The Place Where Everything Begins

Name: Jeremy Caesar Lakota

Race: Human (Le'Liac - Low-Rank Organism)

Class: Journeyman Mage (Peak - Substage 4 of Class 1 Mage)

Title: Mage of Origin (Rank 10 - Inactive), Prodigy Mage (Rank 8 - Inactive), First Mage (Rank 5 - Inactive), NEET (Rank 0 - Inactive)

Affinity:

- Fire (Common): 45.2%

- Darkness (Uncommon): 34.8%

- Space (Rare): 89.9%

- Divinity (Unique): 0.1%

Talent: Prodigy of Magic

Trait: Objective

Skill:

- Footwork (Basic - Passive Skill)

- Ambidextrous (Basic - Passive Skill)

- Disguise (Basic - Active Skill)

Achievement: (Omitted...)

Tutorial Mission:

- Survive I

...

After checking the change within his status window, which was obviously the addition of skill section containing three newly bought skills within, Jeremy closed off his status window.

'The skills bought directly from the system are convenient as always, as they can manifest themselves in the form of information within one's status window, unlike those self-taught skills, abilities, and spells.'

There was something called 'System' in this known universe; it was something akin to an incarnation of Akashic Records.

What was the Akashic Records, you asked?

Simply put, it was an enormous existence that governed all knowledge within the known universe. At the same time, it could also be considered as a bookshelf, which contained countless books inside, as one of those books even included Jeremy's 10th rank title, 'Mage of Origin', that was placed silently on the highest shelf.

As for the System's duty, it had been widely recognized as an AI-like existence, which could be accessed only by the selected few.

There were many guesses regarding the existence of the System, but that's it. No one actually knew what its factual purpose was.

The only one who knew about those questions might have accounted to only one being in the entire universe, which was clearly the Akashic Records.

After all, the Akashic Records was akin to the actual body of the System.

Currently, Jeremy was sitting cross-legged at the corner of the chamber.

The reason for him to be sitting there only signified one thing.

He was preparing to do meditation.

"Fwuuu..."

After exhaling out a long breath, Jeremy closed his eyes...

...

Two hours later, Jeremy was seen to be meditating silently at a corner.

After seeing him like that, other people didn't dare come to disturb him.

Currently, Jeremy was within his own world entirely, inspecting every nook and cranny of his own body using his mind.

To be exact, he was now 'feeling' instead of 'looking' at his own body, but it actually seemed like he saw every place inside his body so clearly, just like he had a microscope within his body.

It was really bizarre and mysterious...

The cause of all that was because Jeremy was within something called 'Realm'.

A realm, or rarely called 'beyond technique', was something that could be achieved by training in some techniques or skills for a very long time.

Train, train, and train nonstop...

Until one day, the practitioner of that said technique or skill would finally attain something called 'Realm'.

This time, it had required Jeremy two hours to enter this 'special' meditating state, as this was the first time after going back in time that he had decided to enter a realm.

Right now, Jeremy was within a realm of meditation called 'Mindful Body Realm', which was a realm that could only be achieved by going higher than the 10th stage of meditation, 'tranquility and equanimity'.

In fact, there were still many realms branching out from the 10th stage of meditation, but right now, the only realm that could let Jeremy inspect every nook and cranny of his body was only this Mindful Body Realm.

At this moment, Jeremy was looking closely inside his brain.

To be specific, he was looking at a rounded black thing embedded within his brain.

As we've all known, the human body contained three dantians: upper, middle, and lower dantian situated at the brain, heart, and underbelly, respectively.

That meant the black thing that Jeremy was looking at was actually a 'dantian'.

It was Jeremy's upper dantian...

A dantian was considered as the best place inside one's body for external energy to exist. It was also connected to other dantians situated in different locations within one's body.

As for the size of those dantians, it could only be described with one word as 'misleading'.

Let's take a look at Jeremy's dantians' size as an example...

As his three dantians had the same out looking size of around almost 1 cm in diameter, on the contrary, the inside of those three dantians was something different entirely, for the interior of Jeremy's dantians had the size of around 5 cm in diameter, which was more than five times of their outlooking size.

As for the type of energy residing within Jeremy's dantians, of course, it was mana, the purest mana in existence at that...

Come back to the current situations...

The sole reason why Jeremy was inspecting his upper dantian was that he wanted to know why he couldn't naturally attract and absorb the atmosphere's mana into his own dantians.

After all, his mana had only around 85% of his total amount mana left, and it had not been naturally replenished as it always was.

'Hmm... something is really wrong here. In my past life, whenever I inspected my own dantians, I would see countless mana particles being guided towards my dantians continually. But this is very strange... My upper dantian remains completely isolated with no mana being guided towards it at all.'

'Let's take a closer look then.'

After accessing into his upper dantian, it would not be an exaggeration at all to say that Jeremy's dantian was akin to an infinite outer space. It was decorated by a big hurricane acting like a universe spinning at the centermost place of the dantian, while countless lights were glowing brightly on the universe's body akin to the endless star lights.

Of course, that hurricane was Jeremy's whirlpool that was rotating incessantly at the most center of this black space.

Time by time, there would be light blue glows coming out from countless mana particles flying here and there within this black space, causing the area to be illuminated like the shining stars in the vast dark sky.

After taking a look around, Jeremy was stupefied yet again...

'What the f*ck. Everything is so... normal.'

'How? Why my dantian doesn't attract mana from the outside world?'

Even after thinking about many possible problems and solutions, Jeremy still couldn't find one...

In truth, he didn't even know what the problem was. So, how could he even find the solution in the first place?

'Like this, I can only do the trials and errors on my own then. First, let's check on the other dantians.'

Soon after, Jeremy changed his focus to the chest area where situated his beating heart. At that place, a small rounded black object was within his thumping heart, which clearly was Jeremy's middle dantian.

Upon accessing into his middle dantian, Jeremy got perplexed yet again...

'Nothing out of the ordinary at all. Go to my lower dantian then.'

Then the scene changed once again; Jeremy was now focusing on the inside of his underbelly.

Afterward, his mind went inside his lower dantian...

'Fuck! All three mana whirlpools are doing okay. Then what is the problem? Why the heck my three dantians cannot attract mana? It is so frustrating. Damn it.'

Jeremy could only rant curses and swears endlessly within his mind after finding no solutions to his predicaments.

After some time passed, Jeremy decided to go back inside his upper dantian.

He had to try other things anyway; there was no point for him to curse forever, wasn't he?

Upon coming back inside his upper dantian, he was met with the same sight of a giant whirlpool rotating nonstop at the center of his dantian.

'I've decided. It might be a bit tiring, but I have to try that...' Jeremy thought.