Chapter 29: Body

Chapter 29: Body

"The levels of power for physical prowess are quite vague and loose."

"As previously stated, the four stages known are Mortal, Enhanced, Strengthened and Inhuman. Among these stages, pures remain at a weaker all-around prowess while mutated have a much more varied skill set. A rare, pure born master will be at peak level of Enhanced all-around, while a lightning blooded adept with royal lineage may have Inhuman speed and Strengthened physical power. A mutated with the bloodline of the constellations of the Titan, will find great strength and toughness yet will also observe a lack of speed. An adept with Titan blood and royal lineage will find Inhuman strength, Inhuman toughness yet only Enhanced speed."

"The dragonblood lineage is strange, in the fact that their abilities are widely variant. Mutated in themselves have variants from time to time but the dragon lineage simply has too many variants all the time. I theorize this has something to do with the way past civilizations widely discussed the concept of dragons, and their different interpretations of them has led to a wider variety in physically manifested draconic ability."

"Though that leads me to a particularly interesting idea…Do our ideas affect the metaphysical source? Or are we simply uncovering more about them everytime we focus our thoughts and think about the concept? The folklores and folktales of past civilizations have so much similarity to mutated today that it's almost unnerving."

"In her youth, the Nightsky dragon queen was known to have Inhuman speed yet Mortal strength. While her brother, the Sloth, boasted Inhuman strength and Inhuman toughness but just barely Enhanced speed. Some civilizations thought dragons to be swift and deadly and only hunted at night while other folktales imagine dragons as large, lazy but strong. The same particular civilizations thought dragons to sleep for months at a time and…just like the stories, the Sloth slept for weeks and months at a time."

"Amazingly this only happens to those of the main bloodline. Those not a part of 'royalty' have differences but they are not so pronounced. Even still however, the weakest trash of those mutated are treated better than our kind. Why is that?"

"That's because even the most talentless and worthless mutated are stronger in body than their ordinary pure counterparts. A mutated novice with barely any bloodline and talent can match pure adepts in physical prowess. Though depending on the skill of the pure adept, their fate in such an encounter would vastly differ from one another.

Most would simply have to accept their fate of getting mauled by a disgusting warped form of their pure being. However, a few talented pure adepts really take the time to cruelly play around and dissect the creature before them."

"Of course, pure born adepts are already rare, and those with such skill are even rarer."

"I've pondered once before why the millennium empires don't get rid of their untainted counterparts. Or totally stomp out the remnants of the ruined empires for good. They definitely have the power to do so...That greedy pig who calls himself the king of this nation says that the millennium empires are too busy fighting amongst themselves, but I know that they simply don't dare to step their foot in shit. There's nothing for them to take from us. They don't even bother. The empires even recruit our own kind for their selfish wars."

"The Phoenix clans bolster their numbers with our own who are much easier to breed, and then they put all of them on the frontline as the vanguard. Human wave strategies and swarm tactics. They watch as millions of our kind die just to exhaust the enemy novices and adepts. A hundred of our kind mean nothing to a single worthless talentless bastard with even a hint of their bloodline in them. I've observed frequently, that even adepts and masters of our own kind who hold high positions within the mutated armies, are looked down upon by these trash."

"The only hope for pures are the rebels. Yet even they are in conflict with one another. Two ideologies split them. The superior ideology is that we are above the mutated with our perfect and untainted genes. This I could agree with. We are as nature intended us to be, not anything else."

"The other ideology, that both pures and mutated are still one race. That we were never separate to begin with. That we are all equal and deserving of fair opportunity. For hatred to cease and for compassion for all. They preach for unity and the raging wars to end. They say we should only fight for peace, not vengeance."

"But…peace? Unity? Between us and those creatures? They dare to step on us for years and use us as their servants and livestock and you preach for forgiveness and compassion!? I want nothing more than to see all of them dead! To see those disgusting races wiped out from existence and to see them genocided! Yet the rebels who were supposed to fight for us are fighting between themselves! We were already weaker than them united but now they want to fight each other! Useless!"

"Fuck!"

"…But…there are rumors however. Rumors that circulate between the high society of pure nobility. A new force has risen, created from the alliance of the remaining noble families from the ruined empires. Perhaps they may be able to break the balance between the rebels and lead us back to greatness."

"But until then those disgusting…"

'Huh…okay interesting…'

Zan wasn't sure that he understood everything he just read but he made sure to remember what he saw as the "important" parts.

'Initiate, Novice, Adept and Master…'

'Mortal, Enhanced, Strengthened, Inhuman…'

'I have to be around Adept and Master in terms of moving energy around…hehe I'm a genius after all.'

'But how strong is my body? It can't be the first level, or that dragon bastard would have killed me already.'

'But when I was hitting him he didn't budge. It looked like he felt the pain at least, like the impact got to him but never really shook him. Wait. How strong is he anyway? How the fuck am I supposed to compare if I don't even know how strong a level should be?'

Zan looked at the contents of the documents once again but he couldn't find more details exploring the levels of physical prowess.

"My thoughts on the morality of pure born utilizing nuclear cores to boost their own power."

"Scientific findings and unearthed advanced technology."

"Healing pods, hyper regeneration agents, fridges, solar powered railguns and vibrating toys…"

"Mysterious traces and remnants of the demonic cult. Does the underworld exist? Could there be a dimension similar to what some religions call Hell?"

"Ghosts? Spirits? I swear I can feel the presence of my son and my husband. I've frozen what I have left of them in separate cryogenic chambers and I will bring them back no matter what."

The youth ruffled through the papers one by one but he couldn't find the information he found so important.

'Fuck. Whatever, it's fine.'

'Hehe I still have much more to read anyway. Knowledge is power!'

Zan ruffled through the papers.

'Hmmm? What's this?'

The youth's eyes shined.

"Body-building techniques. Are they able to bridge the gap between the pures and mutated?"

'Hell yeah we're asking the important questions now baby!'

Zan started his reading and quickly became immersed in its contents. After all, the youth himself was deeply captivated by physical training.

"The pure human body in itself is a genetic masterpiece. From the most recent destroyed civilizations, it was said that it took thousands of millions of years for a single cell organism to reach the beauty of the human body today. Under the framework of this knowledge, many individuals created and pioneered new schools of thought, theories, models and methods, to unearth the infinite potential within the human body."

"The past civilizations first began with muscle building techniques..."

'Oooh.'

'Exactly what I'm looking for haha!'

THUD!

'What the hell?'

Why am I looking at the ground? Why am I kneeling? Zan looked around himself to find that his vision was immensely blurry. He could barely recognize the figure of a boy standing above him.

His body felt so lethargic and weak that he thought he was dying, but even those near death experiences didn't come close to the…disharmony he was feeling. Within himself he felt a deep and discordant change that affected even his etheric body.

Seconds before everything turned to black, he saw Quin place his small hand on his forehead, and the same white energy from the orb gushed out to soothe him.