Hero's Return 33 Results

Seth looked at the 3 with a confusing set of emotions, he felt pride, anger and a rare sense of admiration. His admiration came from the fact that he didn't reach this level until way after his leader had died, just thinking about how far these 3 would go if they had reached his level sent chills down his spine, whilst his admiration for them was present, it did not mean he didn't feel mad, mad for not being born with the natural talent to be able to attain this level this early, his pride was shattered right now. But seeing that the incarnation of his leader had seemed to be getting along with them now made him feel relieved, and to him that's all that mattered right now.

Se: "To think... and I worked so hard..."

Natu patted Seth on the back.

N: "It's okay..."

Se: "..."

*Pat*

*Pat*

*Pat*

Se: "Would you quit that?"

Natu stopped patting but chuckled to himself as he stared back towards the 3 figures in question.

N: "But seriously though, what kind of stuff did they go through to get to this level this early in their lives?"

Se: "Either they trained hard or something real bad happened to the 3 of them"

I: "Isn't Aura Manifestation really hard to do?"

Iona's view of Aura Manifestation was just that it was something 'really hard to do', she didn't actually know the details of what it was or how it was attained, only how difficult it was to do so. Seth saw her innocent view of it as cute, and replied casually.

Se: "Yeah, it is really hard to do... even for someone like me..."

Seth thought back to the h.e.l.lish environment his body had to get used to years ago, his time in that h.e.l.l was most likely the most painful experience he had ever gone through, if it weren't for his loyalty to his leader, he would have more than likely died in that place, his body burned until there was nothing left, but he managed to keep his focus up, every minute of every day, every minute of every night, the constant burning was h.e.l.l at first, but as the years pa.s.sed, as everything in that h.e.l.l attacked him consistently every day for years on end, his skin had become impenetrable by the flames and the denizens - when he reached that level, that was when he could confidently say he had reached the first level of Aura Manifestation. He could finally hold on to the h.e.l.lflame, and after years and years of constant training, he could utilise it to it's fullest.

Se: "I'll never forget..."

Seth then looked at the 3 figures again.

Se: "I can use 'Aura Manifestation', but I'm not the only one... Xion can use it too... We need to tell her about these 3, she can hone them to the best they can possibly be. She's probably the most qualified in all of Elia"

Xion's Aura Manifestation was different from Seth's, everyone's was different. Seth's had his skin turn draconic, and his entire body went through a change so that he could use the h.e.l.lflame efficiently, it was something that he went through years of h.e.l.l for. While Xion suffered a similar treatment, Xion's Aura Manifestation involved no physical changes in her body, all it did was coat her entire body in a barrier of condensed lightning magic, this magic was extremely powerful, and due to it's natural power to cause destruction, it acted as both a defensive barrier and an offensive amplifier for her physical attacks, it could even cause lightning to strike wherever she hit, granted the physical attack was strong enough to generate enough of an impact. But she essentially had to act as a lightning rod atop multiple mountains to attain it, she had grown almost impervious to lightning, just as Seth had grown impervious to fire.

[Shattered Arena]

?: "NO!"

Someone had just been chased to the edge of the Arena and had been tripped up at the end, leading to their fall off of the arena, with this. The population has been reduced to 75. Sora and Jin had been doing some more sparring and were currently shattering the Arena, everyone else in the group had already given up on fighting eachother as they watched, they familiarised themselves with eachother, talking about eachother's backstories and strengths, none of them really thought of the others as bad people through their aura's so they shared a friendly conversation, everyone else had already saw the strength of this group first hand, attacking one of them specifically for some people would lead to an easy or somewhat difficult win, but attacking them when they were in a group was basically throwing your chance away, so people just opted to fight eachother instead. As soon as the 76th candidate was knocked off the Arena, a horn blared, signalling for everyone to stop fighting, the loud noise was almost deafening to the ears and stopped anyone who was fighting. Sora and Jin walked back to their group with smiles on their faces.

So: "Man, I didn't know you could get that strong with just physical attacks and no magic!"

J: "Can you really talk? You didn't even use your sword!"

So: "Yeah? It's a fight right? It's not fun if it's one-sided"

J: "Really? I beat you though, if you used your sword you would have probably beat me"

So: "Nah, I wanna see how strong I am without it"

J: "Fair enough"

Sora and Jin were already talking comfortably, and this made the accomplices of both sigh in relief. They both arrived and joined their now pretty large group. This circle of candidates was made up of Sora, Del, Rez, Joe, Indy, Jin, Zero, Len, Lux, Rin and Garoda.

So: "When did we get so much people in our group?"

Jo: "Hey, I still wanna fight with you fair and square"

I: "Yeah me too"

So: "We're still friends though, right?"

Joe and Indy looked at each other and after a short pause smiled and nodded at Sora.

Ji: "To think two people here could use spatial magic"

Jo: "It's me that's surprised, you guys can fight at the same level as us without magic, your aura's don't seem to be much stronger than our's either. I can't find out what's making you so strong"

Jin looked at his hands.

Ji: "To be honest... we really don't know either"

Jin laughed and scratched his head.

The ground below them began to rumble, all of the remaining candidates reacted almost immediately and tried to balance themselves.

So: "What's this?!"

Sora's group had all reacted and were balancing themselves, the ground beneath them began to crumble before completely shattering. All of the candidates were now falling to the ground, with either the shattered remaining rocks or other candidates by their sides. As they fell faster and faster towards the ground, some had already prepared how they would land. Rez looked towards all of the people close to him and began linking them all with his strings, pulling all of them towards him then creating a sphere of soft string. The sphere was big enough to hold all of them in it without being too cramped. After a couple of minutes they began to grow suspicious of what was going on outside, seeing as they hadn't felt anything from the outside for ages, Rez withdrew the sphere and found that they were floating a couple centimetres above the ground. They all softly landed on the ground, all of them looked around and it seemed like the ones around them were waiting for the withdrawal of the sphere. Next to them was an older woman with dark brown hair, but her face was hidden behind a cloak that she wore, she had also been waiting for the withdrawal of the string sphere. The aura she held felt like a summer breeze, immediately relaxing all of the remaining candidates and allowed them to begin cooling down after the intense free-for-all that they had just gone through. The woman looked around at the candidates then to the group of people right in front of her and scanned each of them individually before nodding her head.

?: "So you are the ones that caused the most trouble up there..."

Sora and Rez were confused.

So: "What? Were you watching us?"

?: "Yes"

R: "What?! How?!"

Del looked at them hopelessly.

D: "Seriously? What else would you think they would do?"

Jo: "Yeah... they have to scout out the candidates somehow..."

I: "Pretty obvious if you think about it..."

So: "Oh... I didn't really think about it..."

R: "But how did they do it?"

This was where the group's overall knowledge ended.

D: "That... I don't know..."

The cloaked woman chuckled and pointed towards a far side of the field they were still standing on, she seemed to be pointing at nothing at first but a light in the shape of a slender man began slowly appearing, the colours around him had a multi-coloured hue before the colours became more clear, and a man wearing a suit appeared. Sora knew this kind of magic.

R: "I couldn't even sense him..."

So: "Light magic?"

The woman looked at him and was surprised for a brief moment, whilst she knew from the fight that he could use light magic she didn't know that someone who seemed like one of the less intelligent in the group would know about such an advanced concept of light magic. Little did she know that Sora had access to everything light and darkness had to offer, only that he was not strong enough to wield it. Sora's powers were like an armory filled with weapons, but each 'weapon' needed a specific level of power to be reached. Like levels in an RPG, all Sora needed to do was become strong enough to be able to utilise them. Something like refraction which he had used to turn Rin invisible some time ago wasn't a directly offensive magic, and it's use was very situational, so Sora didn't need much to be able to use it. Anyone else would be out of luck, they would have to go through the meticulous practice of using light magic in such a different way than usual.

?: "So you know about the utilisation of refraction in light magic?"

So: "Yeah, it's one of the easier ones right?"

The woman was shocked. Whilst refraction was definitely not the most powerful offensive ability for light magic, it definitely could not be looked down upon. Use of it required one to be at a high level of attunement with the light, calling it 'easy' would be like spitting in the faces of higher level light magic users. Sora had been given full control of two magics though, and he had been given no reason to think that this aspect of light magic was difficult, so he just said it as it was. Del noticed the woman's shock and hit Sora on the head.

So: "Ah! Hey!!! I didn't even do anything!!!"
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D: "Respect other people..."

So: "Huh?!"

Sora was confused.

Del apologised for him.

D: "Sorry, ever since hes gained his affinity for light and darkness he's become numb to the levels of it that most people are used to"

?: "Oh... well... that's fine..."

The cloaked woman dismissed the subject but kept thinking about just how high ones affinity to light magic needed to be in order to say such things, this wasn't even mentioning that one, he seemingly had a similar affinity to darkness and two, utilising both light and darkness was unheard of. Many of the spectators watching had been shocked by this sudden development in the prior tests but had kept quiet about it, they could just ask Sora personally later after all.

After finis.h.i.+ng with Sora's group, the woman walked to the other surviving candidates, whether they were by themselves or were also in groups. Then nodded her head. From where she was standing when she finished looking through the candidates, she looked towards the rest and shouted.

?: "All candidates still standing have been totalled up to 75! All have been accepted into the Sta.r.s.eeker School! Please prepare yourself to be teleported back to the school!"

After finis.h.i.+ng her words, a bright blue glow suddenly illuminated the ground below all of the candidates standing in the field and flashed with a blinding light, after the light disappeared the field was completely empty, after a few seconds the cracked and destroyed ground and destroyed environment seemed to begin fixing itself.

After the blinding light disappeared, the candidates found themselves in a hall, its size was enormous, the distance between the candidates and the ceiling of this hall could be compared to the land and the sky, the 'ceiling' didn't seem to be solid though, as it just extended into the darkness, within this darkness were beautiful constellations, stars and galaxies - the colours that mixed together were astonis.h.i.+ng to say the least, and this 's.p.a.ce' didn't stop as it extended all the way down the hall. Some of the candidates including Sora's group had been taken aback by the beauty of this place, but others began getting suspicious.

?: "Um..."

One of the candidates that weren't in a group raised their hand.

?: "Where are we?"

Another one of the candidates spoke.

?: "And..."

Another one of them spoke.

?: "Why is it so empty here?"

The place they had been transported too, while beautiful, was ominous to say the least. A structure as big as this could only be seen inside of the school, especially taking the 'stars' above them into account. So why was it only them there in such a big s.p.a.ce? The cloaked woman put her hood down and revealed her face, she had white skin and green eyes and the look on her face was one of constant relaxation, like nothing bad had ever happened to her.

?: "I haven't introduced myself properly have I? My name's Rhea, I'll be one of your teachers if you have an affinity with wind and I'll also be acting as your guide, but for now - we must allocate you all to both your ranks and your cla.s.ses dependent on your ability. Please, follow me"

The 75 candidates all looked at her as she walked slowly away and then began to follow her. Rez wanted to confirm something before they kept going.

Re: "Sorry if this seems rude, but that doesn't answer the question as to why there's no one here. No offense..."

Rh: "None taken"

Rhea answered with a smile.

Rh: "You see... there are people here, in fact, they are walking past you right now, you just can't see or touch them, they can see you, but they can't touch you"

Re: "Huh?"

Rh: "The school has placed magic on you automatically - this magic has never been publicly revealed to the outside for a simple reason. Protection"

So: "Protection?"

Rh: "If anyone were to sneak past the initial barrier as well as those tasked with fending off any would-be threats to the school. A curse is placed on them, that curse allows students to stay safe even if they are directly next to the threat. The curse on you will be removed after what we are about to do next"

D: "That sounds like an extremely powerful curse... who could keep such a thing going?"

Rh: "Well the headmaster of course"

Rhea smiled.

Jo: "Yeah, the headmaster is a Legend, it isn't too surprising that he can hold a spell like this"

Sora's group was the closest to Rhea, and they exchanged more questions as they walked. Rhea answered all of them with a smile on her face. After walking a while they arrived to a giant doorway that was decorated with almost child-like drawings of stars and s.p.a.ce.

So: "Um..."

I: "Why the drawings?"

For the first time Rhea looked embarra.s.sed.

Rh: "Haha... well... see... our headmaster is a very interesting person, they have a very simple view towards the world, and when this room was being built, he was obssessed with the fact that this room would be the 'beginning' of all of the students. So he had it made as if it was... well the 'beginning'..."

Lux laughed.

Lu: "I like this guy!"

After sharing a small laugh between themselves, they entered the room. The room was shaped like a dome, with the stars and constellations surrounding the dome.

Ji: "Man this guy really has a thing for the stars..."

Le: "I like it..."

In the middle of the room was a single, floating sphere, it emanated a multi-coloured light and it didn't seem to possess any special traits, not an inch of magical power or aura was leaking out of it.

Z: "What is it?"

Rhea looked at all the candidates with the same smile on her face and walked towards the sphere, she put her hand on it and it began to glow green, with ten red circles slowly appearing inside the sphere. Rhea took her hand off and showcased the sphere.

Rh: "As you can see it's glowing a bright green colour with ten red circles inside. The colour shown will display your elemental affinity or affinities, and the red circles will determine your rank based on your current magical, physical, or aurbased strength. The highest rank you can be is 15, you will be placed into cla.s.ses based on your rank and your element"

All the candidates listened to the explanation and grew more and more excited.

Rh: "So..."

The sphere quickly returned to it's previous multi-coloured form.

Rh: "Who would like to go first?"

[Message From Art]

Alright... I know that I've been gone for a while... but there is alot to be doin right now. Ima be on break in about 2 weeks tho. I created this chapter as an apology for the people that decided to stick around. But after this I probably won't be doing any chapters for the next two weeks (just keeping your hopes down for now ^.^) - Im only a student, ain't the most professional guy out there and I'm really only doing this for fun. Hope that's cool with you. The novel isn't suspended anymore, but don't expect a new chapter for a while. Anyway... back to my studies... cya...