I opened my eyes, fatigue seemed to wash over my body like a storm.
"For fucks sake…" I groaned as I tried to rub my eyes.
I froze.
My voice, it was different. It sounded nothing like how it should.
Then it hit me, I could barely sense anything. As the Heavenly Demon, I subconsciously let my telekinesis blanket everything in my room whenever I sleep. This way I can sense any assassins trying to sneak into my room to slit my throat. Any movement, any whisper, I can sense it all. I would say even bugs won't escape my senses, but of course, I wouldn't be the Heavenly Demon if I had to sleep in a bug-infested house anyway, would I? Not the point of course, but just saying.
When I wake up, I retract my telekinesis back, but only after doing a run-through of everything in my vicinity, a sanity check, if you will.
My telekinesis at the moment could barely extend an arm's length ahead of me. This was only the case when I first awakened my power. Not only that, but I could barely sense any detail, it'd be useful only for lifting up some sort of pencil or a shoe. If anybody wanted to kill me, they could just get up close to me and strangle me, that's how weak I had become.
I immediately sat up, and surveyed my surroundings, trying to discern any possible threats.
The room, it wasn't any I'd ever seen before. I looked down, the clothes I had on were vastly different from what I even have in my wardrobe. Although, they were very luxurious. Silk with golden outlines wrapped my body in a soft outer layer. I could feel some sort of mysterious power woven throughout the threads too, but I didn't sense any danger from them, so I let it be for now as I had very different things to worry about.
I can use my telekinesis to get a rough visualization of objects, especially once I reach higher levels, anything my telekinesis touches I can visualize in my mind, in very high detail.
Since I seemed to be weaker than usual, I could only get a rough outline of what my body was like, but that was more than enough. I know I had a godlike ability and didn't need to train my body too much, but as the Heavenly Demon, I was still very well-built. Muscles would be present all over my body as I loved to wield a sword against my weaker opponents.
All the progress I had made, all the scars that I received from my fights, they were all gone. If anything, I seemed to be in the body of a child no more than 10 years old.
Before I could say anything more, I was assaulted with a vicious headache. I let out a groan and immediately shut my eyes as I did everything I could to stop the sudden pain. Memories started flooding into my brain and played in my mind at an incredibly fast speed. A boy, his name being Akuma Tojo, playing with his parents at 3 years old. His parents seem to be high-ranking government officials. Most importantly, both were high-level mages.
Wait, mages? The word was unfamiliar to me but the memories kept playing. At 7 years old, Akuma was brought by his parents to a special room, lines spanned throughout the entire floor with strange symbols flashing in a brilliant glow all throughout the room. In the center of the room was an orb, suspended in the air.
"Is that telekinesis?" I wondered. "There's no way I had never met someone else with that power, plus those glowing symbols and lines throughout the room seem to be powering the orb, as it would glow whenever the lines flashed".
I saw Akuma walk up to the orb and place his hand on it. The orb pulsed 7 different colors as Akuma held onto it, sweat starting to form on his brow as he winced.
White, Green, Blue, Violet, Yellow, Red, Black.
The orb kept pulsing those seven colors before it finalized at white.
Akuma let go and stumbled back, his father stepped forward and caught him before he fell. Akuma looked up at his father, and his father smiled back at him, telling him not to worry. His mother walked up next to him and hugged him before the memory faded.
The memories kept flooding in, and I was able to come to the realization that these were the memories of the body I was currently in, I had taken over Akuma's body. I realized something else, that explosion that occurred in my palace most likely killed me. I saw Akuma practicing with energy very similar to that of the mysterious energy woven into the clothes I was wearing. It seemed to be called Mana.
As I was trying to get my thoughts together, I was greeted with a memory, this one longer than the others. It was Akuma sitting on his bed. His attire closely matched what the current me was wearing as well.
His legs were crossed, and he seemed to be meditating.
Mana was circling around his body as he tried to absorb it, he looked like he was struggling and he grit his teeth as he tried to continue.
Suddenly, in a flash of light, he opened his eyes and gasped. He clutched at his heart and tried to call out to his parents.
Everything went black after that.
I let out a groan as I opened my eyes again. The headache seemed to be receding as I tried to process what had happened. Luckily enough my intelligence seemed to be in tact and I seemed cable of processing information just as I was able to as the Heavenly Demon, ie: really fucking fast.
Akuma Tojo, the original owner of this body had loving parents and was an only child. They were both mages, murim equivalent of warriors in this world. They use mana to both reinforce their bodies and influence their environments.
His father, is what they call a magic swordsman, someone that uses mana to reinforce their body and their swords, while also being able to launch spells through their swords and bodies. His father was very skilled and was a general, as well as the head of the Tojo family. A family of mages.
His mother, was a regular mage. She would use mana and form it into different shapes while imprinting her will onto the mana. Once it took shape it would interact with the environment to do what she wanted. She was also a very high-ranking mage. She could cast spells that would create explosions that could wipe out cities.
Even in Murim, these two would have been very formidable, with very little being able to fight on par with them. I'm surprised that people could reach this level of strength. Albeit, it only makes sense. Mana seems to be vastly superior to Qi. In Murim, Qi is used to reinforce your body and strengthen your attacks. When you reach a higher level you can use it to slash forward like a ranged attack, but a simple spell used from mana could definitely crush attacks like that.
One thing common throughout all those who use mana is what's called a mana core. Although mana is everywhere, you need to process it first before you can use it. Mages can't just take mana from the atmosphere for their spells. It needs to be processed to fit them first. This happens automatically over time, although there are several ways to boost this, such as by meditating or taking medicines. This is very similar to Qi, where it is stored in your dantian. The mana core is even stored in the same location. Mana cores start off at the first level, or rank. Mages spend a lot of time breaking through. This process involved condensing the mana in your core into 1/10th the size of the core. Doing so reinforces the walls of your mana core and in turn, your entire body. Once you're able to condense the mana down to the required level, the mana will be just as dense. So once new mana enters your body it'll be condensed down to the level you have achieved. This will allow a mage to cast spells that require more mana. The amount of power a spell can reach depends on the amount of mana pushed into it, although there is always a limit. The more mana put into a spell the more raw power it'll output, but the harder it is to control. That's why there's higher level spells, the more intricate ones are designed to output a higher level of power and mana.
The room Akuma was in with the orb was the talent assessment room, which is to assess talent. White being the shittiest, most pathetic, and Black being immeasureable. Black just means the orb can't see how much potential you have, either this is just an error or you're broken as fuck.
The talent level you have can be seen as your upper limit. In this world, mages have rankings from F tier to S tier. S tiers are the strongest in the world, and even government leaders need to be respectful and cater to them. S tiers theoretically can destroy countries if not continents. F tiers are the weakest, just starting out. The higher your potential, the higher your maximum rank can be. Of course, a white-tier talent could never reach the S tier, but a red-tiered talent had a very small chance of reaching S tier. Theoretically, a black-tiered individual meant they could even surpass S tier, but that has never been proven, and the only occurrence of someone being black-tier meant they were trash and had no talent at all for mana and magic.
Akuma got white tier as his talent in magic. That meant unlike his overpowered parents who had red-tier talents, he's fucking trash. But, I gotta give it to Akuma. He did his due diligence in studying.
Akuma was trying to "level up" as a mage and ended up pushing himself too far. He wasn't able to properly do it and ended up dying. As he tried to condense the mana in his core, he suffered a mana reflux, where the mana inside him became uncontrollable and destroyed him from the inside. It happened so fast he could barely feel any pain before he died. For some reason, I ended up inhabiting his body.
That meant all his problems were now mine, such as his pathetic state, and his shitty talent.
Luckily, I have telekinesis so if anything I can use that to try and help me get stronger. I don't know how strong the apex predators of this world are, those being the S-tier mages. But, if Murim taught me anything, strength is the great equalizer. Everyone is nothing but trash in the face of true power. Those at the top reign supreme, and as the Heavenly Demon, I exist solely to stand at the top of the world. The issue is, if I stay as I am now, my Akuma's body will die again, his organs are barely functioning. His mana core is destroyed, but I already have various ideas for fixing that issue. I'd have to start again from scratch, but Akuma was only an F tier, specifically an F- tier. Each rank as a mage has 3 stages, when you first break through you're at the initial stage, (ie F-). You need to break through to the general stage (ie F), and then the advanced stage (symbolized with a +, ex F+).
For Akuma to experience mana reflux from a simple breakthrough at the lowest stage, just shows how shitty his aptitude and talent is for magic, honestly laughable.
I tried to move to the edge of the bed and wince. Pain assaulted my entire body as blood rushed up my throat. I cough it out and it spills down my mana-infused pajamas.
Akuma may have been smart, but after realizing his talent was worthless, he became desperate. He made a stupid fucking mistake and now I have to deal with his shit.
I grit my teeth as the pain persists.
If I still had the same level of telekinesis, I could repair my body myself, but since I'm lucky I still had the ability at all, I didn't bother complaining.
I opened my mouth and did the only thing I could think of that'd even give me a shot at not dying that night.
I called for mommy.
I horesly screamed out for my mother, Akame Tojo, and not even a second later she was right next to me.
I fought the urge to recoil from her as she just instantly appeared in front of me.
Fast, I thought.
She had lush golden hair that fell in waves down her shoulders, and sharp blue eyes that seemed to pierce through my very being. She was gorgeous.
"Akuma, what happened?" She said in a worried tone. She put her hand in my direction and chanted a spell.
Her eyes went wide as the spell assessed my condition.
She opened her mouth to say something but I coughed and grabbed my stomach. I doubled over as more blood was coughed up.
I felt my consciousness fading as I slumped over.
The last thing I heard was a bang and a male voice started yelling as I blacked out.