In a mountainside illuminated by flames, the huge craters and surrounding fire that covered the whole mountain made obvious that a huge battle had just taken place, or that it was in the middle of occurring. Many shadowed figures surrounded a huge and mighty looking beast that possessed a monstrous size with lizard-like shape, it had three curved grey horns on its forehead and it was covered from head to tail on deep green scales.
If someone looked closely they would notice many places where the scales seemed cracked and blood came out, a few scales even fell loosely on the ground with each breath the creature took. The aura surrounding the creature was by no means weak it still held a huge amount of vigor and a crushing strength that made everything around, most of the figures around the creature seemed stiff as if the mere presence of the being held them in place.
Only a couple figures seemed fine under the crushing aura, one of them slowly moved closer to the huge creature and the fire illuminated his face, it was a man on its thirties with a look of satisfaction on its face as he watched the state the creature was in. The said creature looked around before focusing its two huge eyes on the human in front of him, the human seemed fine compared to the beast, almost impeccable as if he did not participate in the fight and just came to take a look from a safe distance.
"This is the first time I see something like this, a human being helped by demons"
"Why don't you just accept your defeat, follow me and you will live"
"Hahaha! you want me to follow a puny human, one whos so weak and spineless that needs to ally himself with demons to fight me, you are funny"
The creature laughed and its voice was very deep and fear-inducing, after that it spat out a great amount of blood and paused to look at the human's reaction. The man seemed calm as if nothing had happened, however, the beast could see a hint of anger rising through the man's face and it grinned showing his sharp sword-like teeth.
"Why would an Elder Land Dragon on the peak of Legendary rank wish for death, when you can live with just a small concession"
The man said that with a smile on his face, after seeing that smile and hearing those words it was the beast the one that seemed to get angry and it started trembling but it calmed down very soon. It sat down on its back legs and lowered its head, the aura surrounding him weakened and the surroundings calmed down.
Seeing this the man smiled victoriously and proudly after all this was an Elder Dragon in front of him and it looked like it gave up and surrendered itself. If he could contract it then everything would become so much easier, he would need less and less help of the demons and he might complete his goal alone.
A demon appeared behind him and whispered a few words so he nodded and walked towards the dragon, the demon followed closely behind him and once the human stood in front of the dragon he stretched his hand and tried to press it on the forehead of the beast. The demon sensed something weird, and his expression changed but it was already too late. They misunderstood the dragon's actions and overestimated the pride of his race, dragon's are the proudest being in the world and they would never surrender, at least not without a fight and certainly not to someone who can't beat them in a straight on fight.
"You think that you can coerce a pact out of a dragon? that's the problem with your kind and the filthy demons, always thinking yourselves as great and mighty but you are just a bunch weaklings with no pride or honor"
At that moment the pressure multiplied almost instantly and everyone knelt upon the ground, for one last time they were able to sense the full strength of a dragon. The whole area briefly came to life in a burst of light before being completely gone, it seemed as if a part of the mountain was devoured by something.
Somewhere far away a sphere made out of darkness appeared out of nowhere after it vanished two figures were revealed. The man from before knelt upon the ground, his arm was missing down from the elbow and he was bleeding in great amounts.
Behind him was another man, however, this one had a very pale face with two horns at the side of his head, the iris of his eyes was completely red, his skin color was reddish and he had a tail with a triangular tip. Obviously, he was not human so he definitely was part of the demons the dragon talked about.
The man tried to calm down and closed his eyes before another figure appeared in front of him, it was a deer creature with branches instead of horns and a bluish hair. Seeing the condition in which the man was in the deer looked surprised and almost sorrowful, its eyes lighted up in a white color and the wound on the man's arm started healing at a visible rate, however, the missing part of his arm did not recover.
"Despite the failure, we fulfilled our part. The dragon was subdued and you had the opportunity to make the pact"
"Fulfilled your part? opportunity? I just lost my fucking arm for nothing and you think you can just call that a success?"
Clearly, they both disagreed and felt that the other was being unreasonable. The surroundings went deathly silent in response to the rising aura of them both, they were preparing to fight it out and clearly, the odds were not in favor of the human.
"You should have made sure he was willing to cooperate, a pact cannot be formed without both parties agreeing to it and you already know that"
"So it is my fault that the fucker tried to kill us, why didn't you make sure that he was not preparing spell or some technique"
Slowly they both separated from each other, and with each step back they would bicker and refute any statement from the other. When the fight seemed to be about to break out someone else appeared and both of them were crushed by the pressure this new figure distilled, they turned to look who it was and both of them dismissed any energy they had summoned.
&
Somewhere in the east close to the sea was a city full of people like any other, in a room inside one of the many inns on the city laid a teen with 17 years of age. Sometime in the middle of the night Adrien woke up, it was a weird feeling as if something happened but nothing seemed out of place. He approached the window and looked at the night sky, the stars were bright tonight and he felt the cold breeze on his face and started to think about the future.
"Just a few more weeks, and then everything will be gone…"
"I don't have time to sleep, I need to get back to training"
Sitting himself down he started to train instead of going back to sleep, with each breath he took the surrounding energy started to flow in and out of him. The room light up dimly in a blue shine, if you paid close attention, you would notice that the origin of the light was Adrien. He was surrounded with a dim veil of blue energy that covered his entire body, it seemed to brighten each time he inhaled and darkened when he exhaled.
There are many training exercises and manuals in the whole world, however, all of them have one thing in common: the creation of a mana core that feeds every technique a practitioner can use. After the mana core its completely formed each person gets a grimoire unique to them and get their Vital Summon, a creature that evolves and gets stronger together with his summoner.
Slowly but surely he felt his energy strength and his breaths got slower and longer, he felt pain in his chest but he placed it on the back on his mind and kept training so he did not notice that the space behind him started to flicker. The pain grew more and more and despite this Adrien kept training, he was damp in sweat and with each passing second, he became wetter.
At some point, the pain was too much and the training state broke, the energy dispersed and he fell heavily on the floor and not even a sign of life was felt from it. This was clearly a sign that something went wrong with his training, on each training manual are rules and safety precautions to ensure that the user did not suffer an accident like this one. If he hadn't been so keen on continuing anything would have happened, his mana core that is located in the center of the heart fractured and all the mana inside started to disperse in the atmosphere.
A mana core it's similar to a spiritual sea in those cultivation novels. The difference between them is that if a spiritual sea is broken a person future in cultivation is severed, in the case of a mana core, however, since is located in the center of a person's chest this one does not usually support the impact if it breaks and the person dies.
Suddenly the place behind him where the atmosphere trembled suffered a small crack, like a mirror being broken into pieces and small wisps of energy came out and followed the path depicted by the mana being expelled from Adrian, however, instead of dispersing it did the contrary and entered his body.
The mana core inside Adrien's body used this energy to supplement the one it was constantly losing, slowly it started to reform and taken a better shape than ever. After the wisps of energy came out of the space crack something else came through, it was a bigger wisp of light green color the size of his body and settled inside of it.
The night passed away slowly and the sun began to rise, at some point the body with no signs of life started to breathe again at a very rapid pace and his eyes abruptly opened.
Looking at his arms something was weird, the last thing he remembered was training and increasing pain. Something else was weird, there was a place in his mind too, it was a mountainside full of flames and havoc as if a great battle had occurred.
Shaking that out of his head he stood up and the sat down on a chair close to a small desk at the side of the window, taking a deep breath he closed his eyes and decided to examine his mana core. Everything seemed completely different than before, the whole core was complete but unlike the previous pure blue color, this one looked like a mixture between green and blue.
It is important to know that the color of the mana core usually represents the element that the person its most attuned to, in theory, this mixed color of blue and green should represent the water and wind element respectively.
Every person it's usually attuned to a single element, this dictates the type of essence cultivation that they must follow through to increase in power level and its usually determined at birth. In a world as big and marvelous as this one, however, it is incredibly rare but not impossible for someone to be born with a special soul that allows one to have the affinity for two elements at the same time.
It should be impossible to change your affinity after being born, thus Adrien felt that these sudden changes seemed very mysterious. Both that he completed his core after being unconscious and the sudden change of his affinity, everything pointed out to something but he didn't quite know what. After relaxing a little and realizing that he could not determine the nature of these changes, he placed all the suspicions in the back of his mind and let himself be comforted by his feelings.
"Finally, after all these years I've finished it…"
He felt very excited, after all the time and effort he placed into forming his core it had finally borne fruit. If he had just been a little late then everything would have been for nothing, it is widely known that after you turn 18 it becomes impossible to form a mana core.
After calming down he admired the core a little more, it was a smooth sphere with azure color in slightly transparent hue, inside of it at the center floated a book. That was his grimoire. Some Believe that a grimoire was a visible representation of one's soul and their appearances changed from person to person.
His grimoire looked like any other book with the slight detail that his cover was not a smooth leather cover but instead, it had a scalelike pattern, the scales alternated between blue and green color in a disorderly manner and if seen from afar it would be almost impossible to recognize, the center of the front cover had inlaid a colorless and transparent crystal.
"Adrien is time for you to start with the cooking, breakfast time will begin in an hour"
"Yes, uncle Jhon I'll be there in a minute"
Today like every day it was time for him to make the breakfast that the inn served to customers, his job paid for everything he needed. He stopped the inspection and decided to get ready for his job, after fully forming the core the rush he had vanished and he felt lighter than ever. After all, the grimoire inside the core wasn't going anywhere.