The late afternoon sun sank lower in the sky as the shadows slowly lengthened. Within a large, verdant forest, a golden carriage was pulled by two black horses down a small, twisted path through the trees. These horses were taller than those of Earth, and were capable of running at high speeds for long distances. They both wore some type of red armor that made them look very fierce. These were the War Horses of the Djage Empire. They were trained for battle, and capable of killing regular mortals with ease.

The driver of the golden carriage was none other than the woman sent by the emperor to fetch Shad, his fourth son. Right now she couldn’t help but glance back at the carriage where Shad was sleeping with a rather complicated look on her face. After two years, the fourth prince had become devilishly strong and more mysterious than ever. She was an Imperial Knight of the Djage Empire, and she had been assigned to protect the Fourth Prince in secret by the emperor. What she had seen during the past two years was incredible. She was only able to witness the Fourth Prince’s physical fitness training, but that alone was enough to make her flabbergasted.

Every morning, the Fourth prince would run up and down the mountain at least five times while carrying a huge amount of weight. These weights were strapped on his back, legs, and arms, and as time went by he slowly increased the weight. He repeated this pattern for two years without missing a day. She had never seen a mage push himself to that length to strengthen his body; indeed, this type of training was just as brutal as the training undertaken by warriors, if not more so. She could clearly sense the explosiveness, flexibility, and toughness of the Fourth Prince when she was near him. After some time, she regained her bearings and tried to stop thinking about the Fourth Prince. She would go crazy if she continued to dwell on what she’d seen.

Within the carriage, oblivious to what the driver was contemplating, Shad appeared to be asleep as he laid on the bench with both eyes closed. In fact, he was very much awake, and was using spiritual perception to inspect his body and his mana pool. Spiritual perception was a method used my mid and high level mages to inspect their body, and could only be accomplished by a mage who had a strong spirit. In the world of Eidrin, the intensity of a person’s spirit was known as spiritual energy, and this is what was tested in the soul intensity test that determined a mage’s talent. This, coupled with a mage’s affinity, were the two largest factors of a mage’s strength.

One of the reasons there wasn’t many mages in the world was the high spiritual energy requirement. The minimum amount of spiritual energy required by a mage was four times higher than an average person would have. Compared to this requirement, the element affinity was secondary.

Shad’s spiritual perception sank deep into his mana pool. Compared to other mages, his mana pool looked more like an infinite space, with no borders or walls. Inside this infinite space there was a small, purple ball of lightning that resembled a seed. This purple lightning seed rotated by itself and swallowed streams of mana, which resembled transparent energy. Each time it swallowed a stream of mana, it released strands of white lightning that permeated the infinite space, turning it into a lightning field. This purple seed was acting as a converter to turn the streams of mana into bolts of lightning. After a while, the countless strands of lightning that were converted by the lightning seed reverted back to streams of mana, and the cycle would start anew.

“I finally can revert the lightning back into mana even after it has been refined” mumbled Shad as he opened his eyes.

Shad knew about this infinite space with the lightning seed inside it ever since he came to this world. It was a part of him, as if it was embedded into his soul. At first, he was afraid of it, but he forced himself to research it and gradually learned to control aspects of its power. Despite his newfound control, it still gave him an uneasy feeling due to the immense destructive power it emitted.

There were several advantages and disadvantages to the lightning seed. First of all, it could convert the mana absorbed by Shad into the lightning strands within his infinite space. This allowed Shad to directly attack someone with the lightning stored inside his infinite space without having to cast a lengthy spell. It normally required time to cast a spell, and to be able to instantly attack with lightning energy without a chant was a good thing for any mage. However, the drawback to this was that his body could not currently withstand releasing high-intensity blasts of the purple lightning. Compared to a regular lightning spell, his instantaneous attack was relatively weak, which is one of the reasons he trained his body so brutally for the last two years.

The biggest drawback he struggled with was that one the lightning seed converted raw mana into the strands of lightning, it was nearly impossible to convert back to mana, which Shad needed to cast other magic spells. After extensive training, Shad finally managed to revert the lightning bolts back to mana even after it had been refined once. The trick was that lightning and mana were both forms of energy, and he simply had to learn to convert between the two. He was very pleased with the results of this training, because the transformed mana became much more powerful and concentrated after it was refined by the purple lightning seed.

The lightning element was generally known for high destructive power and speed, but incredibly low defensive capabilities. As a mage who could only use the lightning element, Shad had to work very hard on improving his defensive capabilities, such as creating a shield of mana. This was unusual for most mages in Eidrin, as most of them could use more than one element of magic through different spells, even though the effects may be slightly weaker. For example, a fire mage might have a weak affinity for earth as well and learn to use low level earth based magical spells. Shad, on the other hand, could only use lightning. It was as though the purple lightning seed disdained all the other elements and declared itself superior. Because of the way this seed was bonded to Shad’s soul, he had zero affinity for any other elements, which was very odd for most mages.

Still, after two years of constant training, Shad managed to shore up most of his shortcomings. He could finally begin walking on the path to become the most powerful mage this world had ever seen.

Edited by eljako98.