Daniel's desperate teleport dropped him just a fewteen meters above his original location.
It was a spell that he devised under his true master's tutelage as a prologue to a surprise attack in fights he couldn't win.
Back in the world where one's imagination was the second most powerful tool after the mana-enchanted sword of the gods, being able to surprise fellow magic practitioners was the best buff one could get for themselves.
And just like in modern times, humans were always earth-bound creatures. Some of them could fly, but their influence never got strong enough to warrant a change in the way people acted.
People rarely looked up. With no flying predators capable of seriously harming them, they never developed that kind of habit, contrary to how some of them could react to even the tiniest of sounds. As such, whenever Daniel would suddenly disappear, his enemies would throw their eyes around the scene or maybe rapidly turn around to protect their backs.
In no memory of his, Daniel could recall a single opponent ever looking up after he used this move. Sure, there were some insane fighters who would notice him at the last possible moment and then still be quick enough to counter his attack… but even with that in mind, this technique turned into Daniel's preferred ace in the sleeve.
And it was solely because of how insanely used he was to practicing it, Daniel managed to cast it while buried upon a mountain of irradiated sand. He managed to pull himself up a fewteen meters up… Only to then instantly come crashing down on the glassified sand of the desert.
"Fuck!" Daniel screamed out when his body struck the perfectly flat yet extremely smooth terrain.
His body was still doing its utmost to recover from having two pieces of lead in it, one in the heart and the other lodged deeply into Daniel's brain.
'It's not going to stop hurting until I removed the bullets…' Daniel thought to himself, forcing his soul to accept the harsh truth.
His hands were too unsteady for the job. He could survive a small mishap, but even a mage slash cultivator like him could die if his fingers would twitch at the wrong moment.
No, for a precise job like removing the bullets from the wounds that would normally be lethal, Daniel had no other choice but to use magic. Sadly, even though his rebirth apparently brought down the barrier that kept the mana from even entering this dimension…
It would take quite a while before Daniel could gather enough of this faint mana mist to perform any of the desired techniques.
And so, Daniel laid down on the glass of the nuked desert, ignoring the risks that came from spending time in the zero-zone of a nuclear discharge.
Having his body fall apart due to radiation was one of the worries that cultivators simply didn't have, thanks to the insane regenerative power of their bodies.
"It seems like I broke all three of the rules you gave me, master," Daniel muttered two days later once he got too tired of watching the empty sky in an attempt to see the stars beyond it.
He failed to guide a selected few that would then guide the rest of humanity.
He failed not to die, as the memory that he unlocked stipulated.
And although he had yet to act like a god, the betrayal of the only two people that ever knew about his true self was enough of a reason for Daniel to forget about all the rules.
'And it's not like it will change a thing,' Daniel thought a full day later, his thoughts taking an extremely long time to form due to the presence of a lead bullet still stuck in the middle of his brain.
It took Daniel four more days to gather just enough energy to create simple spells capable of affecting physical words.
He used the first one right away, teleporting the bullet stuck in his heart away. The second he did so, his consciousness nearly faded away as his body rushed all of its available energy into the recovery process.
Entire two weeks later, Daniel finally removed the bullet from his brain, teleporting it into his right hand.
'You tried to kill me with this bullet,' Daniel thought, finally regaining full control over his brain and its natural functions.
This was the moment, three full weeks after his destined death, when Daniel finally changed his position, standing up from the place where he laid flat for nearly a month.
"So there is no way I could discard it, right?" he then muttered, staring down at a small, deformed piece of metal in his hand.
Daniel then took a deep breath… Only to lay down right back to where he was just a moment before.
This time, however, rather than trying to pull himself up from the insanely dangerous situation he was immediately in, Daniel took his time for his will to penetrate through the several meters worth of sand.
There was no vault below him, anymore. The impact of the nuke turned out to be enough to squash the device's protective walls, turning it into just another layer of the ground.
But the device itself was far too complicated to be destroyed just by… well, destroying it. In a sense, the device itself had more computing power than all of the quasi-quantum computers that Daniel's former conglomerate had.
It was damaged beyond recovery, and Daniel had no other choice but to admit it once he managed to connect his thoughts directly to its systems. Its computing power was a mere tenth of a single percent of what it was supposed to be capable of.
But for his purposes, it was enough.
'Launch the optima sequence,' Daniel thought, infusing the first order into the device. 'Set the activation to remote, target ID on me,' Daniel then filled in the rest of the necessary details for the order.
'Command accepted. Calculating processing delay…'
The device responded. That alone was a great sign as it proved it still could operate.
'Processing will be complete over the next twenty-three years,' the device then replied, pouring a bucket of cold water down Daniel's head.
"That's a lot longer than I anticipated," Daniel bit down on his lips. He then took a deep breath before standing up, for real this time.
'Activate upon completion of the processing,' Daniel then thought.
"Twenty-three years," he muttered, looking up to the empty sky. He then quickly did the math in his head.
"Welp," Daniel released a long moan as he stretched his body before orienting himself towards the north where he could see a range of mountains far off in the distance. "Five years to set everything up and then eighteen more for a proper reincarnation…" Daniel muttered before a small smile finally reemerged on his face. "But first, it's time to get back at those damn traitors!"
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