บท 3: The Sanctuary
Somewhere in Faea, the Freshlife Continent...
A flash of blinding light shone for just a fraction of a second. And then there he was, Alkhael's new physical body, sprawling on the ground, completely naked.
"God damn it. That was a really rough way of travel," grunting loudly, the young man lifted his body off the ground.
Feeling cool breeze swept his skin without any resistance, Alkhael could not help but realize that he was completely naked. "Oh, shit!" He quickly looked around for anything to wear. And he saw them, all of the items he purchased with his creation points... scattered all around him carelessly.
But, just as he was about to collect those things, he stopped... frozen in confusion and fear, as he now saw completely where he was.
This place was a horrible... really horrible ruin. Burned down wooden buildings... blood... mangled corpses of humans and beasts... stomach-turning smells... unnatural silence... chilling atmosphere...
With panicked expression, he quickly grabbed his purchased bag, opened it forcefully that it tore down a little, grabbed and shoved in every single thing around him that he thought were his, without even bothering himself to wear anything.
As a chilling growl was heard from behind, he did the single thing that had been on his mind ever since he saw this terrible situation he was in. He grabbed the last item within his eyesight, a glittering crystal key which looked really fragile, and crushed it.
Another flash of blinding light appeared, and Alkhael disappeared from that place along with everything he had taken, leaving only one left shoe... the one that he hadn't managed to take with him.
...
The Sacred Sanctuary...
Once more, a flash of blinding light... and Alkhael was there, squatting down without wearing anything, with a slightly bulging up bag held tightly in his left hand.
Alkhael quickly scanned his surroundings. Slowly, his pale face started to regain its color and the tension on his face started to relax. It was a safe place.
"Oh, God... oh my... Damn it!" He panted, letting out quick breaths from his lungs loudly and rapidly. "Luckily... luckily the purchase of that <<Access to Sanctuary>>... came... came together with the instruction on... how to use it."
Trying to calm down the rapid beating of his heart, Alkhael looked at his surroundings more carefully.
He was in the middle of what-seemed-to-be the most beautiful garden he had ever seen in his life. All around, there were lush trees, bushes, and grasses, as well as an amazing numbers of colorful flowers. There were also a lot of colorful butterflies flying all around. It was quite a beautiful sight. This view looked like as if it came out of a fairy tale.
Looking at the plentiful fruits of many different varieties on the trees and also the large number of berries on the bushes, he didn't seem to need to worry about food for quite a long time... well, as long as he did not mind to be a vegan.
He had not seen any yet, but he could hear the sound of the birds and insects, playing a soothing harmonious melody. And, there was also relaxing sound of running water. There should be a river or stream not far from that place.
Alkhael looked up... it looked bright on one side, but there was no sun in the sky. Coupled with the wet grass under his feet and the vibrant colors of the plants and flowers which were likely caused by the dewdrops, he immediately concluded that the time was probably a very early morning.
Very quickly, Alkhael discovered another fact, as he could see rugged and tall cliffs at the background anywhere he put his sight on. This seemed to be a valley surrounded by tall cliffs.
There were some objects of interests that caught his attention as he looked all around. The first would be what seemed to be three buildings not far from there. Those buildings looked like Asian pagodas in shape, but seemed to be completely made of stones, just like ancient Hindus and Buddhist temples he had seen in his previous life.
Then, there were also a few waterfalls of various sizes decorating those faraway tall cliffs at the background. He would need to visit each of them one day as he truly enjoyed watching and listening to the sound of waterfalls. If the definition of the item that brought him here, the <<Access to Sanctuary>>, was not misleading, he would stay in this place for seven months. He had plenty of time to do so.
As a gust of cool breeze caressed his unprotected body, Alkhael was reminded that he was still completely naked. Quickly, he opened up the carrier bag in his hand, took out a set of clothing, and worn it. It was a relief for him that the clothing was of modern-style, pretty similar to what he usually wore in his past life. What he currently wore looked exactly like regular boxer underwear, collared cotton T-shirt, denim jacket, denim pants, socks, and sport shoes. All of them were of various shades of black in color as that was his favorite color in the case of clothing.
After he finished putting on his clothes, Alkhael started to walk to the direction of the stone pagodas to inspect them. They were the closest ones he could think of that very likely had anything to do with the most interesting description in the <<Access to Sanctuary>>... the most effective training place.
It took only about five minutes for the newly transmigrated young man to reach the first stone pagoda. It was actually pretty big, much bigger than what he had thought. And it was quite tall. Looking at the number of the eaves, it was a seven-tiered building. The exquisite carving that decorated almost every single part of the building gave it an impression of grandeur and majesty.
Outside the pagoda, not too far from the front door, there was a stone stele with artistic runic-like carvings. At first, Alkhael thought that they were foreign runic alphabets, but then he realized that it was just a fancy writing style in modern Roman alphabet. And it was actually a writing of an English phrase: The Way of Body Tempering.
"Oh my... How could I not consider this? Language, oh gosh... language...," he groaned, although he was not too depressed yet about it. There was nothing in the list of the items in the character creation, as far as he could remember, that was related to common tongue, the most commonly used language in Faea. It seemed very likely that the common tongue in that World of Paragons was English.
Well, at least, that was it in the original setting of his world design. He and his friends were too lazy to design a new language for just a game after all. There were some other languages that seemed to exist in Faea though. He still remembered there were some things related to that in the list of purchasable items during his avatar creation. He remembered there were at least: Book of Ancient Languages, Dictionary of Forgotten Languages, and Dictionary of the Old Eastern Tongue. He wanted to purchase them, but he simply didn't have enough points.
"Should I go inside?" Alkhael muttered, looking at the huge front door of the stone building. He hesitated for a while, before he decided... not to do so. He thought that it would be better if he could check the other pagodas first.
Alkhael walked away, following a beautiful stone path in front of the pagoda which stretched to the direction of the other two pagodas.
After just a few minutes, he reached the second pagoda. It was, in appearance, exactly the same as the first pagoda. The only thing that he could see was different was the words carved to the stone stele near the front door. It was: The Way of Soul Purification.
Not staying for too long there, he continued his exploration to the last pagoda, still following the beautifully set stone path. When he reached it, he could see that it was a pretty similar case, the same kind of building, just with different name. The words written on the stone stele this time was: The Way of Mind Enhancement.
Three stone pagodas, each with the name associated to the improvement of body, soul, and mind. It was not really hard for Alkhael to conclude that each of these buildings was the training place where he could improve the quality of his body, soul, and mind.
Alkhael took a deep breath. He needed to train himself. He urgently needed to be stronger as soon as possible. The horrible sight of the ruins he saw before he teleported himself to this sanctuary still could not be deleted from his mind. He would probably not be able to forget it for a long... long time. He would not even be surprised if it would keep coming to haunt him as daily nightmares for many-many days.
Besides, other than that terrible experience, he also remembered seeing a few alarming items that was so expensive that his whole points could not afford to purchase just one of them during his avatar creation. They were written in the list as: <<Prophecy: Invasion>>, <<Prophecy: Evil Gods' Return>>, and << Prophecy: Reign of Chaos>>.
As he could not afford to purchase any of them, he did not know exactly what they were about. But despite so, the names seemed really forbidding and threatening to him. His imagination ran incredibly wild trying to predict what they were about. He needed to be much stronger as soon as possible to give him higher chance to survive, just in case any of his worst speculations became reality.
Alkhael gritted his teeth and started to walk to the front door of the Mind Enhancement Pagoda. "Let's just do this!" He said with an expression of complete determination... and pushed the door open.
--- Time Skip: five months later...---
Still in the Sacred Sanctuary...
Alkhael stood motionlessly on the rock, eyes closed, wearing nothing but black boxer underwear. The deafening roar of the huge waterfall not far behind him, as well as the splash of the water that almost completely drenched his back did not seem to bother this guy at all. Right now, he was so focused that nothing could seem to affect him.
And then, suddenly, something of mystical nature happened to that half-naked man. His body slowly levitated upwards, as if it was unaffected by power of gravity.
This extraordinary situation seemed to also affect the environment. The soothing gust of wind, sparking drops of water caused by the waterfall splash, and gently moving fallen leaves all suddenly flew to Alkhael's body. This guy seemed to turn into an omnipotent magnet that drew any unattached lightweight objects to him.
Yet, magically, there also seemed to be an invisible barrier around him that prohibited the absorbed objects to touch him. Instead, this invisible power inexplicably forced the objects to revolve randomly around Alkhael's body.
This unfortunately didn't happen for long, as just a few seconds later, the invisible force around the young man's body soundlessly exploded, pushing away the drawn objects so violently that they seemed to turn into speeding-up bullets that crashed against anything that stood on their way.
On the rock, Alkhael landed unsteadily. A wide smile was on his face as he opened his closed eyes. He advanced. He broke through to the [Construction] stage for all of his paragon classes.
In the design of the World of Paragons, there were seven main stages for every paragon class... seven cultivation stages if they were compared to the Chinese story's terms. They were, from the lowest to the highest: [Foundation] stage, [Construction] stage, [Fortification] stage, [Expansion] stage, [Dominion] stage, [Illumination] stage, and [Exaltation] stage.
In Faea, a person without any paragon class was known as the "Classless", or more formally as the Unawakened Civilian.
Simply by acquiring a paragon class, one can enter the [Foundation] level, and were then officially known as a Foundational Paragon, or more informally as the "Digger".
The people of that level of paragon class simply needed to train the aspect of their chosen path hard enough to forcefully break through their limits. By breaking through the limits, they would get to the next level, [Construction], and be known as a Constructed Paragon, or simply, the "Builder".
Alkhael had actually reached the minimum limit for breakthrough to the [Construction] stage about two months ago. But as far as he could remember from the World of Paragon game design, there was a really tricky concept in a cross-stage level up.
In the game design, players could receive his first stage upgrade quest when they reached level seven. Once they completed that quest, their level would immediately jump to level eleven. Had the players chose to do so, they could definitely overwhelm the other players who had not upgraded their stage yet. It was because of the level gap and the cross-stage suppression.
The problem was, by doing so, they missed the attribute and skill points they could gain from level eight to level ten. So, in the later part of the game, when every player would have reached the maximum levels, those players that took the shortcut would definitely be disadvantaged.
Thus, since he was concerned about this, although there was no such concept of attribute points and skill points here, Alkhael decided to keep practicing and strengthening his foundation for two more months before he finally attempted his breakthrough. And now that he had done the breakthrough, he was pretty sure that he made the correct decision. Although, obviously, there was no way for him right now to prove it, as he did not have anyone or anything to compare to.
Alkhael stretched out his body and yawned. He felt really sleepy now, but he still needed to do one thing as he had just completed his breakthrough to the [Construction] stage. The main privilege that differentiated the Builder to the Digger, other than cross-stage suppression, was the choice of energy source.
Diggers mainly draw energy that was needed to use their skills and abilities from their stamina. Builders, on the other hand, could choose one other type of energy as their source. In other game's concept, it could be compared to a magician apprentice, who previously could only use his staff to hit the monsters, could now unlock his mana and truly use magic.
There were seven types of energy. Alkhael grinned as he remembered that his friends used to playfully call their game as the World of Seven Things rather than the World of Paragons and blamed him because of that. Well, it was indeed mostly his fault since he was the one who made most of those 'seven-types-of' designs.
He was indeed obsessed with the number seven. This might have started as he found out that his uncommon surname, Pitu, likely came from a Javanese word that meant "seven". His parents said that his great-great grandfather came from the Java Island in Indonesia after all.
Anyway, back to the seven types of energy, they were known as: [Primal], [Elemental], [Natural], [Divine], [Arcane], [Martial], and [Eldritch] types. Each type had their unique nature and characteristics. None could actually be called better than the others. Choosing one was simply just a matter of affinity and decision. As for the way of choosing...
Alkhael sat down on the rock in a lotus position, closed his eyes and started to focus his attention to the dark-red innate gem on his chest. Within a few seconds, his consciousness seemed to return to the avatar creation sphere. It was almost exactly the same.
The items on the list this time were much more limited though. And his points were completely gone. In exchange, there were four sparkling silver diamonds and one glowing golden diamond. That seemed to be the new type of currency to use here.
At the top of the list, there were the choices of energy source, which as far as he could remember, didn't exist previously. Since he had already planned what to choose, Alkhael quickly picked the [Primal] energy, at the cost of one silver diamond.
[Primal] energy was actually the raw energy formed by internal, inexhaustible, life spark. The greater the user's desire to live and the stronger his survival instinct were, the more primal energy could be generated deep within his mind, body, and soul. As for the amount that one could utilize, that actually depended on his intrapersonal wisdom (his understanding of himself) and the quality of his body, mind and soul.
Other than the selections of the energy source, in the list, there were also choices of possible new class skills and skill upgrades. Without wasting too much time, Alkhael decided to use two silver diamonds to upgrade two of his skills: <Pinnacle Path of Body> and <Inscription Mastery>, practically doubling their effectiveness.
The upgraded <Pinnacle Path of Body> changed its name into <Celestial Path of Body>. This was an obvious choice for Alkhael, since greater physical quality meant higher chance of survival for him. Besides, his [Trinity Human Eltalent] would later balance the significant impact the passive skill had done to his body quality toward those of his mind and soul qualities. This practically increased his development in all three aspects..
For the upgrade of the <Inscription Mastery> into <Greater Inscription Mastery>... Well, he hadn't gotten any chance to use <Inscription Mastery> yet as he didn't have any tool and ingredient to do so, but that was the easiest source of income he could rely on, in the near future.
Before using the last silver diamond he possessed, Alkhael navigated the list to the grayed out skill names under [Sanctifist] class. He could not obtain the skills here previously because he did not have the class.
But now, he was at the [Construction] stage and possessed the <<Fate Stone>> which was symbolized by the golden diamond. If the world system had not been changed, the hidden cheat-code trick could be used. He quickly selected the grayed out <Mind Purity>, praying wholeheartedly that it would work.
And it really worked. The <Mind Purity> was now his, at the cost of the <<Fate Stone>> that he instinctively felt disappearing from his possession.
Alkhael felt as if his consciousness would glow in delight, because there was one more hidden feature he could automatically exploit now that he had all three <Purity> skills.
'Combine <Purity> skills... Please, make it work,' voiceless scream reverberated from every part of Alkhael's consciousness.
And again, it worked. The <Physique Purity>, <Soul Purity>, and <Mind Purity> melded together into one skill, the <Trinity Purity>. Feeling really delighted, Alkhael used his last silver diamond, which basically was the condensed skill points, to upgrade it.
Immediately the passive skill changed its name into <Greater Trinity Purity>. Now, his general resistance against negative statuses and overall regeneration could be compared to those of a superhuman. His chance of survival had again increased significantly.
As his conscience returned to his body, Alkhael felt that all of the muscles in his well-sculpted body ached all over. The pain seemed to even seep to his bones. Furthermore, his fatigue and drowsiness also almost reached their peak.
Awkwardly, Alkhael forced himself to jump down to the shallow part of the waterfall's river. He dragged his exhausted body to the river bank where soft green grasses grew. There, sprawling on the grass, still only wearing wet boxer underwear, and seemingly without any care of the world, Alkhael fell into a deep sleep... while his mind flashed back to what had happened since he came to this place.
These five months had been rough time for Alkhael. Every day, he trained like mad in the first floors of the three stone pagodas. It was not easy. No. In fact, it could even be said... torturous.
The training place of Body Tempering Pagoda utilized randomly transforming landscapes and a self-regenerating combat puppet. The training was always a real combat simulation in a tricky landscape that forced him to do a lot of parkour moves.
Pain, bruises, flesh injury, and even broken bones were the common results of the training. Fortunately, the fruits he consumed for meals and possibly the atmosphere of the Sanctuary location itself, helped increase his regeneration and healing rate at a ridiculously fast rate. It only took him at most two days for even the worst injury to heal. Unfortunately though, nothing in this place, as far as he knew, could lessen the pain. Thus, he could only force himself to ignore it, just like what he did just now.
Different from the first pagoda, the Mind Enhancing Pagoda, on the other hand, used a very complicated mind game involving dizzying logic, twisted science, ambiguous philosophy, and obscure memory trap. More often than not, when he was thrown out of that pagoda, he had somehow completely forgotten what he had experienced inside. This was not as physically painful as the body training. But, it did mentally exhaust him more and also gave him uncomfortable headache.
Worse yet, the mind training did not seem to be designed to give him more knowledge. It did not make him more intelligent or smarter or wiser either. He was not any better in analyzing or solving a problem. It did force him to gradually process information faster (not necessarily better though), concentrate harder and longer, and endure mental stress better.
Extremely different from the other two pagodas, the soul training in the Soul Purifying Pagoda was relatively much easier. It was pretty much a combination of excessive horror dare with a mixture of extreme temptation and annoyance.
There, Alkhael could just stand still as if he was a frozen statue. He could not control his body at all, even for just closing his eyes. And while he was in that condition, he was forced to withstand either: the illusionary assault of a really grotesque ghost, the sight of rage inducing incidents, the stomach-turning smell of blood and rotting corpses, the sight of gory and unnecessary violence, the sexual temptation of a really sexy succubus, the sight of a man turning a large variety of treasure into worthless garbage, the irritating voice of gossiping old women, and many-many more.
At first, Alkhael thought that the training's purpose was to give him exposure to the ugly side of the world. But then he was proven wrong. The things he was forced to withstand included: extremely funny comedic acts, touching and heartwarming acts of altruism, tear-jerking scenes of sorrowful loss, exciting tales of passionate friendship, and many other things he would never categorize into the ugly side of the world.
Alkhael still could not understand how that wild ride of emotions was supposed to purify his soul. And he could not see nor feel any effect from those training, but still he persevered and came to the pagoda every day. No matter how strange the training was, as he later could fulfill the requirement for a breakthrough to the next level, it must have somehow worked.
Other than training and taking necessary daily actions for a living human being like eating, sleeping, and the likes, during the early parts of those five months, Alkhael had spent most of his free time studying the two books he had purchased, the <<Common Sense Guide for Dummies in Faea>> and the <<Ritual Symbol Encyclopedia>>.
Very soon, Alkhael discovered that the thing whose usage he was not so confident about previously, the <<Common Sense Guide for Dummies in Faea>> was actually a hidden treasure. The book did not only discuss the common senses the natives had, but it also elaborated on the hidden common senses that most of the natives did not know.
The greatest finding Alkhael discovered in that book was the trick to obtain free, personalized, and suitable cultivation technique. It really surprised him greatly when he read that. He did take some inspirations from Chinese xianxia stories for the design, but he didn't even consider utilizing cultivation at all in The World of Paragon.
Anyway, since the trick was quite simple, he immediately tried it. Following the trick, he just needed to imagine the name and features of his eltalent and compressed it into a tiny shining star in his brain.
After that he needed to imagine the shining star moving slowly to his innate gem, which in his case was in his chest. Surprisingly, he managed to complete the trick in only one try successfully... and right away, a stream of knowledge related to a cultivation technique: the <Trinity Human Cultivation> flowed continuously to his mind.
The <Trinity Human Cultivation> seemed to be a really complicated technique designed to stimulate the user's mind to convert a great amount of wild energy from the user's stamina or chosen source of power. The mental power then was used to compress it into the smallest possible sphere, and guide it following certain pathway to every crucial parts of his body.
Since it was wild energy that was compressed, it should still retain its erratic nature despite the user's effort to guide it. Thus, willpower was needed to withstand the itch and pain caused by the wild nature of the energy. Simultaneously, the technique trained the user's body, mind, and willpower.
Ever since he discovered this technique, Alkhael training routine changed quite significantly. He reduced his sleep and recuperation time to practice it as much as he could. That was probably the main reason why he felt so exhausted and sleepy after breaking through the [Construction] stage.
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