Way of the Knights

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"Woah! That\'s awesome dude!" Paul exclaimed excitedly, "You have more options that any of us here."

"That might be true but…" Raven frowned and continued, "Having more isn\'t necessarily a good thing. All of them are good so it\'s kind of hard to choose only one you know?"

"I don\'t get it Avi..." Ellen said while frowning, "I mean, what\'s the basis of affinity even? Is it bloodline? Spiritual Entity? Or Luck?"

"Cause if were talking about bloodline here, then there should be a Fire affinity. Like mine, I came from the Vermillion Sky Clan and our specialty is fire. If were talking about Spiritual Entity, then I don\'t have much idea about yours. So what\'s the deal here?"

Ellen\'s question raised point for everyone. Raven placed a serious expression and explained: "It\'s a mixture of everything except luck, Ellen."

"Look at you, the reason why your Fire Affinity is high is because of your bloodline which is the Vermillion Sky Clan and your Spiritual Entity, which is the Vermillion Bird."

"Paul had Metal and Water. Metal from the Eternal Defence Clan, and Water from the Black Tortoise."

"Mark had high lightning because of both his clan, the Marching Warlords, and his spiritual entity which is the Primordial Lightning Serpent."

"Anne had triple affinity. Wind and Metal from the spiritual entity which is Annarosa\'s Bow. The water comes from the Western Star Clan."

"As for Luna, the Lightshield Clan as well as the Archangel Jubileus makes her affinity towards the Light element extremely high."

"But you do remember what happened after we left the clan right?" Raven\'s simple question greatly startled Ellen. Suddenly, memories of their childhood flashed before her eyes, it didn\'t take long before she realized what he was referring to, and just to make sure she had the right guess…

"You don\'t mean…" Ellen wanted to express her words freely but she can\'t, this topic had been a bad memory for the both of them and it\'s also one of the main reasons why she hated those people.

"What? What happened?" Paul\'s eyes narrowed, based from Ellen\'s reaction, he could guess that it wasn\'t a great thing. It wasn\'t only him who noticed this, the rest also felt the heaviness of the atmosphere.

"It\'s no big deal really." Raven waved his hands casually to disperse the heavy atmosphere, but he knew of all people here that such thing wasn\'t possible.

"When mom, dad, and I left the Burning Heaven Clan. They purged us from the list of descendants."

"THEY DID WHAT??"

Their exclaims echoed inside the room. Raven flinched a bit due to their loudness but once again waved his hand and said: "Like I said, It\'s no big deal. It only annoyed us for a bit, nothing more."

"It IS a big deal bro!" Paul slammed his fist on the table. "It\'s not like they merely erased your name on the list! They Purged it!"

"That right!" Mark\'s eyes flashed with incredible coldness, "Purging someone off the list of descendants is worst than being neglected or disowned by the clan. Once your name is purged, you will lose all of the benefits of being a part of that clan. You will have no rights towards their inheritance, their resources and the very blood that run through your veins."

"Now that you mention it, everything makes sense now. The reason why your a Red-grade Talent, the reason why Sir Luis is greatly hindered by his cultivation. All of this was because of that. The purge dissolved the potential on your blood, lowering your talents similar to that of a commoner. That is just too cruel." Anne explained in a low voice.

"You do know that Royal Palace strictly prohibited this process right? Why didn\'t you say anything?" Luna asked exasperatingly.

"Calm down you guys…" Raven chuckled, "Let me explain."

The team sat down and listened closely to him.

"It\'s true that what they did was cruel. I struggled with it too you know. But we made an exclusive decision that we are drawing a clear line away from the clan. We returned everything that we could and those things we can\'t, we reimbursed using money. It was after we left that they did the Purge, and if we really want them to take responsibility then dad would\'ve done something about it already."

"We no longer owe them anything. We left on our own accord and all that\'s left between us and that clan is bad blood. We endured everything and we managed to rise back up. Look at me? Isn\'t everything fine now?" Raven pointed at himself, wanting to convince his friends that there\'s nothing to worry about.

"You right, everything is okay now. But still…they did you dirty. If I were you, I would at least do something to get back at them…" Paul scratched his head in frustration.

"Well, who said I won\'t be doing so?" Raven raised his brow and asked.

The people around him could only stare at him dumbly. Right, for a second there, they forgot who they are talking to. Of course! How could Raven let them go? It\'s true that everything is okay now, but that doesn\'t mean that he letting them off the hook. He\'s just letting them experience peace because god knows that they will miss it once he started.

"Yep, they\'re fucked." Paul snickered and laughed coldly. The rest could only shake their heads due to his vulgar words, but deep down, they knew this response was accurate.

"Okay, so going back to the Affinity stuff. Because of the purge, the Fire Affinity, which is ingrained at the Burning Heaven Clan, is removed from me. What\'s left is the affinity that the Spiritual Entity bestowed to me. And that\'s precisely the five elements that I mentioned earlier."

Wood, Lightning, Metal, Light and Dark. These are the innate affinities of the Myriad Limb spiritual entity. Now, Raven\'s only dilemma is picking the element/s that he should master. Like he said earlier, have multiple choices wasn\'t necessarily a good thing, and this is precisely why.

\'I could pick a single one, or two, or three, or four, or all of them. But my cultivation manual is already hard on it\'s own. So going for more than one would complicate it even more. What should I do?\'

Raven was in deep thought. \'Do I really have to choose? Is there anyway for me to enjoy all of these benefits without sacrifice? No, there no way right? Unless…\'

After a moment of thinking, Raven\'s eyes flashed with realization, a huge grin appeared on his face as he thought: \'Yeah, yeah! That could totally work! I could enhance my mastery over Wood and Lightning Affinities just for the sole purpose of aiding me in the Body Path. Add the Metal Affinity to my Energy Path to make my attacks more formidable and deadly. As for the Light and Dark, that could go towards my Spirit Path, using those elements to temper my spirit! That would make my path incredibly tough but that was bound to happen anyway! Yeah! I\'ll make this work! I\'m a genius!\'

"Uh…world to Raven. World to Raven. Hello?"

Raven\'s thoughts were interrupted by Paul who was clapping on his face.

"What\'s wrong?" He asked with a confused face.

"See, he wasn\'t listening!" Paul whined to the rest. This made Raven laugh out loud.

"My bad, my bad. What did I miss?"

"Nothing much, we\'re just talking about how we\'re going to miss this place." Mark said with a thick melancholy on his voice.

"Oh, that\'s right. We have to pack our things and move out right?" Raven now realized what they were talking about.

"Yeah." Anne nodded, "It\'s just, we gotten used to this place you know? I barely even stayed out of our place, most of times were training here."

"I\'m going to miss this place as well. This is where everything started." Luna added. For her, this place means a lot, this is where the person who cured her lived, where she picked up her weapon and trained, where she laughed and shared many memories with her old and new friends. Where she realized many things about life and experienced many rude awakenings. A lot things happened in this stone house, which makes her somewhat hesitant to leave it, even though she wasn\'t a tenant in the first place.

"Well, we have to move on." Paul whispered softly.

"Yeah we have to. This became somewhat a greenhouse for us. But in order to truly become the protectors of our home, we need to leave this place and face the dangers outside." Raven nodded and replied with a greater determination on his voice.

"Come! Let us not be feel downcast and feel alive! Our transfer is tomorrow so we have to clean this place up today!" He then stood up and encouraged the rest to pack up their things so that they could bring it along with them towards their new place.

A feeling of excitement and thrill emerged from the bottom of Raven\'s heart

\'Oh, Inner Branch. Just what are the things that you could show me?\'