Domain of Darkness.

AUTHORS NOTE: UNEDITED CHAPTER

[ Aruh's pov]

Aruh was the first among all three of them to ease up to the shadows. After creating small flames for several hundreds of times , he realised the shadows were not the only thing present in this space. In fact, there was no shadow at all.

he came to this conclusion after observing how the shadows kept eating up his flames like they were food. In fact, in this space, it was impossible for light to exist.

This made him wonder how shadows are formed or created in the first place. he knows shadows are formed when an object comes in the part of light. from his knowledge, in a fully dark room where there's absolutely no light source like the one they were in right now, no shadows are formed.

with this, he had a light bulb moment," without light, there's only darkness."

even though darkness and shadow are similar, they are far from being the same thing. shadows can only exist because there's a light being blocked. but in this space or domain, light can not even exist, let alone being blocked. so this meant he wasn't in a shadowy space but a domain of darkness.

[mean while Arwin]

Currently, Arwin was sitting crossed legged on the ground. she made a small slit on her hand as she quickly activated her blood manipulation ability,

she further split her blood into tiny droplets, and then she proceeded to lace each of the droplets with her vampiric energy.

After which, she directed the tiny droplets to different parts of the space she was currently in. since it was impossible for her to be everywhere at the same time, and also since it was proving to be difficult for her to locate the exit she decided to observe the space with her blood ability instead.

closing her eyes, she began using perception to study every inch of the shadow space. while using her blood manipulation and vampiric energy combination, she realised she was losing her energy faster, so she removed the energy layer and concentrated on using her blood manipulation ability to find answers.

with her eyes close and her concentration fully centred on the various locations of her tiny blood droplets, it was as if her blood were nano satellites collecting information from all over the place and transmitting it back to her.

she could tell she was alone in this space, but at the same time, she was hearing different voices, voices that had an ancient feel to it.

paying more attention to the words these voices were saying sent goosebumps all over her body. it was as if the voices could read her innermost darkest desires and fears, and they were pouring it out in the open.

If anything, the voices revealed her jealousy, fear, and dark thoughts. thoughts she had never mentioned in the open.

out of everything she heard, one stood out, almost like a reminder of her answer when Aidris had asked her what she felt the other day.

The voice was cold and sounded melancholic

"You can feel us blood mage. Why do you shut us out? .....hear our whispers, hear our voices, embrace us, control this energy, and then alone will you understand."

Some how listening to this voice reminded her of her response the other day, she had told teacher Aidris that she felt dark energy all around her, dark energy that called out to her like blood calls out to her.

After this, she realised that whatever she was dealing with currently was not shadows but dark energies.

now it all depended in her wether or not she wanted to embrace the energy.

[Elena's pov]

since she decided to look at the entire situation from a different perspective, she ordered dracula to shut down her system for as long as the training would last. she wanted to give this her all without relying on her system as a cheat mechanism.

Once dracula had shut down her system, she felt almost empty, like she was missing a huge part of herself, but that didn't stop her from concentrating on the tasks at hand.

she began meditating, but then she began noticing a bizarre situation. the more she meditated, the more she felt this intense feeling of fear, and her heart began racing fast.

She heard whispers about her not being good enough about her only relying on the system to do everything.

The more whispers she heard, the more her heart raced faster. the more fear she felt.

this continued for a while. Instead of allowing her fears and feelings of not being good enough to consume her, she decided to solve every single issue one after the other.

First, she accepted the fact that she may not be good enough in comparison to the system and Dracula but she was good enough in her own right, as a human who was dragged into all of this she realised she was doing pretty good for herself.

she was made aware of her inferiority complex when compared to alacad. and also the fact that she feels she might not be able to carry out her duties to the humans and vampires when the time comes.

but she was able to solve all these negative issues in her head as time went on. by the time she had master the act of controlling her fears and emotions, she realised whatever had been making her feel intense negative emotions was strongly connected to the space she was currently on.

for one thing, she could tell the constant loss of energy that she had been experiencing since she got here had stopped.

this very moment, if her system was still activated, she would have been able to see that she had already mastered an important aspect of darkness, and that would have pointed her towards the right direction sooner.

with this realisation, she came to the conclusion that whatever domain she was currently in wasn't just the shadows. There was more to it.

this domain had a mind of its own. It was a domain that was filled with an element that could amplify the negative desire of any individual and also bring out the worse in them.

Elena realised that this element made use of fear and dark thoughts as a weapon that was sharper than any sword she had come in contact with so far.

now the question bothering her mind was how to harness this element and what was the true form of this element since it seemed to be more complicated than just shadows.

First, she created flame daggers, and almost immediately, the flame daggers were snuffed out of existence.

she then proceeded to generate other light base attacks, but none of them were able to stand or survive in this dark space.

If only she could isolate the element in a small space and study it or so, she thought. hearing her think on this line.... dracula voices sounded in her mind.

" Actually, you can, but to do this, you'll need to create a domain inside the one you're currently in. "

the hope that Elena was building crumbled the next moment. to create a domain like what dracula was suggesting she would first need a domain based spell, and also, her mana would need to be in peak condition if she hoped to succeed.

Not only was she lacking in the department of spells, but her mana was also currently low, even though she was no longer losing mana , energy, or health points.

"Drac, I'm sorry, but I need a suggestion that can actually work right now." She said with a tone of tiredness.

After saying this, she began brainstorming for ideas once more...after constant observation and brainstorming for what seemed like weeks, she suddenly felt enlightened.

since all elements had their characteristics and attributes, it would be easy to narrow it down. many abilities were a by-product of the four basic elements, " fire, air water, and earth."

but then, while in zastlevania, she had once read a book in Alacad's Castle that suggested that apart from the four basic elements there existed other elements in the higher scale, Elements like void, chaos and darkness and in all of this mana stood in the middle as a bridge.