"Hey Maya, what do you think about the new boy?" said a light skinned girl with brown curly hair. Her hair hung at the top of her head in an afro. She had a petite nose and brown, bright curious eyes which made her look like a fun time to be around.
"What's there to think about. Maybe he's arrogant. Or maybe he's self driven and independent. That's all.", said another girl standing beside the first. They were currently in line at the cafeteria so people were everywhere around, but her innocent beauty made her noticeable anywhere. She had brunette hair, puffy cheeks and an oval face. Her brown eyes exuded an intelligence that was hard to find in girls her age.
"Pfft I know right? It's been two weeks and all he does is read books from the library. He doesn't talk. He doesn't try to make friends. Nothing. He's boring. Even the boys think he's a weirdo", the first girl continued. Her name was Lihle and she and Maya were known as the prettiest girls in class 8e. They had known each other for 3 months now and had grown to be best friends. Lihle was very popular with everyone so people told her things.
"All the boys do is play soccer and act tough. He's a bit more refreshing because he doesn't try to fit in" said Maya resolutely. Beside her, Lihle began staring at her with questioning eyes and Maya noticed this. Maya shook her head knowing what her friend was about to say.
"Heeyy Maya, I had no idea this was your type. So you like the silent weirdos... I see.", teased Lihle playfully. Maya looked at her scornfully and Lihle started laughing as a response.
While this conversation was happening, Leonidas was right behind them. But because he was short and had no presence, the girls failed to notice him. At this moment, Maya looked back and saw him looking back. She couldn't help but look away embarrassed. Lihle noticed and looked back only to see Leonidas looking to the front where a worker had just freed himself up to take an order.
"Hey, you like listening to other people's conversations don't you?", questioned Lihle shamefully. She had been the one gossiping a few seconds ago and yet he had become a villain all of a sudden. Leonidas could not help but think to himself 'No wonder they say that Women can casually ruin your life'. Leonidas visibly shook his head and pointed to the front where a worker was waiting to take an order.
Maya noticed that she had been holding up the line and immediately regained her composure and went forward to order her lunch. Meanwhile Leonidas immediately got his own lunch afterward and walked away leaving those girls staring at his back. He had other matters to deal with.
Leonidas had to come up with a plan. It had been almost a month since he came back. In this month he was changing his personality to seem like an intelligent kid while simultaneously trying to remember everything that would happen in the future. Whenever he remembered, he would write it down.
His journal, which was practically empty, was now full of stories and events that would happen from now to the year 2112. 100 years of history. Of course Leonidas knew that due to the butterfly effect, his mere change in behaviour and decisions had already influenced reality to start moving in a different direction. But just because it was moving in another direction did not mean some events in the future would not happen. That was why he took down the most important events, as they would define his success.
He understood that he needed Power. The power to move people. The power to inspire change. The power to influence reality. But power like that doesn't just pop out of nowhere. So he began with what he understood the best... Soul Cultivation.
Human beings have 7 natural energy centres, also known as *Chakras*. The sixth energy center, commonly known as the third eye or the crown of the soul, was the place where a human's soul could be found. Most people have no idea about this information as most of it has been lost in translation while some of it has been relegated to the realm of myth. There were even some organisations which thoroughly controlled the dissemination of this type of information. They are the ones who made sure that humanity would only think of *The Soul* as a myth, obviously for the purpose of control.
In order to cultivate the Soul, humans have to *Awaken* their awareness to it's existence. This *Awakening* takes place by channeling spiritual energy from the spiritual energy dimension through the soul and out into the body, thus forming a formal connection between the soul and the physical.
Yogis do this through Meditation by chanting certain phrases which create a link between the soul and the physical. They call Awakening *Enlightenment* and whenever it happens to a human, humanity gains the existence of an *Awakened Being*.
There have been many such awakened beings throughout history. From Osiris in ancient Egypt, who awakened after reading ancient Sumerian texts and felt himself a part of the universe thus proclaiming himself to be a son of a God. To Jesus, who awakened at the age of 24 while practicing what he learned from Tibetan scriptures and went on to preach about Love being the way to achieving *Oneness* with the universe. There were few before, few in between and few who came after them. What matters most is that humans are capable of awakening themselves but they have always been bad at teaching others to awaken.
Leonidas needed to begin his path into cultivation as soon as possible. And so, 2 weeks ago, while sat on the roof of his new house, in the middle of the night, Leonidas meditated on a script that he had conceptualized himself.
He let go of reality and looked within himself. Within his 6th energy center. Indigo lights would shine periodically as he tried to gain awareness of his energy center. But because he'd done this before, it merely took him 5 seconds to achieve this. Next he ran the script and after 3 more minutes an explosion of light occurred. This explosion of light was invisible to the naked eye, but if anyone was capable of *Spiritual Energy Vision* they would see bright rainbow colored light spread all over Southern Africa. He had succeeded.
Seeing that the lights had the potential to spread all across the globe and way further, he willed them to return and breathed out some foul air as he woke up in the morning of the next day. A smile was visible on his face. He was beaming. The first time he awakened in his hospital room, the light inspired by his soul had only been a silver color and it had stretched out to a distance of 1000 meters around him. At that time he was proud after finding out that most other awakened people did not even reach 500 meters. But now his lights had the potential to reach around the whole world.
The lights from an awakening determine an energy center's innate potential and ability. If back then his potential was high, now it's more than 100 million times higher. This would benefit his cultivation speed and comprehension of the art of *Sorcery*, the art of Sorcery being the conscious manipulation of spiritual energy to bring about changes in physical phenomena.
His *Soul*, the container for spiritual energy, had been changed greatly in those trillion years in the Spiritual Energy Dimension. It was purified and cleansed. Thus, it's innate quality increased to something humans could never be capable of. Of course Leonidas understood this. He again became grateful for the existence of the fragment of the Divine Spark. None of this would be possible without it protecting and healing him all that time.
Every day from then on, he would cultivate and absorb spiritual energy. The cultivation realms were defined by Gaia as follows:
The Minor Realms...
>> Mortal Realm: 1-10 units ... Lifeforce: 125 yrs
>> Awakened Realm: 10-100 units ... Lifeforce +25 yrs
>> Lord Realm: 100-1000 units ... Lifeforce +50 yrs
The Major Realms...
>> Noble Realm: 1000 - 1,000,000 units ... Lifeforce +100 yrs
>> King Realm: 1,000,000 - 1,000,000,000 units ... Lifeforce +200 yrs
>> Emperor Realm: 1,000,000,000 - 1,000,000,000,000 units ... Lifeforce +500 yrs
The Higher Realms...
>> Earth Lord Realm: 1,000,000,000,000 - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 units ... Lifeforce +5,000 yrs
>> Ascended Realm: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 units ... Lifeforce +50,000 yrs
>> Higher Being Realm: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 units ... Lifeforce +500,000 yrs
The Beyonder Realms...
>> Celestial Realm: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 units ... Lifeforce +10,000,000 yrs
A *unit* was defined as the minimum amount of energy it would take to conceptualize a rune, and it was a string of energy. Gaia had gotten this knowledge from the universe at the time of her birth. This was a universal concept. All beings were bound by it. Gaia changed some of the names to make them relevant to human cuiture and history.
Everytime a cultivator ascended a realm, they would get a gift from the universe as a reward for their hard work... *Lifeforce*. Living beings have a set amount of Lifeforce at birth and the Lifeforce depletes itself over time. Once there is no more Lifeforce, the being experiences death. As long as a being cultivates they could one day achieve immortality.
At the time of his death, Leonidas was only in the lowest level of the King Realm with total possible lifespan of 500 earth years. But he was still able to fend against most of the highest level battle soldiers of the Kr'roga. If he managed to get to the Emperor realm before they arrived... Leonidas couldn't even think of the possibilities but he knew that humanity would at least have a fighting chance.
Leonidas theorized that Gaia may have been an existence in the Earth Lord Realm. The only reason she could not fight was because she was held back by the rules of the universe. As the spirit of the Earth Planet, if the spirit of another planet declared war on her she could only leave it up to the beings who inhabited her planet to protect it.
The spirit she was going up against, Rz'nga was 100 times older than her, so he had time to teach his people about cultivation and the order of the universe. Some would say Gaia was doomed to lose. Others would say it was a surprise the fight even lasted that long. Whatever it was, humanity just needed more time.
Now Leonidas had been cultivating for 2 weeks. He was cultivating a self created script he named *Freya's Origin Manual*. It was a work in progress. But it currently had two chapters, and these two chapters were filled with runes and script which he would use to absorb spiritual energy.
With the advent of his 70 million base runes and his innate understanding he was able to create an array which would speed up cultivation by 1000 times faster than the manual given to the awakeners by Gaia. With this he managed to cultivate all the way from the Mortal realm to the 9th level of the Lord Realm (900 units) and was very close to a breakthrough to the Noble Realm!
It has to be said that this is from someone who could only cultivate 8-10 hours a day. He knew that his soul's innate talent was also a catalyst for his crazy talent and that prompted him to cultivate even harder.
Right now he was walking to his favorite spot where he would sit everyday and eat or write notes about what to do next. Write notes... Leonidas did not like that fact that he had to write notes. Although he used a constructed language to hide his writings as a form of cryptographic concealment, he figured it would not take long for a super computer to decode his language and translate it for anyone to see.
He needed a way to store his thoughts... Or maybe he needed a way to remodel his thinking... The human brain has very bad memory. It does not remember object, but remembers feelings and attaches general objects to those feelings.
For example a dog bites your leg and you grow to fear them. The next time you see a dog or imagine it, your brain elicits those same emotions as a response to remind you that they're dangerous. The same way if you think about an Apple, your brain will activate your saliva glands to remind you that Apples are edible.
But as we know, YOU are not your brain. YOU are not your body. As long as a person can awaken their soul, their soul can have the ability to remember anything, in high definition, as events. The main reason why Leonidas was able to remember things about his past life was because it took two weeks for his soul to settle, and in that two weeks he had access to his memories.
"I guess it's about time I rebuild my Soul Library", Leonidas said to himself while chomping on a piece of bread.