Read Of Heroes And Villains (Book 4) for Free Online

the meadow outside the castle, or along the outskirts all day, attempting to pull their eidolon out every second. There was no patience. No preparation.
    He didn’t know if it was true, but he had decided to prepare his soul for the hardships to come ahead of time. He would meditate for hours, just trying to build his confidence and his resolve. He refrained from too much junk food, therefore he avoided the new Stuff and Gorge at all costs. He figured that if the shell was strong, perhaps it would make the soul strong too. It might have all been for nothing, but he also realized that he only had one chance to pull out his eidolon. Only one chance to prepare his soul to take on the rest of the world.
    He thought of it like a little baby in its mother’s womb, squeezed in tight and warm, and provided all the nourishment it could ever need. Once a baby was born, that was it. There was no more preparation. No more sustenance. There was no control on how the baby would grow from the mother’s end. It was from that point on, a self-sustaining individual, so to speak.
    His theory was…if the eidolon was weak from the beginning, it could only get so strong from there on out. Each time it was pulled from that point on, sure, it got used to the outside environment, but that didn’t mean it could overcome it. That didn’t mean it was worthy to be used as a weapon.
    Bastion had been in the woods then, taking deep breaths one after the other. When he was ready to unsheathe his soul, he placed his hand over his heart. He wasn’t sure if that was where the soul resided, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to give his eidolon the easiest extraction point possible, and he figured the heart was an important organ. He might as well try there.
    He closed his eyes and kept the palm of his hand over his heart. And before he could open them again, he felt the hilt. He hadn’t even called it yet, and it was already yearning to be free. He wasted no more time. Slowly, he pulled out the blade, watching in awe as its width shrunk and then expanded rapidly—its colors rippling across the blade’s surface sporadically. He didn’t know what to think of it, but he wasn’t afraid.
    And then, when the last of the eidolon emerged, he was reborn.
    It was not an ordinary summoning. It couldn’t be. Because he had seen his peers summon their eidolons for the first time on many occasions. Usually there would be cries of shock and awe. They would rip the eidolon out of their body, and then they would be jumping up and down in the grass or screaming wildly, swinging their soul back and forth in excitement. They would start telling anyone who was nearby how happy they were, and how they would be a great warrior someday. It was all so…superficial.
    But this…it was like being awake for the first time, and the rest of his life prior had been just a dream. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had. And it wasn’t even his heightened senses, or the new power surging through his veins—it was his very being. Instantly, he was a different person.
    He couldn’t explain it, even to himself. But suddenly, he had no taste for child’s play. Where once he would have ran to the meadow and joined in a game of tag, he now wondered how the pain he felt from his neighbors could be eased. He learned about the fragility of life instantly, as he felt the tree in front of him gasping its last arduous breaths. No one would notice that it had died until it had long withered and decayed.
    He felt a change in the air. There was a definitive truth to things. He understood this immediately. He understood that there were answers to everything, if only he had the courage and the desire to seek them out. It was all so clear to him. As sharp and crisp as the wind.
    While most Sages would use their newfound clarity in the past for violence, he understood that the eidolon, and the power of a Sage, had to be more than that. Yes, there was truth to the fact that if one sliced