Audience with a King

Rowan could feel himself splash into something as he landed on something smooth and rolled across the floor his mana armament was still intact but as his mana space strained and cracked more, he could feel the pain pounding at the inside of his body as more and more light spilled out of his body. It reached a point where he was no longer able to see past the brightness that his own body was exuding, so he never even got to see where he was before the brightness got to be too much.

There was a sound like chains clinking before Rowan felt something grip his sides and tightly wrap around his body before the world went silent. The pounding in his ears began to fade and the cracks on his mana space stopped expanding, but he could feel his body getting weaker by the second he was, in fact, dying. Rowan was, on the other hand, able to finally take in his surroundings, which allowed him to see where he was at finally. He could hear the running water before he saw what was going on fully. He was standing in a bathroom covered in some of the most beautiful tile that Rowan had ever seen.

It was neat white squares that were lined with a single box of gold, while each square had a monogrammed L on the center of it. Rowan looked towards the running water and was amazed by what he saw. The bathroom was humongous, bigger than his suite at the tower, but there were several pools situated around the room that had different means of water pouring into them, but the center most one had what looked to be an entire waterfall pouring into it. The water somehow never splashed past the borders of the pool and sitting on the edge of the pool was a man with his back to Rowan as he stared at them.

Rowan watched in fascination as the same runes that Feng had marveled over were, in fact, a small portion of what scrolled across his back in a matter of seconds. The script moved faster than even Rowan was capable of following before it seemed to stop and shatter. It all began to arrange itself into an image. A wolf formed on his back and then before long the shattered script formed a dragon as well as Rowan watched the scene on his back the two beasts chased each other for so long and at such a quick speed that they formed the infinity symbol right on the man's back.

Rowan blinked and the weight of what he saw bounced around his brain and threatened to break it, which caused his body to shake and the chains that bound him to rattle. He could now only see the infinity symbol on his back and nothing more. Rowan could feel his body breaking down further just from seeing the symbol, but all of a sudden the man without looking back waved his hands, and the chains tightened and his shaking stopped.

"Can you give me five minutes? I was in the middle of this bath and really was not expecting your fight to end so soon. It was just so abrupt. Good application of your intelligence, kid." Rowan physically felt his body stabilize and then anger coursed through him. His life was on the line and this person in front of him had told him to hold on while he finished his bath. He opened his mouth to speak when the man sighed and it was like all the surrounding mana sighed with him, moving silently in and then silently out.

He finally turned towards Rowan and he was able to see the man for the first time while he realized that he had in fact seen this man before. It was the man that had executed the slash he had been chasing as one of his goals. His skin was light brown and the script he saw previously formed images on his bare body, some that not even Rowan knew what they were, but they all met the same end, chased by a wolf until they became an infinity symbol.

The man had hair that went to his shoulder, but with it currently being soaking wet, he was amazed by the fact that it looked like crystal had been pulled into strands and placed onto his head. Ever since his first transformation, Rowan had thought that his body was the pinnacle of the male physique, but the man in front of him wearing nothing but a towel put him to shame.

The muscle definition was out of this world. Rowan had to stop himself from ogling the man as he thought to himself, "He is perfection made flesh". He silently toweled himself off and, with a snap of his fingers, he was fully clothed. Nothing special. It actually looked like clothes from his own planet, which stood out as odd to him. He finally looked down at Rowan because Rowan truly just felt small before this man, despite their height not being dissimilar. "It's nice to finally meet you, Rowan Raid. My name is Regius Lowe. I go by several names and I've been called several things, but that's not really the point right now. The point is that, due to your own stupidity, you are dying."

Rowan froze for a moment. "My own stupidity?" Regius picked him up with one hand by the chains and took a step, causing them to vanish from where they stood and appear in what looked like a library. Rowan looked at the man, the rage on his face not hidden in the least. "I got this way because I was trying to carry out a mission for your system and I could not help but absorb the souls. I would have died otherwise." Regius nodded his head once. "Yes, and all of this would have been avoided if you simply paid attention to your mana center and properly evolved and cultivated it. You put the cap on the lid of a coke bottle after putting in a store's worth of mentos and you expected the bottle to not blow up. What can you be called other than a fool? Now granted you are here right now because you did complete the quest, but make no mistake Rowan Raid, this is a product of your stupidity. If you properly advanced your cultivation, then you would have been able to contain the energy and you could have used this reward for something else, but now your options are limited."

Rowan shot to his feet in his rage, displacing some of the things on a table next to them. "WHO was supposed to tell me that? How am I supposed to know any of this? There was no magic in my world a couple of months ago. Who did I have to tell me this?!" Rowan's gaze never wavered, and he stared at Rowan from a chair situated across from him.

"You had the system. You simply did not pay the price that was required for it. Nothing in this world is free Rowan Raid. The system will be going through an update to better help you and others on your layer, but that does not change what I said. Also, mana existed everywhere, you simply chose not to listen to its call. You are a tier zero soul. There is no restriction in the world that can keep you from sensing mana. You think you were just some all-star prodigy because you were? You've spent your life moving from task to task and you thought you were just good at these things? Your body has, on a subconscious level, always used mana to supplant itself even before the system."

"You just thought you were greater than you ever actually were, and you certainly weren't all that hardworking. Your cultivation journey up until this point can only be described as one word. Pitiful. You could have stayed in the gym an extra day and you would have noticed that it was not that the area ran out of mana that you could absorb but because you weren't able to see that you were absorbing so much of it that you were pulling it from space itself and it was taking time to travel to your planet. A day of cultivation would have put you higher than a rank 2 existence and still you chose to be mediocre."

"You only know how to work hard in battle and I don't know if that's genuinely you or if it's the evolved battle gene, which at this stage is your only truly redeeming quality and that was handed to you by a woman who should have been able to rely on you but instead you let her down as well, Maybe it should be here this opportunity is offered to."

Rowan couldn't control himself any longer, his rage reaching a tipping point and he threw a punch with all his might and it thudded into an invisible barrier stopping not even a centimeter from the man's face as he sipped on a drink that had appeared next to him. "Sit down, kid."

The word kid seemed to reverberate through Rowan's body, causing him to sit down not of his volition as his whole body reached a state of weird quiet, like even dying wanted to be obedient to the man in front of him. You have the power of an ant, Rowan Raid. I did not think I would need to tell you that you stand before a god."

Rowan looked at him glumly "Just give me my reward and save me, I'll show you that I can be just as good as you, I can only imagine the amount of help you required to make it here, I've done what I needed to on my own and on my own I'll climb up to the same height as you and show you what talent really looks like. I knew nothing of mana or anything like it, and I've thrived. What do you think I'll do when I have the knowledge to back the power?"

Regius smiled and slowly clapped his hands. "Good, that's the fire I wanted to see. You showed fear in the face of your death when you appeared in that bathroom and I needed to know you would be worth the effort I'm going to put in here. A long time ago, I made a deal to raise individuals who one day may have the potential to stand side by side with me. Now I won't lie to you and tell you that this doesn't benefit me because here in this Ark everything that happens, all advancements benefit me, the king."

Rowan wanted to ask the question that had been burning through his mind other than the Rage but Regius held up a hand and stopped him. "Some things you need not know at this time. If you live long enough to reach me without my intervention, then you can know these truths." Rowan tempered the anger and nodded to himself as Regius continued. "Now kid you have two options for Reward here, Option 1 is I fix your body and send you back to where you came from with the reward of me upgrading your Astra and you will get to go back to cultivating your own way with the help of the system 2.0. Option 2 is much different, Ill correct your path and show you what it means to be a cultivator, but it would mean swallowing your pride and asking for my help… oh and also it will probably be painful and I won't be able to return you to your world until you have reached a suitable point."

Rowan wanted so badly to take option one, rely on the system and tell this man to fuck off, he had it with his opinions and pompous attitude but at the same time he knew that this was an opportunity that no other living being would pass up on. He sucked it up and he could feel the emotional blow to his pride, almost as if it were physical as his voice came out barely a whisper. "I'll take the second option."

Regius grinned from ear to ear and for some reason Rowan could not help but think it looked rather demonic. His hand lightly stretched out and became ethereal as he reached his hand into Rowans chest and squeezed his mana space directly shattering it into fragments as the pain wracked Rowans body he stared into the smile that truly was the smile of the actual devil as he heard Regius voice right in front of him and in between him gasping from the tremendous pain. "To start, let's see if you can evolve your mana space."