so as to train and become better. This was the fundamental aptitude that differentiated between the good and bad players.

After waiting for half an hour, the terrain next to the military camp was filled to the brim.

“Wow, I didn’t know there were these many players even. Wait, I didn’t expect even the capital city to have these many players, from where did they spawn?” Looking at the swarm of players, Shesmu was pressured by their sheer number.

Hearing his friend complains, Seth rolled his eyes and said “According to forums and game journalists, Thousand leaves have 50000 players. This mob doesn’t make even half the population of the city.”

Shesmu reevaluated the mob in front of him and made a quick number estimation. From what he saw, it seems that the players willing to participate in the war is around 15000.

Shesmu was surprised, to say the least. In his past life, he didn’t really know how many players were playing the game since day 1, but he was pretty sure that the town wasn’t as crowded as they are now in this timeline. He wondered if it was because of something he did that caused a butterfly effect, or maybe the variable that made this difference didn’t have anything to do with Shesmu and was inherent to the properties of this timeline.

Whichever case it was, Shesmu no longer paid it any attention, as all his focus was now on the Commander-In-Chief that just entered the scene. Standing on top of a wooden stage, the Commander-In-Chief started his speech.

“As we continue with our daily lives, laughing with our friends, being affectionate with our wives and husbands, looking at our kids as they grow, one notion and concept is always on our minds. A concept that we do not give much importance as we take a matter of course, but one that is vital for all us, for our survival and thrift: Safety.” Finishing his introduction, the Commander took a deep breath before continuing.

“Without a safe town we wouldn’t be able to work without worrying about our wives and kids, we wouldn’t be able to genuinely laugh with our friends knowing that these people might die the next day, we wouldn’t be able to continue with our daily lives without the toxicity from stress, fear, and terror polluting everything we do. Yes, my friends and comrades, safety is the backbone of our happiness, the backbone of our lives!” The commander enthusiastically exclaimed before his complexion turned grave.

“And here, an enemy that threatens this safety appeared. One that doesn’t want us to lead our happy lives, one that is disgusted by joy and wants to eradicate anyone who experiences it. The goblins have gone too far! They killed our soldiers, merchants, and hunters. They want us to give up what is rightly ours and greed for even more. Even up to this night reports signaling the death of our brothers I receive and I cry every time. For our brothers and sisters, for our lives and happiness, we will raise our weapons and with them our souls to defend this land!”

“For our land!”

“For our lives!”

“To victory!”

Hearing the Commander’s speech, the crowd cheered and became frenzied. Their patriotic spirit was ignited by the Commander’s epic speech. However, amidst the mob Shesmu clicked his tongue. The current Commander In Chief, Adrian, was half a demon. He had many deals with all kind of evil power, and if left alone, he would most likely cause a tragedy

At first, Shesmu didn’t worry about Adrian. No matter how strong he is, Shesmu knew that he could beat him up easily. However, now that he knew that Adrian was so good with his words, Shesmu felt a headache coming. Half-demons didn’t have any difference in their biology from humans, so Shesmu cannot just kill him and then prove that he was half a demon. He needs to catch him red-handed so that he can officially kill him without incurring public wrath.

As these thoughts circled in Shesmu’s mind, he began to worry about the future.