Chapter 48 - True Awakening

I had been a few months since the incident in the dining hall had happened and nothing had really changed. Well, that's a lie, a few minor changes did happen, but they were just minor.

First, my routine had been reduced by a large amount, giving me no lessons on etiquette anymore and instead, lessons of weapon mastery. I had also started to take educational classes instead of etiquette which once upon a time filled my whole schedule. It seemed like the adults had finally learned their lesson about messing with me when I'm pissed. I'm sure the old hag and the old bastard would be able to beat me without much effort but I couldn't say the same about Elaina and her husband.

If I were to use magic, I would probably be able to kill both of them without getting injured heavily if I'm careful, not that injuring me mattered anyway. Injuring me at best would decrease my stamina and make me a little more hungry for both soul flames and mana.

Since Elaina was a long ranged mage, she wouldn't be much of a struggle to beat, but since she would be working with her husband who was a close range warrior mage, it would be a lot more difficult. Sniping Elaina would be hard but not impossible, while beating her husband in close range combat would be close to impossible. Thankfully, if it ever came to fighting both of them, I can use their lack of braincells against them, making their team work break and me stand victor.

Anyway, all hypotheticals aside, the practice of weapon mastery was exceptionally useful, almost as useful as training with my father. I had found my main weapon of choice, which would be a long sword, my secondary close range weapon quick damage dealing weapon to be 2 short swords, my previous main weapons, and finally, the extra weapons which are mainly situational at best. This would include hammers, spears, a bow if I have the suitable ammunition or even a staff-pole that I can use to extend and enlarge, like one of the weapons in a comic I used to read.

Furthermore, through the educational classes I had learned, I found most of the things easy to memorise while others like maths or basic science were something already knew. I had learnt about the different kingdoms, the empire. Our Empire was apparently called the Zogarian continent. Everyone within the empire spoke the same language and all the kingdoms had trade routes to each other. In the whole continent there were 4 other empires that always fought for dominance of the continent, yet didn't go to all out war due to many reasons which would take me days to list.

Politics is a weird thing. They have tension and grudges yet they are never willing to settle them. They make fun of each other and their respective families yet they never actually fight. Politics is closer to being compared to kids fighting over toys rather than a battle field. They hold a grudge over everything and are unwilling to let them go unless the other side loses something in return. This just creates and endless look, where no side is more correct than the other and everyone is seen as the villain in someone's eyes.

Every kingdom had an academy better than all the other academies and education facilities within the kingdom, while the central empire had the best academies that only lords, royals and very high class nobles were able to join. Sometimes a normal noble would be chosen to join one of those academies if they had a strong enough affinity and a strong understanding of their element.

Nevertheless, today was a special day! Today I would be sent to the wild as a controlled assessment where I would fight a beast. I am not expected to win, but my teacher will be checking on how I would preform against someone much stronger than me. Of course, this meant that I'm not allowed to fight using magic, but this also meant that I would be finding the limits of my own body! Right now, my precisions and control over the gravity field had become good enough that I can use it on my self while simultaneously creating gravity particles around my opponent to slow them down or make them lose their balance by changing their weight or center of gravity.

My weight right now is about 400kg (881 lb)! This meant that over time, I had to have a stronger control over my gravity field while also being able to hit people like a moving car that had been reduced to the size of a fist.

"Are you ready for today's assessment?" Asked a man with fiery red hair that was held up in a small pony tail. Hair stands at the sides of his forehead went down to his eyebrows while his eyes shone with a strong deep red. His skin was smooth and his abs, which I would see after every training lesson, were something to envy. He kept trying to flirt with Gen, which she seemed to like.

According to her, she found him hot but didn't want to become one of his many flings. One things she did tell me over the last months was how mature I truly was, maybe even more than her, even though I am more than a decade younger than her. That's why she felt it was okay for her to talk about her sexual interests in front of me. When she would ask about who I had a crush on, I would simply say something like "I haven't hit puberty yet" or "I don't anyone interesting".

Anyway, I snapped out of my daze at my teacher's question and looked at him with a wide smile of appreciation before saying, "Yes sir!"

Gen had decided to join us to both look after me and to talk to the tutor while we were on the way to the forest. We left after saying our goodbyes for the day and went straight towards the forest. I tried to act like I was oblivious to their casual flirting while being the best wingman/women I could be which Gen had realised half way through our journey.

When we finally reached the forest, we walked inside and walked in random directions before i made a suggestion.

"We are going to camp for the night, right? That means we will need a good water source and a place to bath in. How about we go to the lake?" I asked looking at both of them

"Well, we would, but I don't know anything about this forest and you don't know how to fly soooo..." Said the red haired man who's name was Raknom Amberzel, which Gen called Rak, said while sighing.

"Well, I can travel by branches, plus, I know where the lake is" I voiced while curving my lips into a smile

"REALLY?!" They both blurted out

"I'm offended that you don't have any faith in my capabilities" I muttered loud enough for them to hear me while acting like I had been offended by looking away with a childish "Hmph"

"okay then princess, how about you take us there?" asked my tutor.

"sure!" I said while jumping out of my pout and running up the trees to reach the nearest branch. I then jumped further up using different branches to get higher and higher until I finally got a good distance away from the ground.

"Lead the way little monkey" Shouted Gen 30 meters away from me while floating to the same altitude as me.

I leaped from one tree to another at speeds that Gen could barely follow behind while Rak didn't have much of a problem. He took this moment to help her by casually grabbing her waist and allowing her to accelerate with him. This made me look back for a second before simply chuckling and increasing my speed with gravity field, since now Gen could follow without falling behind.

Finally, when I got closer to the lake, I felt something! It was something similar to that of the fire fox that I had fought before. It was releasing an unnatural amount of mana no human could release while intertwining it with bloodlust that was coming straight out of its' soul flame. It had an Earth element which I could tell from the mana it was releasing. The difference between awakened affinity humans and beasts were simple.

From what I could decipher after being in this world for so long was that beast and human mana hearts simply did not work the same. While humans would awaken a mana heart to also gain veins and arteries which would both transmit mana outside the body, bring elemental particles to the mana heart to keep it nourished and circulate mana within their body, Beasts simply had the same thing but instead of having pure mana, they would have element infused mana.

This was why most beasts are unable to use more than two elements, and the less elements they had, the stronger their race would be unless that element was light or darkness. Humans had a form of pure mana when they awaken, but the more powerful the affinity to a certain element they awaken, the more infused their pure mana would be with their respective affinity. That is why most people were angry when Gen's brother awakened a strong affinity to wind. It was because they had to train their affinity and magic until their pure mana would become more and more infused with their affinity, making them more powerful.

Training the magic arts also expanded the size of your arteries and veins until your veins eventually become too big for your mana heart which makes it expand too when a mage reaches their second awakening.

In conclusion, the strength of your mana rely on the equation Mana heart size (amount of mana that can be stored inside you) + Mana veins size (how much mana you can exert) + (how intertwined your affinity is with your pure mana / number of affinities) = strength of mana. The higher the number, the strong the spell will be compared to someone who had a smaller number. This means that someone with an extremely high number would be able to make a simple spell of his/hers to be just as strong as an advanced spell of someone below average or average.

Back to the topic at hand, the beast sending out pulses of both blood lust and the earth element kept making noises and growling, making it easy to locate. I dropped down with the speed of a hawk before releasing my original mass and going for the unsuspecting... Squirrel? Well, I don't ever feel bad for killing such a hideous creature.

It looked like a giant rotting squirrel, 7 feet tall with rotting flesh, visible bones and bright red yet cold eyes. It was surrounded by black energy that withered it's surroundings without any discrimination. Many animals were trying to gang up on it just to be completely demolished in a single spell.

The spell looked like a mass of darkness enveloping every single animal just to leave behind a rotting dried up corpse. Not a second to be wasted on hesitating, I unsheathed the small knife on my hip and let it expand in size and weight before being divided into two different long swords, as long as the squirrels neck was wide. I released both swords from their gravity rune before spinning at high speeds, making me look like one of the Beyblade toy's kids played with back on earth.

I put my will into my swords, which was something I had learnt to do in the last few months. Since I had promised myself to become stronger before my birthday and my official awakening, I tried to find new ways to attack, defend and use my weapons efficiently, and this was just one of them. My will was transmitted right through my arms into the sword before igniting it with a golden colour that was 3 inches thick.

The golden aura demanded blood, soul energy and the life of the squirrel in front me, making me slightly worried to why my soul flame would act so aggressively toward the creature I had thought to be just another beast with a rare affinity to darkness. What I failed to understand was what the affinity to darkness implied.

The moment my sword touched the neck of the squirrel, it cleaved right through, decapitating the squirrel in one attack and absorbing the soul flame into my 'Soul Light Brigade' which transferred the energy into my soul flame almost instantly.

The soul flame I had seen as deep red before, had turned into a pitch black essence that was devoured by my golden human soul flame, yet, it didn't stop there. The red essence that remained went to nourish my golden flame, while the pitch black essence reawakened the purple essence within me.

For a moment, a purple flame emerged to swallow the black soul energy whole. The colour of my soul flame reverberated into my eyes that had turned bright violet for a few second. Even though it was for a short moment, information about the things I was looking at started to flood into my brain. Everything become blurry and my mind went into super speed to process the information without breaking my mind.

A headache emerged at the same time while all I could decipher from the information that had flooded into my brain was that dark particles were starting to surround me while every element in the area was being drawn to me and swallowed indiscriminately. After a few second, The pain from the flooding of my mind, he violet and black soul flame and finally, the darkness around me started to all fade away. While the darkness seeped into my soul flame as if it was a mana heart, the soul flame slowly became more and golden. In the end, I could feel my body had been refined to a certain extent by the flooding of elemental energies into my body, while my mind, even though it still hurt like hell, seemed to be able to think and process information a lot faster than it usually did.

I laid there on the ground before I heard the voice of female behind me. "Aarree yoouu ookaayy?" asked Gen, in slow motion.

WHAT THE FU- Wait, is this because of the whole information flood thingy? Gosh... I finally understand the pain of the speedster from the tv show 'spelash'! About this dude who had super speed, thought fast than anyone and had the reaction speed of a god. One thing was that he had to live his life in slow motion, which I do not want to happen.

I spent 3 minutes not saying anything, trying to get used to the speed of everything before it finally felt slightly normal again. I was able to restrain the ability to a certain extent, but everything still felt kind of slow, pissing me off every time someone would talk for too long.

"Did you kill this undead beast?!" My tutor asked

"Undead? Well, I guess? I'm not really sure but it attacked me with some kind of darkness shadow things" I replied while standing up.

"THAT'S AMAZING! I mean, I would give you an amazing grade and I will, but the main reason we are here is for you to know what you are lacking in. I'm sure you surprise attacked the zombie squirrel meaning I cant really tell you what you need to improve on. One thing is for certain though, even if I wasn't here to see what happened, your stealth skills are off the charts! I don't think even I can attack an undead without it being able to find me!"

"Thanks." I replied before dropping my torso on the ground due to the head ache and exhaustion I felt.

Seeing my exhaustion, they both decided it was best if we were to take break before we went towards the lake again. After I rested and the headache faded, We started to move again, this time closer to the ground yet still quite high up. When we finally got to the lake, we all looked for the best camping spot within the area before setting camp somewhere far enough from the lake that we wouldn't be in the way of the beasts going to drink from the lake, while also being close enough to use the rivers that connect to the lace. This was used to both bathe and use to drink water that wasn't from the lake itself, where most beasts and animals would be.

We created a small controlled fire while also putting up two small green and dark green tents with a small mix of yellow. This is what people back on earth would call a "camo" designed tent. It was created to not stand out and was clearly enchanted to stop any mana fluctuations from getting out of the tent.

While I was putting up one of the tents, Gen was helping my tutor, Rak, put up the other one. They were clearly flirting a little too much now, making me worry for what would happen the moment they thought I was asleep. Either way, I made the suggestion that they should sleep in the same tent which was met by a few blushes and awkward turns that I didn't know what to make out of.

"Uhm, Pan... Men like me and fine women like Argen here shouldn't sleep on the same bed or bad things would happen... Very bad things." My tutor said while his face turned even more red that it was before.

"Bad things like what? I always used to sleep with my dad and mom. What is the difference?" I asked in a childish way, making Gen glare at me, knowing fully well what I was doing.

"W-well... First off, you parents are married, so it doesn't count. Secondly, you and your father are related with a really big age gap so it is fine. Me and Gen are not related nor are we married and we are not that far in age, so bad things might happen if we sleep in the same tent" Said Rak, trying to get me to understand without using the words 'pregnant' or 'sex'.

"Hmm? You two would make an amazing married couple though, Why not get married now and sleep in the same tent?" I asked with an aloof expression.

"Pany, p-please s-stop" Asked Gen while covering her face with both her hands.

"Marry! Marry! Marry!" I chanted while pushing them into the tent they had finished making less than a minute ago. They had both been forced to get inside due to them not being able to go against my grip strength. I threw them both inside lightly before muttering with a loud enough voice that they could hear me "Make sure to be careful, I'm sure Gen doesnt want a baby so soon, Plus, you would be forced to marry her".

Both their soul flames froze for a second, both for different reasons, yet they had the same reaction while looking toward each other. From what I can tell, they had both gone pale.. I got into my tent before using air magic to block the sounds from their tent from reaching mine, while meditating for the rest of the night and controlling the mana inside me to increase the size of my mana veins and absorbing elemental energies by breathing.