Ascension of the last Celestial

Reincarnation.

Getting reborn into a new life after dying.

It was a concept that existed in Eldoria; while there was nothing proven, there were factions and religions that believed that one gets reborn into a new life when the current one ends.

One of these examples is the elves. The elves believe that once someone dies, their soul finds its way back to the World Tree, who then sends the soul into a new life. In the version of reincarnation the elves believe in, time doesn’t really matter, as the World Tree redistributes the souls of the dead across time, so a person can die today but their soul gets reborn 200 years in the past or future.

Some elves even believe that there is only one original soul that just gets reincarnated across time, forming a connection between every living being.

But to Valerian, reincarnation was never a topic he thought about, since he is so in tune with the mana in the world, to him death was never absolute. If there was a person who was a master of life and death mana, they could bring back any person no matter how long they were dead.

But such a person hasn’t appeared yet; while there have been people that have been resurrected, they were never dead for more than 24 hours.

So now, hearing that Arthur was asking about reincarnation already formed an idea in Valerian’s mind. Since there is no reason for a normal person to just mention the topic like that, there had to be a reason.

"Reincarnation huh, sure I think its possible. There is very little that isn’t possible if one is strong enough, so I don’t see why reincarnation should be one of them."

Arthur nodded at his answer and took a bite of the burned meat. Instantly, his face contorted into disgust and he spat out the piece.

"Fuck this, I’d rather starve."

Seeing the strong reaction caused Valerian to chuckle lightly as he reached into his spatial pocket. From the fold of space, he pulled out a sandwich that was prepared for him by the chefs of the castle.

"Here."

Valerian threw the sandwich to Arthur who caught it easily. As he looked at the sandwich, the juice of the steak began to flow down his hands and his mouth began to water.

But even though he looked at the sandwich like it was sent by the heavens themselves, he still caught himself before devouring it in one piece.

A dagger appeared in his hand and with one clean cut, he cut it into two equal pieces before throwing one half back to Valerian, who caught it just as easily.

Valerian looked at Arthur and the sandwich with bewildered eyes.

"I said I’m not hungry, you can have the whole sandwich."

Arthur already began to eat his half as he began to talk with a full mouth.

"Just eat it, I’m being nice here."

Sighing at the stubbornness of the strange boy, Valerian began to also eat his half. To be honest, Valerian wasn’t sure he even could eat in the first place, since with acquiring his physique he also lost his stomach. But to his joyful surprise, he could eat and swallow just fine, but he was still curious where the food went.

As the two boys ate, they didn’t speak and came to a mutual agreement to continue the conversation once they finished. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence; even if they basically just met, and even though the first meeting didn’t go ideally with one of them being tied up, they kind of enjoyed the presence of the other.

Once they were both finished, Arthur began again.

"You probably already guessed it, but I am a reincarnator. I know, shocker. But that’s not the strangest part. The first life I had wasn’t in this world, to be honest, I don’t even think it was in this universe."

The first part wasn’t something that surprised Valerian, but the second part was the one that caught his interest.

Another universe, a place beyond the boundaries of the world,who knew what kind of mysteries and adventures waited there for someone to explore. But before Valerian could lose himself in his imagination of other universes, Arthur began to speak again and Valerian listened very carefully.

"My home world was different from this world, like completely different. The biggest difference was that there was no mana."

The idea of a manaless world was something Valerian didn’t think about. As he grew up in a world where every being, no matter how small or insignificant, could at least use mana on a basic level, the thought of living without this essential resource caused a strange fear to settle in.

"If your previous world didn’t have any mana, then how did your people survive?"

Hearing the horned boy ask the question, Arthur could only smile.

"We survived by advancing our technology. Like I said, there was no mana and there were also no other intelligent races besides humans. There obviously existed other living beings that weren’t humans, but none of them were intelligent enough to build a civilization. So we, the humans, became the strongest race on Earth."

"Earth? Was that the name of your planet, ’Earth’? Who thought it was a good idea to call a planet like dirt."

Arthur awkwardly laughed slightly, caught off guard by the question.

"I don’t know, some humans thousands of years before I was born. Back then, they even thought the world was flat."

Now that caused Valerian to explode in a fit of laughter at the ridiculous statement that the world was flat. Valerian said between the laughter,

"Seriously, haha! And you said your race was intelligent, haha!"

Hearing Valerian mock his people’s stupidity, Arthur became beet red and tried to defend his people.

"It was long ago! By the time I lived, we obviously knew that Earth was round... well, most did."

The little remark at the end caused another fit of mockery that lasted way too long for Arthur’s liking, but he just sat there and took it like a champ, but not without defending his people from time to time.

When the laughter finally died down and Valerian caught himself again, he guessed for Arthur to continue his story about his previous home world.

"Ahem, like I said, I was born later in the history of our civilization and so I got to experience the wonders of technology. Like for example, we had a device, it was called a Smartphone. It was barely the size of a deck of playing cards, but with it, you could access the entire knowledge of the human race. Millions of books were just at your fingertips."

"That actually doesn’t sound bad, but how did that work without mana?"

Arthur scratched the back of his head with a nervous laugh.

"Haha, I don’t actually know myself."

Valerian stared at him with a blank face.

"You have this amazing technology and you don’t know how it works?"

Arthur tried to defend himself frantically.

"I just know that it works, okay? I didn’t need in-depth knowledge to use it. But that’s not the point here, I’m trying to tell you about my life in another world!"

"Then please continue, you technologically advanced human that doesn’t know how technology works."

With a red face, Arthur began to talk about his life.

"My life wasn’t anything special or anything. I wasn’t an important person that history will remember forever, I was just a normal 16-year-old boy that liked to read novels in his free time. Even my death wasn’t anything special. I just died when a car hit me."

Seeing the confusion on Valerian’s face, Arthur got ahead of him.

"A car is something like a carriage that was powered by technology, and no, I don’t know how it works exactly."

Seeing the nod of agreement with a slight grin, which Arthur knew was making fun of him, he just ignored it and continued.

"After my death, I just woke up here in an orphanage in Eldoria. That’s it, that the story of my life."

After hearing the uneventful story of Arthur, Valerian stared at him with a piercing gaze.

"You still didn’t tell me how you could see my status. I would like it if you tell me why."

Like a deer in headlights, Arthur froze when he got caught trying to weasel himself out of explaining everything.

"Haaa, okay, you got me. The reason why I could see your status is because of my unique skill [Akashic Records]. It changes the way my system interface and status work."

Hearing him mention the status window, Valerian immediately became interested, as the existence of it made him wonder more than once.

"The way my system works is that it can give me quests. They could be anything: kill 10 wolves, defeat this one strong monster, or just to convince another person of something. And when I complete these quests, I get a reward and system points. The quality of the rewards depends on the difficulty of the quest, as does the amount of system points I get. With these system points, or SP, I can then buy things from the system shop. And let me tell you, there is nothing that isn’t in the system shop. I was even able to buy an affinity there."

It was insane. Being able to buy anything with just enough system points was just too ridiculous to be true, but Valerian himself knew just how powerful a unique skill can be, as he himself had one that was maybe as strong as Arthur’s [Akashic Records].

"And I assume one of the abilities you got from the system shop or from a quest is the ability to see the status of another being?"

"That’s correct."

Letting out a sigh, Valerian digested the information he just got. After staying silent for a few seconds, he finally opened his mouth with a breathtaking smile that fully showcased his SSS Rank Charm.

"Hey Arthur, wanna be friends?"