Rian walked out into the middle of the Aetherion Academy City. Tall skyscrapers loomed in the distance, their sides plastered with giant holographic ads. Up in the sky, one could see dozens of spaceships regularly entering and exiting the atmosphere. Neon signs glowed as far as his eyes could see, and at his side, he could see hundreds of floating cars rushing through the roads.
Not too far away from him was the figure of a boy his age, his face covered by a hood and a face mask as he stood among the crowd at an intersection, waiting for the traffic light to turn green.
Rian stood some distance behind him, his head covered in a similar hood and mouth covered by a face mask, as he tried his best to look nonchalant while keeping his focus steady on the boy.
He was busy keeping his focus on the boy when, all of a sudden, a message notification flashed through his commlink.
Looking at the notification, a crease appeared on Rian's forehead. "To hell with this." He mumbled to himself before going to the settings and finally blocking his father's number flashing above the message.
This was probably going to bite him in the ass in the future; then again, they had already cut off his monthly stipend. The only thing his father could do now was to send soldiers to arrest him forcefully.
It had already been three days since Rian had returned to their home world, to the Aetherion academy.
It should have been obvious, but the incident with the princess hadn't been without consequences. Puking on a princess, even from a minor planet in front of every major media house in the galaxy, had quickly made the whole incident go viral.
The princess, of course, had been furious, and the pressure from the royal family over the Ashmere clan had been immense. Thankfully, him being a bastard had made his father's job easy, with him quickly ordering to cut off all his financial support from the clan and instructing him to report back to his legitimate siblings in the academy.
He had even asked him to return the money he had been given to purchase a Grade 8 air element beast sigil for the upcoming invasion of Taurenth.
Rian obviously hadn't done any of it, ultimately causing his half-siblings to look for him like hounds, ultimately forcing him hole inside his room pretending like he wasn't there.
But he didn't care about any of that, or rather, he didn't have time to worry about any of that, especially with the calamity floating in front of his eyes.
==
Name: Rian Ashmere
Cultivation: 1 Star (High)
Affinity: Air (D+ Grade)
Sigil: Skyrazor Falcon (Grade 9)
Skills and Spells: Swift Wingbeat (Short burst of speed to dodge attacks at close distance), Talon Rake (Hardens mage's arms and makes them sharper for five seconds)
Title: Heir of the Flesh Throne
Divinity Granted: Biomastery
==
He had spent the last 3 days trying to make sense of his situation while also going through his memories of Siege Beyond World. And the more of his memories he had confirmed as correct, the more he had prayed the floating screen would somehow disappear.
Unfortunately, that hadn't happened.
At first glance, it might seem like being chosen as an Heir to Godhood was a great thing, which, it would have been in any other time in history. Right now, though… not so much.
The game Siege Beyond World was primarily held in the world of Vornak, where its gods, noble houses, and factions or champions would invade and conquer other worlds.
Only in the later stage of the game was the world of Vornak itself had been invaded by a different world-conquering civilization and its gods.
And surprise, surprise, who was their first target? The gods of Vornak themselves.
One by one, all the gods were hunted down by these foreign gods, with their domains absorbed and souls destroyed to strengthen the foreign gods' own.
"This world is doomed to begin with," Rian mumbled. Stuck with this divinity, the only thing he could do was become strong enough to live through the whole ordeal and escape.
The light soon turned green, and the boy resumed moving, with Rian following closely behind him. Walking past the intersection, they soon turned to another street, slowly making their way towards the city's outskirts.
The further they moved the more the surroundings began to change. Soon, the freshly paved roads were replaced by torn-down streets with run-down buildings on both side of the street.
Yet the boy kept moving, with Rian following him carefully from a distance, making sure that he couldn't see him.
It was at the half an hour mark since they had left the city when the boy stopped, eventually reaching what seemed like a run-down pub, before fixing his hood and slowly walking inside.
Rian did the same as well, waiting for around fifteen minutes before entering the pub.The inside of the pub was exactly as expected. A bunch of drunkards passed out on their seats and a small counter with booze behind it just right besides the door.
Thankfully, Rian hadn't come here for a drink. Ignoring everything, he walked straight towards a door in the back and walked inside, before silently climbing down a set of stairs. As he walked down, the silence around him was replaced by the sounds of screaming and shouting.
"Kill that bastard!"
"Dodge, dodge damnit! Were you born blind? I said dodge!"
"God damnit! I spent all of my money on this fight, you better win!"
The shouts only grew louder as Rian walked down the stairs and walked across another door in the basement.
There in the center stood a large circular cage, in the middle of which were two awakened, both of whom were busy throwing spells and lunging at the other with their weapons.
With each successful attack, the crowd would go wild in cheers, while some would start cursing at the top of their lungs.
This right here was the ugliness of Aetherion Academy City, despite ranking 52nd in the Joint Planar War Academy rankings; even a city like this wasn't devoid of establishments like these.
This place right here was an underground fighting ring, run jointly by the local gangs, and was sort of an open secret among the students.
Of course, the only reason Rian knew about it was due to his in-game knowledge.
Pulling out a mask that covered his face up to his nose, Rian quietly made his way through the crowd towards a bald man with a dragon tattoo, standing in the corner with several receipts in his hand.
"You," Rian spoke with his head held high, exuding arrogance, further changing his accent to match those from the eastern quadrant of the galaxy. "I wish to register for a match."
The man looked up towards Rian, his eyes sizing him up from top to bottom.
"You new here?"
"Why does it matter?"
The man momentarily narrowed his eyes before relaxing.
Yeah Whatever
Humans as a species were incapable of manipulating mana and cultivation and thus had to rely on runes extracted from magical beast's mana core after their death. These runes or sigils could then be transplanted into an awakened's body, giving them different mutations and allowing them to use different spells. Awakened could upgrade or even switch these sigils, improving their spells based on their elemental affinities as they progressed higher in their cultivation.
Of course there were some restrictions. With human cultivation stages starting from 1 star to 9 star, with seven inner stages in each tier and magical beasts being categorized and given grades from 1.0 to 9.0, a person with 1 star of cultivation couldn't transplant a grade 9.0 beast sigil without the remanent mana causing havoc in their bodies and thus had to transplant a sigil from similar grade of beast.
But that didn't mean their weren't any outliers, a few rare awakened like Mirai with high talent in cultivation were known to withstand sigils one or sometimes even 2 grade higher then their own realm, automatically placing them high against their competitors in their generation.