The Path to Star-Ring Awakening

Yu Lian hadn't crept up there like a thief. He'd leaped up in plain sight. He was a sensitive who hadn't yet entered the field, and even though he knew how the powerful psychic techniques from his past life worked, he couldn't actually use them. But he did know that if he slammed a psychic shockwave into the ground, he could launch himself into the air.

So, with his battered, feeble body and a bellyful of nanomachines that seemed to be crying out in misery, he leaped onto the gravel dragon's back, raised his warhammer, and brought it down hard on the monster's crown.

The gravel dragon's body began to twitch and tremble uncontrollably once more. Even its wings seemed to shudder, and it could climb no farther. Sergeant Baka, watching from the ground, saw it all clearly. He let out a roar that sounded remarkably beastlike and not much like a person, then charged like a bear on the hunt and grabbed the gravel dragon's trailing tentacle again.

The veins on his forehead bulged. His arms and abdomen tensed until his torso seemed to swell a size, and then he bellowed, "Bian Baka!" To everyone's amazement, he dragged the creature back down to the ground.

...Well, it was a pretty fantastical sight, but you could chalk it up to a Bian bear-man's "innate strength." At least he hadn't smashed the mighty gravel dragon into the ground and swung it around like a sack. Otherwise, Yu Lian would have suspected the guy was a powerful awakened hiding his true strength.

Corporal Youyou charged over with a howl and hammered the gravel dragon in the belly, but failed to penetrate its defenses. Lieutenant Mondsen, on the other hand, had already been set ablaze. Without a word, he propped up his upper body, rallied his remaining strength, and viciously drove his chainsword into the creature's wound, twisting it hard.

The gravel dragon swung its tail, swatting the lieutenant and the big man aside. But it couldn't stop Yu Lian, standing on its head, from smashing his power hammer down on its skull once again.

At last, the enormous dragon's body gave out and collapsed. Yu Lian could no longer keep his balance and slid off its head. He hit the ground with a resounding splat, his whole back taking the impact. For an instant, he felt as though every bone in his body had come apart.

Even so, it still wasn't dead. The gravel dragon braced itself on its forelimbs, their wing membranes in tatters, and lifted its head. It opened its enormous jaws over Yu Lian, who was right beneath its feet, ready to bite him. He had to be grateful that although the creature was called a "dragon," it had no neck. Otherwise, it would have crunched someone into bite-sized pieces already.

It seemed no one could come to Yu Lian's rescue now, except for Miss Ina Hyrica, who had just leaped down from the sentry tower after firing all its ammunition.

Yes, the shells had run out again, and the loader had been blasted against the wall by the gravel dragon's earlier explosive breath. He was now lying there, barely clinging to life.

Even so, the future ace sniper Ina seemed to have been possessed by a soul from the future. She'd somehow managed to use a hand-cranked autocannon to fire with pinpoint accuracy. With the heavy weapons on the wall and the autocannons on the two armored cars by the gate supporting her, they had actually shot down every insect-dragon in the sky. It was a spectacular victory.

Perhaps the "dragon-slaying battle" at the supply station had been so attention-grabbing that no one had noticed the situation outside the city.

Ina was going to reload the gun herself so she could keep providing fire support to the front. The enemies in the sky had been shot down, but the ground battle at the front was nowhere near over.

But just as she jumped down from the tower, she saw Yu Lian sliding off the dragon's head. Without the slightest hesitation, the sergeant major raised the rifle she always carried at her waist and fired a burst.

It had to be admitted: Ina must have maxed out her marksmanship talent before she was even born. She hadn't had time to assume even a basic firing stance, yet instinctively she put nearly every bullet into the gravel dragon's head. One of them even hit it in the eye.

The severely wounded monster could no longer activate its barrier. It had no choice but to let the bullets pierce its eye. Its vision went black, and it could no longer see where its enemy was. Its bite naturally found nothing. Before it could even feel disappointment, another piercing pain tore through its abdomen. Yu Lian had already rolled beneath its raised ribs. He seized the sword hilt embedded in its body, yanked it out, then thrust it back in with all his strength.

The gravel dragon's mouth snapped open, stiff and twisted, as if its nerves had been pinched. It gave a dry cough, but no bloody foam came out. Instead, it released one last energy blast. In the final instant before its life went out, it managed to launch one more attack, spitting an explosive bolt of energy at the heat source on the city wall.

That heat source was the muzzle of the rifle in Ina's hands.

"Boom!" Fire and electric arcs erupted across the steel wall in another shockwave. The metal plating tore open like flimsy plastic, leaving a twisted breach. Ina had already leaped away from the opening, but the shockwave still caught her in the back.

She felt as though she'd been hit head-on by a speeding tank. Her insides seemed to turn upside down. If she hadn't been wearing powered armor, that blow would have killed her.

The sergeant major slammed into the ground in a thoroughly undignified starfish sprawl. Covered in dust, dizzy and disoriented, she needed several seconds to get her breathing back under control. The soldiers around her hurriedly helped her up. To her surprise, she'd been flung outside the wall and landed right by the trench.

Through the flames and smoke beside the city gate, she saw Yu Lian slowly crawl out from beneath the fallen giant's corpse. She had only just breathed a sigh of relief when the soldiers beside her hastily dragged her into the trench.

As soon as she was on her feet in the trench, the sergeant major looked toward the front—and her relief vanished. To her horror, the enemy had already reached this far.

Yes, after all the confusion caused by the gravel dragon's sudden appearance, the monsters attacking overland had finally broken through the wall of fire. Their hideous forms, part insect and part beast, were now in stark view. There seemed to be no wasted part of their shells, muscles, or clawed blades. They existed for nothing but killing, and the sight made one's skin crawl.

Many of the soldiers encountering them for the first time let out panicked screams.

Shooting at monsters and fighting them hand-to-hand were two entirely different things. Most ordinary soldiers couldn't manage the latter.

Ina gritted her teeth and, fighting through the pain, resolved to stand her ground. Naturally, she didn't see Yu Lian crawl out from beneath the giant's belly with a crystal clutched in his hand.

It was the gravel dragon's dragon crystal. As a material form created from a "phantasm"'s gathered energy and embodied spirit, it sounded like it was worth a lot—perfect as a primary ingredient for a potion. He could probably sell it for eight or nine hundred pounds, at least.

As it happened, that was exactly right.

Of course, since the rules of this world were different, advancing in supernatural power didn't rely on taking drugs or putting on an act. It relied on the classic, old-fashioned, and deeply mysterious trio of "understanding," "awakening," and "cultivation."

Yu Lian had already passed the stage of understanding. He could now use basic psychic techniques with ease, leaving only the necessary stage of awakening. Only after completing it could a sensitive open the spiritual universe deep within their soul, known as the "star ring."

Only then could they resonate with the omnipresent yet formless, invisible psychic energy of the universe, bringing the inner and outer "universes" into communion. Only then would they truly step through the gateway to becoming a psychic and set out on the supernatural path of flying through the skies, burrowing through the earth, and roaming the stars.

There were many ways to awaken. Some were beaten half to death but survived, awakening through pain. Some were thrown off a cliff and frightened into it. Some were made to take poison and jolted into awakening. Some arrived at it through overwhelming joy or grief; others through following a secret manual's instructions, step by step. Some had their heads filled with power by a master, while others were electrocuted... In short, if you could imagine it, someone had probably done it.

The intelligent life in the known universe numbered in the trillions. Even if the ratio of "one sensitive for every ten million people" was accurate, that still meant an enormous population. With numbers like that, it was only natural for awakening methods to vary wildly.

The gravel dragon's dragon crystal could serve perfectly well as the main ingredient for "electrocuting" someone into awakening.

More specifically, a sensitive with even a little psychic perception could use their meager abilities to explore the crystal, find a point of resonance between themselves and the source of its inner energy, then draw all that energy into their body.

You would feel your mind swell with an overwhelming sense of fullness, your perception expand and distort, and your soul dissolve as it was remade. You had to hold on—hold on until the clouds parted, the sun appeared, and flowers bloomed beneath a bright moon. When your soul had been torn apart and reassembled by a power greater than your body could bear, you would see the universe and enter a new plane of existence...

Of course, you were more likely to enter another stage of life.

"Awakening through 'electroshock' is a dark path. Good children, don't try it!"

Every remotely respectable psychic order in the universe warned its apprentices this way.

Yu Lian certainly wasn't planning to do that. He wasn't worried he'd be blown apart. He'd seen all kinds of things in his past life. If he couldn't endure this little bit of pain, people in the know would laugh him out of the business.

But there were plenty of safe, steady, and normal ways to awaken. Why put himself through that suffering? He wasn't a masochist.

Besides, the gravel dragon's crystal could be refined into a decent supernatural artifact—or, failing that, sold for money.

More importantly, based on his birthday, today's corresponding origin star was "Eternity" or "Balance." If he held the ritual and succeeded, his star chart would most likely be a pure white nebula, which ordinary people called a "cleric."

This star-ring advancement path had two branches: the "Harmonizer" and the "Infiltrator." The former leaned toward spiritual cultivation, while the latter specialized in working behind the scenes. But in terms of combat, both developed strength, agility, intellect, red, and blue across the board. They were the sort who trained in martial arts, physique, and psychic arts alike, yet didn't really excel at any of them.

Pure white, right? That just meant it was easy to paint over.

Back in his previous life, Yu Lian had never heard of anyone following the "cleric" path becoming a major power. And supposedly, after the seventh ring, the two branches had completely lost their inheritance. No one with a protagonist's halo had ever managed to fill in the gaps, either.

In short, it didn't have much of a future.

In his previous life, Yu Lian had been a "Free Knight," a seventh-ring expert of the "Wanderer" star ring. He'd risen step by step from the "Traveler" path. Even though he'd been forced to become a deluded idealist all over again in this life, now that he'd embarked on this path, how could he not see what lay beyond the eighth ring?

...Of course, according to some rather unsubstantiated occult theories he'd heard in his previous life, the names of the star rings weren't the sort of customary labels most people assumed. They represented deeper, more mystical concepts.

If they were called "Balance" and "Eternity," they sounded pretty grand, at least.

Yu Lian had spoken with plenty of psychic experts in his previous life. Many of them believed that if the paths beyond "Balance" and "Eternity" could be restored, they might represent a balance between science and the occult, between the material world and the Void; or perhaps eternal life between body and soul, the everlasting transmission of truth and natural laws, and so on...

That was exactly the problem. They sounded so grand that they were hard to take seriously!

Yu Lian had been only one step from the peak, so he knew all too well how difficult the next step was. If he hadn't been seeking a way to reach the world beyond the eighth ring, would he have risked his life challenging the secret behind the Star Dragon King?

...Of course, that had nothing to do with being too popular to find any other way in! Honestly!

Even advancement along a complete path was that difficult, let alone an incomplete one.

Don't assume that going through death and being reborn means you're the protagonist. His previous life had taught him a very practical lesson: that halo was mystical. Sometimes you had it, and sometimes you didn't. If there was already a road in front of you, why choose the hellishly difficult one?

Didn't "Asura" sound like a protagonist, too? Wasn't "Dominion" noble and glorious?

So this time, he'd be a "Star-Realm Swordlord," piercing the heavens with a single sword, or a "Firmament Mentor," igniting stars and creating black holes with his bare hands! Conveniently, he already had some clues about how to break through the peak along both of those paths...

All things considered, the dragon crystal could be kept for now and used once his star position shifted.

As Yu Lian thought this over, he crawled out from beneath the gravel dragon's corpse. The first thing he saw was the scene beyond the city gate: the terrorclaws had charged up the slope, their sharp hooks slashing down like blades. The soldiers in the trench were ducking their heads and scattering in panic. The only one who hadn't fled was the sergeant major, standing on the trench's earthen embankment like an unyielding statue. With one hand, she held her rifle and shot a terrorclaw in the head; with the other, she swung her sword to block the giant pincer of another. Blood and sparks sprayed across her dust-streaked face, yet it was as though they'd struck a mountain.

But a hopper had already leaped to Ina's side, its hooked blade aimed at her neck. The sergeant major hadn't noticed it—and even if she had, she wouldn't have had time to do anything.

"To hell with the Spirit of the Universe!" Yu Lian crushed the dragon crystal.