Red alerts were going through his head, his memory flashing back to how Baraquiel would sometimes look at Shuri.

His eyes widened in fear, when he ‘felt’ the old sage look at him a bit too eagerly.

[P-pedophile!!!]

Unfortunately, it was too late to let go.

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|DxD|

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1996/10/04- July 16th, 1999 (Friday), Flower-Fruit Mountain, Himalayan Mountain Range, India

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A long three years had passed since Igor began training under Sun Wukong. During those years, many things had happened. As promised, the old sage taught Igor the intricacies of sensing energy and different auras. The supernatural world was vast and many different types of energies existed. But according to Nakamura’s books, all of them could be classified under four types.

There is ki which largely represents lifeforce energy or a by-product of it. There is chakra which is closely related to nature. There is nature energy which is the neutral energy that chakra and ki comes from. Various concepts are born from nature energy and could be said to be the energy that holds the universe together. Divine energy would also fall under nature energy. Then there is chi which is the culmination of both ki and chakra.

Igor wasn’t clear on the full capabilities of ki yet since all the book said was that harnessing the energy would allow him to gain the power to kill constellations. The term ‘constellations’ alone confused him since he had no clue what constellations were or what they represented.

But that was currently too far for him in the future. He still hadn’t fully explored the full capabilities of ki yet and was still far from completely unlocking god-ki, which he still wasn’t fully clear on what it was. Either way, those were things that would reveal themselves in due time.

As of now, he still had to demonstrate everything he learned from the old sage during these past three years. The blonde had put in a lot of work into enhancing his aura sensing capabilities. Although Igor was confident in himself, Sun Wukong would be the judge of that.

Today, he was evaluating Igor’s perception. High in the skies above the mountain, Igor was hovering in a meditative position. His eyes were covered by a black blindfold which served to not only invalidate his sense of sight, but his hearing and smell as well.

The focus of this training was to sense Sun Wukong through only his aura. Although the process seemed simple, it was more complicated than it appeared. Igor’s previous method of sensing involved spreading out his own aura like a sonar wave that would detect any foreign aura. While that method worked to a certain extent, it became useless after a certain level.

For instance, there is a limit to what Igor could actively sense. Nature energy or any other related type of energy rendered his style of sensing useless. For those who have bonded with nature, loved by nature, or can utilise the energy of nature, they can easily bypass his senses. That is because to Igor, they are similarly one with nature so his aura sensing will not react to them. It was why Sun Wukong was always able to sneak up on the blonde even when he was fully focused on sensing for his arrival. It got to the point that he could only rely on his physical senses to detect the sage. But that was only a temporary measure that lasted for the first few months.

When the old sage got a bit serious, it was hard for Igor to even sense the displacement of air when the old monkey appeared. That was because a that point, Sun Wukong had begun using senjutsu to not only hide his presence, but become a part of nature as well.

Not only was Igor not able to detect the old sage, but he couldn’t even block a staff to the head as punishment for sneaking off to visit Asia in Italy. So the blonde had no choice but to fully immerse himself into studying aura sensing in order to reach the set milestone and earn the right to visit Asia.

But after a few months of failure, Sun Wukong finally gave the blonde a clue as to what to do.

‘Instead of branching out your ki to detect foreign energy, why not act as a receiver and feel the energy changes in the air?’

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It was a bit cryptic for Igor when he first heard those words. But through a bit of analysis and observing the other yokai on the mountain, he finally found out what he had to do. In order to sense other types of energies, he had to lower the presence of his own ki. It is similar to how in order to better perceive other sounds, one must be silent themselves.

However, in order to be able to use this method of sensing, the blonde had to brush up further on his ki-control otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to lower the presence of his ki without being able to control it.

The blonde thought his level of control was already quite good, but according to the old sage, it was passable at best.

‘Just good enough to survive, but not something you should be proud of.’

Those words made the blonde retreat into the time chamber and try to find other books that could help him increase his ki-control. But it was to no avail. While Nakamura, the author of the books he used had other volumes, they were not accessible to him yet. Just like how the secrets to the Kaioken required him to have the Kaioken, the secrets to further ki-control required him to have a certain level of ki-control.

It made absolutely no sense to the blonde at the time as to how he had to have a higher level of ki-control in order to gain access to further volumes. But he still remembered Nakamura’s writing that suddenly appeared when he failed to peel open the next page.

It was a temporary shock, but he still kept them to heart to this day.

‘Lad. You don’t expect me to spoon-feed you everything, do you? Find your own way to increase your ki-control. I’ll give you a clue. Go back to the basics.’

And go back to the basics he did. The blonde found himself using the [Iron Sharpens Iron] training method as well as the [Yin-Yang Breathing] technique. The latter involved him rapidly raising and lowering his ki as much as possible within the span of a breath. If he breathed in, he would power up as much as possible, circulating his ki as fast as possible without damaging his ki-veins in the slightest.

When he breathed out, he would draw in all the aura he emitted while powering up within the shortest time possible. His goal was to immediately go from emitting a violent aura to appearing like a normal person within the span of a single breath. To add to the difficulty, he did not cancel his Kaioken and used it at its 1.6x multiplier. Although it added to the difficulty, it also showed just how much the blonde needed to regain control over his aura.

Ever since he had awakened his strand of divine ki, his ki-control had suffered due to gaining the Kaioken as well as an immense amount of ki. Although the blonde could still create aura swords and sabers, it never truly hit him how much his ki-control suffered until he tried creating aura blades. Whereas before he could create blades that stretched over a hundred metres, now he was barely able to extend them past forty metres. It was such a blow to his pride that he could not tolerate such a mishap.

And so secluding himself, he trained his ki-control again, using the same method of utilising the [Yin-Yang Breathing] method in conjunction with extending his aura blades. While he could’ve used the time chamber, Igor still abided by his policy of abstaining from using it as much as possible in order to age.

As of now, he was eight-years-old when his age was calculated through his bone age, yet he looked to be nearing fifteen in appearance. The blonde knew that his potential was increasing and he was roughly only another five years away from when he would finally enter the period of his most explosive growth. By then, he was confident that his base strength would be at the peak of god-class and once his body reached thirteen years, he would ‘truly’ enter puberty.*

But that was far in the future. Right now, he had to detect Sun Wukong before he strikes. Having trained his aura control for the past two years and his passive aura sensing for the past year, he was confident he could pass the old sage’s assessment.

If he could pass, then he could finally visit Asia without having to take Sun Wukong’s staff to the head as punishment. Although the old sage would strike him once, it was enough to knock him out for an entire week, a massive waste of time in the blonde’s eyes.

Either way…

*Glances to the left*

He would pass and finally leave this place.

[Found you.]

Tswii!

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AN

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1. By then, he was confident that his base strength would be at the peak of god-class and once his body reached thirteen years, he would ‘truly’ enter puberty.*

Explanation: So far, we know that Igor hasn’t entered puberty. Now to the important question that I know you have. Despite appearing to be over 14, does his ‘equipment’ work? Initially it didn’t and here’s you why. Remember that at first, he only ‘grew’ in order to adapt to the time chamber. So ‘everything’ grew in proportion, but no pipes were really working. He was initially around thirteen years of age in appearance but after awakening his divine ki, that was when he truly grew. It was explained that depending on a person’s initial age, divine ki would either make them younger or older in order to bring them as close as possible to their peak. Now considering that all Igor has is a strand of divine ki, he only got a boost of a year or two but that was enough for ‘production’ to begin. Hope that settles a few lingering questions.

Now, I announce an upload schedule change. Due to an increase in workload, I have decided to swap the times when I write and when I do my assignments. Instead of writing at home, I will write at school and do my assignments at home. The reason is, yesterday I had absolutely no energy to think about the next plot. ChatGPT can help me with my assignments, not writing. So this will roughly be my new upload for the rest of this week.

If you’re interested in reading ahead, here’s the link: [email protected]/HolyGambler

Replace the ‘@’ and ‘0’ with ‘a’ and ‘o’ respectively. Or just search for ‘HolyGambler’.