Until the morning light fell through his window Jack kept cultivating. During the whole evening and night he had kept absorbing the Qi inside the room. In the end he had managed to absorb almost all of it and only the steady trickle of new Qi from the hole was keeping the air from becoming completely empty. By now he needed almost a minute to gather enough for even one drop, so it simply wasn’t effective to keep cultivating. After a last breath got added to the now bottle sized puddle of Qi in his Dantian Jack stopped cultivating.

When Jack opened his eyes, a slight glow appeared inside his eyes before vanishing quickly. Then he stood up and stretched.

*Haaah*

Jack loved the feeling of cultivation. Every cell in his body felt invigorated. And even though he hadn’t focused on it, a small part of the Qi was constantly leaving his Dantian and entering his body during cultivation, strengthening and healing it. Though it was miniscule compared to the wave that came during the breakthrough of a level, it was a passive effect that would allow him become stronger by the day and heal wounds with an incredible speed.

Carefully Jack moved his arm. Yesterday it had been broken and hurt with every movement, but today it had been almost completely repaired. Only a slight unease could be felt from it, but that would vanish soon enough, too.

Cultivating could be used as a convenient way to heal oneself within a short time. That is if the damage was not too much. Several or more complicated wounds would take a long time to heal and in this time it would be very hard to make any progress in cultivation, because the body would instinctively concentrate on the healing. If the wounds were too extreme it was even possible that the cultivation would start to shrink to heal the body.

Finding no problems in his arm, Jack punched the air. With a slight sound the arm went through the air, a bit quicker than before the break. Yesterday he would have been roughly on par with a professional athlete. But today he had gotten stronger by around 5%. That was still in the realm of what a human could reach, at least theoretically, but it was still an impressive increase for barely a night of work.

Then he decided to go a step further. He needed to know how strong he could be if he gave his all. And so a very slight amount of the liquid Qi inside Jack’s Dantian started to change. It lost its glow and turned into a dull grey colour. Instead a small, glowing cloud of pure energy gathered around to it.

Next Jack guided the cloud of energy out of energy out of his Dantian and into the network of Spiritual Veins that surrounded it. Another thought and quickly the energy moved through the Veins towards Jack’s arm. There the energy left the Spiritual Vein and infused itself into the surrounding flesh, bones and tendons.

Jack swung his arm again. With a sharp sound the arm parted the air. Another 5% increase in strength. He nodded satisfied, then he removed the energy from his arm and guided it back to his Dantian where it recombined with the Qi it came from. A bit of the energy had been lost in the process, but that would recover automatically as long as he stayed near a source of Qi.

Suddenly he noticed the clock at the wall and cursed. He barely had half an hour until school would start. He had to go now, or he would be late to his first school day.

Still in the clothes from yesterday he jumped up and ran out of the room. But, just a few minutes after he had left, a soft noise sounded in the empty room, echoing through space itself.

*Crack*

If there was someone around who was able to see Qi, they would see that the space next to the small hole, which Jack had burned into the sphere, had changed. A few hours ago it had started to vibrate in a very slow frequency, but bit by bit it had gotten faster. Soon it had reached a point where it vibrated faster than the eye was able to see. But more than that, the space around it had started to follow the vibration and began to fluctuate slightly.

But the space couldn’t move as freely as the hole. The reason was the Sphere that covered it partially and stabilised it. But with the ever increasing fluctuations it was only a matter of time until the changing space became too volatile for the Sphere to handle. And so, with a resounding crack the Sphere started to break.

When the space broke free and started to become more and more unstable the vibrations of the hole slowed down until it became still once more. But the damage was already caused. Slowly small cracks began growing around the hole, bleeding Qi into reality. Sadly nobody was around to see it, but it was the beginning of a new, chaotic era for Earth.

---

Ignorant to the changes inside his room Jack had finally reached his new school. If he had to find a word to describe it, it would be ‘Ugly’ or maybe ‘hideous’, ‘disgusting’ or any similar word.

Build nearly 50 years ago its outer appearance was a large block of grey concrete, without any redeeming features except its remarkable similarity to a grey coloured brick and a severe lack of windows. But the insides were even worse, especially the carpets. Someone, whose mental qualities were at best questionable in Jack’s opinion, had thought that it would be a wise idea to use carpets as the floor for a school where nearly a thousand of children would pass over it every day. Worse yet, the floor hadn’t been changed even once since it had been placed during the building and that was easily noticeable. It wasn’t without reason that there were rumours that the carpets were secretly alive and would hunt for students during the night.

Walking towards his new classroom Jack shuddered as he looked down. He had the distinct impression that the carpet under his feet was in fact wriggling and moving. A feeling of nausea flooded him.

*Nope, definitely nope*

Quickly Jack turned his view back upwards. Out of sight, out of mind, right? He tried his best to ignore the slightly squishy feeling under his feet while he was trying to walk a little bit faster.

Luckily for him it didn’t take long to finally reach his classroom. And, even more lucky, as it was in a part of the school that had been renovated recently it had been freed from the green-brown (was that even its original colour?) menace that covered the floors in the other parts of the school. The classroom itself was bare, only a single map of Europe covered one of its white walls.

Jack observed his new classmates for a moment. Instantly he became dejected. If you ignored Sam who already sat on a lonely table in the back of the class, the rest of the children in the class were normal. Numbering 23 in total, 11 boys and 12 girls, they were just a normal class of normal children without anything that made them interesting for Jack.

Disappointed Jack walked towards Sam. He noticed that some of the children were looking at him curiously, but decided to ignore them. They were just normal mortals after all.

“Good morning! How’s your arm?”, concerned Sam greeted him.

“All well. I think it didn’t actually break completely. It- *yawn* doesn’t hurt anymore either”

Right in the middle of answering Jack had to yawn. Even though he was a cultivator now, he was still young, so he still had to get a lot of sleep. But he had cultivated through the entire night so he was rather tired.

The fact that he had felt strange ever since he had left the house didn’t help either. Now that he had properly cultivated instead of just gaining a lot of Qi while he had the body of an unprepared infant, the void wasn’t strong enough to pull it out of his body. Still, it continued to try to pull him to all side at once, a feeling that made him extremely uncomfortable.

Sam looked a bit worried, but before he could say anything the teacher entered the room. He was a middle aged man with black hair and a friendly smile on his face. Still, Jack could tell on the first view that this man was their new math teacher. They all had that certain aura of bleakness around them. After a short moment the man introduced himself as Mr. West and began the class.

“Alright class, now, I know it’s a new school year and right after the holidays, so you have a lot to talk about, but please be quiet for a moment. This year we have two new students in class, so why don’t we play a little game to get to know each other”

The ‘game’ was throwing a small ball from person to person. Whoever caught the ball had to introduce him- or herself. Honestly Jack thought that it was just a stupid and inefficient way to waste time.

When the ball finally reached Jack he hesitated for a moment. Everyone else had told not only their names but also their hobbies and dreams. Was he expected to do that, too? After a moment of thinking he shrugged. It wasn’t as if anyone would believe him even if he did tell the truth.

“My name is Jack Erikson. In my past live I have been an immortal cultivator. In this life I plan to gain true immortality and stand on top of this world”

As expected the only reaction was laughter. Even though they probably didn’t even understood what a cultivator was these kids still had the nerve to ridicule him.

*Bah, kids these days*, cursed Jack before passing the ball to the next child. He threw it a bit harder than he had originally planned, still not completely used to his new strength, but luckily the girl could catch it, although only barely.

Grinning Sam leaned closer to Jack. “Still reading those strange novels? Aren’t you a bit too old to play make-belief?”

Jack rolled his eyes. A few years ago he had wanted to prepare Sam to becoming a cultivator and had decided to do it by introducing him to cultivation novels. That way he would have at least some base knowledge. Unfortunately it didn’t work, as Sam disliked the unrealistic and flat main characters and stopped reading it after a few chapters. Which, Jack had to admit, wasn’t even wrong, most of these guys were much too stupid and narrow-minded to be tolerable, though they were certainly close to some people he had met in the past.

Jack opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted when the ball was thrown towards Sam. Obviously he caught the ball effortlessly. He gave a short, playful grin towards Jack and began to introduce himself.

“I’m Sam Long. I’m a martial artist and will one day stand on the top of this world, even if I have to destroy thousands of enemies”

Jack nodded thoughtfully. Indeed, a martial artist had to strive to be the best, no matter who opposed them. As such Sam was truly a perfect example of his profession.

The other children unfortunately didn’t seem to share his opinion. Loud laughter filled the class again. Even the teacher looked a bit strange at his two new students, though he didn’t laugh.

Sam didn’t appear to be faced by the laughter, but Jack could see his eye twitching a little bit. To lose control over his expression like that, he had to be pissed. And how couldn’t he be? Even though his speech had been exaggerated because he wanted to show up his friend, but in its essence it was still what he believed in. And these children dared to trample on his conviction?

With a sharp movement Sam passed the ball over to the next child. Jack opened his eyes abruptly as the ball shot forward with an incredible speed and hit the child, a boy with short red hair, right in the face. He wasn’t sure if even he would be able to throw the ball this fast. Truly, it was a throw that was bordering at the limits of what was humanly possible.

Luckily the ball was filled with a very soft material, otherwise the child would have been hurt. But as it was, the ball simply deformed upon contact before it fell down to the ground with a soft sound. The child that was hit simply sat still for a moment as if he hadn’t noticed anything. Then suddenly tears began to fill his eyes and he started crying.

Sighing Jack shook his head. Way to go, Sam. Now their first impression was ruined.

It took the teacher several minutes to get the boy to stop crying. And then it took some time to get the rest of the class back to focus. They even continued with the game, though the teacher reminded them to be more careful this time. In the end the teacher collected the ball before he frowned for a moment.

“There is still someone who hasn’t been introduced… Ah, right, she’s excused for today…”

With that he put the ball away and finally began the class for real. It turned out that Jack had been right and Mr. West truly was their math teacher. That meant that the time seemed to slow down to a crawl while he waited for the torture to end. When the class finally ended the teacher made a last request to the class.

“And please do not forget to inform your parents about the annual visit to the museum next month. We will need their written agreements until next week or you won’t be allowed to come with us.”

After that he left the room and after only a short break the next lesson started. Sadly it wasn’t much more interesting than the math classes. And so the hours passed slowly. During the breaks Jack and Sam kept for themselves. Their classmates stayed away from them, no doubt because of what had happened before. In short, it was boring and for Jack it seemed as if time had slowed down to a crawl.

Still, after an eternity of boredom school finally ended for the day. Jack and Sam parted ways, as Sam had to buy groceries for his grandfather while Jack went home straight. There was no training this afternoon, as he had been apologized because of his arm, so he had the remaining day free to cultivate. His parents wouldn’t be home until the afternoon, so he would be undisturbed. With a spring in his step he walked home.

But as soon as he opened the door he froze. A small gust of Qi filled air flew towards him. The entire house had been filled with it, far more than the small hole should have been able to provide in the few hours since he had emptied out the area.

Worried Jack run towards his room. The closer he came the more dense the Qi became until it reached a level that could compare to a world of his old life. A world in the lower parts of the mortal realm, but still…

As soon as he reached his room and looked inside he turned pale. The small hole floating in the air had begun to crack. Small extensions spread away from it like a spider web. And Jack could feel that they were still growing bit by bit. The sphere that had protected Earth had started to break apart.