1 The gods' curse

"As humans, we live in a strange world, estranged of our self because of ourselves.

Why? Because we're cursed by the gods! Cursed to be born with one body for two souls! Cursed to be born with an evil as "soulmate"!

It took us decades of research and more than half of the human population being killed and possessed by those evil souls - and killing each other - to find the evils' weakness and exploit it!

We found that every evil is inoffensive for the human soul when being born because in order to strengthen itself it needs to accumulate the energy of this world! And as you may know, the human soul is already strong by nature because it was nurtured by its mother during the pregnancy! So! We just had to find a mean to either kill or seal this abomination!

BUT! We found something wayyy better!

We found a mean to subdue the evil souls! While being more dangerous for us than being killed because of the chance of losing control, a sealed evil soul permits its owner to cultivate! Cultivate!

The curse was turned into a blessing! We were more sly than the gods themselves!

And we became more powerful than ever before!

Before this catastrophe, we were just some puny humans in the eyes of the other races but now they are the puny ones in our eyes HaHAHAHAHA !!"

"Hahahaa!! The teacher is right! The teacher is right! We are strong! Strong!"

"Haha! Gustav Tarray transformed us into gods!"

"You are right Duno! Without him, we would only live a worthless life while being subdued but the other races!"

...

Look at this band of fanatics... now even my classmates are like you professor.

It's said that a good professor is someone that is passionate about his subject and inspiring when he speaks.

But I am sorry professor... in my opinion your fanaticism when teaching history to the class is more of a source of evil than excitement. Because what you are saying is turning your already ignorant students into ignorant fanatics.

The truth is that as of today we are just barely on an equal footing with our neighbouring races but we don't really know about the others. The world - Titanya as we call it - is just too big and we know nothing about it because we are too weak. Too weak on average to move out of our motherland.

I learned all of this from the old books that my uncle gave me. He is a scholar and he is doing research' on some kind of objects and each time I see him he lends me one of his history books while saying: « Listen, Lala, learning history is key to comprehend the world but like everything else: one source of knowledge is always risky. So you should learn from multiple books. And maybe one day, you will have enough knowledge to have a hope of becoming the disciple of a cultivator ! ». But as of today I still don't understand how knowledge can help me becoming the disciple of a cultivator... even though he said it at least twenty times already.

Well, I'll have to play a little with the professor. I don't want them to become fanatics so we have to change the subject... and I don't want to be marginalized by others because I didn't seem interested in the lecture.

"Professor Galmon ! I have a question!"

"...!"

Ha! I think my question was a little too abrupt. Everyone stopped laughing because of me! Haaaaa I'm so dumb! Now I have to ask something pertinent in order to have some respect from those fanatics...

The professor woke up from his dream by my question and seemed a little frustrated.

He moved his gaze in the direction where everyone was looking at and seemed surprised to find that the student who asked the question was me. A seemingly ordinary and yet indifferent girl.

"Ha - if I remember correctly your name is Lala Delmondo? What's your question?"

Wrong! Why does everyone always add this « do » after my last name!

"I am Lala Delmon professor. My question is about the technique used to subdue the evil. I heard that nowadays we have five different techniques used in order to subdue them. But why do we have five techniques if the first one worked perfectly?"

"Ha sorry about that! Well, everyone, the remarque of Miss Delmon is very good and it was exactly the next subject of this lecture! Why do we have five different techniques to subdue the evil souls if the first one worked perfectly fine? Any guess?"

Phew! This random question saved me!

With that everyone seems to forget about me and start to calm down while thinking hard on this question.

But I'm pretty sure none of them will find the right answer because it's not something we normally think when we think of the evils.

Well! One student seems to have an answer. Oh, it's Dex, he is the first of the class and he is always studying. In my opinion, he is the only one that can potentially find the right answer because he might have read that in a book.

Professor Galmon saw him.

"Yes? Dex what is your answer?"

"I think that the answer lies in the talent of the evil! The better the talent, the more powerful the technique!"

"Mmh ... So it means that in your opinion each evil is born with a talent and that there are five levels of talents? Interesting... it's the -"

Wrong answer. While there are different levels of talents, there are way more than five. Each human is unique and so are the evils. Depending on the human's temper an evil power may vary. Some evils are more axed on pure strength while other on strategy. Every evil is totally different but a seal is still a seal. And the seal that we use to subdue them is powerful enough to support every level of talent. The only problem comes when your evil is too strong for it. When that happens you have to change the seal. It's really dangerous because you have to destroy the first one and then create a new one by yourself. There are four levels of cultivation so there are four seals for the evils.

The last one is used for criminals. We seal their evil totally so that they can't even accumulate power. It's the equivalent of crippling them.

"right answer! Well almost haha! We use different techniques - seals if you prefer - depending on the talent of your evil. But let me tell you first that as commoners we all have an evil with the same level of talent. Our evil's talent is called Level 1 of talent. Only one person every couple of millions can have something superior. With our level of talent, we can only meditate every other day and let it stagnate but it's said that we are still more powerful than the other races haha! Where you were partially wrong was that there are only four levels of talent not five! The last one is a very powerful seal used for criminals so as to render their evil totally useless! The first one was invented in 3439 by Gustav Tarray, the famous scientist who transformed us into cultivators! The others were invented in—"

WTF ?! Th-this isn't riiiight !!