The Cyrian Mountain held a great secret.

No, not the Mana Stones, those were well known by the populace, even if they were a rare commodity.

It was a seal.

The Illusion Seeking Sect prided itself on their barriers and confusing spells that robbed people of their sanity.

But they weren’t the first Sect to set up shop on Cyrian Mountain.

Long ago, there used to be a Demonic Sect that used powerful beast and monster blood in experiments to awaken the latent bloodlines in a Mage. However, these tests had drastic effects. Many of the test subjects became what is now known as…

Demons.

They have long since been forgotten, the last few remaining specimens fled to the wastelands beyond the inhabitable parts of the continent.

But, the mountain had relics of the long forgotten past.

Even then, the Pursuing Bloodline Organization, an aptly put name, wasn’t aware of the even distant past that held the powerful fighters that used the Mana as a weapon and not a fuel.

What the Marshall Family wanted was not the Mana Stones, they wanted to see what secrets were unearthed by the Illusion Seeking Sect. However, only Derik was brought back. Not even Neil was aware of the purpose of the Cyrian Mountain.

Not long after Derik won the Tournament, he and several of his personal soldiers were led around the excavation sites. When a strange glowing artifact was found, many Mages had flocked to check it out.

This was at the same time that He Zhi was feeling relaxed and celebrating his birthday with his family.

Derik was the first one to grab at the artifact, claiming that he knew more than these lowly students did. But when he touched it, his energy interfered with the markings on the strange and ugly doll.

All of a sudden, it exploded into straw and fluff, scaring nearly everyone present.

But there was silence.

“Nothing? Okay...my bad…!”

RUMBLE!

The mountain was shaking! The ground was splitting!

Everyone rushed out of the bunker and went to leave the mountain, followed by the other frogs and herons. Unfortunately, everyone was stopped by an even more brilliant barrier than what surrounded the Sect.

“What is this?!” He Zhi was even more perplexed.

Several of the Froglings were ready, surrounding their leader and prepared for a fight. However, when they saw a massive hand reaching out of the ground, they nearly dropped their weapons and ran off.

The first to die was the lowly villagers and Apprentices who were too weak to stave off the energy waves given off by the massive being.

Seeing that several problems were happening, He Zhi remembered Kuroda. He rushed over and grabbed her before she even knew what was going on.

Of course, He Zhi had never met either Kuroda or Mr. Black in this lifetime.

He had no reason to.

“Hello, I’m He Zhi. Mr. Black, meet your niece Kuroda. Kuroda, meet your uncle Mr. Black.”

Then he ran off.

“Uhhh…hello?”

The two Guardians had no idea what to say to each other. They had already been surprised by the giant coming out of the ground, but that person from before apparently knew them! And he was incredibly fast and strong!

Did they know such a person? What was going on?!

Seeing the incoming danger, however, Mr. Black was quick to settle down. He recognized that this snake looked a lot like his sister and agreed. If that truly the case, then he needed to completely protect her!

The air around Mr. Black shimmered before he disappeared entirely. Then, the island in the middle of the lake started to move as well, rising up out of the water and revealing a large black turtle big enough to fit the entire Misty Turtle tribe on his back.

Kuroda stared up in awe.

“So he’s my Uncle…”

Kuroda slithered up onto his shell as the two started to head away from the mountain.

Unfortunately, they also met the same fate as all of the other inhabitants of the Cyrian Mountain.

No! They couldn’t die here!

Many of the remaining villagers united as they called out to their own Guardians. A bear, tiger, bat, hawk, lizard, and dragon all gathered where Mr. Black and Kuroda were, but none were as magnificent as the large turtle.

During this discussion, the lesser Mages were dying, making way for the others to flee. Soon, many of the Sect students were among the villagers and animals.

No predator was hunting, and no creature was fighting.

This was a scary situation for everyone.

Once almost everyone on the mountain had grouped up, a large man with a third eye tattooed on his forehead appeared.

“Sect Master!”

“Master has come to help!”

“Praise the Gods!”

He Zhi looked around, but felt that if only this guy was available, then they would be in for a rough time.

Suddenly, a familiar face appeared, his clothes all torn up and his left arm hanging limply at his side covered in blood.

Derik had wasted his arm in order to get away, but most of his men were dead and the rest were now dying to let him get away.

“Sir, what happened?!”

“You idiot, you awoke a Demon!”

Collective gasps came from the crowd and the Sect Master coughed to remove his awkwardness.

“There must have been some sort of mechanism in place in case this Demon was unsealed! Now we can never leave in case this Demon be unleashed upon the world!”

Many of the villagers began praying and offering up sacrifices of the nearby animals.

Even then, they didn’t move. There was nothing to do. It was either die now or later.

He Zhi walked forward, followed by He Ya, He Yu, He Yi, and He Huan. The last Frogling girl was more inclined to watch over the youngsters and teach, so she remained behind to protect them.

“What is this? A frog person?”

“What can we do to stop this thing?”

“And it speaks?!”

Derik was too surprised, but the Sect Master was actually happy to have another Master level person to come help fight. He only had two other Masters in the Sect and they were both too old to be of much help in a battle.

This Demon seemed to be exuding the energy of a Sovereign! Not even the head of the Marshall Family would want to fight this thing!

If one wanted to easily take down someone one level above them, they needed about five of the very best of the lesser level before even attempting to fight one.

Thankfully, the energy waves were not consistent, meaning this Demon wasn’t stabilized. In fact, maybe it would destroy itself on its own.

But He Zhi quickly stopped everyone from thinking this way.

“Doesn’t that mean it would possibly explode? What would happen to us in that case? We need to defeat it as quickly as possible.”

The Sect Master agreed.

The plan was, using his treasures, the Sect Master would try and keep the Demon busy as the three Masters, which included He Zhi, would try and find the weak points and destroy it.

The Guardians had devised a super powerful attack that could make even a Magister Mage tremble in reluctance.

It was up to the Experts like Derik and the Sect Elders to protect the civilians and hopefully find a place to attack safely.

With this plan in mind, everyone split up. Only the attack of the combined Guardians’ might was enough to damage the Demon’s tough body. He Zhi had tried on multiple occasions to stab into its eye only to have the eyelid block his way.

How was even the eyelid so strong?!

However, it didn’t take long for the Demon to change. It actually stabilized and quickly killed the other two Master Mages. He Zhi was quick and moved away just in time.

The Demon swung its massive hand towards the Sect Master who shined brilliantly before being thrown into the ground. When he finally pulled himself out of the hole, people were alarmed to see that his body was actually squished flat in several places!

Mages didn’t normally train their bodies, as they gained some protection from the Mana running throughout their body. But it wasn’t enough to handle crashing into the ground at nearly the speed of sound.

Derik threw his hands up in surrender, as if that was going to help.

Because of his lack of actions, several of the villagers died in the shockwave that followed.

The other Experts had their faces filled with despair as well, practically falling to the ground of their own volition.

Only one person remained to stop the Demon from attacking everyone else.

He Zhi.

“It’s a shame. I was kind of hoping you would survive longer than a year. You showed me some really cool things. Hey, I can do something, but you will still die afterwards.”

The old man had come again.

“…Sure.”

He was going to die anyway. Since he was going to test the rock, he might also see if this guy would help him pass this bottleneck.

Soon, his body shuddered.

The pools of energy within him started to glow and four colorless Mana Stones and four gray Mana Stones floated from the rubble of the bunker and floated up.

These were the only types that He Zhi couldn’t absorb or use. What were their purposes?

The old man didn’t say anything, as the situation didn’t need any sort of dialogue.

The black, white, red and blue energies welcomed the gray stones, taking one each.

The purple, brown, yellow, and green energies greedily absorbed the clear stones.

There was an immediate ripple in each of the pools as they suddenly collapsed in on themselves, becoming orbs. This was different from the last one, He Zhi noticed.

The eight orbs circled each other, becoming faster and faster until they crashed into each other, becoming one nasty grayish pool of liquid.

No, not a pool.

An ocean.

The size of the stormy sea from his last life was nothing compared to this silvery ocean. It was like he was completely made of the stuff! Suddenly, the liquid seemed to shift and became completely flat, no ripple appearing on the surface.

Then, a wonderful rainbow reflected across the flat metal like surface, filling He Zhi with unimaginable power.

He reached forward and called forth a lightning strike.

The air was filled with light and a deafening boom shook the entire mountain. The Demon that was causing so much trouble was for some reason missing the top half of its body. The surroundings were still.

He Zhi then slowly fell to the ground and started to lose consciousness.

At least this time it didn’t hurt.

Then he noticed a strange rock in front of him. It must be related to the strange rebirth stone, he thought. He Zhi pulled the stone close with difficulty before drawing his last breath.

He Zhi was back in his memories, but the scene before him was something that happened long before he remembered.

He was sitting on the floor in a diaper, watching a cartoon when a knock came to the door. His mother went to answer, her voice spouting curses.

“Your damn father can’t even get a trip to the grocery store done correctly. What the…what the hell happened?!”

When she opened the door, a short man with several large cuts and bruises was standing in the doorway with a sappy expression that showed he knew he was in trouble.

As he tried to walk inside, He Zhi’s mom placed her arm in the way.

“What. Happened.”

“Oh…you remember those guys I borrowed money from?”

“You mean so you could buy pot? Yeah!”

“Oh, no…these are the ones I borrowed when I went to the fights to…umm…make money.”

“You WHAT?!”

“Hehe, they um…weren’t happy that I didn’t have it so they stuffed me in the trunk and set it on fire…good thing I had a tire iron in there…Heh…”

“OUT! Don’t come back! You are a hazard to my children! Get out!”

The scene ended and was replaced with a familiar looking house. It should be familiar, he must have lived here the longest. It was empty, belonging to his mother’s mother and stepfather. His grandmother and grandfather were at the house and brought He Zhi along to help move things around.

They had stopped to get a sandwich, but He Zhi only wanted meat and cheese.

“I can’t eat the other stuff!”

“You need to get used to it! Don’t be such a pussy!”

His grandfather made him eat it anyway.

He Zhi had something that would be later known as Sensory Processing Disorder. He reacted differently to different stimulus.

Poor He Zhi. Not only did he have asthma and allergies, he also found it difficult to enjoy what most other people did.

When he took a bite of that sandwich, an olive got stuck in his throat.

He threw up. It was instinctive to him. The slimy foreign object was seen as an obstruction.

And because he threw up all over the kitchen sink, his grandfather beat him.

He literally kicked him down to the ground and beat him.

Time seemed to blur. When he was home sick by himself, his grandfather came to fix the filter for the air conditioning. When he saw He Zhi’s filthy room, he forced He Zhi to roll around in the trash and claim he loved living like a pig.

He Zhi could still feel his eyes getting wet from the embarrassing memory.

Even still, because he was family, He Zhi had tried to get on his grandfather’s good side for a while.

But his grandfather and grandmother would rather spend their time watching his athletic cousin play American football instead.

The scene changed again and he Zhi was walking into an office.

“Hello, how may we help you?”

“Oh, I had made an appointment about the problem I was having with my payment plan. For some reason, my food plan wasn’t paid for.”

“Oh, that’s because we changed the plan.”

“Huh? Why? It was working so well since I could put my classes, dorm, and food all on one payment.”

“Yes, well…Unfortunately, we had to separate the payments.”

“Can I still apply my student loan to the other two payments?”

“Unfortunately, we cannot.”

“Then how am I supposed to get food or pay for a dorm?”

“I don’t know how to help you on that.”

He Zhi had sighed as he walked outside.

Briring, briring, kechak.

“Hey, mom? Yeah, I am coming home.”

Forced to drop out of the gaming college he wanted, he then went on to lazily get the basics out of the way and get a certificate for a tech support job.

The scene changed again to show a different scene.

“This isn’t a scene. I have noticed the energy of the Markett Crystals. It seems they have fallen into someone else’s hands once more. As you continue to suffer, you must find more of these crystals to power your trip back to the beginning. Otherwise, you will be stuck in limbo. You don’t have an unlimited supply of reruns. Good luck. If you ever manage to find yourself on the Markett Planet, look for Samhawell.”

And then he was greeted with a familiar sight.

“Again…”