The Dawn of the New World

"This is one of the Nine Worlds, a plane of existence different from ours," Gavril informed Hao Xuan.

Hao Xuan inched closer to the window and peered left and right, but there was only fog and nothing else around them.

"But...isn't this a dream?" he muttered confusingly.

"It is," Gavril confirmed.

"Then...how?"

"Who says it has to be just one thing?" Gavril looked towards Hao Xuan with half a smile, but seeing the confused look on his face he let out a sigh and explained further.

"Nine Worlds and Ten Heavens. Eight Desolaces and the Nine Hells. What do you think they are?"

Hao Xuan shrugged. He had a vague idea but nothing else so pretending otherwise would be useless.

*Krrrrreee*

Just then, a low, guttural growl came from somewhere in the fog. It didn't sound too far off.

Gavril quickly took a step back from the window and snapped his fingers. The window vanished completely as if it was never there.

Hao Xuan looked at him with a questioning gaze.

"One of the many local creatures of this world. It would be quite troublesome if it found us."

"Okay...I guess. I still don't know what this place exactly is. How can there be other things in MY dream?"

Gavril reached his hand out and made a grabbing motion. A chair materialized in his hand which he pulled under him and sat down.

He looked at Hao Xuan with a pondering expression for a moment, gathering his thoughts to properly explain everything.

"As I was saying, ours is one of the 'Nine' worlds out there. Comparatively, it is rather...ordinary. Most of the beings here have physical bodies and souls within them, but that is not the case for many of the other worlds."

"For example, one of these other worlds is made up of entities you would call "ghosts". There, they only exist as spiritual entities and have no physical bodies."

"Another world is remarkably close to ours but people there mainly cultivate "magic". It is perhaps most similar to our world in every other aspect."

Hao Xuan silently listened and kept nodding his head. His eyes lit up when he heard of this "world of magic".

Ryfon had mentioned that a door to this world had opened somewhere out there and that there was going to be a huge war over it.

"Just like them," Gavril continued after giving Hao Xuan a moment to digest everything, "This world exists in another plane entirely. It is the easiest world to access and the most difficult one at the same time."

"It is where we go to dream, or where our dreams come from, depending on how you look at it."

"Some believe that this world was born from the energy of dreams and subconscious thoughts of individuals while they slept, while others believe it existed way before that."

"It is a dreamland that exists out of our time and space."

Hao Xuan felt like someone had taken a hammer to his forehead. His head started pounding suddenly.

"Bear with it, the pain will pass soon," Gavril told Hao Xuan, "This can happen sometimes when the boundary of your mind is expanded."

Hao Xuan sat down on the dirty old mattress that smelt of mold and sweat. The unpleasant odors actually helped distract him from the pain that subsided a few minutes later.

He let out a deep breath of turbid air. For some reason, he felt lighter than before, as if he had let go of some heavy weight.

"I think I understand, somehow. But how did you know about all this?"

"The Old King. He passed down all of his knowledge to me along with the cultivation methods he created. The cultivation methods all utilize the unique energy found within this world, which you can just call "dream" energy instead of spiritual energy."

"He believed that Orcs actually came from this world a long time ago. He never found out if that was true or not but its a fact that Orcs are uniquely suited to cultivate the dream energy since birth."

"Does this cultivation method have a name?"

"It does, but it's in our language," Gavril answered after a moment of contemplation, "Roughly translated, it would be something like 'The Eternal Slumber'? Since we have to be sleeping to be able to cultivate this method.. I think 'The Netherworld's Dreamscape' sounds better though."