Chapter 3: Awakening

Stepping through the Portal, Shane felt an overwhelming pressure piercing through his mind while the ground below him seemed to vanish for a fraction of a second.

Once he took another step, Shane required a few seconds to let his brain comprehend what had happened.

Taking a few deep breaths, he calmed down and the pressure on his mind lessened, allowing him to open his eyes, which he instinctively closed as he stepped through the Dimensional Portal.

However, there was not much for him to see and he was in a white room without any furniture or living being around.

Only he and the Dimension Portal behind him were present when a mechanical voice could be heard inside his mind.

With the sudden appearance of the voice, the pressure completely vanished, relieving his mind.

[New living being entered the Primary-Primordial Dimension for the first time. Race 'Human' detected.]

[Scanning initiated]

[0.1%]

[1%]

[5%]

Time passed and Shane didn't know how long it took until the scan was finally finished when he heard.

[100%.Scan finished]

[No anomaly discovered, System fully integrated]

[10 Gold coins have been added to host's [Finances], please use them up before leaving the System-awakening space, otherwise, the host will lose this small fortune forever.]

After a few seconds, another notification read by the mechanical voice resounded in his mind.

[Information Chart also called 'Status' by 'human' race is now accessible]

Everything seemed to be normal and exactly as stated on the news as he read.

With a single thought, his Status panel appeared in front of him as a blue holographic screen.

_______________

Title: [None]

Occupation: [None]

Name: Shane Suro

Race:[Human 100%]

Cultivation Level: Mortal-1st [Purity 0.00%]

Body Refinement: [Mortal-4th]

Cultivation Manual: [None]

<Skills/Techniques>

![Artemis´ Blessing]+

[Innate Skill]: Taming |Trash-★(+)|

Finances: 10 gold coins

_______________

Reading through the panel, two things shocked Shane greatly.

While his Cultivation rank was at the 1st rank of the Mortal stage with a mana purity of [0.00%] which was the starting point for every human, his physique had already reached the 4th rank of the Mortal stage which was the first stage on the way of a cultivator.

This could be considered quite good, as Shane didn't have a body refining technique from the System that could systematically temper his whole body with mana and a high amount of nutrition which would strengthen his physique slowly.

However, this was nothing out of ordinary, as he expected this...

Igra was a planet without a single trace of mana and as such humans couldn't increase their mana and cultivation rank by absorbing and refining the mana in their surroundings, simply because there was nothing to absorb.

Only by entering the Primordial Dimensions, humans were able to feel the mana in their surroundings, and with the right techniques, they were slowly able to absorb and refine them, tempering their life force to create a mana sea in their insides which could hold mana.

With this mana, one would be able to do almost everything, as long as enough mana was provided.

Reaching the 4th Mortal stage at the body refining section was already considered extremely good, without the use of the system's manuals, and the first stage in both cultivation and body refining was considered 'Mortal' because everyone would be able to reach these ranks without the need of entering the Primordial Dimension, even if one's talent was extremely bad.

To reach the top of the Mortal stage one didn't have to rely on the Primordial Dimension as long as a mana source was around.

*

Igra was considered to be one of the worst planets without even the tiniest bit of mana particles and it was already considered a miracle that earth dragons and other terrifying existences that relied on mana invaded their planet, which was relatively uncommon.

Some higher authorities thought it might have been other races that demanded more living space and were testing the waters.

If the rumors were true, they wanted to conquer the planet without even having to lift a finger.

But, they could have never imagined that this decision would provide humanity with enough time to renew their World protection.

This was only a theory and humanity didn't want to figure out the truth as the signals from the adjacent Stella system were already unpleasant for them.

*

Both, Body refining and the cultivation of one's mana were infinitely closely intertwined with each other.

One could only refine the physique to higher stages with enough mana tempering the body by circulating it as per the described ways written inside body refining manuals.

With a consistent increase in the required amount of mana, one's physique became stronger in proportion, and it was apparent that mana had to be cultivated and refined to achieve this.

The same could be said for cultivating the mana pool.

Without tempering the physique, the mana pool inside one's body would grow unstable with the increase of ranks, and the physique could stabilize this.

In the end, humans concluded that it was important to temper and refine both the physique and mana, while most set priorities for a certain path.

This path would be decided by choosing one's occupation but Shane was still far off from reaching that point.

..

Shane found his status more pleasing than he had previously thought.

Continuing to read, Shane glanced across two messages that pleased his eyes..

A Blessing and an Innate Skill!!

Both were considered extremely rare and probably even scarcer than special physical traits that could enhance certain body parts.

[Artemis' Blessing] probably didn't sound amazing for others, but Shane was aware of the Greek goddess from earth, and his eyes widened while reading the description.

[Artemis' Blessing: The Goddess of Hunting, Growth, Birth, and Nature has blessed your Soul. Thereupon, wild animals will be attracted to you, your capabilities to hunt evil tainted beasts will sharply increase, and your determination to grow stronger will cause your will to remain unshaken.

+[Hunter's mind] (passive)

+[Mana pool strengthening] 30%]

The description itself was useless for Shane, but the effects provided by the blessing were exceptional.

The passive effect [Hunter's mind] allowed him to maintain calm in most situations, and to think rationally without letting emotions disturb his mind.

On the other hand, Shane was at least as astonished to see [Mana pool strengthening] as [Hunter's mind] because increasing one's mana pool before the cultivation journey even begun was like an extra enlargement in one's mana pool that would grow with them during the cultivation path.

The most advantageous effect of the mana pool strengthening was that Shane received it so early.

For instance→Instead of having a mana pool of 1 unit his mana pool had the size of 1.3 units.

With time, Shane's mana pool would increase more as each increase would enlarge his mana pool significantly when compared to his brethren.

It was said that having a blessing at the beginning of one's journey was considered a 'blessing by Heaven'.

If the mana pool enlarged by 10% with every rank within the Mortal stage, normal Cultivators would reach approximately 2.35 units while Shane would have approximately 3.06 units

In the beginning, the gap between him and normal cultivators would be marginal, but with time it would only widen, and one would see a 16-year-old silly youth laughing in a completely white room.

As for his Innate Skill [Taming], Shane couldn´t really comprehend what to do with it, but he knew that it was at least as important as the Blessing he had received.

Innate Skills were extremely threatening because of their growth ability!

Shane spotted the (+) behind his Innate ability and smiled brightly.

Every Innate Skill started from the bottom rank as [Trash-★] but this was unimportant.

With the possibility to grow stronger, it wouldn't matter how trashy this skill was in the beginning.

With time, Shane would be able to enhance his skill to the common, uncommon, rare quality, and maybe even higher.

It wasn't much, but even having an extra single Skill than the others would give him a huge advantage.

Nevertheless, considering his knowledge about Innate-Skills, Shane was still eager to see what the Taming skill could exactly do.

Each Innate Skill was considered a limited edition, and even similar Skills couldn´t be purchased easily, nor could they be found within the Primordial Dimension.

At least, not with the growing potential!

However, while reading the skill's description, Shane's smile vanished and was replaced by a deep frown 'Huh?'

[Taming |Trash-★(+)|

→ Tamed [0/1]

→ Limit: [Low-Wild]