Rankings and Skills

Two years passed by. Nile was now 3 years old. All three of Nile's birthdays were celebrated in secrecy, Drake and Elora invited Darren and the two maids ( old maid Kaya and Mia) prepared the food and a cake for the occasion. On his first birthday, Nile was surprised as the whole concept of celebrating birthdays was alien to him. Drake and Darren wanted to have a grand celebration and wanted to invite the whole Withlock town and some friends from other Noble families which they could not invite at the celebration of Nile's birth but Elora denied the whole idea. She wanted to avoid people knowing about Nile. It was her way of protecting Nile from the outer world. Elora has restricted all the maids and workers from coming in contact with Nile and hardly anyone has seen the young Nile in the Withlock town since the first celebration due to this reason many rumors started spreading. Some said the young master's body was paralysed, some believed young Nile was mute and dumb and even though he was 3 years now he still could not speak or understand anything. They believed that the reason Lord Drake and Lady Elora were trying so hard to avoid anyone meeting or even seeing the young master was due to his physical and mental incapabilities. Everyone felt sorry for the couple, they were aware of the hardships Drake and Elora have faced in the past. They were hoping a baby would bring happiness to the family but it turned it to be the opposite.

The rumors remained not only in the Withlock town but spread to other small Noble families. Some pitied the Withlock family while there were some families happy to hear such rumors and they were hoping they were true.

Only if they even knew half of the reality they would have puked blood.

In these past two years, Nile had read almost all the books regarding the cultivation of this world and if he had any query he would approach Drake or Darren. Initially, Drake was a bit hesitant but as time passed by and once he accepted Nile to be different from average child , then spared no effort to quench Nile's thirst for knowledge. Darren in these past years has spent a lot of time with Nile telling him different stories about the cultivation world. Daren had taken an instant liking towards Nile when he first met him. Even though Darren looked like a ruthless giant with a barbaric physique, he was someone who valued relations and people.

Darren had a tough and lonely childhood, his mother died while giving birth to him and his father who was a guard died fighting against bandits when he was just eight. He was then raised by his uncle who was a soldier in Withlock. His uncle treated him like a slave and Darren was not even allowed to leave the house. 5 years later Drake's father who was the Lord at that time came to know about Darren's situation and he quickly stripped Darren's uncle of his post and banished him from the town. Drake's father made sure that Darren had a home and even trained both Drake (his son) and Darren in combat.Drake and Darren became friends on the very first day they met. Drake was then 11 and had just awakened as a cultivator and Darren was 13 years old unaware of cultivation and energy, realising Darren was ignorant of cultivation Drake taught him the basics of cultivation and in 3 years even Darren managed to awakened as a cultivator. Drake later introduced his lover Elora to Darren and three of them since then became best of friends.

Even though Darren looked intimidating he was too naïve on every matter which was not related to weapons or battles. He gifted Nile a dagger with shinny red shaft on his third birthday leaving everyone startled, even Mia's eyes broadened seeing him gift a dagger to a 3 year old. Nile was happy seeing the dagger and instantly ran towards Darren to get a hold of his gift, Elora snatched the gift before even Nile could reach Darren. Elora then handed the dagger to Mia asking her to keep the dagger in a safe while giving a furious look to Darren. Seeing the mad look on Elora's face 'IT WAS AT THAT MOMENT Darren KNEW HE FUCKED UP' the giant broke out in a cold sweat, after the birthday party Darren was lectured for hours. It was an amusing sight to see a 6"9 giant being scolded by Elora who looked delicate and had a thin frame.

In these past 2 years, Nile learned a lot about cultivation and this world.

In this world of cultivation, your strength determined everything, anything else was secondary.

(Cultivation)

When one would absorb a particular amount of energy from the surrounding, he/she would develop a part of the brain known as cest which was otherwise unused by non-cultivators. Once cest was developed the person would be known as cultivators, and they could store energy in cest and use that energy according to their wish. The stronger the cest the more energy one could hold, the larger the amount of energy the stronger the person. Other things also did matter like the person's nature of cest, the skills one possesses and the fighting experience.

The Cultivation level were as follows-

A cultivator begins as human rank 1 cultivator and goes down to human rank cultivator 9, and if he achieves a breakthrough he will become warrior rank cultivator 1 which goes to 9, then Master 1-9, then Grand Master 1-9, Lord 1-9 and then finally King 1-9.

So the cultivators ranking goes like-

King> Lord> Grand Master> Master> Warrior> Human.

A person could strengthen their cest by cultivating. If one wanted to check the amount of energy their cest has (Their cultivation level), they just have to sit in a cultivation position and focus on their cest, on being successful they would reach a state of mind, this state of mind was called cestation. In cestation(state of mind), one would find himself floating between two things, below him he would find his energy reserves which were in liquid state and above him he could see floating stone engraved with skill <details about skills later in the chapter> .

Cest has 5 different kinds of nature, this nature determined the type of skills a person could wield. The five different nature were wind, earth, water, fire and lightning. A person having a cest of wind nature can learn a skill which is on par with its cultivation/cest level. For eg a warrior level cultivator cannot wield a skill having a minimum requirement of Master. Wind nature user can obtain skill related to wind and they could wield any form of wind skill of same level.

Wind and earth cultivators were most common, water and fire were rare as compared to wind and earth . Lightning was the rarest among these 5 natures. If we were to survey 100 cultivators sixty would be of wind and earth nature (thirty each), twenty water, fifteen fire and five lightning.

There were some rare cases where individuals had more than one nature—

If a cultivator had two different nature he was called bi-nature i.e, could wield skills of 2 different nature, Tri—nature (three different nature), quad-nature and finally Penta-nature one who could wield skills of all 5 nature. The possibility of finding a two nature (bi-nature) individual was one in every thousand cultivators, for tri-nature it was one among every ten thousand cultivators, for quad-nature it was one in every million cultivators and for a penta nature cultivator it was one in every fifty million cultivator.

(Note -- Keeping in mind every person is not a cultivator.)

Skills

Skills were obtained through learning skill scrolls, these scrolls were one of the most precious items for cultivators on the planet. These scrolls consisted of runes, the stronger the skill more complicated the structure of the rune will be and more difficult it would be to memorize it. Once the cultivator has memorized the runes that rune will be copied on a stone which is present in cestation(state of mind) above the cultivator. When a cultivator enters cestation, below him he could see his energy reserves which depict his cultivation level, and above him he could see stones engraved with skill runes. A person could wield a skill even if he has memorized fifty percent of that skill but that cultivator would only be able to use half potential of that skill. Memorizing these skills was no easy feat, it took cultivators months to memorize only half of these skills. If a cultivator could memorize from 80-90% of that skill he was a genius of their times. As for memorising 100% of a skill, only a handful of people in history had achieved this task.

In these past 3 years, Nile regularly absorbed energy. His energy absorption speed increased as time passed by as his body grew stronger with age.

Nile was slowly and steadily developing his cest, for these past years his priority was knowledge of this world and absorbing energy and awakening was secondary.