Sitting inside the cold, dark cellar I listened to the old man speaking inside my mind intently as his recording passed through my ear, I had no idea what was going on outside, it as if I had gone into a coma my body not moving a single inch as it sat loosely on the ground near the stack of books and when I finally opened my eyes hearing everything the old man had to say, the first thing I did was to reach for another book and hold the mysterious symbol while feeling the hot veins of engravings lighting up showing me the true knowledge that was hidden within.
Time seemed as if it flashed by, my enlightened trance and the pulsation of my soul forced me to move unceasingly with unstoppable enthusiasm, my hunger for knowledge was immense as was my speed of digestion that absorbed that knowledge like a dry sponge.
By the time I satisfied my frenzy of discovery I collapsed onto the ground from utter exhaustion of body and mind, the next time I woke up incredible hunger and thirst awaited me turning me into a ravenous beast that swallowed everything I could eat inside the cellar.
I had no idea how much time has passed or what day it was anymore as I had not bothered to record the date anymore on the wall ever since the lecture the old man gave me in his recording, the only thing I knew at this moment was that things had changed and that a part of the world I had never known before opened up to me which made me smile with glee.
I looked at my hand, not being able to see through my blindness I could only feel the aching pain of my fingers that caressed those pages to read endlessly, but it was not because of the pain I stared so much at my hand that I couldn’t see, but rather I concentrated on something that was here but invisible.
Spiritual force.
A term used to describe the sensitivity and strength of a soul, all living beings no matter big or small possess a soul which automatically means they also possess spiritual force, but not all creatures are capable of using spiritual force or detect it.
Just like how a fire cannot burn without fuel or goods cannot be obtained without work, spiritual force cannot be used without a certain level of awareness and intellect.
What this means is that for anyone to be able to use spiritual force they would first have to be as intelligent as a human or at least be able to perceive a sense of self.
And second be born with the magical talent that gives them the ability to use their spiritual force.
Now having talked about spiritual force and making clear on who can and can’t use it, it is time to talk about what exactly spiritual force is.
First of all, spiritual force is not a expandable and recoverable source of energy like stamina is, spiritual force, just like I had said in the beginning, is the sensitivity and strength of a soul, it is comparable to the muscles on your body, the more you strain and flex them, putting them under pressure, the more they are going to grow, but unlike muscles the soul is a immaterial thing meaning it cannot atrophy over time like something physical can without outside interference.
Now knowing what spiritual force is, it is time to understand the purpose of spiritual force, spiritual force is a container for a type of energy that allows the user to control the natural laws of nature.
This energy is called spiritual power.
Spiritual power comes from spiritual force, it is a recoverable energy that can be used freely to ones will and what I mean by will has many implications.
Psychokinesis, pyrokinesis, body-reinforcement and even foresight.
Different people have different inclinations or affinities, these 4 abilities are merely a example as they do not represent the entire roster of other abilities that can be used through the help of spiritual power.
Rather these abilities are the result of personality and personal understanding, they are inefficient by nature and consume a lot of spiritual power just by being active for a few seconds, it is the most crudest way of using this power and comparable to trying to lift a steel beam in a construction site with your strength when you could have used a tool like a crane to make it easier and faster, to top it off, using spiritual power this way could sometimes even overdraft the soul and cause a backlash which is equivalent to you breaking your back becoming disabled or outright die..
Because of this inherent flaw of the way spiritual power is used and could harm oneself, a tool was necessary to control the output and input of spiritual power to not overdraft the user, this tool is called spell casting, using symbols, shapes and lines that all have different meanings and uses, it is possible to precisely control how much spiritual power one can use within a single instance while also not being restricted to only using one ability or effect, the symbol on the book that I had touched earlier and felt hot to the touch was one way of spell casting which is called spell engraving, it is programmed in a way that reacts when certain conditions are met and serves as a lock to only open to those who inherited the true knowledge hidden within those books, but elaborating on this is for another time.
In the end the quality of spiritual force determines the quality of spiritual power which determines the strength of a spell, you cannot put more or less spiritual power into a spell because a spell is a pre-programmed set of code that follows its purpose with utmost precision, it will always only takes a fixed amount of spiritual power from the user, the variance comes into play when the same spell is used by different individuals whose spiritual force are on a different level, hence changing the power of the spell that uses more potent spiritual power.
This difference in modern terms is called the level of spiritual force or the level of the spell caster.
The levels go from 1 to 9 each increase in level increases the quality of the spiritual force and the capacity of it to store spiritual power.
And just like how there are levels for spell casters there are also levels for spells themselves as well to match the power of the spell caster.
But this isn’t all either, upon advancing to the next level a spell caster can take a spell model and engrave it onto their soul to create something called a talent spell.
A talent spell allows the spell caster to cast the spell whenever and wherever he or she desires by force of will alone without doing the actually spell casting which is time consuming, all requirements and spiritual power costs of the talent spell is halved as well allowing either mass spamming or uninterrupted channel if one so pleases.
The only down side to this is that the talent spell cannot be changed after being engraved onto the soul, each new level also requires the same level of a spell to become a talent spell, meaning level 1 spell caster needing level 1 spells for the talent spell and level 2 spell caster needing level 2 spells for a talent spell.
Of course there comes a question of how useful a level 1 talent spell could be if you’re already a level 2 or 3 spell caster, but after listening to the old man I came to understand that this isn’t something I had to be worried about because all talents spells bellow your level get upgraded automatically the moment you advance a level meaning a level 1 talent spell will have roughly the same power level of a level 2 spell if you advance to level 2 spell caster and they not only get stronger but they also evolve depending on the meditation technique you use.
Now here is a curious topic.
Meditation techniques.
It is the main way of increasing spiritual force and the foundation of your future growth, to increase spiritual force one needs to first acquire a meditation technique, the old man sneakily had taught me this exact technique when I was younger or 10 years old which I called the breathing technique, whenever I used it a minty breath of air would circulate within my lungs which I thought was actually normal this entire time and didn’t think much of it, while in all reality it was actually a meditation technique called Earth Mother’s Guardian that cultivated my spiritual force.
A fascinating thing I came to understand is the fact that not all meditation technique can actually allow the user to advance a level, there were a lot of other meditation techniques within the scriptures collected from who knows where that were only able to advance someone from level 0 to level 1 which is almost half of the meditation techniques that were available while other half which were higher quality allowed the user to advance from level 0 to level 3 or 4, there were only 6 meditation techniques amongst these numerous other meditation techniques that allowed a user to advance from level 0 to level 7 and no further.
Which is even more ridiculous if I think about the fact how many levels the meditation technique I use allows me to advance.
It is from level 0 to level 9 !
The entire line !
And though this may sound like something extremely overpowered, in all reality it was not, it would be more fitting to say that it was all thanks to luck that allowed me to practice this meditation technique because not even the old man the current head priest met the insane requirements to practice this meditation technique even though it was literally the proof of the earth mother bestowing the right of guardianship to our church.
Now let me tell you the requirements to this meditation technique, first of all you need to be naturally blind since birth to even have the right to initiate into this technique, your magical talent the ability to use spiritual force doesn’t matter because it will grow that talent no matter what the only thing you need is a extremely high affinity towards the earth element and nature element, you also can only start using this technique when you are 10 years old, if you use it when you are 9 or 11 it won’t work and may even end up killing you, next you also can’t be a unforgiving individual, which is vague in my opinion but I trust myself not to be such a individual since I hadn’t any problems just yet, and then you also need to be surrounded by nature your entire life, meaning you can’t go to a city because there isn’t much nature there, to absorb the necessary elemental particles that power the meditation technique but if you leave the confines of nature whilst having practiced this meditation technique you may get sick and die, you also need to meditate daily for another 10 years until you are 20 to build your foundation before you can finally advance and officially become a level 1 spell caster. After becoming a level 1 spell caster through this meditation technique you cannot change the technique to another if you do so you will die instantly. Upon becoming a level 1 spell caster through this meditation technique you also become unable to cast any other spells other then the ones from the earth and nature element category.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Lets first talk about the very first crucial requirement, being naturally blind since birth, I don’t know the percentage of babies being naturally blind since birth in my country much less the earth itself, but I do know that it is so uncommon that it can’t be less then 0.1 percent of all people born because if it was more or even a solid 1 percent then everyone would know this and the world would be inhabited by a whole lot of blind people.
Second requirement, not requiring magical talent is convenient but having extremely high affinity towards earth and nature element isn’t, the old man told me within his record that earth does not have the most elemental particles compared to other realms that exist in the whole wide universe, the reason for this is because of the earth mother who is a cultivating type realm meaning she uses all resources available to strengthen herself compared to a devouring realm that steals the resources of others and strengthens itself and its inhabitants.
This causes the inhabitants from the cultivating realm to be weaker physically but stronger mentally since these particles aren’t interfering with their evolution giving them one united path of progression.
The devouring realm on the other hand makes the inhabitants stronger physically but weaker mentally because of the different way the particles had evolved each and every inhabitant.
It is already extremely rare to have someone possess a high natural affinity within a million people who live inside a cultivating realm much less having 2 high natural affinities in the exact same realm.
When the old man first ever checked me for my magical talent and elemental affinities he told me that he was quite startled about the result, the old man actually didn’t know what my talent was regarding magic or affinities before he decided to make me his successor and didn’t expect much in the first place since he didn’t really care because he possessed a meditation technique that simply did not rely on any magical talent or elemental affinity to cultivate which is his own meditation technique that he practices one of the 6 meditation techniques that lets someone advance from level 0 to level 7.
Upon confirming my magical talent and elemental affinities he scraped his initial idea and immediately decided he would teach me the Earth Mothers Guardian meditation technique instead, I didn’t possess any magical talent but my affinities for both earth element and nature element were extremely high, since then he believed that I was truly send by the earth mother herself and it wasn’t just luck that brought me to him and made him want to take me in because of my blind eyes that reminded him of the earth mother.
Though eventually through time he came to understand that I wasn’t anything special and just a normal kid with normal worries, not some kind of god send messenger from the earth mother herself, which is how he was able to get close to me and accept me as his family and not just something to be respected or worshiped which I feel quite thankful of.
He also said he found my real parents quite easily as well with use of his abilities, he didn’t tell me immediately after finding them when I was young since I was undergoing a heavily emotional state of my life that he didn’t want to mess up, but since I already grew up he told me in his recording the names and locations of my two parents, he had also stored a specific document inside his own room that I could bring to the authorities and have them bring me to them instead, though now with the current situation and with my present mindset I didn’t even have a speck of interest to look after my parents much less entertain the idea of going outside.
Even if I did go out, I wouldn’t necessarily want to look for my parents and instead would have preferred to find the old man who is my real family, but then again I shouldn’t say “would” and “wouldn’t” since nothing has happened yet to give me the ability to chose.
Third, fourth and fifth requirement.
Being 10 years old to practice this meditation technique isn’t really that difficult to achieve but having the risk of instant death swayed in front of your face if you even miss a single opportunity is a bit much, next, being unforgiving is something I can’t truly understand that well because it seems too vague to me, I don’t particularly am strong enough to hold grudges against anyone even towards my biological parents who left me to a church and while this may be so I don’t really think crime should go unpunished either and that justice should be upheld swift and painfully, next, being surrounded by nature also isn’t that heavy of a requirement but it becomes extremely uncomfortable to bear just like the third requirement if the risk of dying gets involved that easily.
Finally the last and sixth requirement which is to practice for an entire decade or 10 years before you are able to become a official level 1 spell caster, which honestly doesn’t sound that bad nor harmful since it doesn’t kill you if you don’t do it in more then 10 years, but this in itself is a issue if you compare all of the other meditation techniques to the earth mothers guardian meditation technique more particularly the one the old man practices which is called One With Nothing.
To practice this technique you first need to have no magical talent, elemental affinities do not matter as they will be erased further upon practicing this technique, the only spells that can be used are the spells provided by the meditation technique itself, it can be practiced by anyone as long as they are intelligent and have a soul, it demands from the user to have no thoughts about anything and be completely empty with nothing to distract them when practicing, there are also no repercussions if you fail to do so since you can start again and if everything goes well the user is guaranteed to advance into a level 1 spell caster within a single year and if they can endure the next level practice they can also become a level 2 spell caster within 2 to 3 years maximum.
A total of 4 years to become a level 2 spell caster sounds like light speed compared to my snail like track of a entire decade to reach level 1 spell caster, but then again the restrictions for this technique in particular One With Nothing do seem a bit iffy even if fast, especially the spell restriction and having no thoughts whatsoever when practicing which confuses me far more then it should and in the end of the day it can only advance up to level 7 with no further progress so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
Plus the meditation technique itself, earth mother’s guardian also seems to have undergone countless to millions of changes over the course of history, there must have been a reason as to why it was changed in the first place to end up like this but since I hadn’t finished reading everything yet and put all pieces together I couldn’t understand why it had undergone so much change making me wonder what the original technique was like if the current technique had so many restrictions.
Out of curiosity I also took a look to see what kind of spells are provided for the One With Nothing meditation technique, but after glancing at them and seeing the weird almost nonsensical chicken scratch like scribble of text and symbols I couldn’t read that was called a “spell model” I immediately gave up on understanding these spells whatsoever.
Some of the other meditation techniques also possessed spells that came along with them, most of these spells were crucial towards the meditation technique and required them to become talent spells to progress the meditation technique further to create powerful synergies while other techniques solely focused on the body and mind aspect without caring about the spells which had its own pros and cons.
The earth mother’s guardian meditation technique did not possess any spells that came along with the technique, the technique emphasized on the nature of balance and how everything feeds itself to form a circle of life and death, whenever I practice the meditation a breath of minty air enters my lungs, this is supposed to show the connection I had towards nature but I simply couldn’t guess why since I was still unaware and inexperienced when it came to these fundamental of nature.
-I am sure I will understand one day, but now I don’t think I afford to continue reading, I can feel my soul already filled to the brim and reaching its limits, its already time for me to advance, I have to choose my talent spell…
Not even turning my head I reached for a book near, feeling the heavy leather cover of the book I turned the pages with my hand before finally reaching what I had been looking for feeling the familiar burn of the engravings warm my skin.
A Place Of Legends 
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