Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 159 …A Pair Of Legends Rise

It was only much later down my journey that I found out that my previous boss and mentor had used his status to earn the favor of a famous martial medic to save his sickly daughter. But, when the pract.i.tioner who came to collect his debt on that fateful day attacked, I didn't know. All I knew was that my boss was dead and that his debt would fall onto the next head of the company.

It was unreasonable and impossible for me to repay the ma.s.sive debt at the time, but against a fabled Martial Pract.i.tioner who belong to a faction in the Martial Society, there wasn't a thing I could do. With my life, your mother's life, and the child in her belly's life all being used against me, it was impossible for me to not give into their demands…

With my boss owing the equivalent of ten trillion dollars by today's standards and only a year to repay it before the cycle of killing and piling the debt to the person next in line came, I did the only thing I could; I looked for a way to enter a faction in the Martial Society. I made use of the company's network of information to find a Martial Faction and after finding one that would test my affinity for a small sum of one million dollars, I resolved to do my best to become a Martial Pract.i.tioner and become a Martial mercenary to hasten the rate with which I earned money.

Surprisingly, when I went to test my affinity I was blessed with what is virtually the greatest line up of affinities anyone on Earth has been born with. Fire, Lightning, Yang, and a mysterious fourth type of energy which no one could understand came out of my affinity test and almost immediately, my debt problem was resolved. Sadly, the tradeoff for having my debt paid was having to join the Martial Faction that tested me.

Being essentially kidnapped and forced to attend harsh training for two whole years, the head of the Martial Faction tried to brainwash me into serving him until I died; he was one of those unorthodox devil-like pract.i.tioners… However, I held out throughout the whole time pretending to be his lackey while gaining strength through training, taking missions, and competing in tournaments. Even though I started training at the late age of 26, after the two torturous years where I never knew when I might die, I was quite the force to be reckoned with, matching even Late Phase Warriors with my Early Phase Warrior Stage cultivation base.

Exactly one month after the second year marking the start of my career as a cultivator, I went on a mission in Africa that changed the course of my life. There, I was tasked by the government of Sudan to infiltrate a warlord's hideout singlehandedly and eliminate him along with all his men. This being a rather tame mission, only involving a minor army force, I proceeded with the mission normally. Having grown used to the life of killing over those past two years, I slowly used the methods of an a.s.sa.s.sin and almost succeeded in wiping out the warlord's base without anyone being the wiser.

At the time, I considered it a failure to have been noticed, as a surveying group of the militia had returned to the hideout ahead of time and informed the warlord along with the remaining dozen or so members of his group of my deeds, which made taking care of the warlord a bit more troublesome for me.

However, to this day, I find that failure of a mission to be the reason why I'm even standing before you as someone in the Spirit Realm..." Stopping the story here, Kurt materialized a scroll and tossed it to Elizabeth as he said, "As a pract.i.tioner of Time, you'll understand better if you see for yourself."

He gave Elizabeth a couple moments to take in the contents of the scroll and only continued his story after seeing the look of questioning she gave him, saying, "You see, the African warlord attempted to evade me by fleeing on a helicopter and he almost succeeded too. But fortunately, I had finished killing the last of his men when he was still visible several dozen miles to the east of his hideout.

As you can probably guess, with abilities at that time comparable to a Late Phase Warrior, it was beyond easy to catch up to him on foot. Better yet, with the lush African foliage giving me cover, I managed to follow him with being detected as he entered a second hideout. Thinking that eliminating the second hideout would give me a bonus, I took a short rest and proceeded with stealth tactics until it came down to only the warlord and a group of the most battle-hardened soldiers on the base he had ordered be by his side, remained.

Confronting them in the open after a.s.sa.s.sinating three soldiers in the group of five, I killed the two that remained with martial skills. When only the Warlord and I remained, he begged for his life as most would in his situation, he even tried to bribe me. But after all the training I had done with so much blood on my hands, doing this dirty work for so long, I killed him without sparing an extra thought.

With my mission done, I was preparing to leave when my senses picked up on something resonating with the previous energy that had been arcane. Turning back to face the warlord I had killed, I found a spatial ring much like the one you possess on the man's body and upon activating it, I found the scroll that I pa.s.sed on to you..."

Hearing him mention spatial rings and recognize that she possessed one herself, Elizabeth's eyebrows rose, but she kept quiet as she let Kurt continue with his story. Kurt continued, "Unfortunately, the spatial ring was busted. With the spiritual air of its items inside spilling, the moment I activated it, the thing collapsed in on itself. However, with the knowledge that scroll pa.s.sed on to me as well as all the Time-related resources I used, it didn't take more than a month to rise to the rank of Saint and become strong enough to forcefully cut ties to the Martial Faction that had been holding me captive.

Although I had exceptionally negative feelings about the leader of the Martial Faction that had forced me under his group, at the time I felt confident in my still rising strength. I also felt like I owed him for settling the debt of my company. I planned to have spared him even after he tried to brainwash me, but before I acted to leave the Faction, I found out something so utterly heinous, so vile, and wicked… even now, after so many years have pa.s.sed, I find myself heated thinking about what had been going on behind my back during that time..." With Kurt becoming emotionally unstable as he recalled the day he "cut ties" with his first Martial Faction, Maria stepped in to continue the story as she rubbed his back to calm him down.

With a helpless smile on her face, she said, "Changing things to my perspective, after Kurt had been essentially turned into a mercenary for the Martial Faction, about a week later, the head of the Faction returned for me and gave me deal. Threatening to kill all of us as well as **** and use me as a cultivation furnace until my last breath unless I followed through with his demands, the head of the Martial Faction planned to use me as leverage against Kurt in case he ever grew strong enough to leave the faction and stop representing him. He made he enter the faction and train; albeit to a lesser extent.

I wasn't forced into any harsh training nor did I have to take any missions for the factions. I wasn't even given an affinity test as everyone just a.s.sumed me to be a regular person. For those two years, where Kurt was out in the field and getting stronger, I was left to handle both the company and your older brother. I only had to report to the faction every other day to let them know where I was and they promised to not touch us.

Two years later, as a Saint Stage pract.i.tioner, Kurt became one of the top 50 strongest people on Earth as it was ridiculously difficult to cultivate to that level before the Celestial Phenomenon. With so much power, he finished his last mission so quickly that he had enough time to visit me before returning to cut ties with the faction. Kurt intended to surprise me about his achievements back where we used to live, but when he reached our home, he found the house empty aside from our nanny taking care of your brother. He had actually walked in when I was reporting to the faction head…

At that time, having kept his growth rate a secret, the Faction head had yet to make any moves on me as he was a Peak Phase King and Kurt wasn't suppose to even be a King Stage pract.i.tioner for couple more months. However, after talking to the nanny and discovering where I had gone, on his way to the faction's headquarters, we saw each other on the street.

He pulled me aside and we had a coffee as he told me his plans and asked me about mine. When he found out what the head of the Martial Faction had done, he became a completely different person. At that time, it was the first time I had seen him so cold and with danger turning palpable just being around him in that state, I was a bit scared. But then, Kurt hugged me and rea.s.sured me that everything would be alright, telling me to go back home as he would 'take care of business once and for all.'

Going back home, he only returned the next day around 1 AM, in the dead of the night. With not a scratch on him, I only realized how capable he was as a terrorist attack on a scale never before seen was mentioned on the morning TV news of that very same day. Some 'terrorists' had bombed and destroyed the base of our-then Martial Faction. Much later down the road, I found out that Kurt had consulted the Martial Society with his status as a Martial Sant and received all the information he could ever want to know about who deserved to die. He checked through the files of his peers in the faction and after killing all the devil-path pract.i.tioners that were like the Faction head, he had everyone else evacuate, disbanded the faction, and blew it to pieces with his Fire and Lightning Qi skills."

Feeling a hand on her shoulder, Maria stepped down and let Kurt do the rest of the talking after feeling that he had returned to normal. Taking the spotlight once more, Kurt said, "After clearing things with that Martial Faction, having already been embroiled in the Martial World, with my cultivation base nearing the peak of possible strength apparent to the Martial Society, I took back the helm of CEO of the Quantum Inc, I had all of my past records as a mercenary of the Martial Faction erased, and while I acted as the leader of our company with the face you see now, after using the skills inside the scroll I gave you to change my appearance, I took on the pseudonym of Sir Keter while influencing the world as a member of the Martial Society.

Your mother, as fate would have it, later had her affinity tested by me personally as I was nearing the peak of the Saint Stage. It turned out that compliment to my absurd line up of affinities, she was no joke herself. Holding Water, Ice, Yin, and s.p.a.ce Affinities, after she followed the methods held in the scroll for her s.p.a.ce Affinity, as well as the s.p.a.ce-type resources I had yet to use up, she quickly caught up to my level and over the years, we've been managing a Secret Faction in the Martial Society.

With myself breaking through to the legendary Spirit Realm first when you were only three months old, your mother's breakthrough came much later, after Liam was born and you were a year old. Following the instructions of the scroll, we learned that we could continue cultivation past the first Stage of the Spirit Realm, but with the climate of Earth it was impossible to make any progress as the air was spiritually inert.

So, while only occasionally focusing on cultivation with both of us having attained strength that could move the world single-handedly, we tried to do our best to spend time and raise our children. Since we were never part of a Martial Family or Clan, we didn't want to force Martial Culture down your throat, so we waited to see how you would turn out being raised normally. We planned to bring the subject up after you reached the age most suitable to begin practicing — ten years old — but after the incident with Gasper… you became, you know… antisocial. With games being the only thing that could hold your interest and bring you joy, we decided to let you live however best you wanted. As world-commanding company owners with Spirit Realm powers, neither money nor power was a problem to get for you, but since you only wanted to be left alone with your games, we gave you the freedom to live your life and took your hints leaving you the house in Miami, only returning every couple months just to see how you were doing..."