Liberatio!

Soon as he left the room he saw a door leading to where he saw a table with his belongings. Hanging the sword on his waist and holding his blaster, he asked in a low voice."If what that alchemist said is true, I should have more power. Tell me what to I need to do to a achieve the second stage?"

[There is not really a second stage for you. However if you absorb enough energy you will be able to discharge.]

They didn't even finished talking when he heard a loud explosion on the other side of the base. Countless people pick up their guns and rushed to the source of the sound as Rick hid behind the door.

When a security guard passed by his door, Rick suddenly pulled him inside the room and soon the blue-haired man put on a cap and armor as the other men before running together toward the source of explosion.

Others looked at him with confusion as he ran far behind, trying to conceal his missing right arm. When he reached the place, a deep cold invaded him. Even the air was freezing under this coldness as he saw a lot of people shooting bullets covered with elemental force coming from the weapons of first stage elemental masters while the second and third stage controlled the elements as they attacked a silhouette in the crater.

Earth element master erected huge rocks as the fire element masters put it on fire shooting fireballs in each rock. Then a violent wind blew against those rock throwing with all the power of the wind at the figure within in the dark. The fire helped melting some of the ice, but then even the fire showed signs of freezing under the immense burst of cold air coming from there. Walking to the border he could see from close, Rick saw a black-haired middle-aged woman. Very beautiful for her age and with an air of elegance, however at the moment her hair slowly turned white as the air around her manifested in a armor around her.

A single word came to his mouth as he stared at the scene. "Manifestation."

Others may not know, but how could he not understand this was all brought by the fourth stage. Mystic had told him in the time he worked under her that above the third stage, they were not elemental masters but elemental kings. Manifestation or Physical manifestation was the power to manifest the elements in a physical form. Most of the divine six were at that stage including his father and mother.

From the look in her eyes, he knew his mother has lost her mind and was in a crazed state, using her power wildly. Whatever they did to her it was scary enough to awake powers lost for more than sixteen years.

[Boy, You must save her quickly! The thing they gave her not only make her brimming with a astonishing amount of energy as her own life and soul are being converted into power. She is going to die if we don't stop her.]

Then a flash of light came from above, and a one hundred meter ilusory sword came slashing at his mother. With the size of the sword, just it's tip was more than enough to bury him into the ground.

The old voice's words has awaken him Rick from his confused state, jumping into the crater everyone else hold down their weapons to see what he was going to do. With the energetic eyes, he could clearly see the crazy flow of energy in her body and the speed of how her life force was slowing converted into energy.

Then he stared at the sword. It's trajectory toward mother couldn't be changed and the speed it moved was even faster than him. So much faster than the soldiers and elemental masters close to him not even noticed the huge threat to their lives, only with his lighting speed thinking he could ratiocinate. Surely, he saw no way of escape under this immense sword.

Without even thinking he rushed at his mother and stood with his arm open in order to protect his mother from the the sword. At the same time, light returned to her eyes as she realized a huge physical wind sword was going to smash her when her son, who appeared with his long hair flickering under the faint green light the huge sword radiated.

She tried to move, tried to help her son, but she could feel her powers out of control and making it impossible for her to move. When the sword was about to hit them, she closed her eyes just before a huge sucking force was felt by her and everyone else in the base. Even the man clad in green priest robes stared to the hole his sword has open on the ground, pleasantly surprised by what he saw.

[I don't like the idea of having this low-class energy inside me, but this will enough help. Boy, it's with you from now on.]

Rick was like a black hole, sucking the energy out of every elemental master, battery and even the huge quad-elemental reactor at the bottom of the underground base. All of it was being sucking into his body.

His entire body was sparking blue, inside himself he could feel thousands and dozens of blue energy threads inside him forming a massive deep blue web. Then all the blue threads dissolved into a thin blue sun lighting up the dark space inside him. All the other lights he had seen before were gone, with a single blue sun shinning brighter than a thousand stars.

"Liberatio!"

The blue sun left his body and appeared above his head, it's size was not big, only the size of a ball, but the the power it contained was not bellow the most powerful reactors made by the human race.

Shiiiiin!

A blinding light was then released forming an invisible energy field around Rick and his mom, then the sword burst into a hurricane and the two lights clashed for a single second before the the green light was quickly dispersed by the energy field.

When his mother realized it was taking too long, she open eyes and screamed. "Son!"

The area of ten meters away from then was intact, however everything else was in devastated state. Rick the source of their survival was lying on the ground, most of his body was sore with countless little bruise all over him blood flowing out.