Birth of the Legendary Battle Mage

A New Friend From Another World

“Wow, this is astonishing. A soul, or in more appropriate terms, a spirit.” This existence was truly fascinating for one who is a magician, or was, as he is now. The luminous ball of smoke approached Julius slowly, hovering at about chest level. It had a sky blue colour, and seemed to be something like a condensed ball of smoke, at the size of a palm, emitting faint lighting. When it got closer to Julius, the smoke started dissipating, flowing around the core (the ball of smoke), developing a shape and form. When it was done, it took on the appearance of a person. The core was still visible through its translucent body, and the smoke from earlier still emanated from the core, flowing through the body to the surface.

“Thank you for coming. Heh.” The soul gave a tired expression as he finished his sentence. This was the first time he had seen anyone here, and the fact that the first person he discovered actually approached the cave was relieving. He was already nearing the limit of staying in the mortal world, and soon his soul would decimate.

“So, uhm, I can see you are not alive. You must have been pretty strong to survive in this environment. Who are you exactly?” Now Julius took a step back. He was now a normal human being in the literal sense of it. If this soul decided to possess or harm his body in any way, he would be powerless.

“Don’t worry about anything, I have no intention of harming you. Counter to what you might think, I am relatively powerless in this form.”

“Then who are you?”

“Ahh, this might sound strange, but hear me out.” The soul introduced himself to be Li Zhou, a cultivator from an unknown land. He wasn’t talented in cultivation at all, what took others two years to learn took him five. Unfortunately, he was part of the children taken away by an evil sect/organisation that practiced demonic arts. He barely made it out of the filtering, where many children who were weak died, but was stuck as an outer sect disciple because of his poor talent. In a land where the strong survive and the weak perish, the only thing that separated their much hated sect from the other so called good sects was the fact that they went the route of demonic cultivation. Eventually, at the age of thirty two(32), war broke out within the cultivation world, with all the other sects ganging up to destroy their demonic sect.

He, Li Zhou didn’t even get to take part in the war because he died before it even started proper. As a way to increase his survivability rate, he snuck into the restricted area of the fourth library by chance, where only elders were allowed, in there, he found a scroll in the forbidden section of the restricted area that had no title, and seemed to have been recorded from ancient times. He carried and study this mysterious scroll. The scroll itself gave off an ominous and powerful aura, and in the demonic sect, the more evil the aura, the better. He was sure this scroll was the missing part of his life’s equation. When he studied this scroll and used whatever cultivation method was left inside, he would definitely become one of the most powerful cultivators.

At first, after opening the book he couldn’t understand what was written because it was ancient language, but after studying different ancient language that were similar to the one in the scroll, he was able to grasp some things from the scroll. Not long after, he started having weird dreams. He would dream about being in a place that seemed to not be within his continent, as though in a different world. But after a few hours pass in the unnaturally realistic dream he would wake up in his world. This continued until the day before the war was to begin officially, when he suddenly found himself here in this forest. Immediately he appeared here, the pressure from an unknown energy suppressed him, it was so intense that all he could do was to cover himself in qi to be able to barely walk. He found this cave the next day, and immediately deployed a protective talisman over the cave, creating an array over it. At this point, he had run out of qi leaving a little and since there was no qi in this world; he died not long after. With his remaining life force, he used a ghost technique and deployed an array around the cave so that his soul would remain in the world of the living, so that he could find a way to get back. But it was pointless as throughout his years of staying here he encountered neither human nor animal, and now his soul was close to decimating, Seeing Julius was a pleasant gift from the heavens to him, at least he could converse with his fellow man before dying completely.

After Li finished his story, Julius rubbed his chin gently, “This is even more fascinating than the fact that you are a ghost. The idea of another world existing outside this one, even spatial and dimensional magic has no record of anyone discovering this kind of phenomenon.” This idea was very much mesmerizing to Julius. After going through distinct possibilities and creating countless hypothesis, he and Li seemed to have been well acquainted. He proceeded to tell Li about his own story of his childhood up to the point where he was betrayed and dumped here to die. After much remorse, Julius educated Li about the world he was in currently, and to their surprise, the two worlds had many similarities, with minor differences. For example, both worlds had a mortal planeealm which was earth, the underworld/demonic realm, and the heavenly planeealm. In Li’s world, the heavenly planeealm was inhabited by those cultivators that achieved immortality basically becoming gods, while in Julius’s world, it was a place where the ancient gods stayed, and unlike Li’s world, not anyone can become immortal or even become a god. The underworld or demonic realm contained demons and demonic creatures, which was the same in both worlds. These among other things like this world being filled with mana while the other with qi, were what differentiated the two worlds.

“Hmm, this is very interesting. But since one cannot become an immortal in this world, doesn’t that mean that, if a mortal could use cultivation to achieve immortality, he could become a god in this world?” Li suggested to Julius this idea. On hearing this, Julius looked down to the dirt beneath his feet as he sat on a boulder, his mind going through what he just heard.

“That is a possibility only if you could travel through both worlds. Hmm.” As he thought about the idea, another idea entered his mind. Immediately, he faced up to look at Li with a slight grin on his face. “What if I substituted qi for mana? What would happen then?” On hearing this, Li’s eyes widened.

“That is a possibility. It could actually work!”

“As of present, my mana core is no more so it would work even better since there’ll be nothing counter acting the new flow of mana into my body.”

After deciding to try out this idea, Julius left the cave the next day in the morning to settle his empty stomach. On getting to the crater where the demonic beast lay dead, he discovered that the meat had finally started to rotten, so he took his equipments over to the tree with big roots to get his clothes, before returning to the cave. He later found some fruits to eat and before long, it was night. Li taught him some cultivation techniques that night. Although it was hard to grasp at first, he soon figured it out.

Li complemented Julius, saying he had an amazing talent for cultivation, if he was in his world, he would be considered a prodigy. Although because of his age, he won’t be able to go far in cultivation, and although he understood the technique, Julius still needed to practise it before he really decide if his body was good for cultivation.

The next morning, very early before the sun rose, Julius was already up ready to start cultivating. But before then, he needed to open his dantians, which would be the first step before actual cultivation.