216 Watch and Learn (1/2)
Xen quickly crossed his hands in the air, creating countless seals in the shape of huge yellow bulls, pervaded by the essence of the Earth Mana. They gave off a power capable of levelling mountains.
Pseudonym, on the other hand, looked like the king of kings, still and covered by a heavenly waterfall of pitch-black flames. His movements, slow, continuous and methodical, had hypnotized the crowd. But Helial was not hypnotized: he was simply shocked.
\”Pseudonym already has a Skill at Grand Master rank,\” Helial said incredulously. He had seen Skills at that rank multiple times while he had been in the Time Block with Alexander. And for this very reason, he knew exactly what it meant.
The rules of Mana prevent mortals from crossing certain boundaries. Before the Third Phase it's impossible to acquire the Divine Sense, before the Sixth it's impossible to manipulate the fabric of reality in order to fly.
The eternal fate of Mana pervaded all living beings and was relentless.
What had shocked Helial was the very fact that a living being had gone against heavenly destiny.
Skills in the Grand Master rank required a control that cannot be reached below the Fifth Phase. Furthermore, the difficulty in overcoming the bottleneck between Master and Grand Master rank is not something that a simple man could have imagined.
In his life close to Alexander, Helial had experienced the feeling of having an ability at the Grand Master rank and he knew well how extraordinary it was that Pseudonym had already reached that degree of experience.
Once reborn in the Time Block, Helial had experienced the incredible power of Skills at the Grand Master rank.
He didn't even need to watch the fight to know how it would end.
Not only did a set of Meridians pure and tempered more than hardened steel was required to perform such a Skill, but one's understanding of Mana must have reached an extremely high level. In addition, Pseudonym had also integrated his power with Flame of the Black Phoenix.
The deeper and more inscrutable the laws of a Skill are, that is, the more potential it has, the more difficult it is to raise its level.
The ability one's Meridians had to possess to use a Skill in the Grand Master rank were not something achievable before the Fifth Phase. Each remodelling that the body went through passing from Phase to Phase allowed the warrior to make the most of his Meridians. Only by reaching, gradually, a state close to perfection, one could hope to be able to use such an ability in the distant future.
Whether living beings liked it or not, until someone managed to subdue all the limits of the universe, it would always have been impossible to violate the laws of Mana.
\”How is that possible,\” swallowed Helial, eyes wide.
A gentle voice coughed inside Helial's Soul. \”Talent is only a small part of the path that will take us to meet Amaterasu again,\” said Iblis, appearing next to Helial.
Nobody seemed to have noticed the boy who suddenly appeared among them. Probably, the Devil had used something to hide his presence from prying eyes.
\”Never give up, never give in, go through a sea of flames and a mountain of blades,\” said Helial, laughing, looking at the armour high in the sky, \”what does Pseudonym have that Helial doesn't?\”
Iblis stretched the corners of his mouth in an enigmatic smile and turned to him.
\”I can read your soul at any moment. I never missed your thoughts. So, I turn this question back to you: what does the great Pseudonym have that Helial doesn't? \” replied Iblis.