Preparing to Leave

The next morning after leaving the apartment, Jax and I separated to go our own ways, Jax to find Cinderstorm to arrange to meet us in five days time, and me to the library. I had a restricted room to break into. My plan was to "borrow" Dnise's key to the restricted area. I would then leave when everyone else did and after dark, I would then sneak back into the library.

The library itself was never locked, as no one would think about stealing books, only the restricted section was locked up. Surprising enough my plan went off without a hitch, and that night I snuck into the restricted section. I couldn't take any of these books with me, as one each of these books had tracers on them, and even if I could somehow figure out a way to wipe out the tracer I couldn't bring them with me. Items from Soul Worlds couldn't materialize in the mortal realm. So I had four nights to memorize as many of these books as I could.

Thank the Light, that as a soul I didn't need to sleep. That night I read through all the books on cultivation that I could find. I had no idea what sort of world I would be sent to, nor what sort of situation that I would find myself in. Souls were required to learn about cultivating on their own through their mortal lives so unfortunately, the library didn't have many books on the different techniques, but any knowledge was better than none.

After I finished the last book, I was really surprised at how much more complicated cultivation was and that there were so different advancement levels. In Purgatory no one really spoke about cultivation, I knew the basics, but this small little book that I had just read, really gave me a much better understanding of just how much I had to learn.

From what I had read, cultivation ranks were broken into two separate divisions mortal world and immortal world.

In the mortal realm, your classes were

Mage >> Great Mage >> Saint Mage >> Great Saint Mage >> King Mage >> Great King Mage >> Emperor Mage

Each of these seven classes was broken into sub-classes those being

Beginner Level >> Mid Level >> Advance Level

And within these sub-classes you had to advance three ranks, 1 to 3 was a beginner, 4 – 6 was mid-level and 7 – 9 was advanced level.

After Emperor Mage, you could then start to prepare your body to convert it into an immortal body, there were two stages to this development

Core Formation Stage and Nascent Soul Stage

It was only after Nascent Soul Stage that you could now convert your body and you ascended to being an immortal.

Once you became an immortal you would then carry on your cultivation, the immortal classes were separated into

Immortal >> Gods >> Overgods >> Godkings >> Primordials >> Great Primes >> Overlord Primes

The immortal's classes were also broken into three sub-classes like the mortal realms.

My head was reeling just trying to keep all these levels straight, I had always known that becoming an immortal was difficult, but I hadn't realized just how difficult it was, according to this small book, I would have to advance sixty-three levels before I reached the Core Formation Stage.

The first two stages were not that difficult to achieve, but from Saint Mage onwards, it became a lot more difficult to advance, and it took a lot longer. It really was quite disheartening when you realized just what a long road lay ahead of you. Well, I knew that I was in for a rough ride. Shaking the depressing thoughts from my mind, I quickly put the books that I had taken back into their correct places on the shelves, after locking up I snuck downstairs and placed Dnise's restricted section key back in its original place in the draw of her desk.

Leaving the library, I could see that the sun was about to rise, I had agreed to meet Jax in a nearby park, as I knew I would never have the time to race home, change and make it back in time for my shift. Jax was waiting for me when I arrived. Taking the clean clothes he had brought, I disappeared behind one of the scrubs and quickly changed. Once I was decent, I took a seat next to Jax on the park bench.

After giving Jax a quick rundown on what I had been up to, Jax informed me that he had managed to find Cinderstorm, and everything was arranged, we would meet with Cinderstorm in four days time in the Lower Bounds. Jax had already informed the landlord that we would be moving, as well as his buddies, so everything was on track. We had four more days for our final preparations.

The next three days passed in a blur, Jax joined me in the restricted section in the evenings, reading through as many books as he could. I concentrated on magical spells, weaponsmith and alchemy. Jax spent his time reading through books on runes and different demon beasts as well as one darkling races, we really had no idea what we would run into.

We couldn't find any information on the rim worlds in the restricted section, but we did find an absolute treasure, an encyclopedia on herbs and plants, after discussing it, we decided to take this encyclopedia with us, as well as {Medicinal Pill Refining for Dummies}, Jax was sure that if we gave Cinderbloom some extra soul stones that he would find a way to get us these books after I reincarnated. I was really dumbfounded when Jax removed the traces on the books, I never knew that he had such skills, seeing my stupefied look, Jax just laughed at me. After Jax removed the traces, I packed these two books away in my backpack. We then put everything back in order and after placing the key we left the library and went home.

Tomorrow would be my last day in Purgatory.