Chapter 1: New Life, New Beginning, New Me

(It worked, I'm right where I wanted… Well, I didn't expect to be here before I came to be, but this is a great place to start training for magic. After all, I choose to start in a magic world.

(It also seems my memories merged with that of the character Alaric… it's weird... But I am still me… Oh well, I'm sure it will be fine, after all, I met around 5 Gods, and that Lady who claimed to be the Supreme Goddess. I'm bound to reach great heights!) Alaric enjoyed the situation, as it had all gone according to plan.

Once he gained access to the choice to rewrite the game's background and his own background into overwriting reality, he felt like this opportunity was way too good to be true, but it was.

Even though there were still limitations to what he could do, he managed to set up his background so he would come from a great family, and be an Otherwolder as they got extra bonuses.

After that, he made sure to meet as many Gods as possible for connections, and again, bonuses, though meeting with the so-called Supreme Goddess was outside his plans, it was still a plus. Aside from that, he set up a cosmic event to take place in the near future for even more power.

However, he didn't account for how the things he wanted would be granted, and it was not what he expected though he got what he wanted.

(I should have been more specific, a lot of details I didn't plan for, got added to my background and the character made a bunch of deals I didn't really want, but then again, they will make the Gods like me more and that's beneficial.) He was a bit surprised thinking back on his new memories from the merger with his character.

This situation was bound to get a bit complicated, but it was not something he was afraid of as someone who understood Absolute Fantasy: Endless Possibilities deeply, he was sure of himself and his success.

(All in all, it's still fine as I decided not to alter the world background from the one in the game, aside from a cosmic event since it's easier that way when I have an idea of what's out there or coming.

(Characters and major events should still happen within the scope of my understanding even if they change, and most importantly, I already understand the supernatural elements at play, this way.

(I'll be unstoppable by the time I'm an adult in this world, which should be around 14 years old… maybe 18 if I don't have much talent, but I'll get there either way! Time to start!) Alaric celebrated being able to make the most of his own setup for victory, there was no stopping him.

It was time for Aralic to start making his mana link. In the Absolute Fantasy: Endless Possibilities world, to be able to use magic on the most basic of levels, one must first create a mana link.

A connection between themselves and the magical energy known as mana, allows them to communicate their intentions and commands into it. Kind of like how certain programs work with some coding languages, one needs a mana link to work with mana.

Magic is basically a programming language, but one that has too many variants, and way too much flexibility for it to be easily understood by beginners since it's very easy to get lost or misunderstand some of its rules.

For example, there are 3 main ways to cast a spell, those being magicraft, which is the idea of using magic circles to cast magic spells.

Chanting, which is the most common, as the method of using words to help one focus on the proper visualization of the spell.

There are two categories of chants, complete or full chants and shortened or simplified chants, their names being quite self-explanatory.

Last, there is silent casting, mute casting, or chantless, the advanced casting technique of simply using one's mind as the vessel for the whole process of the spell, not only is it the fastest casting method it is also the hardest to master, as most avoid using this method unless they are facing equally dangerous opponents since more often than not spells come out weaker than using the other methods.

The spells only become weaker because of the lack of understanding the caster might actually have of them.

When it comes to the other two methods, magicraft was literally writing the formula of the spell so it gets cast, making it impossible to fail unless it gets interrupted or the formula is written out wrong... Well, it could still be canceled but that's beyond the point. While chanting is basically subliminal messaging oneself into visualizing what one has to do in order to make the spell work.

There are also more minor methods like rune casting and prayer casting, each being a subcategory.

Rune casting is a subcategory of magicraft while prayer casting is a subcategory of chanting. What makes them different? You might ask, it's that Rune casting is very fast, but also way weaker than the three main methods.

It just consists of instead of writing out a whole formula, the person will just use primal magic symbols of the elements to get a different reaction depending on the command given and or do the same but keep the spell stored in an object or rune.

For example, you cast the water rune and give it the command to boil and you get hot water. Though you would still have to learn and memorize the runes to do so.

As for prayer casting, it's a bit different in the sense that instead of trying to convince oneself of something, the person is literally appealing to the celestials of whatever planet they live in, so the power and all the other information about the spell is decided by them, depending on how well they bootlick. Only people affiliated with a church or proven Devotees can use them anyway.

Very similar to prayer casting, there's spirit casting, which is the same just instead of bootlicking Celestials, they bootlicking spirits. Though it is still a form of prayer casting it has a different name due to its origin.

Finally, when it comes to speed, chantless is the fastest as said before, but when it comes to chanting and magicraft it depends.

Individual full chants can go up to 30 seconds for normal spells, while magicraft can go up to 60 seconds for the same normal spells, but if an individual is proficient in magicraft, they can cast even the more complicated normal spells in 2 to 5 seconds while none of the shortest chants goes below 5 seconds.

Unfortunately, one has to learn each magicraft formula individually and hone their magic circle construction with them as well as memorize said formulas.

Now back to creating one's mana link, they'll have to first go through the most basic part of the whole process, train their ability to sense mana at least to the bare minimum.

When it comes to the Omniverse energies, they exist everywhere, they are simply more active in some places than others. As such, every sentient being should be able to sense mana if they train themselves to do so.

The first step would always be prevalent aside from being the foundation of it all, meditation.

One must start by being able to concentrate and expand their senses to the world around them before they can sense a single streak of mana. And that was exactly what Alaric did.

Unfortunately, this was also the most uncertain method to create your mana link, since each individual would evolve at different rates and have different ways to meditate, which would often lead to apprentices spending most of their beginning stage trying to figure out how to properly meditate rather than actually trying to form their mana link.

On the other hand, there is a faster method, but it requires an experienced magic user to pull off. That being the use of one's own mana to help awaken another's connection to theirs. It is known as mana guidance, and it's not something he could employ in his current position.

Focusing on mediating and expanding his mind to the world around him, Alaric found no results even after trying for hours.

This was not unexpected, as even in Absolute Fantasy, it would take apprentices anywhere between a week and 3 months to create their mana link, only prodigies being the exception and being able to do it in 2 to 3 days.

Eventually, he was mentally tired of the effort and decided to take a break, he was in no hurry, after all.

From then, his days moved on and he kept practicing meditation... And noticed that he sucks at it. Unfortunate, however, it didn't stop him from continuing to work every single day for long hours.

Time passed and it was almost a month since he first started practicing meditation, and he started feeling like he was finally making significant progress as his focus had improved a lot, and he could now feel a tingling sensation whenever he meditated until living proof of it appeared before him almost like a reward for completing a quest.

[Master! I'm happy to inform you that you acquired the meditation skill! One step closer to the goal!]

Though it wasn't much it gave him some motivation while validating his efforts.

As he continued to do so, something weird and unexpected happened.

[As the conflict of those who stand above has elevated, the 28 planes below were elevated. Your mind can make this decision so answer this question.

Lesser being of this plane, do you wish to gain the power to stay on top of those who stand with you and stop them from rising as a hoarder or the potential to rise so high nobody could even catch you as a pursuer?]

[[Hoarder] Or [Pursuer]]

(Finally the last part of my character backstory is here. Origo and Fin were some of the most mysterious and powerful characters in the enterity of the game, and were teased to finally be revealed in the next game.

(However, one thing that was known for sure is that they caused a massive cosmic event known as the Ascension Wars to start, and I made this event happen earlier.) Alaric found himself smiling as he saw a floating screen different from his system appear before him.

In the original Absolute Fantasy: Endless Possibilities, all beings with sufficient cognitive abilities were given the option to either become a Hoarder or a Pursuer some that originally happened in the later stages of the game and completely changed everything, as choosing one or the other grants a person powerful abilities.

The difference being that those who became hoarders would gain immediate power with overpowered superpowers, while those who chose to become pursuers would gain superpowers with infinite growth but would start at the weakest rank.

However, the biggest downside to becoming a hoarder was that it automatically gave the individual a level cap that they could not break, meaning that they would only be able to get to a certain level of power ever. This is because the goal of hoarders was to stop everyone else from rising beyond the cap that was now imposed on them.

Alaric chose to be a pursuer without much of a thought, after all, he had been a hoarder last time due to how much immediate power he gained before he found out about the drawbacks, this time he would be on top of it and rise above.

[Your should has been registered, so now please answer, what is your favorite thing?]

(Video games.) He replied easily.

[Which part of video games is your favorite?]

(The possibility to go new game plus, even after you messed up everything.)

[Registered. As a Pursuer you have received the superpower Checkpoint.Lv-1 rank I. Potential: New Game+++ and beyond.]

[Checkpoint: This superpower allows the user to return to a checkpoint, 1 minute before the user's death.]

(As expected, they gave me a weaker version of what I asked for, but this is already an amazing cheat anyway.) He smiled as he looked at his newly awarded superpower.

This event, however, didn't simply affect him, as all beings with sufficient intelligence were given the choice, and they did.

After that, his training continued for a few more days until the fated moment finally came.

____________________________________________

"Congratulations miss Lofn, it's a healthy boy.", the woman said to miss Lofn who was resting with heavy breathing. It wasn't long before she handed the baby to miss Lofn.

That was followed by all the medical staff leaving the room once everything was properly set up for miss Lofn to have her time with her child.

"Hi, my little Alaric, welcome to this world. Mom is extremely happy to have you." Miss Lofn said to her child, Alaric, who could help but look at her.

She had long curly turquoise hair with ruby red eyes under her similarly turquoise eyebrows accompanied by her smooth and sharp ever so small facial features that gave her a fresh look, that made one wonder about her age, but that was quickly offset by her ample chest that carried some heavy hitters that would stun-lock most into being mystified by their visage.

"Now you just have to wait a bit and your... Father? I guess, is going to be here... Eventually...", miss Lofn announced almost confused in her own statement.

(Just what does she mean by that? Does she not know who my father is? Or is there something else going on here?), Alaric couldn't help but question, as he looked at his mother with the closest thing to narrowed eyes he could muster right now.

"Awww, you're tired. Just sleep, I'll wake you up later to meet your father. Then again, should I feed him before he sleeps?", miss Lofn was infatuated with her child who she believes to be the cutest baby ever.

"And I can't even ask the doctors... Your father might know though.", she said to herself as she looked at her child.

Her baby was a dark-skinned chubby little one with black hair and one of his eyes blue.

(My life will be something if this woman will be the one taking care of me.), Alaric had a decent first impression of the woman he would call his mother, but he understood that it was too early to form any opinions.

Their small little interaction continued as she puffed her cheeks followed by her lightly hitting them to instead have her tongue out while sucking her cheeks in and making her own eyes go completely white, just before she made exaggerated duck lips while covering her eyes with her index and thumb fingers making a circle around them.

She then stopped only to find her son not amused by any of her attempts and more so almost stoic about it, or at least that's what it seemed to her while in reality, Alaric was actually semi-disappointed he had to witness that display of self-deprecation to try to entertain him, and just when he thought it had ended things proceeded to continue.

"Why ish mawh bewby sho angly? Awe you humgwy?(Why is my baby so angry? Are you hungry?)", miss Lofn enunciated.

(Will she stop if I laugh? Cause, I don't think I can emotionally survive her antics.), Alaric was slowly internally dying as he experienced the first glimpses into his life as a baby.

Just as Alaric lost hope in being able to keep any semblance of his sanity living like this, things spiraled even further towards it, as his mother pulled down her blouse and moved it towards his mouth. An advance that was rejected by Alaric due to how awkward it was for him.

"Sweetie, you have to drink, it's good for you... Plus, What kind of mother would I be if my child won't drink my breast milk? It can't be that he hates me, right? No, there's no way... He was literally just born from me, how could he hate me?!", these thoughts only got worse as she began to question herself.

"ALARIC NYX LOFN! You're going to drink my milk, even if it's the last thing I do!", facing rejection awake something in Miss Lofn and her eyes flared with burning passion, and she insisted incessantly to the point where Alaric had no choice, but to accept his destiny as a baby and drink her breast milk.

(This woman is too intense, I won't survive this household...), a defeated Alaric could only obediently drink the milk as he contemplated the possibility of his future demise.

Once she was done feeding Alaric, miss Lofn began lulling him to sleep with a song in her melodic voice that soon made him comfortable as he slowly began to fall asleep.

"I'M HERE!" As the door to the room opened abruptly a voice resounded and woke Alaric up from his slumber.

"SHUT UP! You dumbass! Look at what you did?! Now, little Alaric got his sleep interrupted... You're lucky he's a calm baby, because I would end you right now if he was crying.", miss Lofn was furious and even yelled herself, somewhat contributing to the problem.

(The f*ck?!), Alaric, the calm baby, thought to himself as this commotion pulled him out of his lulled state.

The individual on the door contrary to Alaric' expectations was a woman, one with long purple hair, a purple eye, and a pink one. Her facial features were sharp and smooth with a voluptuous body to complement them.

(Who is this woman? Is she a sister or something?), Alaric questioned looking at the approaching woman.

"I would nag you about how you're late, but now's not the time for that. I have to introduce you to someone.", miss Lofn said to the woman as she got closer.

"Little Alaric, I'm sorry to wake up like this, but there's someone who really wants to meet you... And though they are late and will certainly be punished for this later. Right now, I want to see your best smile, 'cause here is Loralaine Lofn, your father!", miss Lofn very enthusiastically introduced the newcomer.

(What?!) Alaric was surprised by the reveal as he didn't decide everything.

Chapter end