Heyoo, here's a chapter. And also greetings from an Estonian in Austria to all Austrian readers (If there are any)

Enjoy.

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Chapter 25: Learning

When morning came, Nalser woke up. He had no idea what had happened between the man in ninja garb and the Nura clan master. When he woke up, he started doing his routine rotations of Phantom Song Sutra.

He had made a habit of practicing it a little every morning before setting out to continue his long journey to unknown. When old man Xi saw his cultivation technique, he was astonished. His mind was reeling, “This is the Nura clan “Phantom Song” Cultivation technique. Only those who are part of the main family can practice it. This kid, his background isn't simple at all. What the hell is he doing in a middle of nowhere like this?”

The more he thought about it, the more complex his face got. On one hand, he had a job of teaching him how to use and control his Asura Flame efficiently. O n the other hand, his background also had about 5 other Asura Flame Holders, why in the world is it like this. Suddenly, a thought hit him and he asked Nalser in serious voice, “How old are you?” Nalser had already finished his practice and was just relaxing his muscles when he heard Xi talking.

Nalser looked at Xi and said, “I am currently 15 years old, why?” When Xi heard that, everything fell into place inside his head but on the outside, he just let out a friendly smile and said, “Ohh, nothing. I was just wondering that the technique you use is kind of interesting. Mind if I ask where did you get it?” Nalser just looked at him cluelessly and answered in a straight tone, “I found it in a magic shop in the Nadin's Capital Magic shop. I just stumbled onto it when I was searching for a good Refining Technique. Why do you seem like you have just seen a ghost?” 

Halfway through the explanation, Xi's face was as pale as a sheet. He knew 4 other Asura Flame Holders from the Nura clan so he was quite familiar with that cultivation technique since all of them practice the same technique. However, he couldn't wrap his head around how they could let their clans most precious cultivating technique end up in a random Lesser Minor World (Lowest ranking on the Minor Worlds list) like this.

In his mind he thought “If my guess is correct, this is the “deceased” second young master of the Nura clan. If this is true, all the more reason to train him hard before leaving. I also ought to ask about this privately from one of the Nura clans Asura Flame Holders.” 

As his mind reached conclusions and decisions, Nalser just looked at the man in thought and shrugged his shoulder. He just cleared his throat loudly and brought Xi out of his daze. Xi just gave a wry smile and said, “Enough about that, let's start training, shall we?” 

As he said that, Xi straightened his back and looked like a very strict teacher. Seeing this change in atmosphere, Nalser also straightened his back and turned his attention towards Xi. Xi held out his right hand and on it a black flame materialized. “We are going to do the most basic Flame training. Control the shapes and control the output. A Flame is only as strong as the users control over it.” 

As Xi said that, the Flame on his hand started changing shapes. A tree, a sword, a pagoda. As Nalser saw that, his eyes went round, he was very interested in this kind of thing and although Xi had explained the purpose of this training in a few words, he understood the importance of it. If he didn't have sufficient control over the flame, it didn't matter how much he could generate it. It's like a duel between a newbie bowman and a senior. It didn't matter how many arrows more you gave to the newbie, he can't win if he can't hit. It is the same basic, if you can't control the flame to attack your enemies, what use is it. 

“The key to this is visualizing the shape and pouring Mana into the flame to take the shape.” Xi started explaining the way to change the Flames shape. “Through the same logic, you can also, by pouring more Mana into it, compress the Flames into solid weapons like a sword or an ax.” Hearing this Nalser was quite intrigued as he thought to himself, “If that's true, I could create countless throwing knives out of thin air and use them to hail the towards my enemies like rain if I ever go against an overwhelming number of enemies by myself.

The more he thought about it, the more ways to use the “Materialized Flames” popped into his mind. Just as he was deep in thought, Xi coughed. Nalser gave a wry smile and made an attentive face. Seeing this Xi told him in more detail on how to change the shape of the Flame and demonstrated it himself. After about half an hours worth of explanations and demonstrations, he let Nalser try it out himself. Nalser opened his palms and placed them on the sides palms facing each other. 

He generated a little Flame and Xi told him, “Well, for starters, try to change the shape into numbers. This phase of training will be complete if you can change the shape of the Flames into numbers from 1-100. A number would change every second and the shape should be good to look at as well. The next phase will be doing the same thing but while moving. After that, I will teach you how to change the shapes into more complex designs and after that, the real training will start.”

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Hearing this, Nalser nodded and promptly asked, “If this is warm up training what is the real training then?” Xi just gave a sinister smile and said, “Well, that is of course battle training.” Hearing that the second part of training would be battle training, made Nalser kind of excited. He came from a world where guns were weapons. In this and as it turned out in majority of worlds long ranged weapons were useless. His foundation in fighting close quarters was that of an assassins.

Although having an assassins foundation was not a bad thing, if it was a fight he was in a natural disadvantage. An assassin uses the element of surprise in killing but in a straight up fight, that advantage is nullified and thus, he will be extremely easy prey to people with a solid foundation in martial arts or certain weapon arts.

The same went for his blade “Dreamer”, although he used it, he didn't have any specific sword, saber or blade arts to go with it. He had to develop the arts on his own, so all the more necessary for him to build a solid foundation beforehand. By luck Xi possessed a introductiory jade slip on “Saber Arts”. He studied it a bit yesterday evening and a lot of questions on how to move with his blade were answered by it. 

Currently, he was trying to make his flames take the shape of number from 1-100. It might seem easy to just manipulate a flame but it was actually very hard. At every given point in time he had to have complete control over the flame size, shape and concentration. For the first few times, he failed. Either the flame was too big or the shape was out of whack. One time he even made it into a solid object and then drained nearly all of his Mana in the process. Time flew by and soon 4 days had passed since he started training his control over the Flame. 

Together with Xi and Mei, he traveled towards where his Yin compass pointed. Out of curiosity he had asked that if they could find the Nuwa Flame Holder like they did in his case but Xi just shook his head saying, “She hasn't awakened yet so I have no way of finding her. At the moment She is like a normal everyday person, you can't even find anything special about her.” Hearing that, Nalser was puzzled, “If they couldn't feel the unawakened flames, where the heck did the number for successful awakenings come from.” He couldn't understand the statistic part but when he asked Xi about it, he also just shook his head and said that he had no idea either, where it came from. 

Just like that, they kept traveling towards he Nuwa Flame and Nalser kept practicing his control over the Flame while he was traveling. He had completely skipped the part about staying put and transforming the flame from 1-100 but his progress was something that left even Xi astonished. “You must have been born as a natural flame manipulator to have such precise control over the flame so fast.” He had been hailed as a genius but even he took at least a week before he managed to make the same progress as Nalser. It made him bot happy and left him depressed.

He was happy because he would be teaching such a good seedling but depressed because his talent overshadowed his by a large margin. As they traveled Nalser also learned a lot about different worlds and their hiearhy. It turned out that the entire cosmos was like the Xianxia novels from pre-war China. Countless worlds and Immortals, Devils and every kind of people and beasts that he had thought to be a fairytale or a myth were actually real. Xi also explained how to create a rift between worlds and demonstrated.

He explained the theory behind it in full detail and even gave Nalser a few pointers on how to successfully create a rift between specific worlds specific points. For example, if he wanted to create a rift between this worlds point where they currently were and between the place from where he was summoned. If he wanted to create a rift like that, he needed to be careful to keep the spatial crack stable or best case scenario, they would end up in a random world. Worse case scenario, he would sustain extremely grievous injuries and in the worst case scenario, he would have his body turned into meat paste. Hearing that, Nalser decided to not use the spatial crack any time soon, not until he had sufficient control over his Mana and sufficient control over his Flame. 

Time ticked by while traveling together and soon 2 months had passed and currently Xi, Mei and Nalser were standing on a small hill overlooking a small farming village. The place was nothing special but this was the party's destination. Xi narrowed his eyes and asked, “Are you completely sure that the Nuwa Flame Holder is here? Do you know exactly where she is?” Nalser just nodded his head and said in a low voice, “I'm 100% sure that his is the place and as for the Holder, well speak of the Devil.”

At the same time a young lady walked out from a farm house.