In the dark of night, Mikolas slowly opened his eyes, looking at the electronic calendar emitting a faint glow in the bedroom, his mind momentarily struggling to comprehend its radiance as it shone fiercely brighter while he stared in the shadows.
'Had he truly regressed, or had he simply experienced an incredibly long dream?' He questioned himself ever since waking up in this world several times, and this was one of them in the dead of night.
This was a world where an energy revival of unknown origin had occurred several thousand years ago, marking a new epoch in human civilisation. But the phenomenon nicknamed the Leyrise changed more than human society alone. It affected all life on Earth.
From the birds of the sky to the insect beasts and all that scurry the earth, and even the aquatic creatures in rivers, lakes and seas, being closer to nature, all were mutated and affected by this energy.
Fortunately, humanity adapted through martial and weapon arts, research into Leyris, and powerful technology, allowing them to barely stand on equal footing with the other phenomenon that occurred as a result.
…
Gold Ridge, a large city relatively close to the outer regions of the Human Federation, was controlled by three Great Noble families: the Walkers, the Suttons, and the Chandlers.
Mikolas was a grandson of the Walker patriarch and the only male child in the second branch of the family's main line. Three years ago, a rift world opened near Gold Ridge that caused the incident.
Rift worlds were one of the phenomena that occurred after the Leyrise. Such rifts have appeared only since the primaeval flow.
Their origins remain unknown, and they manifest at random. These rift worlds are the chief reason humanity still survives, even though they were part of the problem brought forth by the Leyris, but within them lie abundant treasures, resources, and materials, along with technologies, arts, and wonders far beyond the reach of present civilisation.
They are exceedingly rare. Fewer than a thousand have appeared over several millennia, and less than half have fallen into human hands, especially those rich in resources rather than overrun by invading beasts.
Mikolas speculated they were ruins of civilisations that existed parallel to the world on Trimont—the name of the planet—but had perhaps fallen to ruin based on what was discovered within them.
Alongside treasures, rift worlds were also passageways to beings known as the Flock and their Lords. They were the sole reason for the pushback humanity faced, as the Lords possessed the ability to manipulate and infect animals and humans to such a degree that they evolved and affected the world tremendously.
Thus, when a rift world surfaced near Gold Ridge, the great noble families moved at once. They sealed the news, mobilised their forces, and sent nearly all descendants older than ten to explore its depths. Unfortunately, once they went in, they were never seen again. Not only did no one return, but the rift world itself disappeared along with them, a strange phenomenon that couldn't be revealed to the public, as the disappearance of a rift world was unheard of even to the higher echelons of the world government and its bodies.
Mikolas, who was thirteen at the time, had also been on the list of explorers. But he happened to be suffering from a serious illness, which was how he was fortunate enough to be spared from the disappearance. Among Gold Ridge's noble Houses, Mikolas's generation already had far more females than males, and there wasn't a single male younger than him. The result was that, apart from him, all the males of the three great families were wiped out by that rift world in one fell swoop.
With their male lines erased, the families' prestige collapsed. They stood on the brink of being swallowed by rival powers from neighbouring quadrants and cities, were it not for the fact that each house still retained practitioners and ascendants at the Fifth Greater Ring, enough strength to deter immediate encroachment.
However, misfortunes rarely come alone. If Mikolas's memories from before his regression were true, Gold Ridge would face a cataclysm in three years: a Greater Lord leading a flock nicknamed the Black Tide, followed by a dozen or more lesser fiends, would invade without end.
The onslaught would force Gold Ridge and its great houses into a battle they could not withstand. Desperate, they petitioned Skysea, the nearest Quadrant city, for aid.
Skysea answered their plea, but at a price.
As its name suggested, Gold Ridge was famed for gold, which came in two forms: its natural deposits of Leycoris, formed when the primaeval flow mixed with gold veins during the Leyrise phenomenon, and its reputation as a haven that hosted beauties of all kinds, an effect of the land itself.
During the Leyrise phenomenon, many biological and physical changes occurred, and humanity evolved alongside them. Gold Ridge, which had been a large country by old-world standards before the Federation union, bore a unique legacy: its men and women had been transformed at the genetic level into wondrous beauties, with the effect more pronounced especially among the great houses. The envoy from Skysea demanded that once the tide was repelled, the houses would submit as subhouses under Skysea's domain.
To the great elder matriarch who remained, the intent of this bargain was plain. Rather than bow, the women of the great houses chose death, falling alongside a swathe of the Flock.
Mikolas died that day. As he charged the tide with his grandmother, mother, and elder sisters, a chime rang in his ear, and an indescribable force seized him before he vanished into a world without light.
Before awakening, regressed to the past. Rebirth, or the end of a dream? He could not tell. But by habit, after waking from a dizzying sleep, he sat cross-legged and set the last known method he remembered practising in motion, a method he had learnt not long before the Black Tide.
Cultivation was one of Leyris' byproducts. It was a phenomenon in which the human body absorbed the primaeval flow that seeped into the world through rift worlds, allowing it to acclimate, evolve, and store that energy.
Cultivation was divided into several stages: rotations, rings, and systems. Systems were the greater order. Three had been discovered by the Federation Research team, namely, Minor Rings, Greater Rings, and Grand Rings. Each system contained about nine rings, named after the planets, and each ring held nine rotations, or levels.
From the fifth rotation of the second Minor Ring, Mikolas's cultivation surged upwards—sixth, seventh—racing on.
...
As his circulation increased, the golden-purple rod beneath Mikolas's crotch stood erect like a pillar, growing larger and larger until it was fuller, thicker, and longer than he remembered it being.
At this point, Mikolas's cultivation had reached the ninth circulation. Just one more step, and he could advance into the third ring.
Mikolas immediately stopped cultivating. Although continuing would allow him to advance into the fourth ring without obstacles, experience from his past life had taught him that once he entered the next circulation, that thing wouldn't soften again. How would he go out then?
Now he had confirmed it: he truly had been reborn, not merely dreaming. The current existed. His previous rank from when he was sixteen was the same. And switching on the light in the room, his room was also the same.
"I truly regressed—but how?" he wondered, standing and staring around. The more he thought about it, the more questions arose. But before he could dwell on his regression, another thought came: the Black Tide.
Although Gold Ridge lay in the outer regions near the Leylines, it wasn't at the very edge. How could the Black Tide from the half-world suddenly emerge right at their door?
Secondly, the great houses of Gold Ridge. To his knowledge, each house had connections with the Federation, and if not them, then a holy land. How did that family from Skysea dare covet his city? And when Gold Ridge suffered the tide's disaster, why was there no response from them at all?
Of course, these questions could be unravelled later. The urgent priority now was how to deal with the tide.
Following the family cultivation technique step by step clearly wouldn't work. Even if the Walker house's current pillar of support—his grandmother, the grand matriarch Walker Lewis—spared nothing and broke through with all her might, in three years, she would at most reach the early Fifth Greater Ring. Dealing with over a dozen fiends would be utterly impossible, let alone the greater lord that accompanied them.
If Mikolas forcibly cultivated the technique he had brought with him, that would be no problem. Although the northern essence from the primaeval flow here was several times more sparse than in the place he had inherited it from, with the intensity of this cultivation technique, never mind three years, even just a year would be enough for him to easily join the fray against a fiend.
However, the side effects of this technique were too… how could he put it? Abundant. He had to first find a method to resolve or counter the effects.