Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 108. Admiration.
“You guys… can someone explain to me what happened here?” Elder Samuel asked in a helpless manner. He probably would have been able to figure out the answer to this question on his own, but at the moment, he was way too dumbfounded to have any spare room for thinking.
“It’s a pretty simple story,” Laien responded with a laugh, his lighthearted attitude in addition to the scene of carnage around him causing Elder Samuel and the guards he brought with him to feel all the weirder as if they weren’t looking and listening to something realistic. “Elder Sophie came here with the intention of capturing us and using that as a bargain card to save those eight million refugees of yours. She said something about the Prophet’s sermon changing… I guess she learned only that and made her own assumptions,” Laien elaborated, then shrugged his shoulders.
“The result of it is as you can see,” he added with a slight smile and to his surprise, had Mikaela add a few words from himself right afterwards.
“Laien killed them all by himself, dad! He’s super strong! It’s great that you called us over here! Ah, I mean he killed those two guards, she’s still alive.”
Listening to the silver-haired nine-year-old, the five experts accompanying Samuel couldn’t help but reveal wry smiles. Those kids were just too much; they faced a situation that would devastate most adults, but according to their words, they not only turned the tables around with ease but did so without getting all that nervous. Moreover, there was this enthusiastic way in which Elder Samuel’s son spoke just now… the sly plan to get those youths befriend each other for the sake of future might as well backfire at their master as his own son appeared to have become extremely fond of Laien.
“On his own…” Elder Samuel repeated in a low voice, then quickly swept the two corpses and Elder Sophie’s body with his gaze. “They all have wounds from ice and frost. Out of those present, only Laien and Mikaela have water-element affinities, but Mikaela is still far too weak… so it really was like Mikaela is saying, Laien took care of them on his own? But this battle didn’t take more than ten seconds… and judging from the wounds of those guards, they both died in one blow each. Good God, could it be that this story about the battle against Yimar Furi and his men wasn’t overexaggerated in the least?” he asked himself, beginning to regret that he didn’t push through with his original idea of making Laien and Yin owe him a favor.
“No, this is good too,” he told himself when he saw his son and Laien exchange an amused glance, only for Laien to then tousle Mikaela’s hair. “They look to be getting along very well. That’s worth much more than a half-forced promise. In case anything unpredictable happens in the future, we will be able to rely on those kids helping each other out even without treaties and agreements,” he mused quietly. Having come to this conclusion, he took a deep breath and redirected his thinking to the other matters at hand; like dealing with the aftermath of this event.
“Jugal, heal Elder Sophie… no, heal this woman just enough so that she won’t die. Abel, gather up your unit of thirty-six, capture the remaining men of this woman’s and subjugate the two Grand Elders that belong to her faction, of course along with their own people. You are free to kill those who resist, but do try to keep the Grand Elders alive,” Elder Samuel ordered after a mere few seconds of thought. He was well-versed in politics to begin with and he had a mountain of experience, so there was no way he wouldn’t be able to make the best out of those circumstances.
“As for you three,” he added, looking at the three guards he managed to take with him while rushing here. “Go deliver the orders to my own unit. They are to seal off the fort and make sure no news of this event leak out. If Elder Simon or someone else tries to pry, tell them that I will personally explain the situation to him before today is over,” he ordered, planning to keep the matter of Elder Sophie committing an act of treason secret, at least from the general public. After all, something like ‘three Grand Elders stepping down because of personal reasons’ would be easier for them to swallow than ‘three Grand Elders being sentenced to death for an act of treason’.
“Understood,” the three guards saluted and left in a hurry to deliver the orders. As for the two personal guards of Elder Samuel’s, they were already carrying out the instructions that were given to them. Jugal was frowning and cursing while using his water-element magic to attempt to heal Elder Sophie’s injuries, while Abel had left the moment he received his orders.
“Screw it,” Jugal cursed once more and clicked his tongue. Frowning, he gave Laien an annoyed yet equally impressed look and said, “I can deal with most of it easily enough, but can you remove your ice from her arms? You froze them all the way to the bone and your energy in them is so dense that I can’t force it out without shattering her arms into pieces in the process. I’d rather you save me the trouble of regrowing her whole arms.”
“We could always leave her without them,” Laien said with a seemingly serious look on his face but laughed the next moment and waved his hand ever so slightly. The mixture of Qi and Spiritual energy that accumulated in Elder Sophie’s arms woke up to life in an instant, flowing out and dispersing in the air, leaving the two limbs with shattered bones, cut muscles and ruptured skin, bleeding all over. Still, even a state this bad was far easier to heal than regrowing two arms from the very beginning.
“You sure didn’t hold back on her, eh?” Jugal asked with a smirk as he started tending to Elder Sophie’s arms. “The bitch deserved it though, so good job,” he added with a snort and a chuckle. As far as the general outlook on the matters on the country went, he was practically of the same mind of Samuel; that was also why he willingly and contentedly offered his services and allegiance to him. For the likes of Elder Sophie, he held no sympathy; only disdain.
“Jugal, mind your words,” Elder Samuel reprimanded, though he could only sigh when he received a half-hearted ‘yeah, yeah’ in response to his words. Had Jugal not been a rare dual water-element practitioner with both of his cultivation bases in the fifth Realm of Heroes, he would have made sure to make him tone down on his uncouth behavior in one way or another, but as the matters stood, there wasn’t much he could do. Jugal was just too important for him to damage their relationship because of Jugal’s tendency to use ugly language when one should naturally mind his tongue.
“Does the martial law include us?” Laien asked, his eyebrows raised slightly. If they were to stay here, then he would at least like to be provided with a better room.
Elder Samuel appeared to have read Laien’s intentions from his gaze as he replied with an apologetic smile, “I fear it does. It shouldn’t take too long though, at most one hour. I will take you to one of the empty rooms in my quarters and leave some food and drinks for you, so I would be grateful if you waited there.”
“Sure,” Laien said with an amused smile, thinking that Elder Samuel was suddenly being way too polite towards him. “But instead of a simple room, can you give us a training hall for private use?” he inquired, then sent a meaningful glance to Mikaela. Since they were stuck here, then why not make use of the opportunity to do some training? He and Yin would be leaving soon, so there wouldn’t be many opportunities to do so… though Raphael and Mikaela weren’t yet aware of it.
Perhaps as expected, Mikaela’s expression grew excited in an instant. He quickly turned towards his father, looking at him with an intense ‘please!’ look in his silvery-blue eyes. He was brimming with so much anticipation that even a blind person would be able to tell how much he was looking forward to learning from Laien.
“As you wish,” Elder Samuel agreed with a helpless smile. He had always been weak towards the requests coming from his youngest son, but this time around, it wasn’t the reason for his feelings of helplessness. Rather, he was a bit worried if Laien’s influence on his son wouldn’t prove to be too strong; had the plan not been for Laien and the others to leave in six days, he would have been seriously concerned with his son making a request similar to ‘I want to go and study at the Eclipse Academy too!’. If he heard Mikaela say so, he truly wouldn’t know how to respond.
“Thanks,” Laien said casually, by this point seeing no reason to stick to any kind of formal language with Elder Simon.
“Thanks, dad!” Mikaela added the next second, looking very pleased and happy with how everything was going.
“I’m done here too,” Jugal mentioned, then picked Elder Sophie up and flung her unconscious body over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
Elder Samuel looked like he wanted to make a comment about that, but he simply let out a resigned sigh and gestured Jugal and the youths to follow him, what they did. Although Laien and Mikaela had decided the plan for next hour or possibly even longer on their own, neither Yin, Arslan nor Raphael had any objections; they could talk in a spacious training hall just as well as in a guest room, so they weren’t unhappy at all about the choice to go there. In fact, Raphael was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t try and make use of this time to offer to share some of their insights to Yin, though he wasn’t yet all that sure if it was an appropriate request to make.
A few moments later, Elder Samuel left them in one of the secluded training halls that his subordinates used to train. Since they were in the middle of his quarters, Elder Samuel didn’t bother assigning any additional guards to watch over the boys as no one suspicious would be allowed to enter that far in to begin with. Thus, after wishing the boys to have a good time, Elder Samuel left them on their own and headed to tend to the matters at hand, amongst which a serious talk with Elder Sophie and the other two Grand Elders from her camp was of the highest priority.
“So, what do we start from?” Mikaela asked impatiently after seating himself in front of Laien, both of them sitting on large, soft pillows just about five or six meters away from the others.
“How about you show me your strongest spiritual energy, to begin with?” Laien requested with a smile, then specified what he meant after seeing the somewhat confused look on Mikaela’s face. “I don’t need you to use much spiritual energy at all. Just make use of your Guardian and… bah, won’t it be faster to just show you what I mean than to explain?” Having said so, Laien chuckled and raised his hand. He pulled onto the essences of all the Aspects he had insights into, added the Principle of Energy, and to top it off made use of all the Profound Mysteries of the Elemental Law of Water he could use in order to create a palm-sized sphere of ice, water, and mist, all of which flowed and intermingled constantly, all the while releasing a powerful aura of insights contained within them.
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“Wow,” Mikaela said quietly, looking at the mysterious sphere of water, ice and, mist with clear and wide-open eyes. As a talented spiritual practitioner of the sixth rank, he had already awakened his spiritual sense and as such, now that he had an opportunity to perceive Laien’s energy from close-up and without rushing, he could tell exactly how amazingly powerful it was. Both its extreme purity and the number of various insights it contained was simply extraordinary; even though as Samuel’s son, he had had an opportunity to study under water-element spiritual masters who were arguably stronger than Laien, their strength came purely from the superior level of their cultivation base. They weren’t able to stir him up at all, while just sensing Laien’s energy was giving him chills.
“Hey, how long are you planning to just keep looking?” Laien reminded with a laugh. He didn’t have anything against Mikaela pondering on the insights contained in his magic, but he had a feeling that the boy was simply dazed and lost in his own thoughts. Certainly enough, the current Mikaela didn’t look like a person having an epiphany that shouldn’t be disturbed.
“Uh, yeah. Sorry,” Mikaela said a bit nervously, but when he saw that Laien’s expression remained friendly and gentle, he relaxed once again. He had gotten a bit worked up since their positions as ‘friends’ got suddenly changed to ‘teacher and disciple’, but it looked like Laien wasn’t going to treat him any different than before, what made him feel glad. He really wouldn’t have liked it if Laien suddenly changed his attitude and became all teacher-like; he liked the current Laien much better than some stiff and overly serious teacher persona akin to all those old folks who had been employed by his father to teach him in the past.
As such, after taking a moment to focus, he raised his hand and controlled his spiritual energy, converging it into the shape of a ball. He did so slowly, all the while paying attention to the mysterious spherical mass of water, ice and mist that Laien was displaying to him just a dozen centimeters away from his own hand. He wouldn’t have trouble with merely making the best use of his spiritual energy and adding the insights he had into it, but at the same time, he wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Thus, instead of simply forming a ball of water, he attempted to mimic a part of Laien’s magic and from a ball of water and ice.
He focused the best he could and took the process slowly, without hurrying, and yet, to his dismay, all he achieved after almost ten seconds was an unstable ball of pure water. Frowning, he gave up on trying to create ice and stabilized his spiritual energy, causing the ball to take a proper spherical shape. Still, he wasn’t happy with this result at all. Laien was making it look so easy and effortless when he created ice and this strange icy mist, but he couldn’t even do half of that! It was very frustrating considering that it wasn’t the first time he attempted to produce some ice and failed.
“There are two Aspects in his spiritual energy,” Laien mused to himself. “If I’m sensing it correctly, the first and stronger one is the Aspect of Love, while the second one is the Aspect of Awareness, that’s for sure. There are no Profound mysteries nor Principles in it though,” he thought quietly. From what he learned about Mikaela so far, this boy wasn’t all that interested in training hard and even though he did train a fair bit, he never faced any true challenges or problems in his life. It was already impressive for him to have gained insights into two Aspects despite that, but in the end, all his talent would be wasted if he kept living as he was doing until now.
“You tried to create ice, right?” Laien inquired to start off, choosing to leave the ‘lecture’ part for much later. “Can you tell me how exactly you were trying to create it? What were you thinking about, what were you imagining?” he asked, curious to see how practitioners in the Ruishi Federation who had undoubtedly been teaching Mikaela would go about explaining the basics of the Principle of Energy; if they even were aware that such a thing existed, to begin with.
“How…?” Mikaela repeated in a discouraged manner. By the looks of it, he was one to get easily motivated with the opposite also being very much true. “I dunno, I was trying to feel out how your ice is and create the same thing. Something that is cold and low on energy,” he explained unhappily, using some of the words he had listened to more than he would have ever liked to.
“As I thought,” Laien said with a laugh and canceled his magic, then leaned forward by a little and looked Mikaela in the eye, causing him to raise his gaze to meet him. “Teaching someone the Principle behind the ice magic before this person actually learns how to use it is the worst thing one can do. I for once realized that everything contains varying amounts of energy on my own, due to my senses and thoughts, what allowed me to instantly perceive the Principle of Energy and learn how to manipulate the state of water,” he explained with a confident smile, thus getting Mikaela to stop sulking as much; but only by a little bit.
“So am I in a hopeless spot now…?” Mikaela asked gloomily, feeling resentful towards all his previous teachers. How come Laien knew something like that and they, the supposed experts, didn’t?
“Of course not,” Laien said with a chuckle, causing the look on Mikaela’s face to brighten in an instant. “His emotions really do show very easily on his face. Paired up with how cute he is, it’s no wonder that everyone pampers him,” Laien thought to himself and laughed inwardly. He was only able to say that Mikaela wasn’t in a bad spot thanks to the great improvements he had made in the Principle of Energy since the time he first learned how to use it. Especially the training in the Combined Soul Realm during which he and Yin could push each other up and up with regards to their insights into the Principle of Energy was very helpful to him. His understanding of the Principle of Energy was already so high that he would probably be able to form the second golden rune within a few weeks, what would symbolize yet another qualitative breakthrough!
Truth to be told though, he didn’t know how deep the insights into the Principle of Energy went, so two golden runes could mean as little as nothing in the grand scope of things… but most importantly, his current level of insight was enough to allow him to sense and use the Principle of Energy in a very detailed and specific way; thanks to that, he could also attempt to explain it to someone else!
“How about that. Stop with your magic for now and listen,” he said with a smile and as it was to be expected, Mikaela eagerly did as he was told, focusing on every word that he was about to hear. “Forget all about the ‘amount of energy’ crap, that you can leave for later. For now, let’s focus on the image and sensations. For example, if you were to compare it to something, what kind of a feeling do you get when your spiritual energy transforms into water?” he asked, attempting to lead Mikaela step by step towards the solution he had in mind for him.
“Hm,” Mikaela’s silvery eyebrows furrowed as he thought hard about an answer to Laien’s question. What was this feeling again…? He tried to recall it as he had created water using Guardian Magic and various other spells so many times that he had long ago lost count, but somehow, he couldn’t get the right image. He kind of felt like Laien was asking him to explain what image he had in mind while walking and how he was doing that; even though he wanted to answer, the question itself made little sense to him.
“Try creating a ball of water once again and focus on the sensation,” Laien advised with a smile. If one never paid attention to such minute details, it would be akin to asking him how he was breathing or thinking, especially for those with high elemental affinity who could create the desired element almost effortlessly from the very beginning of their cultivation path.
Mikaela nodded obediently and did as Laien suggested. He was a little doubtful if he was going to sense anything new at first, but when he actually paid proper and close attention to that very short moment when his spiritual energy was changing into the actual water, he couldn’t help but perk up in excitement. “It’s like water! I mean, not exactly like water… it’s as if the spiritual energy bubbles as it changes? You know, like when you play with soap in the bath!” he explained eagerly, thrilled to discover that Laien was right and there was something like that to the magic he always used.
Laien chuckled in amusement, once more thinking how expressive and honest Mikaela was with all his feelings. “I totally get it. It’s the same for me too; it’s like making bubbles in the bath from soap or maybe like breathing out underwater to create bubbles of air, this kind of a general image,” he said with a smile and was met with a few eager nods from Mikaela. It looked like his theory about elements containing their own unique ‘sensations’ that were universal in application, though likely subjective to each person in perception, was spot on. Luckily, Mikaela’s senses appeared to be very similar to his own, if not exactly identical, so it would be easy to teach him a few nice things.
“Good,” Laien said with a clear hint of anticipation. “Now, focus on this image of bubbles as you create another ball. However, instead of letting the bubbles go wild as your spiritual energy transforms into water, stop them in place the moment they appear. Something as if the flow of time suddenly stopped while you were playing in the bath,” he instructed, looking forward to seeing what Mikaela would be able to accomplish with this piece of advice.
“Okay,” Mikaela said eagerly and got straight to doing as Laien told him to. He took a few seconds to focus on the image in his mind, then attempted to create a ball of water. “Ah.” He frowned a little, having missed the timing and allowed the ball to form, the ‘bubbles’ to spread fully as they pleased. This time, however, he didn’t get discouraged nearly as easily. He knew what he needed to do and was confident that if he did his best and tried a few more times, he would succeed.
Watching Mikaela make repeated attempts with a very focused look on his face, Laien smiled contentedly and kept his mouth shut. There was no need for him to speak further; Mikaela was focused on his task and didn’t seem to notice anything that was going on around him. This state was the best one for training and was close to the ideal meditative trance that he and Yin always aimed to achieve while pondering their insights. Given that Mikaela entered something similar to it so easily when he discarded all the unnecessary thoughts proved that his talent was immense.
“Ah! There’s some ice!” Mikaela exclaimed in joy, seeing how at his seventh attempt, just around ten percent of the ball turned into ice instead of water. In the past, he couldn’t create ice no matter how hard he tried, but now he finally did it! And he knew that when he grabbed ahold of the timing a little better, he would be able to create a proper ball of pure ice! How could he not be greatly excited about it? He raised his head and looked at Laien, a look of anticipation present on his face.
“You really got it down fast,” Laien said with a laugh. It was a bit of a pity that the first bit of success distracted Mikaela so much that he left the perfect training state he had been in, but given Mikaela’s character, he saw no point in as much as bringing it up. The boy would be able to enter such a state easily enough anyway, or so Laien thought as he reached out with his hand and patted Mikaela’s head, then tousled his soft, silver hair in a playful manner. “Now if you get the timing right in the entire amount of spiritual energy you use, you will have mastered the basics of using ice magic,” he said encouragingly, wanting to motivate Mikaela to give his best and keep going.
“Yeah!” Mikaela responded excitedly, looking at Laien with a completely mesmerized look in his silvery-blue eyes. Laien was strong, cool, had the same elemental affinity as he did, was great at teaching and was super nice too! How could he not admire someone like that? As such, in order to not disappoint Laien and to show him that he was talented too, he quickly began working on creating a pure ball of ice. He made repeated attempts without getting down about the few failures or set-backs in-between, what allowed him to improve at a truly staggering rate.
“Incredible,” Raphael said quietly on the side, watching the two train with Yin and Arslan. “I never saw anyone handle Mika so well. Even when the two of us trained together, he wasn’t as motivated and diligent as he is being now,” he added in a low voice, intending only for Yin and Arslan to hear him. He had been friends with Mika since forever, so he was obviously feeling a bit jealous to see him get along with someone else so well… but since this training would be of great benefit to his friend, he pushed such thoughts away and deemed them as too immature.
“Laien was always good at making friends out of everyone he met,” Yin pointed out quietly and chuckled a little. “He and Mikaela are pretty similar in character and in their abilities, so it’s not surprising they would get along well,” he added and laughed quietly. Had it not been for their spiritual bond, he would have gotten jealous of Mikaela. However, he could tell that Laien was seeing Mikaela as nothing more and nothing less than a cute and enthusiastic boy he could have fun with. Thanks to that, he could relax and enjoy watching the two of them train without a worry.