Way of the Knights

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The morning after the ritual day.

Raven and his friends are back at the stone house again, hanging out after a light exercise. Heavy training was still not allowed since they have to consolidate their new cultivation bases.

"Have you guys gotten used to your new strengths?" Raven asked soon as the gathered over to eat lunch.

"Nope." Paul answered first, followed by the rest. From their answers it seems that they still haven\'t been able to gain complete control of their new strengths.

"It actually feels really strange." Mark gazed at his hands while speaking, "We\'ve trained energy control for a while now but after the ritual, it all became useless. It took me a good while to re learn how to walk upstairs without stomping a hole through it." He shook his head while smiling wryly.

*Snap!*

Everybody look over to Paul side and saw him lowering his head while holding a spoon which was snapped in two.

"…and Paul still can\'t pick up a spoon without breaking it in two." Mark chuckled helplessly.

"How many does that make?" Anne asked out of the blue.

"He\'s on his 5th spoon just this morning." Mark replied, everyone sighed while Paul stood up and made his way towards the kitchen drawer to get a new spoon. He picked it up with a great care and made his way back to his seat. As soon as he sat down…

*Snap!* *Crack*

"Make that 6th spoon and 1 broken chair." Ellen chided on the side.

The corners of Paul\'s mouth twitched several times before he sighed helplessly and looked up to Raven. "Dude, what should I do?"

Raven let out a chuckle and helped him up. He had him sit on the floor so that he won\'t break another chair, only then he explained.

"It can\'t be helped, your Energy Nodes are freshly opened and unknowingly, you\'re using them to store energies now. Like I said earlier, the only way you could regain control over the extraction of force is by careful management over the nodes."

"Well, I am doing that." Paul whined, "I did manage them carefully, I made sure that I absorbed just enough energy."

"No, you misunderstood." Raven laughed and shook his head. "What I mean by careful management of energy nodes is about the way you circulate your energies from one node to another via the channels."

"For example, you move your energy from your left wrist energy node, towards your right wrist energy node. Or, from the chest energy node, down to spine energy node and then back up. That\'s the management that I\'m referring to. You only need to do that until all of the nodes and the channels hurt, that\'s when you stop. Get it?"

"Oh..." Paul had an enlightened face, he immediately went cross legged to do what Raven said. In fact, it wasn\'t only paul who had did this, there\'s also Mark. The girls had it easier since they understood his instructions before. They only needed a little bit of time to really get used to it.

"That reminds me…" Raven faced the girls and asked: "How about your Spiritual Sense, are you able to use it?"

"Barely…" Ellen grimaced while answering.

"Same." - Anne.

"A little bit." - Luna.

"Don\'t worry, you\'ll eventually get used to it. Just try scanning you area everytime you could, it doesn\'t take much Spiritual Energy to use anyway."

Due to their initial plan, the girls followed his advice to also thread the Spirit Path. During the ritual, their soul went to a similar experience as he did and was now completely awake. This enabled them to absorb and use Spiritual Energy.

Spiritual Sense is somewhat similar to echolocation. One only needs to send a wave of Spiritual Energy on their surroundings to accurately \'see\' their surroundings. What\'s differentiate this from other types of tracking techniques is that, spiritual energy is almost intangible. Meaning that it could seep in to pretty much everything and could accurately provide a feedback.

It\'s also sensitive to life forms, everything that it touched would be reflected on one\'s spiritual sea. And what\'s probably the most important thing, is that not everyone knew what a Spiritual Energy is, so for them, having contact with spiritual energy might be similar to a gust of air, but in truth their details had already been exposed.

"It actually feels weird though." Anne softly said, "I\'ve been feeling like…I have a second pulse. Isn\'t that crazy?"

"Don\'t worry it\'s not." Raven chuckled and answered her curiosity. "That just means that that your energy body exists and is functioning properly. Get used to that feeling."

"Okay."

"Oh yeah, another thing." Raven just remembered something and gathered their attention. "You\'r energies are bound to experience some sort of change later on. When that happens, don\'t panic. That is because of your Innate Elemental Affinities waking up."

"Innate Elemental Affinities?" Luna repeated while tilting her head.

"Yep." He nodded, "For example Ellen here, there\'s almost no doubt that she will inherit a Fire-based affinity, that will cause her energy to behave like a fire and it could even take it\'s form. So don\'t be surprised whenever that happens."

"Alright…" they all answered after a brief moment.

\'That being said…I actually don\'t have any clues as to what Elemental Affinity I have.\' He frowned as he this was an important piece of information.

He thought hard for a bit and searched his memories. He filtered them by category and eventually found out what he was looking for.

\'Here it is. The Natural Affinity Tester. It just so happens that I have the materials to make it right now.\'

Without any hesitation, he went outside towards the backyard to create the tester. He produced the materials and crafted it for about an hour. Wiping off the sweat on his forehead, he connected the last piece that he needed and smiled with satisfaction.

The tester was a small board filled with many inscriptions. There was a six pointed star in the middle and several symbols around it. The inscriptions looked like carvings on the board that one might mistaken this as an antique item. He then brought the board inside and called out his friends.

"Here, Paul you go first. Try injecting this board with your energy."

He was intrigued at first and somewhat hesitant, nevertheless he still ended up doing what he said and injected a bit of his energy on the board.

The six pointed star lit up under their shocked gazes. Afterwards, the light from the star moved and separated into two branches, lighting up two symbols on the board.

"Oh, Metal and Water. That\'s your Elemental Affinity. So it\'s highly possible for your attacks to be as fluid as water or as solid as metal." He said after looking at the results.

"Alright, Ellen you try it." She nodded and similarly injected her energies on the board. Just like what he expected…

"I thought so, you have an Affinity with Fire. A very high one at that. And because your affinity is high, your body will have a minor immunity against fire based attacks as well." He explained to her. He then looked at Mark, signifying that it was his turn.

"Mark you have a very high affinity with Lightning. You will also have a minor immunity against lightning based attacks. You might want to start learning some lightning based Battle Arts." After telling him his results, Raven looked at Anne.

"Anne you have three affinities: Wind, Water and Metal. You can decide which one to focus on later. I\'ll guide you the best I could."

"Luna, you go." Raven beckoned.

Luna placed her hand on the six pointed star and injected her energy. And similar to Ellen and Mark, she only have one affinity.

"A high Light Affinity. You actually don\'t have to change anything since your battle arts are Light based anyway, but if you have any light based techniques that you want to practice, then don\'t hesitate to do so. I\'ll be here to help." He smiled as he told her the results.

"Thanks. Why don\'t you try it as well?" Luna said.

Raven nodded and similarly placed his hand on the six pointed star, he then injected it with his energy and watched out for the results.

The six pointed star lit up brightly, then under his watchful gaze, it divided into several branches and lit up multiple branches.

"Eh?" Raven raised his brow in confusion.

"What\'s the matter?" Ellen asked.

"Well, nothing really." Raven shook his head and smiled wryly, "I just didn\'t expect to have multiple affinities."

"How many?" Paul asked curiously.

"Five.. They are Wood, Lightning, Metal, Light and Dark."