““………”” – Mazupo, Baoai

‘…….This is slightly awkward…….’

They are very shocked, well except for Dad as he is already aware of it due to his lack of reaction, to the point of their minds blanking out. Dad is enjoying the moment though, as he is waving his hand in front of Mazupo’s face to see her blank face remain unmoving. They really are trying their best to process this. Anyways, they were taking their time, like more than a minute…so I proceeded to look at my skill effects while they’re in their own world starting with the most prominent skills that catch my eye.

Crystal Mind: (Passive)

Your mind is clear of all distractions and hesitation, and tempered through harsh trials of pain and suffering. The end result is your mind free from its flaws and weaknesses, allowing it to understand the world around you without any mental limits.

Effects:

-Can learn skills and masteries faster.

-More EXP gained from any action.

‘Hmmm, so I can learn skills faster, huh? And ‘masteries’…mom did tell me about it when she was transferring her knowledge to me…another leveling system on a different category used by every mortal on Mundus to surpass their limits, allowing them to defeat monsters naturally stronger than them and more. How it is leveled is not like the regular level system, as one has to diligently study the path of any chosen mastery, train hard on it, and etc.

The stages of these masteries can’t just be raised by killing monsters all day using the same skills over and over again, as it will not only be a waste of time and effort, it will also lead to stagnation and worse, the higher level one is, the harder it is to increase one’s masteries. Ultimately, because of these facts, anyone with common sense should train in their masteries as early and as much as they can, else they will be surpassed by those of the same levels as them.

There are different stages of combat masteries…like here from lowest to highest stages are beginner, novice, intermediate, advanced, adept, expert, master, fable, and last but not least, divine. It is also has the obvious limit system, the higher you go, the harder it is to advance to the next level. There are ten levels between each stage of mastery, and if one reaches level ten in any stage, they can advance to the next stage at level one and repeat the process with greater difficulty. One can also learn skills when training any mastery as well.

Onto the next skill, Essence Absorption.’

Essence Absorption: (Passive)

Take the essences residing in the world around you in any way, be it consumption or natural absorption into the body, and use it as your own.

Effects:

-Can absorb non-detrimental skills, abilities and/or traits, at most two per essence (be it magic crystal, Qi crystal, soul core, weapon, or else) of any individual or object. If the essence resides in organic matter, for example in the heart or brain of any creature that recently died, it must be consumed within at most thirty minutes or else the absorption will fail. Unrestricted by race.

-Chances of success in acquirement depends on the difference between your current strength, and the caliber of the essence taken in. If the essence is equal or greater than your current strength, the chances of success is guaranteed, and for essences below you, the chances are drastically low depending on the distance between your current strength and the essence.

Holy…I can absorb skills from, uh eating my foes? That is very cool, must I say so myself. But, essence…what does it exactly mean by that? There are examples like magic crystals and Qi crystals, so I believe it means the source of power from anyone or thing, be it creatures or objects of power. I have to eat my kill(s) quickly though, or the skill will be invalid if the thirty minute mark is up. What else is questionable is the amount of skills I get ‘per essence’. Does it mean the limit I can get from the same individual, be it living or dead, or the limit I get from absorption of said individual meaning I can get as many skills as I want as long as I have a steady supply of ‘essence’ from said individual? Eh, guess I will experiment on that part and find out myself.

Anyway let’s see…how about, ‘Evolution’?

Evolution: (Passive)

Evolve and surpass your limits however you can through your daunting trials.

Effects:

-Evolve any skills, abilities and/or traits compatible to your biology depending on your situation and environment once you’ve met and survived the necessary conditions.

‘Ohhhhh……What the heck? I need more elaborations on this part. Does it mean like I can get another head if I attach a random creature’s head to my body or something? Or could it give me godlike strength if I train hard enough like a certain superhero that lost his hair from 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups, and 100 kilometer run every single day for three years straight? Hmmm, need to experiment on this one too. Continuing on…oh it seems mom and the Elder are waking up from their daze.’

“…Ohhhh…Oh my…This might explain some things. Yixing, no Heibai, were you…somehow in the middle of a summoning by any chance, and died during the process?” – Mazupo

After she spoke, my mind blanked at the work ‘summoning’.

“What?”

I furiously replied in a serious tone.

“You see…You have a blessing from one of the main Royal Gods watching over this realm, but not govern exactly. Those who receive the blessing from a Royal God, they are always meant to be…heroes. Meaning you were summoned to defeat the current, um, Devil Emperor.” – Mazupo

‘…I never heard of demons in Dad’s story.’

Hearing this, I glared at dad with all three of my eyes, silently demanding answers. Dad pondered on the matter, and started to continue where he left off in his story.

“Ah yes, I did not tell you that part yet, my son. Let me continue where I left off.” – Heiyang

“Wait, you already started telling him about our world? I was supposed to do that! *Puff Cheeks cutely*” – Mazupo

“He had questions, and what kind of a father would I be if I did not give him the answers he rightfully deserves to know? Besides, I was bored. Anyway back to where I left off…” – Heiyang

”WHAT?!! Don’t ignore me!” – Mazupo

Dad ignored her still and resumed where he left off.

“After the Gods wiped out most of the rebelling Deities, the surviving Deities went into hiding, waiting for the right time to rise again. The deities that did not resist were indoctrinated into servitude, obeying the gods’ every needs and will, but they were treated fairly…most of them at least.

We, the Dragons however, were unsure on how to respond to the Gods’ sudden intrusion and their swift involvement into ending our endless conflict, so we decided to negotiate with them in hopes of learning their motives and plans. But, we received condescending narcissism and arrogance in response from some of them, as well as…immigrants, other sentient life migrating here from other worlds like Elves for example. The Prime Royal God, Odin even planted a ‘World Tree’ as he calls it, to establish their mark and influence on Mundus. I was a Shadow Dragon at the time when the negotiations started, and they did say some brave words. There were also other Divine beings as well, for example one of the Divine races is called Titans, an ancient race of great cosmic power comparable to that of Gods. Angry, we diligently scour the roots of their aggression from the other gods, hoping to shed some light on the matter. The friendly gods informed us that some of them dislike us Dragons because we possess powers beyond mortal limitations without using faith to acquire them. They dislike us because almost all the gods that touched down this world were offspring of gods that were once sentient mortals or weak mortals that ascended to godhood, meaning their origins and means of ascension is from faith and faith alone.

The process of reaching godhood in their case was to acquire a certain amount of faith from many sentient life, and when one succeeds in doing so, the successful individual can shed their mortal shell and become more than just mere flesh and bone by becoming deities first, unlike how the deities were born here through efforts and survival instincts. It makes them look very inferior and inept when they uncovered how the deities were born here in a shorter amount of time than them.

After that, a new breed of sentient mortals were born, now called Beastmen, but we will talk about that later as you want to know about the Devil Emperor, yes?” – Heiyang

Hearing the sudden interruption, I am in the flow of the story, so I did not notice that. I nodded yes in response. But Mazupo coyly interjected, and is the narrator this time as she replaced dad by force.

“The Demons and Devils were made by the rebelling Deities, with the help of Evil Gods in secret. The Evil Gods were a separate faction that rebelled against the Divine Pact, refusing to include their names in it. They desire absolute power, disregarding the consequences of any means to do so. It was believed that they were all wiped out, or eternally imprisoned after having their divine powers stripped away, but the sad truth was a very few of them escaped under their detection while the other few defected and betrayed the other Gods. The ones that escaped were stripped of their divine powers, all except for two. The ones that retained their divinity…was Enki, Royal God of Creation and Magic and the Storm God Marduk, his son. They banded together out of sharing mutual goals and formed what is now known as New Genesis.

They saw an opportunity here, a land rich with untapped power and resources, free for the taking while the Gods were…bound by their pact. Some millennia later after our negotiation, they secretly contacted the surviving deities as well as those that submitted to them, either through negotiation or violent subjugation. The deities that rejected them or resisted were killed, and their bodies harvested as ingredients. They tried to do the same with us as well sending Marduk, two fallen Gods and four deities, but we were stronger than before, more than they anticipated.

We diligently trained and advanced out methods in gaining strength in preparation of the day the Gods decided to turn against us. We, Dragons, adopted the strengthening methods from how the Deities shed their mortal shells, how they ascend, and integrate their knowledge into our own, leading to the discovery of new evolutions of immense power like Dragon King, and Dragon Emperor. A few of us even ascended to Dragon Gods, with Tiamat as the first one with the rest after her being her husband and children. We can grow stronger thorough cultivation of Qi or continuously consuming and assimilating large quantities of heavily refined raw mana. We can cultivate with mana, but it’s not ideal compared with Qi, as it is much more difficult to control, so we just consume and assimilate the pure mana of other creatures to further our own development.

We repelled the fallen Gods and Deities invading our land, Dryukyul after they failed to persuade us. I was still a young pure dragon at that time, hee hee! We even managed to kill three of the deities and captured one Fallen God for interrogation and planned to inform the Gods of this to curry rewards and favors. But…Tiamat was severely injured and her mate was…killed by Marduk, along with other casualties. What is worse is that before we can react, Marduk corrupted our land with a powerful magic poison we do not know before he fled, making it uninhabitable and beyond recovery by the time we discovered the cure…or so we believed. So we decided to split up into separate groups keeping our connections into separate strategic locations preparing to retaliate by allying with others willing to side with us, be it Beastmen, humans, Demi-humans and sentient monsters.

To summarize what happened after that, long before New Genesis invaded and before we informed the Gods of what transpired, they secretly prepared artificial…soldiers, using the essence of monsters with humans as the base to make them stronger than the humanoid life here, but…the creations were corrupted and enslaved. The methods they use to make them are unknown and now forbidden, as they corrupt souls into depravity, making them belligerent at birth. How they learned of these methods, we don’t know. The abominations New Genesis made were later known as Demons, but that is a general term for their race as there are devils, a caste of highly intelligent demons in the ruling class and were the rulers. The greatest one among was then known as the Devil Emperor. And to insult us, the abominations set their home in our former homeland, after fixing the damage Marduk wrought under our noses.

They invaded the existing nations at that time, be it human or not, in a surprise attack and pushed them at the brink of extinction. The Demons were physically stronger than demi-humans while having greater magic affinity than the average human. Unfortunately for the humans, they already lost their knowledge and records of cultivation long before their invasion due to internal war for power and probably due to manipulated events as there was evidence that the records were destroyed intentionally, leaving the humans vulnerable at the time. The demons could not obtain the same level of benefits as the humans from cultivation, which is the cost for being made naturally stronger and having more magic potential than humans and demi-humans. The surviving kingdoms of all races, monsters included, banded together and did their best on the defensive and held back the Demons for some time, which is more than enough for them to prepare a counterattack.

The Prime God, Odin along with other Prime Gods were informed by us of the situation, now aware of their time of desperate need. They bestowed them the power to overcome their enemies, which are the Hero Weapons, along with a one time weapon to summon the Gods to fight against New Genesis as the Evil Gods and their followers were using the Divine Pact against them by using their mortal creations as shields, meaning if the Gods harmed a mortal unprovoked, they will fall into Fallen Gods. Through their overwhelming strength, will, and charisma, heroes of all races pushed back the Demons back to their main territory, our former homeland Dryukyul.

The heroes reached the Devil Emperor, a powerful puppet of New Genesis with power almost comparable to the average Deity’s. The Evil Gods were also there to destroy them, but…we also participated in secret to catch them by surprise. New Genesis was elusive, so we made a plan secretly with the Gods to help them in exchange for new ideal homes for us and more. You should've seen the heroes’ faces when we busted through the walls, roaring with rage. They even raised their weapons on us in fear of our attack, until we attacked the Evil Gods and their followers.

After a long battle, the heroes defeated the first Devil Emperor, but they couldn’t kill the leader at the time. They then used the holy artifact to summon the Gods, and then they punished them once again, and truly stripped Enki’s and Marduk’s divine powers for good and punished them with eternal imprisonment along with eternal torment in Gods know where.

What happened after that, the alliance between the races broke up and went back to their separate ways. The Devil Emperor and the surviving demons escaped, but now free from their masters and established a new home somewhere unknown at the time waiting to establish their hold on this world. They are still quite belligerent and hostile to the other races to this day and they’re still trying to invade the other nations, but with less success than before as they were no longer supported by New Genesis.

The humans were a bit greedy once they were bestowed permission to keep the hero weapons, but only the chosen few picked by the weapons can wield them. The weapons are sentient, as they will only pick a wielder they deem truly worthy of their power, or at least with the potential. So they devised a ritual method obtained from the Gods at their permission to summon heroes from another world, only in times of great crisis or in preparation of near-future disasters predicted by their prophets, holy priests who can see the future with the help of certain powerful relics.

And now, here we are. With a human soul native in another world reincarnated into a Imoogi, slowly fusing with the original Imoogi’s soul!” – Mazupo

At her words…I bulged my three eyes and dropped my jaw in shock, unable to believe what I just heard.