To the Land of the Unknown

Reincarnation was real! Garret, or rather now Reann, was alive again as a young teenage boy in this world. The empty void that he was once in was no more and the surrounding nothingness had been replaced with a small cramped bedroom.

The room only contained a straw mat and a neatly folded pile of ragged clothes. Reann's memory overlapped with Garret's as he sat in contemplation.

This appeared to be the first moment where he could be said to be fully self-aware. Memories and reasoning could be recalled clearly and he understood this world's language well enough. He could barely read but he had a vague understanding of his situation.

Most importantly, this world did not follow the laws of his old world! Humans could bend the very laws of nature with magical items and powers and fortunately, Reann was one of these people! The only issue was Reann's lacking talent for cultivation.

In this world, cultivators would use shards of the world to inscribe laws onto their bodies which would give them supernatural abilities along with conditions. Highly talented individuals would be able to hold nine shards at once. This would allow them to catapult themselves ahead of the competition because they would inscribe up to nine shards at once then each shard's laws would acclimate at the same time compared to a low-talented individual.

People who had low talent would need years and at later stages whole lifetimes to achieve what talented people could do. Was this not too different from Reann's old world?

There would always be gifted people on earth with talents that the masses could never achieve. But so what?

Heaven provides, but man decides!

So what if you are talented in an instrument? Another person can create something to allow them to create music without putting themself through something they are unable to do!

Simply to create, is that not what had led man to outpace beasts?

Tools replace claws and wits for brawn.

But there is a limit to everything. While in the short term a better talent for cultivation would be nice, strife and conflict are needed to temper oneself. Reann could only use three shards at once but he would have it no other way! After all, to innovate one does need a problem to solve do they not?

Reann was the fifth son of seven children of an innkeeper and was thirteen years old. His father and mother had made the inn and hosted travelers that came from the main village to a sub-village. He was a good-for-nothing who had lazed around all day not contributing to the clan. He had attended the clan's classes on cultivation but had chosen the easiest path. A support cultivator who specialized in providing food for the team. Reann had traveled to the main village with a group that frequently traveled back and forth from the villages.

He currently had two shards inscribed upon himself. The clan's main shard that the village monopolized was the Wyrm Exhale Shard. He had also inscribed the Air Sustenance Shard.

The Wyrm Exhale Shard would allow the wielder to breathe two kinds of air, hard and soft. Hard air would act similarly to pressurized air it would travel in a straight line for five meters and it could by itself pierce flesh but only crack bone. Solid materials like wood or stone would have barely a dent in them if it was used against them.

On the other hand, soft air would linger until all of the force from the exhale was gone. This would be handy if one were to cultivate another shard for instance if you had a shard that gave you iron lungs and the ability to breathe fire the air would feed the flames creating a wall of flames for a time.

The shard also enacted a condition upon its user which would get worse with repeated use. The price of the Wyrm Exhale Shard was that every tenth breath would sustain its use. If someone was to repeatedly use it they would find themselves unable to breathe as every breath would be taken to sustain the laws inscribed upon their bodies.

His other shard, the Air Sustenance Shard, would allow him to gain nutrients by simply breathing. While he would still need water, eating would be mainly for the pleasure of it. It would also allow the user to imbue the air they breathed out which would effectively mean one person with this would benefit a whole team. The air had a sweet scent and could be tasted if breathed in through the mouth.

The condition of this shard was that the user was required to breathe at a higher pace than normal. The more it was used the faster the user would need to breathe. The good part about this would be that this condition went away quickly. After creating about three to four dozen eggs worth of nourishment the user would feel like they had been sprinting with all their effort for a kilometer. If used too soon while recovering the user would hyperventilate and most likely asphyxiate.

Combined with the Wyrm Exale Shard the Air Sustenance Shard would create a lingering area of nourishment that wouldn't require both parties to actively participate. For people who were not part of the clan if they only had the Air Sustenance Shard, they would have to continuously breathe it to whoever they were feeding, or else the air would disperse wasting the nourishment it provided

The room he was staying in was a cheap run-down building. He had rented the room and was a tenant along with the few people who stayed. His last mission he had been on had been a few weeks ago and he would only go out to pay rent or simply walk around watching people train to ease the boredom. But this was before Garret had overlapped with Reann.

He could not help but think this world was linked to that void he had been in as he was dying. But that could wait. Reann got up from his recollections and quickly got dressed.

To find out what this world had in store for him he would first need Soothing Stones, the currency of this world. It would allow the conditions brought on by cultivating to ease one's conditions and once used potentially save their life.

Most people in this world would also use shards and what they come from, cores, for trading. There was a building near the center of the village and each gate that had missions that Shard Users would be given. Some would require multiple people from the clan to team up and so they would leave notes and check who is available to do certain tasks.

Usually, an expert would be in the building to recommend their junior Shard User missions for what the village needed or threats in certain areas.

After Reann exited the rickety building, he did not immediately head for the mission center. He decided it would be best to tour the village since he was not familiar with it.

The village was located at the bottom of a verdant valley with a river flowing beside it. The mountains were lush and had white peaks. The streets were busy at this time of the morning as people began their routine. Various stalls selling assorted goods and food were plenty. While the Air Sustenance shard was common and among these stalls at a cheaper price nothing could beat cooked food in taste and fulfillment.

As Reann was heading to a mission building on the outskirts of the village, he noticed that there was a large crowd around the entrance.