Ch2: Beginning of exorcist training

(3rd pov)

In the training yard of the Sigurd Institution, you can see different types of children playing, training or just resting and talking. Though if you look closely, you can see most of this kids has either white hair or white and black hair, paired with red eyes, plus the fact that most of them also have quite the varying degrees of similarities, except a select few. One such exception is the golden hair red eyed kid who seems to be engrossed in his physical training, with no other kids giving him any attention.

"Welp, that should fo it, I don't think my hand can handle more" having said that, he stopped doing his push ups, stood up and walked toward his usual spot for mediation, under the shade of one of the trees in the yard. Sitting down, he breathed in a little before activating his magic core and pulling his mana to the tip of his finger and drew ᛚᚦ on the air, then with a quick mental command moisture begin to gather from the air forming a water arrow which he admired for a moment before commanding to take off into the sky.

Shortly afterwards he saw the arrow lose its shape and the water return back to earth with a splash.

Seeing this, he drew ᛜᛚ three times on the earth, before falling behind a little and watching as water was seemingly being continously extracted from the earth until it formed a puddel at which, he pointed his hand, materialising a magic circle from which lighting shot and electrocuted the still growing puddle. Looking at all this, he stopped supplying mana to the 3 ᛜᛚ, which stopped the expansion of the puddle.

' Hmmm, runic drawing and invocation seems decent enough, and with my advanced mana control and somewhat big reserves, I'm still left with quite a bit, more than 3/4 of my mana' He mused as he started preparing to draw another Rune sequence.

'But, the activation of the magic circles is still quite the hassle, what's with remembering and invoking the corresponding equations and calculations. Even with my seemingly great affinity with lightning and lesser one with water'

Quickly, discarding those thoughts, he drew ᛊᚦ and overcharged it with mana before letting it loose on the puddle, causing a gout of flame to lash out and started evaporating the puddle.

With this, he nodded his head and started practicing some of his other rune sequences such as Shield of Earth(ᛜᛉᛇ), earth arrow(ᛜᚦ), lightning arrows( ᚺᚦ) and some magic circle equations, mainly lightning and water magic.

He continued doing this until he felt a little bit light headed and has no mana left. Feeling this, he forced himself to focus and take a dummy sword that was thrown around and start to swing it. He continued swinging despite the headaches and fatigue that he was feeling, until he was on the brink of collapse.

"Haah, time to rest and meditate" Samuel murmured as he nearly collapsed before sitting and leaning against the tree for support a little.

'Training to be able to fight and move in any situation is really hard, but I guess its paying up. Now when I run out of mana, instead of losing consciousness, I just feel some headaches but can still fight physically' he remarked before starting to mediate.

(MC pov)

It's been 3 years since the system activation and my magic core awakening, and its been quite the interesting and novel experience to finally be able to use magic. From my experiments in this last years, I mainly focused on Rune magic because as I said before, it doesn't require any complex calculations or equations. Sadly most of my runic combinations of the higher order turned out to be a bust. Of course I tried my hand with normal calculation magic and found out that, from experimenting with all 6 elements, that I mainly have 3 affinities: A greater affinity with lightning making it considerably easy to use any and all lightning elemental magics while simplifying the needed equations, and 2 lesser affinities with water and light magic. And no, light and holy magic aren't the same thing, the 2 just happen to be effective against creatures of the dark such as devils, vampires, etc...

And while I don't have any capacity of holy magic, I distinctively remember that Vasco was said to be able to channel holy magic into his body and fist from God's system just by praying and believing I guess.

So while the system assured me that I'm immune to mind fuckery like memory reading and being controlled, I just started praying in earnest, every day while training, before sleeping, after waking up, before eating, after training and many more instances.

It wasn't really that hard or weird, considering that my family was christian and so did I by default, now its not like I'm a zealout devout, or will try defending and dying or killing someone just because they also don't believe. In fact as I grew up and read more about different of religions, saw and participated in lots of debates about how accurate is the bible, the meaning of God and many more I begun to have more and more open mindset, and started looking at myself, to know what I truly want, who I truly am and not just what society wants or what my parents wanted.

But back to the point, while I am not exactly the No1 believer, I believe in what God represents, what the ideal of God stands for, and by doing it for the last 3 years I was in fact able to feel it, it's just tiny and maybe I won't have noticed it without being focused and the alert of the system, but I was indeed receiving holy power, bit by bit. It wasn't doing much at the beginning, just being there helping me recover stamina a little faster, making my body become stronger and stronger.

But it wasn't until 2 years later, when I was at the age of 9, during one of my mediation sessions that I felt a shift in the holy energy inside me, and was finally able to manipulate it. From there, I tried seeing its applications, and mainly came with 2 ways to use it. First is to enhance my physical abilities and attacks, like what Vasco is doing but on a much lesser scale, while the other effect is being able to empower and imbue many of my abilities with holy properties, making my magic attacks has holy damage, powering holy sacraments and making them way stronger and quicker to use, etc..

Thinking about all of this, I said:

'Status'

[ Name: Samuel Willis

Age: 10

Gender: Male

Race: Human

Physical body: Stronger than trained 15 years old kids without any kind of active enhancement( Except the passive ones, as in holy magic)

Mana pool: Mid-tier

Powers: Rune magic( Intermediate ), Lightning(Beginner), water magic(Beginner), light magic(Beginner), Holy sacraments( Intermediate)

Skills: Acting( Intermediate), stealth( Intermediate), Mana manipulation( advanced), Holy power manipulation(Advanced), Karate(Intermediate), swordmanship(Beginner) ]

While I wish I could become stronger than this, I'm quite proud of all the progress I made, especially since all of it was me as apparently missions of the system are rare because I still didn't get a single one. For the Karate skill, well it's me training its moves that I remember from my past life, since I stopped at the red belt before quitting, cause I had to focus more on my studies and because I was a lazy son of a bitch.

As for the holy sacraments, it's no surprise that I found some of them in the library, so I decided to memorize and practice them with holy power.

With that, I decided to go to the cafeteria, take my food and go to my usual spot. They are mainly consisted of holy rituals like Blessing water, sanctifying silver, chanting Bible verses for some extra effects on supernatural, rituals to banish ghosts, etc...

Arriving at the table, I greeted the 2 kids that were sitting there already

" Yo Sieg, Lint. How is it going?" making them to look up from their food to answer.

" Hello Samuel" "H-hello Samuel, it's fine I guess" responded Siegfried and Lint correspondingly.

Siegfried, or as he is called, No15 is one of the many artificial clones in the institution, but unlike the others, he was the only one actually named Siegfried.

He is the original Siegfried from the Hero faction, possessing the common grade sacred gear, Twice Critical, which he awakened during one of our one sided beat downs by yours truly. He is quite hardworking, have a great talent in swordmanship and is quite silent in conversations.

In the original, Siegfried will be isolated because of his strength above his peers and talent, pretty much like my situation. But unlike me, he doesn't have the experience and self awareness of an adult, meaning that the isolation weighted down upon him, and made him more and more unstable, until he snapped and became a stray, deciding to go with the hero wannabe faction.

That's why I'm trying to befriend him and take care of him, since I'm his, Freed and Lint's senior by 3 years, making me at the age of Dulio probably, since this is 1996, so canon is approximately 12 years later.

" Hey, Samuel, you're spacing out again" pouted Lint as she poked me in the arm.

"Sorry, sorry. So what did you ask?" I replied, but seeing that she is still pounting, I decided to use one of the strongest moves in anime history. Headpats!! And it's super effective!!! Since she stopped pouting and leaned into my hand to enjoy it.

"There, there, no need to sulk. So what was it that you asked?" having said that, I turned to Siegfried for the answer. Seeing this, he let out a sigh before answering

"We were asking if you're ready for the official start of the exorcist training tomorrow"

Hearing that I just shrugged and stopped head patting Lint

" Well, I can't say I'm not excited, but I'm also ready for being disappointed since from when we started studying about the supernatural 5 years ago, all we were doing is studying and just some light training. So I hope they start focusing more on the combat, equipment and magic aspects in the next years. But all in all, I think I'm quite ready" I replied before adding

"By the way, you 2 are still keeping up with your training right? I don't want to find out you were slacking, especially you Lint" that made her look indignant before shouting

"HEY!! I'll have you know that I am keeping up with my training and trying my best to catch up with you. Just you wait, it won't be long before we can defeat you! Right Siegfried?" to which Siegfried responded with a simple nod, but you could see the determination in his eyes.

Looking at them, I don't really have that much to say, except that I'm glad they will have each other's back when the time come for me to go in 4 years. In fact if all goes well, and none of them stray from the right path and get excommunicated, we will manage to gain either an expert in soul manipulation or a Senjetsu master, who can help Sieg with his lifespan fighting style, if not well there are still 2 ways to help him. Turning him into an angel to increase his lifespan to some absurd levels and using the holy attribute he will gain to balance the demonic one, just like what Kiba did for Gram in the Original story, but that's plans for later, since he won't be getting them until 5 years later.

Saying goodbye to the kids and heading back to my room and sitting on the bed.

I begin to mediate once again, feeling my body, my soul, my magic core and everything there is to feel. Whith my memories perfectly safe and preserved, thanks to the system, which I can't feel its presence even with all my training, I have been able to feel something else, I don't know if it's a sacred gear or what, but it's very much linked to my soul feeding on any excess energy it can find from it without harming me.

I found about it last year and after some debating with myself, I decided start feeding it with a little bit of my mana everyday, in fact sometimes I drain all of my reserves in it, and from my observations, it seems to be growing bigger and bigger, start twitching and twisting more often, and my connection with it seems to be stronger, bigger and more stable.

I only quite remember 2 to 3 sacred gears that use shadows, that one dude with Vritra sacred gear and Canis Lakyon, if its the latter, well oh boy, I just have to say sorry in advance for Tobio and be glad that I have a god killing dog with me. If its the former, ehhhh good riddance I suppose, the original weirder was just a dickhead, though in that case I shall contact Azazel first to tell him to collect the Vritra pieces for me, in which I'll have to say sorry in advance for Saji too but hey what can you do, this is a world where the strong eats the weak, nothing will change that. As for keeping Canon? What's that? is it tasty?

Anyways, for my Touki, sadly it's still not unlocked, but I can actually feel my spirit now, my Ki, my life-force, so i suppose it won't be long before I am able to use it. Now I'm not particularly stupid so I didn't try to sense the ki in the air since I know what that will result in. With that, I stopped my meditation, stretched a little bit before going to sleep, ready for the beginning of my exorcist training tomorrow.