Hello! Author here. Please bear with me in this chapter since the whole chapter is an info dump and please don't mind it as it is one of the few chapters like this. That said, please enjoy my novel and add it to your library if you feel like it! :) :>
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[After 3 Years]
It's been 3 years since Ray Vixen or more accurately, Arthur Blade made his choice to join Hades against the gods. Yes, Ray Vixen was now named Arthur Blade - a name that he got one day after his conversation with Hades.
During that time, Arthur learned several things about this world from Hades and the libraries of the Blade household. The Blade library was large, almost the size of a football stadium was Arthur's past life, Arthur mostly when left alone expressed his desire to go to the library through his actions and his parents attuned this to the fact that the baby must have seen it as an interesting toy to play and didn't suspect much.
First thing Arthur came to learn from Hades was that, this planet was not Earth, it was a planet called Luminastra. The surprising fact was that this planet had magic just like Arthur suspected it would, he based his suspicion on the fact that he had seen a lot of reincarnation game commercials in his past life on T.V or billboards.
Moreover, this world was not born with magic from the start. Like Earth, Luminastra was also once a manaless planet consisting of only Humans before one day, the planet suddenly underwent a major change. Climate disasters and calamities broke throughout the whole world and the planet expanded to triple its previous size. Although half of the humanity was almost wiped out, they survived because of the new energy that was present in the planet's atmosphere now. Humans felt this energy and they did what always did best, adapt. They adapted to the changes and before long people began harnessing this energy in their bodies and discovered what they once thought was impossible, magic.
But it was not over for the humans, 50 years after this event which came to be known as "Esoteric Resurgence"- an event which was etched in the annals of time as an event responsible for both humanity's destruction but also its reemergence - portals opened everywhere on the Luminastra's continents. Different races emerged from the portals on different continents, like elves and dwarves etc, and after they and humanity both realized that mankind was weaker than the races, they made an agreement in which the races were allowed to set their bases on the continent they emerged on.
But this was not a fairy tale or the normal stories, the races were always at each other throats trying to gain dominance over one other. Unfortunately, mankind was the weakest out of all races due to just gaining access to mana recently. But all this frontal conflicts came to an end when the Netherfiends emerged from a portal that opened an year after the previous ones. The Netherfiends were disgusting, vile creatures who used a corrupt form of mana called "Wither". They immediately seized the continent emerged on without any talks, resulting in the formation of alliance of the human, elves and dwarves also known as "Tripartite Coalition". Thus began the "Netherbane Crusade", a war between the Tripartite Coalition and the Netherfiends.
The result was the terrible loss of lives on both sides for various reasons. While one might argue that the Tripartite Coalition were three races against only one race, the other race was not weak in any terms. One could already guess how strong the Netherfiends were, to even cause the alliance of three races that were always at each other's throat. The Elves were prideful and for them "mana" was a sacred energy given to them by their ancestors which enabled them to use their mana-rich bodies at full capacities. They considered humanity "undeserving" of the gift of mana and they were "lowly creatures" to them, but even they were forced to ally with this "lowly race" when the Netherfiends emerged.
For the Elves, the Netherfiends were the vilest creatures they could ever imagine, even more "disgusting" than humans. Their corrupt mana called "Wither" was extremely hazardous to humans and elves who used "mana". But even more so for the Elves who were highly tuned with mana than the humans which resulted in them facing terrible losses even though they were the strongest of the three races. The humans suffered for the same reasons as the elves, albeit on a lower scale. They mostly suffered due to just being exposed to mana, not even more than 50 years. without even having any technology to study it for long.
The Dwarves, although not affected by "Wither" due to the reason they had another energy called "Will", suffered because their main strength was physical combat or technological inventions. However, the Netherfiends were not unscathed, they all suffered just as much as other races because of two reasons. One being of course, that they were only race against three other races who were not less formidable in any way. The second reason was the terrible proportion of "Wither" on Luminastra, when they arrived on Luminastra, there was not a speck of Wither on the planet which led to the Netherfiends using Wither generators to produce Wither, but they could only do that so far on one continent and that was on the continent which they had settled on. They were only powerful on their own continent and if they fought on other land, their power would be drastically reduced. On Luminastra, the percentage of mana was 80%, while Will being 15% and Wither being only 5%. In this 80% of mana, 80% was present on the continent of Elves while 20% was present on the human continent.
At last, a truce was arranged between the Tripartite Coalition and Netherfiends, in which it was agreed that the war would end and no race was to attack any other race, otherwise the other races would band up to exterminate the oppressor race and 1000 years passed since then.
In Luminastra, there were 5 Continents. The human continent also called "Caelum" was present in the north, while the Demonic continent also called "Netheron" was present in the East, the Dwarven continent called "Pyralis" in the West and the Elven continent called "Sylvanis" in the South.
In "Caelum", there existed the system of monarchy which was in the form the Royal Family and which was further supported by five major families in the past, namely the Blades, the Blackhearts, the Stormhearts, the Cromwells and at last the Ravencrests. But due to an unfortunate incident in the past in which the Royal Kingdom was subjected to attacks from the inside, the Ravencrests suffered the blame for the incident resulting in the execution of everyone in the family except only a few survivors remaining.
The Blades were the Kingdom's assassins, they dealt in every operation relating to assassination or covert strikes and the protection of the King in the important events. One time, the Blades failed to protect the King from an assassination strike during his coronation. The next King was kind and generous due to which the Blades were still allowed their major family status but their respect was lost and they were demoted from strongest to weakest and being discriminated.
To utilize magic using mana, the user converted the mana into elemental mana suiting his elemental synergy. There were many element synergies such as Light, Darkness, Frost, Magma, Wind etc. But there were only three supreme elements in the world which were Death, Time and Space respectively in which in the whole history of man only person was able to awaken a supreme element and not even one but two elements.
At the age of 5, every person awakened a stigmata to channel mana through their mana veins which they opened at the time of awakening at the same time his talent was also measured to gauge how far a person would progress in their ranks. The Stigmata was an elemental mark which established itself on the right hand of the individual at the time of awakening.
Light was the purest strongest element while Darkness was the weakest element but not in terms of strength because Darkness was stronger than Light, it was because it was one of the hardest to control and not many people awakened with it and those who did sometimes set themselves on the wrong path.
The Blades were all Darkness users which was one of the major reasons they specialized in assassinations and covert operations. One more reason why the King didn't demote the Blades from the major family status was all because of one individual, an individual who was a centurial prodigy at his age, he was none other than Christopher Blade, the heir of Blade family, who was an Adept+ at the age of just 18 when it was considered for man to reach Adept+ at the age of 21-22 even if he was a genius.
Christopher Blade was a force to be reckoned with and his talent made him progress to Zenith rank making him a Menhir at the age of 38 which sent shockwaves throughout the world, because not only was it rare to get Zenith rank talent but, even if you got the talent it was not a must that you would reach that rank. But Christopher Blade did not only that, but reached the Zenith rank at the age of 38 when it was considered to be only achievable at the age of 50 at most early. He was one of the only two Zenith rank stigmata users that specialized in Darkness.
The other one was none other than Edward Blackheart, the patriarch of the Blackheart family. The Blackheart family not only specialized in assassination but also in fighting because they were a mixed elemental house even though the majority were Darkness element Fahrs.
The next family were the Cromwells who specialized in the close combat and war units of the Kingdom, their specialized element was fire and their patriarch Mike Cromwell was a Zenith as well.
The next family were the Stormhearts, who were responsible for the long range, and scouting tasks of the Kingdom since their specialized element was wind and their matriarch being the only female Zenith out of the total 6 Zeniths, who were one for each respective house and two from the royal family. She was Helena Stormheart, who specialized in the wind element and used a bow.
Although not really mentioned, every family had a specialization in their weapon. The Blades were adept at daggers and swords, the Blackheats mostly at swords but could use every kind of weapon, the Cromwells at spears and Stormhearts at bows.
Arthur Blade was the first son of the current patriarch of the Blades, Nolan Blade and his wife, Alice Blade. Nolan's father, Christopher Blade had given up his position for reasons untold only to be called when necessary.
This was the world of Luminastra and its history was filled with wars but now the races were at peace, but nobody knew for how long as the storm was already brewing in the races.