[Initial Scan……]
[Initial Scan……]
[Initial Scan……]
[Alert! Alert! Subject: 982829149 Registers As Paradox Incursion]
[Alert! Alert! Subject: 982829149 Registers As Paradox Incursion]
[Alert! Alert! Subject: 982829149 Registers As Paradox Incursion]
[Continuing Scan…..]
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I fought my way from the steppes to the heart of civilization. I have supped with warlords, wizards, and assassins, I have fought men in the shape of beasts, and beasts in the shape of men. I have matched wits with generals and broken cultivators with my bare hands. I have fought legends and war gods, often at the same time. I have seen men who could shape the weather, and I have shattered armies alone.
[Subject: 982829149 High Tier Soul Remnant. Subject: 982829149 Body Experiencing Forced Temporary Growth Acceleration. Cannot Be Halted]
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So when I tell you that I have never seen anything stranger than the room I awoke in. I really want you to understand the gravitas of that statement. This place was strange in a way I didn’t really have words for.
The walls were a pearlescent white that somehow shone with such a bright purity it hurt my eyes. If the oddities had ended at the walls, I would have thought myself in some ascended realm or heavenly antechamber. As only janitors of the higher realms could ever hope to maintain such clean whiteness.
Not only were shining white walls not the end of the strangeness, they were barely the beginning. I lay naked on some sort of cushioned table, big enough to barely fit my torso and my head. My lower body and limbs hung awkwardly over the sides. The air around me tasted dead somehow, like I had entered a region so desolate that no Qi permeated the land.
Above me floated what looked like a cluster of glowing purple gems. It hovered in the center of the room just below a ceiling that was the same unnatural white as the walls. As I stared at the gem cluster, it seemed to move, to rearrange itself. I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at the thing as it gave off the distinct impression it was somehow watching me back.
Around me were dozens of similar tables, but on each one lay an infant wrapped in fine-looking blankets and shielded by a strange glass dome. Beside each was a strange esoteric box, made of a material I didn't recognize and displaying shifting glyphs in a language I couldn't read.
A trio of two men and one woman dressed head to toe in muted deep green robes? They looked like robes, but pulled tight enough to act as a shirt and pants despite a lack of a belt. Their faces were covered from the nose down in some sort of thin white mask. The tallest of the men was armed with a bizarre and obviously esoteric dagger. The weapon’s shape was cylindrical, ending in a single thin stabbing, needle-like point.
I think a dome like the others must have adorned my own table at one point, as shards of glass littered my naked body, and the three masked people only seemed to be noticing my presence now. Though they immediately gathered together to approach me. Placing a hand on the identical glyph box that sat next to my cot, I steadied myself and sat up.
I realised almost immediately that something was wrong with me. My body was shorter and thinner than it should have been. I wasn’t a baby like the room’s other occupants, but nor was I the powerfully built man I had been before awakening here. Running a hand through my hair, I found it a scraggly mess, barely long enough to reach my eyes. It might have been less alarming than the lithe and youthful body I found myself in, but not feeling the long and lustrous black mane I was accustomed to was oddly disheartening.
Slipping off the table onto the floor, I stepped between the shards of shattered glass and inspected the room around me more closely. While I had never seen anything at all like it before, the proliferation of infants gave some context. This room had to be a nursery of some sort. Granted, one the likes of which I couldn’t imagine if you described it to me, but a nursery all the same.
At least that’s what I thought before the strange living gem cluster above me launched a beam of light directly into my head. It was reminiscent of the energy attacks certain cultivators and sorcerers are known to favor, but very thin and far faster-moving than any Qi-based technique I knew of.
The beam hit me before I had even registered what was happening. Now, in my defense, I had just woken up, not to mention I had found myself in a body not my own. So It is fair to say that my reflexes weren’t exactly finely honed that day. Still, I know what I saw, and that beam of energy was fast.
Evidently, it wasn’t an attack, as while my head felt slightly warm where the energy had struck my forehead, nothing else happened. At least that's what I initially thought, soon, I realized the gems must be the home of some particularly powerful spirit, ghost, or demon that now had me in its grasp. It was the only explanation for my sudden inability to move.
When I say I couldn’t move, I want you to understand that I couldn’t even breathe or blink. I was utterly frozen in place, staring straight ahead…surrounded by babies. As though this alone hadn’t added to the surrealness of my situation enough, the spirit or whatever it was began showing me what had to be the most pointless illusions I have ever been subjected to. Before my eyes appeared words? Why?
Unable to move, I had no choice but to stand there and read this nonsense. It didn’t tell me anything I cared about, the scrolling words talking about my superior physical state, something about an infant's body being unable to contain my soul. I don’t really remember, as pretty soon I felt my mind glaze over at all this writing. In the past if I needed to read something long and boring like this, I would have a beautiful girl do it, ideally one with honey in her voice and a cheeky “Fuck me” smile.
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[...The Soul Fall is a natural phenomenon that allows the technology of ABEYANCE City to function…
I’ve always been able to hold my breath for a long time, but even I should have been feeling the strain of being unable to breathe by now. It must have been some side effect of the spirit’s grasp, either having slowed time for the pair of us, or I was getting air in some mystical way that I wasn’t aware of. Whatever the cause it didn’t seem to be affecting the green-robed people, as they continued to carefully approach me.
[...Similar in nature to the way a physical body is altered by the cultivation of….
At some point, the illusion added the least human voice I have ever heard in my life, though the words also continued to scroll before my eyes with certain phrases flashing a violent red.
“Greetings Subject: 982829149. As a Paradox Incursion you are likely experiencing a great deal of confusion. DO NOT PANIC. DO NOT PANIC. DO NOT PANIC. I have been created just for you, and if you listen to me and complete the ABEYANCE CITY INTRODUCTION as instructed ALL WILL BE WELL. ALL WILL BE WELL.”
I probably don’t have to tell you that I was not reassured that all would be well. In fact, I had resolved to explode into an escape the moment this paralysis ended. It had to be soon, a technique that could hold me even in this new, reduced body must cost an intense amount of whatever was fuelling the spirit speaking to me.
[...The world you are from may refer to this as Mana, Qi, or…]
?It said something more about Paradox Incursion and excess energy being recycled back into me. I really wasn’t paying attention. My eyes may not have been able to move, but past the masked group I could still see much of the strange white nursery, including what must have been a door. It looked like no door I had ever seen, but it was the part of the wall that wasn’t just wall.
[...Spells and skills function differently, though neither will require expenditure of…]
Large metal sheets that meet in the middle with an ornate and glowing lock of some kind, covered in raised glowing runes. Even in my new body, I felt confident I could shatter the runic lock. I’ve done it many times. Even the chains that held me during my execution had to be reinforced by a team of sorcerers and cultivators pouring their Qi into them.
[...as energy cannot be destroyed, the system being installed in you now will automatically…]
Eventually, I noticed the spirit had ceased its yammering exposition, and several of the words it was showing me flashed repeatedly in my vision. “Please select a name I should call you by, and then choose a Class, based on the unusually high tier of your soul remnant. I have made several suggestions. If you would like further clarification or have any other questions, all you need to do is think that you wish to communicate with your guide/assistant.”
I made a conscious decision to communicate with this thing, and all of a sudden, I could breathe and speak once more. My lungs did not feel like I had been holding my breath, a vital clue about the nature of my paralysis. I must have actually been breathing up till now, meaning that the immobilization was merely an illusion. I had encountered such techniques before among my foes, but rarely. Even knowing that I could, in reality, move didn’t break the illusory hold, so I did the next best thing.
[Please register a name]
“Release me, specter, before I shatter your vessel and send you screaming back to the afterlife!” I demanded.
[Please register a name]
“Before we can continue, please register a name.”
In frustration, I roared, “ I am Lu Bu, the mightiest of a generation, perhaps the mightiest ever. Your trickery will only save you for so long. Bow to my demands or face destruction!” The three masked figures had obviously gathered up their courage as they closed in around me, the tallest did something to his strange dagger and then raised it in preparation to strike me.?
“Name registered as Lu Bu,” Said the spirit that claimed it was my guide. I still couldn’t truly hear the thing’s words, appearing as they did in my mind and before my eyes. “Please select a Class so that we can channel your excess energy generation towards something constructive.”
Gibberish it was all gibberish, and I told the spirit as much.
“What are you babbling about?! I don’t have time for this!”
I have never heard a spirit sigh before, but I swear that is what it did. The voice in my head sighed it's annoyance at me.
“Please select a Class, there is an extensive list but I have provided three examples at the bottom of your vision that can take maximum advantage of your greater-than-average soul remnant.”
If I could have glared, the look that would have crossed my face could have shattered pottery at a hundred paces.
“I am of the noble class,” I replied dismissively. “I earned my adoption through skill and determination. Now release me!”
The spirit was growing more flustered by the moment, a sure sign that its Qi must be running low.
“You… haven't been paying any attention to me at all, have you?”
“I have not,” I confirmed.
The spirit went silent for what felt like a long time but somehow wasn’t enough time for the man to reach me. I am uncertain, but these three must have been in some way caught in the edges of the time freezing technique if it was taking them so long to reach me.
“Please, master Lu Bu, just look at the list and select one of the options. If you do, ALL WILL BE WELL. You don't have to go through all of them if you don't want to, but both of us will be stuck here until you make a selection.”
I considered the incorporeal voice's words. Many types of spirit or yaoguai could not lie to you, but I had no indication this was that sort. It was also possible by interacting with the illusion that I would strengthen it.
Perhaps I was influenced by the impending attack, perhaps it was that the spirit had proven itself wise enough to call me master. Whatever the reason, I directed my attention to the flashing words the illusion was presenting at the bottom of my vision.
[Great Sage- Inspect for more details.
Legendary Warlord- Inspect for more details.
Divine Hacker-Inspect for more details.
Full List]
Upon directing my attention to each word, a tiny window would miraculously appear in my vision. Through it, I could see a nondescript man in oddly tight clothing doing various martial arts, using various weaponry I have never seen before, or employing Qi techniques.
Maybe I should have been paying attention to the spirit’s esoteric ramblings. The name of these ‘classes’ showed under the window with some additional nonsense about their eventual destinations or something. I ignored them, fascinated as I was by the movements and magics I could see the figure doing.
“Normally, Class recommendations are made based on the stats and skills a person has developed as they have grown. As you are a Paradox Incursion, such mundane concerns should not hold you back in the long run, so make sure to review each option in detail and select a class that represents a path of growth for you-”
“I select Legendary Warlord.”
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