Awakening

Rich woman!

If possible, I hoped I could find a rich woman who would let me live off her!

--45th Epoch, Year 211, October 1.

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Rich woman!!

Yay!!

I was definitely going to find a beautiful rich woman!!!

--45th Epoch, Year 211, October 24.

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Rich woman!!!

Hooray!!!

I felt that I could totally have several very beautiful rich women!!!!

--45th Epoch, Year 211, November 8.

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As expected of me. My resolve is firm, and I'm a man of perseverance.

I was clearly destined for great things!

Time.

10:40 p.m., November 9, Year 211 of the 45th Epoch.

Location.

Eastern Ying Nation—Tokyo City—Arakawa District.

Ever since it had been developed 577 years ago, the overall environment here had remained that of a relatively ordinary civilian district.

Housing prices were relatively ordinary, public safety was relatively ordinary, the economy was relatively ordinary, and even the residents were all quite ordinary. There were very few Innate Aristocrats worth mentioning.

In short.

It could be said to be a place densely populated by ordinary wage earners.

Its greatest advantage was that transportation was fairly convenient.

No matter which prosperous district one went to work in, it was never too far away.

And when returning home late at night, one did not have to worry too much about being knifed and robbed while walking down the street.

At this moment.

Under the moonlight.

Inside a cheap apartment building that looked old just from the outside.

A young-looking boy, apparently sixteen or seventeen years old, was examining his diary.

His clothes were extremely plain.

His black pants were obviously cheap goods.

The yellow shirt on his body had even faded somewhat from washing.

His entire outfit could be summed up in one word: poverty.

Yet none of this affected his appearance score in the slightest. He was extremely handsome, and even though his clothes made it obvious that he was poor, he still had all the makings of a top host.

He gave off the impression that he could start working on Host Street at any time.

At this moment.

After gazing quite contentedly at the diary before him and carefully savoring its utterly sincere contents.

He even loosened his waistband and inspected the DLC information within.

In an instant.

He could not help nodding repeatedly.

"Very good. Very healthy."

"Not only am I ambitious!"

"I'm also hiding an impressive weapon!"

"Damn it, who could possibly stop me??"

"Just thinking about it is getting me a little excited..."

Xi Shenlian.

That was his name in this life.

As a Reincarnator.

One day in his previous life, Xi Shenlian had been walking down the street when he suddenly felt as if the sky were collapsing and the earth were splitting apart around him. Then everything went black.

And then.

By the time he had fully regained consciousness, he had already been living here for more than ten years.

As an orphan who had been abandoned as a child.

And one whose mind was more or less abnormal, the sort who occasionally blurted out nonsensical words that no one else could understand.

In this regard.

The point when he had fully awakened—or, more accurately, awakened his past-life wisdom, understood his former life, and broke through his Perceptual Obstruction—was today.

It was... a very strange feeling.

In the morning.

When he woke up.

He had felt as though he had suddenly understood something.

But he had still been somewhat confused.

He had merely grasped certain profound principles by instinct.

As time passed, and evening arrived.

He had finally understood everything about his past and present lives.

His mind, which had been inexplicably muddled for years, suddenly became clearer than ever before.

At the same time.

He had also clearly sensed that he was different.

A certain trait that had begun slowly emerging in him half a month ago was now surfacing at an astonishing speed.

At a speed far beyond anything before...

It was the trait known in this world as that of an Awakened, a Chosen One, or an Innate Aristocrat...

The trait of a supernatural being.

For Xi Shenlian.

In his previous life, the world he had originally lived in might have possessed some supernatural powers.

But he had never come into contact with them, nor had he heard any definite reports of them.

At most, there had only been some vague rumors.

But in this life.

The existence of supernatural powers was an absolutely clear and certain fact!

There was no doubt about it.

The earliest records of human history had already documented them clearly, venerating them as divine powers that ordinary people could not defy.

Moreover, this power, commonly known in modern times as that of the Awakened, was by no means some hidden secret.

Looking across the entirety of history, it had thoroughly influenced the course of Human civilization.

This included, among other things, leading Human civilization forward and destroying Human civilization.

Take the way this world recorded its history, for example.

The so-called Epoch.

That historical unit ranked above years, months, and days.

Actually referred to the occurrence of some enormous upheaval.

An enormous upheaval capable of affecting all of Human civilization!

Every time such an upheaval passed.

The historical calendar would enter the next Epoch in the following year.

And such enormous upheavals usually referred to one thing.

A man-made disaster sweeping across the entire world, a superwar—the World War.

Therefore.

By the time of the 45th Epoch in which Xi Shenlian currently lived.

The entire world had already experienced at least forty-five rounds of man-made upheavals on the level of a World War.

At least!!

As far as Xi Shenlian knew.

Various historical records had all vaguely mentioned that, in the even more distant past, there had actually been a very long stretch of history. That excessively remote history was known as prehistoric history.

And the dividing line between that obscure prehistoric history and ancient history—the history of the 1st Epoch—was a major event that had nearly caused a break in the historical continuity of Human civilization.

The day Atlantis, the birthplace of Human civilization, sank beneath the sea!

In the various textbooks Xi Shenlian had studied in this life, the myths recorded within them all described Atlantis as the richest and largest landmass on the entire planet, the dazzling jewel among the seven continents of that era.

Its sinking not only destroyed most of Prehistoric Human civilization and caused a tremendous technological regression, with only a small number of lucky survivors escaping to settle on remote continents.

It also brought about global climatic reactions and environmental changes.

For example, rising sea levels and frequent storms caused raging ocean floods to submerge vast stretches of land across the other six continents.

However, even so.

At present, the Earth of this world still had roughly 3.5 billion square kilometers of land on its surface.

It was more than twenty times larger than the Earth of his previous life.

And this land accounted for only seventeen percent of the total surface area of the planet.

Even with more than forty billion Modern Humans living on it, there were still vast undeveloped and unexplored regions, providing more than enough room for even more people.

From this, one could vaguely imagine just how enormous Atlantis had once been as the largest continent on the entire planet!

As for exactly how Atlantis had sunk beneath the sea?

That brought things back to the essence of the matter...

In what way did the Awakened influence the course of Human civilization's history?

It was said that Atlantis had been sunk by a group of Awakened. It was an extremely violent and profoundly negative example among the various ways they exerted influence...

P.S.: In this book, the protagonist's moral standards are probably 666 times higher than those of the protagonist from my previous book, namely Alsaga. Don't ask me what that actually means—I don't know either. Anyway, it's at the level where he can only be placed in the Parallel World's Dongying.