Chapter 59: The Calm

-BAM-

The door was opened with such a strong force!

Zachery and two others walked entered one of the rooms within the Rizon faction. They just came back from the elementalist class, hoping to incite Teo’s anger but was clearly disappointed.

“GAH!! These small things can’t be called revenge at all!!”, Zachery shouted with burning anger in his voice

His lofty countenance and coolheadedness slowly vanished ever since he was forced to buy Teo’s blood.

He was spoiled by his grandfather and created a few annoyances for Teo, but still wanted for Teo to suffer. Unfortunately, they were forbidden from taking action directly. They could not opening take their revenge.

Erin, who was behind him, was also mad as she thought of her brother who was currently recovering.

“We can’t do much about it Zach, if we had money we can hire a few guys to beat him up, but..”, Ash did not finish his words because he saw Zachery’s eyes becoming more inflamed than before

That’s right! Not only Teo humiliated them, he also took a large chunk of their money.

“Although we can’t act now, during the third year we can! There is also the yearly tournament at the end of next year!”, Ash added

These tournaments were originally proposed by the Imperial family to grow the children’s competitiveness and combat skills. It shouldn’t be a problem if they beat up Teo during the tournament.

The burning desire for revenge grew them which motivated them to train harder, hoping for an opportunity for revenge!

“Hmph! Waiting for next year?! There is another way we can go about this but…”, Erin slowly said

…..

After their inscription class, Teo, Windle and Lia walked towards the Martial faction as usual and talked about the events that happened earlier.

“Teo, you were really kicked out? Are you going to enroll for a different class as a replacement?”, Lia asked

“Is that even possible? Don’t enrollments only occur within at the beginning or end of the school year?”

“That’s true, but what are you gonna be doing now? There’s still more than half a year until then”

Teo didn’t give a specific answer and only lifted his shoulders, gesturing that he didn’t know, but in fact he already have a plan on unexpected free time he had obtained.

They arrived but surprisingly, Rowen was not here. Only Gina was there to guide them today.

“Where’s big sister?”

“Oh, she had some stuff to take care of today, it’s just us today. She told me to tell you to relax for today Teo, your body must be still tired from yesterday’s battle. Go over there and play a bit with the other members”

Teo looked towards that direction and saw several people sitting across from each other playing a board game.

Teo had previously asked about this game before. Apparently, this game of chess were used to train people’s decision making. Even such a simple board had a use for combat.

There were mainly two different ways of playing the game. One was timed, and the other was not. The untimed chess games were used for beginners to learn about the game, for for experts who played them, it allowed them to deeply think many moves ahead, while the timed chess games simulated a battle where one was given very little time to think.

The timed games were quick and exciting. Each player held an hourglass that lasted 3 minutes, after making a move they would tilt the hour glass sideways preventing the sand to slide down.

Teo sat down against an old gentleman who was waiting for an opponent. Not only faction members played this game, so there were sometimes visitors who came here just to play.

“Timed or not?”, the old man asked

“Not timed”, Teo answered since he still considered himself fairly new at this game.

The old man did not care who his opponent was and respected them all equally.

Teo, like the other players, practiced his breathing technique as he played. The game was fun but had an air of seriousness. The game of chess was one without mercy. If a player intentionally made a mistake, it would be frowned upon and be thought of disrespecting their opponents, so players were forced to play the game at the full extent of their abilities.

Teo’s games were long, and against the experienced old man, he could not win a single game, but surprisingly, Teo did not lose as easily as most people would expect. The game was complicated, forcing players to think several steps ahead to try and outwit their opponents.

“Young man, you shouldn’t be distracted while playing, it’s quite rude”, the old man grumbled

“I apologize”, Teo responded as he continued to play

Teo’s thoughts only briefly wandered towards his experiments but the old man quickly took notice of this through Teo’s moves and expression.

The old man was did not only looked at the board when playing but also observed the opponent in front of him. By observing his opponent’s eyes, one could easily see where their opponent’s attention was focusing on. Even a brief glance was enough to discover his opponent’s intent.

“It seems that you are mentally fatigued. For a child as yourself to have a tired mind, you must be in a quite of a predicament. You should learn to relax. Haste makes waste, and the harder you push yourself, the slower your progress will be”

“Thank you for the advice senior”

…..

A few months had passed and it seems as if the trouble Teo brought upon himself, Rowen and his friends had vanished.

Rowen learned that Teo was kicked out of a class and was initially enraged and was going to complain but Teo eventually calmed her down.

Due to the inscription Teo obtained from Zachery’s ring, his understanding of arrays and inscriptions improved by an enormous amount. It was as if a barrier was broken into and the sense of achievement that Teo experienced was overwhelming.

He engraved the inscription he obtained from Zachery’s ring into the silver ring he managed to keep. Not only that, but he had successfully also created an array that mimicked its function as well as improved its performance!

When he discovered the defensive capabilities of the inscription he became elated. By reverse engineering the inscription, instead of killing two birds with one stone, he killed three!

The inscription’s main property was of a defensive nature, but a part of the inscription also had a concealing effect.

By understanding this lower grade concealing inscription, Teo’s understanding of the more advanced concealment inscription of the void necklace would become easier.

But the main problems still existed, which was the formation of this array. Although he had created an array of the inscriptions simply drawn a piece of paper, Teo knew that a multilayered array was not enough for the void inscription.

He tried many different ways to solving this problem and after failure after failure he had managed to have some progress.

He used a much more simpler array design for testing different methods. He tried wires and sap, creating an array using a ball of wire, coated in sap and elemental ink. In theory this could work but having such a extremely large ball of wire, it could not fit into a necklace.

He tried hollowing a stone prototype using the wire drill and creating a 3 dimensional array within the stone but it weakened the stone’s structure and would become too weak if more drills were made.

Many materials were used; he tried strings, hair, fur but all of them caused one or more problems as he progressed. He attempted to create an array formation that did not rely on on direct lines for their connection, but this was currently too far advanced for Teo.

Teo was even forced to start attempting to control his Qi because of his desperation but even if he could control his Qi perfectly, how would he make it permanently stay in place to hold up the lines of the array?

The fundamental problem bred more problems as he thought of different experiments, so he decided to put it off for now. His goal right now is translating the void inscription into an array. Designing such an array would be challenging, but with his new profound knowledge it should be easier than before. Unfortunately, even if he does create a successful design, testing it would be difficult until he created his own method of forming the array.

There was less than a year left before the school year would end. At this rate, after he cleared that tiny road block, he should be able to finish it with 1 or 2 months to spare.

His improvement speed was not only due to the defensive inscription he obtained from the ring, nor was it solely from his unexpected extra time, but because he took the advice of the old man he played chess with.

Instead of focusing on the problem non-stop, he took time to take a breather. He would meditate and relax, gathering Qi within the inner world, or improving his control of his Qi using a set of poses. Sometimes he would even experiment on unrelated arrays, to keep his mind flexible.

Aside from discovering more basic arrays, he also learned of a medium ranked array that enabled him to link two different arrays. By combining each array property, he can create an array with a specific function, so this linking array was quite useful.

The first array he built had a built in trigger type that activated when pressure was applied towards it. Teo became well versed in adding a trigger effect into a different array because of this. As for the linking effect of an array, it had many uses that Teo could think of.

Like instead of the trigger type from his first array, he could instead activate it remotely using two arrays. This would allow him to control an array’s activation without the risk of harming anyone who was not his target.

….

Teo walked around the academy as he was currently taking a break from his experiments.

He was looking for inspiration from other things, and even browsed through many shop’s enchanted items but most of them were inscriptions he had already seen; they were nothing special, and the higher quality ones required one to show that he could afford them to be able to even look at them.

Despite winning 9 gold coins off of Zachery and his goons, with his recent expenses he did not have enough to view these items.

Windle was currently attending the elementalist class, while Lia was taking in her smithing class, so Teo was alone wandering about.

A delicious smell wafted through the air and attracted Teo’s attention. His mouth watered as the strong smell of cooked meat invaded through his nostrils.

He involuntarily swallowed his overflowing saliva and approached the nearby stall.

“Mister, give me a stick”, Teo ordered

His eyes were glued to the many rows of perfectly charred meat and the fatty juices that dripped from them was enough to whet Teo’s appetite.

Recently, Teo’s appetite grew larger and larger. With his recent activities, it was no surprise at all.

His hard training was almost done for 4 to 5 days a week; sometimes even more depending if Gina or Rowen had any scheduled plans for them.

Combining his training exercises and activities regarding inscriptions and arrays, which taxed his grey matter heavily, he required a lot of food to sustain both of these intense activities.

‘Good thing food from the stalls are cheap’, Teo thought as he bit down and munched on a chunk of perfectly cooked meat. The marinade seeped into the meat for a long time, and gave the meat a rich flavor.

‘Delicious!’

We walked carelessly as he enjoyed his snack, he thoroughly chewed the meat enjoying it to the fullest.

As he was eating, two figures stepped forward and blocked his path. Teo’s face instantly froze and he was forced to swallow the meat he currently had in his mouth as he forgot to chew it.

‘!!!’

The piece of meat was briefly stuck on in his throat until he forcefully swallowed it.

-Cough cough-

“And here I was hoping that he’ll choke to death on his own, that would be hilarious!”, Ash said with a sinister look on his face

Zachery stood besides Ash with a solemn expression.

Teo looked at Zachery and noticed that his aura changed. He became more masculine and seemed to give off a more dangerous feeling compared to before!

He also heard a few sounds coming from behind him, he quickly took a glance and saw Kristofer and Erin blocking his path of retreat.

He realized that it wasn’t just Zachery who felt different, all of them released a different feeling as before.

‘It seems that they’ve been training hard as well’

Despite briefly panicking from their appearance and almost choking from his meal, Teo was confident that although he was surrounded, they shouldn’t be able to attack him in public.

“What do you guys want?”, Teo asked

[Author's note: Birthday wishes to my brother yesterday, although he probably doesn't read this at all.

3 releases wooo~! lol

Issues regarding Teo's progress, let me remind you that he just started learning how to make arrays in a little over a year. Just because he becomes stronger in in fights compared to his progress in arrays doesn't mean its a plot hole.

Anyways, I do appreciate all your concerns to the plot and stuff as I keep them all in mind with the future chapters ahead. Hoped you enjoyed. Maybe a fourth chapter will come out later today, depends if i can finish it.]