After waking up, the first thing Jody saw was the three people staring at him like he was a freak. Next, he realized he was naked and standing amongst a pile of rubble. He couldn't help but notice two tattoos on his defined chest and one on his right wrist. On the left chest was a shining sword with a sun behind it. On the right chest were three skeletal dragons that seemed to be singing. On his wrist was a wriggling demoness with a long tale coiled around him like an occult bracelet.
"Ma, it's cold," said the shivering Jody, looking at his mother, who seemed so happy and excited, like she was about to get some ice cream in the summer.
Snapping out of her stunned glee, Isis ran forward and dropped to her knees, embracing her son tightly.
"You brat, giving me troubles as soon as you're awake," although his mother scolded him, she was smiling ear to ear and kissing his handsome little face over and over again.
"Ma, you're drowning me," Jody immediately protested when assaulted by all this unexpected affection.
However, he felt very pleased inside. He never expected his mother would miss him so much.
"Hush, boy, you will endure my kiss attack!" giggled Isis, kissing Jody's cheeks several more times.
The lad was powerless to resist.
Lady Isis had returned to her bright and tender temperament the moment Jody woke up. She had never been so happy to hear his unique yet improper way of speaking. This was her little boy. A ring on her finger flashed as a set of brand new all-white clothes appeared in front of Jody, who swiftly removed himself from his mother's bosom and got dressed on his own.
However, as the clothes didn't fit, his mother had to prepare another outfit. Luckily, shopping for her son was one of her favorite pastimes. She watched him daily, so she knew better than anyone that his current body was that of a pre-teen, despite him only being seven.
It was at this moment that everyone else, mostly Jody himself, noticed that he had grown significantly. He currently looked like a tall eleven or twelve-year-old child. He was shocked. Flabbergasted, even. How long, exactly, had he slept? Jody looked up at his father, only to see him smiling back.
"In one week, you will be eight. I suppose I owe you a few gifts," said Lord Osiris, reading his son's mind by watching his antics.
He felt relieved knowing that this was still his son. Whatever happened on the platform of destiny, it was behind them now. This was one major concern out of the way.
Jody, on the other hand, frowned.
Doesn't this mean he had been in a coma for five years? Five. YEARS!? How tragic! How despotic. That's five years of delicious food not enjoyed. Five years he could have been formulating his Titanic Rage gone to waste! Even worse, five years worth of Kamila's dreams he would have to endure.
The horror!
Worst of all, that's five years that he couldn't enjoy ogling his father's second wife, Lylian. This was probably what upset Jody the most. Lylian's beauty was only eclipsed by Jody's mother herself.
How was Jody supposed to raise his standards of beauty now?
Seeing the indignation on his son's face, Lord Osiris was tickled. What did this child even know about life, for him to be this upset about five little years? If he knew what the boy was really thinking, who knew how he would feel?
To experts at the Lord's level, five years was no time at all.
Thinking little of it, he said, "My son, do not fret. Come, show us what you have obtained."
However, right after speaking, Jody noticed all three adults frowning.
Osiris held his hand out to stop Jody, "Wait, son. Ke Si, remove my boy from this area until I summon you again."
Ke did not hesitate as Jody was immediately shrouded in darkness, unaware of his surroundings.
After standing in silence for a few moments, the latter grew irritated. Was he not freshly awakened? Should there not be a banquet held in his honor or something of the like? Why were there only three people here to receive him? Why are they suddenly hiding like rats the heard the pet cat coming?
"Ke."
"I am here, little Lord," came Ke Si's mysterious voice in the darkness.
"I do not like this. I can not see," Unknown to himself, a white mist started to rise from Jody's body.
As his irritation grew, he suddenly looked down at his hands in shock. Jody realized he felt more powerful than ever, even in his previous life. It felt like his body was bursting with strength. His energy felt similar to an overflowing bathtub full of water. All he had to do was pull out the stopper, and it would swiftly drain.
Realizing this, Jody immediately opened his mind's eye and cast his perception inward.
What he saw shocked him.
The network in his body was far more complicated than before. Misty seven-colored veins were jetting up his body from his abdominal region, spreading out in all directions like branches on a tree. At the ends of the tree, there were individual pores made to absorb and filter energies.
Mana!
Twilight Veins!
Doors of Origin!
Upon more in-depth inspection, some of these veins were not actually new. The ones connected to his heart had always been there. However, before this, they had looked like standard parts of Jody's anatomy. Now, however, they had awakened! He would have to be careful of people inspecting his body with spiritual perception in the future, as he didn't want to show everyone his light show.
He knew what these unique veins were from the moment he cast his mind's eye.
Originally, they were not filled with such energy or radiating such a glow. There definitely weren't exclusive channels straight from his abdomen. This white mist escaping his body was precisely his body's own mana! Mana and Rukh exist as refined fusions of origin and elemental forces, as well as the body's life essence. Since Jody didn't know how to harness his mana, it escaped his pores as it was produced.
Mana possessed positive and proactive properties, while Rukh possessed negative and reactive properties. So, no rukh was being produced independently, but his mana was forming itself at will.
Even the ambient mana and rukh in the surroundings were the same. This is why one didn't see rukh so freely in nature, but mana could be seen everywhere.
Merely, ambient power was the perfect fusion of heavenly energy, elemental energy, and worldly essence. With twilight veins, Jody could refine heaven and earth forces to form mana or rukh in his body. Jody wondered if, with his aiguilles, he would be able to use either astral power or origin power to form his mana and rukh.
Of course, he currently had no idea how to put any of this into practice. But he had the knowledge! Maybe books weren't so bad after all.
"I wonder how many doors of origin I have open?"
Doors of Origin were something everyone possessed across all races. Altogether, a hero could have a maximum of thirty-six doors of origin, which would be gateways for mana or rukh production after the sage rebirth. Most sages either experience a magical body rebirth or a cursed body rebirth, making their constitutions suitable for the optimal path.
Origin energy traveled into the Doors of Origin, through the origin veins, and into the origin pool at the root. After awakening, ordinary sages are born with three or four doors open, while those blessed with high-level innate talent will have close to ten doors open.
A person with at least fifteen doors open after the mana or rukh body rebirth would be considered to have exceptional record-breaking talent. Most people had opened around ten doors. The more doors one has open, the faster primary forces can be absorbed, refined, and activated. An expert with twenty doors open could formulate force twice as fast as an expert with only ten doors open. Opening more than ten doors of origin was incredibly difficult.
In the Great Motherland continent, documented experts who had achieved the opening of more than 24 doors of origin could be counted on one hand. The opening of all 36 doors of origin was called the Grand Opening of Heaven's Door. The number of innately open doors of origin essentially decided the height one could reach during their entire life because it was extremely complicated to open doors of origin postnatal.
Extremely advanced miraculous medicine, chance, and luck; all of this was required, or it would be impossible. Unfortunately, even using external forces to open a Door of Origin would be accompanied by high risks, to the extent that even the slightest mistake would cause irreparable damage to the power veins. Damaged power veins could no longer support energy, basically making one a cripple.
Refining a source artifact opened certain doors of origin during the first baptism of the Sage Rebirth. If most doors were mana-based, it would be a magical body rebirth. If the doors were rukh-based, it would be a cursed body rebirth. This was the process Jody had just awakened from. But seeing the seven-colored tint to his veins, Jody felt he had experienced a twilight body rebirth.
He started counting how many doors of origin he had open.
It terrified Jody when he discovered that he had twenty-seven doors of origin already open! Of the twenty-seven doors of origin open, twelve were rukh doors, and twelve were mana doors. There were three doors with a strange yet familiar energy at their base, but he was clueless as to what it was. The mana light was milky white, sometimes golden. The rukh light was a creepy grayish-black, but sometimes purple.
Meanwhile, this mysterious energy on the remaining three doors was opaque with ghost-like hieroglyphs that couldn't be properly gleaned. It was too strange.
Jody didn't dare to believe he had such heaven-blessed luck, so he counted again. The answer was the same! Unconvinced, he then counted how many doors were closed. To his utter befuddlement, he found that thirteen doors of origin were blocked and not emitting any milky white light.
After a few minutes of repeated confirmation, there could be no mistake.
In his body, there were forty doors of origin.
FORTY!
On top of that, twenty-seven of them were already open! But wait! Three of the open doors possessed an energy signature he couldn't identify with his current knowledge at all!
He somehow had enough doors of origin open to be considered outstanding in any country, but even more perplexing, he had four other branches in his system of twilight veins. What kind of abnormal joke was this? What did that even mean? He didn't even dare to look.
Jody: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
He was fed up!
"The authors of this world are so full of shit!" Jody was confused and frustrated. He hated that he kept reading all these books but still felt clueless, "What's the point of reading so much if everything I read is wrong!"