1 What Just Happened?

*Beep* *Beep* *Beep*

"Ugh ..."

*Thud* *Thud*

"Damn it. Why couldn't school start later?"

Kaiden Allen wearily looks at his digital alarm clock after slamming it silent, reading that it is seven in the morning. Slowly he gets up out of bed, stretches to wake himself up, and changed into a pair of jeans and an army green t-shirt. After washing up in the bathroom, he walks towards the kitchen for breakfast and sees a note from his father. After taking a minute to decipher the usual chicken scratch it read 'Gone to work, sent some money into your account for dinner so go ahead and eat without me'. "Love you too," Kaiden mutters to himself as he checks his phone and sees a notification telling him that one hundred dollars have been deposited into his account before starting to make a quick breakfast.

While eating, his mind drifts and broods over the events of the past five years. His mom died suddenly while in the field working as a police officer and his dad drowned himself in work at an accounting firm, forcing Kaiden to learn how to take care of himself and finally ... school. Even with his decent looks thanks to both his mom and dad, he wasn't that popular. He mostly kept to himself and his head in the books since his mom insisted that studying is more important than anything, so he could put himself into a good college, and in turn get a high paying job, making socializing with others take the back seat. Thankfully he was able to make a handful of friends after meeting them in an extra class for college credit but even they started to distance themselves and grow cold after he started studying more serious than ever trying to live up to his mother's expectations and finding a strange satisfaction from learning more and more. It didn't take much before his thirst for knowledge took him to many different fields of study from medicine to agriculture and even through these last few long, lonely years his love for learning new things never faded giving him some form of comfort.

"Sigh." After pushing his thoughts to the side and deciding it won't fix anything, he started making his way to school.

After walking for a few seconds, he suddenly stopped in his tracks.

Something felt off.

All the sudden he can hear some kind of noise, and it was slowly getting louder and louder.

The louder it got, Kaiden realized it almost started to sound like chanting. But this chanting doesn't sound remotely close to any languages hes ever heard before.

After being lost in thought for a moment and frantically looking everywhere trying to figure out where in the world the sounds were coming from, his vision suddenly went white and his ears were full of a loud ringing as if an explosion went off right beside him!

Kaiden tried screaming to get any help but it felt as if even his words weren't coming out of his mouth!

After what felt like an eternity passed Kaiden thought to himself, 'How long am I going to be tortured like this?!?" Almost as if someone heard his prayers, both his vision and hearing cleared up. Startled at the abrupt clearness, he started quickly looking around to get a bearing on where he was and what exactly happened to him. "What the fuck??" At first he thought it was all some kind of hallucination since he was back in his living room at home, but all the sudden a handsome young man wearing a black three piece suit appeared out of nowhere sitting on his couch, drinking fresh coffee out of a mug. "Who are you and why are you in MY home?!"

The suave man slowly stood up and bowed while introducing himself, "You may call me Varun, Allah, Vaspaan, Adro, Khawar, etc. etc." "However most normally just stick to calling me God."

"Okay... If you say so. So 'God' how much did they pay you to practically flash-bang me and trap me here in my home."

*Tut* *Tut* "Now, now Kaiden. Don't be like that!" God said impatiently. "I wish I could chat more but we are simply running out of time since mortals can't stay in the Heavenly Realm for long, so please do be quite so I can give you a quick explanation about what exactly I will be throwing you into."

Kaiden tried to retaliate but all the sudden he couldn't even move a finger much less say a single word.

Without missing a beat God went on, "You are about to enter a world called Arcydil. It is basically a parallel world to yours, however, after a super massive solar flare almost ended the human race as they knew it. At the same time an unknown energy started to seep into the very fabric of the world and slowly started to strengthen everything in it. Without being noticed for over half a century people were starting to live longer, feel healthier, and some were even given primitive abilities like super strength, speed, or intelligence if they were lucky!"

"Sadly, because it went largely unnoticed for so long, humanity was caught by surprise when the animals all over the world started to go feral and attack whoever or whatever they put their eyes on out of pure rage and evolved at what seemed like a faster rate than humanity could handle since they lost their advanced weaponry from their golden age and were left with only cold weapons like swords, shields, and bows," at this point God's face was filled with pity and sadness before suddenly perking up again as if nothing happened. "However!" he continued, "Like any good fairy tale goes humanity were able to fight back, thanks to the next generation being born with a new and peculiar ability they called Spirit Channeling or Spiritual Utilization!"

Behind God the TV flared up and a presentation started playing while he explained how Spirit Channeling worked. "This new generation of humans were being born with what is called a Spirit. Spirits stay dormant through out the early years of a humans life but still give them a passive boost to their overall attributes. They stay in this state until they are any where from eight to ten years old. They quickly learned after a few years of trial and error that this is the most important time for the child's future as this will determine how they will grow and develop to become stronger.'

"First, they found out that the sooner the spirit awakens, the more powerful the child will be in the future. As a side note this is not always one hundred percent accurate as other factors do come into play but you will find that out later."

"Then, to awaken the spirit a certain amount of the new energy, mana or syr as it's more commonly called now, must be absorbed into the body. This can be done in any number of ways but the most popular is by meditation and eating any kind of flora or fauna found in the wild as it is full of syr and obviously the stronger the animal or older the plant the more syr it contains but it will also be more dangerous to obtain."

"The child must direct their syr towards their abdomen and connect it to their spirit's egg causing it to hatch. After doing so the spirit will bring the child into their Spirit Palace, a place that only they can enter that houses both their spirit and any items that they put into it. This is called the bonding process and after the spirit is given a name the child will become its official contractor and truly start their cultivation journey!"

"When the bonding is complete the spirit then spreads it's syr back into the child's body causing their potential to skyrocket and grant them an elemental affinity. If they are lucky then they may be granted more than one element, however this is very rare and can truly happen either by luck or by a certain set of requirements being fulfilled. Only a handful of either cases have been documented and in all cases such children have more potential than single element contractors but they also have to work harder to make use of their potential or it will simply be wasted."

"I will leave you with just this as it is way too boring to explain it all to you and I believe you are smart enough to figure it out on your own! I will give you one choice though: Do you want to be reincarnated with your memories as a baby, or as a ten year old?"

Finally feeling freed from his constraints, before Kaiden answered he asked, "Why me? Why are you even doing this??"

Taking a second to think God just replied with a wide grin on his face, "For fun of course! Why else would I go through all this trouble?"

Speechless and already tired of talking to 'God' Kaiden answered with half a sigh, "A ten year old. I would rather die than be a baby but with my memories intact." He shivered at the thought of months of soiling his diaper, eating nasty food and not being able to do anything for himself.

"Sounds like a done deal! Now then. It's time for you to enter the world of Arcydil! I really do hope you enjoy your stay and hopefully it will be a long one!!" God cheered.

Before Kaiden could say anything everything went white again. Thankfully he could hear this time as he heard himself say, "What the fuck just happened?"