Owen spent the next ten minutes trying and failing to recreate the flame burst that Xerxes had demonstrated. When he looked up to Xerxes to see what he was doing wrong, Xerxes smiled and gestured for him to continue trying, but began speaking at the same time. "So, I assume each of you is currently trying to recreate the symbol that appeared?" Xerxes asked and Owen barely recognized that their teacher looked slightly smug that they hadn't managed it yet.
"Well, that's because it was a distraction. What I was hoping some of you would pick up on was the energy in the air rather than the energy I was moving. But I will demonstrate again, but without moving any mana." Xerxes said and Owen could immediately feel the energy in the air begin to shift. He close his eyes and felt out with his senses to the energy directly, trying to see if he could capture the feeling of its flow.
"I'm going a little slower this time, so you can open your eyes." Xerxes added, as soon as Owen felt the energy stop shifting. In Xerxes's hands was a small red marble of energy that shone brightly, its surface seemed to shift and rotate, but as soon as he pulled his hands apart, the marble dissolved into thin air. He then began to manipulate the energy in his surroundings again and this time a golden marble formed in his hands. His face then began to look stressed, before the golden marble shifted into a red one and he waited while looking at everyone watching.
"What I have done is channel my affinities into my mana, this is easiest if you have a skill for it, but when you channel your affinity into your mana, you get what is called essence. So, this marble," He said lifting up the red marble of energy. "This is an essence, when you work towards purifying your essence, you take the aspects of your mana that are a part of you out and you are left with pure mana combined with an affinity." Owen then felt the energy in the air shift again and small wisps of energy poured out or the marble and were absorbed back into Xerxes's body.
"Once it is fully purified," Xerxes said pausing for effect. Owen watched as the final wisps of energy left the marble and in the instant that they did, the marble seemed to explode with energy and was replace by a small blast of fire. Xerxes looked at all of them and grinned. "This will be what we spend a long span of our time focusing on for the last week." Xerxes said as he began forming another marble of essence.
"What if I wanted to use a giant blast of power, like a beam of it or something?" Lucas asked as he looked intensely at his hands, as if hoping essence could be wished into reality. He flexed them back and forth and Owen quickly recognized the description from an anime he had seen. Shaking his head he drowned out Xerxes's questions to Lucas as he began trying to form his own marble.
He did his best to remember the flow of energy, but as he tried to mimic it, he got caught on the first step. He didn't know what his affinities were or how to draw them out and combine them with his mana. He tried again to shift the energy in the air to match exactly what Xerxes had done, but as it felt like something was trying to form in the air, he could feel that a part of it was missing. Like a puzzle with half its puzzle pieces. Before he could ask, he felt a hand on his shoulder and Xerxes began giving him directions.
"Take this energy you are trying to form and attempt to pull some of it directly from your core. There will be several types, so try to pull just one of them. Force it to merge with the energy you have already gathered and we should be able to find out what at least one of your affinities are." Owen dropped his focus down into the depths of his core and almost immediately lost his focus. When having the gathered energy waiting for him to add an affinity to it, all of the energy in his core felt like it had began to writhe as dozens of separate snakes.
He managed to grab tight onto one of the energies and as he pulled it from his core, he immediately felt exhaustion sweep through his whole body, but he continued pulling the energy and began braiding it with the energy he had already gathered. Sharpening his focus, he heard Xerxes give him the next step. "Now condense the energy into a marble or some other shape you're familiar with and force it into an area you can control, like between your hands."
Owen forced the braided energies into a tight spiral and began to compress it. It fought back as the energy didn't want to immediately blend, but as Owen continued to force his will onto the energy it slowly begin to shift into the shape of a marble. He had closed his eyes at this point, but didn't let up on the pressure he was using to keep the energy in the shape he wanted it to be and could now feel the energy forming outside of his body.
By the time all of the energy had been forced out of his body, he felt like he had been drained of all his mana and vitality at once. But he had done it, he still had to keep some focus on the marble between his hands to keep it from disappearing. He stared down, only slightly surprised, he had expected to see a red colored marble, but instead the marble was a misty white color. Owen looked at Xerxes for answers and saw Xerxes beaming at him.
"I'm impressed, that took a lot less time than I expected." Owen looked around and realized that both Lucas and Briar had left at some point. "It had been a little more than three hours." Owen almost immediately released his control on the marble but barely managed to hold onto it. "Three hours? I only felt like it had been maybe ten minutes." Owen said in surprise. Xerxes gave a him a thoughtful nod. "It can happen especially considering you were able to hold your focus so intensely. What you are holding the is the fruit of your labor. I would hazard a guess that you have a wind affinity and what you are holding is a wind essence."
Owen nodded an stared down at the marble again. "So, what do I need to do next?" Owen asked uncertain how he was supposed to pull himself out of the essence. "You can give it a try, but it might be worth the practice to continue making the essence as fast as possible." Xerxes said, but when Owen just continued to stare at him with hopeful eyes he sighed. "Next you need to feel the energy and try to sense its pattern and see if you can find anything that resonates with your core. When you do, you want to try and sift that energy out of the essence and pull it back into your core."
Owen poured his consciousness into the marble and he was surprised that he immediately felt something resonate with him. Without much effort he was able to connect to it and began trying to pull it into his core. Almost immediately the marble fell apart and Owen's concentration snapped. Grumbling, he tried to create another marble of essence, but couldn't pull his focus together enough to force the energy to condense. He continued to to try, but it became pretty clear that he wasn't in the right head space any longer.
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Xerxes gave him a pitying look and Owen scoffed. "Let's get to sparring, I'm gonna try again once I'm in the right head space." Owen said as he quickly formed his bracers into a sword. Xerxes nodded sagely and gave him one last word of encouragement before calling up his echo. "It was good for a first try, but don't expect to have successfully done it more than a couple times before leaving." Owen saw an opportunity and smiled. "If I master it before I leave, do I win something?" He asked, trying to sound innocent and Xerxes stared at him for a moment. "I would need to also have a chance at winning something, what would I get out of it?" Xerxes asked.
"I'll try to think of something I can give you if you win, but you don't even want to know what I want?" Owen asked trying to sound offended, but Xerxes just gave a hearty laugh. "You don't know enough about the system to ask for anything that could cost more than I'm already willing to part with." Owen sighed. It was mostly what he expected to hear. He really didn't know enough about the system yet, but it did mean there was a chance he could bring the training gauntlet back with him. He didn't necessarily need it anymore, but it was good training for him and he had taken to heart what Xerxes had talked to him about.
He wasn't that talented a fighter yet, his stats were high enough that skill wasn't as much a factor, but a level 15 echo of Xerxes could still beat him when fighting with whatever weapon Owen chose. Now could he blast through the echo if he activated skills and win, yes he could, but it wasn't the point of what Xerxes had been trying to teach him. But he would have to put it on the back burner for at least a little bit if he wanted any chance so of winning their bet.
They fought for several hours and again Owen's weapon mastery increased by another level putting it at 35. It made him feel proud, but he forced himself to remember that mastery meant nothing without actual skill. Mastery just made it easier to do the same thing without the necessary skill. When they finished, Owen sat down again and tried to form another marble.
This time the marble he made was a black color, but Xerxes didn't give him anymore insight than he had the first time. He just said that when Owen could successfully more an element he would teach him how to call up a specific affinity. Of course, Owen again failed to get it to turn into an elemental attack. The required control to successfully pull the strands of himself that were layered into the mana he had used was tough and not having an intelligence stat to begin with made it even harder.
Before going down the hill to try to get the last couples levels before level fifty, he sparred with Lucas for another couples hours before sitting and repeating the process of creating a marble. It took him more than a dozen tries to create one again, but when he succeeded, he had managed to form a white marble again. He had to release the marble without trying to purify it, he was too mentally wiped out by the time he had succeeded, that he had barely managed to hold the marble together for longer than a second.
The positive for that day though, was that by the time he was returning from the mountain side, he had managed to gain another level. Which meant he had six days to try and get two more levels, while at the same time mastering a new technique he didn't know how to pull off yet. As well try to form a secondary class, all while trying to find the time to make sure he and Briar could remove the bond, tying Briar to him. It felt like a lot, but Owen didn't really give himself anytime to worry about it, he would either get done what he needed to, or he wouldn't and would have to get it done on earth.
The thing that helped keep him from worrying was not needing to spend anytime eating or sleeping, though after a couple days, he would need to sleep again. But with all of the extra time he had, the access to, it was more like he had a week and a half to get everything done.
The next day was much the same as the day before. Xerxes had them all gather in the courtyard and practice trying to create an essence marble. Owen was starting to have a slightly easier time with it and was able to create two, before he felt like he needed a break. Sparring went much the same again, but he was still getting better. By the third day, Owen managed for the first time to purify a white essence marble he had created.
A large gust of wind picked up form nowhere and blasted through the courtyard. Chimes that hung form some of the nearby pagoda, rustled in the wind and began to echo throughout the schoolgrounds as a satisfied Owen sat in the center of the courtyard just taking it all in. He immediately set to work trying to create another essence marble and several hours later, managed to purify another essence.
A dark cloud appeared and darkness filled the courtyard, making everything look darker than it ever had at night. Xerxes had to create a burst of wind to disperse it, but Owen only flashed him a triumphant smiled. Owen was pretty sure he had figured out a trick to purifying his essence, but he hadn't asked Xerxes about it yet.
He had realized early on that he didn't need to absorb what he purified from the marble, which meant that as long as he had essence marbles, he could practice purifying them. Briar was the biggest help to him as being an elemental based monster, they had very little trouble forming essence and purifying it, but for Owen, all he needed was the essence. Hours passed as Briar made essence marbles every time Owen managed to purify or fail. It was harder to purify them when there wasn't an aspect of it that resonated with himself, but he realized that his mana manipulation skill, let him see the ties the essence had to Briar.
Using the skill, he was able to map what connected to Briar most and slowly try and pull it from the marble. The other bonus was that since Briar was a roseborn, the essence it created often turn into large thorns or a ball of thorns that Briar could reabsorb. So hours flew by in the blink of an eye as Owen practiced. He didn't even notice the several times Xerxes got close to see exactly what the two to them were doing. Or when Xerxes walked away shaking his head in amazement.
By the morning of the fourth day, Owen had a 90% success rate on purifying the thorn essence and was confident he could now translate that to his own essence marbles. When it was his turn to demonstrate his progress, he created a wind essence marble and was able to purify it in seconds, sending a large gust of wind through the courtyard, but he wasn't done. In less than a minute, he managed to make another essence marble, but this time it was a deep blue color, he hadn't seen this one before, but as he had been rushing he wasn't as picking about the energy he had pulled from his core.
Again, he succeeded in purifying the essence, sending a blast of cold water out into the air. Xerxes disappeared for a moment as he dodged the water and reappeared without so much as a drop on him. The next essence was wind again, but after that, Owen could feel his core straining. It sent aches up and down his spine, but he ignored it as he purified the last essence and stared at Xerxes with a big grin on his face. Xerxes met his eyes and grinned right back. "I guess its time for the next step then."