Chapter 1219 – Gate

Jake looked at the First Sage for several moments, wondering if he was even seeing right. His still-muddled mind told him that this was indeed the visage of the First Sage, yet it also felt slightly off.

The old man didn’t have any aura but seemed to be nothing more than a loose collection of energy and Records. This wasn’t like the vision he’d seen through Path of the Heretic-Chosen but something entirely different.

As Jake was thinking, he suddenly felt another rush of exhaustion, making him nearly fall forward. He had to brace himself on the side of the bench, making the First Sage shake his head.

“I would really recommend sitting.”

Jake didn’t argue but did as the teacher of the Malefic Viper said. With a struggle, he forced himself around the handrest of the bench and took a seat. He leaned on the backrest and let out a loud sigh of pure exhaustion as he finally felt a moment of relaxation.

Sitting there, he no longer felt any of the pressure from this weird world, and he even felt the damage to his soul pause, with some minor aspects even beginning to slowly mend.

After sitting for a good dozen seconds, Jake finally looked at the old man again, who patiently waited for Jake to get his bearings.

“How are you here?” Jake asked, confused.

“That’s an interesting question, now isn’t it?” the First Sage responded. “Tell me, Jake, why do you think I’m here?”

“I don’t know, which is why I’m asking,” Jake muttered. “But if I had to guess… the Records from the tome you gave me summoned you here. That, or you’re an image born from those Records. In either case, you’re really doing a bad job convincing me you’re not some aspect of the system, seeing where we are.”

The First Sage chuckled at Jake’s words. “You forgot another option. That I’m not actually here. That no one else besides you is here.”

Jake stared confused, clearly seeing the old man. “I’m pretty sure you… okay, this is weird.”

As Jake studied the old man more closely, he realized that not only did he lack any kind of physicality, but he also didn’t seem to actually be sitting on the bench at all. He was like a ghost that could be seen and heard, but didn’t actually exist.

“Seems like you’ve realized by now,” the First Sage smiled. “Though you weren’t entirely wrong. I’m born of your own mind and the Records of the First Sage. An embodiment of the knowledge you gleaned from my tome. I’m just a little more aware of what I am than usual specters of Records tend to be.”

Jake slowly nodded along as he looked toward the massive gate blocking off the rest of this odd realm that seemed to exist within his Truesoul. “I guess you’re here because of that.”

“Indeed,” the old man nodded. “You know what it is, right? Or perhaps more accurately, what it isn’t?”

“It’s not actually here… but a mental block of some kind created to protect myself,” Jake answered. “Because if I truly saw what was behind that gate…”

“You would die in an instant, your soul crumbled into nothingness, and your existence erased,” the First Sage finished Jake’s sentence. “But that still leaves the question… what lies beyond to cause something like that? And if what lies beyond is what you’ve come here in pursuit of, was your journey for naught?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” Jake sighed as he leaned forward, cupping his hands. “Though I do believe I have an answer.”

“Pray tell,” the First Sage motioned for Jake to speak.

“You know… for the longest time studying your tome, I wondered what kind of direction Meditate could even be taken in. I knew the skill had something to do with deepening one’s connection to the system, but I still wasn’t entirely sure what exactly that meant,” Jake began as he answered the First Sage’s question while also fully putting his own thoughts into words.

“Improving regeneration was the baseline. A natural upgrade to that was helping speed up other kinds of healing, such as a way to heal the soul faster. Meditate doesn’t necessarily provide anything new; it just amplifies and speeds up certain parts of what the system is already doing. At first, I considered another natural extension of this to be the ability to gain experience and even Records from the mere act of meditating, and as technically one earns experience and Records at all times, one should be able to speed that up for the effect to become noticeable and recognized.”

“Yet that isn’t what you believe lies beyond the gate,” the First Sage chimed in.

“No, because the ability to gain experience from meditating is too… basic. The Dao Sect already does this as part of their base Path. I know the Sword Saint’s Meditate skill also allows him to gain experience while using it. I guess technically mine already does too; the effect is just too insignificant to the level where the system doesn’t even mention it as a feature,” Jake answered calmly.

“Which means something far more significant has to lie beyond. Something so profound and difficult to comprehend that it required direct guidance from you.”

“Does it, though?” the old man asked, raising an eyebrow.

“For a C-grade… likely. But beyond that? For those at higher grades possessing powers and capabilities I’m not able to fully comprehend yet? I’m not so sure,” Jake shook his head. “Especially not when it comes to gods. When I had this realization, a new question was born, one I should perhaps have asked far earlier… why do gods meditate? Perhaps a better question is, why do all the gods I’ve ever heard of meditate?”

The First Sage was silent as Jake kept speaking.

Before Jake started doing his research, he hadn’t been entirely sure that the act of meditation was such a shared pastime among all the gods, and he even guessed some gods, like Valdemar, weren’t really into it. Jake just had a hard time seeing that man spend long times in deep meditation, but to his surprise, the man did.

Sure, his form of meditation didn’t necessarily require him to sit down in a lotus position, but he still did it. Jake had asked Artemis a long time ago, and she had mentioned that she was sure she didn’t know of any gods who never meditated. Yet, for some reason, she never mentioned the reason they all meditated. Perhaps she couldn’t, or perhaps she believed it was best for Jake to find out for himself, but that theory was kind of shut down as Jake realized something else.

For some reason, it was never talked about anywhere. It wasn’t mentioned in any books, and even when Jake decided to just ask the snake god directly, he just got the answer that the act of meditation was important for the gods. The same half-baked answer Artemis gave him, which made Jake conclude that the reason no one talked about it was because they couldn’t.

That’s right… Whatever the explanation, it was considered Forbidden Knowledge. This meant that the only way for Jake to learn it was to discover it himself, and Jake had many theories.

“Now, I did think it was perhaps just to pass the time, as sometimes one wants to fast-travel through eternity a little, but that felt wrong. It’s probably a factor, but not the main reason. No, Meditate has to serve some other kind of function that’s shared by the gods. A crucial one that the system wants to keep hidden.”

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“Seeking Forbidden Knowledge is a risky endeavor,” the First Sage said. “While the curiosity is natural, the system does not classify something as Forbidden Knowledge for no reason. More often than not, it’s protecting someone from learning something that will have a very detrimental effect on them. To restrict one from knowledge one isn’t ready for yet.”

“I know, and yet you helped lead me down this path of discovery,” Jake chuckled, shaking his head. “But back to what I believe lies beyond that gate. As I said, it must be something even gods value to such a degree that it’s mandatory for them to progress. However, if it’s mandatory, it makes me question… how can Meditate be a Legacy skill of yours in the first place?”

Once more, the First Sage didn’t offer any words but just allowed Jake to continue to speak his thoughts.

“And I concluded that in some ways, it isn’t. Sure, the Meditate skill I and every other mortal have is a Legacy skill of yours, but the Meditate skill possessed by gods isn’t the same thing at all. What really hammered home this theory was something I didn’t even think about when I first saw it, but made sense later… Minaga meditates. As a Unique Lifeform who is so restricted from other skills, why does he seemingly possess the Meditate skill?”

“He may not have it,” the First Sage proposed an alternative. “Isn’t it possible he is not using a skill but is doing something self-taught?”