Aetherium

Aetherium, the capital city of the central continent, the city of the future, home to the innovators and pioneers of mana, building new innovations, building a new era of mana...

Aetherium has the World Academy towards the North, The Guild Headquarters located in the South, and the mage tower located in the East. Towards the West lies inheritance grounds amidst the dark forest, entry to which is restricted. Not only because of its value but also due to the fact that it is the base of the devil worshippers who hid amidst the forest, protected by mana beasts.

Tall towers and colorful light illuminated the night sky as we entered out of the portal, greeting us there stood a carriage with Nightshade families' insignia.

"Not again, can't they just invent some sort of magic flying carpet or some shit."

"High-speed transportation is a privilege, Orion, not everyone can be provided with such tools. Besides, the spatial gates are lost technologies of the past, older than the Nightshade family itself, the primordial era."

"A spatial user is so rare that there have never been more than two spatial users in the same generation. Besides having space affinity doesn't mean you would be able to actually be strong, unless you have some ancient inheritance from the primordial era, or else you might just be a scapegoat for the mage tower."

"Can't we just cultivate it on our own? If we have the affinity, then why would we need inheritance?"

"Good question. To simply state it, our brain is incapable of what you call visualizing another dimension other than reality. So, it results in increased brain activity and drain in life force. That is the reason why elemental affinity is ranked above others as it is more versatile, whereas other auxiliary affinities, in general, are quite dangerous. You don't have to worry about getting those elements as it is very rare to awaken a space affinity. In fact, the last one who awakened it was the first patriarch of our family, Dracula Nightshade."

"But isn't our Patriarch a Dark mage specializing in dark magic."

"Although our patriarch was a once-in-a-millennia genius with dual affinity, as he didn't gain information on spatial laws, he had to only rely on dark affinity, which is comparatively less straining, and as vampires have great vitality, he was able to fully utilize the dark affinity. One of the reasons dark affinity is considered a taboo, is the fact that the more you rely on it, It urges its user to fulfill his innermost desires."

"The only Advanced elements which are somewhat useful are the ice , lightning and gravity element. The ice and gravity users mostly are from elves and dwarves families. The lightning on the other hand generally appears to humans."

"What about the vampires?"

"It is a bit complicated because after the first patriarch there has never been a dark mage, and in some rare cases there have been occurrence of space user, but they weren't able to live long enough. In recent years our race's power is gradually declining, especially due to the presence of Julius Evenstar, the strongest lightning elemental mage in history."

'Well, that explains why he took Peter as his successor.'

"Sister, what about an affinity that boosts speed? "

"Hmm, then it must be an auxiliary element"!

"What is that? Is it as powerful as Advanced elements?"

"No, Auxiliary elements generally occur in cases of commoners where there is a mutation in the elemental affinity due to impure bloodline, In most of the cases resulting in weak elements like speed boost, shields,wall-climbing etc."

'In the original novel, Orion had an auxiliary ability, if I'm not wrong, it was speed. Yeah, you heard me Speed not bad, not good either, meh okaish like a mob character that he was.'

'But one thing that concerns me is if Speed was his main affinity, then why didn't he escape from the horde at his last moments. I don't think it might be due to a lack of mana reserves.'

As I was busy contemplating things, I heard an inner voice "I tried to use it, but it didn't work."

"Unlike other auxiliaries, mine was the trashiest of them all. It needed utmost concentration and large mana reserves to even maintain it for a few seconds. But then again, the results were awesome. I could literally kill anyone within my range in those few seconds."

"Tch... Tch I didn't call you Orion."

"Thank you for the warm welcoming Rain."