Chapter 42: Poor Kid.

Kalon clenched his Jaw as the pain shot up and down his spine like fire spreading around his body. It took every bit of will power that he could muster to stop himself from opening his eyes and screaming out in pain.

'Why does it hurt this much!? Is she trying to kill me?' Kalon asked himself while trying his best to focus on feeling a little ball above his belly button. Even though the pain was worse than anything he had felt before, he knew that he would fail and have to do it all over again if he opened his eyes.

'I need to do this. If I can master the use of Qi, then I will be able to teach everyone back home how to use it too.' Kalon thought while disregarding the fact that monsters didn't have a dantian. He couldn't think straight as it felt like fire was spreading through the marrow of his bones.

The pain suddenly travelled down his back once again, and just as it reached the small ball that he imagined above his belly button, his body felt numb, and a tingling sensation set it. It felt like his body was vibrating, and it seemed to be coming from the ball he imagined. The feeling spread around his body until a cracking sound caught him off guard.

A wave of warm air circled his body in a vortex and pushed dust around the inside of the carriage. The horses on the outside felt the warm air blast against their behind and sped up out of fear causing the carriage to shake a little more violently against the dirt road.

A drop of sweat slowly rolled down the side of his cheek and hit the floor of the carriage. The sound was almost silent but just significant enough for it to cause Roah to open her eyes and look at Kalon's back once again before realising that his eyes were still closed.

"Congratulations, you have now reached the foundation establishment," Roah said with a smile and patted Kalon's shoulder with a sigh. She felt exhausted from the mental strain of opening his acupoints.

The horses pulling the carriage calmed down upon feeling Roah's presence, but as she looked down, she saw that Kalon still had his eyes closed.

"What are you doing? It's okay for you to open your eyes now. I stopped, so you don't need to worry about failing anymore." Roah reassured Kalon, who was still holding on and trying to imagine a ball in his stomach, but his imagination had become clearer, and he felt like he could feel it as well as see it. He was too focused that he had forgotten to open his eyes until Roah slapped his back once more, this time a little bit harder.

"You finished? But I still feel the warmness around me. I thought that you were still doing it." Kalon said out loud as he slowly opened his eyes to see an orange hue from the window beside him as the sunset over the horizon.

"And that is a sign that you reached foundation establishment. The warmness that you feel is Qi running through your acupoints. Since Qi can now flow through your body, it's only natural for you to feel it all the time." Roah explained and then sat back in the seat.

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She felt all of her energy fade as the sky slowly turned darker and darker.

Kalon sat back down on the other side of the carriage and asked as many questions as possible about Qi and Cultivators to the point where Roah felt as though her brain was going to melt if she said anything else. She lay her head on the soft cushioned bench and closed her eyes.

"Get some rest for now. I will tell you anything you want to know in the morning. I don't have the energy to explain right now. I need to sleep." Noah's words began to slur as she drifted off to sleep mid-sentence.

But Kalon wasn't ready to sleep just yet. He looked outside to see nothing but darkness as boredom set in. He lay back across the bench on his side of the carriage and looked up at the ceiling. His body bounced up and down as the wooden wheels slowly tumbled across the floor and began to think.

As he was sitting in silence, he began to remember all the experiences he had at home. It had only been a few days since he left, but it already felt like a lifetime. He had seen so much in the last couple of days that it made him want to forget his life in the Sylton empire.

But he wasn't ready to let his mother down as he knew that he was the only one who could free her from the dungeons. He couldn't wait to see her face once again. Although he didn't have pleasant memories of his home, he felt tied to that life as though it was dragging him down.

He couldn't put into words how he felt, but he knew it didn't make him happy. Truth be told, the time that he spent with Roah at the mountain pass and in the carriage were some of the happiest moments of his life. He didn't feel hated, and he knew that he could relax when he was with Roah since he had seen her strength first hand.

She was capable enough to keep him safe, and as long as he was with her, he knew that nothing could cause him harm. As for when he was back home, there wasn't anyone who could keep him safe. Even master ranwald wouldn't be able to refuse an order to kill Kalon if that was ever to happen.

And Kalon lived in constant fear that his father would give up on him and order someone to kill him. But with Roah, he felt as though all the worries in his heart would fade away as time passed.

He looked over at the bench where the sounds of snoring were shaking the carriage and smiled.

'She looks so peaceful.' Kalon thought as he looked at her. But he couldn't help but worry. She didn't have a blanket over her, and the carriage didn't have a fire to heat it. He pulled out the blanket that was wrapped around him when he woke up and carefully stepped over to Noah's side of the carriage before laying it over her body.

"Thank you. Sleep well with a kiss to scare the monsters away." Kalon whispered as he recalled a pleasant memory of his mother and then leaned over to kiss Roah's on the forehead. He had almost forgotten about the memory of his mother leaning over his bed to kiss his head when he was younger and scared of the monsters that roamed the palace.

He took a step back and smiled with his cheeks slowly turning red as he realised what he had just done.

"I- I, What am I doing?" Kalon whispered to himself, embarrassed by what he had just done, and then lay down facing the wall of the carriage and closed his eyes to try to sleep away his emotions. But the heat from Qi circulating through his body made it too hot to sleep, so he slid off his shirt and dropped it over the edge of the bench.

Roah slowly opened her eyes and gently pressed her hand against her forehead where Kalon had kissed. She couldn't help but smile.

'What a strange child, I should be the one tucking him into bed, not the other way around.' Roah thought to herself as she looked at his slightly muscular back that was covered in scars before holding her hand in front of her mouth to keep herself from gasping.

'I wondered why he ran away from home and why he didn't react when learning his parents were most likely dead, but this is just-' She thought before stopping herself from thinking anything more.

'He's a good kid despite those enormous scars? I don't even want to imagine what his home life was like.' Roah thought as she looked at each one of the scars along his back. As she continued to stare, her eyes became tired once more until she eventually closed them and fell into her own dreamland.