Luke took in the sights as he walked toward the administration building. It was impressive, to say the least. The memories he'd inherited from Max had painted a picture of the world that was tinted through the lens of, not poverty, but of a lower-middle-class existence in what he was now realizing was a poorer part of the world.
Luminous Sky City was the polar opposite. Every brick exuded wealth. The streets were clean, the people sharply dressed and well-groomed as they milled about. There wasn't a single piece of trash to be seen, no matter how hard he looked. It even smelled good. Like woodland and flowers. Just breathing the air made him feel refreshed.
Opening the door to the administration building, he blushed as he walked to the front desk. People stared at him, no doubt wondering what smelly hole he had crawled out of. Despite being dressed the same as everyone else, Luke felt out of place, acutely aware of the dead leaves in his hair and the grime covering every inch of his skin. Not to mention the smell coming off him. It was bad.
"Hi. How can I help you today?" a woman in white robes sitting behind the desk asked him.
"I have this." Luke slid the token Nefkha had given him earlier across her desk, idly wondering what the deal was with the robes. In Max's memories, most people dressed simply in pants and shirts—dresses if they were women.
Accepting it gingerly with both hands, she looked at the token and then at him, seeming stunned that he possessed it. "One moment, please. I'll be right back." She got up and disappeared farther into the building.
Luke stood there awkwardly for a minute as he looked around the room. Waiting rooms, he concluded, were the same everywhere in the world.
A few painfully long moments later, she returned with another woman. Unlike the white robes the receptionist was wearing, she was dressed in the same black robes he wore.
"Hi. I'm Arya." She stepped around the desk and shook his hand. "Welcome to the Luminous Sky Society. We're glad to have you join us. If you follow me, I can take you to your accommodations and get you properly sorted out."
"Right." Luke nodded as he walked out after her. "So … what does the society actually do?"
She looked at him weirdly. "Did the Elder not explain anything to you?"
Scratching the back of his head, he struggled to come up with a response. Nefkha had made incorrect assumptions about who Luke was and what he was capable of. Whatever the society did, he expected Luke to already be aware of it. Instead Luke was completely new to the world and had no idea how anything here worked.
"He mentioned that the dress code is pretty strict?"
She stared at him blankly. "That's it?"
"Um. Yeah. Was he supposed to tell me more?"
Suddenly she stopped and stepped into his personal space. Before he knew what was happening, her hand had snaked through the front of his robes and was resting right over his heart.
"What are you doing?" Luke asked.
"What are you doing here?" she asked in turn.
"Nefkha asked me to join …"
She blinked at him owlishly. "I don't sense any mana in your body. You haven't even begun to draw it in. You're as mortals as a mortal can be."
He stepped away from her as he processed her accusation. He was, in fact, as mortal as a mortal could be. Largely on account of the fact that he had no clue how not to be.
"Is that a problem?"
Her cheeks turned red. "It's … not a problem. It's just unusual. Typically, those who join outside of the examinations already have a foundation in cultivating mana. That's how they catch the society's attention."
Mana—his status screen had said he had none and that he regenerated none of it every second.
"I don't really know how to do that," Luke confessed, thinking over his words carefully. While Nefkha thought he was a powerful man who had fallen on some hard times, he actually had no idea what he was doing. Seeing as he had no foundation in cultivating mana, now was a good time to get the basics explained to him. If Nefkha looked into his actions, he was likely to assume that he was playing a role—pretending to be an ignorant mortal he had picked up from the outside. While, in fact, an ignorant mortal was exactly who he was.
She opened her mouth and then closed it, before nodding. "Why don't you get settled in, and I'll arrange for someone who can walk you through what you need to know tomorrow," she said, leading him to a house on the outskirts of the city.
"Is this all for me?" Luke walked into an empty living room, fully stocked with tasteful furniture.
"Yes. All members are provided with accommodations and meals. There is a copy of our handbook along with a few other introductory texts already in your house. I'd suggest you acquaint yourself with them. They should answer a lot of your questions. Someone will bring you food later in the evening."
"Thank you."
Exploring the house, he was pleasantly surprised by it. While it wasn't extravagant, all the furniture was of very high quality, and besides lacking a kitchen, everything else in the house was largely what he expected. Peeking his head into the rooms as he went, he nodded at the large washroom, which thankfully possessed all the modern conveniences he was used to. He found a room with a yoga mat in the middle surrounded by shelves, which, save for two books and one scroll, were empty. The last room turned out to be a standard bedroom.
Half an hour and a very thorough shower later, he stepped into the meditation room. Peeling a banana that had been left in a basket full of food on his porch, he eyed the books on the shelf. Picking one at random, he decided to try something he had wanted to do for a while.
Add to inventory. He gave the Seed a mental command and, with a flicker, the book was gone. Excitedly, he called up his status.
Status | Quests | Inventory
Capacity: 0.359 kg of 104 kg
Items:
God Seed (Soul Bound)
Tier—Primordial
An artifact forged from the primal energy of chaos by ⠗⠑⠙⠁⠉⠞⠑⠙. Guides wielder in their pursuit of godhood.
Book
Tier—Mortal
Just as expected, an entry, this time lacking a description, appeared under the one for the Seed. His eyes lingered at the top of his inventory page, where a new piece of information had popped up. He frowned as he tried to make sense of the capacity before realizing that it was just his Strength attribute multiplied by his Constitution attribute and converted to kilograms. While it was disappointing that he didn't have a limitless amount of space, he was happy with the current capacity. Being able to carry a little over a hundred kilograms in mass was nothing to scoff at. More than that, the limit should also improve as those two attributes did. Thinking back to Nefkha's flashing ring, he guessed the ability might not be exclusive to him alone.
Leafing through the books, his eyes traced over the foreign letters. Possessing Max's body had come with some welcome side benefits, besides having a body, chief among them the ability to read and write in this world's language.
The first book contained all the rules and duties expected of a member of Luminous Sky and read like those terms and conditions you had to agree to before seemingly doing anything on the internet—contracts Luke had never once bothered reading. Thankfully the book was rather brief.
The society was essentially a gathering of people who all had the common goal of pursuing godhood. There were many challenges to doing so, some of them difficult if not impossible to overcome alone. The society promised its members, among other things, a place where they could exchange resources and learn from those farther along the path, a place to live, and security.
In return, its members were required to contribute to it. All disciples had to fulfill a quota of missions. The minimum required was one a month, but there were provisions for missions that took longer. The society also acted as a police force in the area. All the cities, towns, and even villages in the region sent monthly tributes, and in exchange the society dealt with any supernatural threats.
In retrospect, it seemed obvious to Luke that in a world full of gods, there would also be monsters that mortals were unequipped to handle.
The society was divided into ranks, which determined certain privileges and described a person's power. White robes indicated a person who had attempted to cultivate before being demoted to clerical duties. They took care of the society's more menial tasks. Black robes were one above that. Those that wore them were referred to as Outer Disciples of the society, and from what Luke had seen on his short trip through the town, they were the most populous of the society's members.
The Mortal tier itself was divided into three broad ranks by the society, early, mid-, and late. Outer Disciples belonged to the early and midranks of the tier. Above them were the late-Mortal-tier individuals, who wore blue robes. The divisions inside the Mortal tier, however, weren't actual thresholds, according to the book. Instead, they were meant to signify a difference of ability. Anyone could have their abilities tested, and where you scored within certain parameters informed your rank and progress in the Mortal tier. Those at the Mortal tier ranged anywhere from barely stronger than the average human to having, as the handbook described it, the strength of a hundred men.
If you managed to surpass the Mortal tier and enter the Warrior tier, you would automatically graduate from being a disciple and instead be given red robes and the title of Elder along with an abode on one of the peaks. At the moment, the society only had nine people in the Warrior tier. All of them held considerable influence over the society and had a say in how it operated.
The ability to fly was the hallmark of being in the Warrior tier. Any who demonstrated the ability were instantly promoted to the rank of Elder.
So that's what Nefkha meant by surpassing the threshold.
Having a rough idea of the society's rules, Luke closed the book and looked at the scroll. Smiling at the novelty of it, he unfurled it. His eyes instantly widened at the contents. With the title Ascending Past Mortality, it immediately held his interest.
His eyes raked over each word, careful not to miss the slightest detail. After he was done, he put it to the side and sighed. The path of climbing past the Mortal tier was surprisingly simple. All you had to do was exercise.
According to the scroll, the world was full of energy called mana. Living beings, like humans, animals, and even plants, could absorb mana from the environment and learn to manipulate it after accumulating it inside their bodies.
Unfortunately, the ability to gather mana wasn't something that people were born with. Instead, you had to push yourself to your limits, and eventually—how long it actually took depended on something the scroll referred to as talent—your body would develop an affinity for mana, beginning a process of automatic accumulation. It would then use the energy to make your body better and better, until you surpassed the limitations of mortality.
Eventually, you would even gain the ability to sense the mana entering your body and learn to exert influence over it, choosing what you improved and by how much. The ability to sense and direct mana, however, wasn't guaranteed, and you would be eternally stuck at the middle tier of the Mortal realm.
Recalling Arya being able to detect his mana, he concluded that she would likely enter the late stage, if not the Warrior tier itself eventually.
Having learned the rather mundane secret to godhood, Luke stripped out of his robes, down to his underclothes, and started doing push-ups. When he couldn't do any more push-ups, he rolled onto his back and started doing sit-ups. When even those became impossible for him, he stood up and started doing squats until he could barely move. Sweat beaded on his body as he pushed himself further than he had ever pushed himself before. Godhood, a carrot that he couldn't help but chase.
When the sun set over the horizon, Luke quickly rinsed the sweat off his body and stumbled onto his bed.
Waking up sorer than he ever remembered being, he couldn't take the smile off his face.
Status | Quests | Inventory
Name: Lukas King
Tier: Mortal
Mana: 0
Rate: 10% per hour
Strength: 8 > 9
Agility: 9
Constitution: 13
Arcana: 0
Stat Points: 1
Bloodline: Locked. Conditions not met. (0/10,000)
Charges: 7/10
His status had changed. Not only had his strength increased by one, but he had also gained one stat point, along with a counter next to his Bloodline. Eyeing the stat point, he dropped it where he thought he needed it most—the Arcana stat.
Status | Quests | Inventory
Name: Lukas King
Tier: Mortal
Mana: 6.5
Rate: 10% per hour
Strength: 9
Agility: 9
Constitution: 13
Arcana: 1
Stat Points: 0
Bloodline: Locked. Conditions not met. (0/10,000)
Charges: 7/10
Surprisingly, he didn't feel any different, nor could he feel the presence of mana inside him. Frowning, he analyzed the numbers. His total mana was half his Constitution stat, while the regen rate was unchanged at ten percent an hour.
Maybe I don't have enough mana to even notice it? Six and a half is decent for other things, but maybe not much when it comes to mana. I'll have to add more points to the Arcana stat and see if it makes any difference.
Deciding it was what it was, he rolled out of bed and got ready for the day.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Just in time.