Way of the Knights

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"You are the Genius Class so I expect more from you. I want you guys to fill your Energy Network with nothing but Energy Essence. I am forbidding you people from breaking through the Junior Knight Realm without consulting me first. If I found out that you did, then you can say goodbye to your classmates."

Many were shocked about Victor's tall order. It had to be known that converting regular energy into Energy Essence is already a taxing process. It is a step that has to be done in a step by step manner since any mistakes could injure them heavily. It's not like they only have to condense energy on one Energy Node and be done with it, they have to it to all five of them.

When Victor said that the most common conversion is around 75%, he said that because that 75% was mostly the five Energy Nodes in the network, as for the rest it was obviously the Energy Channels. Which means that they also have to somehow find a way to convert the energies flowing through their Energy Channels to Energy Essence as well.

Due to Energy Essence being a condensed form of regular energies, it's harder to move it from one place to another. If they go from 75% conversion, then things would've been easier, but Victors requirements was 100%, now they faced a troublesome problem.

"Before you start losing confidence about your chances. Do not forget that in the end of the day, I am still your teacher." Victor said while smiling. "Don't start thinking that my task is impossible, I could show you the way on how to achieve it, but the path is yours to walk. You can seek me for advices but I will not hold your hand throughout the process. Understood?"

The students nodded their heads upon hearing his words. They felt more confident since he gate them his word.

"But first, let's continue our talk about Cultivation Realms." Victor said as he sat down in front of them."

After Veteran Warrior Realm, there actually exist a stage which is going to be extremely important. This stage is called Half-Knight Realm. In this realm, one has to condense what we all call: Armament Seeds. This is done by condensing all of your Energy Essences together, resulting into a single grain or seed. Once this seed germinates, then your Knightly Armament will be born and also the day you formally step into Knight Realm."

Knightly Armaments takes shape of an armor and weapons. Their shape and appearance are quite bleak and unimpressive at first but as they move onwards through the Knight Stages, it gets better.

"During the Junior/Senior/Veteran Knight Realm, your Knightly Armament would only form an outline, but this is enough to weaken most of the attacks coming your way. If any chances that your Knightly Armament was destroyed, so long as your Armament Seeds are there, you could still reform it so make sure to take care of it."

"The Knight Realm onwards is where your Knightly Armament will slowly manifest into reality. Following the Knight Realm is Silver Knight, then Golden Knight and finally the legendary Oath Knight Realm."

"If any of you could reach Oath Knight Realm, then I would be able to smile im my death bed, so work hard." Victor said as he gazed at his students with a silent encouragement. "There are rumors that there is a stage beyond that but none has managed to prove it, not even our current King reached that stage."

To the people of Final Haven Kingdom, reaching the Hero Realm is already akin to ascending as a god. If there were only a few people in this kingdom who reached that stage, then the citizens of Final Haven Kingdom had no reason to live in fear.

However in truth, Hero Realm is nothing but a mere pre-requisite to reach the top. In fact, only by reaching this stage would one be aware just how far fetched the powers of a god truly is. Sure, these people are absolutely powerful. If the the King decided to throw a nasty tantrum, then he could disintegrate the whole Royal Palace in a blink of an eye and no one has any power to stop him. But to start comparing himself to a god, that is just an outright blasphemy.

In Hero Realm, one becomes aware of Heavenly Laws. But awareness is only one thing, gaining enlightenment from them is a completely separate topic. Grasping even a fraction of basic elemental laws is already considered as an achievement, much less mastering them, which is the requirement to breakthrough the next stage which is the Hero Realm.

Even though Raven wanted to explain the immensity of Heaven and Earth to these people, he wasn't qualified to do so, not even after the fact the he almost reached it during his past life.

***

After finishing his discussion about cultivation matters with his students, Victor told them to gather towards the training room.

Once there, everyone stood with rapt attention and waited for his next instructions.

"As I promised, I will tell you the way on how to pass my challenge for you guys." Victor smiled as he spoke, "It's nothing hard really. It all boils down to a single concept which is..."

"Control."

Majority of the students were stunned at the revelation.

"That's right." Victor nodded to their reaction, "Control is the key to easily beat my challenge. Explaining things on a wordy basis would be meaningless, it might just go from one ear and escape through the other one. So instead of doing that, why don't we play a little game? A game of Tag to be more precise."

Some students titled their heads in confusion, how could a game of tag make them understand the concept of control?

Instead of answering their questioning looks, Victor instead tapped his cane on the floor and suddenly the whole training area started quaking.

Out of nowhere, multiple stone pillars emerged from the ground. Each of them vary with thickness and height. The spaces between each pillar also differs as well as the way they stood. Some stood straight up while others are a bit diagonal. Some also have creases on the surface while others looked extremely polished. Some are cracked while the others aren't, they also come in different colors too.

"Listen up, I will tell you the rules of our little game." Victor announced which brought back the attention of the students to him.

"It's pretty similar to the rules of 'Tag'. Out of 16 people here, there will be a single one who's going to be the 'It'. The 'It' will start chasing the rest as soon as the game starts. If the 'It' touches the 'not-it' people, the tagged person will automatically become an 'it' as well and has to chase others along with the original 'it'."

"Here's where it gets interesting. Normally, tagging someone should be in a form of a physical interaction, mainly touching their arm, hand, shoulder and etc. But for this game, once the 'it' tags someone, the 'it' must leave a energy signal to the part where they tagged the other person. For example, I tagged him, so long as I could make sure that I left a mark that has my energy signature on his body, then it would count."

"There will be safe zones as well, and those will be the top of each pillar that you see. To count as being in the safe zone, both of your feet should be touching the top of the pillar, otherwise it doesn't count."

"This whole training area would be your playground, if you go out of bounds, then you will receive a punishment later. The game ends once every single one of you is tagged or time runs out."

"To make things fair, we will draw lots to figure out who's the 'it'." Victor said as he summoned a small cup with a bunch of papers in it. "Pick one paper in this cup, you'll find out if you're the 'it' or not."

One by one the student stepped forward and picked, some were nervous and prayed that they weren't the 'it' while others are just relaxed, like they weren't taking this seriously.

When it was Raven's turn to pick, he drew a paper and sneaked a glance out of it. After seeing that the tip of the paper was colored red, a mischievous smile appeared in his face. While he quickly hid it by returning his expression to normal, there was one person who managed to caught that.

"Oh damn, we're done for." Paul groaned as he watched Raven walking back to them.Hearing him say this gave out the idea for the rest of his friends, all of them looked at Raven and similarly smiled wryly.

"So, he's the 'it'?" Rupert asked, somewhat startling the others because they didn't knew he was there. Veronica was also right behind him.With a helpless sigh, Paul nodded and smiled wryly.

"I advice you guys to try your hardest." Paul said.

"Huh? Why? Is he that good in Tag?" Veronica asked.

"Nope." Mark answered, "We actually never played it before."

"Then what's with the reaction?" Rupert asked.

"Let's just say, that the six of us often sparred against each other. Even if we outnumber him and came at him with the intent to kill..."

"We never won...."