21 Elements

'My title… It seems it's more valuable than I thought.'

'When it said that nature friends will be friendly towards me, I understood it as that they won't kill me on sight and maybe become willing to do a few favors. But throwing a unique item straight at my face voluntarily is just…'

Items are divided by 7 tiers.

Common, Uncommon, Rare, Special, Unique, Legendary and Myth.

Unique tier items are just one tier away from becoming a legendary world renowned item so it's extremely valuable.

They are also divided by their grades, grade F to grade S. There are quite a few gaps within the same tiers after all.

Common grade F is just trash, Common grade S is fancy trash. The gap between tiers increases as the tier progresses. Although common grade F wooden swords and common grade S wooden swords don't have much difference, Special grade F and Special grade S are like heaven and earth.

'I wonder if it can be turned into an artifact or a weapon. Let's put it aside for now.'

A lot of disappointed groans were heard the moment the pearl disappeared into Aster's spatial ring but he paid them no mind.

A man came up to Aster to threaten him into giving him the pearl, one tried to scam him, an obese person, seemingly a merchant offered him some discounts for their products etc.

He was constantly pestered by self proclaimed big shots for the rest of the ride which soiled his mood quickly.

Soon, land became visible amongst the endless sea.

***

'Ahh, that was tiring. I still have 5 hours left before the ship moves so let's rest for a bit' He thought.

After buying the tickets to Kyolastix, which existed on a small island not too far from the Division 1, he went to the shore to experiment with his new item.

He manipulated the sea water a bit and got [Water current control Lv 1]. Then he held the pearl and used the skill to see the increase.

[Item effect: Water affinity +0.30]

It was a significant affinity boost, he could manipulate the water particles somewhat without fusing magic aura with it but when he did it, he found out that it became much easier than before.

[Spirit: 1.19]

[Spiritual affinities:

-Mana: 1.67(+1.19)

-Aura: 0.40(+1.19)

-Divine: 0.36(+0.58)

-Demonic: 0.34(0.58)

-Life: 0.05(+0.58)

-Void: 0.01(+0.01)]

'The body purification elixir increased some of it.'

[Elemental affinity: Water(Item effect)]

[Primordial elements:

-Fire: 0.00, Water: 0.00(+0.30), Wind: 0.00, Earth: 0.01, Lightning: 0.00]

[Grand elements:

-Light: 0.10, Darkness: 0.10]

[Progenitor elements:

-Space: 0.01, Time: 0.00]

'The elements…'

The story behind the elements is a special one. Story about the vanquished Primordial Chaos and the Creation of the primordial elements, the ascension of the Divine and Profane, the creation of the world and the birth of humanity.

Before everything began, only one sentient being existed. Born out of endless Void and the Anti-Void, pure energy, the opposite of Void. The thing had unimaginable powers.

After eternity of floating in the Void, it grew bored so it sought to create more sentient beings like itself.

It took inspiration from its parent, Void and created the primordial chaos, a mistake and a devourer. It has no sentience but an endless appetite for energy. Its unstable nature demanded that it consume new laws to keep it somewhat stabilized. Thus it was sealed away.

Learning from its mistake, the Creator created the first elements, Space and Time. The foundation for all of the things that it would create later on. It also created souls and the soulguide so that something like chaos won't happen again.

After that it created sentient beings, gods. The first gods it created were derived from its endless and many types of energies. It separated itself from its mana and then created the Incarnation of it. It did the same with Aura, Sacred and Unholy, Life and Abyss, a lesser version of Void.

All of its creations had certain concepts behind it. Sacred was derived from faith, Unholy from desire, Aura from willpower, Mana from imagination. Abyss being power and Life is self explanatory.

After creating the 7 gods, the Creator became satisfied with its life. Following its death, the universe was created.

Mortal sentient beings were created such as elves, dwarves and merfolk. Some exceptional ones like dragons appeared and even lesser elements such as ice, magma, metal, shadow were created.

Everything was going well even after hundreds of millennials . Life was flourishing and more and more mortals were ascending to the realm of gods.

Powerful beings such as the Dragon King, Daemon, Elf queen, Dwarven master, sword saint, the great sage etc. All powerful people.

But their strength was nothing compared to the firstborn.

Primordial Chaos awakened, introducing the concept of chaos to the world. Wars, rebellions and anarchy. It assimilated the lesser elements into itself, becoming even more powerful.

All the gods were scared, they fought and fought until they couldn't anymore, some of them even lost a portion of their powers to it. Chaos was like an endless storm, annihilating everything it encountered. In desperation, the gods fled to another dimension, but not before leaving a gift to their last fighters.

The Sacred god and the Unholy remained to confront it. First, they assimilated the remaining elements, Light and Darkness respectively, boosting their power.

They received support from their incapacitated siblings, Abyss gifted the Unholy the power of death, the lesser version of its power. Life gave some of it's power to Sacred. Mana and Aura gave them their energies and it mixed with theirs, creating miasma and holy aura, helping Sacred evolve to Holy while Unholy became Vile.

Even then they couldn't beat their older sibling.

They used one last trick up their sleeve, soul union.

Their souls united and they became bound for the rest of eternity, their only weaknesses being each other. Holy became Divine and Vile became Demonic. Their actions introduced the concept of Marriage and unity, and with its power, they vanquished the Chaos, dismantling it and thereby annihilating the concept of chaos once and for all.

The primordial Chaos became the primordial Elements: Fire, Earth, Wind, Water and Lightning and the lesser elements it absorbed went under their branch.

After that, Demonic and Divine released Light and Darkness. Some of their strength remained with them, making Light compatible with Divine and Darkness with Demonic. With their increased strength, Light and Darkness were not fit to be in the same group as the new elements so they became the Grand elements.

The couple couldn't release the gifts they got from their siblings as they have been severely weakened from the fight and would die if they did but that did not stop them from having their honeymoon.

When the Demonic essence inside their children became dominant, they became demons. If the Divine essence prevails then the children were born as Angels. There're a couple of speculations about why demons and angels are hostile against each other while being a sibling race. One is that divine and demonic were always meant to clash no matter what while the other said that it's because of their unhappy marriage that happened because of necessity and not love. The third speculation suggests that they are throwing a tantrum to receive their progenitors attention. None of them were proven.

While the couple gods gave birth to a whole 2 superior races, they also gave birth to an inferior third one.

When the two extremities clash and nullify each other, humans are born. They did not inherit anything from their gods except their sentience and that was it. They were weak, their starting attributes sucked and their growth rate was horrendous. Many races consider them to be the weakest race and some still do . Their only redeeming quality being that they could rarely evolve to an Angel or a Demon although a low ranked ones.

However, the couple loved them, they enjoyed having neutral ground and thus they sought to give humanity a chance at survival.

They pulled in a lot of favors from their younger siblings and exhausted siblings who were still yet to recover. They taught humans the ability to utilize mana and aura and blessed them with slight affinity to the elements.

Sometimes the blessings given by the gods overlap hence creating the rare geniuses.

Nevertheless, humanity managed to survive, and thrive by creating various techniques to enhance their potential.

One interesting thing humans came up with was utilizing different energies to use the elements. Humans mostly use mana to control the elements. It has its limits and is no different than just the pure element but it can ensure survival. They also use elements to enhance their aura. But the special thing is that they can use different energies. Instead of using mana, a person with high life affinity can use life energy or life force to use elements. This gives the elements special properties of healing and it is extremely compatible with light. Another person can use divine energy to use elements, making it 50% divine and 50% the chosen element and deal lethal damage to demons and it can go vice versa as well.

This is almost entirely unique to humans and their siblings. Some other races can use a technique like that but it's extremely rare.

This story is old but surprisingly not many people heard about it. Those who have heard think it's all some fairytales as demons have tortured them since the earliest days of humanity and didn't want to think they were connected.

Aster though, pretty much believed it because it was too detailed to be false. People say 'where are all the gods? ' but the story states that Chaos permanently injured them and they retreated to a different dimension to live.

Aster zoned out a bit, recalling the story. Then woke up due to his stomach rumbling.

'Damn, better eat some food.'

After putting the pearl back, he went to the traveler's center to eat some overpriced junk food.

***

On the second floor of the traveler's center, many people were carrying out their lives. However, some people would occasionally glance at the two beautiful young ladies sitting on a bench, observing the passersby with a bored look.

"Worthless, they are all worthless. None of them can help me get past stage 12. Ughh, it's so frustrating, I'm so close to evolving as well."

One of the ladies whispered. She had average height, long brunette hair, dark pink eyes and a pretty face. Her physique was not yet like an hourglass yet but it was quite alluring nonetheless.

The other lady rolled her eyes and said.

"Stop whining and just choose one and we will go to our lair. I can't wait."

She had short brown hair, similar eyes and similar build as well. One could see that they were related.

"Ughh, easy for you to say, who's only on stage 11. I'm on stage 12, a hundred of these insects wouldn't be enough even if I participated with them in the 'ritual'.

"But a couple of hundred will do, right? So stop whining and get to work, girl! It's not like big fishes are around in this place anyways."

As soon as she said that, both of them felt a massive bundle of aura with their enhanced perception.

Their eyes widened.

"I call dibs-" The shorter haired girl said before her head was stabbed by her sister's dagger.

Blood splattered and her corpse fell down but no one paid attention to it, the other's illusion magic was quite good for her stage.

"Haha, to think a big fish really came here." She excitedly said while licking her lips.

"This much energy… It can push me to stage 13 and beyond that. After 20 years, I can finally stop being a fledgling!" Her alluring pink eyes glittered and she got up and went closer to the edge and observed the source of the aura on the ground floor.

She identified a young man with a forgettable face but one good look revealed that he was hiding his face.

"Hehe, I'm coming for you."

***

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