Sovereign of the Karmic System

When Daniel appeared on the other side of the portal, he found himself in an extremely large square, whose edges were hard to see due to its size.

In this square, thousands of small portals were being opened one after the other, and from each of them, one or more individuals casually came out.

The appearance of each of these individuals was human-like, and thanks to his senses, Daniel could tell that these people were way more powerful than he was.

The majority of them, weren’t part of his own humanoid race.

People quickly started to appear all around him, so he had no choice but to move along and leave the square.

He tried to release his power out and jump high in the air, but the moment it came out of his body, an invisible force stopped him from floating off the ground. No matter how much power he put into it, this invisible force was always able to counter it.

Thanks to this invisible force, and the complete lack of people flying in the sky, It didn’t took long for Daniel to come to the realization that flight was forbidden in this city.

That was a common rule even in his world, where using platforms or air currents to fly, was forbidden in most capitals.

After he left the square, Daniel teleported Alesia, Jerigh, Roley, Gai’ha, Lucious, and Edmund out of the pocket dimension. They were waiting for Daniel to allow them out once they arrived back home.

"What place is this? It doesn’t look like our world.." Asked Roley while looking around.

"It isn’t.. The two acolytes that were in charge of teleporting me, were not too accommodating, and refused to get us home. This is a world very close to ours. In order to reach it, we need the permission to travel between worlds, and I’ve been told that I can get it here." Calmly explained Daniel, before explaining to them what planets, solar systems and galaxies were.

It took the lot of them, especially Edmund and Lucious, a long time to get used to the idea of something as immense as a galaxy.. Or a universe in which billions of galaxies floated. The reason for that, was not only their age, but also the fact that one was a scholar which was completely ignorant in the matter, while the other had spent all his life studying space.

"Can’t you open a portal by yourself if you know where our.. Planet.. Is?" Asked Alesia, still slightly confused.

"I know where it is.. But the sheer distance is hundreds of billions of kilometers.." Responded Daniel with a dispirited tone.

Of his group, Daniel and a few others were the only ones that had an actual reason to go back home.

The majority of Daniel’s group members had been rescued from bad conditions, or had voluntarily joined him.. While those who actually had someone left behind, were Daniel, his original group composed by Roley, Imblen, Ligart, Heimart, and Alis, and finally, the few people he had evaded from prison with.

"Okay, so, what do we do?" Asked Alesia.

Daniel turned to look at her and said "You should all go back into the ring.. Use the monster meat to cultivate, and form your immortal essence. I think that that’s the most commonly used type of power in this world.. And spiritual essence, or ki, are not on par with it."

Thanks to the high level resources, and the complete connection to the spiritual plain, Daniel’s entire group had started to move from being a group of spiritual and martial cultivators, into being a group of dual cultivators.

Furthermore, whenever they reached the peak of the major stage of their second path of cultivation, before breaking through to the following level, they were given a second chance to achieve perfection.

Alesia had reached the level of perfection of both the spiritual connection and the body strengthening stages when she had cultivated in her room.

The only reasons why she hadn’t noticed it, was because her body was already too powerful, while the vortex hadn’t appeared, was because the seventh rank beast core contained more than enough power for her to quickly advance to perfection, and then to the fourth rank.

In the past two months, Jerigh, thanks to the impressive speed of cultivation and the powerful monster meat, was able to reach the seventh stage of spiritual cultivation, and the peak of the ninth stage of martial cultivation.

Roley had reached the early ninth rank of spiritual cultivation, and the fifth rank of martial cultivation thanks to his relentless desire of becoming stronger.

Finally, After eight months of uninterrupted cultivation within the pocket dimension, Alesia had reached the sixth rank of spiritual cultivation and the early ninth rank of martial cultivation.

Daniel wanted to allow Gai’ha and Lucious to follow, as after being purified by the corruption, their bodies had become more powerful.

The old man, which was once a mid-chief level warrior, now had the prowess of a late-chief level warrior, while Gai’ha, currently had a battle prowess at the mid-chief level despite being at the early-chief level. Also, their lifespan had increased greatly, but they didn’t know by how much.

Unfortunately, it took just a moment for Daniel to remember that the two of them did not speak the language of their humanoid race, which was the same spoken in his world of origin.

The first thing Daniel wanted to do, was to go to one of the entrances of the city, and hire a guide.

Differently from the young kids which worked as guides in the cities of his world of origin, the guide job was a dignified one here, and many distinct and well educated young men and women did it with pride.

When Daniel approached the gates of the city, he waited for a few minutes, and soon enough, a couple of young men approached him. They were both well dressed, and very talkative.

"Young hero. Need a guide that can show you the marvels of this city?" Asked one of the two.

The second one approached as well, and said "A beautiful sword, have you come here to participate in the selection for the Sect of the Instantaneous Sword? I can guide you!"

"Actually, I am new to this world.. I would like to have more general knowledge of this planet." Responded Daniel with a hint of embarrassment.

The moment Daniel said the words ’new to this world’, the two guides lost interest in him, and left him alone.

Noticing their behaviour, Daniel thought that he had said something wrong, so, he decided to try another gate. But as he was about to leave, he heard a voice coming from behind him.

It said "I can give you informations." This voice belonged to a young man in his mid teens. He appeared to be the worst dressed amongst the guides, but had an amiable smile on his face. He had no power in him, and walked with the help of two crutches.

"Very well." Responded Daniel, before approaching the young man, and continuing by saying "I guess my first question should be.. What’s the currency in this planet?"

"Various things.. Gold, cultivating resources, materials.. The two most used are gold for small purchases, and crystals.."

After an hour of conversation, Daniel received an impressive amount of informations. He had learned that gold had a much smaller value in this planet than in his world of origin. The difference was of about ten thousand to one.

What was used instead of gold, were crystals. These crystals were made out of mana which had reached a level of purity high enough to crystallize.

Depending on the shape or size, these crystals would be divided into various levels. Low-quality crystals were the cheapest, and their value was of a million gold coins. After the low-quality crystals, were the mid-quality, or simply mid crystals, and high-quality crystals.

Each of these two types of crystals were worth a hundred of the previous kind.

The last type of crystals were the perfect crystals whose price reached the thousand high-quality crystals.

The high value of these crystals was given by the fact that they were extremely useful to cultivate.

Daniel asked to see an example of low-level crystal, but the young man embarrassedly said he didn’t own one.

Thankfully, Daniel still had beast cores with him.

After seeing an eighth rank beast core, the young man told him that the power contained in it was significantly weaker than a low crystal, and confirmed that it was quite similar to a ninth rank beast core only after Daniel showed one to him.

Thanks to this conversation about prices and value, Daniel had understood that his wealth in gold coins was worth very little here. His true wealth, lied in cultivation resources.

He possessed hundreds of rings filled with monster meat, and a large part of it belonged to leader-level monsters, which could be compared to beast cores between the sixth to the ninth rank.

Something else he had learned about this planet, other than its name being Chuatania, was that there weren’t any nations, kingdoms, or empires here. Instead, it was entirely ruled a single government, which did not have a ruler at its head.

This was the type of planets one would end up finding in Iewah’s territory. He wasn’t oppressive like the other factions were. He would simply let the population of each planet take care of themselves.

In Chuatania’s case, a group of powerful group of cultivators worked as a senate, and voted for the major decisions. Each of the senate members were leaders or representatives of powerful groups.

The last thing Daniel had learned about this planet, was how to obtain a permit to travel between worlds.

After that part of their discussion, Daniel had learned something more not about the planet, but about the universal government. Group to which the Judges belonged, and to which the faction leaders like Iewah, the Sovereign of Corruption, and the Spiritual Emperor were registered.

This universal government would grant the permission to the groups to select a few worlds in which it would be possible to make a request for that kind of permission.

One of the planets picked by Iewah for this, was Chuatania.

The only thing that Daniel needed to do, was to reach the city in which the testing office was, pay the fee, test for his power, and then wait for the bureaucratic procedure to take place.

The easiest way to reach the capital, was to use one of the long range teleportation within this city.

After their conversation was over, Daniel asked the young man to guide him to the place where the long range teleportations took place.

The young man refused at first, but after noticing Daniel serious face, he accepted.

On their way there, Daniel asked "Why are your legs in that state.. This planet doesn’t have the level of knowledge necessary to heal two shattered knees? You’ll become limp for the rest of your life if you don’t get them fixed soon."

"It’s just an accident, don’t worry about it. I’ll fix them soon.." Said the young man while forcing a smile on his face. Unfortunately for him, his eyes betrayed his real thoughts.

He and the young man, whose name Daniel learned to be Zack, were quietly and slowly strolling through the lively streets of the city.

Daniel could see that Zack was careful not to end up in anybody’s way, and also looked around the corners before coming out of them.

It almost seemed that he was trying to avoid some people in particular.

In a couple of hours, they had arrived at the entrance of this extremely large building.

The exteriors of this building was very peculiar, and at its entrance, were two muscular-looking men keeping guard.

As a payment for Zack’s services, Daniel gave him the majority of the gold coins he owned. As many of the single monsters corpses he possessed were already more valuable than all the gold he had.

Zack thanked him with enthusiasm, and then, the two split up.

After Daniel went into the building, Zack quickly hid the small ring which contained the gold into his pocket, and after looking around, he tried to go back to the way he and Daniel had arrived.

But before he could go far, a voice that forced a shiver down his spine reached his ears. "HEY, ZACK!.."