26. Divine techniques

The trio walked inside before finding a place to sit in the middle row of the lecture hall before moving on.

As they sat down, the lecturer walked into the class, and it was the familiar middle-aged man from yesterday.

He looked at the class, smiled, and began his lecture.

"Good afternoon, class. From the looks of things, I can see that you've all remembered what I taught you yesterday well and started to walk the road of divine ascendance.

But while training the ability to accumulate divinity is impressive, it's all useless if you end up dying before you complete your journey. I'm sure you have realized it from the abundance of combat-based lessons, but actual fighting is a core ability that all Divine Descendants must develop.

Feats of renown are impressive and grant wonderful and powerful abilities, but feats are too specialized and lack the ability to grant you comprehensive strength. At lower heroic ranks like yours, this is essential.

That is why separate from Feats of Renown, there exist methods of using divinity and the divine abilities granted to you by the blood of the gods, called divine techniques.

Divine techniques are techniques used for fighting or the grand manifestation. Another word you might be familiar with that people use to call divine techniques is magic.

You see, the blood of gods grants the ability to manipulate forces inherent in the universe. This process is beyond the understanding of mere mortals, as it is an inherent ability of the gods akin to the laws of physics this world is built on. While manipulation as easy as the gods is hard, the blood of gods still flows in our veins, and thus divine techniques were created.

There are four key components to actually performing divine techniques:

Blood of the Gods

Visualization

Chanting or Incantation

and Manifestation

The first component, the blood of the gods, is simple to explain. As Divine Descendants, you should know by now that all your powers, your abilities, and even the divinity you refine, all come from the gods. Without the blood of the gods, even if we trained until our bones fell apart, we wouldn't have even a fraction of the power we have right now.

The blood of the gods is our greatest strength, but it also comes with some restrictions. A Divine Descendant of Lord Poseidon would easily be able to learn powerful and magical divine techniques based on water, but if they wanted to learn divine techniques created to manipulate fire by the descendants of Lord Hephaestus, then they would have to forget about it for the rest of their lives. The same would also apply in reverse.

This does not mean that you are solely restricted to learning divine techniques created for the house of the god you follow. You can also learn divine techniques from other houses to an obviously lesser effect. It's just that some techniques are specific and impossible to learn, while others might just be completely opposite to the attributes of the blood flowing in your body, making it naturally impossible to learn."

"If you can get past the barrier of god's blood and choose a divine technique to learn, the next three components will come into play.

First is Visualization. This is the most vital stage. Without visualization, everything crumbles into nothing. At this stage, you must mentally visualize the intricate details and casting of your divine technique. The visualization of such will help guide your divinity to follow your visualization and begin to generate your divine technique.

After Visualization comes chanting.

Speak in the language of the gods and chant the name of your divine technique. This helps focus and refine your visualization as well as activates the divinity in your body.

The last and final aspect is Manifestation. This involves reacting with your divinity to bring your visualization into the physical world—the creation of force from pure divinity.

Manifestation is the final aspect of performing divine techniques, but all steps are important and linked to each other.

Think about it like this: If the manifestation of a divine technique is like driving a car, then the blood of the gods is the fuel, visualization is the engine, and chanting is the spark to start the ignition. Only when all things are used in tandem can divine techniques be properly cast. Despite this, there is still a clear and most important aspect that you must focus on when performing a divine technique.

Going back to the car analogy, the more vivid and powerful your visualization, the stronger your engine. The same divine technique performed by Divine Descendants in the same rank can show vastly different levels of power depending on the caster's mastery of visualization.

Visualization is important, but it is not easy to master. Divine techniques involve the intrinsic manipulation of your blood and divinity. It is something hard to convey via word of mouth, and for someone to truly begin to understand and master the visualization of divine techniques, it needs to be truly experienced.

For that, we have Visualization Scrolls.

They contain the true visualization of powerful Heroes and Divine Descendants that have mastered the divine technique to a near-perfect state. It allows you to experience visualization at a high level, which will help you in the subsequent visualization and mastery of your divine technique.

Basic spells and techniques can be cast without the need for a Visualization Scroll, but for the truly powerful techniques, a Visualization Scroll is a must.

This time, I am unfortunately unable to give you a demonstration of any divine techniques or Visualization Scrolls.

As the professor said this, there was an air of disappointment lingering around the lecture hall.

But the professor didn't leave them in that state for long.

"I can't give you a demonstration because there's something even better. Today, right now, you will be picking out your first divine techniques at Olympus Academy!"

The crowd couldn't contain their excitement; after all, the mysterious world of magic and god-like abilities was right on their doorstep.

Everyone had already gotten up and was quickly packing away all the things they brought to the lecture hall.

Nobody wanted to wait another second!