Dual Realm Exchange System

Power did not remove rules, enough power simply changed which rules started applying to you.

Damian remained silent for several seconds after Selene finished speaking, his eyes drifting across the frozen wasteland surrounding them.

Then something clicked.

Several small things that had bothered him since becoming a Cleric suddenly rearranged themselves into a completely different picture.

Damian’s lips slowly curled upward.

”Yeah... no wonder.” He muttered before shaking his head with a wry smile.

Roland glanced toward him. ”No wonder what?”

”Nothing, I just realized something.” Damian replied casually.

He didn’t elaborate.

Mostly because explaining it properly would require mentioning a second High Grade World he visited whenever he felt like it, and Damian was not about to begin that conversation in the middle of Moonveil Forest.

Instead, he stared toward the crater while his thoughts accelerated.

Was Damian accepting the Oath of Restriction as fair?

Hell no!

From the perspective of ordinary people, perhaps it was.

If Damian happened to be some Level 2 Commoner living quietly with his wife and children, he would absolutely appreciate knowing that the local Legend couldn’t vaporize his entire village because the tavern ran out of his favorite beer.

There was obvious social value in restraining people capable of turning disagreements into geographical changes.

But Damian wasn’t thinking from the perspective of the weak anymore.

His thoughts had gone somewhere else entirely... toward the gods!

Or more accurately...

The Divine Spirits!

Damian had noticed the favoritism from the beginning.

They weren’t particularly subtle about it either!

His Divine Patron selection alone had been ridiculous once he understood what happened behind the scenes.

Eldrian posed like the greatest professor ever born.

Davian presented himself as the perfect father figure.

Orpheus had been aura farming so shamelessly that Damian could practically hear background music behind his divine portrait.

Then there was Eastra.

Good heavens!!

Goth Mommy Eastra had apparently decided the path toward Damian’s soul went through every questionable preference a healthy young man might possess.

And Lyla?

The Goddess of Life had literally bent over in front of him within minutes of their first proper meeting!

Damian still remembered it.

A simple village dress, a woven flower basket, and a backside carrying enough divine blessing to begin its own religion.

That had been deliberate, he knew it now.

Yet Lyla was not some desperate twenty-year-old woman trying to attract a wealthy husband.

She was a Divine Spirit!

An existence older than entire Human nations!

A being who had watched generations of people live and die, possessed knowledge Damian couldn’t even begin to quantify and wielded authority over Life itself!

Eastra was the same, and so were all the others.

Whatever ridiculous personalities they possessed, none of them were stupid.

They were ancient, powerful and experienced beyond anything Damian could realistically imagine.

And yet these beings were trying to win him over.

Perhaps not openly throwing themselves at his feet, but close enough that anyone paying attention would eventually notice.

Why?

Damian originally assumed it was because he was an Otherworlder, then he learned about Valoria’s history.

Otherworlders were certainly valuable, as several had literally reshaped civilization.

But there had been many across history!

Not all of them became Valor, nor did everyone become a Divine Spirit.

Some clearly disappeared into obscurity.

So why was Damian receiving premium treatment almost immediately?

Why were Divine Spirits competing over him before he’d done enough to prove himself?

There could be many reasons.

His origin from a High Technology World like Valor, his unusual growth, or his ridiculous collection of Feats.

Perhaps even something about the Dual-Realm Exchange System they could not fully perceive.

But after hearing Roland explain the Oath of Restriction, another possibility suddenly became impossible to ignore.

Freedom!

Damian’s expression gradually became thoughtful.

He had made a mistake when comparing Valoria and Shengyuan, a rather understandable mistake too.

For an ordinary person, Valoria looked vastly superior!

And it wasn’t even close.

In Valoria, everyone possessed some route toward supernatural growth.

You did not need to be born with a Spirit Root or another miraculous organ before the universe even allowed you to enter the game.

A farmer could possess a Class, a merchant could Level, and a craftsman could gain Attributes, Skills and Specializations through their work.

A child who grew into the Age of Understanding would eventually possess an entire game-like system designed to help turn effort and achievement into measurable advancement.

Even social order was considerably more stable.

There were laws, institutions, guilds, banks, courts, noble obligations, churches, and even proper government systems here.

The Adventurer’s Guild might not be perfect, but it tracked dangerous quests, investigated deaths and punished people who murdered their teammates.

Rosewood Town’s nobles couldn’t simply stroll through the street, see an attractive peasant girl and drag her home because they had a higher cultivation realm than her father.

Well...

They could try.

Then the guild, local government, church, another noble or some irritated Legend might crawl directly up their ass.

In Shengyuan though, Damian had already seen enough to understand the difference.

A cultivator could kill someone weaker because they disliked their face, and whether consequences followed often depended less upon the murder itself than whether the victim had someone stronger behind them.

Even the righteous Sects followed hierarchies that would make many Valorian tyrants look surprisingly reasonable.

To be completely blunt, some of the so-called righteous Sects in Shengyuan treated ordinary people worse than several kingdoms Valoria would openly describe as evil!

For the weak, Valoria was paradise compared to Shengyuan!

But everything possessed a price... everything!

Damian looked toward the drifting System interface only he could see.

Valoria helped you from the beginning.

It measured your progress, rewarded effort, provided free Attribute Points as you advanced, granted Skills, granted Feats, and recognized accomplishments then converted them into Experience.

Even failing to possess some natural talent didn’t necessarily lock you out forever because Classes created structured roads ordinary people could follow.

The world held your hand all the way to godhood.

At Level 1, that hand felt wonderful.

At Level 5, it felt generous.

At Level 10, perhaps you even loved it.

Then one day, you became powerful enough to not need the hand anymore.

Only to find that the hand had moved from your palm...

To your neck.

Damian’s smile faded slightly.

Once somebody crossed into Legend, the same System responsible for supporting their entire development demanded an oath.

An oath enforced by the Valorian Overworld System itself.

Use your power improperly and the System reviewed you.

Fail the review badly enough and it could strip away what it had granted.

Damian almost wanted to laugh.

”So that’s the trade...” He murmured.

Selene glanced toward him, but Damian did not explain.

What was the point of spending decades, perhaps centuries, climbing toward power if someone else retained the authority to tell you when you were permitted to use it?

What was the meaning of becoming overwhelmingly strong if the foundation of that strength remained leased property?

A Mage worked for fifty years, learned hundreds of spells, reached Legend, and developed an Advanced Class.

They accumulated Feats, Attributes, Specializations and Skills until ordinary armies could no longer threaten them.

Then one sufficiently bad decision happened.

Perhaps he lost control, perhaps he disagreed with the System’s judgment, or perhaps circumstances looked different from whatever perspective performed the review.

And suddenly, all that power would bid them goodbye!

The same hand that gave could take.

It meant every person who relied entirely upon the Valorian Overworld System was building a sandcastle on the beach.

All it required was one sufficiently large wave to undo it all.

Damian’s thoughts shifted instinctively toward Shengyuan and the contrast became almost hilarious.

Shengyuan was the exact opposite.

That world did not hold your hand.

It looked at you, judged whether you had been born with a Spirit Root, and if the answer was no?

Too bad!

Enjoy mortality!

Even those blessed with the necessary talent received no Character Sheet explaining exactly what to do.

They had no neat notifications, automatically granted Feats, Experience Points, nor convenient System announcing that your Strength had increased by 0.5.

Nothing!

You learned from Sects, families, manuals, masters and your own mistakes.

You stole Spiritual Energy from heaven and earth, refined it, and made it yours.

You seized resources, fought competitors, plundered opportunities, and built your foundation one dangerous step at a time.

Hell, the higher a cultivator climbed, the more hostile the world itself became!

Damian had already learned enough about cultivation to know what happened at higher realms.

Heavenly Tribulations!

Literal fucking lightning fell from the sky because some madman had accumulated enough power that the world’s laws demanded proof he deserved to continue existing!

Cultivation was theft committed against reality with enough confidence that reality eventually started fighting back.

But there was one enormous difference.

What you successfully took was yours forever!

Damian looked down at his hand.

If he returned to Earth this very moment, most of what Valoria granted him would become functionally useless.

There was no ambient Mana on Earth nor any magical environment supporting his Mage spells.

He could possess every spell formula in his mind and still fail to produce even a simple if the energy required to construct it simply did not exist.

But his Refined Qi?

That would remain.

His Qi Sea existed inside him, and the physical enhancement earned through cultivation belonged to his body.

His strengthened meridians would still be there, and his cultivation foundation would not politely disappear because Earth lacked Spiritual Energy.

Certainly, once his reserves depleted, recovering them without suitable energy would become a serious problem.

If Damian emptied his Qi Sea on Earth, there might be no easy way to refill it.

But until he spent that power, it was his.

No World Stone administrator could revoke it.

No System review could announce that Damian had violated acceptable cultivation conduct and confiscate his Qi Sea.

Even Heaven in Shengyuan couldn’t casually repossess what a cultivator already made their own.

It could strike them with lightning and send Tribulations.

The world could make further advancement increasingly difficult.

But if the cultivator survived, their power remained theirs!

Damian’s eyes slowly narrowed.

Valoria gave first and demanded obedience later.

Shengyuan gave nothing and demanded that you survive taking everything yourself.

One world protected the weak but chained the strong.

The other abandoned the weak but left the strong almost completely free.

Neither was simply better, they were merely opposites, essentially two answers to the same question.

What should power cost?

And suddenly...

Damian understood something else, why Divine Spirits might care so much about him.

Indeed, Valor had reached the top and his companions had followed him.

Other great Otherworlders became Divine Spirits afterward, and they likely possessed unimaginable power.

Yet Divine Spirits could not freely descend upon the mortal plane.

They were governed by divine limitations, restricted in direct interference, and forced to act through blessings, Champions, churches, followers and carefully permitted miracles.

They had climbed higher than almost anyone else in existence...

And discovered more rules waiting above them.

Damian almost laughed.

No wonder Lyla wanted him!

No wonder Eastra posed!

No wonder Divine Spirits who should have considered a Level 11 Adept less significant than dust were already taking personal interest!

Perhaps Damian possessed something they lacked.

Cultivation!

A power system that took from the world and made oneself the center of the universe!

This was a power structure that had not originated from Valor’s System.

Someone who used this power system would eventually reach their heights without wearing the exact same chains!

Damian’s thoughts stopped there.

He wouldn’t assume too much.

That was how idiots built entire conspiracy theories from three pieces of information and then acted surprised when reality slapped them.

But the possibility was definitely going into the mental filing cabinet.

Damian slowly raised his gaze.

Roland and Selene were still beside him.

Two Legends, two tremendously powerful people, and two powerhouses who had spent years climbing high enough that most ordinary Humans would consider them walking natural disasters.

Yet both had willingly placed themselves beneath an oath enforced by the System.

Or perhaps...

”Willingly” was the wrong word.

What alternative existed?

Refuse registration?

Refuse the System whose structure had guided your growth since childhood?

Could someone even become a proper modern Legend without completing the process?

Questions.

So many fucking questions!

For the first time since arriving in Valoria, Damian felt as though he had stopped looking at the beautiful surface and finally noticed the machinery underneath.

His original assessment of this world had not been wrong.

Valoria was safer, kinder, more stable, and more civilized.

It genuinely gave ordinary people opportunities Shengyuan would never provide.

But that wasn’t the whole truth.

The veil had finally lifted.

And once Damian saw what existed beneath it, he could not unsee it.

Valoria...

Valoria...

His gaze drifted upward toward the night sky.

The name suddenly felt different.

Phantasia had been a chaotic world.

It had been wild, unstructured, and dangerous beyond comprehension.

Its inhabitants created their own paths through power, sometimes succeeding, sometimes becoming twisted monstrosities through failed advancement.

Then Valor arrived, rose, became Divine, communed with the will of the world, and the Valorian Overworld System appeared.

Reality reorganized itself around his principles.

And when every sentient being above the Age of Understanding first received those miraculous screens...

The world’s name had already changed.

It was no longer Phantasia, but Valoria.

Damian’s expression became complicated.

The free and chaotic world of Phantasia no longer existed.

This world had structure now, with rules, progression, rewards, and restrictions.

An entire reality built around the framework introduced by one Otherworlder.

Damian finally understood the implication hidden inside the name from the very beginning.

Valoria was not simply a world named in Valor’s honor.

It was a world shaped by his ideals.

A world governed through his System.

A world that, in every way that truly mattered...

Belonged to Valor himself.