415 1 Year Later

1 YEAR LATER

Time seemed to flow a lot faster, when you're a vampire the years become the same, a year passing by did not become as significant as you would expect it to be, it was just like a day in the endless stream of the river that was known as time. The dark council has been pretty much silent, the rest of the dragon gods had gone on a murderous vengeful spree as they rooted out as much of the dark council's forces as they could, breaking them down and killing any that stood in their way. Many of dark gods were currently sitting in a prison of mine, Joshua's and David's own design.

They were sealed, their souls ripped out of their bodies and trapped in much the same way many of my previous enemies had been, and their minds subjected to endless torture and torment courtesy of David's telepathy, and as for their bodies; Joshua's control over the wind element was unprecedented, he had a power unlike any other and that pretty much shook me. He could make his wind sharp enough to cut through dimensions, and he was steadily reaching the point of being able to cut through the veil between universes.

Their bodies were subjected to constant torture and cuts from thousands of wind blades, their lungs pumped full and derived of air, gods they may be, but there were not fully immortal. Killing them would have been a mercy, and none of us were feeling particularly merciful at that moment, so we made sure they suffered as much as they can. During this one year the lines were really blurred, who were the villains and who were the heroes… I think at some point we stopped giving a shit.

This was war, there were no heroes, just enemies and the helpless people that got caught in the crossfire of this war. But things calmed down after the first few months, dragon kings can be really efficient when they decide to be, so far nothing has been heard from the dark gods. Their camps were empty, their temples abandoned, and their followers all in hiding, even on their own home planet. But that was that, in that time I've just busied myself with being the God king and a teacher at Kodak's academy.

There has been a lot of achievements, the system seemed to have settled on a particular evolved form for everyone, at least it would remain that way until the next universe merge in four years. Spero grew, and it still kept growing being home to countless races. The universe got bigger, and because of that so too did the planet that was rapidly turning out to be the nexus of civilization. But even then, in the year that has passed, none of the dragon kings had felt earth… we feared the worst, but we didn't give up hope.

"Right! Well like I was saying the soul is a simple thing, but it can still be extremely complex. Very few are born with the talent to manipulate and cultivate soul energy, but those that do would have access to the source code of the universe, being able to affect, nudge, manipulate and completely rewrite the rules of reality." A student raised his hand and I nodded to him, giving him permission to ask the question he wanted to.

"You Majesty is it possible for someone who wasn't born with the ability to manipulate soul energy to learn it? In much the same way some mages might be able to learn how to use other attribute magic to a certain degree." I cocked my head to the side and smiled, there was a couple of way to answer this question, however the wrong answer even though true might send quite a lot of these students pushing a boulder up a hill in an attempt to master soul energy.

"Well Maximillian. or Max rather, it is possible for an un-attributed practitioner to learn a bit about soul magic, in fact many of you already use soul magic in your day to day uses. The bonds of vampires, team mates, those between beast master and beast, regardless of its race, those who can divine the future, etc. those are subdued uses of soul energy and lots abilities, however to even get a step into the threshold of soul magic without having been born with the talent, you would have to die!" there were gasps and murmurs between the students, I shifted my gaze to Cassiel and Michael, both of them looking at me with raised eyebrows, I smiled, guess I can trick my own kids.

"Well not die per say, but you have to either have come close enough to death that you would be able to perceive a soul, or experienced enlightenment and come in contact with your soul. But sometimes that's never really enough, even those who are able to grasp the concepts might only ever be able to make their souls stronger, giving them stronger perception, intuition and defense against mental and soul attacks.

The people with the most luck when it comes to mastering soul abilities are cultivators, at a high enough stage, after training their bodies and energy they eventually get to train and refine their souls. And luckily for some, it's possible to actually cultivate, but as opposed to other sort of training, cultivating takes years and years or practice and experience. The youngest person to master soul refining was the water dragon king and he was already 128 when he did that.

But, it doesn't matter what lays in front of you, in Spero and beyond, If You Will It!" I paused so that the students can complete the little motto I had come up with for them during our classes.

"THEN YOU CAN ACHIEVE IT!!!"

"Good, class dismissed."