The spiritual energy that resides in every human which is commonly known as mana is a phenomenon that had existed even before Tunechi had granted the use of abilities to humans.
The flow of mana residing in each person is just as different as their appearances are, just like twins look alike but there is a slight difference in their appearance, so does the mana flow in their body seem alike but is just slightly different.
Mana like other features of humans are also genetic, they are passed down to offspring either in quality or in quantity or both.
Just like money is paid in exchange for goods, same goes for mana which is spent in exchange for the use of abilities.
The big five were known for a few things of which many of the masses were not aware of, one of them being their massive spiritual energy which is the massive amount of mana flow in their bodies.
The magnitude of which every ability could be used depended on the quantity of the mana that an individual possessed . In the same way, the standard of ability used depended on the quality of the mana.
There were different ways to cultivate this mana, the easiest and slowest was regular training. As a person trained, their ability gets better and their mana capacity increases as well enabling them to grasp better use of their abilities which in turn made one stronger.
The second which happens to be the hardest is by means of obtaining an orb, these orbs were the life force of living beings that were strong enough to produce their own energy.
The orbs could be gotten from the monsters that came from the gate.
However, the level five monsters produced no such orbs, only monsters from level four and above dropped such orbs when they were killed.
The orb from the level four monsters was donned the Harmonic orb.
For the level three monsters it was the Twilight orb.
For the level two it was the Arcane orb.
And the strongest and most potent orb of all was the Ethereal orb from the level one monsters.
The orbs gotten from the level four monsters were only potent enough to give a certain amount of energy.
The energy gotten from a level four could barely do much to increase ones mana, the orbs from the level three monsters were more potent than those from level four and likewise for level two up until level one. The orb gotten from level one monsters were rumored to give enough mana for a weak ability user to go against a level two monster.
With the conditions surrounding the obtain of an orb it made it so that those who were strong could easily get stronger. Most low level ability users could barely kill a level four monster making it hard to advance much further than their current level.
They were people who specialized in hunting of these monsters, after they had hunted these monsters, they either kept the orbs to themselves or sold them.
People who were rich enough to afford these orbs bought them from the hunters and those that could not afford these orbs lost the drive to grow stronger altogether.
Most of the hunters were Rank C's and Rank D's, it was almost very rare to find a hunter who was a Rank B and almost impossible to find a rank A hunter.
Which was why people naturally relied on the third option.
The third, by heredity, just like genes, mana is passed down to offspring. Which means if a parent was a strong ability user, there is a high chance of the offspring inheriting that ability along with the capacity of mana used to perform the abilities.
If both parents were strong ability users, the offspring had a ninety-nine percent chance of becoming a strong ability user.
On the other hand, if the parents were not ability users or weak ability users the offspring had a high chance of becoming a weak ability user or might not have an ability at all.
There was only a tenth of one percent chance of the offspring becoming a strong ability user or an ability user at all in these cases.
Which was why in the past, during the reign of the great King, Charles Astor. The Astor family had been the strongest family and ruled over the others then.
They had risen to power by what the people then termed as insanity. The Astor family had engaged in acts of incest in order to keep the family line pure, at least that is what they believed.
Brother married sister or married a not so distant cousin as was the case a century ago. The King then, Charles Astor greatly encouraged this act of indecency even though other families frowned greatly at it.
These acts of incest enabled offspring of the Astor family to be of pure undiluted Astor blood. As one of the families with the most mana capacity, the Astor family grew to be the strongest in their time.
The other four families not able to condone the marginalization from the Astor, came together and staged an upheaval, restoring power equally to the five big families and banning acts of incest.
These acts were the reason why the Astor's had a genetic trademark. The blond hair which the descendants of the Astor family possessed. Not everyone with a blond hair was an Astor but all Astor's had blond hair.
Another striking feature which the Astor family possessed was their crimson red eyes which was quite rare among the members of the Astor family.
Which was why more than half of the audience watching the competition right now gasped in shock as the wall of flame rose high above the arena.
Edward had a blond hair and looking closely now, a few could now notice a slightly reddish tint in his eyes which they had not given much thought to since the start of the competition