Avatar - Conquering the Elements-Chapter 4. Birth.

As I expected, mastering the necessary skills took about two days. I finished memorizing the chakra books even earlier.

I managed to stroll through the Library itself. After all, repetitive actions sometimes started to make my head swell. Periodic impulsive actions, like making origami from parchment, were also a big distraction. Being a low-level spirit with a healthy mind is tough. I seriously started to sympathize with the guys before me who faced similar problems. Luckily, I managed to control my actions. If I had folded some origami from precious parchment belonging to a spirit fanatical about knowledge, he would probably have turned me into a figurine.

As I wandered through the Library, I never once ended up in a place I'd already been. Even after covering a considerable distance, I kept discovering new sections. My hands itched to grab more books, brew some tea, and dive into millions of new worlds. After all, books have always been like a whole life to me, even from my previous life. Sometimes, after finishing a particularly good book, I just couldn't start another one because the aftertaste hadn't faded yet.

I desperately wanted to take at least a few books from the history section. The cartoon didn't really show life over a long period. We know there were many Avatars, but only a small number were featured. I had to exert titanic efforts not to give in, even running through that section just in case. But I mentally promised myself that when the time and opportunity came, I'd stay here and read voraciously.

Honestly, walking through the Library was almost as tense as practicing techniques. It's like being a kid in a mall with your parents, walking past store windows filled with cool toys—even the trinkets you'd forget about hours after buying them.

Toward the end of my first stroll, I decided to head back to my room the same way I'd come. It seemed simple enough; I'd been walking in a straight line the whole time. But as I walked past completely different section titles, I started to panic slowly. It seemed like Wan Shi Tong could manipulate space. There was no way this distance was normal—unless it was a typical quirk of ancient spirits' dwellings. When your habitat has been saturated with your energy for millennia, you don't just control space; you control the flow of time itself.

Already panicking, I broke into a run and started choosing directions at random, hoping to find the room. After using half my energy reserve to speed up, I noticed a reddish tail around the corner. My joy knew no bounds.

"Fox spirit, please help me find the way back to the room with the scrolls," I said, trying to keep my voice calm. It was embarrassing to lose my composure just because I was lost.

I thought I saw the spirit give me a disdainful look. Oh well, the main thing was that she flicked her tail and led me back. After passing through just a few sections, I immediately saw the door to the room I needed. Everything here was too confusing; it was more like a labyrinth.

Before leaving, the fox spirit looked at me, sighed heavily, and explained how to use the Library, as if I were distracting her from important matters. How important could they be? But the information turned out to be useful. All I had to do was focus on what I needed, and the Library would narrow the space, leading me directly to my destination. Now it made sense why I kept ending up in the history sections—subconsciously, I really wanted to read them. After thanking the spirit for her help, I went back to practicing.

*

"Stop torturing yourself. Do it or don't," a voice suddenly said behind me, making me jump. I wanted to shout, "Hey, you could've appeared less suddenly!" but my self-preservation instinct, even as a spirit, was strong.

Alright, I really needed to calm down. For the past few hours, I'd just been pacing the room and torturing myself with gloomy thoughts. After all, who wants to leave their life to chance? No one in this room, apparently. Having mastered the techniques to what I considered a good level, I was just plain scared. "I'm not a coward, but I'm afraid, right?"

Stepping out of your comfort zone is always hard, especially when you've got a pile of problems and you just sit there thinking, "Oh well, it'll all work out." But it doesn't work like that. We've been through this. Problems pile up, and by the time your brain gets its act together, you're unpleasantly surprised to find that your brain has cleared up because there's nowhere left to fall. Alright, I thought, enough self-pity. Time to start a new life. Thanks to my past experiences, I'll try to be even better in this life—if I survive, that is. Humor is good.

"Yeah, I'm ready," I said firmly to Wan Shi Tong.

"Good. Send your consciousness to the source," he instructed. I did as he said and began the strengthening process.

After doing everything I'd been doing for the past two days, I waited for some kind of spectacular effect from my departure. Naive low-level spirit, I thought to myself, everyone's out to get me. He just opened a rift in the air and kicked me into it.

"And don't come back without new books," he called after me as I flew through, "or I'll gut your spirit for knowledge myself," he added ominously.

I hoped he was joking. Peaceful spirit, my foot. That's when I started to notice the growing pain. Forced burning of your energy isn't exactly a pleasant process. Luckily, the spirit itself searches for the vessel you need; my main task was just to strengthen myself.

With less than twenty percent of my energy left, I was practically praying for people to have more sex and for waterbenders to make me a vessel. Subjectively, I had less than ten percent of my energy left when the pain became so intense that I started losing consciousness. But I held on as best I could.

My energy was down to the dregs when I almost lost consciousness. That's when the thought occurred to me that in the Avatar world, there was also the Swamp Water Tribe. I was ready to end up with them, as long as I survived.

*

I'm starting to get used to losing consciousness. If I'm thinking, I must still exist. I began to feel my body, wiggled my hands and feet—yes, I had a body, and I could feel it more vividly. It was nothing like a spirit's body. I also seemed to be floating in some kind of fluid.

This was a success. It felt a lot like being an embryo. It was amazing to feel human again. We don't appreciate what we have. Of course, maybe I died back then, and now I'm a Jedi who got shot on Geonosis and is undergoing treatment in a bacta tank. Hmm, it all adds up. My thoughts wandered off, but it was worth checking. Let's move these little hands... yes, the response was too weak. My hands were pressed against a soft wall, and I think I even touched the umbilical cord.

Over time, my thoughts settled, and I began to think more calmly. I'm no expert on embryos, but it seemed like I didn't have much time left. My body was too well-formed; soon, I'd be facing the harsh real world. But after the Spirit World, where there was a chance of becoming breakfast for a passing spirit, the human world looked like paradise.

Sleepiness started to creep in, and without resisting, I drifted into oblivion.

During my next period of wakefulness, I decided to do something useful—review the memories of the cartoon I'd watched. Refreshing my memory wouldn't hurt, especially since everything I'd encountered so far suggested that the canon here, if not complete, didn't have major differences. I spent a week on this task, getting so engrossed that I even watched the Korra series.

It was only then that I realized I was thinking even before being born. That was the first bonus of being a spirit: an infant's brain couldn't possibly think this coherently. Speaking of which, I had unread books about chakras in my memory. It was time to start processing this important information. My own body wasn't far off, and I planned to cherish and nurture it.

After another week, I organized the information I'd gleaned from the books. Now it was clear why there were three books on chakras. They represented three different paths to opening them, and then you chose the one that suited you best.

The first path was the Path of the Spirit, the one Guru Pathik taught Avatar Aang. It unlocks spiritual powers within you, no matter how cliché that sounds. As a human, you gain the abilities spirits have in their realm: seamless connection with the Spirit World, the ability to send your spirit wandering and interacting while physically in the human world. It enhances your energy conductivity and quality, taking your understanding of your element to a whole new level. Even as a mediocre bender, you'd achieve mastery in your element within a year. And most excitingly, even if you're not a bender, you could try to become one.

The book clearly states that most humans are actually benders; they just have a dormant gift. When you open your chakras, each one tries to break through the boundaries of your gift. Some might unlock their bending ability with the first chakra, while others might only do so after the seventh. It all depends on the metaphorical wall separating you from awakening. For some, it's a flimsy cardboard wall that the first chakra sweeps away without notice. These people are even listed in the book as late bloomers, becoming benders on their own in their later years. Others have a wall made of the strongest steel, requiring them to work up to the seventh chakra.

The loss of various senses when opening chakras is because the process is like the birth of a new spirit, and they start their journey with a clean slate. You don't lose your emotions; you simply relearn them as you live. This path is perfect for the Avatar, whose main power is entering the Avatar State.

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The second book describes the Path of the Mind. As I delved into it, I thought I'd stumbled upon a treasure, but let me say upfront: the book is dangerous, or rather, the abilities it grants are. Each new chakra gives you power over your own mind and others'. At first, it's fairly standard: a significant boost in thinking speed, protection of your mind from various influences, and intuition reaching a new level. You literally feel which actions benefit you and which don't. Reading people's emotions? Easy! It gets more intense: telepathy, freely transmitting thoughts over thousands of kilometers. The final chakra grants "power over others' minds"—a direct quote from the book. You can literally read thoughts, uncover hidden fears, ambitions, and desires. Still sounds appealing, right? You can even rewrite someone's mind, create your ideal wife, friends—whatever you want.

Honestly, the author of the book, after opening the seventh chakra, no longer resembles a Guru. The book includes a brief history of his life, though his name isn't mentioned. As a student of a Guru who mastered the Path of the Spirit, he also wanted to open his chakras. But dissatisfied with the abilities he gained, he decided to experiment: what if he approached the chakras differently? The experiment succeeded, and he opened the first Earth chakra, which gave him entirely different abilities. Emboldened by his success, he opened the remaining chakras without considering the consequences.

Opening each chakra is a risk; you lose a certain sense. Every Guru is not just a person but someone with a will of steel—the wisest of humans who haven't lost themselves. The Path of the Mind has abilities that offset the loss of senses. Being devoid of emotions himself, the author deliberately induced them in others to feed off them, meaning he learned no lessons from opening the chakras. As the smartest person around, knowing everyone's thoughts, he grew callous. Unable to find genuine emotions from those close to him, he simply made them the way he wanted them to be. In the end, the author committed suicide, destroying all his records except for this book, which only describes the abilities and his story, with no instructions on how to open the chakras this way.

The final book outlines the Path of the Body. I called this path "Superman on a Budget." Each new chakra turns you into something like a cultivator who's been tempered by lightning, purified in a volcano, and so on. The first Earth chakra grants your body strength, incredible flexibility, increased endurance, and faster reaction times—basically, a comprehensive upgrade. The second Water chakra boosts your immune system, making you impervious to diseases and poisons. The third Fire chakra enhances all your senses: perfect vision, keen hearing, and a sharp sense of smell. The fourth Air chakra unlocks super intuition, almost like a minor precognitive ability. The fifth Sound chakra gives you complete control over your body, down to the smallest particle: hormone production, blood circulation, bones, muscles, and more. The sixth chakra cleanses your body and genotype of all toxins accumulated during your life and your ancestors' lives, activating only the best traits hidden in your body.

The final seventh chakra grants super regeneration and physical immortality. The regeneration allows you to recover from any injury as long as your brain is intact. I assume even having my head cut off wouldn���t be a problem; that's just for regular people. As a spirit, my brain is secondary; as long as I can regenerate my body in time, even that wouldn't be an issue. Of course, we won't be testing that in practice. Physical immortality means your body stops aging; you can still be killed, but you won't die of old age.

This path appealed to me the most. When opening chakras, emotions are only temporarily lost and never fully disappear. The focus is on preparing your body—or rather, subjecting it to self-torture. Maybe the author of this work was a follower of Might Guy's Youth?

I didn't even have to think about which path to choose. The Path of the Spirit was out; I already had those abilities. The Path of the Mind had no instructions, and I wouldn't have chosen it anyway; it was too risky. I wanted to live a more colorful and unpredictable life. That left the Path of the Body, the book I'd read with drool practically dripping from my mouth. I felt like saying, "Wrap up two, please."

For the following week, I continued fantasizing about striking fear into my enemies, having girls fawn over me, and—wait, my mother's water just broke?

Well, hello, new world. Be gentle; you're my first.