Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 45. The Endless Battle.
“Maybe I can just turn back and run?” the fleeting thought passed through Laien’s mind, but was quickly discarded. ‘He’ had already released killing intent and those soldiers were about to launch an attack; all he could achieve by running was exposing himself to an amassed attack of the army’s spiritual masters. “Ah, damn it all!” Laien shouted in his heart and hurriedly took out his white spear from the black gold interspatial ring on his finger.
Remembering what ‘he’ had done throughout the battle, Laien no longer hesitated and charged forward at full speed, crossing the remaining dozen meters in the blink of an eye. This whole thing felt incredibly realistic, but in the end, it was only a vision in which he had an opportunity to temper himself… right?
“Kill him!” someone’s shout reached Laien’s ears, a shout in a language very different from the one he knew, in a language he didn’t know how to speak and yet, for some reason understood.
“Hah!” Laien swept with his spear, mimicking ‘his’ first attack. At the same time, he roused Qi in his body and spread it throughout his skin, muscles and bones. His skin grew pale-white, the black pupils of his eyes intermingled with stands of white mist and most of the black hair of his turned silver.
Covered by a layer of ice and water, the spear knocked aside the guard of the first man on its way and ripped his torso apart, sending bits and pieces of frozen flesh and blood flying into the air. In the same swipe, the spear successfully killed two more experts comparable to martial masters of the first rank. This development might have seemed to be a bit too frightening, but in truth, it wasn’t that surprising.
Laien’s current battle prowess was far beyond of that of those weakest Realm of Heroes experts; he was definitely a genius that couldn’t be measured by normal standards. Considering that those warriors before him were much weaker than the Shadows Altair commanded, it wasn’t strange at all for them to not be able to resist. With Laien’s Absolute Water Spiritual Domain and his Absolute Water Martial Realm working in unison, there were sparsely any people with a similar level of cultivation bases who could match up to him.
However, even though those individual fighters couldn’t match up to Laien, there was still ten thousand of them! Having cut his way into the ranks of the army, Laien kept attacking furiously and without rest, the pressure causing him to constantly feel on the edge. Unlike ‘him’ however, Laien needed to expend a lot of effort to keep the swarm of soldiers off of himself. The crazy battle of this kind required not only killing at the very least three people with each attack, but also demanded exquisite judgment ability and unpreceded battle sense!
“At this rate, I won’t be able to keep up at all,” Laien realized at one moment. So far he had only killed a little over three hundred of those people but his reservoir of strength had already dropped to less than half. To make the matters worse, the three hundred elites didn’t even act yet, while the rest of the army began slowly organizing itself. Since he failed to kill the potential leaders and didn’t sow enough chaos upon the battlefield, he got himself into a very disadvantageous position.
“Using area of effect magic won’t be enough to take care of so many of them. I could at most kill a thousand more if I used up all my strength recklessly, but what then?” Laien thought grimly. The sense of danger appeared to be scarily real to him despite it being only a dream. The blows of his spear, the sensation of cutting into someone’s flesh, the way he manipulated his Qi and spiritual energy… the way he was feeling tired, they were all way too real!
“That first strong vision was dangerous too…” he recalled that time when his soul had nearly been broken by the extreme experience in the vision, then silently steeled himself to keep fighting for as long as he would have the strength to.
He persisted in attacking the groups of soldiers, at the very least making any assault by spiritual masters be uncalled for. Yet, the moment the elites of the army joined the fray, he lost whatever advantage he had. Against those experts comparable to martial masters of the fourth and fifth ranks, he found it impossible to wound them, much less finish them off with one strike. He would need to expend a fair bit of effort even if he wanted to dispose of one of them, and he could achieve that only because those people appeared to have no special insights at all. In normal circumstances, beating a martial master of the fourth rank in a duel would already be challenging, whereas now there was three hundred of them and they had the assistance of a huge army.
“I’m going to die here anyway, so instead of wasting my time I should use it to improve!” Laien told himself, only now managing to discard all the unnecessary thoughts. He focused on the battle fully, but regrettably, he didn’t have much strength left and was already being assaulted by some of the men from the elite unit of three hundred. On one hand, his Water Flow defense was nearly impregnable for those soldiers and his Ice Body technique was no less formidable, alas, on the other hand, he simply didn’t have enough strength to keep going. He was too tired!
Finally, he couldn’t hold on anymore and had a spear run through his calf. He grit his teeth, refusing to cry out, but couldn’t hold himself back from shouting in pain when the following thrusts and slashes ripped his body apart. The sensation of dying… the life seeping out of his body… it was the worst kind of suffering he had ever experienced, maybe with the exception of the sensation of his soul being torn apart.
Thankfully, before he went crazy from pain the scenery blurred and the sensations disappeared. If he could, Laien would have gasped for breath, but he realized that he was once again in ‘his’ body, and he was once again looking at the ten thousand strong army gathered in the valley from atop of a mountain.
“You must be kidding me…” Laien groaned inwardly. Was he caught in a loop? How many times would he need to attack that army and die? Would it end when he fully lost consciousness within this vision, or would that cause his soul to shatter? Did he need to master something… or, did he need to beat this army into a retreat like ‘he’ did? “There’s no way I can do that!” he wanted to shout, but at the moment all he could do was think.
As Laien feared, ‘he’ charged into the army just like before, and just like before Laien found himself taking ‘his’ place at the very last moment.
Just like that, regardless of his will, Laien was thrown into a vicious cycle. Fighting, dying, and charging to fight once again; and again, again, and again to no end.
The repeated deaths and the stress resulting from them had nearly made Laien lose his mind after a few dozen repetitions, but luckily enough his soul had experienced a substantial growth in the past days. Thus, as the time went on Laien found it somewhat easier to bear with the pain of death; he even began purposely letting the soldiers kill him with one clean blow when his energy was all but depleted. However, he wouldn’t succeed every time and every so often would experience being turned into a mincemeat by dozens of slashes and thrusts coming from various kinds of weapons.
What mainly allowed Laien to keep his sanity, however, was the awareness of improving with each consecutive battle. The progress in his insights wasn’t too apparent, but his control over both spiritual energy and Qi improved by leaps and bounds. The same could be said about his spear technique and the ability to make a calm judgment. In the early clashes it took all his effort to keep up with the closest enemies attacking him; now, after dying more than one hundred times, he learned how to fight purely based on his polished instincts and with the assistance of battle sense, which he had unknowingly awakened at the moment of his breakthrough in the temple.
Laien learned firsthand that fighting a mass of weaker enemies was very different from facing one or two opponents. It was an impossibility to pay close and detailed attention to each and every person just like one would do with his opponent in a duel. When he understood that, the rest became much simpler. He began noticing which areas in the army were beginning to organize themselves and would give his best to disrupt them; he had also remembered how the potential leaders looked from all the previous battles, so he aimed to take their lives early on.
With every battle, he was making an incredible progress in controlling his energy and using just the necessary amount to dispose of his targets. His spear arts, battle sense and overall awareness were all becoming more refined. However… it was still impossible for him to make it past the middle stages of the battle. He could avoid en masse attacks from spiritual masters, but every time the elite unit of three hundred would join and assist the regular soldiers in fighting he would quickly perish.
With this stalemate, the vision kept repeating itself over and over. Soon Laien stopped counting how many times he had fought and died; he no longer cared about that. Despite the heat of battle and the inevitable suffering of death, he remained in a perfectly tranquil state. It wasn’t that he became apathetic though; a strong will to fight burned in his eyes, one that disregarded everything and anything for the sake of victory.
This perpetual battle brought him great suffering, true… but at one point, after many hundreds of deaths, Laien understood how great of an opportunity he was being gifted. Then, not only was he not thinking about anything unnecessary like pretty much from the very beginning, but more importantly the doubt and fear lingering in his heart also disappeared, allowing him to engross himself in the experience of endless slaughter and unending struggle, thus bringing him further benefits.
As it was, practitioners almost always displayed talent in the things they were innately suited for and talented in. A born swordsman would easily reach the level of mastery, someone with an ancient bloodline of a beast would effortlessly display that beast’s abilities. A person who was a master of the spear and of an element would find it possible to fuse the two paths and create Elemental techniques.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
For Laien to have awakened the certain Aspects and mastered their foundations wasn’t a coincidence, nor was it in Yin’s case. The two of them had things they were extremely suited for; for example, Laien’s forte was the pair of Aspects, Tranquility and Wrath. As for Yin, he was most suited for Humility and Pride, in that particular order.
They had fused their respective pairs of Aspects with ease, but later on, they found it impossible to do the same with the Aspect of Awareness, and in Yin’s case, the Aspect of Desire. They both came to suspect there were either some other requirements for fusing the less compatible Aspects; for example reaching a certain degree of strength or learning new techniques, comprehending more insights and the like. And indeed, they were right about it.
Now, amidst the endless battle Laien’s battle sense was being pushed to its limits. Slowly but surely, Laien’s movements were becoming smoother and more confident. Just like an experienced cook would prepare his ingredients in the blink of an eye while an amateur would take half an hour to do the same job with half the quality, Laien’s battle sense was evolving from an infant to an adult. It was slowly but surely become more powerful.
More and more battles passed; so many that even with his strong soul Laien started to grow dangerously close to a mental breakdown. However, at this crucial time, the immense amount of effort he put in finally bore fruit.
Just as he was facing the first wave of the elite warriors attacking him along with the regular soldiers, Laien felt a warm wave of pleasure spread from deep within his soul to every inch of his body. He didn’t quite know what was happening, but the battlefield suddenly became much clearer to him; everyone began moving just a little bit slower, giving him more time both to think and react.
“Spiritual sense… and battle sense… they actually both joined into my aura and became one?” Laien realized, unthinkably enough finding enough time to inspect his state in the middle of the heated battle. “And within my soul, the Aspects…!” he gasped, sensing how the three omnicolored essences began resonating with each other and fusing in a natural, perfect manner. He could tell that despite the fairly low increase in pure power compared to what the original fusion of Aspects of Wrath and Tranquility had provided him, he instantly gained a much more refined control over his Qi and spiritual energy!
“He’s going to attack… but he can’t decide where to,” the realization his Laien like a ton of bricks. The expert at the level of a martial master of the fourth rank was about to throw a thrust, but he found it impossible to detect any opening within Laien’s own Water Flow defense. “Ah! So that was it!” Laien felt like laughing out loud to celebrate, but at the same time didn’t want to waste time to do that.
The perfect defense… in his fights against Yin, he always aimed for counterattacks! But, he could only aim for them because Yin was a monstrous talent that could break past his defense with his unstoppable attacks! Of course, he would find it hard to attack those elite warriors in the vision if they weren’t stepping in far enough with their assaults! The ‘fusion’ of offense and defense which he chased while mimicking ‘his’ battle style was a wrong concept in itself; what he needed to do was use his defense to draw people in, then finish them off! And to do that, he needed not to only defend, but also create fake openings and lure the attacks in! Swallow them within the waves of the sea and tear them down into pieces!
“The only problem is…” Laien smiled ruefully as he wounded an elite expert of the army with a quick swipe of his spear. He did as he planned and showed a momentary opening, after which the man quickly went. Then, he deflected the attack and responded with a counterattack of his own, alas.
“I’m not strong enough to kill or lethally wound someone so strong with one blow,” he laughed in his heart, a bit helpless to have made this discovery. It couldn’t be helped though; ‘he’ was a spiritual master of the second rank and a marital master of the second rank! Laien himself was merely at the eighth mortal realm in his marital and spiritual practice; his skill and insights were amazing, but they could only carry him only so far.
After putting up a good fight against the unit of elites, Laien’s strength was inevitably exhausted and he fell under their blows one more time. The vision blurred, just like every previous time, truth to be told making Laien feel rather desperate. Still, he was ready to keep trying until he would finally succeed beating those ten thousand men even if it took him tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of attempts. Yet, to his relief, the valley didn’t appear before him again. Instead, the vision blurred even more and ended, releasing him from the perpetual cycle of endless battles.
---
“Laien…! Laien!”
Feeling as if his soul only now returned to his body, Laien gasped for breath, being woken by the sound of Yin calling out his name and the sensation of his shoulder being shaken. He opened his eyes, but then squinted them in the sun; it seemed like it was still the middle of the day. Did he not sleep for long, or did he end up sleeping for more than just a few hours?
“You finally woke up,” Yin breathed with relief. “What happened? You were shaking all over and I could tell you were in pain. Was it that vision of yours?” he asked, remembering that Laien had mentioned something about his strange dreams at one point.
“Yeah,” Laien confirmed and sat down, but soon enough needed to cover his mouth with his hand and hold back from vomiting. He was feeling incredibly nauseous and weak; and only now did he realize that he was soaked wet with cold sweat. “How long…?” he swallowed heavily and asked briefly, worried about emptying the content of his stomach.
“Not too long… less than ten minutes,” Yin said quietly. “I think I woke up right away when you started groaning and throwing about, so it shouldn’t have been longer than that,” he added, watching how Laien stored his clothes away into his interspatial ring, then created and controlled some water in order to clean his body and refresh his mind.
“He seems fine now,” Yin thought to himself with a slight smile on his face. “He is much calmer now. Even though he was dreaming, it was scary to feel his emotions through our spiritual bond…” he mused, aware than Laien knew that he wanted to ask about the details of what happened.
“Ten minutes here, over a thousand deaths there,” Laien said with a weak laugh. When he had been struggling through the vision he pushed all his fears and thoughts away, but as he recalled the experience he couldn’t help but tremble. It did benefit him greatly, but he wouldn’t want to repeat this kind of ‘lucky encounter’ too many times. He sighed, then put a new set of clothes on and summarized the vision and what he had gone through in it to Yin.
“I think I’ve read about it somewhere,” Yin brought up when Laien finished talking. There was no need for him to verbally express how hard it must have been for Laien since the two of them shared emotions through their spiritual bond, thus he got straight to the point. “The thing I read about was called Divine Sense and apparently there exist two ways to awaken it; fuse your spiritual sense and battle sense, or achieve an incredibly high realm of cultivation and naturally transform your battle sense or spiritual sense into a Divine Sense,” he explained, his voice filled with amazement. He didn’t even know what realm one needed to be at to create his own Divine Sense, but Laien already had it!
“So it’s like that huh,” Laien nodded in understanding and laughed a little. “At least now I feel a bit more confident in facing you after you advance to the ninth mortal realm. Too bad I’m still far away from matching your Heavenly Lightning,” he said very honestly. The gains he had made in the vision weren’t small, but they would be of limited use in fighting Yin. The three fused essences of Aspects were nice and all and the Divine Sense was certainly a fair bit more powerful than spiritual sense and battle sense respectively, but those things were all support-type abilities. They were extremely useful when fighting someone weaker than you or a group of opponents; against one powerful enemy, they couldn’t be called a trump card or anything alike.
“Do you think I managed to fuse my Aspects because of that Divine Sense?” Laien asked, for some reason feeling as if those two breakthroughs had been unrelated to each other. “You know, when I fused Wrath and Tranquility I needed to figure out the special relationship between the two… maybe the relationship of Awareness and other Aspects is actually a very loose connection? Those three fused on their own when I became capable of controlling where I put my attention in battle, so maybe…” he wondered aloud, but never would he have expected Yin to close his eyes and begin meditating just because of those few words of his!
Smiling in disbelief Laien observed Yin for a few moments, sensing that indeed Yin was experiencing a breakthrough similar to his own.
Two or three minutes after Yin opened his eyes and smiled brightly. “You were right! Instead of trying to fit the Aspect of Awareness in, it was supposed to be used as a base to mix the other Aspects in!” he said happily, able to tell how much his control over Qi had improved. Lightning was an unwieldy element to begin with, so everything that allowed one to use it without the need of suppressing its properties was of extreme value to any lightning-element practitioner!
In comparison, Laien had already had an extreme degree of control over his strength due to possessing double Absolute Water cultivation bases. The benefits coming from fusing Awareness into his two other Aspects weren’t too noticeable for him; the development of his Battle Sense and subsequent creation of Divine Sense were the most beneficial thing he had obtained from today’s vision. Yin, on the other hand, reaped great benefits from adding Awareness to his Humility and Pride.
“I take a step forward, and so do you,” Laien shook his head and laughed. Catching up to Yin was much harder than he had thought it would be! At this rate, he was beginning to doubt if he would ever be able to get ahead of his friend, and even if he did manage to do that, he would constantly worry about Yin catching up to him and surpassing him in turn!
“We both grow stronger,” Yin said happily. “Isn’t that a good thing?” he asked playfully and leaned forward a bit, glancing Laien straight in the eye.
The two of them looked at each other for a few seconds, then moved a bit closer and kissed lightly and gently, but very much unhurriedly as they enjoyed the moment. Being further away from the camp they didn’t need to worry about anyone peeking at them, so they laid back down and simply stayed snuggled close together for the time being.
In the afternoon the seven guards welcomed the two youths back into the camp. They were pretty surprised to see both of them returning with wounds all over their bodies and with clothes in absolutely terrible shape. They knew the two had planned to spar, but would one normally end up with so many injuries after battling a friend?
“So, who won?” Liza asked with a laugh, unable to tell merely from the boys’ appearance.
Laien and Yin exchanged a glance, then laughed in amusement. Neither of them replied to this question, leaving the seven guards wondering.
The following nine days passed quickly and in pretty much the same manner. The group would travel for a few hours, then set up a camp. Laien and Yin would rest a little and spar, using whatever spare time they had to hang out with each other and meditate on their insights. After Yin made his breakthrough to the ninth mortal realm though, it started being only Laien who returned wounded all over his body from their daily sparring sessions.
Laien followed Yin’s advice and no longer used magic to heal himself if not necessary, but he still felt a bit annoyed that he couldn’t pay Yin back in their duels. Still, he didn’t mind it too much and was looking forward to every day. For the time being, both he and Yin couldn’t wait to see how the lands of Eulene looked and how would the people of the split Eulean Union welcome them.
They had heard about a civil war in the south of the Eulean Union and the split of it from the General Agnes, but they wanted to see the current state of things in those lands with their own eyes.