Chapter 6: The Origins of Battle Force

The Origins of Battle Force

In front of him was the main lecture building of the Dawn Academy. Its design was like the form of a large bird spreading its wings, with both of the "wings" enclosing a central plaza; it looked like a bird that was embracing the central area. The main hall had five floors that served as the main offices for instructors of the various disciplines taught in the academy. The other two wings only had four floors which comprised 80 classrooms altogether and could fit up to 4000 students in total at any given time.

To the left of the mini plaza between the wings was a white stone building. Originally, it was a defense outpost, but in recent times it has been used as an office for the Enforcement Department as well as the Department of Student Affairs. To the right of the plaza was a small forest which was an ideal place for training and even romantic rendezvous.

To meet with the academy head, Lorist had to go through the main hall of the lecture building, circle around the assembly ground and canteen, pass through the herb garden and research building that were used mainly by the academy's herbalists and finally the library before he arrived at the main administration building, which was previously an abandoned training ground. The academy head's office was on the top floor of the administration building.

Despite being a multidisciplinary academy with more than 153 years of history, the Dawn Academy wasn't famous for their Battle Force or swordsmanship courses. Most other schools that ranked above them usually had a Blademaster in charge for the two courses.

Rather, the academy was more famous for accounting, archaeology, language studies, herbalism as well as magical beast studies. They were also quite renowned for their painting and music composition courses.

To ensure that their students were multitalented and holistic, the Dawn Academy insists that all students choose two other professional disciplines and one arts course besides their main Battle Force and swordsmanship courses or they will not be allowed to graduate. On the other hand, the academy does not care about how long it takes to graduate as long as the fees are paid.

Besides the few renowned courses, the academy also has multiple other disciplines for students to choose from, namely, construction, sculpting, city management, business management, knight training, horsemanship, ship building, smithing as well as leather tanning. They even had one course specially designed for descendants of noble families among which included flower appreciation and fine-dining courses.

Although these other courses were not the academy's best ones, they still held a certain standard and only hired qualified instructors. As these courses only taught the basics of the disciplines, students could easily pass them and graduate, provided that they put in a decent amount of effort into it.

Lorist took up accounting and knight training as his additional professional courses. This was chosen ten years ago by his uncle who also handled all of his family's business affairs. His uncle thought that learning accounting would benefit Lorist even if he doesn't end up inheriting the title of the family head as he can always inherit his position as the head of the family's trading group.

As for knight training, that was chosen because his family had a glorious military history and considered martial prowess paragon. Lorist also showed tremendous talent as he had awakened his Battle Force at the young age of 14. Had it not been for the grave error he committed in the past, he would not have been exiled to Morante City by his father.

Being exiled meant not being able to receive the traditional knight training of his family. At that time, Lorist's uncle thought that it was not good for Lorist to not have any training in this field and chose knight training as the other professional course he had to take.

What his uncle didn't expect was that before even a month has passed since his precious nephew's enrollment, due to his overbearing arrogance, Lorist had got into some trouble with several other students and ended up beaten to the brink of death. It was at that time that another consciousness took over young Lorist's body.

Because of that, Lorist only took one year to complete the accounting course since to the current Lorist, the subject was merely some crude, simple arithmetic on the level of mathematics classes taught to fourth or fifth graders back in his previous life.

However, the current Lorist had some initial trouble with his knight training. Had it not been for his already fit body, he would've suffered quite a bit during the arduous three years of the course. He had to start of as a squire of other knights and carry out many miscellaneous tasks for his seniors as well as manage their armors and take care of their horses on top of attending his own physical exercise and training sessions in the skills of a knight. After three years of bitter training, he finally obtained his pass for the course.

Despite all that, he could only become a knight apprentice, unlike his other course mates. That was due to his Iron ranked Battle Force. Only Silver Swordsmen could become full-fledged knights.

That being said, the main cause for his stunted Battle Force training was due to a mishap in the cultivation of the Norton family's Blazing Battle Force. Ever since inheriting the memories of the original owner of the body, he knew that he was in possession of a hand-copied version of the Blazing Battle Force manual that only allowed him to train up to the Three Star Iron rank. At that time, his Battle Force had just recently been awakened and it would take him a few more years to reach the Three Star Iron rank, so he wasn't in a hurry to obtain the rest of the manual.

Battle Force training was very much different from the Ki-refining techniques he had encountered in his previous life. He was forced to train the Aquametal Technique passed down in his family by his grandfather at the young age of seven back then. Battle Force training, however, did not start until one reached the age of 15 or 16; one could not awaken one's Battle Force at too young an age when the pulse wasn't strong enough to agitate the magical beast factors present in the blood.

Legend says that thousands of years ago, the world was rife with magic and great magi and sages dominated the world. They called the Grindia Continent the 'main plane' and set off to the stars in search for other planar worlds. In one of their countless expeditions, the magi discovered a worrying problem. The magi usually travelled in small numbers and did not have much prowess in close combat to fight the warriors of the other planes. Thus, they returned to the Grindia Continent to figure out a solution for the problem.

Initially, the magi resorted to taming magical beasts, but they soon felt that it wasn't that great of a choice, as the beasts had relatively low intelligence and could not efficiently comprehend the magi's instructions. Problems solved with magical beasts usually ended up messy or bloody.

One day, after long periods of brainstorming, the magi got a spark of inspiration and injected blood from strong magical beasts into humans who could not train in the art of magic, and through the use of a magic formation, Battle Force was manifested.

Battle Force totally changed the world of humans. Possessing techniques to train in Battle Force, the magically inept humans could thrive against magical beasts without the protection of the magi. Not only did that greatly lessen the magi's responsibilities to protect the normal humans hence allowing them more time to pursue their own interests, it also provided the magi with a formidable army.

Following that discovery, various other types of blood from different magical beasts were integrated into the human body and thus different types of Battle Force attributes were identified. At that time, Battle Force awakening and training occurred with the aid of magical formations. The magi also categorized the different ranks of power and their difference in abilities. With the extensive research conducted by the magi, Battle Force training got easier and faster and humans with Battle Force started showing up everywhere, with their training speeds getting faster and faster. In time, Sword Gods roamed the world and Sword Saints were littered all over the place.

Those thousand years were the most glorious era of the humans. The countless planes conquered by them supplied Grindia with an massive amount of resources and riches. At that time, the fairies sang for the humans, the halflings cooked them wondrous delicacies, the dwarves built them majestic palaces, the dragons served as their mounts, the minotaurs plowed their fields, the beastmen herded their livestock; all the other races revered the humans and treated them with utmost respect.

However, something happened and sparked the beginning of the end. Some magi explorers of the boundless void discovered the desolate ruins of a race of gods on an abandoned plane. The magi soon got to know that all the resources available in the countless planes did not even add up to an iota of the resources on the plane of the god race. On that plane were countless high grade magical materials, the purest of ore mines as well as the legendary, arcane secrets of immortality.

All of the magi turned their focus to the land of the gods. They formed large and powerful parties of magi and rallied armies of Sword Gods and invaded the plane of the gods.

The war waged by the magi against the gods lasted a thousand years. Countless different nations on that plane were eradicated and the blood of countless magi and Sword Gods tainted the battlefields. No side emerged victorious from the war; both parties were left crippled and ravaged. The event was just as described by 'The War of the Gods', blood stained the skies, countless brilliant stars fell like meteors, human greed triggered earth-shattering change and darkness enveloped the world......

The actual factor that kick-started the downfall of the humans was the gradual depletion of the once omnipresent magical force, causing the great magi to lose their main source of power. Nobody knew the cause of such a phenomenon, but all of them were convinced that the era of magic was coming to an end.

As the magi lost their last strands of power, the previously subordinate Sword Gods and Saints reckoned that their time had come, and that the main driving force in the near future of Grindia was the Battle Force that they possessed. For their own selfish ambitions, they began to fight among each other. No longer bound by a pact with the magi, they murdered, pillaged and destroyed to their hearts' desires. They hated being under the control of the magi and vented their anger on the majestic structures built during the age of magical civilization. They would not be satisfied until every one of them were reduced to ashes.

Founding their own kingdoms or nations, they towered over the common folk and were worshipped by their subjects. But in their arrogance, they had forgotten that without the magi's aid in the first place, they did not have the right to own what they had. As they grew older, they discovered that their descendants could not inherit their fantastical abilities and were only ordinary men as they didn't know how to draw out the innate Battle Force in their blood. Their empires and legacies they built were left with no eligible heir.

When the last Sword Saint breathed his final breath, a thousand years of darkness descended onto the human inhabitants of Grindia. Having lost their ultimate means of defense, the humans could not fend off the dreaded magical beasts and were helpless against their assaults. They had no choice but to live in seclusion for the sake of survival.

The human population on the continent was reduced up to two thirds during the thousand years of darkness.

However, one lone warrior miraculously awakened his Battle Force in a battle to the death with a magical beast while he was hunting. Using the power of his newly-awakened Battle Force, he killed the savage beast and survived. Fortunately, the settlement he lived still had an ancient Battle Force manual that was passed down by his ancestors.

The curtains of the night were lifted and the rays of dawn once again shone upon the humans. The awakening of this sole warrior's Battle Force was a silver lining and brought great hope to the human race, prompting the survivors to cooperate and research alternative ways to awaken Battle Force.

In the long years of battling against magical beasts, the humans slowly began to understand the dynamics of Battle Force and grasped the means of Battle Force awakening. Without the magical formations of the magi and given that the Battle Force manuals left by their ancestors were not applicable to them, the humans could only learn from their experiences in battle through the process of trial and error. Their progress was slow, but steady.

Another thousand years elapsed and the humans have once again become the overlords of the Grindia Continent. Battle Force was no longer an arcane discipline and has become common knowledge. Stimulating the innate magical beast factor in their blood to awaken their Battle Force and training to achieve higher levels of power allowed the humans to turn the tables against their once again thrive over magical beasts and become the predators instead.

No longer having any threats to their survival, the once unified humans broke apart again into different tribes and creeds and once again competed among each other for their own agendas and goals for hundreds of years up until present time.

Historians opined that the end of the magic civilization marked the end of magic age as the foundations for their technology had long been eroded. According to them, magical energy did not just disappear. It was actually replaced by another force that could resonate with the magical beast factors in the blood of humans that once again allowed the awakening of Battle Force.

It was thought that if a family had produced Sword Gods or Sword Saints in the past, their descendants would have a higher chance of awakening their Battle Force as the magical beast blood that their ancestors had assimilated were from stronger magical beasts, and that was believed to be the main factor of the relatively high success rate for Battle Force awakening of the descendants of such families.

That line of thought caused many noble families to pay more attention to their family's marriages in the name of maintaining a purer bloodline, even forcing siblings into marriage in certain instances.