Aiden stood before the doors that lead to The Royal Family's Dining Area.He waited as the butler announced his presence before the doors opened and he stepped into the hall.Immediately, he was blown away by the craftsmanship that went into designing the place. It was an overdressed room to be brutally honest but this was one dressing to be appreciated once you laid eyes on it.He soon collected his thoughts. He turned to look at the dining table. It was still a beautifully crafted one and the chairs were just as pretty with the chairs at both ends looking extra special, taller and nicer."Your Majesties, Your Highnesses", Aiden greeted everyone."It's great that you could make it. You can take your sit", King Robert said."I am grateful for the invitation", Aiden replied as he took the seat reserved for him.The seat was to the left of King Robert, in between Princess Diane and Prince Dante, directly opposite Prince Adrian who had Princess Caitlyn sitting to his right.This was the
"The Selection is a yearly event for choosing the best of your apprentices"A message had come in from the capital for an increase in every nation's quota. So, one hundred and fifty of them were seated in front of a small stage. The middle-aged trainer stood there explaining the points to take note of... Elder Friesian sat to the side watching quietly.The rest who had not been chosen would be trained in the city with the army. Every other city in the nation of Sur would also have participants chosen to attend The Selection.Aiden was present and he sat at the back, out of sight. Even so, he could hear everything the trainer said, loud and clear."The threshold is set at the third-order apprentice rank so the competition will be somewhat fair. Note that breaking through during the test is very common"This was information that most of them knew. They were impatient because of this and the trainer could feel it."The first test is the same as every year. You have to earn the qualificat
As soon as he opened the door..."Are you okay? I felt the spiritual energy go crazy in your room for a moment"Aiden nodded as he pulled the door all the way so that Mallory could enter."What happened?"Aiden closed the door and was just about to explain when he saw Mallory with wide eyes."What is it?", He askedHowever, Mallory was frozen in place as he kept looking at Aiden.Aiden turned around to see if there was anything behind him when he heard Zarek warn him.["Your astral projection seems to be under attack. I'm warning you so you can keep your consciousness. If you lose consciousness, you might never wake..."]Aiden had tensed up immediately after he heard that his astral projection was under attack.Before he heard everything Zarek wanted to say, he felt a tight pull in his mind. It was as if something was trying to rip his mind in half.With a groan he fell to his knees, head to the ground as the pain racked his body.Maybe it was the groan but Mallory snapped back to att
With a nod of the head amid a whole lot of waves, Aiden stood with the rest.King Robert stood with the nobles and had just finished addressing them. Queen Vivienne, Prince Dante, Princess Freya, and Prince Fitzgerald also stood with him.Princess Freya had looked Aiden straight in the eye which was why Aiden nodded.One after the other, they entered their assigned carriages. They were arranged in order of rank. He had been assigned the second rank, just after Princess Diane, so he sat in the first carriage.These carriages were not crafted from the best materials possible, but it was so big that they required six feral horses to pull them.With a foot stepping up to enter the carriage, Aiden turned to look at the crowd, picking out the few faces that meant anything to him.Mallory stood with Miss Riordan, Warden Bo, and Madam Rou. Last but not least was Princess Freya. After his devastating run-in with an astral attack, he understood Princess Freya's wishes a lot better.The moment
The door opened and one of her guards brought a small girl in.The girl had snow-white hair that fell past her shoulder. Her hair was dirty and messed up at the moment but it could only be an impressive sight once it was cleaned.She looked at the girl who had passed out at her feet for a few moments. Her eyes scrutinized the girl thoroughly. She was looking for what made her feel different about this girl, however, the girl looked ordinary.Was it something else and she'd associated it with the wrong person?She looked through the windows on both sides of the carriage to be sure but she felt nothing different."Take her to an infirmary and pay for her treatment. She is to visit when she gets better"The guard nodded and carried the girl out of the carriage to carry out her instructions.Her ride continued through the city till she got bored and returned to her house.***The was the sharp sound of a whistle. It came from the front of the carriage.There were a few more that followed
......Fighting techniques are divided into star ranks, from 1★ - 12★. Each star rank corresponds to the rank you're at.First to seventh order: 1 - 7Priest to Monarch: 8 -12Trying to learn a fighting technique before you get to the rank required to learn it can lead to fatal injuries.Just like sets in artifacts, there are fighting techniques with volumes corresponding to successive star ranks.Sets are rare and can give a bigger boost in fighting power compared to individual fighting techniques.......["Get up"]"It's time?"["Yes"]"Thanks"There was a moment of silence as Aiden tried to get his mind in order.["So what did you learn this time?"]"Fighting techniques"["Anything from the stele?"]"No"["Keep trying, that stele hides secrets that can cause empires each other if they find it"]Aiden's mind recalled the scene where he floated through space as he experienced chaos.He'd touched on something that day but he couldn't put his finger on what it was."I will", he answered
She opened the door to see a box sitting in front of the door. It was a pretty big box. She peeked out the door to see who had dropped it off but she saw no one. After a slight pause, she opened it and saw that it was divided into sections. Each section had a different thing in it. The biggest section was filled with clothes. The smaller ones either had jewelry or shoes.She dragged the box into the room and locked the door before she dragged the box into the empty dressing room.She opened the closet and hung the clothes one after the other. She put the shoes on the shelves and the jewelry on stands or in the glass cabinets.By the time she was done arranging everything, she had spent a few hours on it.Standing in front of the half-filled closet, she lost count of how many times she looked over all the fancy clothes.There was only one dress that was remotely simple enough to fit her tastes.It was a plain light blue dress. Not long after, she had put it on. Her hair was let down,
"Every person had a seed inside them but only a small percentage of people were able to awaken their seeds.The seeds awoken will always have a specific elemental inclination and the more compatible the seed is with the element it was inclined to, the more powerful the control over the element and the more powerful the arcana it belongs to will be"Deirdre nodded as Miss Seiran explained things. Some of these she already had an idea of."Since you have once been exposed to an incredibly pure source of aether during your first awakening and it did not work, we'll have to use a different method""How will we do that?""I'll have to stress your elemental seed to the point of breaking""Will that be painful?", she asked."Are you having second thoughts?", Aoife asked in response.Deirdre hardened her expression with some determination."Let's get started"They were currently standing in a cavern. The rocky walls had a glassy look to them, seemingly glowing in the greyness of the space.Dei
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