Chapter 7: A Grand Illusion...

A shout out to Kenjisato for his amazing editing skill and suggestions...

Tags: No Sex... (AN: I am also laughing at the irony ... but as I said wait for the weekend.)

Thursday...

He wasn’t sure where he was, but his surroundings were covered in thick fog and darkness— there was nothing visible. He wasn’t sure how he arrived at wherever he was; after all, the last thing he could remember was sleeping in his room on his comfy bed.

This meant it was some kind of dream, but he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t waking up from it.

Normally, when you realize that you are dreaming, you wake up from the dream, but here he was, still experiencing the same hazy darkness, instead of waking up in his bed.

Suddenly, he felt a burning sensation within his chest; he looked down, only to notice his chest shining with a bright golden light which was spreading across his body. In less than a second, his entire body was being illuminated by this golden light, but that wasn’t all; the burning sensation had also increased by tenfold— he was barely able to breathe!

The burning sensation kept increasing, and with a loud burst, his entire body blasted like a firecracker.

“MUMMY!”

He woke from this weird and scary dream, which felt so realistic. The first thing he did, was to look down, only to find his chest was normal.

‘That was a strange dream, it felt so realistic!’

A knock on the door brought him out of his reverie. ‘Who could it be?’ He looked at the clock, it was six in the morning.

He got out of bed and opened the door, only to find his dad standing before him.

Mike Strode was a man in his late forties. He had a streak of grey hair and a few wrinkles on his face. After his wife’s death, he hadn’t paid enough attention to his diet which was quite evident, in the form of his balding head and a round belly.

“Morning Jim, are you all right? I heard your scream, champ; another bad dream?”

After the accident, every night, he would experience nightmares, when he would often be comforted by his Dad. But as time passed, those dreams became fewer and fewer, and by the age of ten, they just stopped. It was the first time in the past few years that he had experienced such a dream.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Oh ... If you want to talk about it, you know I am here, right?”

“Nah ... Dad, I am fine. I will catch some sleep, I mean, it’s still early, right?”

“Yeah, of course, but are you sure you would be fine all alone for the whole weekend?”

The dumbfounded expression on James’s face was enough for his Dad to remind him, “You remember, right; both me and Viviana are supposed to go for a weekend cruise trip. I mean, I asked you if you want to come, but you said you would be fine.”

“Oh ... yeah, Dad, I remember it. I mean, I would be fine. And Debby would be around, right?” He spoke making sure his words were coated with enough brotherly love.

“Champ, it’s the last weekend of the month. Debby wouldn’t be around, either.”

He then remembered that every month, on the last weekend, Debby would go to California to spend time with her Nana; because she loved her Nana so much! But James knew the real reason— her Nana’s residence was in LA, which was nothing more than a dream city for Debby.

“Oh, yeah. Still, I will be fine, Dad.” ‘But wait a minute, if Debby wouldn’t be here, then what in the hell had Cindy planned for me?’

“If you want to come with...”

“No, no, Dad, I will be fine. I mean, I also have my weekend plans.”

“Oh anything that I should be aware of?” Mike asked, while raising an eyebrow in a comical expression.

After his mother’s death, James had seen how his Dad would be always skulking but once he started dating Viviana he had changed greatly; of course, he wasn’t as adventurous as before, but he had started enjoying his life, which was all James could ask for!

“What? No, Dad. I mean, we are going to do some big missions on Clan Survivors and that’s all there is, nothing else.” ‘Now I can’t tell my Dad that I have to save my ass from my school bully, escape a humiliating scheme of his stepdaughter, and also meet a fine, hot Milf whom I met online!’

“Well that’s good, I guess...” With that, he shook his head in understanding.

James could see a slight disappointment in his old man’s eyes. To be honest, James could understand, after all, he had never gone out on a date, or had brought a girl to their home.

“All of us had taken Friday off and will be leaving on an early flight. First, we will drop Debby off and then go on the cruise, so we won’t disturb your sleep tomorrow.”

“Yeah, thanks, Dad.” With that he gently closed the door, he knew within a few hours he would be back at school on a new day filled with the same trouble. He only hoped that both Henry’s anger and the gossip had died down!

He jogged to the school, while still musing about his ability, although it wasn’t something like super strength or speed, it was still an awesome ability if you thought about it, right? ‘I mean, who in the world wouldn’t want to have sexual superpowers? But still, what is the origin of this ability?’

This was the question that even after five days, he had failed to find an answer to. While, usually, in any superpower fantasy, the person gained power through accident, experiment, etc.; in his life, no such thing had happened.

So, to put it simply, there was just no way to explain how he got his ability; well, except for him helping that old man to cross the road.

‘Which doesn’t make sense, I mean you don’t get gamer-like ability by just helping an old man cross a road, I mean, that would be the lamest origin story anyone have ever thought of!

‘I mean what am I supposed to say? ‘I am James Strode and I got my powers by helping an old man cross the road!’

He kept thinking and questioning multiple things within his mind, while jogging toward the school.

Even though he was so lost in his thoughts, he noticed when he entered the corridor that all of the students had stopped whatever they were doing, and looked at him; some of them were also talking in hushed tones with each other, while pointing fingers at him.

It was the first time he was getting so much attention, and without stopping, he just kept his head low and kept walking toward the classroom. Again, when he entered the classroom, all of the activities came to a halt, and everyone looked at him.

Again, he just kept his head low and walked toward the back of the class. After some time again, the entire classroom started to chat and he would occasionally hear his name, Jane Dunbar’s name, along with Henry’s.

There were also hushed discussions about how Henry had sworn to beat him black and blue. Those lines sent a cold sensation across his heart, and his stomach lurched at the prospect of beat down, even though he was a victim in this entire incident, yet there was no justice!

He knew approaching teachers would be useless since Principal Holmes would shy away from punishing Henry for crimes he had done, and forget about punishing him for something that he hadn’t done yet!

‘Well, today, I will also have to go through the library to escape from Henry, I guess!’

That thought suddenly made butterflies dance in his stomach, and the image of Mrs. Holmes masturbating in the library’s storage room appeared before him.

Again, he started to curse himself for being such an idiot and not taking up the opportunity to film Mrs. Holmes while she was presenting such a hot show!

Last night, he had barely fallen asleep when his eyes opened wide in sudden realization, ‘Why didn’t he do it? Why didn’t he make a video of Mrs. Holmes’s jilling session? How could he miss such a rare opportunity?’ These kinds of thoughts tormented him for at least an hour and he had barely fallen asleep when he suddenly woke up from that weird dream of him being blown up like a sparkler.

‘That was surely one of the most realistic and vivid dreams I have ever seen in recent times.’ After the accident, in which he lost his mother, he would have nightmares every night; all of them filled with pain, horror, and death. With passing time, he stopped experiencing those realistic and vivid nightmares, and in the past few years, he hadn’t seen even a single nightmare. This was the reason why the dream last night had caught him off guard.

‘I hope it was just a one-time thing!’

The rest of the day was uneventful, except for angry glances from Henry and some curious fingers being pointed toward him; nothing else happened. Once the day was over, he sneaked out of the classroom and rushed toward the library; during his escape toward the library, he had looked behind and didn’t see Henry or his lackeys following him; which, instead of making him relax, increased his tension. After all, Henry wasn’t the kind of person who would let this kind of thing go so easily.

Still, he kept running and entered the library, only to find Nina Jackson sitting on Mrs. Holmes’s chair.

Nina Jackson was an assistant librarian, and since she was sitting in Mrs. Holmes’s chair, it only meant Mrs. Holmes was on leave.

‘Fuck!’ Even though he wouldn’t bluntly admit it, deep down he had wished for repetition of the previous evening and this time, to also film it.

He was about to walk past Nina, who just gave him a slight look and went back to her phone doing whatever she was doing, but suddenly, she raised her head and spoke.

“Hey, you are that kid who kissed Henry’s girl, right?”

That caught him by surprise, and James wasn’t sure what to say.

But before he could say or do anything, she spoke again, “Wow! You got some guts, kid!” With that, she winked at him and then focused back on her phone.

‘Fuck, if she knows, then what are the chances that the teacher and principal know as well?’

A tense wave of panic rushed across his mind, but he just ignored it and walked toward the stacks and started to go through the books; he had no intention of reading any of the books, but he wanted to make sure that when he went around the school building, everyone would have left.

He entered the boys’ bathroom and jumped across the ventilation window, walked past the library building, then crossed the school building as stealthily as possible. He made sure that all of the students had left, and only after he was sure about it, he sneaked out of the main gate.

“Going somewhere, Jimmy?”

He had barely walked out of the school gate, when he heard Jack’s voice and looked to the right side of the gate, only to find Jack standing there.

While Henry was a tall and buff young man, Jack had a physique that even dwarfed Henry, but nature seemed to have balanced it out by giving him fewer brain cells, which is why the only thing he could do was play the muscle for Henry.

In short, Jack was nothing less than a buffed-up baboon, but at the same time, James knew how fucked he was if he got caught!

‘Fuck me!’ Without wasting much time he took a sharp left and started to run as fast as he could.

“Stop there...!” Jack shouted, but James just ignored his threatening shout and kept running, which prompted Jack to start chasing him.

‘Fuck me! I am so dead!’

His heart was beating hastily; after all, physically, Jack was far more stronger and active than him; he could hear his footsteps closing in, he mustered all his strength and pushed his legs as fast as he could.

He knew if he crossed the road before the light turned green, then he might be able to escape this brute. With that thought, he put in his last effort.

BANG!!!

Suddenly, everything around him started to spin, and a mind-numbing pain shot through his body.

His mind was in a haze due to the sudden shock and pain, but at the same time, the HP bar appeared before him and the number 100 started to change,... 99... 98 ... it kept changing, and reached number... 20.

“!Your HP is at a critical limit!”

“Do you want to convert LVL into HP?”

Suddenly, a message appeared asking him whether he wanted to convert LVL into HP; of course, he wasn’t aware that there was also this kind of feature, but his brain wasn’t coping with the situation to even react to it, and the HP kept decreasing resulting in another notification.

“!Critical situation auto-confirmation!”

After that notification, the LVL bar had 8 written in it, which rapidly started to decrease; at the same time, the HP bar started to increase, 10 became 20 and so on; the decrease of 1 LVL was increasing 10 HP.

He noticed what felt like broken bones were being repaired, the left side of his rib-cage was also putting itself back in its place, and everything that was spinning around came to a halt. He could also open his eyes properly, only to find himself in middle of the road at least twelve meters away from a black XUV.

The LVL bar kept decreasing, while at the same time, the HP bar kept increasing which in effect healed his body and made all the pain disappear. This kept going until the entire LVL bar was emptied and 8 became 0, while HP had reached almost full state, with 90 written on it.

He tried to stand up, there were still a few kinks within his bones, but except for the shock of the accident overall, he was fine. He noticed Jack was nowhere to be seen.

“Are you all right, young man?”

He turned around only to find a woman who appeared to be in her late thirties standing behind him. She had dark hair tied in a ponytail, and she had a full face with gentle facial features, yet her eyes were sharp and were observing his minute momentum; to him, it felt like she was trying to look through his very being. She had a sculpture-like body along with pale-brown skin; if he had to guess, she appeared like a model from a Middle Eastern country.

He felt a pleasant scent entering his nostrils which, for a brief moment, made him enter a hazy, dreamy state, but the same vision he had seen in the dream appeared before him, and he saw and felt himself being blown up again, which pulled him out of the enchanting haze!

“Yeah, am ... I am fine. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have been running around.”

He hastily apologized to the woman, turned around, and walked away, He wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. Since he was in such a hurry, he didn’t notice the surprised expression on the woman’s face.

She kept looking at the back of the young man; it was the first time in two centuries that someone was able to wave her allure off in a blink of an eye. A thin smile appeared on the woman’s face. The young man wasn’t a normal human; her thought was confirmed when she looked at the bonnet of her car, which was badly damaged, yet the young man was walking away unscathed!

Her breathing quickened, she bit on her lower lip while looking at the young man who took a sharp turn and disappeared from her sight.

If she had wanted, she could have stopped him, but she liked the thrill of the chase!

“WHAT THE...?”

He was still in a state of shock, he just had faced an extremely dangerous accident in which he would have been left in a very critical state or worse, even dead, but all that happened was a moment of shock and extreme pain— once the LVL was converted into HP, all his pain was gone!

Then, except for a few kinks in his body, he was as fine as he was before the accident.

This was the reason why he quickly walked away from that woman, ‘but this is insane, man.’ Being a gamer, he knew what HP stood for, but never had he imagined that he would get in a life-threatening accident, and that his new ability would utilize this HP, and not only save him, but also quickly heal all his wounds.

He was still in shock of amazement at this discovery, which is the reason why he wasn’t paying enough attention to his surroundings, a foolhardy thing to do after you had just walked out of a car accident, but his mind was busy running through multiple scenarios.

He was barely halfway to his home when, suddenly, an old man appeared out of nowhere, or at least that’s how he felt; he had appeared right before him, scaring the shit out of James!

“Calm down, young man.”

The man was wearing a tattered white robe, had brown skin tone, and a poorly aged face; he was also wearing a pair of sunglasses. He had a huge wooden box on his back.

“Can I ask you for your name?”

“I think you are asking the wrong person, excuse me.” With that, James tried to walk past the old man, whom he had never seen before, but his body wouldn’t budge!

‘What the hell? Why can’t I move?’ He looked at his body, thinking that maybe it could have been the accident, that he might be having trouble walking or something like that.

“I asked for your name, young man, and you shouldn’t behave like that with your seniors.”

Then, James looked back at the man, who appeared to be in his late sixties and was standing before him calmly; while waiting for his answer. James knew this wasn’t right, but if this old man was so interested in just knowing his name, then he should just tell him this would also clarify that he had approached the wrong person.

“I ... My name is James Strode.”

Again, James tried to walk, or at least move, but it felt like there was some kind of pressure from outside that was keeping his body pinned there.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Strode. I am Daisuke, the 99th direct disciple of old Han. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Strode James, and it must be a virtue of my past life and the blessing of my Master that I also have the fortune to induct you as his one-hundredth disciple.”

With that, the old man punched the fist of his right hand against the palm of his left hand, pulled out a Golden Scroll, and presented it to him.

‘What the hell is going on? And what is this Master-Disciple thing? Wasn’t that some old-time thing in the eastern part of the globe? What the hell is this old man even talking about? And where the hell did he get this Scroll? Even though I haven’t seen an actual one, I have seen a lot of them when I was playing ‘War-Mage’ and I can say that this is the fakest thing ever!’

“This Golden Scroll contains one of the legendary art created by Master Han, and as a rightful disciple, I present it to you.”

‘What? What art? I mean, what is that supposed to mean? Is it some kind of secret painting, or wait a minute, it’s not like there is some secret kung-fu method or anything like that, right?’

“I don’t want to sound rude, but are you sure you are not mistaking me for someone else? I mean, I have never learned this kung-fu or anything like it in my life; neither have I met this Master Han.”

“Of course, how could you meet him? He had passed away a long time ago.” With that, the man started to cry earnestly.

All right, it was confirmed that this was some crazy old man; something within him was also telling him to run, but his body just wouldn’t move, ‘Fuck, what the hell is going on? And why are none of the passersby paying any attention to us? I mean, here is an old man dressed like a hobo and crying like a madman and everyone is just ignoring him. Everyone is walking by without even giving a passing glance. What the hell is just going on?’

Since he was forced to stay and look at the old man, he couldn’t stop but make an observation— the old man crying like a baby looked extremely ugly! He knew it was wrong of him to make such a rude assessment, but this old man just wouldn’t leave him alone!

Suddenly, he stopped crying, looked at him with excitement, and started to laugh hysterically while dancing around.

‘Fuck! This looks even uglier!’

After a few minutes of a laughing riot, he stopped before him.

“Fellow disciple, it’s a pleasure to meet you again.” He punched the fist of one hand into the other hand’s palm and bowed before him. “I am sorry, but a bug is following me, so to protect you from this enemy, I must leave as fast as I can.”

‘What the hell? What rubbish is this crazy old man talking?’ Because none of his words were making sense to him.

But before he could say anything, the crazy geezer spoke again, “Oh, and before I forget, here it is.”

With that, the old man pulled out a small wooden box from his robes and presented it before James.

“What is it?”

“A gift that the Master had left for his one-hundredth disciple; he had asked me to also give you this with the Golden Scroll.”

With that, he moved forward and took hold of James’s hand and placed the scroll and the wooden box in it. James failed to understand whatever gibberish this crazy old man was speaking; he knew the old man had misunderstood him, and he was about to say so, but the old man was nowhere to be seen!

‘What the hell? Where did he go? And why am I meeting weird old men? Is it some kind of trend that I am not aware of? And what should I do with it? I mean could it be that there are some kind of explosives or some illegal thing in the wooden box or maybe both this wooden box and Golden Scroll are stolen from someone?’ That thought scared him.

His first thought was to dump this thing here and rush back home, but then he stopped. What if the old man came back, or worse, what if the authorities approached him? If he said that he didn’t know the old man, he could at least give this thing to them to justify his story.

While he wouldn’t accept it, a scroll and a small wooden box were enough to spark curiosity for the gamer within him. He knew magic didn’t exist in real life, and getting treasure from wooden boxes was something limited to video games, but then again, he was a living video-game character right now!

‘No, that’s not right. I should report it to the cops. I mean, it could be life threatening or it could be stolen from others... ‘

While his mind was going along that line of thought, at the same time, the Golden Scroll shone with a bright light, which immediately changed his line of thought.

‘ ... No, I must open this scroll; yes, that’s right. Who knows what might be in it! There could be something useful.’ All of the concerns and thoughts had just disappeared from his mind, and with this single thought, he rushed back home.

He even ignored the fact that just a few seconds ago, he wasn’t even able to move and here he was running toward his house at full speed.

He reached his home, rushed to his room. Without wasting any time, he opened the scroll, only to find there were some weird symbols engraved on it, which he could not read. He was about to close the scroll, but at the same time, he felt a cold sensation on his fingers.

‘What the hell?!’

A weird, creepy, cold sensation numbed his fingers, and slowly, it started to move upward. He quickly let go of the scroll, but the cold sensation wasn’t going anywhere.

‘So, damn cold!’

Slowly, the coldness crept spreading, and it wasn’t long before both his hands were numbed by it, and yet, it didn’t stop and kept covering his body.

It felt like his entire body was being frozen. Never before had he felt such a coldness. With a loud thud, he fell on his bedroom floor, while his body kept getting colder and colder!

He could barely breathe and the exhale that came out of his body was in the form of a cold wind, instead of normal air. It became hard to breathe since the air that entered his nostrils would quickly freeze and get stuck; it felt like he would die from all of this coldness, or due to the lack of oxygen.

His body was not moving at all, his breathing had stopped, and his eyes had become crystalline cold, his eyelashes also froze and stopped fluttering. His spine turned cold, his heartbeat kept decreasing, while he felt his lungs also being gripped by this creepy, cold sensation.

There wasn’t any struggle, he wanted to fight this, fight whatever this sensation was, and win— but his body wasn’t listening. The only thing that was working was his brain, which slowly slipped into unending darkness.

The last thing he felt was a small spark of warmth deep within his heart!

An old man, who appeared to be in his late eighties, was standing before a broken ancient ruin. The ruin had been greatly affected by the climate and overgrown vegetation. What once used to be the great Han family residence, had been reduced to a massive ruin with broken houses, temples, passages, etc.

‘Destiny’ was the meaning of the word that was barely readable on the broken gate of the estate, instead of the whole sentence, ‘Between the Heaven and Earth, the Destiny of the Brave!’

The sight before him triggered memories of a life that he had lived eons ago. Han Wu was the eldest of two siblings in the Han family; once a powerful clan that didn’t even exist in the history of the Martial World.

The Martial World is divided into Eleven Continents all of which are in different sizes and shapes. Out of these eleven continents, the biggest one is known as Qian Continent, named after Qian Wu, the first Cultivator who broke through the barrier and ascended to Immortality, hence opening a path of Immortality for humanity of this world.

On this Qian Continent, there is a huge mountain range with more than nine thousand mountains. In ancient times, this used to be a single huge mountain, but when Qian Wu ascended to Immortality, he faced the Heavenly Calamity on this tall mountain; as per the myth, it is believed that the heavenly lightning strike collided with the sword of Qian Wu.

This powerful collision was the reason for the creation of the Nine Thousand Mountains.

These Nine Thousand Mountains were home to hundreds of types of spiritual herbs, so it was natural that many other families and clans wanted to get a hold of these treasure mountains, but none of them would dare to act on their desire since the mountains were under the Han family’s control, and head of the family, his father, was a talented Cultivator who had formed his Golden Core centuries ago!

He was a force to be reckoned with, his name was enough to strike fear in the hearts of their enemy.

But one day, he encountered a powerful monster during his journey across the sea, and he was gravely wounded; all the vultures decided to take advantage of such a great opportunity, which they may not get another in the next hundreds of years. On one fateful night, all those enemies combined their forces and attacked the Han family.

While his father was a genius, except for him, all of the other members were average and most of them were in Qi-Refinement Realm, while few were in Qi-Condensing Realm; after his father fell in the battle, it wasn’t a battle anymore, but more of a maiming of the Han family!

At the age of forty, Han Wu was still stuck in Body-Refinement Realm and couldn’t do anything, but watch his entire family be wiped out, right before his eyes.

He, along with his younger brother Han Bao, was able to escape during the chaos, but both of them were immediately chased by their attackers.

They came to the northern end of the Nine Thousand Mountains, right before the entrance of the Cursed Forest. This was the forest where no one would dare to enter, not even his father, due to the belief that whoever entered this forest, would be cursed by it!

In the past, whoever dared to enter the forest would suffer a great tragedy! It didn’t matter how talented or powerful a person was, if he entered the forest, he was bound to be cursed by it.

The Han Duo came to a halt in their escape; on one side was the Cursed Forest, while on the other side, there was death that was closing in on them with each passing moment; while it was a tough choice it wasn’t an impossible one!

They entered the Cursed Forest!

Being cursed wasn’t the only threat in the forest, there was also the risk of encountering powerful beasts, and being Body-Refinement level cultivators, it wasn’t long before both of them were tired, so they entered a cave to hide for the night.

There was an eerie feeling both of them experienced when they entered the cave; at first, they both stopped. There was a clear sense of doubt, but at the same time, the whole forest was creeping them out.

With no other option left, with heavy hearts, both of them moved deeper into the cave.

In the start, it was extremely dark, but the more they walked, the lighter the path became; it was like there was light coming from deep within the cave.

It wasn’t long before they noticed that it was the walls of the cave that were shining with weird light, every part of the cave was shining with Azure-hued light!

Both of them failed to understand the reason why the cave walls were shining with such weird light, but at the same time, there was nothing in the cave that could answer their question; well, except a weird-looking tree.

The tree was standing on a single root that was coming out from the ground, four trunks emerged from the single tree root and merged at the top, forming a tree top. From that top, a single branch was sprouting, and on the top of that branch, there was a pair of fruit.

Both fruits were similar to a peach, but instead of having normal peach-like coloring, they had bright Azure coloring to it with golden shades.