Xen quickly crossed his hands in the air, creating countless seals in the shape of huge yellow bulls, pervaded by the essence of the Earth Mana. They gave off a power capable of levelling mountains.
Pseudonym, on the other hand, looked like the king of kings, still and covered by a heavenly waterfall of pitch-black flames. His movements, slow, continuous and methodical, had hypnotized the crowd. But Helial was not hypnotized: he was simply shocked.
"Pseudonym already has a Skill at Grand Master rank," Helial said incredulously. He had seen Skills at that rank multiple times while he had been in the Time Block with Alexander. And for this very reason, he knew exactly what it meant.
The rules of Mana prevent mortals from crossing certain boundaries. Before the Third Phase it’s impossible to acquire the Divine Sense, before the Sixth it’s impossible to manipulate the fabric of reality in order to fly.
The eternal fate of Mana pervaded all living beings and was relentless.
What had shocked Helial was the very fact that a living being had gone against heavenly destiny.
Skills in the Grand Master rank required a control that cannot be reached below the Fifth Phase. Furthermore, the difficulty in overcoming the bottleneck between Master and Grand Master rank is not something that a simple man could have imagined.
In his life close to Alexander, Helial had experienced the feeling of having an ability at the Grand Master rank and he knew well how extraordinary it was that Pseudonym had already reached that degree of experience.
Once reborn in the Time Block, Helial had experienced the incredible power of Skills at the Grand Master rank.
He didn't even need to watch the fight to know how it would end.
Not only did a set of Meridians pure and tempered more than hardened steel was required to perform such a Skill, but one's understanding of Mana must have reached an extremely high level. In addition, Pseudonym had also integrated his power with Flame of the Black Phoenix.
The deeper and more inscrutable the laws of a Skill are, that is, the more potential it has, the more difficult it is to raise its level.
The ability one's Meridians had to possess to use a Skill in the Grand Master rank were not something achievable before the Fifth Phase. Each remodelling that the body went through passing from Phase to Phase allowed the warrior to make the most of his Meridians. Only by reaching, gradually, a state close to perfection, one could hope to be able to use such an ability in the distant future.
Whether living beings liked it or not, until someone managed to subdue all the limits of the universe, it would always have been impossible to violate the laws of Mana.
"How is that possible," swallowed Helial, eyes wide.
A gentle voice coughed inside Helial's Soul. "Talent is only a small part of the path that will take us to meet Amaterasu again," said Iblis, appearing next to Helial.
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Nobody seemed to have noticed the boy who suddenly appeared among them. Probably, the Devil had used something to hide his presence from prying eyes.
"Never give up, never give in, go through a sea of flames and a mountain of blades," said Helial, laughing, looking at the armour high in the sky, "what does Pseudonym have that Helial doesn't?"
Iblis stretched the corners of his mouth in an enigmatic smile and turned to him.
“I can read your soul at any moment. I never missed your thoughts. So, I turn this question back to you: what does the great Pseudonym have that Helial doesn't? " replied Iblis.
Freezing on the spot, Helial suddenly felt a twinge in his heart. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm the Mana that had already begun to simmer within his Soul and Meridians.
“What holds our bodies together is nothing but a goal through which to sublimate our essence. Be it freedom, love, death or even eliminate evil from the world. Life and Destruction are what they are only because the members of their forces have something tremendously great to draw from and pour their essence into. Every warrior has something from which he will have to draw to overcome Immortality, to overcome the first boundaries of the Mana, which makes us mortal and fragile."
“Pseudonym, despite his young age, has in his head something already as big as the thoughts that cross the mind of some big shots of Life and Destruction. How can the mind of such a young person already hold certain follies, this is a mystery for me too. All the emotions we feel, all the forces that we are able to release with the palm of your hand ... If we were to go to the base of everything, do you know what we would find? Just an emotion, a spark that then ignites our hearts and gives birth to all other emotions."
Iblis paused briefly while watching Pseudonym cross swords with Xen for the first time; the warrior of the Sect of the Worthy spat several mouthfuls of blood after the head-on collision, and was thrown over a hundred meters into the air.
Wiping blood from the corners of his mouth, he roared furiously and created more seals with his hands, this time even larger than before.
There had been only one exchange, but Xen had already decided to give all he had.
Skill Activated:
Infinite Suppression of the Bull
All the seals dematerialized, dispersing in the air and creating a block with a radius of half a km. A huge yellowish and impalpable prison enveloped both warriors.
Xen's Skill was using the Mana of the environment to merge with that of the amorphous seals.
Glaucus' expression changed: "Damn it, does Xen really want to use that attack?!"
In panic, Glaucus thought about intruding. Yet, despite the fact that he was slightly stronger than Xen, facing such an attack he would still have risked being seriously injured if he had not been careful enough.
Seeing Pseudonym remain calm and impassive even facing Infinite Suppression of the Bull, Glaucus decided not to get in the way.
Lumia, Vlad, Snowflake and the others watched with curiosity the clash, increasingly shocked by the unmatched power of Pseudonym.
Although the Generals were not in the Late stage of the Sixth Phase, but only in the Intermediate one, the boys understood that there was a reason, if they had been ordered to hold that position: they were so strong that not even the most incredible warrior at the climax of the Sixth Phase would have been able to defeat them.
Circe shook her head.
"Getting on par with that monster is getting harder and harder," she told herself.
The yellowish air around Pseudonym stopped collecting Mana from the surrounding environment and began to thicken, forming a huge yellow bull that contained the power of Earth Mana.
Scratching his chin, Iblis commented: “It is not freedom that moves you, nor love for your sister. They are all very strong feelings and rooted within your Soul. But you know it too. You realized it after experiencing Alexander's greatness. If you really want to walk alongside the great monsters of the universe, you will have to find a corner stone to lay the foundations of your being. Another day, when it will be more appropriate, we will continue this conversation. For the moment, watch and learn."