Penumbra (5) - 32

A/N: Well, whoever it was that got those 100 coins, congratulations!

The skill, "The Library of Karmic Records", was truly something that I had never imagined that I would get.

You see, from what I remembered of the novel, only one person had ever received this skill before in all of history, and that had been "Mana Blessed Orion", a hero from 300 years ago that had completely destroyed the demonic being that had appeared that time around.

This was all due to the nature of this skill, which was more like a ticket rather than a skill, as it let the user access the Karmic Records.

Using these records, the skill holder would be able to learn and master every single magic spell in existence.

Now, this would probably prompt a question in you, the reader, which was, "What's magic?" Or more precisely, "What's the difference between magic and skills?"

Well, it was simple, actually, now that I thought about it, not simple really.

You see, mana was something every living being in this world had, except for certain rare cases, and it could be used in a variety of ways.

For humans, there were two main uses for mana, and that was to either turn it into "magic" or "aura".

On one hand, "magic" was the manifestation of one's mana to create something out of nothing, whilst "aura" was the coating of mana around one's body, specifically, around the skin and muscles, greatly enhancing the physical power of one's attack.

"The Library of Karmic Records" specialized in knowledge about all things mana, so, basically, I could become the most overpowered mana user if I diligently followed the instructions of the 10 circle grade breathing and absorbing manuals in the library.

I knew that I had to instantly use this skill as it would definitely boost my strength, which was exactly what I wanted.

Mumbling under my breath, I whispered, "Enter The Library of Karmic Records."

Immediately, my surroundings changed, and I appeared in a white space.

In front of me was a massive tome, one that no normal human being could ever flip a page of.

But, as I was one that had been granted access to this tome, I opened the tome and started reading.

Taking my time, as I knew that spending 1000 years in this space would only equal a second in the outside world, I kept on reading and reading, boosting my intelligence in the process as I strived to finish the entire tome of The Library of Karmic Records.

Whoever thought that I would be the first novel protagonist to not go crazy from such a long time in isolation?

"..."

Wait, what did I just say?

Anyways, for some reason, I felt perfectly normal as I passed the 1,000 year mark, and so I continued to read.

Hmm...

Maybe it was because something was already wrong with my head...

Well, passing the 2,000 year mark, I looked up from the tome for a little bit as I rested my eyes... before locking my eyes back on the paper a second later as I continued reading.

A few thousand more years passed and I was well over a eleven thousand years old.

I had actually lost track of the count of years that I had stayed in this place after hitting the 8,000 year mark, as I had become too absorbed in my reading to bother with it anymore.

Even then, I continued reading.

...

"THUMP!"

Reaching the last page of the giant tome, I flipped the end cover over and a huge shockwave resounded in the space.

After having read through the whole tome, I know knew exactly which methods I needed to absorb from the tome.

The first method I decided to learn was the "Breathing Technique".

Yes, the name of it was just "Breathing Technique", there were no adjectives or descriptors to describe it.

I had actually been pretty wishy washy about choosing between this breathing technique and the, "Heavenly Martial God Asura Breathing Technique", but, in the end, this technique had won out as it was the most useful for me.

Sitting down in a lotus position on the floor of the white space, I started breathing in and out in a very peculiar manner as the flow of a substance in my body changed drastically.

Just by breathing in this way, I was able to make my heart beat erratically, effectively changing the flow of my blood, which, in turn, changed the flow of the mana that resided in my blood.

Completely reversing the flow of blood in my body, I made the "out" "in" and the "in" "out".

Of course, this didn't come with its fair bout of pain, but by now, with my memories of my past life fully integrated, I was basically someone that couldn't feel pain anymore after all the trials that I had had to face.

But still, even though I wasn't in pain, my body clearly responded to the changes as sweat and a black goo spilled out of every single pore in my body.

I had reached the first step of the martial path, "Purgative", a state where all the impurities that had been building up in a practitioner's body were expelled violently and their aura was formed due to the clean mana now flowing through every single vein in their body, making its presence clear.

Usually, the build up to this process would have taken at least a year for the normal practitioner, with an average age of about 23 years old, but with this breathing method, I had been able to succeed in initiating the process in mere seconds.

This just showed the power of "Breathing Technique", which I would refer to by its more well known name, known as the breathing technique lost to history.

You see, "Breathing Technique" was actually the original breathing technique created by the one true god that created the gods of this world, and, well, the actual name of the technique was, "Genesis Breathing Technique."

But, even with this broken breathing technique, I wasn't satisfied.

It was after 5 minutes of rest that I decided to proceed with the next step in my process of getting stronger.

I would now attempt to use an absorption technique whilst using the Genesis Breathing technique at the same time, something that could kill me.

Facing the abyss of death herself, I opened the tome to the right page and started.

---

I got some news guys.

Yesterday, in the midst of my migraine, I for some reason was thinking about OTR (probably because I would have published a chapter for it because the schedule said so, only if it wasn't on hiatus and I didn't have a migraine).

Originally, I had planned to start releasing chapters again for it as my commission was taking way too long and I wanted to dive back into that story.

So, I started reading the whole thing again.

And I realized, the story was complete shit!

Like, obviously, it was written when I was still a novice writer, but still, I couldn't believe the low quality of the story.

I knew that if I continued with this type of structure trying to support the rest of what I had planned out, the whole story would definitely collapse.

So, I'm now making a hard, gut-wrenching decision as the author and father of that novel and its characters.

I'll be completely rewriting the whole thing.

In this rewrite, I'll be keeping most of the character names and backstories, but the entire plot will be changed.

Basically, I'll be starting off from square one.

And, for those of you who somehow liked Shinobu, who I know realize is a really poorly made character, well, I'm sorry, because he will be the character that is changed the most.

After all, the main character has to be the best made character, didn't they?

Also, I might be publishing it on another site, but we'll see.

Anyways, just wanted to update y'all about that.

Here's the title reveal:

Return of the Shattered Ranker