The Blood Legacy (The Divine Elements Book 1)
Page 1
Acknowledgments
This book has only been possible due to certain people that helped me create it. First of all, I would like to thank David for being a great editor and offering his guidance and suggestions to better the story of The Divine Elements.
Next, a big thank you to Richard for letting me host my work on his site, Gravity Tales, and being a great guy in general. I would also like to thank the other members of the Gravity team, especially Jafz, for helping out with the cover of this book.
Thank you guys.
-Daman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1 – A New Destiny
Chapter 2 – A Mysterious Voice
Chapter 3 – Red Boar School
Chapter 4 – Natural Born Genius
Chapter 5 – Disappear
Chapter 6 – Element-Less
Chapter 7 – First Taste of Blood
Chapter 8 – The Twin Demons
Chapter 9 – A Painful Past
Chapter 10 – The First Lesson
Chapter 11 – The Axier Family
Chapter 12 – The Legacy of Blood
Chapter 13 – Transformation
Chapter 14 – The First Breakthrough
Chapter 15 – Defying the Heavens
Chapter 16 – The Thunder Bird
Chapter 17 – Explosive Strength
Chapter 18 – The Formless Fist
Chapter 19 – A Fateful Encounter
Chapter 20 – Big Sister?
Chapter 21 – A New Bond
Chapter 22 – A Fresh Sight
Chapter 23 – The Beast Within
Chapter 24 – The Final Destination
Chapter 25 – A Broken Weapon
Chapter 26 – Thunder’s Hand
Chapter 27 – The Second Inheritor
Chapter 28 – Legend of the Past
Chapter 29 – Rebirth
Chapter 30 – Changes
Chapter 31 – The First Spar
Chapter 32 – A Soft Breeze
Chapter 33 – The Azure Lightning Emerges
Chapter 34 – Secret Unveiled
Chapter 35 – The Supreme Entities
Chapter 36 – Titan’s Fury
Chapter 37 – Preparation
Chapter 38 – A Summer’s Beauty
Chapter 39 – A Deathly Smile
Chapter 40 – The Violet-Eyed Executioner
Chapter 41 – Order of the World
Chapter 42 – A Rare Elixir
Chapter 43 – The Blood Mist Step
Chapter 44 – The Preliminary Round
Chapter 45 – A Change of Heart
Chapter 46 – The Arena
Chapter 47 – A Shocking Scene
Chapter 48 – Are you a Boy or a Girl?
Chapter 49 – The White Armband
Chapter 51 – Entering the Stage
Chapter 52 – Behind the Scenes
Chapter 53 – A Teardrop
Chapter 54 – Yearning a Family’s Love
Chapter 55 – Retribution
Chapter 56 – Arrival of the Shadow Corps
Chapter 57 – Dilemma
Chapter 58 – The Return
Chapter 59 – I Will Create My Own Destiny!
Chapter 60 – Epilogue
Prologue
“I’m sorry, Elaine.”
The old midwife said sorrowfully as she gazed down at the pale woman lying on a dirty mat. Splotches of dark blood were pooled around the pale woman, and she appeared to be on the verge of her last few breaths.
Gently holding the stillborn baby in her bloodstained hands, the old midwife slowly laid the child into its mother’s arms. Meanwhile, a small wiry boy was currently kneeling next to this pale woman while he firmly grasped one of her hands. It was as if the boy was afraid that he would lose her hand’s warmth forever.
The young boy had hair the color of midnight, and eyes just as equally as dark. With streams of tears rolling down his face, he scrunched up his childish face in an attempt to look brave, but his facade immediately collapsed when he saw his mother struggling with her next breath.
“Mother…”
Tendrils of light blue essence slowly coalesced around the old midwife’s hands as she desperately tried to heal the dying woman with her element. After a few seconds, the blood ceased to flow out from the pale woman, but it was clear that there was no preventing the inevitable outcome that would soon occur.
“Calron, come meet your little sister.”
The pale woman whispered gently as she turned her head to look at her sniveling eight year old son beside her.
Reaching out a trembling arm, the woman warmly grazed her palm against her son’s wet cheeks as she felt her soul crumbling from knowing that her son was soon going to be an orphan in this cruel world.
The boy immediately stopped crying the moment he felt his mother’s touch on his face.
This was the woman who brought him into this world and the one who showed him the true depths of love and compassion. Noticing the motionless blood-covered baby within his mother’s embrace, the boy felt his heart being slowly crushed.
Robbed of the chance to take a single breath in this word, his sister would never who her brother was, or experience what it felt like to be alive.
Suddenly, the boy’s mother started to cough uncontrollably while she struggled to take her next breath.
“Mother!”
The dark haired boy frantically yelled in panic.
“It’s alright, Cal… mommy’s fine… she just to need rest a bit.”
The woman softly said while trying to reassure her son. With her hands slightly trembling, she reached out to wipe away the tears from her son’s cheeks.
“Cal, leave this place after mommy’s gone…those people will soon come here torment you… just like they did to your father…”
The boy slowly nodded in response to his mother’s wish, but a fierce determination began to spread across his face as he thought about the people his mother was talking about.
After the death of his father a few months back, the boy had already once experienced the agony of loss at a tender age, and the grief in his tiny heart could not bear the pain of another loss so soon.
How could he simply leave this place? Those people had not only caused the deaths of his parents, but also denied his little sister to ever feel the warmth of her family.
Fate was cruel.
Destiny was worthless.
Only strength was everlasting.
The dark haired boy tightly clenched his tiny fists together, drawing blood as his nails pierced into his own skin.
As the small drops of crimson liquid dripped onto the floor, a seed of vengeance started to take root inside the boy’s heart.
“Keep the locket safe, Cal… it was the heirloom of your father’s family…”
His mother’s soft voice abruptly shook the boy out of his raging thoughts.
Subconsciously, the dark-haired boy gripped the bird-shaped locket on his collar and slowly nodded to his mother as he wiped away his tears on his shoulder.
The pale woman tightly hugged the small blood-covered baby to her chest and then slowly turned her head to tenderly kiss her son. Lovingly gazed into his eyes, the woman gingerly patted her son’s head for the last time. Slowly closing her eyes, the boy’s mother drew her very last breath of life.
All time seemed to stop.
Silence.
A heartbreaking cry of a young child echoed throughout the area, as it shattered the silence of the world.
Chapter 1 – A New Destiny
*thak*
*thak* *thak*
; In the blazing sun’s heat, an eight year old boy stood panting with bloody fists at his sides.
In front of him was a tree with blood-smeared bark. No matter how many times he punched or kicked, the anger and the grief he felt would not leave him. The boy suddenly turned his head towards his family’s modest farm behind the tree and forlornly gazed at the three graves.
The villagers helped him with digging the two new graves, but they did not continue to help him further as they knew exactly who would come for the boy later. They did not wish to gamble with their lives for a mere orphan.
With pity in their eyes, the villagers left to the safety of their own homes and families.
The boy was truly alone now.
The child looked up towards the bright blue sky while squinting his eyes as the sun’s flare bore through his eyelids. How could such a beautiful and yet a cruel world exist?
As he pondered these thoughts, the boy looked away from the sky.
With only a few weeks remaining till he reached his eighth birthday, the child knew that his element’s awakening was drawing near. However, the moment where one’s family and friends would normally rejoice and celebrate, it would only serve to bring further pain and anguish to him.
Especially if he awakened to the same element as his father: the element of lightning.
Lightning was said to be the weakest of all the elements, as a lightning elementalist could only paralyze an opponent.
It was too weak to actually land fatal blows, and against a stronger opponent, the paralyzing attack would hardly deter them for longer than a moment, and without the power to kill an opponent, who would ever be afraid of a lightning elementalist?
Although using an element was not the only method for killing one’s opponent, against higher ranked cultivators who had bodies stronger than steel, normal weapons were completely useless. For this reason, in the continent, lightning cultivators were always looked down upon.
Throughout the records of history, there had never been a lightning cultivator who had ever managed to make a breakthrough after the Spiritual stage.
Breakthroughs required an immense amount of elemental essence, so cultivators would have to go to an environment where their element’s essence was rich in quantity. A lightning elementalist, therefore, could only cultivate near thunderstorms, as a large cloud of thunder was the only time lightning would appear.
There are five elements that exist in the world: Fire, Wind, Earth, Water, and Lightning.
Other elementalists could cultivate without fear, as their elements were not violent in nature, like lightning. A fire element could be cultivated near hot places like a desert or in later stages, near a volcano. There was not a lot of risk involved, as a desert was a relatively safe environment, albeit there was a danger of thirst and scarcity of water, but if fully prepared, it was completely safe.
Even for the volcano, a dormant one could be chosen at the earlier stages of cultivation, rather than a fully active one. The fire elementals would still be able to absorb the purer fire essence without having to put his life at such a risk.
This held true for the other elements as well, but lightning was never dormant as its unpredictable nature denied any chance of safely cultivating. A lightning elementalist could never know where the next bolt would strike or how powerful the bolt will be. Even the weakest of lightning, when under contact with a mortal body, would completely disintegrate the cultivator within seconds.
Many hopeful youths and a few elders with the lightning element had tried to breakthrough during thunderstorms in order to escape their fate and life of servitude, but only ended up staring at the face of death under the vicious torrents of lightning.
The tyranny of the lightning that exists in nature is not as meek and powerless as the essence of lightning cultivators. With both speed and power under its dominance, even nature trembles when hearing the roaring sound of thunder!
With this, the lightning elementalists were forever doomed to a life of servitude. In a world where the strong ruled, the weak were only looked down upon and continued to live as they kneeled before the strong.
Strength was glory.
Strength was authority.
Strength was everything.
With power, one could have any riches or wealth he wanted, as powerful sects would try to rope him in with further prestige and influence. The higher your cultivation was, the better life you would live.
Expectedly, lightning elementalists were at the bottom of this social ladder.
Calron’s mother was a second rank at the Spiritual stage and his father was at fourth rank of the same stage. This was considered to be especially weak for an adult.
There were four elemental stages, beginning at the Spiritual stage, followed by the Vajra stage where the body would fuse with the elemental core, which would make the physical strength of the cultivator reach immense heights.
After that, came the Saint stage, where the soul of the cultivator would be awakened and able to infuse their soul strength into their attacks. The next following stage was the Heavenly stage, but not much was known about this realm as very rare few cultivators have yet managed to achieve this might.
Calron’s family worked in the local Lord’s mansion as servants. Even though the Lord was only around the fifth rank of the Vajra stage, the difference in power between each stage was comparable to the difference between heaven and earth!
Furthermore, breaking through each stage would get increasingly more difficult. The citizens in the city of Vernia were mostly at the fifth rank of Spiritual stage, and the common soldiers were at the seventh rank.
As servants, Calron’s family had little ‘free will’ of their own, but under the oppressive power of a Vajra stage cultivator, who would dare to argue against injustice?
His father, as a lightning cultivator, was forced to fight for the Lord against the magical beasts that plagued the border between Vernia and the mountains. The local citizens soon started to call the mountain ranges as ‘The Desolate Mountains’.
This coalition of a large number of mountains were surrounded by an unending forest full of magical beasts, where in the deepest part of the forest, was said to be the home of beasts in the Vajra stage.
There was even a legend that the Desolate Mountains was ruled by a beast in the Heavenly stage!
Very few cultivators willingly went inside the mountains, but the cores of magical beasts were the main source of Vernia’s economy and its immense wealth, so warriors and cultivators were actively recruited to participate in beast hunts. As a lightning cultivator, Calron’s father had no choice but to follow the commands of the city Lord.
Even the core of a beast in the first rank of the Spiritual stage was worth at least one gold square, and a single gold square could last a poor family for an entire year.
With his father’s strength of a fourth rank, the paralyzing effect on lower magical beasts was a tool that the Lord of Vernia would never cease to exploit, as it would save both the lives of his soldiers, and with Calron’s father being a servant to his family, the Lord would not even have to pay much for his services and would rake in majority of the profits.
Although lightning elementalists were looked down upon in society, they were extremely rare as only a few children ever awakened to a lightning element. The reason for the rarity of the lightning element was unknown, however, the world did not seem to mind this fact.
Another reason was that sometimes, the parents would abandon the child once they discovered the lightning element inside them. Sooner or later, that child would meet his or her death, as without the shelter or support of an adult, it was immensely difficult for an eight year old to survive on their own.
The greed of the lightning elementalist’s paralyzing ability led the city Lord to hunt higher ranked beasts deeper into the forest.
However, one day when a sixth rank beast suddenly appeared, it decimated the entire regiment of soldiers along with Calron’s father, who was
forced to be at the very forefront of the formation.
Calron’s father was the first one to be killed, as his paralyzing attack did not deter the beast at all, but only seemed to make it angrier, as it charged towards him.
A few soldiers survived the aftermath of the attack, as the beast did not give chase to the ones that escaped, but more than twenty soldiers of the seventh rank were killed that day.
Although the magical beast was only a rank lower than them, magical beasts were generally stronger due to the toughness of their bodies and the fact that they were already born with awakened cores, allowing them to fight against human elementalists two ranks above them.
With a last punch to the tree, Calron kneeled down in utter exhaustion. No matter how much rage his little heart contained, his body was still that of an eight year old.
Calron slowly treaded back to his home and he suddenly felt a few wet drops on his cheek. He stopped to touch his cheek in confusion and looked up towards the sky.
He had not realized in his previous daze, but the sky was darkening as the number of grey clouds increased by the second.