Mason couldn't sleep. Three things were on his mind.
First, the dream. Mason had come to learn a lot of things in the dream and classified it as a map to clear the tutorial.
'I guess that's why it's called a tutorial in the first place.'
He had learned partially how to find the Iron Lotus Pagoda. In fact, one couldn't call it learning, but just more confusion.
The dream told him the Pagoda was at the "center of one's martial realization." It told him he had to "bleed the world into his soul." To a warrior like Jumong, that probably sounded poetic and profound. To a kid who grew up in a concrete coffin like the Stone Slums, it sounded like a bunch of high-end garbage.
'If "experiencing the world" is the key, then the Pagoda should have popped up the second I landed here,' Mason thought bitterly. 'I've bled enough throughout my life, goddammit.'
Well, that told him the Pagoda wouldn't appear just because he had walked a certain distance, nor would it appear if his soul merely matched the world he had experienced.
It would only work if both were incorporated together. All he had to do tomorrow was find a certain tree...
The second thing on his mind was the discrepancy.
In the dream, Jumong was flawless. He moved with a blinding white arc and unnatural stillness. He was a master of his own body.
But Mason looked down at his trembling, dirty hands. He was a Jiang now, supposedly inhabiting the body of this legend, yet he felt like a fraud. He had the white hair and he had the Dragon blood, but he was still fighting like a rat in a corner.
'Why did the dream show me the end of his journey?' Mason wondered, his eyes narrowing. 'If this is a tutorial, shouldn't it show me how he started? Why show me the god-tier Jumong when I'm still stuck with a broken hilt in my forehead?'
But Mason knew deep down the system had shown him the right dream. The Jumong he saw was the weakest of the mysterious dragons back then, who could only perform a single stroke—which he had also witnessed him use throughout the dream.
While the Jumong whose role he was inhabiting was... the strongest? Mason wasn't sure of that, but for such a man to be able to engage in such a high-scale war, he was definitely strong.
'Well, from the look of things, it looks like he failed in whatever he was doing, so doesn't that still make him weak?'
Well, Mason wasn't sure whether Jumong had failed or succeeded in whatever he was doing, but that still didn't change the fact that the multiple realms once inhabited by humans had been destroyed.
Jumong couldn't do anything. The so-called Dragons couldn't do anything. So what exactly gave them the right to rank themselves based on prowess? They were all weak.
Mason hissed in disdain.
The other thing on his mind was the single stroke performed by Jumong. Sure, the Dragons were weak to him, but they were still stronger than he was. Even the weakest of them killed every enemy with a single skill.
And it had taken him nearly an hour to defeat a single Yaoguai. Actually, that depended on the evolution rank of the monster, but since he had little to no idea about anything related to the Fate System, he couldn't tell if Effluent Hollow was a strong rank for an opponent or just a mere ridicule.
'If only I could master that stroke.'
Mason wasn't a poet, nor was he a seeker. He was a pragmatist. In the Stone Slums, if you saw a better weapon, you stole it. If you saw a better technique, you mimicked it. Actually, that was the exact way of life.
One had to copy once in a while to achieve goals, and if someone tried to imitate Jumong's perfect skill, it would create a lifeline.
It might have looked simple to others, but to him, it did not.
The kid in the dream was the weakest. He could only do one thing. But he did that one thing so well that the world had to take notice.
In a way, that felt more like the Slums than anything else. You didn't need to know a hundred ways to punch; you just needed to know the one way that broke a jaw before the other guy could pull his trigger.
But there was a catch.
In the dream, Jumong's movements were fueled by a calmness that Mason simply didn't possess. Jumong was a still lake; Mason was a boiling pot of oil. Every time he tried to imagine himself performing that stroke, his heartbeat—erratic and heavy from the trauma to his head—tripped him up.
Jumong moving into both the attack and defense area of an opponent was a huge risk. And the calmness of his gaze just made it seem as if he did not care about losing his life.
Mason cared about his life. Really! He wasn't going to waste his second chance at life by practicing a dangerous skill. More choices of martial arts would come in the future.
But when? He needed it to survive in this hellish realm and might even visit other realms too. This thoughts had now drifted to how many days, weeks, months, or years it would take for him to pass the tutorial and officially become a Jiang.
Mason stared at the split sky and grimaced. The last thing bothering him was the nature of this region.
'If the Warden had come from the war below, then how had it fallen from the sky?'
That wasn't the main bother though; if that thing could actually fall from the sky, then other warriors could also do that. He was in no shape or mindset to even battle a single Yaoguai, not to talk of a bunch of them.
Mason looked in the direction of the bone and made a final decision. With a reluctant shrug, he stood up and headed in its direction. Tomorrow he would think and do other things he hadn't done, like checking his system status, learning how to unlock his assistant, and his venture to find the tree.
And a lot more.
But tonight, all he wanted to do was rest in the large bone of a dead creature.