The barely decorated dimly lit grey room was submerged into odd silence for a long time as four people were slowly recuperating. The lonely figure of the seated young man in torn clothes with messy red hair, gloomy amber colored eyes was immersed in his thoughts. Kamys’ unfocused gaze was directed toward one of the walls, but deep in his mind he reflected upon the recent fight and the sudden attack of what seemed to be a little girl. The battle he just had helped him improve some of his techniques and even slightly advance in his battle teaching.
On the other side of the room, Brienne was lying with her eyes shut and onсe in a while, her whole body trembled as if she was experiencing tormenting pain in her sleep. Meanwhile, Dale was calmly sleeping as if nothing happened, but his formerly white hair were dirtied from the bitter battle and his usually dark grey skin was noticeably paler. And in between them, Boe was sitting still just like a meditating monk while his shoulder-length black hair fluttered as if wind actually appeared in the calm stone room. The heavy atmosphere hung in the room for a long time and no sound was uttered for more than ten hours.
Then, Dale’s body started moving as his scarlet eyes slowly opened. Before saying anything, Dale looked around himself in amazement. “We’re already in the next stone room?” The first thing he noticed was a strange mood in the room and a moment later he suddenly remembered something as he started yelling, “You goddamn moron! I, the noble prince, was actually seriously injured because of your stupid attempts to be a knight in shining armor!” Saliva was splashing out of Dale’s mouth as he stared at Kamys with eyes full of killing intent.
“He knows he made a mistake and he already paid for it heavily.” Boe’s indifferent voice resounded behind Dale.
Hearing Boe’s words, Dale instantly turned around and looked at the former. But before he could say anything, Dale saw the ashen-faced Brienne lying next to seated Boe. “By the looks of things, she got it even worse than me, huh?” Dale’s enraged face slowly calmed down as he stared at Kamys yet again. “What will happen when your clan and her father will find out that your precious princess was wounded under your care, eh, little guardian?” asked Dale with apparent mocking smile on his face.
“You need not worry about me. Anything that will happen to me has nothing to do with you,” to Boe’s surprise, the usually hot-tempered Kamys answered quite calmly.
After that exchange of words between Dale and Kamys, Boe had finally remembered that Kamys was from the guardian clan of the Shadow Kingdom and one of duties of these clans was to protect the royal family. The aftermath of this adventure might worsen the already grim situation of Kamys’ family in the clan and all his hopes of becoming the next patriarch of the clan might shutter just like that.
Seeing Kamys’ calm response, Dale muttered something to himself and finally sat himself down. “Another painting of the mountain awaits us and the monster portrait disappeared as expected. Good thing we didn’t have to actually fight that gruesome thing.” Dale lightly chuckled as he drank a potion that he took out from his magic ring. As soon as he finished the painting, he quickly took out some food and drinks for himself. After Dale finished his meal, the room sunk into silence yet again.
----------------------------------------
Boe managed to create the new move of his battle teaching right in a middle of the fight by releasing a bit of his battle aura out of his body to strengthen his attack. By doing it, he had finally understood how he was supposed to manipulate a tiny bit of battle aura outside of his body and it was a first step he needed to take to advance to rank 3. And in the last twenty hours, besides sleeping and eating, he spent all his time wholeheartedly training. A small deep black sphere was levitating above Boe’s right hand as he was focusing his mind in attempts to change the sphere’s shape. But no matter how hard he tried, the only thing he could do right now was to create the sphere for a brief moment before it gradually dissipated into nothingness. It seemed like the next step of forming different shapes out of released battle aura was still too hard for the current Boe.
Boe softly exhaled as the sphere in his hands gradually vanished. In the next moment, determination flashed across his mind and, although exhausted, Boe formed yet another sphere of mysterious black light. And just as Boe started trying to manipulate the sphere to change into the cube, a barely noticeable shadow flew past him toward the sphere. When Boe concentrated his vision on the shadow, he saw that it was actually a hand-sized sword made out of shadow attribute battle aura. The shadow sword rotated around the sphere a few times before its shape suddenly changed into hammer. The small hammer shaped shadow moved toward Boe’s face and, before he could react, appeared right before his right eye, then the hammer suddenly turned around and fiercely smashed into Boe’s dissipating sphere. To Boe’s shock, the hammer easily torn the sphere into pieces.
“It seems like your barbaric strength can’t help you with that?” A melodious voice resounded behind Boe as the hammer suddenly transformed into the shape of a flower with thorns all over its stem and flew past Boe toward the already seating pale-faced Brienne. The flower gently placed itself right onto the ear of the beautiful maiden.
“How are you feeling?” Boe’s cold voice had a hint of worry as he asked the question, but he quickly suppressed it.
“It feels like someone dropped a mountain on my body.” Boe heard cracking sounds ringing out as Brienne stretched her body. And after an awkward pause, Brienne said, “I noticed that you’ve finally made a little progress?” Brienne chuckled as the shadow flower flew up from her ear toward Boe. The distance between Boe and Brienne was only a couple of meters and the flower flew rather quickly, but in that short amount of time, it actually managed to transform into sword, spike, cube, sphere and back into flower as it stopped right before Boe’s face. Boe’s attentive gaze was focused on these transformations the whole time as he was trying to understand how Brienne did that. And at last, right before Boe’s eyes, the flower started changing its shape yet again as it slowly took shape of a person. To Boe’s surprise, the tiny shadow person in front of him was actually himself. Seeing all the little details of his own face and body copied by Brienne into the shadow before him, Boe’s jaw almost dropped down from shock.
Stolen story; please report.
“Teach me.” Boe’s voice suddenly resounded throughout the room. Even though he got the battle teaching from the Strongest, there were no detailed instructions on how to progress between ranks.
As Boe’s voice faded, both Dale and Kamys jerked their heads toward Brienne with interest. Kamys silently glanced at Brienne with apologizing look in his eyes. Seeing this, Brienne quickly understood what Kamys was thinking as she said, “You were not at fault. A true guardian protects people no matter the cost.” Brienne’s mouth curled into gentle smile as she shook her head. “Anyway, how did we end up in the stone room? Did we pass the test or did we get another strike?”
“After you were attacked, Brother Boe jumped in to save you while me and Dale finished off the big lizard. Then-” Kamys started describing what happened in the world of monsters as his head gradually lowered.
“Then I killed all the little lizards and all of us were suddenly teleported into this room.” Boe interrupted Kamys as he decided not to tell the full story to Brienne and Dale. Hearing this, Kamys lifted his head up and stared at Boe who didn’t show any signs of reaction to his gaze.
“So we successfully passed the test? Did we get any rewards?” Brienne’s weak voice was full of excitement.
“No rewards whatsoever. Only the new big painting.” Boe shook his head and pointed toward the pressure inducing painting in the middle of the wall.
“I see. Then let me heal myself up before we decide what we’ll do further.” Brienne smiled as she took out three potions out of nowhere.
----------------------------------------
In the next few hours, all four member of the party spent in silence as Kamys and Brienne were recuperating while Boe and Dale were training. Dale’s injuries were the lightest out of everyone except for Boe, who basically suffered almost no damage, so Dale was the first to heal up completely. When Dale felt that he was already in his top-notch shape, he sat himself down and his cold aura suddenly burst out of his body. Previously, there were only several translucent little dull white spheres floating around Dale’s body, but now there appeared two unique spheres. While original spheres were completely white and approximately five centimeters in diameter, these two new spheres were both ghastly white and their diameters were seven and ten centimeters. All the smaller spheres were obediently floating according to Dale’s wishes, but the two new ones still had souls of monsters struggling inside of them. The biggest sphere, in particular, gave a headache to Dale. He already tried everything he could to subdue the soul of the lizard, but there were still remnants of the monster’s will. When Boe first saw the silhouette of the lizard inside one of Dale’s spheres howling miserably, he immediately understood that Dale somehow managed to swallow the soul of dying monster while being seriously wounded.
While Dale evidently struggled to control his new power, Boe was still concentrating on changing shape of the sphere that hovered on his hand. Every time he felt like he made some progress, the sphere in his hands would slightly tremble before dissipating into nothingness. Throughout the hours of Boe’s training, Brienne would give some remarks and advices from time to time, but they were of no use to Boe. Evidently, he needed to understand the principle of controlling battle aura by himself because he felt like anything Brienne said didn’t apply to his power at all. Brienne was flabbergasted by this fact as well, since she helped out quite a lot of people throughout her life and all of them deemed her to be a superb mentor.
And just like that, three more days passed in a rather peaceful state for the three young men and the maiden. During these days, Kamys fully recovered his strength and even made significant advancements in his battle teaching. Even though Dale didn’t increase his strength directly, he had finally subdued both new souls he obtained recently, which would definitely boost his fighting prowess. Boe made a rapid progress in his training as he could now easily change the shape of his external battle aura into anything he wished. Spheres he was forming on his hands were far denser now and even though the size of spheres didn’t change, everyone around Boe could feel that his power was raised significantly. Although he couldn’t do it as fast and masterful as Brienne, it was still a great achievement considering how little time he spent on training. And Brienne was the only one who didn’t actually improve during that time since she only had enough time to heal up her wounds.
“Shall we?” Brienne's cheerful voice broke the silence as she stood up and swept three young men with her gaze.
“Finally.” A lazy hoarse voice sounded out from Dale’s throat as his usual haughty demeanor revealed itself.
Kamys silently stood up and was the first one to walk up to the armchair and sit himself down into it.
And finally, Boe, who was lying in the corner with his eyes closed, heavily exhaled as his thin body stood up. His sharp eyes suddenly opened and chilliness brimmed out of them. “Let’s hear what that mountain has to say to us this time.” Boe leisurely walked up to the last free armchair and directly plopped his body into it. And just as he sat down, he looked at the painting and felt the so familiar feeling of being moved into the world of the painting.
----------------------------------------
As the company expected, they were now standing in a middle of the empty space and there was the mountain in front of them. What used to be a majestic mountain of unthinkable sizes now became a foundation to the civilization. All the cosmic objects were still floating around the mountain, but the mountain itself condensed in size considerably, and countless living beings were now dwelling on top of it. Boe could see numerous lights, flickering all over the land, that represented civilizations molded on the the body of the mountain.
And as Boe expected, the thunderous voice resounded throughout the whole world of the painting, “Wanderers of nothingness found me in their search for a haven. At first, I rejoiced at their emergence but soon enough I came to realize that they were no friends of mine, but leeches that fed on my lifeforce. I wanted to communicate with them, but the language they spoke was something I couldn’t replicate. I could’ve annihilated them if I wished to, but they were so fragile and foolish… The decision I made on that day became simultaneously the end of my existence and the start of the life.”