CHAPTER 12; THE GRAVE OF WEAPONS PT II

CHAPTER 12; 

  THE GRAVE OF WEAPONS

In the moment Henry saw the children being taken away something finally clicked, from the start of his fight with the man he could feel how much power the man had but not once did he sense the prana he used while fighting even though it was very clear that he was in fact using it.

'Why was this?' Henry questioned himself as he lay on the ground 'I've practically turned my body into one huge mana factory but somehow I still can't use it… what exactly am I missing in this whole thing?' he kept on thinking until he finally understood.

Mana existed everywhere in this world, so if Mana could be used so easily by simply absorbing some of it, not only would there be no need for a mana pool because the world would just be one big mana pool, the very stages of mana would be meaningless since anyhow who learnt how to absorb mana would be able to use it at will. 

So, what made people with 'mana control' different? 

The answer was simple; 'Refining'

Just like crude oil needs to be turned into petrol for use, like limestone needs to be crushed to form cement, like tomatoes are boiled to make stew and pressure if applied on rocks to form diamonds, in order to use 'mana control' one needed to refine the 'raw mana' in one's body to actually use it, this process of refining that 'raw mana' was what was called 'Mana Control', and once Henry realized this, it was over.

The guardian closed his eyes and immediately began to condense all the mana that made up his body into a huge ball at his center, and then he began applying pressure to that ball until it started to shrink, it grew smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until….it disappeared.

And in place of the 'raw mana' came the refined product, the new ball of mana appeared in Henry's dantian and began spinning at extremely high speeds, causing several mana fluctuations as Henry began channeling the mana back through his body, with each section of his body that was fused back with the newly reformed mana, his 'mana control' soared.

{Pupil}….{Student}…{Child of mana} until it stopped and he had reached the sixth stage of mana control – Creation {Made of mana}.

The now standing Henry looked at himself with disappointment plastered on his face as he cussed,

"Tsk, fuck this body." 

Mana control had 12 stages, each of which one achieved in relation to their understanding of mana, quantity and quality of refined mana, their connection to the mana around the world itself and to one's physique. This meant that even if a seven-year-old like Henry who had understanding of mana, had an enormous quantity and the purest quality of it due to the 'Fallen' he had in him and was connected to not just mana, but the world itself, as he was literally still in the body of a seven-year-old and thus did not have the necessary body capable of handling certain level of mana control, he could never achieve anything higher than a limited stage of mana control. For Henry and his seven-year-old body, this was the sixth stage – {CREATION}, which was not even close enough to what he wanted to achieve once he began to refine all the accumulated mana which was his body.

'Pfttt...ftt…HAHAHAAH!' Diablo burst out laughing.

'What the fuck is so funny, huh?' Henry responded with a sign of frustration in his voice as Kritic responded, barely keeping from bursting out into laughter himself,

'No…pff…no it's just...pfft… you probably felt like some sort of super Saiyan in that moment...pff...and then bam...sixth stage…HAHAHAHA!' Diablo burst out, unable to hold his laughter anymore.

'Tsk, anyways now it all makes sense,' Henry began 'The reason we didn't see them infiltrating the 'cradle' was because of their timing…while I and Maria spent too much time at the mana pool, these bastards attacked the grave of weapons, and the kids escaped into the woods. During the pursuit, they probably stumbled on Maria and myself but decided to come back for us later since we were knocked out anyways, and since two kids already made it to the 'mana pool' that probably made them assume that there could be kids that were already at the third test of the cradle, hence, why they were gone for so long and we didn't meet any of them while we were coming back from the pool.' He concluded.

"It doesn't matter though, because now you're all fucking dead." Henry said to the attackers in an enraged voice as the seven first dropped the kids they held on the floor and began to swiftly walk towards him with a look of disbelief plastered on their faces.

"Oi captain, are you sure that's a fucking seven-year-old? because I don't know if you noticed but he just awakened mana control and jumped to the {creation}." One of the girls among the seven said with a nervous look as their swift walking morphed into running as they charged into the boy, ready for combat.

The seven attackers consisted of five boys and two girls, including their captain; the man with the iron soled boots, all four of the men had similar builds and were hardly visible due to the black khaki trousers, turtle necks and head warmers that all the attackers wore, making them indistinguishable from one another. Among the girls was one who had red hair and one with dark blue hair and although they had different builds, with one of them being a lot more muscular than the other, their faces were also very had to see in the fog and the all-black that they wore.

'Apart from the captain, their all third stage-third star; the girls are martial artists who use daggers and the guys are also spiritualists.' Henry thought to himself, discerning their combat powers swiftly as he got ready to fight.

Henry quickly got into a stance as he slid his right leg behind and put his right foot forward, he tilted his body to the side, clenched his fist and dropped both his arms down.'

Before anyone knew what was going on, the seven-on-one fist fight had started as each member of the crew began taking swings at the boy as he calmly dodged each one of them and dashed in front of their captain, landing a blow on his face that shattered all his teeth.

'This guy is my biggest problem.' Henry quickly calculated as he kept on landing blows to the body of the man, instinctively blocking a kick from one of the girls that sent him flying.

In the few seconds that he went flying, the captain who was already knocked out began to heal.

'Tsk.' Henry thought as he spat out blood and just… disappeared.

All the eyes of six of the seven people he was fighting immediately turned to the opposite direction from which they were looking, their eyes widening in shock as they saw their teammate on his knees behind them, getting violently strangled with one arm by the boy, he did not in fact disappear but rather, blitzed past them.

"One down, six to go." Henry remarked before looking back at the now six people he was fighting with a devilish look on his face.

Both girls immediately lunged towards him with daggers, aiming to stab the boy's throat out as he calmly blocked both their daggers with the back of his palms, redirecting the force of their attacks away from him. As soon as they regained their balance, they all attacked the boy at once, trying to land only deadly blows on him, but to no avail as he just kept redirecting them all away. 

Henry quickly continued with his initial plan as he blitzed towards the captain and got into a swift one on one with him. The captain kept on throwing blows at the boy, hoping at least one would hit, but, none did as he screamed out in frustration,

"Just die you fucking bas-." He was about to say but was cut off by a right hook Henry threw at his face, immediately dislocating his jaw. Seizing the opportunity, Henry took a step back and rushed at the captain, kicking him behind his knee to bring him down to his knees as he grabbed his hair throw his headgear and started pounding his way through the man's face until what was his face became a bloody mesh, with Henry fist printed on it.

"Two down...who the fuck wants to be three?" Henry said to the remaining five as they all rushed at him in confusion.

As one of the men threw a right punch at him, he quickly grabbed the man's arm and suing the momentum from the punch, he twisted his arm to the left and then jumped onto his arm, using the weight of his little body to twist his arm to the left, ultimately breaking the arm as bounced off the man and jumped onto his shoulders and pierced the man's jugular with his fingers.

"Three down." The boy remarked as everyone now backed away from him in fear.

"What's wrong, come at me. All of you…come at me all at once, I'll take on all of you!!!!" The boy shouted at the attackers.

There was a total of twenty-three attackers sent to capture the seventeen kids who took the trials, excluding Henry, three of which were now out of commission, leaving about twenty of them.

They all realized a simple fact as they dropped the kids they were holding and got ready to attack the boy.

'We're all at the third stage-second star excluding the six bosses, meaning if we all attack at once, there's no way he'd win, even if he's at the sixth stage...he's still just a zero-star.' Every single one of the attackers thought as they all rushed towards the boy.

'Mr. Come at me all at once' Kritic began as Diablo was dying of laughter beside him, 'you're fucked.'

'Hahn.' Diablo sighed as he calmed down from his laugh and began to release dark aura that emanated from Henry's body, 'Let's kill these fuckers'.

Just as Henry was about to release his true power for the third time that day, three people came flying down as they crashed to the ground, bringing up dust that surrounded them as everyone halted in place to see just who they were.

From the dust were three figures; two men wearing martial artist robes and a woman who wore a gown. The dust quickly settled as the three of them were now in view, amongst the men was an older one with long white beards and white hair, he was of similar height to the man beside him but had a much muscular build, he had very dark red eyes and he could be said to be an attractive man for his age, plastered on his face was an arrogant smile as he turned and said to the man beside him,

"Would you look at that, {creation} at age seven, doesn't it remind you of someone, Alex?" the man complimented the man beside him; Alex Le Noir, the Patriarch of 'Le Noir'.

"Hehe." Alex said nervously, rubbing the back of his head with his hand, "He's my son after all, and he's even surpassed me, I was ten when I awakened mana control, and I could only break through to {destruction}."

"Anyways, Elizabeth." Alex said to the woman beside him, "Take it easy on the stare..your daughter is safe now." 

Elizabeth was the mother of Maria and a Royal Dragon who was also one of the ten most powerful creatures alive, she stood at a height of six foot-two, and had the signature dark hair and red eyes of the 'Le Noir' Family, her hair ran down her gown gracefully and her lips were the same crimson red as her eyes, she had a rather slim build and a most beautiful face, well, if she wasn't making the face of terror that she was at the moment.

"I'll kill these fuckers." Elizabeth cussed as she was about to do what she said, but was stopped by the old man's arm in front of her.

The man was called the former king of battle, a title which now belonged to Alex and was the former patriarch of 'Le Noir', who was also one of the top ten, his name was Dimitrius, Dimitrius Le Noir,

"Don't worry, let Alex handle this one." Dimitrius said to Elizabeth who looked at Alex and immediately calmed down at the sight of the fiery red aura that emanated from him.

"Guess even without me, these guys are already dead."