"Mom, I'm home!" After parking his hoverbike in the hoverbay behind a groovy looking nine-story building, Bas hopped on the express elevator up to the eighth floor.
He got to their condominium, apartment number 888, and unlocked the door with facial recognition technology. Keys to locked doors were a relic of the past, and any door that required a lock would need a much more sophisticated key than the traditional metal to open. Of course, Bas was used to the Eternal Realm's conventions, where all he needed was his own aura.
"Hello, my baby, I've missed you," Eureka King slowly walked out of her bedroom upon hearing her eldest son's voice. "Lord, what will we do about that hair, boy."
Eureka was around 155 cm tall and had an excessively normal appearance outside of her incredible and voluptuous body. Of course, Bas knew that this so-called "normal" appearance was actually just a bio-mask that his mother almost never took off. In reality, her beauty was quite startling. It was just that only Bas and his siblings had the pleasure of viewing her true countenance, and even they only saw it on holidays. There were many reasons for this, but among the reasons Bas King was currently aware of, not a single one of them would fail to irritate him.
"How was school? You aren't misbehaving, are you? With great intelligence comes great pride, I know, but these people are different from us by design. You must be a gentleman at all times, cough, cough, cough... You need to set an example for your little sister and brother, cough, cough," his mother fell into a coughing fit in the middle of talking.
"Yes mother, your child will be certain to listen. Please, don't overexert yourself on my behalf," Bas hurried to his mother's side to support her after she started another coughing fit. 'Is her condition getting worse? Tch, but if I probe her with my spiritual sense she would surely notice. Besides, what can I do? I'm still so weak. Then again, it would be better to know.'
"Silly boy, your mother is fine, cough," his mother was clearly not as fine as she was currently trying to appear.
Alas, Bas thought that his mom was super cute when she acted tough. Even while wearing that super-regular face, her charm could not be avoided. After discussing his day with his mother for a while, Bas retired to his bedroom.
"Mom, I'll be meditating until tomorrow. No need to cook for me tonight," Bas' shout echoed down the hallway, before he was heard walking through a doorway.
The door automatically slid shut behind him and sealed the room. Bas' room consisted of a queen-sized bed, various gadgets he spent the last two years collecting and researching, his own washroom, and a walk-in closet. In the middle of this room was an arcane circle full of shining golden runes. This was known as a hunting array powered by soul power, and Bas used it to train his soul ryms or inner ryms as they called them here. Or at least, this was what Bas tried to do. For some reason, his hunter formula had stopped advancing three years ago, before Bas came to inhabit this body.
"How can I, this great deity, reincarnated hero of my own story, possibly be in possession of such a waste body? Who wrote this crap? Something is surely not right here," Bas walked to the center of the hunting array and sat in the lotus position to start his night's training.
Runic light lit up on the hunting array as rym power was swiftly drawn toward the circle and poured directly into Bas King's body, where he refined it into hunt ryms. Hunt ryms were offense in nature, great for warrior. Regular refined soul power was rather docile by comparison. Since the entire world referred to Origin Power as ryms, and distinguished activated qi as hunt ryms, who was Bas to argue?
"I mean, if you can't beat 'em..."
At the moment, Bas was drawing in the ambient ryms, refining soul power, and subsequently forming hunt ryms. He did all of this without relying on a hunter soul, something the inhabitants of this world would be dumbstruck to discover.
"Hunt Rym Formulation can be separated into five classes and ten ranks, starting at the first rank, fifth class. The previous Sebastian had just reached the third level of soul power, still on the first step of fifth class rank one. But then his talent vanished?" Bas mused to himself in deep contemplation, rather confused by Sebastian's scattered memories.
By the time the old Sebastian turned ten years old, his fellow clansmen of the same generation had already thoroughly surpassed him, most of them possessed level 10 origin power, growing ever closer to being Fourth Class hunters.
There were some similarities to the formulation practices of Bas' past life and his current. However, there were also some glaring differences. Such as origin energy being referred too as ryms and refined origin power being called soul power. Thanks to this, the ranks of power were totally foreign to Bas.
Hunt Neophyte is the very beginning rank of hunt rym formulation, and one has to possess level 5 or better soul power to qualify for the second rank of the Fifth Class. After leveling up to the Hunt Foundation rank, hunters could use the hunt ryms within their bodies to reinforce their strength.
At this point, in the formula of every fifth class hunter, learning the equivalent of an origin script seemed to be the only way to continue developing their origin power even if they manage to advance their steps. Only, since no one knew what origin was, would he even be able to find a script?
Actually, Bas soon discovered that having a hunter soul worked the same as having a super high level origin script. It could automatically activate soul power, entering the state of energy they called hunt ryms. The so called hunt records were fundamentally different from what Bas had thought. He made a mental note to stop comparing current world terms to those of the old.
That's when this world became unique in his heart.
It seemed that the heavens of his new reality have deemed it necessary to awaken a hunter soul to facilitate the production of hunt ryms. What Bas once considered an uselessly extravagant training-wheel type existence, was actually now mandatory if he wanted his strength to soar. In spite of his faults, the old Sebastian seemed to have already awakened a hunter soul. With this powerful hunter soul, Bas' luck was bound to turn around.
If only he had just one hunter soul...
"For humans who intend to enter the dru, fusing with a powerful medium is essential at level 10 origin power. It must be that a hunter soul is also a type of in-bred medium, right? How could origin records be so advanced to affect the soul directly from birth? Rather than origin record, it should be called a soul record. Maybe that's why they call it soul power now...well origin power indeed needs to be refined by the soul to use," Bas pondered on the meanings of life and magic a bit longer before resuming his practice.
Today, Bas meditated on the basics. Hunt records constructed rym arrays inside the body with inner ryms, allowing the body to gather and refine more ambient ryms into personal hunt ryms, as well as improve rym quality from the base.
For those without a hunter soul, hunt records temporarily allowed them to store refined soul power. Hunt records could also produce skills known as arte. Arti allowed hunters who didn't possess a hunter soul to travel the path to power by relying on the ryms of heaven and earth to attack. Hunters who didn't possess a hunter soul and also couldn't practice any arti were doomed to be mediocre all of their lives. Of course, most of the hunters here seemed to look down on the use of arte and records, wholly ignorant of the complexities of heaven and earth.
The Sebastian King who was once famous as the young hunter with the most talent and potential in the entire Virgin Beach had become a waste who couldn't formulate a record, despite having a combat-type hunter soul. His hunter soul was deemed useless as a result. None of the arti in the family library were compatible with him, either. His hunter soul prevented him from learning a new a new arte in spite of not being compatible with records.
Sebastian's father even bought him countless different types of arti over the years, all in the hope he would find a suitable match. Unfortunately, no such match was found. Sebastian even vowed not to cut his hair until he found a suitable arte. There were many reasons why one would be incompatible to arti. The main reasons were thought to be lack of talent, or a peculiar hunter soul, but Bas knew better.
Those who were incompatible to arti would almost always be lacking in talent, this was true. And as long as one had a powerful enough hunter soul, they didn't even need to learn arti, this was also true. However, the most important thing would always be understanding the ryms of heaven and earth on the spiritual, mental, and physical levels. Bas even took it a step further as he understood the true origin of energy.
Sebastian's combat soul was constantly looked down upon by his peers. It ruined the kid's confidence. His overinflated ego popped like a bubble.
At least, that was the case for the old Sebastian King.
Bas didn't really share this concern.
In the first place, he had never found an arti that he couldn't practice. Merely, he disdained to practice such low-level arti as what Sebastian had been exposed too. In his past life, Bas was chosen by the Skylord Everflame from birth, replacing the inner space that housed the hunter souls of this world with the all powerful natal flame. This flame was apart of him, they shared a soul on a very intimate level.
In this life, Bas didn't know if such a thing as natal flames exist, but couldn't he still utilize his natal powers? What arti could possibly reject his almighty constitution backed by the everflame? What trash hunter soul could exist before himself?