Way of the Knights

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"Well done."

Sometime after Raven killed the main body of the Phantasm, the method to leave was revealed to him so he didn't waste too much time inside the pocket dimension anymore. He took advantage of the chaos and wiped he treasury of Raul clean and left it in his storage pouch along with his farewell letter.

When he focused on his intent to leave the realm, his body was sucked in by some foreign force. He momentarily lost vision and when it returned, he was back at the palace grounds and he heard Inos' voice.

"Thanks. That's a weird experience." Raven replied with a wry smile.

"I know right?" Inos said with a smile, "Anyway, congratulations for making it in this stage without dying even once. Since you reached the first checkpoint, the road from here on out will only get harder so you have to prepare."

Raven nodded to Inos' explanation, come to think of it, the whole resurrection thing was still something that he hadn't experienced before. He didn't know if he should feel lucky that he hadn't had to take advantage of it, since he shouldn't get used to dying repeatedly because that would be a bad habit, or not.

"Anyway, it's time for you to receive your rewards based on your participation. Focus on the golden imprint on your psyche."

Raven nodded and followed his instructions. He saw the floating golden imprint on his psyche and focused his attention on it. Suddenly, a strange and archaic voice echoed inside his mind…

"First Pocket Dimension: Cleared. Releasing rewards based on performance…" the archaic voice became silent for a bit after saying this. After that, it spoke once more.

"Calculations finished. First Mission Final Grade: S, candidate will be rewarded with…"

"[Book of Chaos: First Chapter], Archaic Hammer, and Mount Seed."

"Oh?" Raven let out a surprised sound as he heard this. Suddenly, three items popped out of existence and floated in front of him. First was an ancient looking book, next was a hammer and the last one is a bean-sized seed.

"Huh? They gave the first chapter to you this early?" Inos commented on the side, clearly surprised when he saw the book.

"You know this book?"

"Know it?" Inos laughed and explained, "That's an understatement, not only me but every Heir of the Ancient Divine Crown used it. Pay attention to it."

Raven raised an eyebrow when he heard this. All of the previous Heir used this book? Then it must be something good then. He decided to carefully read its contents later…

"What about these two then?" Raven asked.

"I don't know." Inos flatly replied. "I never seen the hammer and the seed looks like a mount seed and if I'm right, then it's pretty obvious what it does. What I could say is that the crown won't hand out these rewards without a purpose, so you might want to spend some time thinking about it."

"Is that so…" Raven said in a whisper.

"Anyway. You've reached the first checkpoint and cleared it. You cleared one out of many steps you have to clear before becoming the True Heir. Work hard and search for the next pocket dimensions, I'll appear once again once you found the 10th pocket dimension." And with that, Inos' silhouette disappeared, leaving Raven alone inside the Palace Grounds.

Many thoughts and speculations surfaced over Raven's mind, but he forcefully broke his trance and decided to not think too much, all of his questions will be answered once he became the rightful heir so there's no use stressing himself too much about it.

"I didn't use too much time to clear the mission, so I still have time left in here. I'll check my rewards first." Raven said, he then sat down and picked the mount seed first.

"Mount Seed, the best quality too. Every growing Knight should have a mount, it's a staple even in the Divine Realm. Sure, one could tame beast and make it a mount but the loyalty of it would be in question. The best way to foster a mount is by acquiring a Mount Seed. But raising a mount would be a pain, good thing I have ways to do it."

In order to hatch the Mount Seed, one has to feed it with resources. There is no way of knowing what kind of mount would be hatched from the Mount Seed but one could certainly guess how strong the hatchling could get by how much resources one is willing to spend on it.

Even in the Divine Realm, fostering a Mount Seed is done with outmost care. There are multiple cases of people hatching very rare type mount using the Mount Seed. Some lucky folks could hatch a Quicksilver Horse, which is said to have the highest affinity in Time Laws. Some hatched a Demon Bull, which could trample any kind of barricades using it's horns.

A few of the extremely lucky ones outright hatched a divine beast like a Vermillion Bird, Azure Dragon, Black Tortoise, White Tiger.

Raven could only hope that he get something good out of this Mount Seed since there's no way that he'll find one here in Grand Ancestral Plane. He had to reach the Divine Realm first to find one, and even then it's still extremely rare.

"As for this…" Raven said as he picked up the hammer, immediately regretting his decision since he was not aware that it would be that heavy. "Really heavy! What is it made of?"

Raven carefully placed the hammer in front of him and inspected it. After looking at it for quite sometime, he still couldn't guess what it's made out of, therefore his thoughts became something else.

"Inos said that the crown won't hand you out without any reasons..." Raven muttered, "Is it telling me that I should wield a weapon? That's the only reason I could think of right now. But why though? I've seen many flourish in the weaponless path, so why can't I do the same?"

"Wait…" Raven trailed off when he was in a deep thought, an shocking realization dawned to him that he didn't even want to believe it. "Actually let me test this out."

Without any hesitation, he probed the hammer using his Spiritual Sense. It was then that he felt something stir in his Spiritual See. He unconsciously entered his psyche and involuntarily looked up. The starry skies above his head appeared and a particular constellation started emitting a brilliant flash of light.

Raven watched as the Archaic Hammer let out a joyful hum, it then turned into a flash of light and appeared in his Spiritual Sea which greatly surprised Raven.

But it didn't stop there though. Once the hammer appeared in his Spiritual Sea, it sent out a thin film of light that shot up towards the starry skies. The light touched the constellation that was shining brilliantly and the resonance between them created waves of reaction inside Raven's Spiritual Sea.

Raven felt his soul recovering at an astonishing pace. His Spiritual Sea was expanding at an alarming pace as well. But this wasn't the thing that caused Raven to be astonished. It was the fact that the Archaic Hammer transformed.

Previously, it looked like just any regular hammer, one that has two blunt sides and mostly seen being used by blacksmiths when forging something. But this transformation was just insane…

The hammer was enormous, it was so large that it was almost reaching the starry skies inside Raven's Spiritual Sea. The carvings on the handle of the hammer appeared like numerous hands, wrapping all over it and reaching up towards the skies. The aura it has was suffocating, Raven had no doubt that under the right hands, this hammer could even shatter the Grand Ancestral Plane in one swing.

The color of the hammer remained black with a glistening sheen, the two blunt sides were still there but there was a gem embedded in between them and on top of this gem was a sharp tip, almost like a spearhead.

Raven was dumbfounded, he didn't know what to make out of this situation. Originally, he just thought that he should test the hammer's compatibility with him. He never thought that the reaction would this huge.

He was pretty sure that he had been looking at the hammer for a long time, that's until it suddenly shrank into an acceptable size, enough to be held using two hands, and then it sent a thin film of light once again but this time, it went towards Raven. He didn't dodge it and let it touch his soul, he didn't feel any ill intent from it so he knew that he was safe.action

The film of light fused within his soul, his head throbbed for a bit but he experienced this so many times that it barely affected him. Suddenly, knew things appeared inside his memory and all of those were about the hammer. But the most important thing was…

'Archaic Thousand Arms Hammer, unable to be wielded by anyone else aside from Vendrick Valorheart.. One out of Five Forms unlocked.'