"What is this?" Ezekiel asked
"It will help explain everything, it will show you your powers, your emotions. Ariel appeared a millennium ago and has helped humans grow stronger much faster. Not much is known about it, but it only exists in the Land of Ariel" Adeline answered, talking as if she was reading from a book.
~Personal Status
-Name: Ezekiel Ackman
-Emotion: Void
-Emotion: Emotionless
'What in the world am I reading' Ezekiel thought to myself baffled by the title,
~Due to being the first Human from the land of humans to awaken Ariel Retainer has tricked Ariel, a feat never before attained
~Perks
-Ariel will increase the strength of abilities during awakenings
-A deeper understanding of the retainer's powers
-Mask of Ariel has been obtained
"What is an awake-" Ezekiel was about to finish my question to Adeline when
~Level of Awakening: Reborn
-You have been Reborn, and your old life is inconsequential to the journey ahead, be prepared for a life of the likes you have never before seen
~Quality of Awakening: Emperor
~Quality of Awakening: Mythic
~Retainer viewed his own family dying in front of him, causing a profound change within. A desire for power unattainable had sprouted. He was forced to lock away his emotions in order to survive as a mortal. 4 years of nothing pursued him until he found a chance to obtain what he was looking for. Finally, destroying the cage he himself had created.
~Retainer put a veil of darkness on his emotions, not allowing them to see the light. He had locked himself in darkness lost and alone. It is only fitting that he destroys his enemies with that very same darkness.
~You are the Heir of Darkness, you can mask your presence when hiding in within the darkness. Even if there is only a small portion of darkness you'll be able to hide.
~True Darkness is immovable, but you can create your own darkness and shape it into your own will. Imagination and power are your only chains.
~Your abilities tower above all other darkness abilities, they are useless against you
~Your natural presence has been diminished and will only continue to diminish as you grow
~Darkness needs a home, you can collect the Darkness within the hearts of others, adding it to your power.
~Retainer has hidden away from his emotions, although not a perfect example, Denial can be used as a substitute.
~Denial does not foster the growth of emotions, which contradicts the Land of Ariel, an exception has been made. In order to grow Retainer must move away from denial. Fostering all emotions instead of denying them.
~Retainer has become the first person to move away from their emotion
~Perks
-Retainer feels emotions at 10x the intensity to help understand his emotions quicker
-Retainer intuition will become stronger due to the increase in emotional intensity
~Retainer has become the first person from Land of Humans to become a retainer of Ariel
~Perks
-Able to travel between worlds
-Will be indistinguishable from the people of the Land of Ariel
-Able to speak and read all languages of all the lands
~Retainer locked himself away from everyone even his own emotions, causing him to be alone
~Darkness has no equal, it is alone and never-ending
~Burden
-If Retainer finds another to be his true equal he will be bonded in unimaginable ways to his equal
~Name: Ezekiel Ackman
~Emotion: Denial
~Awakening level: Reborn
~Attribute: True Darkness
~Attribute level: Mythic
~Attribute Abilities
-Cloak of Darkness
-You are Darkness, you can mask your presence hiding from others in places that seem impossible to hide in. Darkness lurks everywhere, even when it seems impossible even it seems there is only light, you will be able to find the darkness to hide in. The more vitality you use, the more hidden you are. (Requires Vitality)
-Heir of Darkness
-Darkness is immovable, that's why you can create your own darkness from within. You can shape your darkness into whatever you imagine, the only limit is your supply of darkness
-Darkness Immunity
-Your abilities tower above all other darkness abilities, they are useless against you
-Darkness Assimilation
-Darkness needs a home, you can collect the darkness within the hearts of others turning it into your own power (Feeds the power of the Heir of Darkness)
~Side Effect of Denial: One True Equal
-If Retainer finds another to be his true equal he will be bonded in unimaginable ways to said person
~Titles
-Emotional Stunted Trickster
-Social Loner
-Trying To Be Different
'Now this is interesting' Ezekiel thought to himself never imagining something like this ever happening
"Any questions?"
Adeline's voice snapped him out of his thoughts, sadly bringing him back into reality.
"What's a side effect?" it had been one of the only questions plaguing him, Ariel had explained and answered all the questions Ezekiel could've had, but the side effect had been confusing him.
"The side effect changes from person to person and is dependent on your emotion, sometimes it's a side effect that you just have to live with. For example, with Anger a side effect may be at times when you channel your emotion your judgment will be reduced. Sometimes there needs to be a catalyst to cause your emotion to occur, but not many people share their side effect, cause it's usually seen as a weakness." As she uttered the last sentence a glint of sorrow passed through her eyes causing an awkward silence to descend.
They had decided to start walking, trying to create even more distance between themselves and those men.
While walking Ezekiel began to admire the forest
The trees were huge and unless you looked up all you would see was brown bark and that same image went on for miles. Although he tried to admire the scenery the forest was very repetitive, leaving Ezekiel bored so after a couple of moments of silence, he asked another question
"What's being a Reborn and how can I use vitality?" he asked hoping to get rid of the oncoming boredom
Shaking her head, the old sorrow in Adeline's eyes seemed to disappear
"When us humans finally interact with Ariel, Ariel deems us Reborns, at this stage we get our emotion and attributes along with some basic abilities, although we are unable to use most of them due to vitality"
Ezekiel suddenly heard a branch break to his left, hiding behind a tree he peeked out to see what it was.
He looked through the trees to see a deer eating grass
"Continue," he said as soon as he witnessed the deer, not wanting to talk about both their reactions to the deer
"Vitality is the energy that courses through our body, but it can only be harnessed after evolving from Reborn, into Juvenile, once one becomes a Juvenile they'll be able to control and harness vitality."
"And one becomes a Juvenile how?" Ezekiel asked with growing curiosity about the prospect of vitality.
"Harnessing a second emotion" She answered in a grim tone,
He didn't understand why she seemed to dislike the idea of a second emotion, 'I mean you get all those fun abilities from before, all you have to do is experience another tragedy' thought to himself still wondering what the problem was
"You can harness a second emotion in two ways, first experience an extremely intense emotional reaction, which rarely happens due to the level of the reaction being exponentially higher at each level. The other way is to slowly harness other emotions through killing entities until you slay a Venomous Juvenile Entity that contains remnants of your second emotion"
"Entity? Venomous? What's that" Ezekiel asked
"Entities are creatures that have lived in the Land of Ariel since the dawn of time, they have been trying to conquer and destroy our world since the beginning of time, Entities are creatures of emotion that have fallen into hate, all the animals you see in your land, have turned into entities due to their susceptibility towards hate"
"Then what about the venomous part" He asked
"Each entity has experienced certain degrees of hate, it starts at hateful, and if an entity experiences an even larger degree of hate it will become a loathing entity, then a revulsed entity, then an abhorrent Entity, and finally a Venomous Entity," Adeline said with evident disdain in her words.
"And they are like hidden throughout the world," Ezekiel asked, in a hopeful tone
"Uhhhh kind of, but they aren't hidden, It's more like they are everywhere. Humans have 3 main cities that take up about 10 percent of the world, the rest is home to entities"
"Oh, so humans are going extinct?" he asked with some sympathy, usually he wouldn't have felt anything but in the past hour he's begun to feel again and much more intensely than ever before.
"It wasn't always like this, humans and entities used to be rather equal until the age of wars came upon us, both sides battled for centuries, and the strength on both sides reduced dramatically, but the entities seem to have an endless supply of creatures and unlike us allowing them to overwhelm us with their numbers"
"So what's the strongest human versus the strongest entity"
"Humans have 3 Highlanders, for reference it goes, Reborn, Juvenile, Prime, Pioneer, Post-Mortal, and then Highlander, and for Entities, while we don't really know, the war was a millennium ago and we haven't seen the entities strength since then"
"So you're saying, an entity could just show up one day and kill all of humanity?"
"Yes" Both of them went silent for a few seconds, Ezekiel didn't truly care about much but even for him humans going extinct didn't sit right with him
"And then they would kill all the people here as well. Of course, it's not all bad, we have many measures in place to prevent that but well" Adeline's voice became quieter with each word, allowing me to barely hear the last word
"I understand, it's a house of cards," Ezekiel said with a slight smile.
Adeline suddenly seemed to shed her gloomy mood,
"On the upside, we have begun to expand, and we have found ways to travel long distances although it takes a long time to set up. We will then send people into different Entity zones and slowly conquer areas" She said with excitement in her voice
"Couldn't the entities just use that teleportation to come right into the center of the cities?" Ezekiel asked
"The entities can't teleport, and even if they could we have plenty of prevention methods in place"
After that long conversation, Ezekiel went silent for a few minutes. He then came up with one more question
"How do we get to the Land of Ariel?"