CHAPTER 11; THE GRAVE OF WEAPONS

CHAPTER 11;

 THE GRAVE OF WEAPONS

 A 1-hectare wide landscape that stretched into the bushes that connected to the mana pool, its surrounding were weapons of all sorts that stretched out of the ground like crops planted on a farm, at least a whopping 80% of the entire land was adorned with weapons, this placed that was worshipped as a sort of ancestral ground by the 'LE NOIR' family was the 'Grave of Weapons'. 

Weapons that belonged to one former member 'LE NOIR' or another, each of them being at least a divine level weapon that could only be truly used once one had reached a certain level of prowess with mana; the 8TH stage of mana control – {King of War} were lying around in bulk all throughout the ground.

It was for this reason that many of the young ones sent out for the 'tests' chose to spend their time searching for weapons here, because the weapons that were chosen here were most likely going to be their weapons for life even though the bulk of them were not going to end up reaching the eight-stage, it was at least worth it to have a divine weapon as one's companion for battle, rather than a normal weapon from a random smithy.

 In order to successfully pick up a weapon from the grave of weapons, your mana had to be compatible with said weapon, that is; A martial arts user would not be able to pick up a staff or an orb which is meant for a person whose mana was more suited for magic rather than martial arts and so on, if they in fact did try to take a weapon which was for a different class, it would feel like they were lifting tons of scrap metal off the ground. 

*

The stages of mana control [which was fundamentally different from the stages of martial or combat prowess] were divided into 12, each given a name akin to the level at which one had mastered the use of mana, they were;

The first stage - The Birth of Mana {THE PUPIL}

The second stage – Mana development {THE STUDENT}

The third stage – Body of Mana {THE CHILD OF MANA}

The fourth stage - Man of Mana

The fifth stage – Destruction {BORN FROM MANA\MANA PSYCHOSIS}

The sixth stage – Creation {MADE OF MANA}

The seventh stage – Nature of Mana {MANA'S SAINT}

The eight stage – Emperor of Mana {KING OF WAR}

The ninth stage – The Empire {SKY OF MANA}

The tenth stage – Conqueror {A MONARCH OF MANA/RULER}

The eleventh stage - World of Mana {UNIVERSALITY}

The twelfth stage – GENESIS

*

I dashed throughout the graveyard in search of my weapon of choice and quickly found it as I dashed back to where Maria was, seven hefty figures approached us from the fog including the man with the iron soles.

"Come at me you bastards." I yelled into the fog as my scream was met with a momentary silence.

"Gloves, huh?" I heard a woman say from amongst them as they all began to laugh wildly, mocking my weapon choice.

The man with the iron sole quickly appeared from beneath the fog into my view; his face looked extremely skinny and his eyeballs were gouging out so much that I felt like they could fall out t any time, he was extremely tall but very horribly built and malnourished, he had long lanky arms and dark hair which was packed backwards, his lips looked dry and cracked, hands were large but didn't look like they had gone through any sword training and his skin was so pale he looked like a part of the fog. 

From his physique I could tell that he was probably a magic user; a spiritualist to be precise.

The man continued to walk towards me as he summoned a wide and creepy grin from his face.

"Well, this'll be fun." He declared as he rushed towards me, quickly kicking me in the face with his boots, pushing me back a few miles and causing me to roll in the dirt.

"Huh?" He said, looking down at his crushed leg with which he kicked me with as I stood up and walked up to him, now standing in front of him as I looked up at him with eyes that only spoke one truth; that I was going to kill him. And he looked down at me, still with a wide grin on his face with eyes that told me that he wanted to toy with me, from the distance at which he was standing in front of me, I realized that this man was tall, really tall, or at least I was too short for this fight.

"A face that awfully resembles the patriarch, extremely dark eyes, a custom made LE NOIR battle gear and enough talent to see and intercept the kick from a Fourth Stage-Third Star spiritualist at the age of seven, I want to say you're the son of the patriarch but, I've never seen any Le Noir with White and black hair before." The man said to me as my eyes widened in shock.

'We didn't really think it was that important but…after the mana pool your hair became white, the way it used to be, probably as side effect.' Diablo said to me, confirming the man's statement.

"From the look on your face, you didn't realize it yourself, did you? Which means, you are indeed the patriarch's son; Henry LE NOIR. HAHAHAAHA!!!" The man laughed as he continued to state the obvious.

"I guess a tiger can only give birth to a tiger, huh?" The man continued, "Now, let's begin." 

And then lunged at me with his fist opened wide like a karate chop in an attempt to butcher me from above, I quickly dodged and landed two hits directed at the joints of his left arm, which immediately dislocated it. The man didn't stop as he rushed towards me with even more vigor, still with an insane smile across his face.

I backed up in caution as I sensed something different about him, I took a sharp glance at his leg and saw that it was healed and then took another at his arm and saw his dislocated joint was already put back in place; and then it dawned on me that I wasn't fighting with pure energy anymore, I was fighting with absolutely nothing and not against anyone but a spiritualist in this world.

*

 A spiritualist, shaman or saint all used the same form of energy to call forth spirits who could strengthen, heal or bestow upon them powers of all sorts, however, whereas all three of the classes could call forth the spirits of nature, a saint or shaman could also call forth holy spirits from their respective 'Gods', the spiritualist only had the access to the spirits of nature since they did not believe in Gods, with the higher the spiritualists class being, the higher the spirit they could summon, it was for this reason that spiritualists were deemed the weakest among the class of mana users who used {Prana}.

*

I quickly dodged the mans blows and kept on landing attacks on him which became less and less effective every time and soon enough my attacks did absolutely nothing to him as his punches finally met my face, throwing me several meters away and bruising my face.

"A seven-year-old boy took a hit from me, and only got out with a rebound and a scratch? …haha …. isn't this something?" as he walked up to me menacingly, staring down at me on the ground as the smile on his face quickly disappeared.

The man bent his knee and I could visibly see the prana covering his body as his fist exploded in a light of emerald green as he threw what was intended to be a finishing blow at me. In that moment, I knew that if I didn't act with everything I had, I was going to die. To be honest, after experiencing it so many times, death wasn't really a big deal to me, no, the problem was that I was going to fail the fucking test if I died!

Time slowed down around me and in a quarter millisecond, my left eye turned white and my right eye turned completely dark as power from Kritic and Diablo flowed into me, from around me was a glowing dark aura that quickly turned the surrounding white and black as immense demonic force poured out of me and just as soon as I was about to kill the bastard who was trying to do the same to me, I sensed a bunch of men and women, all dressed in the same attire as the man in the iron boot; completely clothed in silver black, close to the woods.

I quickly withdrew my power as the man halted his punch in front of my face, unaware of what happened in the quarter millisecond that i almost killed him as he looked at the woods to see the arrival of his comrades.

"Captain, what are you doing?...you've wasted too much time, they're back with the kids, let's get going." A woman who was among the seven people we initially encountered said to the man as he stood up and looked at his trembling arm with an inquisitive look on his face.

"Am I the only one shivering?" the man asked with a very confused look on his face before walking back to his group, "alright, pick up the girl and let's go, she's our main objective anyways, the rest arr just to cover that up."

"What of the boy?" Another one of the seven asked.

"Hah." The man with the iron sole scoffed, "It's already bad enough that we're taking away a dragon princess but at least they paid us to do that, that boy is the patriarch's son, if we take him, we'll most definitely get wiped out before we can even leave here." The man continued with a frustrated look on his face, "they didn't pay us for that trouble, let's just leave." The man said in frustration as he picked up Maria and was ready to leave.

 They halted in their steps as they were leaving, all looking back at once to see the enormous mana fluctuations coming out from me, as I quickly broke through; first stage, second stage, third stage, fourth stage, fifth stage and finally sixth stage.

The mana fluctuations finally settled down as Mana covered my body with a red glow which was tainted by shades of black. Unknowingly, the mana fluctuations from my breakthrough had woken up the knocked-out kids as everyone, child and adult stared at me with utter shock as the man with the iron sole quickly handed over the struggling Maria to someone else and came forward with prana surrounding his body.

"A seven-year-old at the stage of creation? You must be fucking kidding me?"