Spark Town.
It was a remote town in a declining kingdom west of the Magic Beast Mountain Range, the first mountain range on the Yulan Continent.
The sun had just risen, but Spark Town still held a touch of the morning chill. Yet the Central Plaza was crowded with people going through their morning exercises.
In Spark Town, everyone—from grown men to children of seven or eight—came to the plaza for a brief workout when the sun rose.
The sun's warmth fell upon the trees around the open ground in the Central Plaza, leaving dappled spots of light on the earth.
As time passed, the grown men finished their brief exercises and went off to start the day's work. Only the children remained, around two hundred of them, divided into two groups.
Each group stood in several rows. The children lined up quietly on the open ground, their faces solemn.
The smaller group had only fifty or sixty children, all at least six years old and under ten.
The other group consisted of teenagers aged ten to fifteen or sixteen.
The two groups were clearly separated. Standing before them was a burly, middle-aged man wearing a white sleeveless shirt and coarse cloth trousers.
The man was Kaven, Spark Town's youth instructor and a Level 6 Warrior.
The instructor stood with his hands behind his back, chin raised, his expression stern as he regarded the children with a cold gaze. When he saw them press their lips together and fix their round eyes on him, he nodded in satisfaction and said, "If you want to become great warriors, you must train hard from a young age."
"You're all commoners. You don't have the powerful Battle Qi manuals that the great nobles possess. If you want to rise above others and avoid being looked down on in the future, you must train using the oldest, simplest, and most basic methods. Build up your bodies and strength. Do you understand?"
"Understood!" the children shouted in unison.
"Good."
Most of the children under ten were still too young to understand much. They spent several hours a day training here mainly so their peers wouldn't look down on them. But the teenagers over ten had resolute eyes. They understood the meaning behind those words.
On the Yulan Continent, almost every child trained hard from a young age, regardless of gender. If they didn't train diligently, people would look down on them, and they would have neither status nor strength or wealth.
A man without strength would be looked down on by women, and the same was true of women.
They wanted to make their parents proud, earn glory for themselves in the future, win their peers' approval, and attract the favor of the opposite sex.
To achieve all that, they had to become great warriors.
They were all commoners, without access to precious Battle Qi manuals, and it was extremely difficult for them to learn magic. Their only option was to train their bodies and build their strength from a young age. If they passed the Security Team's assessment, their families would earn the respect of all Spark Town.
That was the idea instilled by the lord, Karl Talos.
Not far from the Central Plaza stood a cluster of stone houses built from bluestone. They were the most important place in all of Spark Town: the Security Team's headquarters.
The Security Team was directly under the command of Lord Karl Talos. Everyone in Spark Town took pride in joining it.
The Taros Family estate stood behind the Security Team's headquarters. It was an old manor, and whenever a member of the patrol passed in front of it, they gazed at it with reverence.
In the manor's hall sat a man in black robes, with a resolute face and a short beard at the corners of his mouth. He quietly sipped floral tea.
It was hard to imagine that although he looked no older than thirty, he was actually over two hundred years old.
As a Level 9 Warrior, Karl Talos could live for five hundred years. By an ordinary person's reckoning, he had lived barely half his life.
At Karl's right sat a middle-aged man who looked to be in his forties. He seemed anxious, but decades of proper upbringing had taught him that it was best not to interrupt his father while he drank his tea.
Karl held his teacup and mechanically sipped the still-warm tea. His gaze rested on the empty space before him, unfocused.
A pale-blue screen that only he could see flickered faintly, with numbers appearing on it from time to time.
This was Karl Talos's Golden Finger.
[Auto-Cultivation System]
Just as its name suggested, it let Karl cultivate automatically while idle. Thanks to the system, over the long years, he had advanced from a Level 6 Warrior, crossed the barriers to becoming a Level 7 and Level 8 Warrior, and finally entered the ranks of Level 9 Warriors.
On the Yulan Continent, everyone took pride in cultivating diligently, because cultivation truly could increase one's strength and bring wealth and status.
But on the Yulan Continent, the talented were always just a tiny handful at the top of the pyramid. Most people had ordinary talent.
No matter how hard these ordinary commoners trained from childhood, their natural talent had set a limit on their potential from the moment they were born.
The divide between Level 6 and Level 7 Warriors was one such barrier.
Those lacking talent could never cross it and become Level 7 Warriors, no matter how hard they trained.
A Level 7 Warrior could easily live for two or three hundred years. With the power of Battle Qi, a single warrior could even wipe out an army a thousand strong. They were the true foundation of a kingdom.
Without reaching Level 7, even a family with a fortune would one day run out of money. The Yulan Continent was far from peaceful; amid all kinds of upheavals, a family could lose its precious Battle Qi manual and its safe home, and its members could fall from the upper ranks of society to become commoners.
Across the kingdoms of the Yulan Continent, one ironclad rule held true:
Without becoming a Level 7 Warrior, one could neither be granted a title nor awarded land.
Karl Talos had been an ordinary commoner with ordinary talent. As a transmigrator, he had once thought himself exceptional. He had trained hard under the town instructor from the age of six and became a Level 1 Warrior at fourteen. By the time he enlisted, he had reached Level 2.
Anyone who had turned sixteen and become a Level 1 Warrior could easily join the army.
But after ten years in the army, he had been lucky to survive until his discharge. Even then, he had only reached Level 4.
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