Way of the Knights-Chapter 44 - Time Skip
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Two months passed like a blink of an eye. Many things happened after the night when Luna revealed her true background to Raven.
For starters, the Field Trip of the students continued and finished according to the schedule. After the failed schemes of the Black Curtain Guild, nothing happened afterwards, thus allowing the kids to resume their sight seeing tour in peace.
The criminals were already executed after the interrogation. The people who supervised the whole thing used many ways to extract every single information to them and killed them afterwards by the orders of the Crown Prince. And because the criminals were apprehended in a secretive manner, the whole thing didn't blew up, which caused the Black Curtain Guild to suffer yet another loss on the hands of the Royal Army, or so they thought really.
After the Field Trip, Raven and his crew went back to their usual training, but with renewed vigor this time around. Raven's friends had a rather rude awakening during that time. They caught a glimpse of how dangerous the kingdom truly is no matter how peaceful it looked like on the surface.
They were slapped with the fact on just how irrelevant they truly were no matter how grand their aspirations truly were. They felt so confident about their new found advantage that they forgot just how weak they truly were.
Now they understood why Raven pushed himself to brink over and over again no matter how painful the process were. Now they understood were his motivations came from, and they found it extremely laughable that they were already thinking of resting and/or giving up while Raven himself never uttered a word of complain.
The criminals they met could easily slap them to death easily if it weren't for Raven's help.
Upon their return, they were changed people, and they proved it by working extremely hard on training. This gratified Raven greatly, since it was also one of his plans to let them realize that the peace that this kingdom shows is nothing but a fat lie, and if they truly were to inherit the mantle of their parents, or they make a name for themselves, then eventually they will deal with this.
Raven saw how they trained so hard. Their timetables were updated and the group riled up the intensity of their training by a whole bunch, good thing Raven was there to supervise or else they will end up destroying themselves with this heavy duty training.
And their efforts were rewarded handsomely. Their cultivations practically soared that they caught up with Raven, two days after the Field Trip was over.
Raven also modified their training and made several more tort-Training Creations for them to play with. Now all of them are firmly standing at the peak of Organ Refining Realm.
Just like the name suggests, Organ Refining is all about strengthening the Inner Organs of a person. This is achieved through rigorous circulation of energies throughout the body which cleanses them and improve their functions.
The main targets of this stage are: lungs, heart, liver, brain, eyes and so on.
As an example, all of them could now hold their breaths underwater for thirty minutes before needing to resurface their respiratory systems were enhanced by that much. Their overall endurance were also extended due to their heart enhancement, since it now pumps blood throughout their bodies vigorously and let them do more work than usual. As for enhancing their livers, this basically raised their immunity to some harmful substances to a significant amount. Enhancing their brain allowed their memories to the be sharper and doubled their thought process. Enhancing their eyes gave them better vision overall.
Speaking of eyes, Raven actually encountered something surprising as he enhanced it. His eye technique unexpectedly had a breakthrough!
The [Divine Overseer's Gaze], the eye technique that is given to the person who inherited the Ancestral Crown, had several stages which are mostly referred to as 'Iris Releases' and it has a total of five stages according to what Raven achieved so far. The stages are: Psychometric, Color, Journey, Survey, and Marking Iris Releases.
The Psychometric Iris Release is the beginning stage, where a golden corona will appear in the pupils upon activation of the technique. It allows Raven to see things in a more detailed manner and could even zoom in at some certain range.
As for the stage he's currently in, the Color Iris Release, the golden corona in his eyes will now be present at all times, allowing him to use the Psychometric Iris Release without any having to spend any energy. Aside from this, when Raven activates the Color Iris Release, his pupils will be colored by some sort of glossy film. This is basically an Energy Vision, technically he could already use this before but he had to really push himself to the maximum degree to the point where he would damage his eye meridians, but now that he reached this stage, it would be simpler for him but with the cost of energy.
Raven could now see energy in his surroundings and identify them by their colors, hence the name of the Iris Release. Normal energies, like the ones they absorbed in the air, are usually colored as pale blue. If these energies were then used as a battle art, then it would turn in a deeper blue color in his vision. Blood energies are red, spiritual energies are white, sinister arts like curses, hex, and etc. are black. So far, these are all of the the things that he could see.
The greatest advantage of this eye technique is that it grows along the user, the things that he could see are mostly limited to his own cultivation, as he grow more, each Iris Releases will grow stronger and would provide immense assistance to him.
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The crew is on a different location now.
They were on the third floor of the boys' stone house. Raven asked some people to renovate this entire floor to a single room which he will use for a more advanced way of training.
Raven spent an entire day to carve Inscription Symbols as well as many gems to etch in the corners and walls of room to finish his creation. What ended up happening, was the entire room transform into some sort of vandalized mess with shiny stones embedded on them, but of course, there's more to the story.
Aside from carving and etching stones all day, he also took time to gather as many beast parts as he could, to the point where he basically scoured the entire market just to have as much variety as he could. He ended up with at least 100 type of beast parts which made him satisfied for now.
The crew is now gathered at the third floor to witness the new creation of Raven.
"Hey bro, what's this?" Paul asked as soon as they entered the renovated floor.
"This is where the we will continue our training onwards. I call this, the Virtual Beast Arena."
"Sounds fancy. What does it do?" Ellen asked.
"Simple. It's a formation that will transfer your consciousness into a virtual arena. You will battle a bunch of beasts until one of you dies."
Even though Raven talked so casual about it, the last parts of his statement sent shivers to their spine.
"So we're will fighting beasts now?" Mark was intrigued.
"Nope." Raven shook his head, "You will kill, not fight. There a huge difference."
His words basically confirmed their guesses. It was finally time for them to dirty their hands with blood. Before anyone could ask another question, Raven gave a more detailed explanation about the formation.
"The Virtual Beast Arena will separate your consciousness from your body, you will find yourself waking up inside an arena and a beast will show up. While this might sound underwhelming since the beasts aren't real, what you will experience inside will be very close to the reality. This formation needed beast parts like claws, bones, blood, fur, venoms and many other things. The formation then analyzes it's genes and form a virtual image for you to fight with."
"Take note that the battle won't be finished until you or the beast dies. If you killed the beast, great! Move on to the next one. If you were killed, then even if it won't happen in reality, you will still feel the experience of death. So whatever happens next, will totally be up to you."
No one spoke and Raven wasn't surprised about it. In normal days, no sane person will charge towards their own death, in fact no one wants to die. But death isn't something foreign to the world of Knights. It happened in volumes really, to the point where veterans were jaded about death itself.
Raven acknowledged their hesitation, this is a very human thing, to be scared of death. But death is something they have to come to terms with to truly become the people that they wanted themselves to be.. And the sooner they let go of their hesitations, the faster they will grow up.
