Chapter 20 – Survival of the strongest

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Her cold stare bore into him, he instinctually knew such a person couldn`t be reasoned with, he had meet countless gazes such as this during the Holy War, angels and demons alike who thirsted for the thrill of battle; they would rather talk with their fists. Moreover, he wanted to know what the reasons behind her actions were. She inhaled deeply, taking a stance, mana and earth essence was rapidly flowing into her body, she was clearly reinforcing it, and her mana control was exceptional as the process had taken a matter of seconds. She lunged at him, with 5 wind lances floating above her; commanding the lances to surround him, she thought she had him cornered. She was adept in multiple attributes looking at how she had used both earth and wind.

Lucifer silently stood at the location not moving an inch, he was calmly analyzing the different tactics and movements she was putting forth, her movements to him were in slow motion, his visual acuity had reached such an abnormal degree, he observed her, noticing she plainly lacked basic combat capabilities, he knew she was a full blown mage type who relied heavily on her mana.

When she dashed in front of him, her right fist empowered by earth essence shot towards his face, with a casual tilt of his head he evaded it. Looking at him dodge her attack so easily, she was slightly perturbed, she commanded the lances around to assault him, while sending a fist barrage of her own. He easily dodged all the attacks with the least amount of movements. His terrifying reflexes and response time let him do so, fighting her was to him like stealing a candy for a baby, literally. She looked flabbergasted at his movements, her breath became heavy, and as her mana pool was running low.

Taking the chance, he delivered a swift flick to her chin, knocking her unconscious, she crumbled to the ground. However, he reluctantly caught her, laying her gently on the decks surface. Splashing a few drops of water onto her, her eyes jolted open and turned to look at him with a grin.

He at that moment thought she had a few screws loose,

“You what are you?” were her first words, he was slightly taken back and a second question followed “Why can`t I read your soul?” That comment perked up his interest.

“What do you mean?” he replied trying to act as incoherent as possible.

“Promise that you won`t tell anyone?” she muttered subtly

“Ok” her responded

“Ever since birth I had this strange ability to read peoples souls, they glowed in different colors at certain emotions and I could read people`s intentions, However, you have nothing, I mean not black there are just no colors it just like and empty void” she spoke softly

He now understood about the bizarre mana fluctuations around her, it was brought about by her strange ability.

“I thought you were the same as me, that`s why I attacked you to check whether you could read me, but it`s seems you have no such ability based on your tone” her voice contained a hint of happiness as she spoke.

“What is your name?” he asked, “Meliene” a gentle voice followed with a giggle.

Getting up, she dusted herself before heading back to her cabin, as she disappeared from sight, he pondered why she could not read his soul but the ability was absolutely overwhelming, letting you read someone`s intentions, that thought scared him a bit, he needed to be wary of her in the future. Gaining the ability would be very beneficial to him, however, he didn`t want it knowing that it would degrade his natural battle instincts overtime as he would become too reliant.

Heading back to cabin, he succumbed into his bed, blanking out. The core creation had physically refreshed him, but mentally he was tired and it came rushing at him at the moment. He slept pleasantly, recovering back to his optimal state, after 8 hours had passed before he got up. A soft knock resounded on his cabin door, before a voice announced

“Sir, we have reached the elven continent and will be docking soon”

Lifting himself of the bed, he picked up his hoodie and circulating mana into it, he got rid of any dust or scent. Wearing it, he exited the cabin taking along his rucksack; he made his way to the deck. As he entered it, he spotted the continent; it was as depicted in the books filled with dense and rich plants. The entire continent looked as if it was a layer of green, from a bird’s eye view. As he viewed it with mana perception he could detect the abundant mana that was released from the plants and it contained far more than the human continent.

As he explored the deck, he spotted Meliene a distance away with her siblings, as she sighted him, she vibrantly waved at him while gesturing him to come over. As he walked towards her, he noticed the suspicious gazes which her elder brother and sister were giving off.

“Hello” he said gently, trying to give an amiable first impression

“This is my brother, Samuel and Sister Casandra”, she spoke cheerfully as she pointed at them, her personality was lively. Samuel and Casandra gave a nod; however, their suspicious stares still persisted.

The ship rocked a little as it entered the harbor, and then came to a halt. The passengers quickly lined up waiting to exit, the ship crew inspected the passengers once again as the disembarked of the ship. It took a while for everyone to leave at the very end the crew once again personally guided the group of Sirvius institute recruits to carriages awaiting them.

As they moved as a group, Lucifer took his time to carefully inspect his competitors; the group had 5 transient rankers and 17 elite rankers which were gathered from all over the human continent and their ages seemed to between 6 and 15. Reaching the carriages, he boarded one of them, seated along with two more recruits. They looked to be commoners by their mannerisms, during the journey to the institute both of them constantly bickered to each other on useless topics. Lucifer seating silently, observed the passing scenery from the carriage, unique plants flourished by the sides of their pathway.

Along the path, he saw several normal Murk bears, ‘Crese dears’ which had four horns protruding from their heads and a skin color of light grey. He even saw an ‘Immolate Skywraith’ a bird with wings as hard as the toughest minerals and with its body ablaze with a bluish flame. Their wings were extracted to produce high quality weapons; however, hunting of these creatures was banned in the elven continent as they lived in harmony with nature. The Skywraiths swiftly maneuvered through the trees.

The elven continent was completely different and the sights he witnessed were exquisite, though after a while he had enough of the greenery, the journey didn`t seem to end as the pathway extended to a far as the eyes can see. He rarely spotted an elves, during their travel, as they usually lived in tribes deep within the forest, were the mana was more rich and pure. Time passed by his thoughts darted onto various topics of him. As the carriage ride continued, he visualized several techniques to add to the Wrath arts which he derived from the only move taught to him by Aunt Hilda ‘Flash Storm’. The techniques he devised were ‘Crescent wave’ a move for close combat and “Moon lathe” a counter attack. The only thing remaining was to try them out in real.

Heaving out a sigh, he pictured the various happening that had concluded up till now, the events that had prevailed; he himself was steadily improving in mimicking human emotions. As he pondered on how to act more human, dark clouds gathered above the forest, as heavy trickles of rain came splashing all around. At that instance the carriages came to a screeching halt. Hearing some harsh rambling, he perceived some ruckus had taken place in front.

Exiting the carriage, he moved towards the front were he saw the other recruits gathered in a semi-circle overseeing something. Looking towards what had garnered their attention, he went to the front of the group, where he saw one of the faculty teachers facing off against a bunch of elven thieves. He had read of them, elf’s themselves consisted of different tribes similar to the beast race, some of them didn`t like to co-exist and others had different reasons for creating their own tribes they attacked other tribes and often travellers on routes raiding them of their goods. In any world, only the strong would survive and the weak would be subjected to death that was the universal law.

The thieves slowly converged around the teacher, who had his hands folded behind his back; his sharp gaze was focused solely on their movements. The thieves didn`t care about the recruits, as they could slaughter them at any moment, as the group itself contained an elven thieve who had reached the god stage. The Teacher had noticed the opponent. No wonder they were confident in their assault.

“Watch carefully”, the elven teacher spoke softly but clearly

As all the recruits sharpened their focus on the upcoming battle, the thieves dashed forward, moving towards the teacher from all sides, their main goal was too immediately get rid of the teacher without any causalities. However, they didn`t use any essence attacks, as they would likely injure their own comrades. At the moment where they were only a few meters away from the teacher, he disappeared; others started to look all around from him. Only Lucifer`s gaze darted up into the air, catching sight of the teacher floating above preparing for a devastating attack.

Thick amount of wind essence gathered around, raising his palm a spiral ball of compressed airstream was formed in front it. All the while, the wind enclosed around him protecting him from assaults while he completed his attack. The thieves attacked him discharging their mana and elemental techniques. However, all of their attacks were rebounded by the wind wall enclosing the teacher. The god ranked elven thief prepared a technique were he covered himself with fire essence, a scorching heat emanated from his body, from afar you could see the fire essence converging into an armor.

Beads of rain water rolled down from the faces as they viewed the fight, the recruits had quickly backed away a hefty distance worried that they would get winded in the discharge of the attack. Lucifer all along kept his focus on both the god ranked experts, thick amounts of mana was emanating from their bodies. At that instance, the teacher`s wind wall dispersed and a large spiral ball came into view. Looking at it, everyone tensed up because a great amount of mana and essence was invested to create it, the attack would certainly be very dangerous up close.

As the thieves viewed the ball their faces went aghast and they tried to run away expect for the god ranked elf. However, a heavy wind pressure nailed them to the ground preventing their escape, at that moment the spiral ball was launched, moving towards the thieves at high velocity, though what happened next was unexpected, the god ranked elf appeared before the spiraling ball and tried to grab hold of it protecting his comrades, as the ball came in contact with his hands a shock wave was discharged, the nearby thieves got sliced into half, a part of the shock wave made its way towards the recruits. Caught unprepared, the boy at the in front of the group got his right hand sliced off into two and then it dispersed. The boy howled as he clamped onto his limb, crying because from the pain that assaulted him but no one moved to help him instead stood aside watching his agony.

For them it was one less competitor, they knew the boy could have become their opponent in the future. All the recruits grinned slightly even Meliene and her siblings had a gratified expression. Looking at the boy, Lucifer didn`t care one bit, they were just trash that would be exterminated in the future. If he was in the boy`s place, all of them would have done the same.

As he gaze again landed on the fight, he watched the elf getting pushed by the ball. A roar of anger erupted from, however to no avail; the spiral ball was somehow absorbing his fire essence and strengthening itself. He knew he was going to die, letting go, he let the ball devour him, his comrades were dead and he knew there was no way to escape, he had emptied his mana pool. As the ball devoured him, his body was shredded into tiny pieces by the wind blades inside the ball. His blood was diffused into the air as the ball dispersed.

As the elven teacher made his way to the recruits, the boy with a chopped limb begged him to heal his wound. As a commoner he had no way to feed his family, being gifted with a high mana capacity his family was overjoyed as they could move out of poverty. But now he was crippled. Tears streamed down his face as he begged, the elven teacher stood in front of him with a cold glint in his eyes and muttered,” Get lost”.

The instructors at the institute didn`t care about their recruits no matter how much you were gifted, only the strongest would survive that was their way of living if you wanted to advance on the path of becoming a true expert. As the boy clutched the teacher`s leg not letting go, the teacher got angry lobbing of the recruit`s head with a slap of his hands.

He turned towards the group and with a vile tone muttered.” The institute is a place where you will engage in deadly combat and only a few of you will graduate. Assassinations and other methods of combat are permitted in the institute. Your job is to be in the last top 100 from 590 other recruits. We`re not responsible for your death and it was very clearly detailed in the letter we had sent to your guardian.

Saying these he went back to the carriage, and what he said was true. Their Guardians had accepted it knowing that they children might suffer from heavy causalities or may even become crippled. However, they had still accepted this condition because even though the Sirvius Institutes methods were unconventional and dangerous they reared monstrous experts. The Sirvius institute was well know because it could produce monsters but hundreds of recruits were crippled or suffered from heavy causalities in it each year. That was the way of this world, experts were many but only a few could get to the top.

Getting on the carriage they continued towards the institute.

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