Without Sammath and Ashe around, the sect felt remarkably quiet and, well, Erin was quite pleased with that development. She was also pleased that they were beginning to take initiative and head out on missions to gain experience and improve themselves, not that she’d volunteer that information to the two of them. With both of them gone, Erin was free to leave the house as she didn’t have to be around in case someone from the sects came to try and challenge them. With that in mind, she’d actually left the sect to go sit down on a sunny, nearby hill for the day to absorb sunlight. Erin breathed in, tasting the crisp, fresh morning air and reflected on her fights the previous day to calm her down.
There were a few improvements that she could make but they were minor and, well, she’d be keeping them in mind for her next fight. She’d forgotten how versatile Cultivators could be with their Techniques, even within the same element or for the same person, and felt lucky that the Cultivators at the Viscount Stage were young enough that they hadn’t learn any truly powerful Techniques. That poison-user was a little bit of a pain, though, and she decided to keep an eye on him to gauge his personality. If he seemed like a good enough person, at least ‘good’ for the sects – which counted as self-absorbed, confident to the point of arrogance, and apathetic to the plight of mortals but respectful to both their seniors and their juniors and just ignoring whatever slights mortals may accidentally make against them – she might just recommend that Lu take him to a sect deeper in the Order.
He was certainly hard-working enough to succeed if he’d gotten to such a high combat ranking, she’d later found out that he was ranked within the top five of the outer sect, using poison and needles as his main weapons considering most people in the higher rankings would probably be able to block most of his needles with a defensive Technique. At the very least, his dedication to the weapon was commendable and if he showed that same level of dedication to Cultivation, Erin couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t at least make it to the fifth Stage. After fifteen minutes of analysing her thoughts and future moves, though, Erin centred her mind. That was enough reflection for the morning; she needed to get to work.
Erin closed her eyes and looked at her Bloodline with her mind, the loops and sworls of her Bloodline glowing with the combined, white light of sunlight and moonlight. Erin began to pull on the sunlight she felt on her skin, drawing it into her Bloodline and topping it off, even though she’d barely used any the day before. Once she was completely full, she took the sunlight from her Bloodline and began to slowly, methodically, run it over her Bloodline. With the help of the serpent’s Core, Erin had managed to refine all of the visible blemishes out of her Bloodline and was now on the final step to attaining perfection at her Stage; she had to thoroughly run her energies over her entire Bloodline, burning away any cracks or imperfections that were present but so small that she couldn’t see.
Sunlight began to burn the outside of Erin’s Bloodline, washing away any cracks or defects that might be present in the source of Erin’s magical power with the cleansing power of flame. Slowly, Erin moved forward, making sure to cover every millimetre of her Bloodline, not that it had any actual, physical length, and taking her time; she had plenty of it as this was one of her days off. As Erin used the sunlight stored in her Bloodline to remove whatever microscopic flaws were still present in the Bloodline. As she started to focus more and more, the outside world fading away as Erin concentrated, Erin began to draw in Sunlight through her Bloodline even as she used it to refine the Bloodline, simply so that she could continue to refine her Bloodline for the rest of the day as she didn’t quite have enough sunlight to do it normally. When the sun touched the horizon, though, Erin was only two thirds of the way through her very thorough purge and had been refining her Bloodline for 12 hours.
Despite that, she switched to moonlight and began to draw on the moonlight as it hit her skin, replenishing her Bloodline’s stores even as she used them to freeze off any blemishes. Finally, over six hours later, Erin reached the very end of her Bloodline again and the increasing pressure that had been pushing Erin to advance became completely irresistible. After four of these sessions where Erin scoured her entire Bloodline – three of which were during Ashe’s and Sammath’s time at the Dawnblaze manor and each session reducing the size of the microscopic flaws or eliminating them entirely – Erin was finally advancing.
Moonlight rushed into Erin’s body as her Bloodline moved around. It swelled up in size, doubling its diameter and length. The coils and loops of her Bloodline moved around, creating an entirely new pattern as they collided with each other and her Bloodline pushed on itself. Serpentine and infinitely looping, Erin’s Bloodline grew substantially and power euphorically flooded her limbs even as she kept her body loose and relaxed. Finally, the wash of magical energy that Erin was absorbing from the world around her for her advancement died down and she uncurled her limbs.
Erin stood up, letting a grin come to her face, and begun stretching to get her blood flowing back to her limbs; sitting down in the same position for eighteen hours does not work wonders for blood flow. Erin then began to move around lightly, jogging, lightly sparring with an invisible opponent, and just dynamically moving before finally testing the strength and power she now had. Without even tapping into her Bloodline, Erin set off in a sprint and was substantially faster than before. The ground flew underneath Erin’s feet and she judged that she was running faster than a skittish deer could bound through the forest. Potentially even much faster. Even with her Bloodline active, before her advancement she would have never reached this speed.
Erin rushed to the nearest tree after checking it wasn’t magical and, slowing down to settle into a combat stance with her feet spread out, standing on the balls of her feet, jumped forward and threw a jab with her front hand. The tree’s bark cracked and a massive indent formed underneath the power of Erin’s fist, wood shattering and splintering. A second punch shot forward from Erin’s back hand an even larger crater formed. Beneath her feet, the ground had also compressed with the force and Erin’s feet had sunk into the earth. Finally, Erin spun around on her foot and lashed out with a spinning kick into the side of the tree. Erin’s foot impacted with a massive thunk, digging into the side of the tree and smashing nearly halfway through its trunk. Splinters flew everywhere through the air and massive wedges of wood impacted the moonlight armour that Erin quickly formed to protect herself. While she likely wouldn’t be hurt, she wanted to keep her clothes intact.
Thankfully, Erin had properly braced herself for the kick as she’d ended up sliding nearly half a metre away from the tree, foot digging a channel through the earth like a farmer tilling dirt from the sheer force involved with the blow. The wood of the tree groaned from its injury and, with a mighty crack that rode on the air like the boom of thunder, it began to keel to the side. Erin stepped away from the falling tree as it groaned its own demise and smashed into the ground, bouncing slightly as it settled.
Erin walked over to the stump, eyeing the cracked and splintered wood with a light grin, and turned around when she heard someone approach her. It was one of the sect’s guards and they approached warily, weapon held out in case of trouble. Erin wiped the smile from her face as she stepped out from behind the tree’s leaves and, while they initially tensed when they saw her, the guard relaxed slightly.
Bowing to Erin, the Cultivator spoke, “Apologies, Young Mistress Dawnblaze. I hadn’t realised it was you who did this.” The Cultivator eyed the tree with ill-disguised surprise, walking around to see the stump and finding the massive wound in the side of the stump. Bending down to gingerly touch the crater, they looked up to Erin, “I apologise if you wish to keep it a secret, Young Mistress, but what did this to the tree?”
Erin shrugged internally as she debated whether or not she told the Cultivator; on the one hand, it would probably engender a small amount of fair and more than a small amount of respect if the Cultivators knew that she could fell a tree simply by kicking it but, on the other hand, she didn’t really want to reveal her true capabilities to those who could be her opponents and rivals in the future. Finally, though, she decided that the short-term benefit of scaring her students and opponents far outweighed the potential dangers of revealing her strength. After all, she was currently under the protection of an elder and, by the time some of these Cultivators grew strong enough to rival her, she would be far stronger than she was now, so of course she’d be able to fell a tree with just a kick. “I did. I kicked the tree to test my strength after advancing.”
Eyes widening in shock, the Cultivator bowed to Erin, “Thank you for answering me, Young Mistress. Now, if there isn’t anything you wish to speak to me about, I’ll return to my post.”
Erin just nodded and waved her hand to dismiss the Cultivator; she wanted privacy and having the Cultivator around would run contrary to that goal. As the guard disappeared around the tree, however, Erin realised she did have something to say, “Hold on.” The Cultivator turned around, facing Erin with nervous eyes, “I’ll be practicing here for much of the night. If you see any unusual lights or hear anything, I’d recommend against you coming to check out their sources.”
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Bowing and nodding hurriedly, the Cultivator left before Erin could ask anything more of them and Erin allowed herself a small smile at the Cultivator’s expense; they seemed almost like a nervous, skittish rabbit as they ran away. Erin turned away, ignoring the Cultivator as they rushed away, and walked around to the other side of the tree trunk, where she leaned her back on the wood. Erin closed her eyes and focussed on her Bloodline, pointedly ignoring all of the new flaws, cracks, and blemishes that had formed when it had expanded, before beginning to absorb more moonlight; not enough to fill her up, as she was barely at an eighth of her new capacity, but enough that she would be able to experiment with the things that she wanted to. After nearly two hours of hurriedly absorbing moonlight, Erin stood up with nearly double the amount of moonlight she’d had before as her absorption rate had improved with her advancement.
Erin threw out her hand, manifesting a moonlight sword and bringing it closer to her face to study. Erin noticed nearly immediately that it was much sturdier and much stronger than her weapons had been before, allowing her to better stand up to opponents in the Count Stage and, potentially, above. Erin then dismissed the sword, conserving her moonlight even though she’d barely noticed the drain, and prepared herself for what she wanted to create next; this was going to be a much more complicated construction and she needed to hold the image clear in her mind so that it would form properly.
Erin pushed out her moonlight, holding the image in the forefront of her mind and focussing on it to stop any other thoughts from influencing the construction. While she would eventually be able to make it at a moment’s though, the blueprint becoming second nature to create, she wasn’t at that stage of practice yet and needed to spend time on focussing. When Erin opened her eyes, though she grinned wickedly. Sitting in front of her, in all the softly shining glory of its moonsteel, was a small catapult. While it was a large drain on her moonlight, Erin judged that she could probably keep it running for nearly ten minutes straight when she was at full capacity, which meant that she’d be able to fire it dozens of times if she used her control over the moonsteel to reset it after each shot. Rather than try to search for suitable ammunition, Erin decided to just release the arm and let the catapult fire with an empty basket to judge the amount of force it had in its arm. With only a thought, the chain holding the catapult arm down released and the entire arm swung up with a massive whoosh of displaced air. Slamming to a halt with a massive crash as it hit the frame, the arm bent forward from its sheer velocity and Erin could only imagine the force that the catapult packed; she’d have to do some extensive testing later but, for now, she could be satisfied with the fact that she was becoming a one-man, or more specifically one-woman, siege army.
Erin dismissed the catapult with a wave and the moonlight evaporated into the air. Now, it was time to do some more testing with starlight; Erin really needed to figure out what each star did and begin to focus on systematically mastering the usage of each star. So, with that small test of the catapult done, Erin sat down and pulled her consciousness in to focus on her Bloodline. Slowly, she managed to ignore the soft waves of moonlight washing over her and focus on the prickling, burning sensations of starlight hitting her skin. Erin had determined that the constellation of the Hammer provided fire that ignored heavier armour, the heat propagating through the armour like a hammer striking a gong – or just a person in heavy plate armour. She’d figured out that the Southern Star, often called the star of the snake for the myths that spoke of giant serpents dwelling in the southern oceans off the coast of the continent, gave Erin a green, toxic fire. Finally, the Bear constellation gave Erin different properties depending on the part of the bear each star represented; the body of the bear emanated a lot of heat but wasn’t actually as powerful at burning, the paws were flames that burnt through easily cut or torn material like a knife through butter, and the legs practically exploded with power, easily propelling Erin through the air and allowing her to navigate.
Those were only a few of the many, many stars and constellations around, though, and Erin had far more that she needed to go through, understand, and catalogue the abilities of. So, Erin decided to tackle the next star on her list; the Northern Star. While it technically wasn’t directly north, it was the brightest star in the northern sky and could be relied upon to direct sailors and travellers as long as the night sky remained clear. Erin focussed on the white light coming from the star, slightly different to the green light coming from the southern star – Erin couldn’t actually differentiate the colours of the light with her eyes, only that they appeared that colour in her Bloodline – and began to absorb it to see what it would do. After nearly half an hour absorbing the light, Erin had a small amount of starlight absorbed that she could call upon to make use of in her experimentation and she pushed it out of her Bloodline, into her hand, to start a small, controlled burn.
Erin’s hand lit up under the light of the bright white flame and a blue tinge licked at the edges of the flickering tongues of fire. Despite what Erin’s eyes were telling her and everything that her instincts screamed, the fire wasn’t hot. If anything, it was cold. Leeching and sapping heat, as though it needed the heat to keep on burning, the fire began to condense the water around it in the air, producing a sort of cold, misty steam, almost like fog, as it burned.
Erin’s eyes widened with realisation as she remembered the other name for the Northern Star; the Polar Star. It was said that, if you were to follow the Northern Star to the peak of the world, you would encounter massive plains of ice, with treacherous crevasses, giant storms of snow that could pick up out of nowhere, and huge, glacial rivers of frozen water that moved a few metres each year. Suddenly, Erin made another realisation; this was what she needed to turn her moonlight into flames.
Dispelling the flame with enthusiasm, Erin tapped into her Bloodline and drew on her moonlight even as she thought of creating a flame. While she thought of creating fire, though, she didn’t want that flame to expel heat. Instead, she pushed on the thought that the flame needed to absorb all the heat from the world around it so that it maintained its energetic state, as though without that input of heat it would shrink and freeze in place. With that in mind, Erin pushed her moonlight out into her palm in the shape of fire and watched, mesmerised, as the fire of moonlight flickered and froze the air around it in her hand. Like with the light of the Northern Star, the moonlight fire – moonfire, Erin decided to call it – was extremely cold and she knew it was going to freeze many of the things that it touched. Despite that common property, though, it wasn’t quite the same. Where the Northern Star flame seemed to abhor heat, seeking to leech it from the world and freeze everything in time, the moonfire seemed to be more about cooling down the world. It wanted the world to be cold but wasn’t quite so violent in its desire to remove heat and was a much more controlled leeching, the fog having begun forming slower. Additionally, she felt there was something a little bit more with both the Northern Star and moonfire that she couldn’t put her finger on but would figure out soon enough.
Letting the fire go out by itself after releasing the draw on her moonlight, Erin wanted to try the opposite thing; making sunsteel with her fire. First, though, she needed to figure out the effects that she wanted from the armour. She needed to figure out how, exactly, she was going to turn the sunlight solid. So, Erin began to reanalyse the changes she’d made to make the moonfire work; it was sapping all of the heat to keep itself a flame as such, Erin needed the sunlight to be so focussed on expelling heat, all it did was push out that heat. The sunlight needed to be pushing out so much heat that it was forcibly turning itself from an energetic, dancing flame into a material even more solid than steel.
Erin locked that criteria in her mind and focussed on drawing on the small reserve of sunlight that she had left; she still had a small amount left, having maintained a constant draw on the sunlight while pushing to advance, even if it wasn’t enough that she was completely comfortable. Only thinking about the sunlight expelling absurd amounts of heat and about taking her preferred armour shape, Erin released the sunlight from her body and felt it coalesce on her skin. Where the moonsteel felt like a gentle, radiating cold to Erin’s skin, even as it could freeze water if she left her hand in the water long enough, the sunsteel was the opposite. It felt like a thick, warm blanket had been cast over Erin or like she was sitting near the great fireplace in Dawnblaze manor on a cold, wintry night. Erin’s Bloodline had no interest in hurting her with the heat or chill, after all, and that gave her some extreme temperature resistances.
Erin lifted her foot up as the grass around her caught fire from the sheer heat that was being expelled from the armour and dismissed the plating around her legs to stamp it out before it spread to the tree; she really didn’t want anyone to come by and find her in the glowing, yellow-orange sunsteel armour. Erin turned her hand back and forth, admiring the sunsteel, which had a muted glow like molten steel, and she felt a smile spreading across her face as she realised just what she’d done. That night, she’d done something that no one had ever been able to do and substantially improved her arsenal. She would need a lot of practice to begin using it like it was second nature but practice was something that Erin enjoyed and, at this point, couldn’t really live without unless she was undercover, on a mission.
Erin stood up tall and, for the first time in years, truly let go of her emotions. A triumphant shout tore from her mouth as she leant back and let out her exultation in one massive burst of sound. It echoed through the night, almost certainly reaching the sect, and Erin heard the rustling of leaves and bushes as her victorious crowing disturbed the creatures of the night. But she didn’t care. A massive grin spread across Erin’s face as she began to laugh, a full-bellied laugh that shook her entire body and would have made her seem deranged if anyone had come across her in that moment. Erin had the potential to be the most powerful and versatile person in the history of both the Sarin and Dawnblaze families and she certainly wasn’t going to waste that opportunity. Erin was going to become the strongest she could be and, while people may get in her way, they certainly weren’t going to stop her.