Chapter 10

"You have lost, my son. You have failed me completely."

"No, Father. I've not failed you. I merely failed in fulfilling my responsibilities as your faithful, obedient son."

My father sighed wearily,

he knew better than anyone how I felt.

The old man's eyes met mine.

They were weary and defeated.

"Your duty is to me, but you refuse to follow it Job, and it has cost you dearly."

He shook his head slightly and sighed.

He stood, turned, and walked away, but as he did, he turned back to me and spoke with more strength and confidence than he had shown since I had learned of his plans,

"You're just a Failure." With those final words, he too exited my presence.

I felt my heart break. As he disappeared from sight, I sunk to the floor, the cold stone cutting through my bare legs causing them to sting and burn. I cried. And cried.

And cried.

then I woke up

another bloody dream I woke up in a cold sweat,

my hands clenched into fists as I struggled to catch my breath.

I didn't like the dreams or rather nightmares that they were.

It wasn't so much about the dream but about the feelings and emotions they brought with them.

It was just so real.

the feeling of having your father despise you?

It wasn't something pleasant and

That feeling would stick around forever.

Even now when I was awake,

I could still feel the raw emotions that memories brought along with them,

parents treating me like shit,

never letting me forget my place or my place alone if I even deserved any kind of praise.

To them, I was a Failure,

nothing more than a failure for the whole damned family.

and I didn't mind though,

but I hated this feeling of shame and guilt that did not belong to me

A part of me wished I could have been a normal kid.

Not that it would ever happen in a million years.

My life wasn't easy by any means but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle...not anymore, that is... not with this

I clicked my fingers and a bright fire began burning an inch from my thumb floating in the air illuminating my cell

I felt around the cold wooden floor

I don't know how long I had spent laying in that cold, empty room.

All I knew was that it was dark, it was quiet.

I couldn't tell if it was morning or night. I didn't really care either.

I lay on the floor, unmoving except for my heavy breathing.

It had been days since they locked me in this dark cell, weeks maybe, and I had grown weaker day by day.

I wasn't sure exactly how many days had passed since then, but I knew they had probably been many more.

I had given up on counting.

I hadn't even eaten in the last few days. I was hungry.

All I had was the ache in my bones and the bitter emptiness in my stomach.

I had become numb and detached from the world in my prison.

All I cared about was myself and keeping alive, keeping warm, and staying awake was the main thing right now.

I could feel the prison moving so that meant this was also carriage,

When the guards had thrown me in it, on the outside it was just a shabby black,

Mouldy old carriage from the 19th-century earth but on the inside, it was a dammed dungeon cell.

I could feel the vibration through the ground and walls, So, I could also tell we were traveling.

This seemed to indicate that the prince had returned to his journey,

as we had never gone further than a few leagues away, which was why the vibration of the carriage had awakened me.

I lay there still and listened;

the entire situation seemed ridiculous to me it was as if the prince was moving around with the entire estate,

for an instant the tent in which the prince was staying on the outside

It was a normal ten by ten feet camping tent but,

on the inside, it was a mansion with three storeys worth of space,

eight bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a large dining area with a bar, several card rooms, living quarters, ballrooms, dining rooms, and a small gym that was all I had time to see.

The entire interior was filled with art and treasures and decorated beautifully with marble floors, marble statues, paintings, books, vases, sculptures, and various other pieces of art.

Not to mention he had dungeons, prison cells, salve pens, and bloody torture chambers also traveling with him, not to mention that huge compound where all the servants stayed.

The whole place was beautiful and elegant and luxurious yet at the same time extremely oppressive, almost like a prison.

But at least it offered shelter, warmth, food, and freedom.

It gave me hope.

and I needed that hope now more than ever before.

But how was I going to get it? I thought to myself miserably.

I was weak and frail and injured,

what little strength I had left drained from me with each passing moment,

and it was getting darker and colder.

My fever had broken at some point when I was asleep and I could feel my skin tingle painfully.

at least there was water,

barrels of it right next in my cage and though I had drunk plenty of it in my brief excursion out of my dungeon,

I had not felt the need to replenish my dwindling supply yet.

There was nothing to eat, no food whatsoever.

I had gotten quite familiar with this feeling of being hungry and hungry and hungry.

the only reason why I could tolerate this situation was because of my power,

After days of trial and error,

I had grasped the basics of my newfound ability and gained a much deeper understanding of it.

It took forever of sorting through the new instincts before I was able to cast elemental spells,

I had discovered that when I cast an elemental spell, I could summon each and every element by just thinking even earth

I also discovered that the way I cast was different from what my father had taught me

In natural elemental spells, it actually consisted of a three-step process.

First, I would gather the mana, then I had to mix it with my own internal energy that I was to manipulate in order to give it form.

The last step was the hardest, controlling the spell and its effects.

But the radiance skipped the second step.

It used only its own power without borrowing internal energy.

That made it more difficult than any magic I had Known of so far and more mana-consuming.

It also required much more focus compared to normal magic.

Not only this Since Pure mana had no physical form, everyone had to develop a sort of sixth sense to sense it and open their mind and develop into manipulating its effects.

So, a normal could sense it in only one way either through sight, touch, smell, sound, or feel it through their mind But my senses were omnidirectional I could not just see mana, I could smell it, touch it, hear it and feel it.

The man obeyed me like anything, I could bend it stretch it conjure it I could literally do anything It all depended on my willpower and imagination.

The clearer the mental image of the action I wanted the mana to perform, the better the result.

Radiant magic's range was also very unlimited,

So in hopes of becoming stronger I started to practice Radiant magic.

in coming days I progressed in leaps and bounds compared to my imagination stemmed from games, novels, and movies.

From time to time,

I would use a random elemental spell to check on my progress, reaching a new understanding of the true nature of that element.

The progress I made allowed me to also improve my physique by understanding the nature of mana and its involvement in my body.

Another thing I discovered was accumulation

the more mana I gathered and applied the easier it was to see it Through Accumulation, I could now not only perceive how my own internal energy moved and changed in size with practice,

but also have a rough understanding of the amount of energy contained in my body.

By using Accumulation, I would feed the world energy I possessed and control the mana's properties and movements,

thus allowing me to gain immense amounts of power in a short period.

It was a marvellous gift that was hard earned and very rarely achieved.

But, as I had learned through my trials and errors, perseverance and determination were necessary attributes for success.

I could not afford to waste my life playing pretend with powers I didn't possess.

So, I practiced my magic daily, even during the harshest of times.

I learned three types of energies were present all around me the world energy which made up the bulk of the world I saw through my magical sense the jumble of elemental energies which as Job was taught was mana and my own life force which I called internal energy.

My magical abilities improved tremendously.

I could now hold spells longer and the stronger I got the more I wanted to escape.

But I was helpless against the bars.

That didn't allow me to leave these cells without permission.

It didn't even matter if I could escape now,

where would I go

what would I do and if it was ever found out that I was a radiant

then I was a dead man walking,

The sheer helplessness of the situation made me want to cry in frustration

but I kept my lips sealed and closed instead of letting them drop,

I did not want anyone else to witness my breakdown,

I did not want to be pitied by others.

I jus decided to close my eyes and sleep there was nothing I could do right now,

As I had learned from years of experience,

closing my eyes and shutting off my senses was better than thinking too much.

I was tired, but I didn't want to fall asleep.

It would make it seem as if I was giving up,

even though I hadn't been giving up,

but more like hiding.

Suddenly I heard cracking sounds no more like no I couldn't place the sounds so I just ignored it

but the next second the wooden roof above my head splintered into two.

A massive weight landed on my chest as my eyes flew open, and I found myself looking up at a giant Bear.

at least I think it was the snout of a big black bear.

It had a man in its jaws, and as I instinctually waved my hands and launched skin-piercing wind blade at the beast causing the bear to back off in pain,

at least I prayed it was pain cause I saw the wind blade harmlessly collide with the bear without causing any damage,

But even so it helped the bear let me go As I got and checked myself for any missing limbs I looked at the beast stumbling backward.

the only thought that came to mind was

'HOLY FUCKING SHIT'

It was a bear alright.

It wasn't any kind of bear I knew of and there were more of them standing just fifty feet away from me watching something in the distance.

Mine wasn't the biggest bear of the group that I could now see,

Probably around 30 meters high,

It was a massive massive beast

But this was a bear nonetheless,

there were around 12 or so more bears behind mine each more enormous than the first.

I felt my stomach churn as I saw it shake the man in its jaws like a dog with a rabbit.

Then it dropped him and turned its gaze on me.

Looking at me as i was next

i nervously slowly backed hoping it would loose interest in me

the bear was completely black,

with black fur, black eyes,

black muzzle, and long black fangs,

not to mention pitch black antlers protruding from its head.

suddenly it growled loudly and charged at me surrounded.

Then, the bear's mouth opened wider, and I noticed the rows of sharp black teeth inside, and suddenly all the blood drained from my face.

Without a thought, I threw a ball of fire at its face and jumped off the remains of my carriage.

But I might as well as thrown nothing at him cause it did literally nothing except distract him for less than one split second as he quickly caught it before it reached him.

It burned with white light and soon disappeared with a poof.

It happened so quickly but I knew exactly what I had done the beast was nearly on top of me.

I panicked and I gathered a burst of air and jumped, pushing off to send myself sailing high over the beast's head.

The long seconds of hang time gave me a chance to send a flurry of wind blades raining down on it,

but they didn't penetrate its fur at all, to have any effect.

it just pissed it off.

The beast was easily the size of an elephant, and I was going to need something with more punch than that to deal with it.

I looked around myself to see even more mayhem and destruction,

The rest of the caravan was in complete confusion.

More giant Bears were rampaging among the crowd while the men ran about trying to fight or flee as best as they could.

There were a flurry of many spells flying around everywhere making it look like a light show,

A fire ball there a light here a large ball of Lightning there a gust of wind here and there.

There were explosions of spells

lighting up the sky as they collided with the Beasts.

but nothing the soldier did had any effect on the bears as they went through the men

like a a...a knife going through water.

As I was too busy for sightseeing.

The damned beast was smart enough to see where I was going to land, and it came running towards me at top speed!

This is not good I realized I had to react fast In midair

I grabbed the winds too slow my descend, and I conjured a blade made of lightning and coming down without going splat was tricky enough that I barely managed to fend it off.

as I swatted at it with the blade, it backed of little, but then charged me again

Its jaws closed on lightning causing the blade to rip right through the bear's face.

And before I had time to celebrate something invisible wrapped around my waist yanking me straight up into the air.

"Shit!!!"

Before I even knew it I was already being dragged away and I tried to get out of his grip,

but that was useless,

I'm pretty sure the more I moved the tighter the force held me.

My blade disappeared as my concentration fell apart.

I stopped attempting to cast any spells and began to struggle against my captor who was not even slowing down

I couldn't breathe

I could barely feel my heartbeat racing against my ribcage like wild horses galloping,

as I fought desperately to break free.

At this point I knew what this was about I felt myself being crushed against the ground as I struggled.

I tried to concentrate my mana and focus it in my palms and elbows,

but my whole body shook and I couldn't stop trembling.

I could feel my mana flowing from my palms and fingers as it left them and it slowly faded away,

I couldn't even remember how it disappeared, it vanished in seconds, leaving me in a state of shock I had never experienced before

"You can't escape." said the pleasant sweet voice,

my heart was in overdrive pretty soon I was dangling upside down in mid-air in front of a very old woman dressed in a yellow robe with a white turban on her head,

giving a toothless smile, her wrinkled and pale greyish skin covered entirely with tattoos in a variety of colors.

Her face was wrinkled, her teeth seemed to be rotten, and some had fallen out.

Her eyes were red and bulged as if she didn't have any eyelids, and she wore a pair of black horn-rimmed spectacles.

"A radiant eh, what a pleasant surprise," she said in a sweet sickening jubilant voice that could have belonged to her sending a chill down my spine that terrified me to my core