Chapter 1

Within a seemingly endless, engulfing darkness, a faint figure could be 'seen' drifting. With long white hair that covered his mysterious eyes, the man's body resounded with countless cracking sound as his body was continuously compressed by the surrounding space.

As if foreshadowing his demise, the man had a faint smile as he let out a long sigh.

-------Flashback-------

I still remember how I went to sleep that night, expecting to go back to work the following morning, only to find myself waking up in the arms of a beautiful lady I learned to call mother.

The first couple of years of this new life were as uneventful to me, a programmer who used to sit at least ten hours a day in front of a computer, as you could find. At the very least, the countless novels and fanfics I used to read and the many animes and movies I used to watch were finally proving to be useful.

Like any self-respecting mature baby, I tried to learn as many things as I could around me, which proved to be easier than expected since the language that my parents and the people around them spoke seamed to be English.

The results of my little investigation made me feel both excited and disappointed, as I learned that mana and Qi seemed to be a real thing here, which was confirmed when my mother created a little light show with her fingers while she played with me.

My disappointment, which mainly stemmed from the fact that I didn't recognize the world I lived in as a work I had read or watched before gradually disappeared since I still had two new energies to look for, Qi and mana.

Using my legacy worth of knowledge about cultivation novels, I naturally tried to meditate, which I only used to do as a relaxing hobby. I still remember how excited I was the first time I felt that warm flow like thing in my body, and how chunnibyou I was to actually try to form a Ki blast from Dragon Ball.

I gradually understood that this warm current that I felt in my body that stemmed from my heart was called Qi and that it was naturally used by warriors tho strengthen their bodies.

After a while of playing with this energy, I couldn't restrain my curiosity and tried to find my mana. This proved to be quite difficult as my senses were still adapting to the presence of Qi, but knowing that mana was used by wizards and that in most novels it was connected to the mind, I naturally tried to try and feel it in my head.

I remember that it took me a whole month to finally feel a faint prickling sensation in my glabella, which gradually flooded my head with cooling energy that seemed to sharpen my mind.

Coincidently, since for my first times I felt my Qi during the day and mana during the night, I grew fond of practicing them during those times. While I was young and free of responsibilities, I made the best of my time by alternating between Qi training for a part of the day and Mana training for a part of the night.

At that time I tried to replicate the wisdom of many of the MC I read about, a very simple principle which is basically to use up all your energy to make it grow. Something which I was delighted to find working.

Despite the tiredness, I persevered through it and found out both my Qi and mana were growing every day by a small amount. This was not to be neglected since by the time I was 4 years old, I had nearly 10 times the amount of energy I started with.

By that time, I had 'learned' how to read and write and knew that my name was Arthur Dawnstar. I was really surprised that my family were nobles and that my father was a duke. Which mean I had to go through all kind of classes going from etiquette and dancing to math and history. My young flexible brain was like a sponge that learned fast which gave me a reputation as a genius in our territory.

At 6 my father taught me our family techniques, which was one of the few families to have both warrior and wizard inheritances, optimizing my training efficiency to a whole new level which allowed me to reach the third rank out of nine known ranks by 10 in both professions. In the meanwhile, I also began my sword training which quickly became one of my passion when I learned about the different sword stages such as one with the sword, sword Qi etc… I remember that I scared our servants when I began to creepily laugh while imagining myself reaching the level of Ji Ning, sigh, guess I was still chunni even then.

Between my eleventh and fifteenth years, I was sent to the continent's strongest academy to learn more about the applications and theory of mana and Qi and to further my sword training.

Those years were filled with the infamous clichéd hormonal young masters who lust after anything that moves and who have a 24h/7 boner. Those were such a headache to deal with.

Well, I guess I was also hormonal so I ended up doing some research too. I wanted to know whether dual cultivation was possible, so I tried it many times just to be sure… Cough cough

Anyway, by the time of my graduation, I could confirm many of my theories about Qi and Mana.

So basically, Qi is an energy that comes from the body's nutrition and training that can be stored in the heart and can be refined using the meridians in the body and physical exercise. Its use can be both passive and active, meaning that it passively strengthen your body by flowing naturally and it can be further improved by using Qi techniques and can also be applied to your weapon.

Mana, on the other hand, was a bit different. I learned that the energy of the mind is called spiritual energy, and by mixing it with the world energy, you create mana, which can be used to power spells. About that, the only spell they teach in the academy for free is a basic fireball spell.

After that, they basically teach you how to make your own spells, which came easy for me as it was just another programming language.

Moving on, I graduated with all the honours as the strongest genius in a thousand years, a dual fifth rank, which wasn't really that important since I also finally finished one of my big projects, to create an AI spell matrix.

I guess I missed the internet a bit too much, but another good reason is that I had created hundreds of simples spell with this new programming languages and even with the spiritual energy that greatly improved my mental abilities, I didn't think that I could use them as effectively as I would like.

It began as a simple search engine project to quickly find information, but I found that it wouldn't be flexible nor fast enough in battle. I then remembered that its basically a programming language, I could use the theory from my past life to make it work.

So after many sleepless nights of research, (not of dual cultivation, well just a little bit), I finally made a breakthrough and even though it took a toll on my spiritual energy at first, I gradually refined the spell matrix until it finally became a learning wizard assisting system.

As it learned all of my spells and gradually adapted to combat situations in the sparring classes, it became one of my biggest support. I could even use it in my sword spars since it also learned to improve my Qi efficiency as well.

Basically, I created my cheat.