Kale arrived at the camping area and joined the queue for food, the food has created by the chef hired by the merchant, and the ingredients were mostly hunted down and gathered by the adventurers. The food made was similar to hotpot, except the meat was separately given so that everyone could get equal pieces.
The one distributing the food was an adventurer, he was a robust man with dark skin and bald head, his muscles were acting as an impregnable armour of flesh, he looked like an experienced MMA fighter, when it was Kale's turn, he extended his bowl, the man filled his bowl to the brim, when he was about to put the slices of meat, Kale retracted his bowl.
"No meat today either?" The man spoke, he normally liked to stay quiet but seeing that Kale was still a young practitioner, he spoke in concern. After all, he knew what experiences a practitioner has to go through in their journey.
Kale never told him that he was a practitioner but the difference in strength made it hard for him to hide it, thankfully, others can't inspect his Origin Chasm like that, hence him being a Mutant Martial Mage was still a secret.
On his question, Kale shook his head as a reply.
"Hmm… If it's just the broth, you can come for the second service," The man said and didn't pursue the matter anymore, Kale nodded and moved away, to let others have their turn.
Like always, he picked up an empty spot, a rock beside a tree to sit and started eating.
It wasn't that he didn't like meat, he knew that it was a necessity diet nurture body and walk on the path of a Martial Artist, but the problem was ‹Nether Venom Body› needed the ingestion of poisonous herbs and insect venoms, but without letting the body get used to meat, just to began its cultivation. It was a strict requirement, only after achieving the first step can this requirement be removed.
'It's a problem, my body is lacking nutrition, this soup alone is not enough, after reaching the city I should prepare a good medicinal cuisine for myself,' Kale thought while eating.
"You sat alone today too?" A woman's voice came from the side.
'Not again…' Kale turned to look, it was the same elven woman adventurer he talked or had to talk to most these past days.
She was a tall woman, having golden hairs and green eyes, her ears were slightly pointy, her facial features were equisetic, her skin was glossy and soft as that of a baby.
The woman had the body of a gymnast, her three sizes were well balanced and didn't stick out too much, it was an elven trait, elves lives in the forest so jumping from one tree to another for them is like walking a few steps on the ground for normal humans, as a result, nature evolved them in a way that suits them the best.
Elves were known for their youthful appearance, so Kale didn't bother evaluating her age based on her appearance.
Elves were seen as one of the variant human races, though there were still many differences in them both physically and mentally, like how they appear young in most of their lifetime, their fertility is low as any other variant human race and their sexual attraction towards opposite gender is not as high as humans who have the highest population among them.
The woman was Koya, an Archer Mage, a subclass of Martial Mage.
Kale didn't reply but regardless of his wishes, she sat beside him.
"I am curious, why are you travelling here alone like that? Especially going to a place like Carran Town?" Koya asked with a smile.
"I believe passengers are not obligated to reveal their personal information to the adventurers accompanying them," Kale said in a flat tone.
But Koya wasn't disheartened, she changed the topic and spoke again "You are from Imperial City, right? I heard the Blazing Sun Kingdom had appointed the Hero title to a boy, what was the name again hmm…"
"Xander," Kale said, he knew she didn't plan on leaving no matter how rude he acts, due to his age the others were carrying about him, he wasn't used to such things as there weren't many people like that in Kazeer, seeing the persistence of the woman, he helplessly chose to reply.
"Yeah, it was Xander," Koya said, she felt better seeing that he at least answered this time, she tried and further stretched the topic "I heard he had a lot of blessings that is was why he got chosen as a Hero, it doesn't seem fair to other children, don't you think? Even if they only used Third Generation Hero Summoning, it is still a lot expensive, I heard even the Large Sects only use it on their talented core and legacy disciples,"
Kale stopped eating, her words caught his attention "Third Generation Hero Summoning? Wasn't it Hero Advancing Ceremony?"
"Eh? Looks like you don't know," Koya's eyes brightened up, she continued "Let this big sister tell you about it, Hero Advancement Ceremony is actually the modern name of Third Generation Hero Summoning, the history of Hero Summoning goes back to thousands of years even before the Supreme Hero Artemis appeared.
In the past, when ancient magic was thriving, and the land was in chaos, human race tribes were weak, at that time, several great practitioners who carried the great Blessings Of Gods with them created a Collective Grand Dimensional Summoning Magic tacking a Summoner's ability as a reference, by using this magic they could summon a being from another world who carried several gifts of Gods with them having the endless potential to thrive and request help from them to vanquish evil, it is what we call First Generation Hero Summoning Ceremony,"
Kale furrows his brows, the topic seriously caught his attention.
"Summoning someone from a different world? Is it even possible? Even if it is, why summon a Hero from a different world, this world doesn't lack genius in the first place?" He asked.
Koya didn't answer but looked at him in amusement.
"What's wrong?" Kale asked.
Koya chuckled "Nothing's wrong, I was just surprised because instead of getting surprised that there are other worlds, you asked why to summon a Hero from another world,"
Kale's body shook, in the moment of spur he forgot about the common sense of this world, normally, not many would believe in the theory about the existence of other worlds. Thankfully, due to his age and situation, even if spoke the truth it would be taken as a joke.
"Dad says the universe is boundless, there are infinite possibilities, and there can be millions of worlds like the one we live in," Kale said with a light snort.
Koya laughed at his answer, she didn't want to break the bubble of a child's fantasy so she did not refute and continued "They chose to summon a Hero from the different world because a Hero who has crossed the boundaries between two worlds have high chance to receive gifts from the Universe itself, don't take gifts as the same level as blessings.
If blessings are small modifications then gifts are a whole new version upgrade, a gift can be anything, any ability or a unique subclass. Moreover, the gift would be related to the user itself, depending on the use it can be a huge help to its user.
Actually, there is no proof of such method being existing, it only comes in stories these days, but history books claim that such method used to exist and was destroyed on purpose because of the cost of using it was too high and they could have been misused by bad people.
Later, during the time of Supreme Sage Merlin, she created a new method derived from this concept, it was called Second Generation Hero Summoning Ceremony, unlike the previous one it doesn't summon the whole Hero's body but the soul, will and memories of a Hero in a different vessel, meaning someone else's body, and combine them to become one.
This method had low price compared to first one but it also has its disadvantages, like its high chance of failure, on failure the practitioners who participated in the ceremony would experience intense backlash which can kill them and even if they succeed it doesn't mean that the Hero from another side will respond so true success only depends on luck.
This method too is lost and doesn't usually appear in public, trying to restore it is also seen as taboo because anything that requires human sacrifice is termed as a forbidden act by world organisation like GHO and Adventurer's Guild, though there are rumours that some organizations and kingdoms still has it and practices it.
And now the one which is used freely in the current era, the Third Generation Hero Summoning Ceremony, although it too is costly and have lesser advantages but it is the safest one, it only increases the future potential of an individual and has high success rate without any danger to life," She explained.
Kale nodded and went into deep thinking,
Supreme Sage Merlin, she was a sage that had a vast knowledge about countless things. In terms of knowledge, no one could rival here, it was her, who developed the Mutant Path to be used by practitioners freely, Mutagen that can turn a normal person into a mutant artificially was also created by her, lastly, she was the founder of one of the world-leading organisation… GHO or Global Health Organisation.
Any practitioner that has Supreme in their name was someone who remained unparalleled in their time, someone no one could kill, someone whose power said to rival Gods, the number of Supremes till this day is less than ten, they had all lived for millenniums of years before disappearing with the flow of time never to be found again. For many people, especially mortals, these Supremes are just characters in bedtime stories as none of them said to exist now.
Kale asked a few more questions to her, now that he obtained a piece of useful information he was more open to her, this might be common knowledge for other but for him, it carried a deep meaning, he wasn't interested in leaving this world or anything because it looked more favourable to him, the thing attracted him most was that there was a way travel between worlds! He never thought a human could actually achieve such a feat, after all, even the concept of immortality was a baseless dream to many that had no proof at all.
After finished eating, he said goodbye to her and left to cultivate again.
Koya smiled, she bid good night to him then walked towards her companion sitting near the bone fire.
Master Stan, who was the leader of the group and another human woman in black attire was sitting there, Master Stan was eating his food while she was servicing her two daggers.
From her tight-fitting black attire that suited well with shadows and dual daggers, it wasn't hard to guess that her subclass was Assassin.
"There was no need to tell a brat the whole story, he is still pretty much a mortal and doesn't know the rules of the world of practitioners," She said when she saw Koya coming from afar.
"Oh you, it's just a story and he doesn't look like the type who will go spread it among mortals," Koya replied nonchalantly.
Most mortals have meagre to no knowledge about practitioners, it wasn't a coincidence but something is done on purpose, it was done since past times to maintain the balance, for instance, if the mortal people at old times that we're living peaceful life knew that the Hero they were admiring and worshipping so much was actually someone who became a Hero after several people were sacrificed then would he or she still be a symbol of peace and justice in their eyes?
"It's all right, he probably reminds her of her little sister back at home," Master Stan said while laughing.
"Good captains don't talk while eating," Koya said with a light snort then sat on the log beside the other girl "Who about the others?"
"They went out to patrol the area," The woman beside her said faintly.
Koya nodded, she then took out her bow and attended to it, weapons are life-saving tools to adventurers, they need to be taken care of properly, if not, then they won't be able to help them in times of need.
Inside the caravan, Kale took out the spellbook and flipped through the pages.
'My first earth spell was targeted at defence, and with this one, I can increase my movement speed without displaying any martial movement technique,' Kale thought as he stopped reading and started to try and conjure the spell formula in his mind.