A little skip forward. The Pagoda of Inheritance is a point of interest. It would be better to experience rather than watch.
As Aiden made his way to the infirmary, his breathing got harder. It felt like he had a lump in his chest, weighing him down, and keeping him from taking deep breaths. The infirmary was still a few minutes away at this point.By the time he arrived outside the infirmary, there was no patience because he immediately pushed the door open. He stumbled in with his the lump of red that had grown under his neck, much bigger. It was so painful now that he was just short of screaming.A nurse noticed him and hurried over when she saw Aiden's face. He had sweat dripping from his forehead like rain."What happened?", She asked as she tried to lead Aiden to a bed to lie down, but Aiden did not budge, he only managed to choke out his request. "Please call Miss Riordan"The nurse paused for a moment before she hauled Aiden to a bed, then ran off into the hall.Aiden's eyes were shut tightly now and his teeth felt like they had cracked but he only made a groan from time to time. Thankfully, the
"Again...!!""Again...!!!"This was the prevalent sound in the clearing where two people could be seen, tangled in intense combat. A few minutes later, one of them slid back after he took a heavy blow to the side, barely blocked by the staff in his hand.He had managed to block the dual sword attack that she used against him but there was some pain, as well as some more force that he wasn't able to hold off... or so it seemed.Aiden stood up once more at the sound of the ear-piercing order, "again...!!!".Despite beating Aiden over and over again, Princess Diane still did not believe the results of the fight in the slightest. This was a result of Aiden not having full control over his strength as a second-order apprentice.Princess Diane was wielding her dual swords; training versions of them. If she used her real swords instead of the wooden ones she had right now, the fight would be over before Aiden raised his weapon.Aiden waited for the attack to come and instead of dodging or b
"Ohh, so what element is it?""..."She had barely gotten it out when a voice sounded out behind them."Get yourselves in order, we are starting immediately..."Aiden stole a look there and saw an aged-looking man who was wearing long scholarly robes."Good day, sir", Aiden greeted along with Prince Adrian and the two princesses."Hmm... Good day to you too... Get started already, I need to know what you know and what you are missing"The man ordered. Princess Diane wore a proper human look for once as she walked off to one side of the clearing."Go pick a weapon for yourself, and bring me the dual swords", she ordered as she walked away.Aiden felt the seriousness and decided to put away a part of his thoughts as he quickly got a staff and the dual swords she asked for.Aiden still had no idea who the old man was, to elicit this level of respect from the crazy princess, but he did know that the man was a serious person, quite important as well."Begin"Princess Diane did not take any
Soldiers carrying torches and weapons ran past a small dark alley in the ever-darkening evening atmosphere... In this alley, a few eyes were staring, seeking the slightest bit of information they could pick up from the outside."Captain, how are we to escape them?", a soldier asked in a silent voice.Reid looked at the one who asked the question and said, "we'll use General Tarrenblaze's creations. Some of them remain hidden to this day. Hidden away in his memories and mine... We can no longer stay in the city, we have to leave. Our families will be fine, we have not gone to see them since we came from beyond the walls"The soldier fell silent. Aside from this soldier, there were a few others, bringing their numbers up to 10. They all stuck low and close to the walls. They waited and waited for the sun to set completely. It had been hours since they'd been waiting when Reid gave the order."Let's go..."His judgment for when to move could only be described as impeccable because he le
The Forest Of Dreams...There were eight of them left; following after Reid, they moved farther and farther into the forest."Be careful... Stay close, and don't touch anything...", Reid ordered.The forest was quiet as they walked through it. There was the occasional cawing of a bird or the growling of a beast somewhere in the distance. Everything was as normal as you would expect it to be.The farther they went into the forest, the more unrecognizable things got. When they had just entered the forest, the trees and the plants were ones they knew, but at some point along the way, those trees and plants had faded away, replaced by new, unrecognizable ones.The group had kept their hands to themselves, making sure not to touch anything as they continued through the forest.They walked for about two hours without pause when Reid suddenly stopped in his tracks. The others stopped as well, their senses going into overdrive as they tried to pick out the problem."I repeat, stay close. We h
Prince Adrian dived to the right in a bid to escape. The briwyn let out a grunt as it tried to chomp down on Prince Adrian. Prince Adrian backed away from the beast and they both got a break from attacking and defending; watching each other's movements carefully, Prince Adrian and the briwyn circled each other, trying to find the right moment to attack.Both were patient but Prince Adrian was more patient. This led to another quick dash from the beast as it tried to catch Prince Adrian off guard.A futile effort because the beast overshot its target, sliding past Prince Adrian who had turned his body to the left and stepped to the right, swinging his sword down onto the beast's head.A direct hit would have been the result, slicing the beast's head clean off its neck but reality defied these expectations.The beast that was millimeters away from death suddenly vanished, reappearing a few meters away from Prince Adrian, in the same spot it was before it dashed at Prince Adrian.Prince
Evening came and Aiden went to the farm he was assigned to. Despite it being a farm, he showed up early.As he approached the farm, he discovered that a lot of uninformed people were heading in the same direction. He looked around and saw that they all had overalls in their hands.As he looked around he saw Mallory. Mallory was walking alone as one would expect. Without a second thought, he walked over to Mallory. Mallory also had an overall in his hand."Hey, Mallory..."The boy was startled badly when he heard Aiden's greeting... He turned around to see Aiden. This was another surprise because Aiden was not the person he expected to see at the moment."You... What are you doing here...? Don't you have the training session to attend to...?"Aiden smiled when he heard Mallory's question..."You got screwed over again... I get it..."Mallory immediately guessed that things were not as simple as Aiden coming to meet him or some other bizarre reason like that. The only cause for Aiden's
There was the sound of something cracking, followed by a pained scream that rang through the room.Miss Riordan stood to the side as she watched Aiden undergo the reforging process. Even with her nerves as a healer, she flinched every time there was a crack.Aiden's reforging was as painful as you would expect. Every bike in his body was breaking, reforming into a hardened bone moments later.This had been going on for fifteen minutes and Aiden had broken every bone in his body at least twice. Throughout the whole process, Aiden could not manage to keep his screams back. Thankfully, he came to Miss Riordan when he felt the weirdness, getting Miss Riordan to isolate the space for his breakthrough.With no breaks in between, Aiden went a few hours in this agony, breaking every bone over and over again. He did this seven times for every bone before the reforging was completed.The bones that reformed were stronger and tougher making them even harder to break in the next round. This made
The crowd was pulled from the tragedy that the nobles caused, and some people started to point to the group suspended above them, whispering and murmuring various pieces of gossip.This was a topic that excited them all, however, the ones who were most excited for the revelation were the nobles who finally knew the people who beat them to occupy the highest floor of the tower.They did not hide the wicked grins on their faces and Aiden saw these grins on their faces. He also saw that the group were starting to descend from the sky into the midst of the crowd. That was bad and was quickly made worse when he noticed the nobles setting their hounds on the group.He could guess their thoughts. Even if the group was stronger than they were, given the position they occupied, they did not believe it and wanted to know for themselves how powerful they were.This gave Aiden a headache and his mind began to spin quickly, looking for a big enough distraction that would give the group a chance to
None could ask the other for help because each had someone attacking them, however, they were not noble scions for nothing. Despite being overpowered by the golems, they dealt some damage over time.It was not immediately obvious, but they managed to hold their own, and avoid grievous injuries even though there were several close calls.It took them each about an hour to circumvent their respective golems and deal enough damage to break through their chests.Hadrian was the first followed by Oscar shortly after with Tristan clocking in third, a few seconds behind Oscar. He was unhappy with this but he had no time to be unhappy because his face soon changed into a somber look. Oscar who had just tried to pick up the glowing multi-coloured orb was surprised to find the orb roll away from him and float up to meet the orb that came from Tristan’s golem. This also meant that the orb in Hadrian’s hand was the only one that remained.Oscar and Tristan noticed this, but they could do nothin
No one cared who had said that word because they all ran. The sight of the gray tentacles rising like pillars from the depths of the abyss was enough to scare every one of them.At the same moment, there was a rumble that spread across the skies of the city at that moment. Everyone heard it. Aiden, sitting in the restaurant was jolted from his thoughts and joined everyone else as they looked up at the ruin.He witnessed a few of the tentacles of the beast appear on the edge of the ruin as he had seen before they entered the ruin.‘That bridge, huh? They might be lucky enough to escape'.He did not care much if these people beat the ruin and made it to the temple. He had gotten his rewards and he was happy with that.Tristan and his group had immediately dashed off the bridge, but the tentacles came down on the bridge at a lightning-fast speed.This attack ripped the bridge apart, leaving just three people from Tristan’s group unscathed.Tristan’s face was painted with horror like ever
Aiden was dumbfounded. How was this a reward? It simply contradicted itself. The problem it caused was having him be a prime target for the Zaltyr, but it would also save him from them once.Then, is the mark erased once the life-saving opportunity is used?[Yes, everything returns to normal after that]This made him heave a sigh of relief. He tried to look at this from a positive perspective. This meant the mark was not meant to specifically protect him from the Zaltyr, its main purpose was to protect him from every other thing that tried to kill him.Thinking about it this way made it easier to accept the fact that he was going to be in trouble with the Zaltyr sooner or later, albeit only slightly.Elder Zarek watched Aiden go through his thoughts for a few minutes while he thought of the command he had received from The World Seed.Aiden had recovered his thoughts at this point and decided to check on his elemental seed. He was elated to see the changes to his elemental seed.The mu
None of the thirty remaining survivors was stupid and they took things as calmly as they could. There was no visible harm to resting till a problem was identified and this was something they unanimously agreed on.As they expected, there was something that was out of the ordinary and it was found after two hours of waiting.The quiet rumble that came from the depths of the chasm was enough of a wake-up call.Theo of the Arco twins was the one who made the first comment, breaking the silence. None of them believed that crossing the bridge would be easy from the start, however, the realization that some unknown danger lurked beneath was enough to bring them flashbacks of their time in the maze.“There’s something down there as well? Why is this trial so difficult?”“Good thing we were patient…”“Patient? What does that do for us?”“Theo is not completely wrong. Every stage of the trials had been harder than the last”, Oscar took a deep breath.“Indeed… Something that can cause such a ru
“You just had to jinx it?”Raven rolled her eyes in response.The orb glowed and the rubble spread across the hall was drawn to it. One piece after the other, they mashed together and barely a moment later, a statue had formed.This statue looked the same as the ones they fought before, save for a few important differences. One, this new statue was massive, at least three times as tall. Two, the statue now had a weapon – A halberd which it swung around. Three, most importantly, it had lines running all over its body. Looking close enough these lines were runes just like the ones Aiden and the rest had, but these were very close to being complete, easily dwarfing the ones they had.Their expressions turned grave as the glowing eyes of the massive statue locked onto them.It was a golem, and it wasted no time. With a roar that sounded like thunder, it wielded its halberd and charged at them.There was no running from it, because, a sweep of its halberd made the hall feel claustrophobi
Raven who had suggested was the first to move, and the moment she did, everyone else followed her one after the other. They got to the stone coffin amidst their careful creeping without any problems. The unnerving feeling that they felt from the statues kept them on their toes as they expected everything to go wrong at any moment. "Now what", Raven asked. Aiden and Connor stepped here, and as he instructed; "Keep an eye out", the two of them pushed the lid off the stone coffin. They were right to be worried, because the moment the stone coffin opened slightly, light burst out of the opening. They were taken aback by this absurd light show, however, the light was like a tonic, one that breathed life into the surrounding. Life into the several warrior statues that lined the walls. Each of their eyes opened with a snap, glowing a bright orange, followed by cracks that came from the loosening of the joints on the statues. Gadiel was the first to speak regret about the situation, but
With Aiden and Connor leading the way, they stepped onto the rope bridge. The silence that fell on them at that was quite unnerving, but it helped them keep their focus. This meant that their reactions were spot on as they responded immediately to Aiden making any signals.This was the moment that they finally understood the danger that lay in the chasm beneath them. Apart from the scary chasm that looked like a bottomless pit, a sight that already promised them death should they fall into it, there was something else living in the chasm, and the dreadful atmosphere it brought with evidence of its existence sent chills running their spines. The conclusion here was very simple, there was trouble and they needed to be careful.Listening carefully, they heard the silent rumbles gradually fade away, taking with it the tense atmosphere they felt. You would expect Aiden to make a sudden dash to get across as quickly as possible, but he didn't. He was taking no chances, so continued steadily
"Three days?!", Raven started."Oh, don't get worked up, it was more like two and a half days", Princess Eleanor chipped in.Unfortunately, this did not change the reaction Raven had; in fact, her reaction got worse at that moment as she got frantic and almost lost her mind as she looked around."Calm down, Raven. Things are not as bad as you think. We are out of the grassland maze; of course, we had to wait for everyone to de-petrify before we continued…", Deirdre explained."So, what trial do we have now?", Raven asked and immediately got a response."Oh, the long rope bridge, strung across the chasm that has a tentacled beast living in it", Deirdre responded like that piece of information was of no consequence.Raven was silent as she stared off into space for a moment. When she got her mind back, she asked almost immediately… "Are we crossing now that I am awake?"A question to which Princess Eleanor answered in a snarky and sarcastic tone… "Hopefully". Her comment got a few gazes