Layers of Cultivation

*PAK!*

A sound of a punch was heard in the air and my knuckles were now hurting from the fist that I just threw. Man that hurt! What is this guy made of? The man on the other hand wasn't fazed at all.

"Ow! Are you robot or something? It's like you're made of metal or something… Geez…" I complained while rubbing my fists

"Hey! You're the one who punched me… but yeah… My bones are probably stronger since I'm an Iron Cultivator now. HAHAHA!" Grimm answered.

"Iron Cultivator?" I curiously asked.

"What? You don't remember?" He said.

I just shook my head…

"Ayayayayay… I thought the old you would tell you more about it…" He complained

He then explained about the layers of cultivation. As you all know, the dust from the comet that crashed on the moon covered the earth and plunging it into darkness. This is the reason why the earth only had sunlight once or twice a week at random. The clouds of dust were the cause of the shards raining down on earth on the first night of the apocalypse. Everyone who was shot with too many shards or was shot with a dying black shard was turned into zombies. Those who were miraculously unhurt still turned to zombies because of the inhalation of the dust from the cloud. The dusts are a form of tiny crystals after all. So everything in the world had the crystal shards allowing everything to evolve.

But these monsters weren't the only ones who can evolve. We humans had the ability to become powerful to fight them as time went on. I remembered some of my memories in the previous jump as Grimm was explaining. There are 8 layers of cultivation: Wood, Stone, Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, and Obsidian. This makes Wood being the lowest cultivation and Obsidian being the highest level of cultivation.

Our will to fight in this apocalypse would be the source of battery to level up our layers of cultivation. We had to constantly be brave and should have the mindset to improve ourselves in order for us to achieve a higher layer of cultivation. If death would face us right now, and we had the heart to bash it in the face, then our cultivation layers would go up.

If a person survived the apocalypse and was now living in it, they would automatically be a wood cultivator. We call ourselves the awakened. The ability to survive was now ingrained in us. We now have the "will to live" as our first passive ability. There's nothing special about this cultivation layer since it did not offer us much except the essential ability to survive.

A Stone cultivator would have the ability to summon or conjure a weapon out of thin air. This is because they tossed away the ability called "will to live" and traded it for

"hope to survive". The skill is formed because the host has abandoned the thought of just wanting to live, and changed their perspective on wanting to survive. We would receive a random weapon and that would be our personal weapon in the apocalypse. Other weapons are usable but we can't inject our crystal's blood in it making it useless against evolved zombies. Only Kaizer has shown the possibility of being in this layer. He must have a strong will to be this far ahead.

The Iron Cultivators, which Grimm and Ash are, allows a host to have superhuman strength making it possible to lift an entire house with one hand. This is because they have received a new passive skill called "the heart to be strong". Rarely, a host can obtain the ability to create, manipulate and control elements depending on what shard color the host has. For Grimm, it was fire and Ash had the ability to control nature. But this is just rare among the rarest. Not everyone can have it.

Having to manifest a thin layer of aura armor was a skill received in the Bronze layer. It can prevent low-grade zombie bites from penetrating the skin. But mid-grade and high grade zombies destroy it like cutting cake with a hot knife. The passive skill that allows this to manifest was called "drive to protect". But this is not the only thing you will get from being a Bronze Layer Cultivator. If the host received an element to control in the previous layer, the host would then be able to control it perfectly at this level. The strength of the host would now improve to 20% because the passive skill "heart to be strong" was now upgraded. A Bronze Cultivator can blow away a large renegade with a single punch! The only thing was, 95% of the survivors were stuck at this layer.

Going higher, Silver Cultivators can now receive their first active mega skill. The skill they would receive would be randomly given to them. Not only that, "the heart to be strong" would now be upgraded to 50% making them human monsters. A single Gold Cultivator would be able to handle low-grade zombies at ease. And as for the mid-grade zombies, these cultivators would be able to handle a one on one situation with them.

The last layer that the survivors attained in their previous life was the Gold Layer. My team and I were all Gold Cultivators. Back then, when we received the heaven-defying skill called "the thought of being immortal", we could now have the second layer of our aura armor, giving us the ability to become impenetrable by low-grade zombies and we could also resist against mid-grade as well as 7th grade zombie attacks. The best thing about this layer was that we will never be infected. That's right! This passive skill "the thought of being immortal" was a skill worthy of its name.

Sadly, that was the only layer we ever encountered. Based on what we experienced back in the previous jump, there were no Diamond and Obsidian Cultivators.

All these skills, power ups and weapons were all made possible by the crystal that was stuck on our bodies. It feeds from our will and memories, and in turn they supply us with Crystal blood. We called it that because the shards that our on our bodies releases tiny harmless shards and plant themselves in different areas of our bodies making us stronger. These were the fuel to activate the skills. And the higher the host's will to survive is, the stronger they become.

As to how we knew this information. Grimm was only told by the old him in the previous jump. And even though some of my memories resurfaced, it was all blurred and hazy which was odd. I didn't think much of it though.

"Wooooh! I can't believe you tried to wage war against a horde of 1st grade decays and a pack of renegades. And doing it as a Wood Cultivator? You sure have guts!" Ash said.

"Well Little sister… I was betting on the arrival of my comrades. Who knew that it would be you two?" I told them

"Well I'm glad you waited brother." She said as she smiled at me.

Yes, as you can see… These two are my younger siblings.

I know… I know… you have a lot of questions… but so do I…

"If you're thinking how we found… or how we remembered we're siblings and all then it's a long story." Ash said.

"Well as you can see, we have plenty of time" I said that as I gestured for everyone to look at the surroundings.

"You sure that this is a safe place to talk about it?" Grimm asked

"What have I got to worry about when I've got you guys?" I said as I patted their shoulders

They told me that they remembered a week before the apocalypse began. Based on what they told me, they were in our Condo in Hokkaido, Japan waiting for the conference. Grimm and Ash, or back then, Regan and Cherubim Ricks were handling our tech company in Japan as they gave me time to recover from my grief. We were all close since we all experienced the same treatment from our father.

Regan was 15 years old and had short well-trimmed wavy black hair that covered one of his blue eyes. What people loved about him was that he was a very sporty guy. If you let him play any sport against you, he'll crush you completely. He was also into computers which made him a very good tech consultant at the age of 10.

Cherubim suited her name – she was like an angel. She had short dark wavy hair and blue eyes. And she always had a cold expression on her. What amazes me about her is that she was really good with music and was an excellent dancer and gymnast. That's who she is in public. But what people didn't know, was that she was a badass. She had a sweet personality but in the ring she's tenacious. What made her so scary was the fact that she was a master of multiple martial arts at the age of 5… yeah, you heard me… 5! And at the age of 10 she was flying around the world teaching self-defense to celebrities and big shots. Now at the age of 14, she was going with my brother to help him run the company while I was gone.

"We both remembered a week before the apocalypse began…" Grimm started to narrate

I was now intently listening to their story. What happened to them? And how did they get here?

"I was in dad's lab with Ash as we were working on a project together. As we were doing the last part of the experiment in one of dad's old blueprints, it went horribly wrong and it exploded." Grimm said while he ended it with a laugh

I did not know whether to laugh or cry..

This guy… He could have died! Honestly…

"Then we noticed something weird in the room…" Ash said

"Yeah, the walls turned green…" Grimm added

This time Ash continued the story…

She told me they removed the items near the wall since they thought that it was acid corroding it. As they were removing dad's blueprints, they found a lever behind one of them. They both knew how mysterious dad was and decided to give it a try.

Ash said that she pulled the lever and the wall in front of her opened. What they saw were two battle armors just like what we were wearing, a bunch of guns, a bunch of spatial rings invented by their company and two weird looking helmets that had a post its on them.

The post its read that it was for Ash and Grimm. They were both curious as to who "Ash" and "Grimm" were. And their curiosity got the best of them. They both placed the helmet on their heads and thus the mind block was erased.

When they remembered, they immediately used the spatial rings to store their suits and other things inside the ring. Spatial rings are somehow like compressed backpacks that can store items. Their spatial rings had the ability to store 50sqm worth of items. As they touched their rings to place their consciousness inside to navigate and see what was inside the rings, they noticed that there was a lot of food stored inside and on one of the corners of the space was a piece of paper. They both took it out and saw that those were plane tickets to Los Angeles.

They both knew that dad was leading them to our mansion in Los Angeles so they both went out as quickly as they could. Before they left, they took one final glance at the secret lab and had one question in mind.

How in the world did dad know they would be here and that they would find the lab? It was as if he knew everything.

It was… creepy…

They flew to Los Angeles and were now staying at one of the hotels there…

They were ordering a brand new G55 Mercedes Benz in order for them to get to Bridgeport faster. Commuting days before the comet falls was not the best option.

After waiting for a day, they finally had everything they needed.

They were about to leave when suddenly they heard a loud scream coming from one of the hotel rooms…

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