Child of Destiny

Cling! Clang!

Bang! Bang!

Shin was battling with Mondi and Regan’s lesser clones for almost 3 hours already and was about to reach the finish line of this troublesome awakening quest. In fact, there were only 10 minutes remaining on the quest clock before he could clear this quest.

And during this battle, Shin discovered how odd the Legacy Skills that he had. Just like the greatsword that Mondi’s clone was holding on his other hand.

Holding a huge sword one hand and a katana on the other? No matter how hard Shin thought about it, he couldn’t find sense in that sword combo at all.

Greatswords was supposedly used for landing powerful and heavy strikes to an opponent, which was also commonly used with two hands.

But this Mondi style of fighting was really strange; not only could this samurai properly dual-wield a greatsword and a katana, but he was also doing it without having much problem. He was even using this style with a switching attack and defense manner. And the transition between his attacks and defense was quite fast, which put Shin in a lot of disadvantage.

Not only that, the mobility of this Mondi’s clone didn’t suffer a bit even wielding such a heavy sword. What’s more, he was even tossing his greatsword in the air while fighting against Shin. And that was even catching Shin a little off-guard from time to time during their fight.

On the other hand, Regan’s Clone was not losing in oddness either. Despite fighting for almost 3 hours against this clone, Shin still couldn’t figure out how to completely counter ’Reagan’s Method’ Legacy Skill.

Every time Shin figured out a way to counter the shifting elemental spells, Regan’s clone would suddenly change his fighting style and put Shin back at being square one. And battle styles that Regan’s clone used to put Shin on this awkward spot was to just a simple switching from a range to melee battle or vice versa.

Well, it was actually not that simple. Because every time Regan’s clone switched his battle style, the timing and the choice of spell that he was going to use, were always been too perfect to counter Shin’s movements and attacks; from elemental spells to elemental enhancements, everything that this clone did were always been for countering Shin’s attacks.

And the most troublesome thing about this battle style was the switching elements that Regan’s clone was using. There were even some special elements in the mix that always caught Shin off-guard, just like the nature and wood elements or space and time special elements.

Plus, Shin also discovered something that surprised him a lot during his battle. And it was the appearance of some Elemental Companions every time Regan’s Clone used a special magic spell whenever Shin was about to succeed at catching the clone with his attacks.

With all of these, the whole battle felt like a real hell for Shin; dealing with either one of these clones in a one on one battle was already a lot of trouble, what’s more dealing with the two of them at the same time.

Fortunately, everything was not bad news for Shin. Thanks to this hellish experience, he was able to improve himself to a greater degree. Not only did he perfected the breathing technique that he was using inside the game, but he was also able to flawlessly apply them in every skill that he had in his arsenal.

Yes, all of his skills including the Eclipse series of skills. He was able to perfectly use the real Eclipse Powers now.

Before, he was using the ’eclipse powers’ generated by the system, which could be considered as some lesser powers of the game.

This kind of energy and mana generating system were made by the ’AI Chronos’ with a purpose of helping the players that were not used at using the energies inside the game, and also the energies assigned to a player’s class.

In this game, it was quite common that there were some players that could be considered odd, like some Martial-Artist that chose a Magical Class or a Psychic Mentalist that had a physical class, or even an ordinary person that was playing either type of class.

These kinds of players would surely have a hard time adjusting with the energies that they needed to control for their chosen class; especially with the current ’Freedom Mode’ of the game.

To solve the issue, the ’AI Chronos’ made a special energy and mana generating system. And with this ’system’, the players would not be having much problem at controlling the energies assigned to their respective class, which made the casting of a spell and executing a skill would be much easier for all of the players.

But there were also some drawbacks on taking advantage of this system, the damage of the spells and skills that could deal with the help the generated energies and mana under this ’system’, would surely be less compared to the damage of the skills and spells under the manual execution and casting.

Nevertheless, this special generating system gave all of the players a lot of leeway to explore their skills and spells. And if the player was quite talented or skilled enough, then he could unfold the mysteries of their skills and was able to use those skills through a manual execution, just like the other players.

Setting all of these aside, Shin finally broke through the barrier that he needed to overcome so that he could use the ’Eclipse Powers’ properly, which was combining the Power of the Sun and Moon.

Shin had no problem with transforming the elemental mana of fire and ice/water into the powers of the Sun and Moon, but he still had some troubles at combining either of the pair of powers before.

But right now, that problem was immediately resolved when Shin got the inspiration of using the nature of his dantian in the real world. Yes, he mimicked the idea of his dantian to combine the powers of the Sun and the Moon.

Instead of forcefully combining the two powers, he let the two of them slowly assimilate with each other by letting them do their independent cycles inside his body.

The idea might be simple but Shin took a lot of effort to perfectly fuse the two powers; especially that the powers of the Sun and the Moon were occasionally clashing with each other.

Actually, Shin was already trying similar methods since the third round of the Quest, but he still failed continuously even after his repeated tries. He only managed to perfect this method after observing the repeated elemental fusion made by Regan’s Clone during the entire fight.

But there were still some problems on it; Shin couldn’t fuse two kinds of elements in the air unlike Regan’s clone. And due to that, Shin came up with a bold idea; since he could easily wield the two powers at the same time by using his swords as a medium, then why not use another medium to connect the two powers?

As for the new medium that he used for bridging the two powers? It was obviously his body. And Shin controlled the Powers of the Sun and the Moon according to the cycle of the two circulating Qi inside his body in the Real World.

Then he let the two powers meet at the dantian of his virtual body in spiraling movements. And just like what he had expected, the powers of the Sun and the Moon created a strange harmony before fusing together and transforming into the power of Eclipse.

With the help of this method, Shin was able to use the powers of his ’Eclipse Wielding’ Combat Technique more perfectly.

But that was not all, since there were also some changes with this combat technique of Shin; the Power of the Sun and the Moon mutated due to this newly found method.

The Power of the Black Sun became influenced by the Power of the Silver Moon and changed the color and nature of its flame; it transformed into a silver flame with some shades of black on its surface. And this new flame also became so hot that even the space around it was being burned slightly.

At the same time, the Power of the Silver Moon also became mutated due to the Power of the Black Sun. The silver glow that it was releasing suddenly turned black with some tiny silver lights that were blinking in the mixed; they looked like a bunch of stars shining in the dark sky of the night. What’s more, the cold aura that it had was enough to create some crystalline fragments in the air around it.

Due to all of these changes, the rank of the ’Eclipse Wielding’ Combat Technique suddenly promoted from being ’Epic’ and became a ’Lesser Legendary’ Combat Technique, which was obviously much stronger than its previous version.

But even if that was the case, this combat technique consumed a lot of willpower and concentration, which made it hard for Shin to maintain this state in battle.

Fortunately, this was not the only one that Shin had created. Due to the new type of power that he had and his ability to grow in battle, it was natural for Shin to create some skills in the process; especially that he was being pressured to improve by the two clones that he was battling.

And with all of these, Shin suddenly got a renewed look at Arthur’s words when he said to treat this game just like he was in the real world.

”Tsk! This game is becoming more interesting the more I play it. Heh! Let’s see how far I can go this time,” muttered Shin to himself.

Then he paused for a moment and looked at the digital clock at the corner of his eye and saw that there were only 5 more minutes before the end of this Awakening Quest. ”Too bad, this is about to end.”

’Tch! Why all things suddenly end whenever everything is about to get interesting,’ with this thought in mind, Shin looked at the two clones standing not far from him and added. ”I guess, it is time to repay these guys for everything that they have taught me in this battle.”

...…