A New World

"HUaahhH! …" Rellandus opens his eyes with a huge gasp.

*hualahlahlahlahlah*

He winces as a flock of birds fly away from him, obstructing his view of the blue skies for a heartbeat.

*Splat*

"Ughhhh…" He cannot help but groan in disgust as a bird litter lands on his cheek.

He is about to wipe the gooey discharge when he realizes how heavy is body is that he can barely lift his arm up.

Not only does he feel his body heavy, his mind is cloudy too.

"Heh…" He chuckles at his situation.

He had not felt this degree of sluggishness and weakness in a very long time. He cannot help but become nostalgic at the long lost, but very familiar feeling.

Hunger and exhaustion; his default state when he was but a poor and lowly disciple in a third-rate immortal cultivator sect.

The many sleepless nights of studying cultivation methods and arts.

The self-imposed starvation to save the tiniest bit of resources to afford himself cultivation resources of lowest quality that he can buy.

Memories of helplessness and living everyday like his is trapped in a dark and endless tunnel.

While reminiscing, "Master…" he utters in worry as the memories of his last moments in the God King Territories rushes to the front of his mind.

His worries disappear immediately however. If there is anyone who can survive venturing through the lifeless endless realms, then it would be Vroalagg. He should worry for himself first.

"The God King Energy…" He remembers the most valuable object in his possession and feels that he is grasping something on his left hand.

He struggles to lift his arm up, and realizes that his body is barely holding itself together, and that each fiber of his body is just a love tap away by a Celestial, from being crumbled apart.

He ignores his physical state for now and takes a look at the object.

To his surprise and shock, the orb that was once full of light and life, is now nothing but a dull, ordinary pebble.

As if proving his suspicions right, the pebble crumble to dust just as soon as he ever so slightly tightens his grip on the object.

"Ran out, huh?" He utters as he drops his arm limply to the ground.

He can remember vaguely the few moments after he jumped in the portal. He remembers his surroundings was nothing but flashing lights of different colors.

He also felt himself traveling at speeds he never imagined possible. At speeds he figures that only God Kings can travel. With that speed, came a terrible price for someone as weak as he. He felt his body being ripped apart to dust, repeatedly.

He would not have felt those repeats if it was not for the God King energy which he felt restored his body repeatedly.

At some point, he figures he must have lost consciousness, and while he was unconscious, the travel must have continued the cycle of his body ripped apart, and the God King energy healing his injuries.

He gets over his loss of the God King energy and silently thanks Vroalagg, Vroalagg's foresight, and God King Naena's sacrifice before moving on to his more pressing concerns.

First, is his worry of his cultivation. While his body has been protected, and so was his life, he does not know if that was the case to his cultivation.

He forces his cloudy mind to look at his inner world and to his relief, he finds his cultivation core unharmed unlike his body that is barely holding itself together. His energy reserves, however are at a very low level; not enough for him to defend himself against a cultivator that is equal to him in power.

He realizes however that he must have landed in this place for a while now and was unconscious for he figures is more than a hundred breaths, and yet nothing has attempted to harm him yet.

Wanting to be sure how safe he is currently, but can barely move his muscles aside from the one around his eyes, he can only move his eyes to all directions to look around.

He finds that he is currently inside a crater a few tens of feet wide and deep.

The crater, he figures due to its freshly burnt black surface, was caused by his arrival.

"Life…" He smiles in satisfaction, feeling the place teeming with life.

That is evidenced not only by the bird that desecrated his face with its digestive excrement, but also by the roots sticking out of the surface of the crater, bleeding sap and other types of liquids.

He looks beyond the crater and finds trees surrounding it, their leaves swaying in the wind, but tainted with soil and are burning due to the dirt, dust, and high temperature his landing has caused.

Wanting to find more about the place, but can barely able to move his body, he relies on his divine sense. That is when he realizes that he has his divine sense deactivated.

He gets worried for a moment until he manages to release it after fighting the fog in his mind.

As soon as he expands it, he is surprised to detect thousands upon thousands of sentient creatures, in an omnidirectional radius of only a hundred steps. Sentient creatures of different sizes ranging from critters of hundreds of times smaller than his fingertip, to beasts that are tens of times larger than an average human.

While he is surprised of the number, he is disappointed further.

He notices that the levels of these creatures are similar to those that one might find in the lowest levels of mortal domains in the God King Territories.

Creatures, barring plant life aside, that can only live up to a maximum of ten billion heartbeats of an average mortal human.

One example of that is the largest creature he detected so far; a beast around a hundred fifty times the size of an average human. While it is massive, it is still mortal which Rellandus estimates to have a lifespan two to three times longer than an average mortal human's.

Suppressing his disappointment once again, he expands his divine sense but before it can reach a radius five hundred steps, "sssssshh!" he hisses from a searing pain assaulting his brain and mind, like that one time he was stabbed in the head by an opponent.

Figuring that he still cannot force the limits of his divine sense through a muddled mind, or perhaps an injured body, he retreats it back to a range of four hundred steps. A range he feels is enough to warn him of incoming danger.

He ponders for a moment assess what else he can do. While his body is too injured and will take a very long time to heal to its full capacity, it is enough to survive an undefended assault indefinitely from a Golden Immortal at best.

This temporarily lessens his worries for his safety as he figures that nothing can hurt him in his immediate vicinity.

His next concern is his cultivation.

"Damn…" He grumbles.

Matching his observations of the place being somewhere in a very low-level mortal domain, the energy too is as mortal as it gets.

"Basic Spiritual Energy…"

He would shake his head in disappointment if he can. This level of energy has long been useless to grow his cultivation. While the energy can help him refill his reserves, it would take him millions of mortal lifetimes to fully do so.

The energy however is still has other uses he can exploit immediately.

"sssss…. Huuuuu…." Rellandus inhales and exhales deeply, feeling the energy flow through his core and meridians.

"Hm?" the next moment, he notices something strange. The energy seems to be a bit more potent than he expected. Not potent enough for the realm to be considered an ascended domain, but more potent than how spiritual energy should be in a domain like the one he currently is in.

Knowing that he cannot refill his reserves anytime soon, he can only try and re-learn his lost skills in the energy. After all, one benefit of this type of lower form of energy is that he can manipulate it without absorbing it or making it his own.

*whoosh* *whoosh **whoosh*

Suddenly, stones, pebbles, and rocks of all sizes rush towards the space above him, gathering them with his own will and his manipulation of the Basic Spiritual Energy.

After gathering what he deemed enough number of stones and rocks, he crushes them to dust, and mixes them.

Done mixing, he manipulates the stone dust to surround himself with it, and proceeds to use it to prop himself up to sit in a cross-legged position.

He has a hard time keeping himself up however so he shapes the stone dust to a weirdly shaped chair he can use to rest each part of his body on.

Only using a small quantity of the stone dust for his chair, he proceeds to shape the remaining stone dust to form a huge stone spike, the length of five men, and having the thickness of a man's forearm.

*whoo* *whoo* *whoo*

He then wills his newly formed temporary weapon to rotate horizontally and it does, very quickly, repeatedly slicing the air due to its speed.

A breath later, he stops his self-satisfied display and proceeds to use his stone spike for something more practical.