Looking at his frantic face, and his hysterical sobs, his master sighed, and shook her head. Retracting her right hand from him, she pointed to her right, where she opened her ‘Dimensional Pocket’ once again, and took out a with coloured pouch, a little larger than the size of a scroll, from it, which she kept hovering by her side, before she looked at him.
“I am not leaving you, Alnea,” his master said. “Although Oaths may not be my Roots, I still take my promises very seriously. I am not going anywhere until I see to it that you have the best foundations in the world. Now, I will restore your voice to you, but you will not proceed by making another reckless promise. Is that clear?”
Hearing that his master was not leaving for the moment, Alnea wiped his eyes, and nose on his sleeves, even as he continued sobbing, and nodding to his master.
“Good, then take your seat,” his master said, as she released his voice.
“...I am sorry, master.”
“You can be so silly at times,” his master said, shaking her head. “Do you remember what I had said to you before I gave you the Failed Grade Martial Style specialising in Agility?”
“...You said that you wanted to see if I could surprise you.”
“...You can be really dense when it comes to noticing the important details,” his master said. “I said that I needed to check something, so I switched the Martial Style to a Failed Grade one. Do you remember that?”
“...I do.”
“But I never told you what I was checking, did I?”
“...No, no you did not,” Alnea said. “What were you checking, master?”
“I was checking what kind of Martial Styles you are compatible with,” his master said. “I am almost certain that your compatibility with all the Martial Styles of the Auxiliary type that involves the use of your body is very high. But there are many kinds of the Auxiliary type of Martial Styles. I still need to do more tests to understand how deep your compatibility with those kinds of Martial Styles goes.
“And as for the other types, we will have to wait for the time when you break free of the restraints on your Spirit. But we cannot waste our time till then. Since we know that your compatibility with the Auxiliary type of Martial Styles is high, we need to make the best use of it. Unfortunately, I had not prepared the requisite Martial Styles for those kinds of tests beforehand, as I had not thought that I would need them.
“That was why I had to leave for a while. Not because I am leaving you. I had just gone out to get the Martial Styles that are needed for those tests. Besides, you have already mastered the eight Martial Styles to your limits. If I had not left to bring more Martial Styles, what were you going to do all day?”
“...I am sorry for thinking that you were leaving me, master,” Alnea said, bowing down, and biting his lips. Why did he not think it through? Why did he have to act on his whims? Did that worry her? It surely did inconvenience her. Was she disappointed in him?
“I apologise for behaving like that.”
“Look at me, Alnea,” his master said, and he obeyed, expecting to see a frown on her stern, and disappointed face. Instead, he saw a proud face, beaming at him with a smile.
“You are the most talented Seed I have ever seen, Alnea, and I am not saying this just to please you, or console you. Even though it was just basic mastery, you mastered seven Martial Styles in just a couple of hours. And I would be lying if I say that I did not think that there may be a secret behind your sudden compatibility with the Martial Styles, but you do not have to worry. I will not ask you about them.
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“All Wanderers have a few secrets of their own. But no matter what that secret may be, it does not diminish your own talent, Alnea, and the fact that you are the most talented Seed I have seen. And it is not just talent, but your Roots as well. They are stronger than the Roots of most of the Wanderers I have ever met, and I have met many Wanderers, even those with special Roots, like yours, yet none of their Roots could defy common sense, like yours.
“You have strong Roots, and a talent that scant few have, yet you work harder than everyone else, and you never stop. No matter how many days pass by, the conviction within you keeps burning as brightly as it had when I first met you. You have all the qualities necessary to become a great Wanderer, Alnea. And if you keep up with your hard work, one day, you really may become the greatest Wanderer. You are already the best disciple that I could ever hope to have. So why would I ever think of leaving you?”
“I… I thought…”
“Have a little trust in me, silly disciple,” his master said, rapping him on his head with her knuckles, allowing Alnea to have an excuse to lower his head to hide his blush. “Now, pick up the table that you knocked aside. Since you have already made a promise to be more diligent, then we have to make sure that you really are more diligent.”
Listening to his master’s words, Alnea obediently picked up the table, and set it back to its place, before he looked at his master’s smile. He had a feeling that her smile was a little different from her usual ones, but he did not pay much attention to that. As long as his master would not leave him, he was fine with whichever way she smiled. All her smiles were radiant enough to light up his world anyway.
While he was marvelling at his master’s smile, the white pouch that had been hovering by his master’s side floated down onto the table, drawing his attention to it. It was a rather big pouch, a little larger than the average size of a scroll, with a pattern of a couple of green thorny vines, and a red rose, woven into it. And they somehow managed to weave their way into his eyes, mesmerising him for a few moments, until he saw the strings of pouch, tying its mouth, untangling themselves on their own.
“As I had said earlier,” his master said, breaking Alnea out from his daze, and bringing his attention to herself, “we need to make the best use of your affinity with the Auxiliary type of Martial Styles, while also testing your compatibility with all of its different kinds of Martial Styles. Thus, I have decided to let you try out a few sets of Auxiliary type of Martial Styles of the Lowest, Low, and the Intermediate Grade of all eight specialisations.”
His master paused, and pointed to the pouch on the table, before continuing. “We will begin with the Lowest Grade Martial Styles. There are ninety nine sets of the eight specialisations of the Martial Styles in this bag, with each Martial Style going about its specialisation in its own unique way. Let us see how long you take to master them.”
“This pouch?” Alnea asked, staring at the bag with an incredulous expression. “This small pouch has ninety nine sets of Martial Styles? That’s nearly eight hundred scrolls!”
“Did you forget about the storage devices that I told you about before?” his master said. “This bag is exactly such a storage device that I once used in my younger days. Although it is not of top quality, it is barely passable, and barely qualified enough to store miscellaneous things, like some scrolls.”
“It is a Glyph Device… then does that mean that even I can use it, master?”
“...Have you forgotten about the restrictions on your Spirit? How are you going to supply Oren to the Glyphs? And even if your Spirit was restricted, do you think that your Spirit would be powerful enough to supply Oren to a True Ranked Glyph, or bear its manifestation of Mysteries?”
“...I will get back to practising the Martial Styles, master,” Alnea said, trying to hide his flushed cheeks, as he put his hand into the pouch, and took out the first scroll that came into his hand, while his master kept supplying Oren to the bag to let him access its storage. Soon after, he dove into practising the Martial Styles, mastering them one after another, while his master’s gaze kept getting weirder, and weirder.
By the end of the day, when he had mastered all eight hundred Lowest Grade Martial Styles of the Auxiliary type to the limits of Seeds, his master was certain that his affinity with Martial Styles, at least with those of the Auxiliary type, was the highest she had ever seen. It was a natural gift, she said. An unprecedented talent.
Yet he himself knew that it was not his talent, but something that had been granted to him because of the Oathkeeper Style. Despite knowing that, claiming the talent as his own made him feel as if he was lying to her, deceiving her, breaking her trust. That he was breaking his promises with her. That he…
If not for what his master had said earlier about talents, and secrets, then Alnea might not have been able to bear those thoughts. Still, even if he could not tell her about his secrets, he could at least try not to break her trust. No, not try. He would never break her trust. And he would start that by beginning to be more careful with his promises.