"HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA! coughcoughcough, okay, maybe that's enough laughing."
The truth was that Kali had already awakened a day prior to the Ceremony. Yes, he was that one-in-a-million genius who managed to awaken on his own, and in Encantadia, only self-awakened people have an Epic or higher talent.
[Talent grades are as follows: Trash, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic I-III, Legend I-V, Mythical]
Everyone can upgrade their talent up to three times, meaning even a Trash tier talent can eventually upgrade into a Rare one. Mythical talents, however, can only be obtained through awakening, and that was exactly the kind of talent Kali got.
[Talent: God's Playground
Tier: Mythical
Description: You are the God of your own planet. You can do whatever you want on your own land. Its trajectory, development, or even destruction will be wholly based on your decisions.
Level-up requirement: The Spiritual Energy level on the whole Planet is the user's level.
World Size: 100 km in diameter. The world grows, doubling in size every 10 user levels.
Rewards:
• Every level up, the user can introduce 1 item to the world. Items introduced will grow alongside the world, each according to its own potential.
• Every 5 levels, the user will be given 3 choices of upgrades to add to the world. All upgrades gained this way grow stronger with the user's level, and their strength doubles every 10 levels (e.g., Time Acceleration: (World Level)x1, becoming (World Level)x2 at user level 10, x4 at level 20, and so on).
• Every 10 levels, the user may add a unique rule/law to the planet that will shape its development.]
This is the reason why Kali is a God! He already has his own planet, and he is basically the God of Creation to all of its would-be inhabitants. The only thing Kali doesn't like is that the planet is empty! It's just a round piece of land at the moment. How could he act like a benevolent, all-knowing God without any subjects? Alas, if there are no subjects, then he would make them!
That is also the reason why he attended the Awakening Ceremony, even though he didn't have to. When he awakened, the planet didn't have any energy. Through testing, he found out that the Spiritual Energy he passively absorbed went straight to the planet instead of his body.
The absorbed energy, however, was too little to matter given how large the planet is. So he decided to take advantage of the only time the government is obligated to give slum kids like him Spiritual Energy: the Awakening Ceremony.
The contraption in the middle of the venue had been filled with Spiritual Energy donated by high level Awakeners, and it wasn't supposed to come anywhere close to being exhausted by the end of the Ceremony. Kali sucked about 70% of the energy released by the contraption, and he was lucky that the government doesn't monitor anything that happens inside the barrier, or he would have been caught due to his suspicious movements. The reason nobody inside is watched? Well, Kali doesn't really know, but he attributes it to the power of the families of the children positioned closer to the Spiritual Energy Emitter. That's why he positioned himself nearest to the exit of the barrier, so he could leave the venue immediately and not be there when they found out how much of the Spiritual Energy had been consumed. Acting sad, really, was just him wanting to experience being the protagonist who pretends to be powerless.
In fact, from living on the darker side of the world and being as observant as he was, he knew exactly how powerless the government was against the powerful families in their city. What happened at the Awakening Ceremony would be swept under the rug and attributed to some kid from an affluent background awakening a strong talent. For the government to even inquire about it would be overstepping the privacy of the powerful families.
Everything really worked out for Kali, except for the tracker tattoo. It was the only thing stopping him from acting too suspiciously.
What Kali didn't know was that, yes, his predictions were right and the government couldn't do anything about it. The tensions between the big families in the city, however, intensified even more, all of them wondering which family the kid who absorbed almost all the Spiritual Energy came from.
"HAHAHAHA, government who? This god deceived them all! Okay, maybe I need to stop acting now, I'm cringing so much."
Kali, used to being alone, had developed quite a weird hobby: role-playing. He loved acting high and mighty or arrogant inside his own delusions, and sometimes, under the right circumstances, he could get too deep into the act, mastering what actors would call method acting.
"Time to check what all the Spiritual Energy I absorbed did to my Planet!"
Through experimenting with absorbed SE (abbr. for Spiritual Energy), he found out that 1 unit of outside SE is equal to 10 units of SE on his own planet.
Kali looked inward into his Spiritual Space and saw a wholly brown planet almost bursting from the sheer amount of SE circulating around it.
"Shit!"
He panicked, then looked at his Status (every awakened person has one).
[Name: Kali
Age: 18
Talent: God's Playground (Mythical)
Level: 0
SE: 1,000,010
Techniques:
Blood Vein Circulation Technique (Uncommon) Level: 3]
"1,000,010?! That's so much!" He rejoiced. His overnight meditation the night before had only netted him 10 SE; now he had 1,000,010.
Kali didn't linger on the celebration and got to work instead. The meditation technique he practiced, also the most common one in Encantadia because it's free, was the Blood Vein Circulation Technique. It infuses the blood with SE so it carries the energy through all of the veins inside the body, then strengthens the body more and more based on the number of circulations the user has done.
This was a very good technique in that it has no limits: you can strengthen your whole body, upgrade your thinking capacity, become more immune to diseases and even toxins, and the most sought-after effect of all is that every level in the technique increases the user's lifespan by 1 year. The only downside is the sheer amount of SE it demands from the user to level up: level 0 to level 1 = 100 SE, then level 2 jumps up to 1,000, for level 3 (Kali's current level) he had to accumulate 10,000 SE, and level 4 is still a long way off; his current progress is 45,000/100,000 SE. He has been using the technique for almost 8 years now, and his level is already far ahead of other kids using the same technique.
The technique is very comprehensive and is a very good foundation builder for anyone wanting to get strong. That's why Kali decided to use the same concept to create a proper circulation of SE on his planet.
So that's what he did. Using the abundant SE in the atmosphere of the planet, he dug 2 large holes at the north and south poles, down until he reached the bright red core. He then guided all of the SE toward the core, and sealed up the very large hole he had just dug. Then, imitating his Blood Heart, which is where he stores his SE and transports it throughout his body, he modified the Planet Core to mimic the function of his Blood Heart. The once stationary core now beat like a pumping heart.
The stored energy, however, was now stuck within the empty space surrounding the core. For the Blood Veins, Kali imitated how tree roots grow and used that analogy to build micro passageways all around the planet, stemming from the Planet Core up to the surface, making sure the distribution of energy throughout the whole planet is uniform. The excess energy would join the winds of the planet, gradually strengthening its atmosphere.
After all the modifications, Kali looked at his remaining 500,000 SE and felt a pang of pain in his heart. 'That's too much expenditure.' And that was all he had left to level up himself.
According to the information he had come across, the most common method among talents for leveling up is to accumulate and condense the SE in your body into a denser, much stronger energy. It is usually a ratio of 2:1, and once the user reaches 100 SE of a level, they can level up. Circulation techniques like the Blood Vein Technique are important for building a corresponding vessel strong enough to contain the leveled-up energies.
Ordinary people cannot upgrade SE. Kali had experimented with it many times before but never succeeded; however, the moment he awakened, he felt that he could finally condense his SE and upgrade it using his Blood Heart. Doing that carried a lot of risks; a human's heart is fragile, and he had even heard news of some unlucky people damaging their Blood Hearts or even dying from hastily condensing SE in their hearts.
Kali, on the other hand, found out that he didn't have to face this risk, because he could use his Planet Core in place of his heart to condense SE. Even though that also carried a risk of destroying his planet, it was nowhere near as large as the risk of injuring his own heart.
So that's what he did: he condensed all 500,000 of his remaining energy into level 2 SE. This took him a whole day, and Kali could feel the toll of it on his... butt. It had reddened so much from the countless hours of sitting.
There was one detail about the whole process that Kali only properly understood after it was done. Condensing his SE had made his energy denser, stronger, worth ten times more per drop. But his Level hadn't moved by a single digit. God's Playground counted the SE level on the whole Planet as the user's level, and the planet's level was not the grade of energy sitting in his heart. It was the World Level: how far the world itself had been developed. And right now, his world was a level 0 ball of dirt. Which made Kali, technically, a level 0 God. He owned a rock. To level up, he wouldn't be condensing. He would be building. And building, by his rough math, cost ten times what his body's technique demanded. Preferably funded by someone else's SE.