A few years passed with Kellen continuing to develop his combat experience. He had learned how to use a varying amount of different swords, but could not completely master any of them and had reached a wall blocking any further progression.
Four different shadowy figures, that were different variations of "Gregory," surrounded him as they were locked inside a tense battle.
Kellen was able to fend them off with the longsword he held in his hands and swung the huge sword around almost effortlessly. Although he was able to defend against a majority of the attacks, he would still be shocked a couple times as attacks outside his field of view would hit him.
'Damn... I can barely defeat three of them but anymore than that count and I'm toast.' thought Kellen as he slowly eliminated each Gregory, while receiving a few shocks in between from the one in his blind spot, until only one was remaining.
He easily finished off the lone Gregory before turning his head over to Osiris who was intently watching his match.
"How am I supposed to deal with anymore than three of them old man?"
Osiris revealed a small smile before slowly floating over to the kid instead of summoning Gregory again like he usually did.
"The problem isn't that you lack anything at this point... You've reached the limit that even ordinary mortals don't obtain, but still it is the limit... It would be different if you were a full blooded sun demon but you still haven't fully converted your blood yet, which is why you won't be able to make anymore progress." explained Osiris with a smiling face.
"Why are you still smiling while saying this?" asked Kellen with a bad feeling in his gut.
"Because! Now we can finally start with my blessing!" shouted Osiris joyfully as he lazily raised one of his hands in the air.
"How can your blessing help me with breaking the mortal limit?" asked Kellen unconvinced since he had grown used to never expecting anything good to happen to him when the old man was involved.
"I think I mentioned this before but my blessing contains an activated and passive ability. The activated ability is what I like to call Soul Sensing, which allows you to perceive the pulse or heartbeat of any living being within a radius of a few meters. Of course, my blessing is one of the growth types which will increase in power through your proficiency and mastery of the blessing.
This takes time and also requires you to be using it in a correct way, such as detecting enemies in your blind spots, in order to increase in proficiency. I'll explain the passive ability when it will actually be of use, but for now focus on using Soul Sensing while in combat." said Osiris as he snapped his fingers and summoned four of the Gregory dummies.
"Wait! How do I activate it?" yelled Kellen before Osiris sent Gregory after him again.
"That's easy! Send some of your demonic energy towards the spot on your forehead between your eyes where I inserted the blessing." said Osiris as he motioned the dummies towards the kid.
"But I've never used my demonic energy before!" complained Kellen as he watched the incoming dummies walking towards him.
"Sure you have! You accidentally used it when you were climbing that cliff and overloaded yourself with it causing yourself to go berserk... I also felt you use it while I was trapped inside your mind by that geezer and was able to finally get an understanding of how it works... The demonic energy is for some reason linked into your blood, or I should say Nergal's blood, and you should be able to control it better now since you received his dumb inheritance." said Osiris in a pouting voice after remembering the humiliation he went through.
"Anyways, since the demonic energy in your body now is concentrated in your blood, you just need to focus on summoning it in the blood flow inside your head. That burning sensation you began to feel throughout your body and in your blood is the demonic energy activating. So try releasing that burning sensation in your head and the blessing should activate after receiving some of that energy."
Kellen focused himself like the old man suggested and began to imitate the way he felt when he had activated the demonic energy in his blood before. Different negative emotions continued to erupt in his mind as he concentrated but still nothing happened as the Gregory dummies continued to approach him.
'What am I missing?'
He thought as he tried to remember the different circumstances when he had used his demonic energy. He originally assumed he would just have to focus on his negative emotions like he had done when fighting against Seven inside his distorted memories, but after feeling nothing different change within him, he realized there was something he was lacking.
Kellen then remembered the situation he was in when he was scaling the cliff under three times gravity.
'Sure I was under a lot of stress and pressure but that couldn't have been the mechanism... What was I thinking when I was beginning to fall from the cliff and when Seven was beating me down?'
Suddenly, something clicked within his mind and he braced himself while devoting all his energy towards that one thought he had felt in both situations.
'Weak...'
'I'm still too weak...'
'What do I want?'
'Why do I continue on living my miserable life?'
'Power...'
'I need more power...'
'Because I will have my vengeance!'
With this final thought, a burning sensation erupted in his mind and blood, and collected at a single point on his forehead. The sclera in both his eyes turned black and gold behind his glowing red eyes as he focused the energy.
He could now make out the faint traces of a strange fluctuation within the four dummies. They weren't exactly whole but instead fragmented like sparkling stars interconnected with each other or like orbs of electricity that sent out small traces of energy between themselves.
As the dummies continued to walk over to him and surround him in four different directions, he was able to discern all their locations even with his eyes closed. It felt like he had just barely a fraction of a connection to the strange fluctuating energy in each of them, but that fragment was enough.
With each of the dummies' movements, Kellen could see the corresponding energy within them fluctuate in the areas that their shadowy bodies would move.
'This is too much of a cheat!' Thought Kellen as he reopened his eyes and prepared to fight.
The blessing allowed him to see the different movements of energy in his foes and enabled him to predict their next move, while also being able to see his enemies in his blind spots. It was like a built in UAV specifically designed for him!
He was no longer in a disadvantage when confronted with more than three foes and was even able to push them all back a few steps by plotting out his best course of action after predicting their movements.
'This is incredible!'
Kellen successfully fended off all the enemies attacks and even shattered two of the dummies in the first few moments of battle.
"Looks like he is using it pretty well so far... Time to add more enemies!" said Osiris with a grinning face.
After destroying the last Gregory, Kellen revealed a triumphant smile, but his savoring moment of victory didn't last for long as he turned his head to see eight more Gregory dummies charging towards him.
"Oh come on! Can't I just savor one moment without being thrown into another ridiculous scenario!" yelled Kellen in defiance as he prepared to intercept the next wave of opponents.
Instead of being on the defensive, like he normally was, Kellen decided to spit in the old man's face by rushing over to the incoming dummies to launch his first offensive.
Osiris wasn't expecting this change of events but decided to welcome it, since he was excited to see his inheritor use his blessing properly for the first time.
'Yes! Use my blessing to its fullest potential and see just how awesome I actually am!' Thought Osiris as he watched his inheritor begin to decimate the wave of dummies rushing towards him.
Kellen finally shattered the last Gregory while beads of sweat began to drip down his forehead as he collapsed to the ground on his back panting, and he blinked his golden and black emitting eyes that suddenly returned to normal.
"I think I'm only gonna be able to use this for a few minutes for now..." He said as he turned his head towards the floating deity at the side.
"It's a badass blessing, but sadly you don't have enough energy to power it for more than at most three minutes at the moment." Said Osiris, who was obviously proud of himself, in a smug voice.
"It's enough..." Muttered Kellen as he took the moment to rest and revitalize himself.
The power of the blessing was indeed unbelievable and could be a real game changer in a fight, but the aftermath of draining that much energy left him in a weakened and exhausted state.
"Hm, yes... I wager it's about time then..." Sadly said Osiris.
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Early chapter release today! We are approaching the end of the early training arc. I still feel like I struggle with writing dialogues but I hope after more chapters this will be a challenge of the past. Thanks for those of you supporting my book; it helps me a lot and I appreciate it immensely! It's been really interesting and fun writing a bunch of these ideas I've had for awhile into the story, and I hope you are all enjoying this as much as I am. The next chapter for today will soon be released after I look over it again real quickly here and as always much love guys!