What woke Akira up was the sounds of birds chirping in the trees. His entire body was sore as he tried to stand up. Looking down at his body, he could see dried blood and still almost open wounds that barely healed. Goblins were unfortunate creatures that healed slower than humans.
The pain was almost worse than it was the other day, and Akira had no way of fixing it. He then looked around at where he slept for the night and saw something quite interesting. The vegetation that he had noticed the other day had grown considerably. The little bit of moss and brush had grown into multiple long vines that stretched across half of the cave walls. Confused, Akira slowly walked over to the vegetation.
He touched and felt around to see if there was anything amiss. Everything seemed to be completely fine, it seemed that he was simply thinking too much. As he tried to walk away, he noticed that his leg couldn't move. Looking down, he saw that one of the vines had grabbed his leg.
"What?" Akira questioned before the ground under him started to quickly crumble and collapse. With the ground, Akira fell a couple of meters and landed in a small room that was the same size as the cave above.
Akira coughed and waved his hand in front of his face to clear the dust as it started to settle. Everything was dark and he couldn't see a single thing. After a couple of seconds, a red glow could be seen glimmering and shining in the distance. It started to get stronger and stronger as Akira walked closer to the light.
Finally, Akira could see a ring with a small metal skull carved on the top of it encrusted in the stone wall of the room. The red glow seemed to be coming out of the eyes of the skull. Suddenly, the ring started to move unstably and popped out of the wall floating in the air with a luminous red glow to it.
"What the hell is going on here?" Akira was perplexed, was this type of thing normal? The ring stopped moving after a couple of seconds before it quickly flew onto Akira's middle finger. The ring looked like it was meant for a human so it was quite big on Akira's finger, but it quickly changed its size to adjust to the goblins finger.
'That's convenient' Akira thought. Seemingly out of nowhere, Akira experienced a large burst of pain at the core of his stomach. It was excruciating and much worse than he was feeling only a minute before.
He quickly fell to the floor and exclaimed in pain. However, the pain didn't last long, by the end of the one-minute mark, the pain had completely stopped. Akira stumbled back up to his feet as he coughed. After calming down and inspecting the ring for a little longer, Akira heard a random voice in his head. It was mind-boggling.
"What the hell is this thing!? Akira was confused but still quite excited. In his mind, this was it. This was what he was looking for to succeed. Akira spent the entirety of the previous night making a decision, and that was to completely forget about his past life and family.
Although it was a grueling decision, Akira knew that it was the right one. If he was never going back to his past life, he might as well forget all about it. Whenever remembered, all it did was bring him despair and sorrow.
Instead, he would now completely focus on his new life. Akira decided that his new goal or dream was to earn the title of the strongest! The reasoning behind this was quite dull and simple, it was Akira's selfish desire to become free from all burdens, or in other words, to simply become free.
Although this reason was quite shallow, Akira had a feeling that it would get more reinforced as he continued on his journey. He was still confused and a little bit distressed because of this ring and the pain he had just experienced, but he knew that not everyone would simply just find this ring.
It must have been simple luck...
Akira decided to trust the ring and find this mushroom. He needed to heal his injuries as they were still causing pain. When climbing back up to the surface cave, Akira noticed that he was much more nimble and energetic now, although he hadn't eaten for a long time and was quite exhausted just a moment ago.
He went out of the cave to find these mushrooms, it didn't take him long before finding a decent-sized one. After finding it, he simply took a bite out of it. The healing effects it had were quite extraordinary. In just a couple of minutes, Akira's entire body had been healed from all damages. Akira was quite excited about this, it was a good sign of the ring.
After carrying it back to his cave, Akira put it down on the floor and rolled the scroll out. It was a red scroll with thick black writing. The scroll held intricate details about a certain cultivating technique.
Akira didn't know how he felt about the "Demon" part of this technique but in the end, It was most likely a simple cultivating technique that could help him become stronger. Akira wasn't going to complain. He then read the contents of the scroll through and through until he remembered all of it, for some reason, it was extremely easy.
The scroll didn't just tell him about how to use the technique, but also how qi worked in this world. There were said to be multiple cultivation realms that one could achieve, the first and weakest of which was called the qi refinement realm.
The core, or in other words your qi ocean was where your qi was stored. One needed to fill the core up to his maximum capability while strengthening it enough for a breakthrough into the next realm without breaking and potentially killing the cultivator.
To achieve the qi refinement realm, one would have to cultivate for at least a year. In doing so, they would mark their beginning in the journey of cultivation, of course, Akira did not know this.
After breaking through to the first realm, one needed to break through 9 stages in each realm to be able to break through to the next one. The realm after the qi refinement realm was the foundation establishment realm.
After Akira learned the technique, the scroll started to slowly dissipate away. He crossed his legs and closed his eyes to begin his cultivation. After concentrating for a little while, Akira could feel the qi all around, almost as if he could see even with his eyes closed.
Soon, his core immediately started to pull qi energy from all around him. It was like a vortex leading to an endless void. The situation quickly became quite unstable, Akira could feel how reckless the flow of qi was going into his core. If he were to be disturbed at any moment during this process, Akira knew that his core would be shattered at once, potentially leading to his death.
---------
After an hour of immense concentration, the flow of qi had become much more stable and calm. It also seemed that his core had become much more sturdy and was full to the brim with qi. Suddenly, a cracking sound could be heard that immediately put Akira in a state of fear. He had maintained his core for this long, what went wrong!?
A cold sweat ran down the back of his neck as he continued to try and maintain the structure of the core, but it was useless, the core started cracking rapidly like a spider web.
It finally finished cracking and Akira felt a rush of energy throughout his body. The core had not been cracking to break but to shed its outer layer and breakthrough into the next realm. Akira was extremely happy with the results. He had officially broken into the first stage of the qi refinement realm.
He stood up and finally opened his eyes, the sight in front of him was horrid. Black sludge was everyone around his cave home, Akira immediately kneels to throw up due to the putrid stench but nothing came out because he hadn't eaten anything.