New Beginnings

  The smell of salt water and the sound of waves slapping the shore was the first thing Mark could make out as he woke up. He shook his head a little as his eyes focused, he raised his hand to his eyes, hoping it would shade the light a little. He looked around and saw that he was sitting on a wood bench, a long dark stained wood dock led up to a vast body of water. He watched as water sprayed up onto the gleaming wet dock, the mist from the spray shimmered like a million tiny diamonds.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Mark sprung to his feet, slipped, and almost fell back down, an arm hooked around him to steady him. Startled, Mark looked to his right and a grinning man with bright green eyes, wearing a blue hat stared back at him.

  “Be careful their son, my apologies, I didn't mean to startle you.”

  The stranger had a lighthearted almost whimsical British accent. The man let go and Mark was able to get a proper look. The man stood a few inches taller than himself, wearing a nice dark blue suit with a matching bowler hat and black dress shoes.

  “Thank you” Mark said reaching out to shake the man’s hand. “My name is Mark.” The other man looked at his hand, Mark could see the stranger was fighting a grin, but after a minute the stranger took Marks hand and shook more vigorously than he was expecting.

  “My pleasure, my pleasure, Mark.” Still shaking his hand grinning, “My name is Alexander Wick.” And with his hand on top of his hat, he shifted forward into a small bow.

  After a few uncomfortable minutes shaking hands, Mark pulled his hand free. “Um hello Mr. Wick, I don’t want to be rude, but I was wondering as to where we are?” Mark looked around and all he could see was water and a bit of land under the dock they were standing on.

  “That is indeed an excellent question. We are at the very center of the Nexus, the Core of the Nexus, the core is where it all starts for the newly reborn threw techniques or revive tokens. As to what you see, it is surprisingly the Nexus Sea, the Nexus Core shows you the representation of your own core and believe me what an interesting core it is.

  Mark looked around, eyes wide. “My core? Do you mean my soul?”

  “Ah.” Alexander nodded. “I see why you would guess that, but no your soul is a vessel for your very being. Your core represents your true self, and it can be divided into three parts, mind, body, and spirit.” Holding out his hand, a large ocean blue sphere the size of a grapefruit appeared floating just a few inches above his palm. Just a few seconds after the first sphere, three different colored smaller spheres appeared and floated in a triangle around the bigger sphere. The top one was dark purple, the bottom one to the left was dark teal, and the one to the right was gold.

  Mark could hear something faint coming out of the ocean blue sphere. He went to step a little closer but paused, glancing questioningly at Alexander, he received a nod and a grin. So, he stepped closer, and he could just make out the sounds of high winds and crashing waves. And while he was not able to hear anything coming out of the other three, he did notice while the dark teal was a solid color, the gold sphere and the dark purple sphere swirled and shimmered with flakes of silver. Mark pointed at the two shimmering gold and dark purple spheres, “Why are these two different from the teal looking sphere?”

  “Ah another excellent question but first let me explain the spheres. The dark purple sphere right above your core represents the mind part of your core. Strengthening your mind will help you be more confident and decisive and will also help you unlock a deeper understanding of magic. Doing this will not only allow you to learn powerful spells but will also increase your magical defense and increase your resistance to mental attacks. The dark teal sphere on the bottom left represents the body par.”

  “Um sorry I don't mean to interrupt but I have a quick question about the mind sphere.”

  Smiling Alexander chuckled softly, “Go ahead, what is your question?”

  “I was told that strengthening my core increases my levels and stats, so what stats do the mind part of my core effect?”

  Alexander looked at Mark quizzically, “Someone already explained the core to you? Who may I ask explained this to you?”

  “Yeah, um well a bit of it was explained to me anyway. Silva was the one who told me about it before I used the token. I guess you could call her my mom, she adopted me when my parents died saving her.” Mark watched as Alexanders face shifted from quizzical to frowning at hearing Silva’s name.

  “Silva who, what was her last name?”

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  “Silva’s last name was Silk. Why, do you know her?” Alexanders eyes went wide and stepped back and mumbled something Mark could not quite make out. “Are you okay?”

  Alexander materialized a silver coin out of thin air and flipped it, the silver coin turned metallic red then gold. Holding up the coin he peered up at it squinting a bit, he looked at Mark and the coin vanished. “I thought it was odd that a Primordial Elf appeared, I thought maybe you came from a different bloodline but no you come from Silks direct bloodline.”

  “What, an elf?” Mark dashed to a water puddle on the dock to look at his face. Blue eyes that have been brown his entire life peered back at him and his normally round face was now a slim soft angular shape. While his hair was at least twice as long, the color was still deep brown. He held his breath and brushed his hair away from his ears and he slowly released the breath in a long sigh, the top of his ears was indeed pointy.

  “Mark, I need to ask you a few more questions. Mark?”

  Mark looked back at Alexander, “How am I an elf? Silva never told me that I would change races if I used that token.”

  “The token she gave you was infused with her blood, when you were reborn you took on her bloodline. You are now indeed her actual son. I know you have many questions Mark and I will do my best to answer them, but this is important, and I need all the facts. First, is Silva still alive? The whimsical calm voice was gone and replaced with a deep demanding voice.

  “Yeah, she is still alive” Mark blurted out in a rush still reeling from the news.

  “That is excellent news, excellent indeed but where is she? Her dad and grandfather have been looking for her for a very long time.”

  “Oh, she gave me a message for her dad, Elthorn. I am supposed to tell him that she is alive and that she is trapped outside of the nexus. She said she was…”

  “What, Silva is in the void” Alexander turned quickly on the spot and with a wave of his hand there was a loud crack, and a small blue imp appeared.

  Mark startled stepped away the imps’ many earrings jingled as its white horns scrapped the wood dock when he bowed.

  “How may I be of assistance?” The imp asked in a surprisingly deep voice.

  “Anturil, I need you to quickly go tell Elthorn Silk that he should meet me at the Nexus core as soon as possible.”

  “Yes sir” Anturil said, and with the same deafening crack that announced his arrival he was gone.

  “Okay Mark we should have about an hour and a half to finish your introduction to the Nexus. First though I should also explain a bit about what is currently happening as it will most definitely impact your new life.” Alexander waved his hand, and two chairs appeared facing the endless sea.

  Taking a seat Mark was full of questions but one question was weighing on him. “Will someone be able to find Silva and bring her back?”

  Alexander shifted in his seat a little and looked out at the sea. “It is possible but difficult, extremely difficult. You first need to understand that the void is a lawless and mostly barren place, cultivators that go into the void will have their myst drained out of them and their cultivation ranks suppressed. While they will be stronger than most of the regular inhabitants of the void, they are still weak enough to be killed by thing that normally would not. The easiest way for her to get back was to use the rebirth token she gave you. The token would have brought her back here safe but at an extremely high cost she would have to start at her cultivation at the very beginning.

  Adventure and discovery are the most exciting and also dangerous part of a cultivators life, so I will only give you the basic info that you would have learned if you had grown up in the nexus. The cultivation ranks are Grades F, E, D, C, B, and A, and each grade has four stages early, middle, peak and true. Your power and understanding will improve with each stage of your rank, and you will receive a title after you have achieved peak E, C, and A. With each title earned you will receive a significant boost to your stats and other benefits depending on your race and path.” Alexander paused for second and then nodded to himself, “Yes I believe that is all you need to know for now, as the other information you will need to discover for yourself. Ah, yes, actually I should add just one more detail however, It would do you well to focus deeply on your core after you achieve peak F at level one hundred. Yes that is very important, focus deeply on your core. Okay,” he nodded to Mark. “Do you have any questions about the grades and stages?”

  “Yeah, before we talked about Silva, I was asking about stats being affected by the core and you just now mentioned focusing on my core when I get to level one hundred in a grade. So I am guessing I was right and also that grades and stats are affected by my core, So how do I go about leveling my core or is it more apt to say cultivate my core.

  You were asking about the stats effected by your core and that you were not aware of the core being broken into three parts.”

  “Yes sir.” Mark was starting to get beyond excited on beginning his adventure, but more importantly he wanted to rescue Silva.

  “Your core does indeed effect your stats, the body portion will affect your strength, endurance, dexterity, and your constitution attributes. The mind portion will affect intelligence, willpower, perception, and constitution attributes. And the spirit portion will affect your aura, and constitution attributes. Depending on how you strengthen your core, it will determine the effectiveness of your attributes as well as how many attribute points you will gain when you level. The Core will also show you what class choices you will have, that is best suited for you.”

  Mark coughed and rubbed and scratched his head “Umm, yeah that is a lot of info to take in.”

  “You will learn as you go and you…” Alexander stopped talking and grinned.

  Mark looked around and after a second a loud defining pop sounded all around even louder than the one Mark heard before. Before the two of them stood a bowed large black imp with large, curved gold horns.

  The large imp stood “Excuse the interruption sir.” Mark was surprised by the soft voice coming from the imp. “Anturil is about to arrive, and he wanted me to tell you that Lord Elthorn must sense Marks presence because his normal hardy laugh stopped very abruptly.”

  Alexander sighed and shook his head, “Elthorn’s senses continue to amaze me. sense we will have company very soon; we will wait until he gets here. He will want to be here while you choose your class, he will be happily surprised by few things today and your class will be one of them.”