A small town in the middle of nowhere (it's in England).
The population of this small town, Tinybridge, was so small that everyone knew each other.
If anything remotely interesting happened in the usual mundane day, it didn't take long for the entire town to know.
For example, last week, Mrs. Young had an argument with her husband about the fact that he always left the toilet seat up whenever he used the bathroom, and by the end of the day, everyone in the town knew about this.
"How could you leave the seat up?"
"My wife would kill me if I did that."
"It's okay, man. I leave my seat up all the time. It's no biggie. I don't know why these females always make such a big deal of it."
Mr. Young felt like burying himself in a hole.
One of the families in this town was the Green family. They were a humble household of two parents, a small dog, and three kids.
The oldest had left the town to work in the nearby city, returning only on birthdays or holidays.
The second was off to university. She was extremely intelligent, and the entire town expected her to become wealthy someday. Especially with that cheapskate mindset she has.
The youngest, well, he was hard to explain.
He used to be a troublemaker who created so many problems that other families stood asking his parents to apologize, and instead, they just felt pity for them and would support the parents with encouraging words or even gifts.
However, one day, on his fourteenth birthday, the boy became a totally different person.
He stopped causing trouble, which made his parents' lives much better.
But he replaced the troublemaking tendencies with something that was… better? Kind of.
Every day, after school, on the weekends, or during the breaks, he would just be outside, wielding this wooden sword he had carved himself.
He would swing it around like a madman, then once he got tired, he would sit down in the lotus position and meditate.
His parents were concerned for him the first week he did this.
They would've preferred he spend all day playing video games like the other boys in town.
But after a month or two, they stopped caring and just chalked it up to their son being unique. As long as he was harming himself or anyone else, they supported whatever strange things he was up to.
Fletcher Green was the boy's name.
A little over two years had passed since his fourteenth birthday, which was the day he regressed from the future.
The once-troublemaker was now attracting all the nearby qi and was circulating it around in his core. There was barely any qi, but he wasn't frustrated.
"Your son is at it again," a lady said as she peeked out of her bedroom window.
"Hey. That is your son as well."
"I know we've accepted him for who he is, but… do you think something is wrong up there?"
"Yes. But… we'll love him the same regardless."
Mrs. Green looked at her soon with an expression of concern and motherly love before closing her curtains and heading back to the house chore she was busy with.
In their eyes, Fletcher was just a crazy teenage boy who was a little different than the other kids in town. A little. Just a little.
Okay. Maybe not a little.
Maybe a lot.
After absorbing all the qi that was around him, Fletcher exhaled and stood up.
"I'm glad to hear that you two love me regardless, but no, I'm not mentally off," Fletcher laughed. They had spoken inside the house while he was outside, and yet, he still heard everything they had said.
The first day he returned to this time, he was tempted to rush to his parents and hug them so tightly until their bones snapped.
However, he held himself back because he didn't want to freak them out.
If only he knew that he was going to freak them out regardless, he wouldn't have hesitated.
His parents were extremely supportive, and when he told them one day that he wanted to take a trip to South Korea as a family, they hesitated for a bit before deciding, why not.
They weren't wealthy by any means, but they had the funds to take a trip now and then.
Their youngest son was asking for something for the first time in years, so they might as well help fulfil his desires.
"Hey, don't get lost."
"I'm not going to. I'm just going to visit a few places on my list. Don't worry. They're all popular tourist places."
"Okay. Come home before it gets dark."
They ended up going on the trip as a whole family. All five. The only one left behind was the dog, which was being taken care of by their neighbor.
Separating from the rest of the family, Fletcher got into a taxi and spoke in fluent Korean, "Can you take me to this location?"
The taxi driver was stunned at how fluent he was. He was anticipating that he would have to communicate in his broken English, and he even contemplated not picking up this customer at first.
"Okay."
Heading to the mountain, Fletcher stared out of his window, thinking about a lot.
When he finally stepped out of the car and paid the fee, he had mentally prepared himself for what was about to come.
Traveling up the mountain, he reached the location where he knew his king, or the man who would someday become his king, would be.
Before he got to him, though, he made sure to stop at this tree. It was a regular tree. No different than any other in the forest.
However, as he placed his hand on the trunk and used his qi to solve the puzzle that appeared in his mind, once it was completed, a hole appeared below the tree.
Reaching inside, he pulled out a sheathed sword.
Although the tower wouldn't arrive until a little bit later, Earth itself had already been influenced by strange phenomena for centuries now.
There were plenty of real treasures and items with magical properties that were waiting to be collected.
It's just that because of the lack of qi that humans are naturally born with, none of them could be collected.
In other worlds where the towers appeared, most of the races there were able to use qi, so the treasures that had been on their world had already been collected and been in use for centuries, unlike Earth, where all of them were dormant.
This sword was called Biryong — the Flying Dragon Sword.
An hour from now, Ryuk Yongsun was going to discover this sword when the towers that appear cause all the dormant treasures to give off faint hums that could be picked up by anyone with qi.
"I'll use this sword to do what you couldn't do, my king."