Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 119. Well, I did promise.

“Wow, so old-fashioned,” Raphael said with a laugh as the four of them were walking up the stairs extending straight from the second floor’s roof.

“It’s pretty much a large attic,” Laien said carefreely. “There is a toilet with a bath and four large rooms though, so it’s pretty nice. And if you just do this,” he mentioned wryly and now that they were all upstairs, he pulled the lever on the wall and caused the stairs to pull themselves up. Although they were now sticking out here in the hallway, from below this spot should have leveled itself with the ceiling. “Well, there’s another lever below us and it’s not like it’s hard to guess there’s a third floor in the building just by looking from outside, but it’s a fun enough toy,” he added with a smile, thinking that he would love to have something similar in his own house in the future.

“It’s like our own half-secret base,” Mikaela mentioned with a chuckle. He lived in a huge mansion with just his mother and a few servants and guards, so he loved to explore and hide in various places. An old-fashioned attic like that was actually very much to his liking.

“There are three rooms on this side,” Laien mentioned in a seemingly random fashion. “And to the other there’s the toilet, the bath, and one more room,” he said with a playful smile, then headed into the closest room that was right next to the staircase.

Knowing what Laien was thinking about, Yin laughed quietly and followed him inside. As for Raphael and Mikaela, the two of them weren’t too sure what it all was about, though in Raphael’s case, he had an inkling which in turn caused him to unwillingly blush a little. Really, Laien could be considerate in the weirdest of ways!

“You coming?” Mikaela stopped at the door. He was intending to join Laien and Yin in training, but did Raphael not quite like the idea? He didn’t ask him what he thought about it after all, but he just couldn’t come up with any reason for Raphael to not want to train together with them.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” Raphael said somewhat helplessly. “When I’m around this bunch, it almost feels like I’m with three or four mischievous Mikaelas,” he thought to himself, wondering if his thoughts weren’t being influenced by those guys, and especially by Mikaela and Laien.

“No time to waste,” Laien said with a smile while looking around the room to find a good spot for himself and Yin. After a few seconds, he assumed that the sofa would be the best of the available spots. Although with their durable bodies, it didn’t really matter if they were sitting on the ground, resting their backs against a wall or sitting on a sofa or a bed, it was best to be as comfortable as possible while training; or at least, that was what Laien’s own preference was.

“See you in the morning,” Laien said with a smile, having seated himself comfortably, with his legs crossed and with Yin just beside him.

“Goodnight?” Mikaela responded with a laugh. He had sometimes played through the night and then been scolded by his mother, but this was the first time he would be training during the night. Somehow, it was fun and exciting; who knew that something he didn’t like or dislike could turn out to be so enjoyable?

“Kind of?” Laien returned the question and after exchanging one last glance with Mikaela and Raphael, he closed his eyes.

“Good night,” Yin said in amusement and closed his eyes. A few seconds later, his consciousness sank deep into the meditative trance.

“Mm,” Laien opened his eyes, or to be more accurate, his avatar opened his eyes and watched the beginnings of the occurring phenomenon. “No matter how many times I see it, it’s still just amazing as ever,” he mused, watching how his own water-engulfed Soul Realm was being drawn to Yin’s Soul Realm, which was entirely surrounded by a thundering mass of white and emerald lightning.

Wondrously enough, those two protective layers of energies didn’t resist one another at all, instead merging and joining together and enhancing each other in a truly awe-inspiring spectacle. Looking at this scene, Laien was sure that without the logic-defying effects of the Blood Pact, achieving any kind of a Combined Soul Realm would be almost impossible. After all, even if both parties had an inhumane enough control over their own power as to avoid damaging each other’s souls while they were moving closer, the act of combining the souls themselves would be suicidal. It was only because in their case they were already joined by the spiritual bond that they were able to safely merge and then separate the very core of their being; their souls.

“Hey,” Laien greeted merrily as the fusion process finished. As every other time, he and Yin were sitting in the very center of their Combined Soul Realm with the omnicolored-essences of the Aspects slowly rotating behind their backs. “You still didn’t merge Desire or Tranquility, huh,” Laien noted lightheartedly, his words, or rather thoughts, being transferred to Yin with little to no time delay.

“And you didn’t merge Humility,” Yin pointed out wryly, looking at the five orbs of essence behind Laien. Tranquility, Wrath, Awareness, and Compassion, those four were both perfectly fused and had complete foundations; they were following one inner orbit as they circled slowly around one empty spot in the soul-space. As for the most recently learned one of Laien’s aspects, Humility, it had a half-complete foundation and was joined into the whole through the Aspect of Compassion, just like it was with the Desire in Tranquility in his own case.

“We gotta figure out how to merge them sometime soon,” Laien said with a laugh. It was simple enough to merge the pairs of Aspects, like Tranquility and Wrath or Pride and Humility. They had also figured out that using the Aspect of Awareness as a water-like base would allow it to merge with other Aspects freely. The Aspect of Compassion appeared to have natural merging and joining properties as it automatically merged with the rest of the already fused Aspects and even served as an anchor for those that weren’t yet merged to allow them to fuse at least partially. However, if they found a way to fuse all their Aspects properly, their strength would once again increase by a bit.

“We can think about this later,” Yin suggested and brought forth the two complete, golden runes of the Principle of Energy along with a dense cluster of golden mist. “Let’s get to the limits with this first,” he said with a clear hint of anticipation in his voice. Thanks to Raphael, they realized that there was a second important truth to the Principle of Energy apart from the Primordial Energy; that the state of barely stable balance instead of a perfect merger was also a viable path to pursue.

“Fine, I agree,” Laien replied lightheartedly, looking forward to this part just as much as Yin was. He also brought out his own two complete golden runes and the golden cloud of dust, then sent them towards Yin’s, causing the runes to resonate with each other and the clouds to join into one.

With the two of them starting to concentrate on the Principle on Energy, it took mere moments for the third runes to form completely. Truth to be told, either of them could have easily accomplished this much with just a few minutes of normal training, but they simply hadn’t done any of it since the early afternoon. And as for their current progress, they were both fairly confident in being able to form their fourth golden runes tonight. However, whether they would be able to push themselves towards the fifth ones remained unknown, so they naturally set that as their goal for this sessions.

Completing the third set of golden runes had already increased their overall strength by a bit, while the fourth one would only aid this process. If they actually managed to comprehend five of them, then their strength would rise by a fair amount. As for making any comparisons… it would perhaps be equivalent to half of an entire level in the Realm of Heroes. However, considering that the more insights one had, the less accurate it was to judge his strength by pure cultivation level, it would be rather ambitious to claim that each of the two of them could hold his own against a marital master of the fifth rank. On the other hand, if they truly did complete the fifth set of golden runes, then even above-average martial masters of the fourth rank would no longer be their match.

Meanwhile, in the actual room, Raphael and Mikaela were both looking at Laien and Yin, neither of them able to quite make out what was this weird feeling. Even Raphael, who had insights into the Aspect of Awareness, couldn’t quite grasp what this sensation was. However, it was only to be expected; only someone who was immensely skilled in the matters of perception and soul would be able to sense that a vague connection between Laien and Yin existed as they engaged in the Combined Soul Realm training. Someone at the level of the azure-haired youth from the Anarchic Lands would have been able to accomplish that, but even he wouldn’t have been able to sense this connection all that clearly.

“No point looking,” Raphael thought to himself and sighed a little. “Let’s get to training too,” he suggested with a smile and glanced at Mikaela. Himself, he wanted to work on perfecting his Super Nova magic and as for Mikaela, he was sure that his childhood friends had a whole bunch of things he could focus on and quickly improve in. He suspected that by the next National Tournament, as long as Mikaela kept up his training without slacking too much, he would be able to destroy all the competition in his age bracket without using even one-third of his total strength.

“Mhm, okay,” Mikaela said with a nod and looked around the room one more time. Then, he smiled and ran up to the large bed and jumped on top of it. “Come here too,” he called out to Raphael while minding not to raise his voice too much.

“Aren’t you just going to fall asleep?” Raphael raised his eyebrow with a suspicious smile on his face. Seeing Mikaela lay down like that and rest his head on top of a pillow, he couldn’t not think so. After all, Mikaela wasn’t all that used to meditative training. Someone like Laien or Yin could surely keep training in whichever position they liked as their concentration wouldn’t waver, but in Mikaela’s case, the first moment of relaxation would probably end up with him falling asleep.

“I won’t!” Mikaela raised his voice quietly and gestured Raphael to hurry up and come over. He was looking forward to training this time, so he wouldn’t fall asleep!

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“Sure, sure,” Raphael said helplessly and joined Mikaela on the bed. “I might as well let him fall asleep this time so he doesn’t argue tomorrow,” he mused silently and after exchanging a look and a smile with Mikaela, he closed his eyes, assumed a comfortable position and started training.

With silence filling the room, the time began to pass very quickly. Soon, two hours passed and Raphael opened his eyes. He sat down without a hurry and looked at Mikaela, then smiled and shook his head. As expected, Mikaela was thoroughly asleep with a peaceful and relaxed look on his face.

“We slept before, but it looks like it wasn’t enough for him. Well, he is… hrm, we are still kids, after all,” Raphael thought while smiling to himself. He chose not to wake up Mikaela up, assuming that his friend’s training would be more efficient if he rested himself as his body wanted to and only woke up on his own. Since they did nap for six or seven hours before, he suspected that Mikaela would get up in three or four more hours, so he would still have half of the night left to train if he so wished.

“Laien and Yin are… still training, as expected,” Raphael mused, though just as he was about to go back to meditating himself, he noticed something that made him reveal a troubled and somewhat embarrassed look. He really wanted to go back to training, but he had a feeling that he would have quite a hard time doing so… especially after all that happened in that bath. “Should I just take care of it quickly?” he wondered, feeling that he wasn’t about to go soft any time soon.

After hesitating for a moment, he sighed once again and got up from the bed as slowly as he could as to not make too much noise. When he stood up, he glanced at Mikaela, who appeared to still be sleeping, then walked out of the room unhurriedly and left the door slightly open after leaving, just in case closing them would end up being too loud. He headed straight to the room that was furthest away and entered it. It was quite dark, but he could tell that this room was more or less identical to the one he had been training in. Thus, without thinking about it too much, he sat down on the large bed and was just about to use his interspatial ring when he heard the soft sound of footsteps.

“Mika?” he blurted the question out in his surprise, not having expected to see Mikaela here. Did he end up waking him up after all?

“What are you doing?” Mikaela asked with a playful smile, approaching the bed and crawling onto it and sitting in front of Raphael. “You sneak away like that instead of training, it must be something interesting,” he added curiously. Raphael was always so diligent about everything, so how come he was taking a random break now all of the sudden? He really wanted to know.

“Says the one who fell asleep,” Raphael rebuked with a resigned smile on his face, causing Mikaela to puff his lips in response.

“Who cares about that right now,” Mikaela said dismissingly, pretending not to be embarrassed about falling asleep in the middle of training. “So, what did you want to do here?” he inquired persistently, seeing that Raphael was acting in an unusually frustrated way. He rarely saw Raphael like that, so he was convinced that whatever Raphael was planning to do here, it would be quite amusing to see.

“…” After looking Mikaela in the eye for a brief moment, Raphael sighed and gave up. “It’s about the thing I promised to explain to you before… want to listen?” he asked while feeling his face grow somewhat red. He just couldn’t understand how Laien and the rest of them could approach this subject so casually; he was trying to do the same, but he couldn’t quite manage to do so.

“Yeah!” Mikaela said eagerly. He was very much curious about that whole thing from the bath, so he couldn’t say no to such an offer.

“Uh, well,” Raphael scratched his head, not too sure how to begin. He had learned about those things more or less on his own after being prompted by a few words of an older boy, so he had no idea where to begin this conversation. He had lived most of his adolescent life away from his family too and he had been focusing on training, so it was pretty much the first time he found himself in such a situation.

“How about that,” Mikaela spoke up, deciding to take the initiative since it looked like Raphael was having trouble with finding the right words. “Tell me what was this thing that you last did more than a month ago and tell me what was up with that thing that came out of your dick,” he suggested as those two things were what he was most interested in.

“… Where did you even learn this word?” Raphael asked helplessly. For a young master like Mikaela to speak so frivolously, his teachers would likely faint if they heard him.

“Which one?” Mikaela asked, tilting his head in confusion.

“Dick,” Raphael said with a helpless smile.

“We all use it quite often, I’m not really sure?” Mikaela replied with a shrug of his shoulders. Both the boys and girls he knew called the penis this way since it was a more ‘fun’ word, so he picked it up without even noticing. “Forget about that though, what about my questions? You promised to tell me, so come on!” he urged, not planning to let Raphael change the subject just like that.

“Umm,” Raphael groaned, his face flushing even more. He knew the words… but he simply found them too embarrassing to say.

“Haaa,” Mikaela sighed resignedly, seeing as Raphael still couldn’t force any words out of his mouth. Was this topic really so awkward for him? “If you can’t tell me, then how about you just show me?” he proposed daringly, thinking that it would be quite fun to fool around with Raphael in a similar way to what they had all done in the bath.

Although the suggestion caused Raphael to feel even more ashamed just at the thought of agreeing, he was forced to admit that despite feeling embarrassed, he wasn’t all that opposed to the idea itself. “It’s going to be easier than trying to explain everything to him,” he assumed and now that he made a proper choice as to what to do, he found himself feeling quite a bit more relaxed. Suddenly, he wasn’t locked in the chaos of his mind and the noise of his thoughts, but he was sitting on top of a bed in a quiet, dark room, with Mikaela looking at him with eyes full of curious anticipation.

“Show you, huh,” Raphael said with a slight smile, then scooted over to the wall and rested his back against it. “Come here for a bit, Mika,” he said and patted the spot in front of him, thinking that it would be the best way to make this whole thing as non-awkward as possible.

“Me?” Mikaela said with a surprised look on his face. When he asked Raphael to show him, he had a different thing in mind, but he didn’t think long before doing as Raphael told him to. He moved over and sat between his legs and rested his back comfortably against his chest, then asked, “So, what now?”

“I guess I will just show you, right?” Raphael replied playfully and hugged Mikaela in the waist. He pulled up his shirt with one hand, then placed the other one on his pants. He focused for a second and thanks to Mikaela remaining relatively motionless, pulled both Mikaela’s pants and underwear into his interspatial ring. “Hmm?” he raised his eyebrows and laughed quietly, seeing Mikaela hide himself with his hands. “Now you are embarrassed?” he asked teasingly. Was it because Mikaela had always been the one to initiate such games that he wasn’t used to taking the passive role?

“What do you want to do?” Mikaela asked, for the first time betraying a hint of nervousness in his voice.

“Something that feels good, I guess?” Raphael responded in a roundabout way. “We can stop if you want. I can always try to just explain everything,” he added calmly. He definitely didn’t want to force Mikaela to do anything he didn’t like, so he wouldn’t insist if Mikaela was hesitating.

“Kay, go ahead,” Mikaela said after a few seconds of thought and removed his hands, all the while blushing strongly and actually feeling quite surprised. He was perfectly fine with being naked around Raphael every other time, so why was he so ashamed this time around? It was weird… but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling.

“Well…” Raphael said quietly and put his hand on Mikaela’s thigh, then pushed it to the side, making him open his legs up. However, instead of doing anything more right away, he simply hugged Mikaela at his stomach and remained like that. “I never really thought about it like that, but Mika really is cute,” he mused silently as he felt Mikaela relax in his arms. He enjoyed the calm moment for a while, then moved one of his hands downwards and traced it gently first along Mikaela’s stomach, then around the still completely smooth area below it.

And sure enough, he didn’t need to wait long for Mikaela’s body to react. He looked curiously at Mikaela’s penis growing bigger and standing up, thinking that it looked really erotic. He did see Mikaela’s hard-on before, but it was the first time he could take a good look at how Mikaela was getting hard. “You know, Laien was right. You really are big for your age,” he mentioned casually and gripped the upper part of Mikaela’s penis with two fingers, then pushed it down by a bit, making its size more apparent already at the first glance.

He was a bit surprised to hear no typical cheeky reply from Mikaela, though on the other hand, this kind of a meek and shy reaction was quite cute in itself. But either way, since he was already in the perfect position for it, he went ahead and pulled Mikaela’s foreskin down in a slow, unhurried motion. When the skin slipped off entirely, he stopped to admire the pink head for a few seconds before moving his fingers up in the same, unhurried manner. He allowed the skin to slip back entirely, then once again pulled it down very slowly. He then repeated the whole process without a hurry again, again, and again, causing Mikaela to start moaning quietly from the unfamiliar sensation, his body tensing up as he wiggled around, unable to sit in place anymore.

“It feels weird,” Mikaela said puffingly, grabbing and holding tightly the hand Raphael was hugging him with.

“Does it feel bad?” Raphael asked quietly, without stopping the almost painfully-slow movements of his hand.

“No…” Mikaela replied in a low voice and shook his head a little. “I think it’s nice,” he added, not sure as to why his heart was beating so fast or why his face was so hot and red. He had no idea why doing something he had done before was suddenly causing him to feel so weird like that, but he didn’t want this feeling to stop. He was also vaguely impatient, but since he didn’t know the source of this emotion, all he could do was to keep holding onto Raphael’s left hand tightly.

“So cute,” Raphael said his thoughts unintentionally, but it looked like Mikaela was too far gone after a few minutes of this slow teasing to even hear him. “I could go faster or grab his dick with the whole hand, but he looks way too cute squirming around like that. The way he is trying to keep his voice down is also adorable,” he mused silently, though admittedly, he did start to feel embarrassed when he became more aware of his own thoughts. He had never expected himself to be so naughty, but since he was already doing something so shameful, he assumed he might as well do what he wanted without beating himself over it too much. As such, he continued what he was doing for six or seven more minutes before noticing that Mikaela probably wouldn’t last much longer.

“He’s starting to twitch a lot, is he going to come soon?” Raphael asked himself, wondering if he should just continue and make Mikaela come. Although it was quite dark and the only light in the room was coming from the starry sky behind the three windows, he could see clearly; he could see Mikaela wiggling in his arms and he could see the pink head of his penis growing redder with each second. If he stroked him just a few more times, he was sure Mikaela would orgasm… but he didn’t want to finish this so soon. He wanted to experience this rare, shy side of Mikaela’s a little more.

Thus, after pulling Mikaela’s foreskin down one more time, he removed his hand from his shaft and placed it at his hairless nether regions. He started rubbing and massaging them gently, all the while pressing against the base of Mikaela’s penis and sometimes caressing his smooth balls with his fingers. His ministrations were immediately rewarded with the suppressed, impatient moans coming from Mikaela’s mouth and the sight of Mikaela’s bare hard-on twitching repeatedly as if pleading to be touched more. However, he didn’t do so just yet, instead proceeding to tease Mikaela patiently.

“S-something,” Mikaela said alongside a quiet moan. “Something strange is…” he added while trying to catch a breath. This sensation was nearly unbearable; Raphael was just touching him gently, rubbing him without even doing anything to his dick, but he really couldn’t handle it anymore. He felt his dick twitching strongly, he felt a weird pressure building up at the base of it. He was overwhelmed with an urge he couldn’t understand, so all he could do was to clutch onto Raphael’s left hand tightly, his mind slowly going blank as he could no longer form any coherent thoughts.