Chapter 72: Intermission: Levi Rose
The morning air in Coimbatore, India was cool and carried the sweet scent of damp earth and blooming jasmine.
It was the kind of morning that felt like a fresh start, washing a deep sense of peace over anyone who breathed it in.
In front of a small quiet villa tucked safely away from the noise of the main city, a young man sat perfectly still.
He was in his twenties, his skin bronzed by the sun. He sat cross-legged on a simple woven mat, his back perfectly straight. His hands were locked in a strange mudra (a hand sign), pressed together in a way that looked both delicate and powerful.
He looked intense and relaxed at the same time.
After a long period of silence, his eyes flickered open. He looked vibrant and energetic, fully recharged after a long meditation session.
A peaceful smile touched his lips as he unfolded his legs and stood up.
His name was Levi Rose and he was 24 years old this year.
As Levi began walking toward the villa, his mind started to wander, reflecting on the bizarre path that had led him here.
If someone had told me 15 years ago I’d be living in rural India and writing webnovels for a living, I would have called them crazy, he thought to himself.
His family’s journey had been a strange one.
They were originally from Nevada City, a small town in California.
Years ago, his father had spiraled into a severe depression. It wasn’t just sadness; it was the suffocating result of years spent working a corporate job that had slowly sucked the life right out of him.
While the doctors had prescribed pills and the therapists had offered empty words, nothing had actually helped.
Finally, a close friend had suggested something radical: Go to India. Learn classical yoga. Not the commercial kind they teach in modern gyms, but the real, ancient stuff.
Half-skeptical and half-desperate, they gave it a try. And it worked like a miracle.
Within the first week of practicing, Levi had watched the heavy shadows permanently leave his father’s eyes.
The depression began to lift like a morning mist. Even after returning to his old, joyful self his father never stopped practicing.
Even now, as an older man, his relentless commitment to the practices meant he rarely ever got sick.
He loved the simplicity and the profound peace of the lifestyle here so much that the whole family eventually packed up their lives in California and permanently moved to Coimbatore.
When Levi turned twelve, his father finally talked him into trying the practice, too.
At first, Levi had done it just to please him, thinking it was just a weird family hobby. But as soon as he truly realized the significance of it, he became utterly obsessed.
The meditation, the expansion of awareness, the way the world suddenly seemed so much more vibrant and alive, it made him fall in love with it.
After years of regular practice, it was now as natural to him as brushing his teeth. He never missed a single morning.
He used to also spend a lot of time reading webnovels.
He was obsessed with various fictional power systems. Just the thought of being able to consciously evolve and improve would make him wish such a magical thing was possible in the real world.
But after two years of intense practice, he realized it was indeed possible to evolve in real life as well.
His Guru, who had officially initiated him into the Sadhana (spiritual practice), had explained that human beings were actually the peak biological lifeforms in their solar system.
If any further biological evolution were to ever happen, something drastic would have to physically alter the solar system itself.
Seeing a disappointed Levi, his Guru further explained that though physical evolution was currently capped, there was another way to evolve; an internal path of evolution that was not restricted by physical laws.
It was the path of Awareness.
Apparently, every human possessed different levels of awareness and that level depended on what state of mind the person was actively in.
If one consciously expanded their awareness far enough, it was genuinely possible to become a Cosmic Being.
But to increase one’s awareness to such a terrifying degree, one had to gather enough energy. And to generate the necessary energy, one needed to dedicate themselves to enough Sadhana.
After years of relentless practicing, Levi had finally reached a stage where he could genuinely say his awareness was becoming cosmic.
With each passing day, he felt his physical body and mind were just a tiny, insignificant fragment of his true, boundless self.
Of course, with this profound evolution came the capability to do various miraculous things; predicting the future, healing, manipulating the five elements, manifesting and even performing supernatural feats.
But his Guru strictly forbade such things.
The karma gathered from actively interfering with the world was not good and performing those feats drained the user completely, making all that painstakingly accumulated Sadhana wasted on something petty.
For him compared to the ultimate goal of becoming a true Cosmic Being, everything else in the world was just trivial. His Guru had said so and Levi wholeheartedly believed it.
Because of his eerily serene demeanor, people in the town often thought he was a Saint. But the truth was, everything he did was for one singular, selfish purpose: to evolve, to transform, to grow and to permanently break every limitations.
If killing half the world would have brought him this ultimate result, he would not have hesitated to do it.
The world was simply lucky that the correct path to growth naturally made him him saint-like. In reality, he had long become detached from everything and everyone.
Stopping his wandering thoughts, Levi stood near the front door of the villa and tilted his head back, admiring the sky.
Today, the sky was a clear, brilliant blue with not a single cloud in sight.
It was then he saw it.
A silver streak tore violently across the blue. It was a jet, moving at an impossible speed, its engines letting out a terrifying noise that shattered the morning silence.
Levi’s eyes widened, his heart skipping a beat as he saw a small, dark object detach from the underbelly of the plane. It looked so tiny against the vastness of the sky.
His heart dropped into his stomach.
With his awareness, he could effortlessly perceive exactly what it was. Despite the great altitude, he saw the object with crystal clarity.
Being a writer, he had spent countless days researching all sorts of obscure military concepts for his stories.
He had looked at enough reference photos to know exactly what a falling bomb looked like.
Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. In that instant, Levi knew. He knew there was no running. There was no hiding. The villa was too close and the bomb was falling entirely too fast.
He turned his head back toward the villa; toward the rooms where his father, his mother and his little sister were likely just starting their day with warm smiles and laughter. It was a house full of innocent love.
Suddenly, a violent rejection flared deep within him. It seems I was not quite as detached as I thought.
He fully let himself loose.
Immediately, the entire world slowed to a snail’s pace. His awareness expanded to such terrifying height that he could physically perceive individual atoms and subatomic particles lingering in the air.
Even the elusive, metaphysical concept of karma was laid completely bare before him.
He saw the thick karmic threads attached to the falling bomb, realizing that all it would take was a mere thought to wipe them away and this bomb would simply disappear from existence as if it were never forged.
In this moment, he felt truly godlike. He realized just how far he had actually progressed; acting ’human’ had become nothing more than a play a long time ago.
With crystal clarity, he knew that he could do anything to anyone in this world if he wished it and nothing could possibly stop him.
Just as he was about to mentally erase the bomb from reality, a gentle, familiar energy descended upon his mind, forcing his chaotic thoughts to clear.
He realized exactly who it was. After all, how could he ever fail to recognize this energy?
Guru... why?...
It was then he remembered the vow he had taken when he was first initiated into the Sadhana.
He had promised that he would use whatever power he attained strictly for his own spiritual evolution and nothing else.
He stopped his hand.
Then, knowing physical death for his family and his mortal shell was now totally inevitable, he immediately initiated the final method taught to him: to leave the physical body and dissolve directly into the cosmos, permanently becoming a Cosmic Being.
Just as he managed to exit his physical form, hovering above the villa in his subtle body, he watched it happen.
BOOM.
The world didn’t go dark. It turned into a blinding, all-consuming white heat.
As he was in the process of dissolving, his Guru’s gentle energy wrapped around him, helping to speed up his ascension and safely guide him.
When he was in the final stages of transcending, he felt something approach him or, more accurately, something was actively trying to make direct contact with him across the void.
Expanding his vast awareness to check, he saw it was a tiny, mysterious seed covered in a dense black fog.
Reading its karma, he realized it originated from a point a little further into the future than his current timeline.
In his current condition, existing in the subtlest state functionally possible, it was indeed possible to not just see this temporal anomaly, but to actively interact with it.
The seed seems to be asking for my Records...
He probed to understand what a ’Record’ was.
I see. A Record is a condensed, metaphysical form of karma and memory.
Completely unbothered, he agreed.
Karma was no longer something he needed to hoard; it was just trivial baggage he could keep or discard as he pleased.
If he ever needed memories as a Cosmic Being, he could simply create whatever he wanted out of nothing.
Without a single moment of hesitation, he gave away all his Records to the dark seed, tossing them aside as casually as donating old clothes.
And just like that, Levi Rose attained true Enlightenment and seamlessly left the mortal world. From that moment on, he was truly no more.
...
Night’s eyes snapped wide open.
He was physically shaking, his breath coming in rapid panicked gasps.
He had just realized a terrifying truth: he was not the person he had always thought he was...
Looking at his palms Night asked...
Who am I???