The Awakening and Warning

Arthur stood in the Blades training hall with his parents in front of him. The Blades training hall was just what it implied, a hall to train with whichever weapon you wanted. The hall was the size of a golf ground and moreover, the whole hall was built with Crystalium, a metal capable of withstanding Virtuoso rank attacks. The hall had two stands by its right side which stored every weapon known to mankind till now.

But Arthur's focus wasn't training or the hall right now. Unbeknownst to Arthur's parents, blood was rushing through his body and excitement pulsed throughout due to the prospect of finally awakening his stigmata. Nolan walked forward towards Arthur and handed him a pitch black ball the size of tennis ball. Nolan calmly explained about the ball even though Arthur had already read about it in the library,

"This is a Grandmaster Rank Mana core. Its efficiency is at 98% and is full of mana just like you requested son. Its also Darkness element just like you requested."

Arthur intriguingly looked at core before finally looking up at Nolan with a light smile and nodding,

"Thank you mom and dad."

Then he walked back and put quite a considerable distance between him and his parents. Although Arthur's parents didn't know what he was going to do, they trusted him and were here to help him in case anything went wrong after all his parents were not weak in any terms. Moreover, their curiosity was also piqued now that they saw Arthur putting a considerable distance between them. They wanted to see why their son had just requested a mana core out of the blue.

Nolan Blade, the current Patriarch of the Blade Family, was a Virtuoso+ Fahr and his talent was unparalleled which set no doubt in people's mind that he was going to reach the Zenith Rank just like the previous monster Christopher Blade.

Alice Blade, the wife of the current Patriarch of the Blade Family, was a Grandmaster+ Fahr and her talent allowed her to go till Virtuoso Rank but it was widely known that not only was she powerful in battle but her mind was unparalleled in the field of business as well as she managed a large company called MASS (Masglow Assassination and Security Services) for the public level.

Both of them were strong enough to prevent any mishaps that might happen right now. Now just the final component of the plan was missing and Arthur called out to him,

'You there?'

Just like he expected, the voice came a moment later,

[Yeah right here. Alright lets begin but before starting better revise some quick points to be focused on here. One, you do nothing that I don't permit you to do. You will listen completely to me and follow my guidance or otherwise you are dead. Second, focus completely on the core nothing else. You lose your focus for a moment and snap, you're dead. Keep that in mind as we begin OK?]

Arthur nodded inwardly to his words and affirmed to his precautions,

'Understood.'

After hearing his affirmation, Hades started giving his instructions,

[Turn your palm outward such that the ball is facing toward you and hold it in your right hand where you are going to form your stigmata. Now don't close your eyes, by closing your eyes your other senses will become more attuned and although that's good to sense mana it also makes you lose your focus quickly.]

Arthur listened quietly and then obediently followed his instructions down to the core. Then Hades moved on to the main step,

[Now I want you to feel the core in your right hand. Try to feel the mana inside it and also try to absorb it in your right hand but do it slowly. Mainly, once you start feeling the mana try to suck it like a vacuum but slowly.]

Arthur tried to do exactly what Hades told him but after all he wasn't a god, so he couldn't feel anything. But he didn't give up, it was normal to to not feel it in his first try as this wasn't air or water or a state of matter you could touch or feel. He tried again and failed again but this time he felt like he failed better and so he kept trying. 5 minutes in he finally got the first feel of mana.

It was thick and dense like slime and Arthur attuned this to the fact that this mana stone was Grandmaster rank and its purity was very high so it was obvious that the mana would be so dense in such a tight place. He tried to pull it towards him but his sense of mana was not high right now, so he tried feeling mana better and slowly he could feel it getting more thicker or more accurately he was just feeling mana better in the mana stone.

This time his pull was much better towards the mana and he could sense it was entering his body. Probably sensing the mana in his body, Hades came to instruct him again,

[Good you finally got your first feel of mana. Now keep the most important point in your mind is that pull it extremely slowly at the start, we don't want your mana veins to burst from the sudden overflow of mana. Progress it extremely slowly and steadily speed up. Spread it throughout your body in the order of heart, forearms, left hand, legs, brain and then your whole body before finally condensing it in the form of a cluster on your right hand.]

Arthur quickly listened to the instructions and started following them to the point. Hades, as soon as he gave the instructions turned silent. He knew that this was a very crucial point right now. Even a moment of interruption could ruin Arthur's focus, crippling him for life and maybe even kill him.

Arthur's body first twitched from the shock as if pushing away the foreign existence entering its body but then, it slowly got used to the energy as Arthur's mana veins started opening up, making way for the energy to flow throughout his body.

This was when the pain started assaulting his body because of the opening of mana veins inside his body. But Arthur didn't react to the pain even though this was just the starting of the pain. He didn't want his parents to see him facing the pain and make them worry about him. They might even disrupt the process and Arthur would lose his body. He knew that if he also even let out a faint groan, it may disrupt his focus.

As the pull gradually got stronger and more attuned, Arthur also started increasing the speed of the mana traversing throughout his body. As the mana spread from his hand's thin mana veins and started reaching the thicker mana veins of the forearm, his pain started to turn intense but as soon as Hades noticed the signs, he came rushing in and although Arthur couldn't sense what he was doing but he had a faint guess that his body suddenly main more attuned and more resilient to the opening of mana veins.

The pain turned down by a considerable amount and Arthur didn't stop for a second. He pulled mana from the core and at the same time traversed it throughout his forearms.

30 minutes passed, and the mana entering his body reached from the forearm to the upper part of his body where he turned the speed of the mana down because of it reaching a sensitive portion now, his heart. The pain intensified as it reached the heart where resided the largest mana veins but Arthur didn't let out even a whimper, maintaining his full focus on traversing the mana throughout his heart.

All this time his parents didn't leave his side for one second and kept his gaze at him. They still couldn't understand what he was doing but they saw that he was in a state of high focus and chose not to disrupt him even though they saw his body sweating buckets.

The heart took a longer time because of the slow speed of mana and also the larger mana veins taking a longer time to familiarize themselves with the mana entering the body for the first time. After another hour passed, heart's mana veins were fully open.

This was when Arthur's body started excreting disgusting and wrenching blobs of black mass that had a wrenching smell. His parents at once recognized the blobs of mass coming out of his pores slowly and steadily; body impurities. Body impurities were, as the name implied, impurities residing in your body and they were released when a person was awakening his stigmata or advanced in his stigmata rank.

Arthur's parents finally realized what he was doing, he was awakening his stigmata!

Their eyes widened with shock but they did not dare make a noise for fear of disrupting their son's focus. Arthur even though assaulted by the disgusting smell of the impurities, did not let his focus falter for even a second and then moved on to the left forearm next.

Arthur's parent did not know how to react to this scene. They never expected that a person could awaken his stigmata using this method but quickly realized that this method was not possible as they looked at their son's focused face which must have been suffering with a hell of pain, and realized that only their son was able to do this.

But if his stigmata formed right now, this would be a world breaking news for that for the first time in the history of mankind, a kid was able to form his stigmata on the age of three, yes three!

They knew know that the news of their kid's awakening must not travel outside the walls of this hall and if by circumstance it was to, then never out of this house's boundaries. If this news was to get out of their house, there was no knowing how many bounties would be on Arthur's head by the next day.

Unknown to his parents current thoughts, Arthur kept his focus on the mana, resiliently enduring the pain and after 30 minutes also succeeded to open the pathways of his left arm.

Then Arthur progressed over to his legs, all the while releasing more and more impurities and enduring more pain. One time, Arthur's parents eyes widened again as they looked at the sheer mass of his impurities and they knew that it was not that Arthur's body was filled with impurities, it was because of his sheer refining process of his mana pathways. Unbeknownst to all three of them, it was Hades who was doing this by increasing the speed and refining of Arthur's mana pathways by using a little power of him being his Guardianus.

As time passed, Arthur covered his legs and then again by decreasing his speed of mana and more carefully than ever, his brain. In accordance with all these processes, the pitch black color of the core also started getting dimmer and dimmer. Arthur finally reached the last stage of his awakening, his right hand and slowly started to open the cluster of mana veins at his right hand.

Slowly as the mana veins started opening up a mark started to appear on his right hand which was the size of a watch face and although dim at first slowly started to gain color and brightness. The mark was a bundle of sinuous, intertwining lines that formed a stylized representation of a coiling serpent, which symbolized the elusive and serpentine nature of darkness. Within the coiled form of the serpent, intricate patterns resembling stars, crescent moons, and swirling mists were subtly woven, signifying the cosmic forces and mysteries of the darkness.

As the process was just about to end, suddenly the mark on Arthur's hand started releasing small sparks of purple electricity. All of sudden, the bright sky above the circular opening of the hall started turning purple and clouds started covering blanket of the sky with thunder resounding throughout the atmosphere. This phenomenon was not just limited to the Blade manor or the whole human continent, it encompassed the whole planet startling everyone and causing them to look at the sky.

As if on cue, three pairs of red glowing eyes appeared in the sky and one could make out three heads in the sky, heads of a three headed wolf precisely. Feeling everyone's attention on it, the three-headed wolf howled loudly and the thunder of the purple clouds crackled with sheer intensity. Then the three-headed wolf's howl died down and it look at everyone with its 3 pair of red glowing eyes with such malevolence that, everyone in the world from the strongest to the weakest being excluding Arthur felt a chilling shiver travel throughout their bodies, stopping them from moving.

Then all of sudden the wolf and the clouds disappeared bringing back the bright sunny day as if nothing had ever happened. Arthur's parents looked at his back with shock and they knew that what had just happened was precisely because of what had just happened with Arthur's stigmata.

Although every being in the world had felt the threat of the wolf, they couldn't understand its message. But Arthur's parents knew what the glare meant as they stared at their son's back, it was meant for every entity in the world. It was a threat rather than a message.

Its threat was plain clear: Nobody was to harm even a strand of Arthur Blade's hair, for if they did, then they had just incurred the wolf's wrath; a god's wrath.

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Hello everyone. Author here! Sorry for this long chapter but I wanted to make it special. Ill try to maintain the length of chapters from here on out. Again sorry from my side :) :>