Chapter 9: The Laws of Cultivation and Fate

In the end Lu Bu admitted defeat to the reality bending powers of martial arts after the schooling he received on them with the Young Miss and her progressing obsession with them. Overall they had followed some loose guidelines on genetics and allowed you to do as you pleased as long as you had even a Mortal Fighter level of cultivation. Truthfully that was a vast simplification on the subject but Lu Bu could break it down to terms commonly found in a VR game world known as Skyrim that had managed to be passed down for several millennia, it even overshadowed its own sequels.

At the end of the day though cultivation boiled down to having a spiritual root. A simple Punnett square would brake down the chances if you would have one, and the Ares continent applied this simple genetic concept unknowingly by marrying root holders to one another based on quality, element, and bloodline thus slowly edging out mortal bloodlines and any chance of siring mortals.

Clearly spiritual roots largely decided your lot in life but they also assigned your martial art specialization by default. Yes you could still learn any martial art you found and perform it but at the end of the day if you had a Wood spiritual root learning flame based martial arts was largely detrimental. In other words an NPC warrior could learn magic but it would not be as good as a mages or even have more than one use. Spiritual roots could be of one of the four basic elements: Water, Fire, Earth, and Air. They could then be divided into more advanced elements such as Ice, Lightning, Wood, and Space. Each spiritual root had an amplification effect on martial arts that specialized on their corresponding element.

The roots were then divided by their spiritual capacity. Mortal roots starts at baseline of what Lu Bu guessed would be 100 Magicka Points or MP at low level, 200 MP at middle, and 300 MP at high level. Warrior roots would then scale to 500 MP, 1000 MP and 2000 MP respectively.

That said just like in Skyrim where the rules and clear distinction in different classes did not apply if you were the Dragonborn. The martial arts system ironically had their own version of the Dragonborn which would be Holy Roots. Holy Roots allowed one to perform all martial arts as if you were a specialized root holder and gave you a ridiculous capacity for spiritual energy. While a mortal root holder would start with 100 MP and slowly build himself up through cultivation, a Holy root holder would start at 10,000 MP and be a powerhouse the second they practiced any martial art. In the whole Holy Raiment Empire only the Emperor had Holy roots, and across the Ares continent, of the thirteen other empires, another six were also led by a Holy root holder.

That said the none Holy root Emperors overcame the deficiency of their roots through good old cultivation. Cultivation manuals allowed one to expand their spiritual capacity and with enough perseverance, resources, and talent Warrior root holders and even Mortal root holders could match or even overpower the Holy Root Emperors. The greatest example of this was the Crimson Emperor to the west who with a Mortal root rose to power as an Emperor with countless military achievements and his ridiculously powerful cultivation base. Admittedly he did hold a rare lightning Mortal root, but his starting point was as common as any one else on the Ares Continent.

Apart from strength that could shock any Earthling, cultivation also provided benefits to longevity. At the peak of Mortal General cultivators would easily live 200 years, this greatly shocked Lu Bu, as based on his memories he was 250 years of age but this was after several millennia of genetic testing and experimentation. Lu Bu had no knowledge of the Combat or Holy realms of cultivation but the Holy Raiment Emperor was a holy realm expert said to be around 300 years old clearly the lifespan increase did not stop at a mere 200.

Inside this no longer so quite little carriage Lu Bu was actually peering out the window as the Young Miss peppered her father with questions on cultivation. While she could not cultivate yet, she could memorize her manuals and try to visualize the concepts, combined with physical training it would give her a great foundation for her future cultivation path. Lu Da happily answered her questions to keep her entertained, but could be heard sighing at his daughters fascination with axes. This was a very uncommon weapon choice overall and for a woman even more so out of place. Eventually Lu Bu began to zone out their discussion and focused on the wide roads and sights outside the window.

While Lu Bu was coming to terms with his new identity over the past few years and had great fascination with the culture, history, and martial arts of the Ares continent. He still maintained a sense of desire for his home world of Earth, the irony of him detesting Earth but immediately longing for it was not lost on him. Earth was boring he had never had the level of excitement he had here on the Ares continent, to him it seemed insane he longed for Earth. Yet he found the similarities in these cultures and detested not the place he was in but his fate at birth.

On Earth he was a generic bio produced human, his birth was the culmination of the best genetic traits suitable to his job, his number 003 was not inherited from a father or mother but from his birthing pod. The previous pods creation had passed and he was up next, now with his death on Earth it would likely be passed down again.

On Earth looking back he truly had nothing. His clothes, his home, his relatives, his career, his number, all of these were government provided. All he could call his own was his experiences in VR worlds. These worlds held his own decisions, his own path, he had to acquire resources, spend them as he saw fit, and lived as he desired. Realizing that the Ares continent could be similar to one of these VR worlds allowed Lu Bu to fall into a state of bliss for a period of time. Then on a normal day were he rushed to attend the morning classes the Young Miss readily skipped out on for one of her so called pranks. He learned the truth.

He really loved the lessons so he decided to attend with out her but on arrival he was chastised for not attending lessons with the Young Miss in tow. He even took some lashings for not being at her side while skipping class. This one event allowed Lu Bu's reality to hit him. He was not some hero in this world, he did not have great ancestry, he was not the protagonist, simply put he was not the Dragonborn. His clothes, his home, his relatives, his career, his name, were all decided by the Lu family. Here on this continent he had nothing too.

If Lu Bu was being honest his starting point was worse than the one he had on Earth. On Earth while things were decided for him he could slack off at work as desired, he could play in VR worlds, he did not have to fear beasts or human wars, and even without cultivation his life was longer than Mortal Generals. The people of the Ares continent had to fight and risk death for luxuries he often had at hand and took for granted. This reality crushed his spirit for a time but then he accepted his lot in life. Just like on Earth where he did his agricultural work as directed, he did the same when taking on the role of Death Warrior, it was clearly not a great title and properly translated to bodyguard/ cannon fodder #1.

Then the wolf incident happened, he had no idea were he found the strength to do what he did. At the time he just simply did what he believed was expected of him as his role of cannon fodder #1. He had no valiant thoughts, no spirit of self sacrifice, no concept that he was courting death; it was simply his duty. Yet when the wolf flew from a simple push the exhilaration gave him the greatest rush he's ever had in any VR world, his body quite literally roared.

This strength was his!

Not anyone else's!

He was not a mindless idiot, he knew this came from the so called Divine Wolf Blood and Demon core Aegis provided, but this strength was his alone. In his mind he vowed he would cultivate this strength and break free from his status as Death Warrior, break free from living a boring existence, break free from his fate!