Abigaël opened her eyes, feeling slightly dizzy. She looked around and discovered that she was lying on a bed inside a large room. The room was not only large but also very luxurious, like a princess room or something of the sort. The light coming across the windows showed that in the beginning of the morning. She furrowed her eyebrows while trying to remember why she was there. After several seconds, she suddenly recalled everything. She recalled how she had narrowly escaped a calamity because of a trip in the causality realm. She sighed and thought that she had been too careless. She had thought that she could roam through the causality realm without restraint but that was obviously just her wishful thinking. There was something guarding this place, something terrifyingly strong.

“Well, I am alive. That’s all that matter. Thanks to you, dear eyes of mine. You have saved me again. Let’s check this body’s condition first.” She muttered inwardly while standing up. Indeed, it was not the first time she had used [Karma Permutation]. She had used it at critical moments those past years. The moment she was cornered without any mean of escape and on the verge of dying, she would use it. Her enemies could only curse in frustration as their prey disappeared in front of them. As she took a step forward, Abi suddenly felt slightly unbalanced. Puzzled, she looked down and discovered the problem. Her breasts were too heavy, they were two big flesh mounds. “Oh! This body is really gifted. If I had such a big chest back on Earth, all the men would surely be at my feet.” She thought while examining her new body.

She didn’t have an ounce of guilt knowing that she had just stolen someone else body. The world was dangerous after all, anyone could die at any moment. Anyway, the dead would just enter the reincarnation cycle and live again afterward. Abi didn’t consider that stealing a body was a big deal. She didn’t want to die and lose all her precious memories after reincarnation. With a finger snap, she summoned a [Water Mirror]. Water elements within the room began to condense and formed a large mirror in front of her. She undressed swiftly and stood naked in front of the mirror. When the latter finished forming, Abi gaped in shock. She was shocked as her body was that of a female human. What was even more shocking was that she was otherworldly beautiful, breathtaking, gorgeous! She even concluded that English dictionary didn’t possess the right word to describe her beauty.

“Oh my god! What kind of beauty is this? I’m like a goddess from a fantasy movie! My features are too perfect!” She couldn’t help but praise herself.

Even if beauty had little usefulness during a life and death battle, it was still good to be beautiful. Her chance was very good this time. Not only had she transferred to a humanoid body which resembled the human race, she had even obtained a perfect specimen. Even if it couldn’t kill directly, beauty was still useful in good hands. No matter what species one belonged to, one would always love beautiful things. That was a universal truth in the entire multiverse. What was loved was precious and what was precious was worth fighting for. Abi grinned while looking at her perfect breasts, perfect hips and curves, flawless face and long golden coloured hair. She was like a teenage girl who had obtained new clothes during summer sales.

While she was pleased with herself, memories began to resurface within her mind. The former owner of her body was also called Abigaël which was an incredible coincidence. She concluded that it was the effect of [Karma Permutation] which had selected someone with the same name. Abigaël was born within the Lightning clan, a major clan of the Spirit Mountain Kingdom. The clan head had three children, two sons and Abi, the only daughter. The Spirit Mountain Kingdom was located in a gigantic continent existing at the surface of Altaïa, the name of the world Abi was living in. Humans, Abi decided to call her species human for convenience, only populated the northern continent which stretched over dozens of thousands of kilometers.

There were many countries in the northern continent but the former Abi had not been very knowledgeable about them. All she knew was that the Spirit Mountain Kingdom was in the center of the northern continent. Despite being a girl from a powerful clan, she hadn’t inherited the talents of her bloodline. Her magic talent was very poor, which only destined her for an arranged marriage within another noble clan. All her previous education was just trainings to be a good wife. She had never been outside the royal capital before and knew nearly nothing about the outside world.

After checking her cultivation level, Abi became a little disappointed. Her new body was weaker than she had imagined. At 16 years old, she was only level 3, a mediocre result. Sighing, she could only start cultivation from the beginning. If only she had gotten a body with higher cultivation level. Now, she had to start from scratch. Cultivation level represented the depth of a mage’s mana pool. The more mana a mage possessed the more powerful spell he or she was able to use. Having 3 in cultivation level was not very impressive as people of her generation had already surpassed Abi. Her talent was just too poor.

The former Abi had been betrothed to the third royal prince several years ago. They had gotten on well in the beginning but, over the years, the prince began to dislike her because of her poor talent and weak personality. No matter how beautiful she was, her worth was still linked to her strength. Her talent was at the level of a commoner, not a noble. The prince was now against the marriage agreement and didn’t hide it. Because of that, her future was uncertain. If she didn’t marry the prince, what could she do? Her status was too high to imagine a marriage in a minor noble clan and the major noble clans were not interested in her. No clan wanted to contaminate their bloodline with a talentless mage if they had the choice. Fortunately, her father loved her dearly. He hadn’t hesitated to use underhanded methods to get her a spot in the Royal Academy of Magic, the best magic school in the whole kingdom.

Although, only geniuses were worthy of the Royal Academy of Magic, nothing was certain when money was involved. Abi had unexpectedly been accepted there thanks to a generous anonymous donation. She was only level 3 whereas her fellow classmates were, at least, level 7. Thus, everyone in class looked down on her. She was a black sheep mocked everyday by everyone. However, few would dare to harm Abi physically. She was after all the young mistress of one of the major noble clans. Her status was no joke. Anyone daring to harm her without a good justification would face the wrath of Lightning clan.

With her current strength, Abi was too weak to do anything important. Her first goal was to become stronger as quickly as possible. There was a good new though, she was not in mortal danger anymore. Before stepping into the causality realm, she had been hunted continuously so that the shadow of death had never been very far. It could be said that her trip in the causality realm had been a good fortune. As she had performed [Karma Permutation] randomly, her pursuers had no mean to know her whereabouts. It was as if she had disappeared without a trace. It would take a long time before they discovered her trace she thought. As long as she didn’t publicize her racial ability, she would not be discovered.

Having checked her physics, Abi still had to check her soul. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the bedroom, controlled her breathing and tried to absorb the ether all around her. It didn’t take her very long to succeed. The ether was a generic term representing a primordial fluid present everywhere in the multiverse. It was a mix of four other fluids called elements: fire, water, earth and wind. The ether was being attract by her body before being absorbed. Soon, it was refined and transformed into mana which was the substance constituting the etheric body, also called energetic body or soul. Mana was life itself, the building block of the soul. All living things possessed mana. If all mana inside the body disappear, one would die. Fortunately, ether was everywhere as it was the basic component of all creation.

As Abi was building mana, she noticed that the process was very slow. No matter how hard she tried, the ether was absorbed at a very slow rate which made her frown immediately. Something was not right. No wonder her cultivation level was so low, it was impossible to cultivate rapidly with such conditions. As she was pondering, some memories began to appear within her mind. They showed how Abigaël’s father had tried to cure her disease in the past as he believed it was a disease. His beloved daughter was from the Lightning clan! How could she possess such an ordinary talent. Powerful mages tended to give birth to powerful children mage. The Lightning clan, having existed for thousands of years, should always produce geniuses. However, no physician brought by her father had ever find a cure to Abi’s disease. They even said that there was no disease at all. It was her natural talent which was too low, that was all.

Abi groaned while thinking. “It could have been a bad luck if I didn’t have the [Divine Eyes]. My cultivation speed would be disastrous.” She was not too worried in fact, with the help of her eyes, she could see through all hidden things. Although her cultivation level was too low to alter karma, she had still enough mana to use her eyes in passive mode. She could not alter her body condition, but she still had the possibility to discover why her talent was so bad. Once activated, her [Divine eyes] entirely changed her vision of the world. Instead of the dull normal vision, she began to see the world with new light at 360 degrees in all direction. Everything became translucent and seemed to glow with gentle lights. The air was not transparent anymore but populated with strange light particles.

The particles were different shades of 4 basic colours: red, blue, yellow and green. Abi recognized the element particles. The fire element particles were red, the water element particles were blue, the earth element particles were yellow and the green particles represented the wind element. Those particles were not hovering in mid-air. On the contrary, they were moving incessantly. The elements formed something like an ocean, the ether, and like in all ocean, it was home of ocean currents. Abi noticed three main currents, one from east to west, another one from north to south and the last from the sky towards the ground. Apart from those currents, there existed numerous chaotic whirlpools here and there as well as turbulences. Extending her gaze forward, her vision pierced the wall of her apartment making the exterior visible. She couldn’t help but smile as the scenery was very beautiful. It was as if the world had become a paradise with multicoloured light shining everywhere. The sun, the clouds and mountains could be seen in all their splendour.

Abi enjoyed the view for some time before shifting her gaze on her own body. Her physical body was entirely translucent like a ball of shining glass. However, she was not interested in her physical body but in her etheric one. The etheric body, also called soul or energetic body, was an ether construct impregnating the physical body and extending outside of it. It was formed with several layers imbricated the one into the other in the manner of Russian dolls. The outermost layer could extend hundreds of meters from the physical body. What interested Abi the most were the first few layers, where chakras and meridians were located. If one wanted to do magic, one had to pay extreme attention to the first layers of the soul.

The first thing to check was the meridians at which she looked at closely. They looked like blood vessels but, instead of conducting blood, they conducted mana. She noticed that her meridians were quite dense, largely denser than those of normal mages. It was a good new but it didn’t explain why her talent was so poor. It should be the other way around. A problem existed somewhere and she had to find it. Continuing with her inspection, she noticed something else. Some meridians were not activated, no mana flowed inside of them which was rather puzzling. Pondering a moment, she decided to check a specific set of chakras situated along the spine. There were seven of those chakras which was a similar organisation to the human from Earth.

A chakra had a role of absorbing and excreting ether. It was a spinning vortex of energy, a gate the ether had to cross to enter or to exit the body. Those 7 primordial chakras along the spine were the most important of all chakras. Each of them were placed at a critical location along the principal energetic conduit of the body, the central canal. The latter had the form of a caduceus, like two serpents coiled one around each other. The central canal, aided by the primordial chakras, aspired the ether from the top and the bottom ends before distributing them inside the soul via the meridians. This complex system was perfectly designed like everything the nature made. However, from time to time, what was perfectly designed didn’t always work properly. In Abi’s case, she discovered something annoying.

“How troublesome. They are completely desynchronized. It’s miracle this girl could cultivate at all.” She thought about it while shaking her head. Normally, the primordial chakras worked synchronously. They absorbed or excreted ether at the same time. Even a slight desynchronization could be harmful to the soul. Once desynchronized, some chakra would aspire ether while others would reject ether which meant that a part of the absorbed ether would be immediately rejected without being used. It caused something like a mana asphyxia, depriving the soul of vital energy. Moreover, a part of the bad mana which should be rejected outside the body would remain inside of it causing mana poisoning. If she was a normal mage, Abi would surely have died long ago. Fortunately, she came from a clan of mage with hundreds of years of magic lineage. The souls of the Lightning clan members were naturally strong and resistant. Nonetheless, this disease impeded her cultivation greatly.