...........

Chapter 3: New World I

...........

"Oh? He finally started." Those were the words that reverberated throughout the large hall.

The hall was beautifully designed, displaying a sense of simplicity and complexity at the same time.

It had its simplicity from the simple dark marbles it's constructed by, without any extra details.

While its complexity comes from the most striking thing in the hall, a graceful dark ember throne.

What's most striking about it is that each and every part of the throne was engraved by strange hexagonal shapes, extremely complex shapes with what looks like numerous runes.

Despite the hall being mostly constructed by dark kinds of stones, it's still very well lit.

That's due to the bizarre lamps placed all over the walls of the hall.

They're bizarre because within the lamp is an orb engraved by similar hexagonal shapes which produces light.

Well, it's not bizarre by this world's standard as that's the norm here, most things in this world work in strange ways.

On the throne sat a middle-aged man with pitch-black short hair and blood-red eyes that looked down upon the subject kneeling down not far from the throne.

"Why did he change his mind? Did something happen? He went against my wishes for nine whole months, so he won't suddenly change his mind for no reason... Or would he?" The red-eyed man questioned.

The kneeling subject responded immediately, "Nothing happened that we noticed, nothing that he would know at least, considering he has no way to get information about the outside world."

"... So he simply changed his mind overnight? Recount all of his activities before he started practicing."

The red-eyed man closed his eyes and listened carefully to his subordinate.

His son was always bizarre, and he gave him a headache even more than his third child as even he only understand him a bit.

He waited until the kneeling subject finished recounting all of his activities without caring about the passage of time, and only then did he speak.

"So you're saying he spent nearly three days trying to enter a deep meditation state?"

The man opened his blood-red eyes and raised his brows while questioning further, getting a nod from his subordinate.

Then he started stroking his chin while muttering for himself.

"He's just as talented as am I, and he usually enters the state in merely a few hours. I don't think even not practicing for a long time would change that, so that makes no sense...

Unless he wasn't trying to enter that state. Perhaps he was just contemplating things, and he figured something out? It's a good thing either way."

"Just keep him under surveillance as usual and remember, don't interact with him until he meets the conditions."

The red-eyed man then ordered and closed his eyes, slumbering into the state known as deep meditation.

The same state his son is currently in; in the darkness of his prison cell.

He has set foot in the path of ether seeking, The start of ascension.

The introductory period to reality manipulation and the first interaction of a practitioner with the ether or at least its variants.

And the first step for that is entering the mysterious state known as deep meditation.

That state is simply the act of isolating yourself from the outside world and solely focusing on yourself and a tad bit of the space around you.

This in return allows one to faintly sense the ether that exists all around us and interact with it.

This is the first hurdle all beings have to deal with to enter the path of ether seeking as not everyone can enter that state.

Furthermore, not everyone who can enter that state can sense the ether or interact with it due to a concept known as Soul Curtain, a concept further explored in the second phase of the ether seeker sequence.

A concept that will be explored further later on as the young man before us solely focused on his current phase.

He focused on interacting with the ether and absorbing it into his heart and it did just that ignoring any barrier before it.

His bones, his flesh, and blood were ignored as the ether dived into his heart and started circulating through his body through his bloodstream, just as he wished it to.

The process is quite straightforward and it sounds as such but it's anything but easy as with the faint control seeker have at this phase, it usually takes them hours to days to complete one full circulation.

However, there are special cases, the talented bunch that can even complete the process in under an hour to merely a few minutes.

Of course, the latter is so rare that it's only heard of a few times across the course of history.

From what this young man observed, the previous host of this body was quite talented usually taking just five hours to complete a full circulation.

He however is a completely different soul and considering the timespan of the process is relative to one's soul curtain, it's natural that he's different from the previous host.

And strangely, it took him but a few minutes to complete a full circulation.

Furthermore, he found out that he could sense the ether at a much vaster space around him.

The previous host was able to sense the ether within all the space ten meters around him while he on the other hand has a much vaster sensing space.

That space in which one can sense ether is what's called soul curtain and the vastness of that space differs from person to person.

So one can imagine that if a person's soul curtain is too small, that person will naturally have little to no talent and some aren't even able to interact with the ether.

Every day, the young man meditated for about an hour before ending his cultivation as his body enters a state known as the integration period.

That's a state every seeker enters once they complete a certain number of ether circulation, the number largely depends on the seeker's talent.

And the integration period is simply the timespan after cultivating where the body fully assimilates the ether energy they absorbed, allowing one to progress in the path of seekers.

You see, he has come to realize that this world is quite complicated that way, in how it works.

To him, it seemed to be a world between illusion and reality with the latter being in constant change.

Let's say that a seeker has an x amount of ether energy in their body which they can freely manipulate as it became their reality.

And now, let's say that after practicing for a while, the x value became y.

if that y value completes its integration with the seeker's body thus becoming their new reality, then it matters not if the seekers use their own ether after that as their ether will always regenerate to that y value with time.

That however also comes with a risk. If during the integration period a seeker utilizes their ether energy, the integration will simply stop making any progress they made void.

In best-case scenarios, their ether stabilizes at a point between the x and y amount, and in worst cases, it returns to its original x value.

Though strangely, the opposite of the previous rule doesn't apply. Even if a seeker consumes his ether energy fully after full integration, his ether will never regress as if the world itself seeks progress solely and nothing else.

It's important to note that the amount of ether circulation differs from person to person with the average being a mere two circulation.

And it becomes harder and harder to increase that value as it becomes higher so it's anything but normal that the young son of the Helious family could complete full 12 circulations in the span of merely an hour.

That's all he's been doing for the past month since his transmigration, except eating and thinking about a few things in his spare time which he has a lot of.

Alas, his patience is running out, and there is only so much he could do to ignore the environment he's currently in.

For someone who likes to stay clean at all times, this was quite uncomfortable for him, so he simply couldn't wait until he reaches the next sequence which will take a few years even for him.

However, his father didn't exactly say that that's the only way he can leave this place.

The clues were there, the previous host just didn't notice them. one of them was the ether art his father made him learn before sending him here.

It was a simple ether art named 'Corrosive Blood Thouch' that the previous host deemed useless as seekers couldn't use any ether art at all before reaching the third phase of the first sequence.

So it will theoretically take way less time to leave which was likely his father's goal in all of this... However...

'However, going against the norm is one of my strongest forth and why would I wait that long when I can see an alternative.'

He had a lot of spare time and he used part of it to observe his surroundings.

He looked through the small window of his prison cell and listened carefully to the whispers of his neighbor, fellow prisoners. He also carefully observed the movement of the strangely few guards patrolling around.

The young man named Val Helious stood up with a small smile on his face and walked up towards the cell door with his face slowly falling into depression, fully committing to the incoming play...