Asriel

[Sigh].

"Alright, I'll tell you guys what got me out of Tiba.

"For an Awakened I am barely into middle age, for an Awakened Lord I am practically in my youth. Awakened humans with only the first level of Awakening have been known to live up to 200 years, some to push 300 years before before crocking.

"Most are satisfied with simply awakening once either as a magician, a warrior, a stud, a psion or whatever else they can be but some of us push ourselves further. Beyond the initial stage of Awakening to become Awakened Warrior Lords, Awakened Master Magicians or reach the second level of psionic power. Whatever it is they call themselves, psionic communities are more secretive than most.

"Psions are hunted in a few kingdoms I know, Kriyana and Whales coming to mind. Most people don't like having their minds invaded, which is the main psionic path.

"I am a Warrior Lord, second tier Awakened warrior. When I was younger I was lauded for my potential. I had my initial training at the hands of my father, a Warrior King, 3rd tier Awakened warrior. Then I was trained in the ways by the Order Master Zaraya taking a particular interest in me.

"By the young age of 53 I Awakened to mana infusing my body, mind and soul with universal vitality. A feat that caused many to hail me as a prodigy. From there I pushed myself for many years both as an initiate of the path of the Chaste and the Blind. But mainly pushing myself and fighting to reach the second pinnacle of an Awakened Warrior, the level of Awakened Lord.

"Through the path of Chastity I unlocked within myself the chakra talents wholesome body and purified blood. Through the path of Blindness I acquired the talents examine and special-awareness. Talents that were hard earned through discipline and sacrifice, the Order of the Brotherhood has been a lucrative adaptive home to me.

"One doesn't take a path knowing what talent will be unlocked. Chaste talents acquired after spending over 20 years without touching a woman, or man. Though fleshly pleasures are readily available to the chaste, ever ready for when they are ready to break their vows.

"Path of blindness skills I acquired after spending nearly 12 years in complete and utter darkness. Adjusting to darkness, making it my home until even my dreams stopped being in colour. My blindness talents were made easier to acquire because of my open 3rd eye chakra point. A cheat when it comes to following such paths as blindness.

"I didn't realise at the time how prideful I had become in my humble acceptance of praise until I met a true prodigy. The overpowered little shit Monk. Monk shocked everyone in Tiba by Awakening at the tender age of 25 years old.

"He followed the path of Silence, the path of the Chaste, the path of the Pacifist, and the path of Enlightenment simultaneously. An unheard of and laughable thing to attempt.

"Laughable Tlthat is until he started manifesting talents associated to each path. By the time he was 39 he had acquired at least one talent from each of the paths and on the cusp of becoming a 2nd tier being. That's when I knew I had to get out of there.

"That's when I realised that I am actually a prideful motherfucker envious of the kid his accomplishments. The part that really got to me is him potentially becoming a Warrior Lord whilst simultaneously following the path of the Pacifist.

"That just made all my life's accomplishments taste like dross in my mouth. The worst part was the kid was an initiate of Silence. Never boastful or proud, always humble and bowing his head to senior brothers. A truly likeable young man with no apparent flaws.

"How do you even get to the point of being a Lord without fighting? It's completely unnatural and I told him so. I confessed my feelings to him as I had been thought to. Told him how I thought he was an overpowered little shit that has everything come easily to him.

"At the end of my vent I realise the teachers were correct in advising honesty to release negative emotions. I felt better, lighter and my chakra was no longer bottlenecked at my throat.

"But I soon realised that the kid had tears on his face as he sat there listening to me. My heart was in my throat when he broke his vow of silence to address me.

"I have always strived to emulate you, father," he said to me.

"Words that caused my head to spin and my heart to explode into a million pieces, for several reasons. The first being that once you break a vow of the path that's it. You cannot advance any further in that path. No matter what that's as far as you'll go.

"It's as if the Universe is rewarding you with power and enlightenment so long as you are dedicated to a certain path with your entire existence. But if you break that vow, you break that tether between you and the Universe and no longer gain talents.

"Meaning no more power. No more heavenly revelations that slowly seep into you from that path. In my cowardice I had confronted a man in Silence not expecting he would break his vows to respond. I was sorely mistaken and shattered by what I have unwittingly caused.

"The second thing was that this kid clearly looked up to me before today and I had never known. In my bitterness I had seen him as a rival instead of trying to mentor him and learn from him.

"And then the worst fact, he had called me 'father'. Not a title we have in the brotherhood. Which could only mean I had fathered this boy, as the ring of truth in his words was unquestionably.

"To be Chaste is not just to go without sex. First you have to spend a month at the Brothel Palace. The Brothel is a cult to a minor deity. A goddess of sex, passion and fertility. The women there don't take money and they choose who they want to bed instead of it being the other way around.

"It is said every other institution throughout Gaia calling itself a brothel is a diluted imitation of the palace...

"Men have been known to spend half their fortune donating to the temple and still not being chosen for a night of pleasure by any of the priests or priestesses.

"Some have been known to sit and wait in the courtyard waiting for days before one of the women takes them in to 'worship' at the altar of canal pleasure.

"The Order uses this as the first step necessary to be initiated into the Chaste. One has to first spend a month at The Brothel before taking their vows.

"For a virgin or a person that doesn't know the depth of enlightenment that can be found in physical pleasure cannot join the Chaste. How can you give up sex if you have no idea what true sexual pleasure can be?

"I also spent a month there before being initiated. Being at the tender, eager, and competent hands of the priests and priestesses of The Brothel Palace of the Hidden Palaces of the Lost Village of Tiba.

"That is the only time I could have fathered a son. Many sons in fact, but the ways of the Brothel are strange. They sometimes choose to be impregnated and sometimes they don't. No one outside a few knows where those children are raised, but they soon make it into society as especially talented or beautiful young people.

"His vast talent suddenly made sense and as I looked at him I knew exactly which of the priestesses was his mother. I was filled with shame.

"Till this day I am filled with shame.

"Shame for my envy, shame for my outburst, shame for my pride, shame for my cowardice. I immediately bowed my head and touched my forehead to the floor.

"I am sorry my son, I am ashamed at myself. I will strive to be better," I said before leaving Tiba to seek out the Orientals. To further my education on chakra release methods and combinations, to be a better man.

"And now I find myself here. In these mountains where Malachi, one of the men that found me lost in the wastes as a child almost dead from dehydration has directed me.

"This place where almost everyone is overpowered in skill. Yet they seem to not realise how far advanced they are in martial skill with the sword in comparison to the rest of humanity. Of course they compare themselves to anomalies like Kazimoto, and vampires not us mere mortals.

"The mere fact that someone who isn't Awakened should think to compare themselves to a creature designed to feed on humans is scary.

"These people remind me that even being as well travelled as I am coming from Pangaea, what I once thought to be the largest continent in the world spanning an estimated 150.2 million square kilometres, I know little of the world.

"An estimate from records and maps spanning hundreds of years back. Records that are incomplete as some places of the continent have never been explored by anyone who has returned to boast of that accomplishment.

"There is a lot I could learn here. Maybe even follow the next expedition into the Underworld, another vast place on Gaia I've never been. I have truly been a frog in a pond thinking I knew the world.

"These people have a settlement in the Underworld. A settlement that is much vaster than any one of their villages, which they use as a forward base. How does Malachi even associate with such people?

"The rest of the world must be grateful that the Hito have no designs upon them. That these elite swordsmen look to expand into the Underworld as their population rises. Reclaiming their ancestral lands from vampire families, ghouls, zombies or whatever else lurks down there.

[Sigh].

"I have to go meet Khan Watanabe for the first time."