Climbing the mysterious mountain.

{AN: Made a discord server with the help of my friend, here is the link:

https://discord.gg/ZCX5F5cfKq

Don't worry I will also post the link in the comments session.}

.

.

.

I continued walking in the polished cobblestone path, following this path I slowly started climbing up the mountain. Thanks to my trained body walking this long cobblestone path is relatively easy, and with how much [Ki] is currently in my body I doubt I will need to rest any time soon, heck I may even be able to stay days without eating in relatively good condition. But I shouldn't mistake this delay my huge [Ki] offers my body with not needing to eat or sleep. I still need the basics for my body to function that didn't change, but thanks to my huge [Ki] I can handle more time without the basic necessities.

My body also has even greater stamina than before due to my gigantic [Ki]. But I guess that has a downside too, due to my [Ki] being so big now, I will probably need to retrain my control. Thankfully that is something incredibly easy, on two days tops, I could reacquire my control back and start refining even further.

Even right now while I circulate the [Black Heaven and Earth Technique] I am doing the cycle training which is doing the [First, Second and Third Step] simultaneously. This has been doing wonders in the road to recuperate my control back.

I remember Shi-Woon having a problem with his body being way too week to handle such big [Ki], so his [Ki] helped push his body forward while he had to train a lot to not simply explode. Thankfully I won't have the same problem, I trained my body my whole life so I have a pretty strong physique right now.

But that doesn't mean that I should slack off, training is something never-ending and perfection doesn't exist, you can always improve... But when I was thinking about new ways and some crazy training programs, my mood instantly plummeted yet again... I can't help it, those events are still too fresh in my mind... and I literally have no one in my life right now... The desire to simply give up and do nothing is strong... the void is strong...

Why bother...

It's not worth it anyway...

You didn't need to do anything, you have time...

Just lay on this cool stone and sleep away...

More and more plagued and depressing thoughts assaulted my mind, my mother's death keeps replaying and replaying like some kind of broken record. I know the [Sharingan] amplify how I feel emotions... but I never knew it was so easy to fall into such a downwards spiral of despair and emptiness...

"Why don't you try living for yourself a bit... Friend."

Those words echoed through my mind yet again, and thanks to them I was able to jolt my mind away from the abyss of negative emotions... I feel a previously forgotten clarity return to my mind. This... this time it was particularly bad, like really, really bad. I was a few steps from falling...

I know my mental state isn't one of the bests... But... That was something else... something viler... My mind just slipped for a moment and I already started falling into the abyss. And even with my [Sharingan] combining with my shitty mental state... things shouldn't be like this... Maybe there is something amplifying my negative emotion more than normal? Guess I need to keep my guard up even from my own thoughts... what a huge pain.

Living for myself huh, guess it wouldn't hurt to pursue some of my interests. Maybe I can finally find someone I can love, Wear some cool armor, Learn magic...

Magic...

I can't do magic...

Immediately my mind tried to start again that towards a spiral of depression. But thankful this time I was more aware of it and was able to put myself away from it.

Fuckign hell...

Is that easy to enter the shitty depressive spiral? Fuck, I guess I will need to learn how to control my emotions better. Well, learn to control my emotions better is something quite beneficial to me. My [Fury] and [Black Origin Threshold] are heavily dependent on my intense emotions, so maybe if I have better control of my emotions I can have better control of them? Worth a shot, I won't lose anything if I train my emotion control anyway. It may even help me strengthen my [Spirit] a great deal, the strength of [Spirit] is also linked to my resolve and to my will a great deal so those things can also count when strengthening my [Spirit].

Whit all these thoughts occupying my mind I didn't even notice the time passing while I naturally followed the polished cobblestones path. Soon I reached a new place, from a distance I could only see a bunch of blurs that looked quite organized in some way. Coming closer and closer I was able to see a similar slab of stone that worked as a plaque, it read:

[Mt. Arcana Marketplace]

A plaza, and now a market place... hmm, let's explore this new place.

Utilizing the most my 10 meters radius of vision I was able to painfully explore the marketplace. why painfully? because it took more time than I would like to admit to exploring everything, and I ended up finding a great slew of nothing.

The please was deserted, no pun intended, there is absolutely nothing here besides differently shaped stones, not even some bits of rotting wood or anything, there is literally nothing. You can find some stalls made of polished stone, some stalls are even decorated with engravings of sorts. There is also what I presume are stores of different sizes and places, and the closer I got to the middle of the market place the bigger the stores became and the fewer stone stalls I found.

At the exact middle, there were the biggest stone buildings, you could easily see some pretty advanced architecture here with buildings reaching base ten stories tall. And yeah I went floor by floor checking everything, and yes I did indeed use [Advanced Step]. But not in a dumb manner, I let my legs cool off after using, and I never used it for more than ten meters. I am not dumb enough to try to use a literal walking technique on a place I can't see or I am not familiar with, so I limit myself to the border of my range of ten meters.

The biggest and what looked the fanciest building was in the exact middle of the marketplace. It was a 12 stories building, but this building was special in the sense that it wasn't just tall, but big and large to the sides, and back too. And it was one of the few which engravings survived intact, its huge stone signboard reads:

[Arcana Bank]

So this is a bank... huh, quite impressive to be honest... But when I got closer I saw why this signboard was able to survive relatively intact while the others from the other stores didn't. Dragon enchanting.

I could see a bunch of small and inconspicuous characters written all over the stone, some of them looked quite close to the ones I saw on my statue. So maybe these runes in the dragon tongue are to help preserve or enchant the durability of something... Plausible, but I could be very far away from the mark, My knowledge about magic is zero, and enchanting even less.

I explored the bank thoroughly expecting to find at least something, I did indeed found something. A safe, a really huge safe, or that is at least what should've been in this room. I found the room where the supposed safe of the bank was located, but it appears that someone took great effort to remove the safe, I only know this because looking with my [Sharingan] I found some scratches on the polished stone ground that probably showed the patch the door took every time someone opened it.

But besides that, the room was entirely empty. Not even a metal part to be found, only stone. If I had to guess the safe was removed by magic, powerful magic.

After the uneventful bank I finished exploring the marketplace, and seeing as it left me severely disappointed I simply continued going.

Exiting the marketplace I simply continued following the cobblestone road. Looking at the sky I could see that it was already night, the exploration of the marketplace took more time than I imagined, but I am still good to go.

After some more time walking I finally stumbled upon the third place of this journey, due to my bad sight I was only able to see a huge crater. My mind raced with more and more possibilities, maybe this part of Mt.Arcana has been completely destroyed? But seeing as this crater is the same color of stone I am growing so used with I don't think that is correct. Maybe its-

I stopped my train of thoughts when I finally reached the stone plaque, on the plaque I could read:

[Arcana Amphitheater]

Did I just mistake a fucking amphitheater for a crater? Man, my vision is really bad. I just set out to explore the stone amphitheater and found as you already expected a whole slew of absolutely nothing. Without much to do, I just continued following the stone path towards my next destination.

After some time taking the cobblestone road, I reached an interesting place. From afar it looked like a bunch of big blurry pillars put together, I presume they are buildings. Coming closer and closer I finally reached this place stone plaque, it read:

[Arcana University]

A university of all things. What a surprise. I immediately set to explore, maybe I will be able to find a book or some more information inside of this university.

Well... turns out the university is as deserted as every other place here. But the good thing was that I was able to find some interesting info.

First, the university is composed of twelve buildings. Each of these buildings are pretty big and filled to the brim with a lot of classroom and training halls. But these twelve buildings are also subdivided into three. There is the [Magic Subdivision], the [Mundane Subdivision], and the [Combat Subdivision]. Each subdivision has four buildings with varied facilities, at least I was able to deduce that from the clues left in the stones. I am just sad I didn't find anything different here, I was hoping maybe I could find some magic scroll, or maybe a weapon of sorts, anything that could help really.

But I am still kinda surprised in finding a university here, and to think I built all of this. It must've been glorious seeing these halls full of people, the marketplace with multiple vendors and people running around, the bank with its huge lines and unnecessary bureaucracy. The plaza with people coming and going, kids running around while their parents watched attentively, artists coming to admire and observe the stone artworks. The amphitheater full of people watching the performances, actors trying their best to stage the craziest histories.

It must've been really glorious, a true and really beautiful sight. But now everything is a simple shell of their past, a once beautiful mountain is now simply a huge amount of rubble on top of each other. Truly a sad fate to what once was a beautiful place.