Reborn as the Empire's Blind Prince

6. The four classes of power

Lucian didn't stop at one book. To truly grasp the mechanics of power in this brutal world, he needed a complete foundation.

He spent hours navigating the towering shelves, pulling heavy tomes, old scrolls, and foundational texts.

He read until the dead of night bled into the early hours of dawn.

Outside the thick library windows, the sky was still dark, but the faintest hint of morning light was beginning to creep over the horizon.

With that subtle shift in the ambient light, Lucian felt his False Sight begin to waver.

A dull, throbbing ache started to build behind his eyes. He pressed his fingers against his temples, forcing himself to keep going.

From the mountain of texts he had digested, the first thing that became clear was that all power in Ur began with the elements.

Every living thing carried an elemental affinity. The affinity was not chosen willingly but it was determined by certain conditions during the Awakening Ordeal.

An element flavored everything an Awakened did, regardless of their class.

The four primary elements were the basic Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind.

Fire was destruction and passion. Water was adaptation and pressure. Earth was endurance and stability. Wind was speed and precision.

But these were only the beginning. From the primary four, advanced elements emerged through natural combination.

Lightning was fire and wind together, pure kinetic speed and thermal destruction.

Ice was water and wind, thermodynamics, the freezing of molecules through atmospheric pressure.

Metal was earth and fire, refined density and unbreakable structure.

Some texts hinted at rarer, anomalous elements that existed entirely outside the combination framework, they were viewed as unstable mutations born from extreme environmental conditions or ancient bloodline anomalies.

They were highly volatile, unpredictable, and barely documented.

But an element alone was useless without a class to channel it through.

When an Awakened survived the Ordeal, their newly ignited essence core didn't just randomly spew energy.

It locked into one primary flow. This was also not a personal choice. It was determined by biological and spiritual inclination shaped by bloodline, personality, and soul will.

Most Awakened spent their entire lives mastering a single class. To spread essence across multiple paths was considered a fatal dilution or rather delusion, a waste of potential.

No one in recorded history from what Lucian had been reading had ever fully mastered more than two.

There were four classes altogether. Each was recognized by a distinct glow from the orb during the awakening ordeal and also people with perception abilities.

The Fortification Class had a blue glow.

Fortification users channeled their essence entirely inward. Their power never left their bodies.

Instead, it sank deep into muscle fiber, bone marrow, and bloodstream, reinforcing everything it touched.

Their body became their weapon, their shield, and their armor all at once. They hit harder, moved faster, and healed at terrifying speeds.

At higher ranks, their skin could snap blades, and their organs could continue functioning through trauma that would instantly kill a normal human.

An element determined how that reinforcement manifested.

A Fortification user with a Fire affinity couldn't throw fireballs but their internal body temperature rose to lethal levels, and their bare hands could heat up a surface it comes in contact with.

A Fortification user with an Earth affinity developed skin like granite, immovable and nearly unbreakable.

A Fortification user with a Wind affinity moved with unnatural speed, their limbs cutting through air resistance like sword blades.

Their only weakness was range. Against a skilled opponent who could control distance, a Fortification user had to absorb immense punishment just to close the gap. But if they closed it, the fight was usually over.

Lucian rubbed his temples as the text burned into his memory.

For him, Fortification represented survival in its purest form. His physical body was atrophied from years confined to a wheelchair.

His muscles were paper-thin, his bones untested. If he managed to unlock this class, it wouldn't make him a god of war.

It would simply make him not weak. In the Everstar household, that alone could save his life.

The Manifestation Class burned with a green glow.

Manifestation users channeled their essence outward. They shaped raw energy into physical constructs through sheer will and imagination.

Blades of hard energy. Shields of flame. Barriers of crystallized air. At the highest peaks, semi-autonomous entities that fought alongside their creator.

An element determined what those constructs became.

A Manifestation user with a Fire affinity created blades of living flame and walls of heat that melted arrows mid-flight.

A Manifestation user with a Water affinity shaped whips of pressurized liquid that could slice through steel.

A Manifestation user with a Lightning affinity, an advanced element projected spears of pure kinetic energy that struck faster than the eye could track.

But the cost was steep. Every construct drew from a finite pool of essence.

A user who projected too much, too fast, would drain their core and become defenseless.

Worse, the constructs required absolute concentration. A sudden piercing pain or a moment of doubt, and their weapons would shatter into dust.

Manifestation was a distant temptation for Lucian, but his scientific mind saw the ultimate loophole.

His False Sight allowed him to see the structural integrity of anything he looked at.

He could perceive where a manifested blade was thinnest. He could identify where a magical barrier would fracture under stress.

If he ever unlocked this class, he wouldn't need to invent original constructs. He would copy what he saw. Every enemy who drew a weapon in front of him would become his unwilling teacher.

The next, the Sensory Class burned with a white glow. They were less useful on a battlefield.

Sensory users channeled essence into perception itself, expanding their senses far beyond physical limits.

They could read essence signatures through solid walls. They could perceive emotional intent as visible auras.

They could track the residual energy of old spells and identify who cast them and how long ago.

Elite Seers could distinguish truth from lies with absolute certainty. A rare few could glimpse brief flashes of immediate futures, though such visions were unstable and often misleading.

An element sharpened the nature of that perception.

A Sensory user with a Water affinity sensed the flow of essence through living bodies like currents in a river, making them exceptional trackers.

A Sensory user with a Wind affinity could hear whispers from impossible distances, catching conversations held behind closed doors.

There was another path within the Sensory class, a rare sub-class that only a few ever unlocked: Healing.

A healer was a Seer who had learned to perceive not just essence flow but essence damage. They could see where a core was cracked. They could identify where energy was blocked or corrupted. And with that perception came the ability to mend.

Healing was slow, delicate work. It required absolute precision and deep reserves of essence.

But a skilled healer was worth more to an empire than a battalion of soldiers.

They were rare. They were protected. They were never allowed to leave the palace once discovered.

Lucian let out a shaky breath. His False Sight was already a Primordial-level Sensory ability, implanted directly into his optical nerves by the transmigration system.

It completely bypassed the normal limits of the class. He could read auras. He could see through solid matter.

He could d******d the contents of a book in a single glance. But being a Seer wasn't enough. He could see everything perfectly, and right now, he couldn't do a damn thing to stop any of it.

Finally, the last class. The dominion class. Unlike every other class that fought on a battlefield, this class is a battlefield to the others.

'Interesting.' Lucian thought, as he dived into the class.