I opened the book to the Claws of Darkness, although calling it a book is a stretch. There were only two pages in total. The first page contained detailed instructions on how to learn the technique.
'You must focus your energy down into your fingertips. At first, this will cause no small amount of pain. You have to visualize the energy moving from your sea of energy and along the pathways of your body until it reaches your fingertips…
'What is the sea of energy? And what pathways?'
So far, I had no idea what the book was talking about. I assumed that the energy in question was my darkness energy, but I had no idea how to access it. After deciding to move on from that for now, I turned to the second page. This page held an image on it. There was an outline of the human body. There was a a black star over where the heart would be located. From the heart was a long arrow that had been drawn, leading to two different places. The arrow started from the heart and went up slightly before it branched off into two arrows, one leading to the left and on to the right. Each arrow finished off by branching into five arrows at the palms and leading down each finger.
'So, this sea of energy must be in my heart?'
I immediately started to follow the instructions while looking at the picture, but I felt an intense pain in my heart. The pain wasn't comparable to the previous torture of the Omni-Drug, but it was still great enough to almost cause me to collapse.
I stopped trying to visualize the technique and took a few deep breathes to stable myself. After a few minutes, the pain receded. I decided it was time to take a look at the other book instead of retrying the technique. When I opened the book to the first page, there were three words written. "The Dark Advent".
The name of the book seemed interesting to me as I turned the page. On the next page was an image of a sun being blocked out by a moon. It took me a second to realize that it was a solar eclipse. On the next page, the moon was being eclipsed by a dark energy. On the third page, there was no picture. The page was completely black. On the fourth page, the black started to congeal together. On the fifth and final page, there was a picture of a being made entirely out of dark energy. This figure had a pair of enormous wings stretching out behind it.
As I flipped through the pages, I started to lose my sense of my surroundings. As I stared deeply into the last page, the world started to spin around me before everything went black.
#
Once again, I was standing on top of the tallest peak of the mountain range. I looked down at myself and noticed that instead of how I looked last time, I now looked just the same as I did when I was awake. I looked up to examine my surroundings, expecting to see the same scene as before, but I was surprised to see a change. The same figure who I saw in my first dream was now standing in front of me. This time though, the figure felt a bit different. The figure in front of me and the image in the mysterious book started to merge together in my mind. I found that I was quite shocked my the discovery.
'How is this possible? How did I manage to dream about some random thing in a book I had never seen before?'
Just as I was lost in thought, the figure spoke to me.
"You've finally made it to me. I have been waiting for centuries for someone with a darkness elemental affinity that was strong enough for me to contact to be born."
"Who or what are you?"
"It has been so many years that I no longer remember my name, but I was once known as The Dark Lord. Had I had to wait a few more years, I would be nothing but history."
"The Dark Lord? How are you in my dreams?"
"I am nothing but a soul at the moment. Years ago, I used the last of my powers to form a book using my will. With my dying breath, I attached a piece of my soul to the book in hopes that someone like you would come along. That is enough questions for now.; My soul is only growing weaker and I must return to my slumber. Before then, I will impart to you a technique to control the element of darkness. Since we are now connected through our souls, as you get stronger, I will slowly recover."
The figure reached out with a thin and bony hand. Once he was near enough to me, it extended out a single finger and placed it on the center of my forehead. A rush of information entered into my mind as everything went dark again.
#
I woke up with a throbbing headache. the first thought that entered my mind was how tired I was of being knocked unconscious. The next thought that crossed my mind was the technique that I supposedly received. I searched my mind for a bit, and a bunch of information flooded my mind. There was not only information regarding a way to control the darkness element, but also information on its strengths and weaknesses.
The number one benefit to the darkness element was its corrosive ability. As my ability with the element strengthened, so would its corrosive ability. The information even mentioned that at the peak, I would even be able to corrode space itself. As powerful as it was, the early stages of darkness energy could also be very weak. Being anywhere near the element of light would dampen my abilities greatly at the moment due to how weak my own energy was.
The most important information that I learned though, was the technique to control darkness energy. The technique itself was very simple. I was required to sit cross legged on the ground and calm my mind. From there, I had to try and sense the element of darkness in the air around me. Once I am able to sense the darkness element, I had to draw the particles from the air directly to my heart.
According to the information in my mind; at the first stage, once I drew enough energy into my heart, an empty space would form. That would be where I store all of my darkness energy. Once I completely fill the space, the energy would transform and double the size of the space while disappearing. Once this happened nine times, I would Complete the second stage. I could feel that there was more information related to the technique after this, but it seemed to be locked behind some kind of barrier inside of my mind.
I focused my attention outward as I tried the technique for the first time. I sat cross legged on the ground and cleared my head before trying to sense the darkness element. At first, I could feel nothing around me. After around 10 minutes passed, I could finally feel a trace of a warm and familiar feeling. I focused on that feeling for a bit until it got strong enough for me to actually sense what I assumed to be the darkness element. It was an extremely weird feeling to be able to see something with my mind that I could not see with my eyes. I then started to try and draw the element of darkness into my heart.
Little by little, the darkness element started to enter my body and into my heart. After around an hour, I felt my heart beat harder than usual. I had finally absorbed enough energy to create the required space inside my heart. When that finally happened, I felt an euphoria unlike never before. My entire body felt warm and comfortable, and now, I could even sense the darkness element much easier than before. I continued to practice the technique for another hour before I actually fell asleep sitting down.
#
When I awoke the next morning, it was to the sound of Alex knocking on my door. Still wearing the same uniform from yesterday, I joined him in the hallway to go to the canteen. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then met in the lobby with the others in preparation for our first mission. I noticed some familiar faces inside the lobby and turned to ask Alex when everyone else would show up.
Alex, who had always been chipper, suddenly seemed crestfallen. I immediately realized the answer to my own question. There were only 10 of us in the lobby at the moment, aside from Sergeant Rhodes, the General, and a few people I had never seen before.
I felt a great sadness inside of me. Although I had not known Alex and the others for more than three months, we had built up a bit om camaraderie. I had never known what it felt like to lose someone close to me before, but I already despised the feeling. As I thought of Pratt's friendly banter the first time we had met and the good and bad times I shared with the others, my eyes started to water up. In order to not make a fool of myself, I decided to bury these feelings deep down inside of me and not think about the subject anymore.
The General stepped forward and his commanding presence immediately captured my attention.
"The 10 of you will each be separated into groups of 2 and placed with one of these captains. Once you are with your captain, they will share with you the details of your first mission."
The general then proceeded to seperate us and place us all with our future captains. Fortunately, Alex and I were placed together. The name of our captain was Ralph Oldham. He was a 25 year old man of short stature. Blonde hair draped down to his shoulders and a beard wrapped around his face. He had piercing blue eyes that carried a sharp glint inside of them. As Alex and I walked over to him, he gave us a warm smile in welcome.
"I'm glad to have the two of you on board! My squad has needed some fresh blood for a while! Come with me and I'll introduce you to your fellow squad members and tell you about your first mission. We're setting out tonight, so there's no time to waste!"
We followed the Captain outside and got into a military truck. We took a road leading away from the command center and took a few turns before finally arriving at a much smaller building. We got out of the vehicle and followed the Captain inside. There wasn't much inside of the building. There was a small kitchen area, a living room with a couple of couches, and an open door. Behind the open door were a few beds lined up in a row. Past that door was another that was closed. Off of the kitchen area was a small dining room table, around which, sat two people. There was a man that was even shorter than the Captain, with an unassuming appearance, and a woman, who although looked very beautiful, had a dangerous feeling she gave off.
"Jerome! Leya! Welcome our new recruits!"
Jerome and Leya both perked up upon hearing the Captain speak. Jerome simple nodded to us, while Leya looked at us and winked before speaking with a seductive voice.
"Ohhhh, looks like things will be a bit more interesting around here..."
"Knock it off, Leya! You're going to scare the boys away! This one with the fiery hair is Alex, and the sickly looking one is Alicard. It's time to go over our mission so make room around the table."
I stumbled and nearly fell over when I hear the Captain call me 'the sickly one'. How could I be sickly?! I look freaking cool, okay?! While feeling like I took and arrow to my pride, I found a seat at the table and looked toward the captain.
"This will be a relatively easy mission. The scientists on the base need more lab rats for testing, so our mission is to go out and find a level two demon and bring it back to them. Even though we have to watch two newbies, this shouldn't be much of a problem. We have four six hours until dusk, so prepare yourselves and be ready to move out when the time comes."
After the Captain finished speaking, he walked off into the other room and collapsed on one of the beds. A few seconds later, and snoring could be heard coming from the room. Jerome nodded to us and closed his eyes on the spot, while Leya left the building and went who knows where. Alex and I looked at each other before each of us sat on one of the couches and started to practice our techniques.
'Finally, my first mission. I hope nothing goes wrong...'