Subconsciously they all tensed up seeing him standing before them, the overwhelming feeling from eight years ago made fresh in their minds and for the first time in this month Ishmael had stepped out of the volcano as he too had sensed his presence and the ones who seemed least affected were Noctis, Shen and Sarang.
To no one's surprise Sarang walked up to him and tapped Emrys on the shoulder-
"Can you spar with me".
"Before we return home and begin the tournament I would like to have some understanding of the distance between us".
Emrys tilted his head a little giving no reply to him before staring out into a different direction, particularly towards the place he could feel a different gaze unlike the rest.
"I accept" he replied.
Beneath his feet from his shadow a wave of darkness rushed out in all directions startling everyone and sending them into battle ready mode thinking he was launching an attack on them-
"Are you insane, what are you doing!?" Mordred exclaimed.
"Be calm" he whispered and instantly the tension left their bodies as all gained the presence of a calm mind, the spell was released moments later.
"I am simply preparing the stage" he explained motioning for them to take a look around them.
The darkness Emrys released had spread over the entire planet cloaking it and then became translucent enough for everyone to see clearly, he gave the go ahead to Sarang that he could begin at any moment he desired.
"And worry not about accidents, neither this planet or realm will be broken".
Sarang requested that their location be moved and then jumped forward landing three miles away with Emrys flying over to him a second later, everyone could still make out their forms with no problems and watched as the beastman took a stance while releasing the restraints placed upon himself thereby disrupting his state of harmony and unleashing upon the world a crazy violent storm of mana
Emrys raised a brow 'interesting, so that's how he went about his'.
"A dragged out fight would be pointless so I can only do this".
<
Sarang's right arm took was encapsulated in a silvery fluid mana which began vibrating at a high speed and then in an instant his hand vanished, there was no deafening sound or extravagant display of a light show, just a tiny flash accompanied by a silent whisper and suddenly Emrys was but a golden skeleton, like his flesh and clothes had simply just vanished entirely into thin air which made for a bizarre and confusing sight.
But then just like it never left all were once again present on his body, more surprising scenes were revealed as Sarang fell down on both knees slumped forward with a huge hole in his chest releasing some dark mana.
Almost immediately they were already standing before him again looking very worried and angry at the same time, he heaved a small sigh and then turned around to leave but had his arm held onto by Bahu.
"What did you do to him, why isn't he healing".
"Slowed down his regeneration so you can ease up now, I couldn't kill him even if I wanted"
"He should recover in an hour without any interference".
Bahu let go and turned to Sarang, Emrys was about to attempt leaving once again but the young fairy suddenly came out and flew towards Rozaria pointing towards something, specifically her eyes and Emrys being curious about what could have possibly grabbed the fairy's attention about her came forward staring into her eyes intently.
Rozaria took a step back suddenly wondering what was going on, Emrys having found exactly what it was the fairy had detected smiled which took her by surprise causing her heart to skip a beat.
Emrys realizing how he might have been too close for comfort eased up-
"Ah, do forgive me, your eyes just drew my attention so unexpectedly".
"I like them, they're more special than you know".
He absorbed the cloak of darkness casted upon the planet and turned around as he flew up into the space having learned a new piece of information on his peers, neither of them could see the young fairy, for now at least.
There were still far too many mysteries concerning the bodies of one fated to become gods so them gaining the same affinity he had somewhere down the line wasn't out the realm of possibilities, even he himself did not seem to have it until the day of his awakening following his mother's recounting of events.
"What's the deal with that guy" Rozaria whispered under her breath unconsciously bringing a hand right under her eyes, shaking herself out of it she turned to the unconscious Sarang with a huge gaping hole in his chest.
The others were gathered around him trying to analyze the wound for solutions on how to neutralize the effect of whatever Emrys had done to him, even Ismael had come close in worry.
She felt a gaze on her and looked up to meet Mordred's eyes staring at her with a mischievous and knowing look.
"What" she asked.
He shrugged "nothing, just be careful is all".
She raised a brow "what is that supposed to mean" her tone was one of confusion.
Mordred simply just smiled, "forget about it, our friend needs some tending to now".
"Are you done analyzing what it is" he asked Noctis who nod his head.
"It's dark mana" he replied.
"That guy has dark mana!?" Exclaimed Bahu in surprise.
"Yeah, he should be the only other person to have it as of current alongside General Maeve".
"But how come we couldn't sense it, as per what has been documented dark mana is the most destructive and dangerous affinity which makes it's nature impossible to hide no matter how much you suppress it".
Shen snapped his fingers as he recalled a memory "do you remember the first feeling we got when we met him on that day eight years ago, before we fully discovered he was like us".
Noctis nod his head "like a ghost".
"So are you suggesting he might have found a way to fuse his ghost-like nature into his dark mana attribute?" Selene hypothesized.
"I can't say for sure, it might have been his doing or it might have been that way with him already from the start but-
"Can you neutralize it with yours" Mavion interjected.
"I don't know, my attribute does have divine properties but that's not the same when it comes to dark mana".
"It's not of an 'evil' nature like everyone says it to be, it is much more like a force of nature".
"The stigma around dark mana has made it really hard to find honest information detailing the true nature of what it is but they're not completely nonexistent and thankfully so".
"One of the main reasons it can be stated to be of an 'evil' nature is due to the fact it has no real properties of corruption, it is more....overwhelm".
"What I am about to say might sound a little unbelievable but I am sure that dark mana is of a divine nature just like mine".
"If mine could be called the healing and judging side of the divine, dark mana is it's pure wrath and executioner".
Everyone was silent for a little while and Noctis felt so awkward he just put his head down and sighed.
"You really can talk a lot sometimes huh" Ishmael teased and he just chuckled.
"Yeah, was just a bit too enthusiastic in wanting a share some rare knowledge that I've kept to myself for so long".
"Everyone else is just far too set in their ways to entertain even half of what I said here"
Mordred smirked and gave him a light smack on the head "that's why we're your friends you idiot".
"Who else but us will bear with your rants whenever the mood arrives".
Noctis smiled and then sighed looking down at Sarang's body "I guess I have to try something either way".
He closed his eyes and put both hands together as he whispered-
<
A bright golden pillar of light descendent softly upon Sarangs body embracing him in a divine warmth, eyes watched attentively waiting for a hint of hope that it was working and to their joy it did.
The gaping wound began closing at visible speeds but their happiness was to be a short lived one as a problem had occurred, the wound stopped healing and began growing even wider than it was before, immediately they yelled for Noctis to stop the spell.
Noctis stopped just as they had asked and opened his eyes to meet with the sight almost losing his composure at the new much bigger wound that showed on Sarang's body, he could not understand why healing magic could backfire so terribly and cause something like this.
"It fed on it" Rozaria suddenly spoke up.
Their attention was turned to her "what do you mean" Ishmael asked.
"That Noctis was correct" Avistro replied as he squat down to examine the wound himself this time.
"Dark mana is not of an 'evil' nature".
Noctis scoffed looking at Sarang with a solemn gaze "who knew I could hate being correct".
"It is no fault of yours, we were the ones who pushed for this".
Avistro looked up at his peers "I think it would be best if we just choose to wait an hour like he had said".
"Any further experiments on what could work or not isn't worth the risk, we might have even extended the original time limit just by doing this".
They all silently agreed and took Sarang's body back with them in a transparent sphere of mana, they all sat around in awkward silence for a bit until Shen suddenly chuckled.
"It's a bit amusing when you think about it, just a little while ago we had discovered that we were absolutely immortal and "some" abused this to annoy the hell out of someone".
Rozaria rolled her eyes sarcastically knowing full well he was referring to her-
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"And then here comes that guy to scare back into us a little feeling of mortality, absolutely amusing" he laughed for a bit with the others unable to help the feeling of rolling their eyes also.
"I wasn't scared" Ishmael raised his hand and spoke.
"I believe you" Shen replied in a lazy tone which prompted Ishmael to believe he was being sarcastic but Shen feeling too unmotivated to clarify just allowed him to think whatever suited him.
"But I suppose something like this isn't out of realm for someone born with the same potential rivaling the future ruler of the gods" Selene conceded.
Bahu suddenly sprung up "I can't stand it anymore, why are all of you accepting such a humiliation so easily".
"It doesn't matter his potential rivals that of our future ruler, at this stage such a large gap between us should be unacceptable to everyone here".
"He has yet to reach the peak of power whereby the strength of his potential should truly begin to show and yet we have such a large gap already".
"When we arrived here at the start and I sensed him he felt far weaker than any of us were, this gap is our fault".
"For two months we barely did any real training or honing of our skills after completing our given task and I blame myself for not wondering why neither of us had sensed him during the entirety of this period".
"The tournament will begin very soon, just four more days left and if we arrive there with such a gap existing between us what sort of image would we be projecting".
"Either one of us should be capable of putting up a good fight against him and not just become useless spectators when he and our ruler inevitably have a meet up in the tournament".
"I know you're all thinking it, we all know what the people back home are expecting to be the highlight of this tournament and look at us foolishly presenting them their wish on a golden platter".
Another round of awkward silence followed after Bahu was done with his rant, he simply shook his head disappointedly and turned around to leave.
"I'll be back when Sarang has recovered" then he flew out of away into space.
"Geez, anybody else have a rant you want to get off your chest" Shen looked around at his peers.
Selene frowned a little seeing his attitude "you can't be like that Shen, you know in the end that he was right".
He rolled his eyes "he's just angry at his own realized weakness and only dragged us into his preachy rant to make himself feel better".
"The future god of defense here is simply just a weak hearted person, nothing more and nothing less".
"Sure I might currently be weaker than that guy, it's possible but his assumption of the gap he's perceived between himself and that guy, the fact he applied that gap to every one of us individually under the assumption that we were all equal in the first place is what annoys me the most".
Selene's frown grew deeper but she was starting to understand a bit of where he was coming from "even so that's no reason to talk this way when approaching it".
"I didn't say anything wrong, you're just too soft spoken".
Seeing that nothing productive would come out of bickering with him she chose to give up on the subject and continue watching over Sarangs body, they all just chose to remain silent for the rest of the while they waited, emotions were too disturbed at the moment to risk it.
An hour eventually passed and new worries grew, a second hour passed and Bahu had returned to see Sarang's body still retained the hole in his chest. Avistro's hypothesis was becoming more and more of a reality the longer time passed and with it also grew the guilt of Noctis.
But soon enough their ray of hope arrived, a soft groan escaped Sarangs vocals and all immediately reacted, having seen their friend lay completely still and unmoving like a corpse for two hours straight it felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off their shoulders.
Selene covered her mouth with both hands as tears of joy began streaming down her face with each drop that fell crystallizing into small round blue gemstones containing one of the highest quality of water mana possible in the world.
Avistro acted fast as he caught the tear drops lest they touched the earth causing an accident, his face was riddled with worry because he could feel just how potent the mana contained within these stones were even while contained within their crystal prison.
Selene realised what had occured and reached out to take back the gemstones from his hands easing his worry, she brought them to her chest and closed her eyes. A whirlpool of water began forming taking form right in the center and she gently let go of the stones which surprised Avistro for a moment but he realized they weren't falling but instead steadily getting sucked into the whirlpool to become engraved onto her heart like a marking.
"The first tears of a mermaid are her most precious and belong with her".
She smiled looking down at Sarangs body, the wound had already began visibly closing and a minute it was fully healed when the dark mana had fully faded away, his eyes trembled as the beastman turned to prop himself up of the ground while holding onto his head feeling groggy.
His eyes suddenly sprung wide open as all feelings of clarity rushed back to him and he turned around to meet with eleven pair of eyes staring at him intently, he froze for a moment as he knew not what to do or say in this situation.
His eyes looked around instinctively for Emrys but just as expected he was gone, he tensed up a bit when Selene got up and walked towards him but his worries were for naught as she simply just hugged him dearly.
He hesitated for a bit in choosing what to do but finally decided to reciprocate the gesture and hugged her back as well.
"You bastard, do you know how worried we were".
Sarang's eyes hung wide open in surprise and not just him but everyone were the same, he just smiled bitterly and hugged her a little closer to himself.
"I'm sorry".
She pulled away from him a little and gently rubbed his luscious mane with a warm smile on her face "You have nothing to apologize for, none of us knew that he would be so cruel".
Sarang's head tilted as he looked to be a little confused "cruel?".
"Yes, he left you with a huge hole in your chest which you could not heal from and we could not risk interfering because it had already backfired once".
"We were forced to watch your motionless body for two hours, forced to doubt our very own immortality, if that's not cruel then I don't know what is".
It was then that Sarang realized and a visible rage could be felt building beneath the surface but Selene placed a gentle hand on his face to calm him down, he looked into her crystal blue eyes and felt his rage go down in a matter of seconds then he heaved a sigh.
"Tsk, though I dislike what that guy put you through I'm forced to admit things aren't as simple as they seem on the surface".
He sat down and then began narrating-
"After I lost the clash between us he took my mind to a different space and asked that I show him the skill I had used on him once again".
"Though i thought it a bit out of place I saw no reason to refuse and used it again".
"He asked where I got it from and I told him it was a bloodline skill belonging solely to the -Hands of extinction- Knights family whom I took it from a year ago and forgetting that I had it until just recently".
"I guess that guy really has an obsession with collecting strong skills or magic so he copied it to the same level of mastery as I a minute later".
"Of course it was very surprising for me when he did that as it took me a number of five days to reach ten percent mastery and he somehow also figured out the skill was very incomplete, I had only learned ten percent of it after all".
"Before my eyes he began figuring out the formula to it's complete form and managed to reach fifty percent of it's true manifestation before suddenly claiming to have lost interest and wanted to send me back".
"Aaaaand.....of course I didn't want to go back just like that and begged him to teach me rest of what he learned, I thought he had left seeing as he was suddenly gone from the space for a moment but he came back a second later and agreed".
"Surprisingly he was a willing teacher and a really good one too, with hus guidance I managed to reach thirty percent mastery before he told me my time was up".
"Thought he made a throwaway comment about how more time was spent than he had intended but thought nothing of it".
"I guess this was what he meant, didn't know he would leave you with such a sight as I had imagined from your perspective it would like i was in a deep slumber."
After Sarang was done with his story they all seemed to look at him with an unreadable expression, then they shook their heads disappointedly.
"Unbelievable, all that worry and dread for nothing" - Mavion.
"I feel scammed of my emotions" said Bahu sounding a little lost.
But of them all only Selene suddenly burst out in laughter "guess we really have found the true designated troublemaker of our group then".
He laughed nervously along with her "I'm really sorry for making all of you worry" his head was bowed proving himself that he really was being sincere.
"Worry not about it, in the end things turned out okay and you managed to leave with something good at the very least" -Avistro.
"Just don't ever do that again".
"I won't" he agreed and they all had a hearty round of laughs for the next few minutes teasing one another with the ordeal they had just experienced.
The rest of the four days of time they had left in this realm they absorbed themselves entirely in training except for Velkos who still retained the same position as always atop the mountain peak, on the second day they had managed to enlist the help of Emrys with some convincing from Sarang and one that took hours but in the end Avistro caved in to his demands amd searched for Emrys once again knowing he would catch on to it just as before and make an appearance which he did.
He cast a darkness over the world again to properly contain their power and allow them to truly train themselves to the limit while watching from the side, on the third day Sarang had come to him once again asking for him to finish imparting to him the rest of his knowledge on the <
He even went further in teaching him better refined control over mana as a bonus, it was a pretty surprising sight for the rest to see how easygoing he seemingly was which lessened their negative opinion of him though not by much at all.
And now the fourth day had arrived, they all just lay side by side looking up at the sky in wait for when their ride home would be returning, Emrys had left at the end of the third day though he left the cloak around the planet still.
"It just hit me, during the time we were still exploring this realm did any of you ever try a black hole" Mordred asked.
"Some worlds here believe them to be portals of sorts and who knows, it might just work that way here".
"No" they replied
"Never crossed my mind surprisingly" -Sarang.
Mordred grinned "wouldn't hurt to try then would it".
They all seemed to share the same sentiment and in moments they had flown far beyond the galaxy they resided in, thanks to Avistro they managed to find the strongest available one in this realm and in a matter of seconds they were right at it's location.
"Whoa, that looks....unusual" Sarang commented.
The blackhole before them looked to be at least eight times larger than the galaxy bearing their base world and all around it were red storms of lightning converging right in the centre of it striking with an overbearing aura, one that gave them a small sense of discomfort.
Avistro looked a little conflicted "something tells me that shouldn't be here, it feels very off".
"You're worried?" Mordred was quite surprised at his tone.
"Ah, there's something coming out of there" Selene pointed right it's centre where a figure was taking form and walking out to meet them.
It's body seemed to be humanoid and made out of an ancient tree with the cosmos embedded in different parts of it, on it's head a golden flame burning pure and almost serene, right in the centre of it's chest was deep spiral of an abyss and all around it's body the red lightning ran rampant but controlled.
It's face had no discernable features to make of other than a simple vertical line and the longer they looked at it the more uncomfortable they felt because it felt almost familiar yet not at all, the most they could describe it to be was like a half completed imitation corrupted by something.
≈Hm, so you're the invaders responsible for the slaughter of my creations≈
It suddenly spoke, it's tone seemingly commanding but also one of pure nonchalance and though they could make out no discernible eyes they could feel it's gaze upon them was similar to the look given to ants.
It could be said to have been quite a new experience for them the feeling of being looked down on, from the very moment they were born all they had gotten were looks of praise, adoration, of awe, envy, jealousy and hatred even but never once had they ever been looked down upon till this moment, it was quite the new experience indeed.
The being turned it's head around seemingly in search for something-
≈Where is he, the other one responsible for my current state≈
They looked a little confused when it said that, the first person that came to mind was Emrys but then they heard it laugh.
≈That's not the one, the kid you call Velkos, where is he≈ it demanded.
With this they understood it could also read their thoughts which was interesting, in the first place they had made no effort or strong defenses to protect against a possibility for something like this in this realm but it was still impressive nonetheless.
Ishmael suddenly moved closer to it much to his peers surprise, he looked to be extremely curious and amused at the same time- "If I'm not wrong you are to be what passes as a god in this realm correct?".
≈A god huh, my creations did refer to me as such so I guess you may refer to me as such if you wish≈
"Hoh? If you do not comfortably proclaim yourself as one are you just the guard dog of this realm then"
"How boring".
They could sense a hint of amusement coming from the being-
≈I should go find him now≈
It ignored Ishmael's attempt at provocation and began flying away causing a small disruption in space as it tried to teleport but couldn't, it's invisible gaze fell upon Avistro who seemed to be holding it hostage.
"For someone entirely out of his depth you project a confidence that is the complete opposite and that annoys me a bit".
"I am relived you do not proclaim yourself a god, how insulting that would be if you were is not something you could possiblyimaginee".
The being gave no reply and in am instant they found themselves in what seemed to be a body of water with no surface and seemingly no end to it's depth.
≈I have no interest in fighting any of you, I just need to find the one you call Velkos and so for the timebeing you shall remain here≈
It's body suddenly broke into multiple pieces and faded away, on the outside the being looked at the blue spherical object containing the invaders in the palm of his hands and then left it to drift away while it pushed it's senses in search of his target whom was all too adept at evading him.
≈This time you shall be the one who falls≈
Out of nowhere a fist suddenly struck at it's head causing it to turn a little to the side but causing no damage to it, Sarang bared his fangs in a wild smile feeling it's gaze upon him.
"Hey" he called.
"Imposing a sealed dimension around the space we resided in and then meticulously weaving and melding a looped space around so as to give the illusion of it being endless".
"What an amateur, though i will give you the credit of finding a way out of my hold through a disposable puppet body".
Avistro appeared seated atop it's head with his size being much smaller than before and kicking his legs carelessly with a bored expression on his face "go on then, show me the reason you showed such confidence".
.............≈As you wish, persistent one≈
EnD.