CH1: Mandela

Vergil had never felt so small and insignificant until he saw a toddler the size of a mountain staring at him. Its hand rested beside a towering book that could put skyscrapers to shame hung halfway in a corner covered in a fine layer of dust. His head pounded from something called a hunter packet burned into his mind like a brand. Information filled his mind about things he never wanted to know and couldn't resist. Staring into the eyes with flecks of green larger than him made knowing things like cultivation seem insignificant.

The feeling of smallness continued; Vergil tried to look beyond the toddler and only saw the expanse of air. He looked around and saw people he would rather not be with. A decade of dropped contact with the people around him hadn't been enough.

Sitting down in a six-inch layer of dust was the guy Vergil had hated since high school Dante Fair, the guy who made it. Vergil hated that Dante had lived in his headspace for too long and would be competing again. But, like before Dante got his head in the game first and started cultivating immediately, he was also here long before Vergil or obscenely talented.

Vergil sneezed but managed to choke down a breath long enough to cultivate heaven and earth's vast spiritual energy. Doing so was the only way he would get anywhere before they were off to who knows where.

He took a step back and tripped when the back of his legs hit something. Dante started laughing, and Clay ran over to slap the lawyer's hand.

"Come on, Vergil, it's all in good fun; if you can't laugh at your own expense, then what can you laugh at," Dante said and stood up.

This scene had happened twice, once over a decade ago in the locker room and again on the shelf of a giant Toddler. Unfortunately, it had cost him the precious time needed to attempt to move from mortal into the initial stage of the prenatal realm of ki cultivation.

He knew that a mistake like that could have caused ki deviation and killed him if he wasn't careful. After getting that information branded into his mind, he was also aware that Dante knew that. It was an attempt to decrease the competition and attack before Vergil got his bearings. Dante was always the tactician and only held back from murder, but Vergil hadn't known Dante for over a decade.

A black vortex opened, and reality turned into rainbow pixels and moved away from a man dressed in a 3 piece suit wearing a top hat with a massive mustache. The suit was black with racecar flames along the sleeves that changed styles every time Vergil looked away.

"Allow me to introduce myself; my name is Mandela, and I am your demiurge this evening. I speak for the supreme being you see behind me. Think of me as an intermediate between yourselves and the divine." Mandela said.

"Can I ask why god is a toddler?" Clay asked.

Mandela's face went from calm to unsightly in an instant. Then, a terrible rage entered his eyes before he lifted his hand and snapped.

Vergil blinked, and Clay exploded. Screams echoed all around him as Vergil wiped the blood from his face. He could feel a line of intestines wrapped around his shoulder, warm sticky blood clung to his skin, and he could feel a piece of bone in his shoe. Slowly Vergil walked away from the blast zone even if it wouldn't do him any good.

He hated Clay but didn't want to see him dead. Still, that didn't matter; nothing mattered before the power he saw. Cultivation meant they could waste all of them with thought and summon a new batch. The only real question was, why summon them at all?

"The supreme being is over 2 million years old and deserves your respect. He is so great and mighty that imparting the wisdom of the cosmos upon all of you is needed for all of you to begin to be useful. But, unfortunately, even after giving you such a great boon, it won't be enough; many of you will die." Mandela smiled, and Vergil noticed the man's feet never touched the ground. He didn't have legs.

The suit perpetually moved as he gazed at the being, never stopping. Vergil blinked, and the dark shade of black had become a dark purple. He remembered it was black before, and the suit's flames were flowers.

"The bottom line is simple the supreme being is so great that he can't enter lower worlds and needs agents that can't be tracked back to him. So, all of you will go on a treasure hunt for the supreme being. I know what you're thinking, what is in it for me. Perhaps it is too soon for the gifts given to you to really sink in enough for you to be thankful. So we are going to play a game. I will have an agent observe you and assign points to your actions. Whoever contributes the most will get the most points, and after the first hunt, I will allow you to exchange these points for prizes. Maybe one of the prizes will even be your freedom." The fiend said.

An image of their objective seared itself into his mind. They were after a sarcophagus with a head covered in tentacles on it. Dark iron chains with markings faded with age wrapped around the coffin keeping whatever was sealed inside. A cold light seeped from its lid, whispering dreaded secrets mortal minds weren't meant to know.

Vergil tried cultivating the energy in the air because it was the best for ki refiners. However, it was difficult to cultivate with his eyes open and ears listening.

"Don't nod off; it's rude." He looked behind him to see someone cultivating before they exploded into gore." His heart raced until his chest hurt as he struggled to cultivate with his eyes open.

He felt his body fading away from the supreme being's room. Mandela raised a hand covered in tentacles instead of fingers and waved his hand.

"Don't forget this is a competition. Whoever does the best will get the most points; everyone should try and get the top spot. If someone is dragging you, you down, throw them away like the trash they are."

Dante looked at him, and Silas knew what the man was thinking well ahead of time. But, of course, there were problems with fighting Dante. The guy trained at an MMA gym and hit like a truck in high school. Vergil had gone from an athlete to a bookish shortly after leaving school. He hadn't been in a fight in years and worked in a supermarket. Unlike Dante, Vergil never had the killer instinct the lawyer had.

…

When he came to, he tasted grime on his teeth and felt pain crawl up his legs from chafed feet. There were no memories of another life, only a body that wasn't his own with what little ki he managed to cultivate. He was in a cell submerged up to his shins with red light pouring in through a barred window 30ft over his head.

Dante was on a bench, one of the few dry spots with others around him. No one watched over Vergil or paid him much attention. Before they had really gotten started, Vergil was behind.

Being behind forced him to do something he shouldn't, and he decided to take a risk.

He felt a buzzing sensation at the edge of his senses; it wasn't ki, but they had more than one cultivation technique seared into their brains medium well. Of the myriad of techniques aflush in his mind, the Ostrich Oscillation wasn't something most would consider practicing.

Techniques were the bread and butter for ki users to project power. It was the mechanism to transform ki into something usable. At the initial stage of the prenatal realm, he could get one technique running, but it wouldn't leave any room for others. Performing a technique acclimatizes the body to it. Once he performed one in the initial stage of the prenatal realm, he couldn't just swap techniques. So should he gamble on the Ostrich Oscillation? That technique would allow him to detect energy in all forms, like an advanced ki sense gained from the initial realm.

"Wow, Dante, you are a freak of nature." Joseph, one of Vergil's former friend's said.

Vergil knew why an instant later. Dante's cultivation suddenly increased from the advanced to peak in the prenatal realm. That put him a half step away from being a natal realm cultivator. In essence, he would evolve from trash to trash in the eyes of Mandela, but compared to Vergil, Dante would become a demigod.

That was how these things worked. Cultivation was separated by stages and realms, with barriers between each realm that needed to be overcome to move into them. It seemed the first barrier for prenatal was knowledge and the needed energy.

Regarding knowledge, they all had information seared into their minds, or at least that was how Vergil felt. The energy was another barrier; without enough spirit energy, cultivating ki was counterproductive. Body cultivation was an option if they had something like a sci-fi healing pod. It took a lot of beatings and recovery in special mixtures to get anywhere in body cultivation. Vergil knew the mixtures and variations from prenatal to Naraka, over 9 realms and numerous stages and sub-realms divided the beginning from the end.

Of course, some locations could benefit body cultivation to get around the need for special herbs; maybe the water rolling into his shins had that effect. The problem was ki sense didn't tell him a thing, and it only advanced into true ki sense at the natal realm. Dante wouldn't know dick about the water either, which brought him back to Ostrich Oscillation.

Strategically speaking, it would be beneficial in the long run to know what energy is best to cultivate where. It would allow him to use the knowledge seared into his brain to the best of his ability. Of course, tactically speaking, it would be best to gain a movement technique like Spider Hands to climb up the wall and get out of the cell or telekinesis to pick the lock keeping them in the cell. The latter was only available after cultivating the mind, which was only available when certain types of energies were available.

He tried to calm down until a rusty door opened and closed. "A show of hands who are in the advanced stage," Dante said.

"No," Vergil said, and Dante smiled.

About a quarter of the group raised their hands, and Dante smiled.

Vergil sighed. "Next, you will say, show of hands who are in the intermediate realm," Vergil said, and about half raised their hands.

There were no splashing sounds, but he could feel several ki signatures moving closer to their location, stopping every few heartbeats.

Vergil stared at Dante, and the red light made the blonde man's eyes look demonically red. "A show of hands; how many are in the beginner ranks," Dante said, and all but himself raised their hands.

"It looks like I am the weakest member of the group," Vergil said.

"Don't look at it that way. I think you're more like the most expendable. Whatever is coming for us, you're going first. That way, no real loss if you die and we have to fight our way out. It's for the good of the group; why don't you show everyone how stoic you are." Dante said.

He activated the Ostrich Oscillation technique and felt an overabundance of psychic energy. There were sources of energy spilling out everywhere; all he had to do was cultivate at one of them. Massive wells of that same energy approached their cell, and then Dante had his arms.

Tentacles slithered into the cell, and Dante pushed him into them. He felt them quickly slither around his body, cold to the touch and grasping his head.

"I want this one." A feminine voice cried into his skull. Again, it was an effect of the Ostrich Oscillation he could intercept signals. In this case, he intercepted psionic communication. The information seared into his head translated into something besides shrieking that made his brain want to hemorrhage.

The door slid open, and he turned his head to see a floating 6ft tall squid girl with large black eyes, tentacles on her head that could be mistaken for hair, and a pink spot on her face that almost made up for a lack of nose. Her head was large and took up a lot of her body mass while her body was thin.