Novaris. Septer. 904. AGC.

Their parents were Joseph and Sandral Siandel and they had been clergy of Luxana.

Sandral, their mom, was a Moon Touched Elf Cleric in the Church of Dreams, while their dad, Joseph, was a Human Holy Warrior in the Order of Moonlight. They had been two loyal followers of the deity who lived out in the middle of nowhere, acting as ambassadors of Luxana to villages.

Then, their mom got pregnant and was asked to be part of Project Nodel, which was named after their planet’s moon, as symbolism that it was the key to retaking it. Their parents loyal followers as they were accepted, though they had been a bit worried at first. Their worry came from the fact that they were having twins, which was something that caused problems during the last two experiments that created the Moon Angels and Moon Touched. Furthermore, there was the fact their mother was Moon Touched herself and knew about the many things that had gone wrong then. The mother knew that if two siblings were empowered simultaneously, they would merge into one.

However, Luxana had reassured them that she would only imbue her power to one of the kids, specifically Jasmine. This was because the goddesses preferred girls over boys and, when given a choice would pick a lady every time.

Either way, with the reassurance of their god, the couple joined Project Nodel and were taken to the capital of the Novarian Alliance.

It was at that point that Ravnica wished to end the discussion, as she concluded it was enough to explain why they were reawakening their bodies. The issue was that Arelion and Jasmine weren’t having it. After all, that didn’t explain how they had come to be two people stuck in one body with two different godly powers. So, after some back-and-forth argument, pointing out that they could probably just look up the answers later on or ask another cleric once they were free, the Grand Cleric gave up and continued the story.

Essentially, around six months after being taken to Luminant, the Capital City of the Novarian Alliance the city came under attack.

The attack had been unexpected as they couldn’t believe someone actually had the gall to attack the capital. However, once the culprits were seen, the attack made sense.

A coalition of the darker gods had formed. They brought Celestials, S Rankers, A Rankers, and even one of each god's mortal leaders—the Divine Archons.

Due to the surprise attack and the sheer force brought to bear, the invaders managed to breach the city and began kidnapping or killing all those whom they found belonged to Project Nodel.

The breach didn’t last but minutes before gates to each of the seven gods' holy realms opened.

As soon as the gates opened, their deity's own Celestials and S Rankers came through, causing the dark gods to call for a retreat.

In total, the dark forces had taken 350 of the 1000 mothers who were part of Project Nodel.

The alliance's forces pursued and managed to recover some, but many were killed outright by the dark forces instead of letting them fall back into enemy hands again. Overall, only 50 of the captured moms were recovered alive, while 38 were taken hostage, with the rest being killed.

From there, Ravnica says the rest of the children and mothers died, well, all except for one. However, though Luxana could tell the baby was alive through their connection, she wasn’t able to locate it. The goddess tried to search for the lost child, but without any idea where she was, there wasn’t much she could do. So, as time passed, the search diminished in strength, but they never truly gave up and were always on the lookout for anyone with silver hair.

Of course, the search ended in success, as indicated by Jasmine’s presence. The issue is that they don’t know what happened after Jasmine was taken, so neither Ravnica nor Luxana could explain the cause of the twins' current problems.

So, without anything else to divulge and with Arelion still being unconvinced by the whole, Luxana didn’t know a thing; they let Ravnica continue her explanation of their awakening bodies.

Ravnica explained that the rest of the children in Project Nodel and so, by extension, Jasmine and Arelion have to progress like the rest of the mortals, which means reforging their bodies slowly but surely with purer and purer mana. The process can be as fast or as slow as someone is willing to make it by withstanding the pain that comes with it.

Now, most mortals without access to a higher power like a god or monarch cannot jump ranks as easily as clergy or warlocks can. This is because the purest mana they can get a hold of is always kept at a certain amount that never actually goes above a certain threshold. This is done so that if they decide to unleash all their purified mana, they don’t end up burning their bodies into dust. Something clergy and warlocks or anyone with access to a higher power can definitely do. Now, the trade-off is that these mortals are free to truly do as they wish, while clergy or warlocks are often bound to a being, and the fact is that if they go too far, they can very much kill themselves by jumping ranks.

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So what that means is that as long as clergy or warlocks don’t overdo it, they can progress in the ranks at a much faster rate. This then leads to Jasmine’s and the others from Project Nodel’s special circumstances. Though they, too, can jump rank, at first, they are stuck behind the limiting factor of other mortals without clergy due to not having access to a lot of Luxana’s mana. However, as they rank up and have access to purer mana, whether straight from the goddess or by making their own, they would then be able to progress faster. However, even then, it wasn’t recommended that they jump ranks as their bodies still couldn’t be fully healed with normal magic. However, the issue wasn’t as big of a problem at later ranks when they did have access to more of Luxana’s mana.

Now, Jasmine and Arelion were the oddities in this because, according to Ravnica, it was clear to Luxana that her connection with the girl was an unlimited one way street in Jasmine’s favor. This then allowed Jasmine to pull as much mana as she wanted, letting her much more easily jump ranks. Of course, there was still the drawback, and as Jasmine experienced, her body would definitely get heavily damaged.

Ravnica also pointed out that Jasmine and Arelion had still jumped ranks, which meant their body was indeed reforged at a faster rate than it was being destroyed. And when everything settled down, and they had recuperated, they did, in fact have a stronger body around the start of D Rank in power.

The issue was that their body was still recovering, but with some slow exercise and the eventual usage of magic, it should properly awaken while also taking them to Mid D Rank at most.

So, with that out of the way, the twins began their training in earnest. It started rather slowly, but the training kicked up with the passing months.

At first, it was just slow exercises to improve their movement while also building up some muscle and endurance. In truth, the twins didn’t notice a difference, which led them to believe that the whole awakening thing was not true. However, they went along with it.

After the light exercise came the actual workouts. This just reaffirmed that Ravnica’s awakening rant was definitely a theory more than anything. They didn’t blame the woman as they definitely were a special case, even for those in Project Nodel. Arelion even speculated that their body not healing even with access to the deity's mana might be a handicap brought by their strange existence.

Anyways, the training was based on movement and further weight training. They would jump around their training room, going through loops and doing various flips while also lifting heavy weights. According to Ravnica, the training they were doing was similar to that of those who were trained to achieve D Rank. And after seeing how well they were doing, Ravnica decided it was time for actual ranker training.

Actual ranker training did actually make them feel a bit exhausted. The training took the simple gymnastics they were doing and moved it to something regular mortals could never do. Things that would have definitely broken bones from sheer fall height or definitely twisted muscles from irregular movement were part of the course. Strength training was also crazy, as they were sure they could probably lift a horse at their current level of strength.

Moving on from exercising, they started proper combat training. Jasmine was told that even if she wanted to be a primary caster, it was important that she learn some melee weaponry. The case for this was that ignoring melee was what many focused casters did early on and met their end as a monster rushed and ripped their faces off. So, she was given the staff.

She would be given a magical staff later on that would help her channel her magic, but that could also be used for melee combat. The staff she practiced with was a bit shorter than her, which, according to Ravnica, was meant to help with its use. Speaking of Ravnica, the dragonkin finally got into the training herself. The cleric had been alive for a long time and, though not a master, was proficient with staffs and daggers, among other things.

Now, training with Ravnica hurt. Luckily, the pain turned to skill as Jasmine and technically Arleion began learning how to use the weapon. They learned to twirl, smash, slash, poke, and all other sorts of moves that would work against humanoids. Ravnica also told them they would need to learn how to fight monsters, which they did.

It was some time after they had been training and when they both were proficient with staffs and daggers. However, it is important to mention that Arelion also learned to dual-wield short swords and even threw in a rapier lesson here and there. According to him, it was important to have a wide variety of killing methods for the right occasions.

Either way, it had definitely been a surprise when they had entered the training room one day and were met face-to-face with a two-headed bear who promptly began chasing them around. The thing wasn’t a D Rank threat, but it was still a hard-fought battle since it was their first monster beast thing to encounter. It also didn’t help they couldn’t use magic. Thankfully, Ravnica was watching them in case something went wrong.

So after running around fighting it with staff to keep it at bay and switching to short daggers for quick rushes of stabs, they did manage to kill it.

Which was when they both felt something weird. It was a feeling telling them to approach the bear and drain it. In fact, it was so strong that they were on their way to “drain” it or whatever it actually meant. Sadly Ravnica beat them to it and stored the body away, congratulating them as if nothing had just happened. Thankfully, when the body disappeared, so did the urge, but it was something they definitely needed to look into and definitely not tell Ravnica.

The training continued as they fought a few more monsters in between standard combat lesson. Each time, the urge came, but each time, they managed to hold it off.

Finally, one day, Ravnica told them it was time to start their magical training so they could integrate it with their combat styles. This excited both of them, as they had wanted to use magic but had been worried about hurting themselves with the clearly powerful and pure mana in their souls.

They had attempted to search their small library for any tomes about magic, but oddly enough, they couldn’t find anything. And with only vague memories from when the orphanage gave them a brief lesson in mana, they didn’t want to do anything that might devolve into accidental rank jumping.