Chapter 8: The Primordial RecordRowan heard a whisper, and his mind fell into a daze, he felt his heart contract and a Black Book entered his mind, it flipped open, and he saw a picture of his face, but he was grown up. It was a picture of a regal blonde man with green eyes. The image blinked, Rowan paused and stared at the image for a while, looking closely, the image appeared to be breathing, and interestingly enough, it was also staring back at him. Since the pages were red, the face resembled a decapitated head in a pool of blood, reminding Rowan of the circumstances when he awoke in this world. The book began to rapidly flip to the seventh page where words began to form. The words resembled some form of hieroglyphs, slowly they began to take shape in his head, the words shifting and bending until he could understand and read them. PᖇᎥᗰᗝᖇᗪᎥᗩᒪ ᖇᗴᑕᗝᖇᗪ Name: Rowan Kuranes Age: 11/12 Strength: 0.2 Agility: 0.2 Constitution: 3.5 Spirit: 1.5 Class: None Title: Plane walker Skill: (None) Passive: Decipher language (complete), Icy soul (level 2) Records: Scion Of Light - level 0 [0/5] Scion Of Darkness – level 0 [0/5] 𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗢𝗕𝗢𝗥𝗢𝗦 – level 0 [0/1000] 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗟 𝗦𝗘𝗜𝗭𝗘𝗥 – level 0 [0/1000] Soul Point: 0.0000 Remark: Divine Fodder Rowan stood for a while, his heart raced, yet his mind was calm, this state of mind reminded him of when he first had this sensation—the feeling of control when his body panicked, but his mind was still. It was inside that slaughter mansion, where three diabolical men plot devilish machinations in the midst of dancing corpses. This book in his heart should be the most likely cause. When he was going through his diary, he had placed extra emphasis on searching for details on the ritual, yet there was no mention, except for the first cryptic message in the diary, the rest was normal gallivanting of a knowledge-driven scholar, with a fair degree of knowledge on the supernatural. This knowledge included many topics, most especially the fantastical might of Divine Weapons, which were powerful artifacts controlled exclusively by royalty and powerful families, with different organizations owning a few of them. Rowan was fascinated by Divine Weapons, he had researched a lot on the subject, hoping to find a cure for his frailness, but fearing the corruption they brought even more. Rowan eventually purchased a lesser variant, but there was no knowledge of any divine weapon such as this Black Book inside his heart, if this was at all a divine weapon. This Black Book—The Primordial Record, could be his path to power and safety, unlike the previous Rowan, he had no distaste for supernatural power, and he needed to feel in control of his life, for he felt confused and powerless. He steadied himself and slowly looked through the information presented to him. The first thing that came to him was his life span, according to this, he had less than a year to live, even under the influence of the strange mental detachment he still felt a chill that struck him deep inside his soul. Life had a different meaning when you knew the moment you were going to die, every passing moment was felt, and every second counts. This was a sick joke, against all odds, he survived Death itself only to die just a year after he was reborn. "Put away those false dreams. Oh foolish mortal, did you think you could forgo your destiny?" Rowan thought he could hear the voice of Death as it was delivering the perfect checkmate. A bubble of anger began to grow in his soul. He was not particularly scared of dying, but no one loves to be the fool of fate, to be the plaything of the powerful, he died in mysterious circumstances in his previous life as he could not even recollect how he passed away, only to awake in a slaughterhouse, his mind scattered, his body reduced and now his life a fraction of what it should be. He wanted to not believe what he was seeing, having no way to test this hypothesis about his pending death a year from now, but he had an idea of how to test the validity of this Record. Furthermore, he would be a fool to dismiss what was happening to him. Nevertheless, he was still cool-headed, his hands were clenched while his eyes were empty, for the moment, he had no other pressing concerns, time to him was now his most precious asset, and he ought to use it wisely. He rapidly scanned through the information and realized that when he concentrated on each of the words, descriptions of their purpose entered his mind. The normal adult man had an average Stat distribution of 1.0, his was a pathetic number as his Strength and Agility were far below the norm, the misnomer would be his Constitution and Spirit, they were incredibly high, especially his Constitution, he felt the number like that should be ridiculous. The Stats were self-explanatory enough, Constitution should deal with the overall well-being of his body from health to his vitality. He was a bit confused about strength, for he felt with a powerful Constitution his Strength and Agility Stat should also be high, but he may have been wrong in how those were measured. Spirit was a necessary attribute to understand the supernatural and obtain powerful abilities. Without a strong Spirit, the power door was locked away. He was glad to see that it was particularly high, though not as much as his Constitution, that was just ridiculous. He needed to test and see the result of that number, Rowan tried to squeeze the flesh of his hand, it felt soft and smooth, there was no hardness, fishing for a pen knife in his drawer, he slowly pierced the thick flesh of his palm, he kept increasing pressure until his hands shook, but he could not penetrate his flesh. His breath caught in his throat, dropping the knife, he gingerly took off the glass covering the gas lamp, and hovered his hand over the flame, except for a slight warmth, he detected nothing much, he lowered his hand until he touched the flame, and kept it there for fifteen seconds, that was when it was beginning to hurt. The surface of his palm was charred, but to his pleasant surprise, the flesh squirmed, and the dead flaky part fell off, to be replaced by new soft skin. Rowan could not help but grin at his amazing healing capabilities. His laughter was short-lived though, as a prince, he had come across powerful Dominators, and he did not remember any of them having a healing factor like his. He was sure they had a far more powerful Constitution than his own, yet his healing capabilities were off the charts. Well, he still had many descriptions to go through, and if this Primordial Record was as exhaustive as he anticipated, it would inevitably have an answer to his queries. "Ok what's next," he mused, mentally rubbing his palms together, his spirit was impressive, most people's spirit fell at 0.5, and he was triple that amount. The next was Passive skills, Decipher language was self-explanatory, one detail he skipped was that he had been able to read every text he came across, including the weird hieroglyphs used by the Primordial Record, if this skill also affected spoken language, he could see how this could be very useful to him. One should know that there were many races in this world, each with its unique language and cultures, the wealth of knowledge this skill would bring to him would be incalculable. He suspected Icy soul was the strange almost robotic detachment of his will from his body, almost making his body into a puppet, this skill had promise, and he was sure the limit of this skill lay in his imagination. All around these were great Passive skills, but he knew the meat of this Primordial Record should be about the records, hovering over the first, he mentally clicked it and his perception fell into darkness.