I have been working on making different Martial Arts and techniques for almost as long as I have been cultivating, but even I am sometimes surprised by how they end up being different from what I had first come up with. These changes are usually quite beneficial to my combat capabilities, but some are incredibly dangerous. So dangerous in fact that I have been forced to destroy the notes that I have made on some of them so that they couldn’t be stolen and used by someone else.

-Excerpt from Telram’s notes on Martial Techniques.

Hernan frowned as he saw the mana gathering around Telram’s hand. He wasn’t sure what was going on because the mana somehow felt odd to him even though he couldn’t quite figure out why. What he did know was that the attack that Telram was preparing was going to be a dangerous one. However, he wasn’t sure who it was going to be dangerous for, him or Telram.

As soon as Telram was done preparing the mana he started walking towards Hernan who frowned as his opponent approached. He was still covered in flames and as soon as Telram got within about three meters of him he started smoking but Hernan just stood there mesmerised as Telram thrust his hand forwards.

Everything fell silent as Telram’s palm made contact with Hernan’s chest and the flames covering his body simply vanished. There was no sound from the crowd nor the smack of flesh on flesh. Nothing. Just silence as a wave of mana passed through Hernan’s body.

Then all the sound of the crowd returned in a rush as Hernan’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed in a boneless heap on the arena floor. Telram staggered backwards and looked down at his hand with a worried look on his face before sighing in relief when he couldn’t find any damage. He had half expected that using this technique would backfire dramatically, but it seemed that everything had turned out well.

Or at least that was what he had thought but the referee’s reaction told him otherwise as the older man sprinted over and stared down at Hernan in horror.

“What!?” the man shouted as he spun towards Telram and grabbed him by the shoulder. “What the hell did you do to him?!”

“What do you mean?” Telram asked in confusion as the man started to shake him angrily.

“Look at his Core!” The referee shouted. “What. Did. You. Do!?”

Pulling himself free Telram looked back over at his opponent in confusion and then his eyes widened when he saw what was wrong. Blood drained from Telram’s face as he saw what remained of Hernan’s Mana Core slowly crumbling away.

Seeing the mana flooding Hernan’s body Telram activated his movement technique before the referee could stop him and came to a halt at Hernan’s side. He knew that he could prevent Hernan from suffering like his mother had if he acted to force all of the mana within his body out all at once.

“What are you doing now boy!?” The referee shouted angrily as he grabbed Telram by the shoulder again. “Get away from him!”

“Let go of me,” Telram snarled right back at him as he shook the man’s hand off his shoulder. “I’m trying to help him.”

The referee hesitated as he looked into Telram’s eyes before nodding and stepping back even as another man vaulted over the barricade between them and the audience and rushed over with a furious look on his face. Immediately the referee moved to stop him but was pushed aside with surprising ease by the man.

“Get away from my son!” The man shouted at Telram who looked up at him calmly as he prepared to administer one of the techniques that he had developed with Gerry in an attempt to cure his mother. Seeing this the man’s face turned purple and he prepared to strike Telram only for his attack to be stopped in its tracks by Gerry who looked just as furious as he did.

Fergus and the others in the stands blinked in surprise as they realised that Gerry had disappeared from his seat in the blink of an eye. Fergus in particular was surprised because he had always been faster than Gerry, but he hadn’t even noticed him move let alone been able to react to it.

“If you stop him now your son will never be the same again,” Gerry growled angrily as his wispy grey hair blew in the gale force winds that surrounded him. “Telram needs to clear the mana that was released into his body when his Core was broken, or he will come down with mana poisoning.”

“I don’t know what he did to my son,” the man snarled back at Gerry. “But I don’t plan on letting him hurt him any less than he already has.”

“He won’t,” Gerry replied. “You have my word.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” Hernan’s father sneered in reply making Gerry breath out slowly through his nose in exasperation.

Meanwhile Telram had placed his hand on Hernan’s stomach and closed his eyes in concentration as he started to allow his soul energy to flow into his former opponent’s body slowly clearing out the mana that was already beginning to damage his body. He had to be quite careful not to be too rough with his use of soul energy or he could cause Hernan’s own soul energy to start fighting back against his efforts.

Seeing this Hernan’s father started struggling against Gerry’s grip but stopped when he started to see grey mist flowing out of his son’s body. He wasn’t quite sure what Telram was doing but he could tell that it was helping.

Sweat poured down Telram’s brow as he worked. He had already used up a lot of his soul energy to control the technique that had ended up accidentally destroying Hernan’s Mana Core so this was proving to be much more difficult than it had been when he had tried to cure his mother using this technique. Seeing this Gerry carefully let go of Hernan’s father who fell to his knees beside his son and placed his hand on Telram’s shoulder so that he could start providing him with some of his own soul energy.

The crowd watched silently as Telram and Gerry worked. Most of them weren’t quite sure what was going on, but it was clear that Telram was once again showing them something that they had never seen before.

A few minutes later a smile crossed Telram’s face and he opened his eyes and slowly rose to his feet. As he did so he started swaying slightly from exhaustion, but Gerry caught him before he fell over on top of Hernan.

“He’s going to be okay,” Telram said giving the older man a weak smile. “He will have to start cultivating again from scratch though.”

“What exactly did you do?” Hernan’s father asked. “I’ve never seen a technique like that before.”

“It’s one of my more powerful techniques,” Telram replied. “Unfortunately, that was the first time I successfully used it and I definitely wasn’t expecting it to be able to destroy someone’s Mana Core like that.”

“If you would like I have a copy of notes that I can give you that should help him reach the Ascendant Realm again with a more stable cultivation base much faster,” Gerry offered. He knew that Telram would offer this himself, but it was much more likely to be accepted if the offer was coming from him. Especially since it sounded like they were Gerry’s notes coming from him even though they were actually Telram’s notes.

“I suppose we could accept them as a form of apology,” Hernan’s father admitted with a small sigh. “I’m not sure that Hernan will want to use them though.”

“That’s fine,” Gerry said with an understanding nod. “We’re both very sorry that this happened.”

“Yes,” Telram nodded. “I definitely won’t be using that technique again any time soon.”

“I should hope not,” Hernan’s father agreed as he frowned slightly at Telram’s words. He couldn’t detect any subterfuge in the young man’s words, but he was still furious with him for what had happened to his son. It had taken Hernan years to raise his cultivation level to where it had been and Telram had been able to destroy everything that he had worked for in a split second. “A technique like that is far too dangerous to be used on a fellow cultivator. Even thinking about what it could be used for is horrifying.”

“I completely agree,” Telram nodded. “The technique that I used to purge the mana from Hernan’s body was developed because my mother was suffering from a more severe version of that condition because of a flawed cultivation technique. If I had even considered the possibility that my attack might be able to destroy someone’s Mana Core, I would never have risked using it.”

“I see,” Hernan’s father said as his face softened slightly in understanding. “Well I hope that your mother recovers.”

“Actually, she already has,” Gerry said with a smile. “I plan on sending the results of my research into cures for similar conditions to as many cities as possible but there just hasn’t been time yet.”

“That’s incredible news!” Hernan’s father said with a look of amazement on his face. His awe was understandable, people had been working on cures for mana poisoning and other similar conditions for literally hundreds of years to no avail. Then he shook his head as he remembered that his son had just been quite badly injured, and he still had that to worry about.

“Indeed,” Gerry nodded. “Now I think we should both head back to our respective lodgings. May I know where you are staying and your name so that I can have the notes and some money to pay for some cultivation aids.”

Hernan’s father nodded slowly and introduced himself as Fernal. He and Hernan were both citizens of Urlan so he also told Gerry to send the notes to his residence which any courier in the town would know the location of. He was still quite angry about what had happened to his son, but he did believe that it was an accident and Gerry was doing his best to make up for it.

Once they were done both parties started making their way out of the arena while a very confused audience watched. A few of the audience members were aware of the fact that Telram had somehow destroyed Hernan’s Mana Core and then purged almost all of the mana from his body, but they weren’t sure how he had done either of these things. They had also expected Telram to be killed by Fernal when he had leapt into the arena but then Gerry had shown up and somehow managed to defuse the situation before it could get any worse than it already was.

The rest of Telram’s group had made themselves scarce when Gerry had made his move which proved to be wise when Telram and Gerry found themselves getting swarmed by the crowd when they exited the stadium. Eventually the guards managed to clear a path through the crowd, but it still took them more than half an hour to make the trip back to the inn which was only about a ten-minute walk away normally.

As soon as they got back to their rooms Telram staggered over to his bed and fell asleep. While the others would’ve liked to talk to him about what had happened, they knew that he had to be exhausted, so they decided to ask Gerry instead.

“He’s been working on that technique for a long time now,” Gerry sighed. “In fact, that technique was the whole reason that he created his Resonance Palm technique in the first place.”

“Wait he wanted to create a technique that could destroy someone else’s Mana Core?” Diane asked in confusion. “That seems like the last thing that he would do.”

“That’s because it is the last thing that he would do,” Gerry nodded. “That technique was only supposed to cancel out any technique his opponent was using. He never expected it to do something like that.”

“Either way it’s way too dangerous,” Fergus said, and the others all nodded in agreement. “He’ll have to destroy his notes on it.”

“He already knows that,’ Gerry sighed. “Anyway, I need to get a copy of some of his notes and send them to Hernan’s family.”

The next morning when Telram woke up and stumbled out of his room to get breakfast he found Gerry waiting for him with a stern look on his face. None of the others were there and Telram knew that Gerry had organised this so that he and Telram could have a private conversation. Once he had gotten some of the food that was waiting for him on the stove he sat down and met Gerry’s gaze.

“So how are you feeling today?” Gerry asked. “Do you think that you can fight?”

“Against Ryu?” Telram asked. “I think that I can fight but I know that I can’t win.”

“Well then, do you still want to fight him?”

“I think that I need to,” Telram sighed. “There’s something about him that is telling me that I can learn a lot from fighting him.”

“About your body strengthening technique?” Gerry asked as he nodded slowly in understanding. “I did notice that your bodies were similar in many ways.”

“Yeah,” Telram agreed. “I think that I can learn how make my body strengthening technique evolve into something very different from anything else that we have ever seen if I push Ryu hard enough.”

“You want to see his Divine Form, don’t you?” Gerry asked and this time it was Telram’s turn to nod in agreement. Divine Beasts are capable of taking three different forms; their human form, their beast form and one that sits somewhere in between and is more powerful than either. Even fully-grown Divine Beasts didn’t use this form often because it used up truly massive amounts of mana that only grew the higher their cultivation level was so getting Ryu to use this form could be very difficult. “Do you think that you’ll be able to get him to use it?”

“He seemed to be quite interested in me yesterday and I think that interest will have only grown after what happened during my fight with Hernan,” Telram explained. “So, I think that I can make him use his Divine Form if I prove that he’s right to be interested to me.”

“Maybe, but I’m not sure that this is a good idea,” Gerry pointed out. “Ryu is strong, so strong that I’m not sure that I could even defeat him if he was in his Divine Beast Form.

“I don’t think that you’ll have to,” Telram said. “But I know that you don’t think that Ryu’s the sort of person to just kill someone without any real reason. You think that he could accidentally injure or even kill me if I’m not careful, don’t you?”

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Gerry agreed. “You’ve been pushing yourself way too hard over the past couple of days. First that Martial Breakthrough and now what happened yesterday…”

“I know,” Telram sighed. “But I have good reasons for pushing myself this hard.”

“I know that you’ve been struggling to progress when it comes to your martial arts,” Gerry agreed. While Telram’s cultivation in general had been progressing quite well he had been suffering a bit from a lack of pressure to improve his martial arts. It was something that had only really become noticeable in the past couple of weeks. Mostly because Telram had so many new things to work on and the fact that he spent most of his time training his students, but Gerry knew his disciple well enough to know when he wasn’t happy with his progress. It was something that he had seen many times before while they had been trying to find a cure for Lily’s condition.

“Yeah I really needed some pressure to grow stronger and I thought that this was the best way to do it,” Telram nodded. “And the opportunity to get a Forest Pixie for Iris to create a contract with was hard to turn my nose up at.”

“Yes, I’ve already broken the news to her that you won’t be able to get her the Pixie like she wanted,” Gerry agreed. “She took it quite well. So, don’t let that cloud your judgement.”

“Thanks for doing that,” Telram chuckled. “But that’s not why I’m doing this. I have to get stronger. No matter what.”

Gerry stared into Telram’s eyes for a few seconds which rapidly became a minute before sighing and nodding in agreement.

“You’re right of course,” the old man admitted with a sad smile. He knew that Telram wanted to change the way that this world worked and if he wanted to do that then he needed the power to back up his ideals and try as he might he couldn’t think of a better way for Telram to do that than fighting Ryu.

Now that the conversation appeared to be over Telram started eating his breakfast and then got ready for the semi-finals. Once he was ready, they made their way to the arena which was surrounded by an even larger crowd of people than yesterday. There was a large group of people that seemed to be quite upset about something and were shouting angrily at the guards who were standing in front of them.

Telram glanced in their direction briefly when he heard them shouting but decided to ignore them for now. There was a good chance that they were here for him. On the other hand, they could just as easily be there for Ryu since he was a Divine Beast who was taking part in a tournament

“He doesn’t belong here!” Some members of the crowd shouted as Gerry and Telram walked past them. “He’s too dangerous, don’t let him compete!”

Thankfully, they hadn’t noticed them as of yet and the same guard who had escorted them yesterday rushed over.

“Good morning,” the guard stammered as he glanced at the angry crowd before quickly turning around and looking back at them over his shoulder as he began to walk away. “Would you follow me please?”

Telram and Gerry nodded before following the guard who was walking as fast as he possibly could towards one of the entrances. Judging by how the guard was acting Telram was now convinced that the crowd was there to complain about him, but he chose not to say anything for now.

“I’m sorry about all of that sir,” the guard said once they were inside. “I’m afraid that the technique that you used yesterday has created quite a bit of attention and the fact that your opponent is Ryu isn’t making things any better.”

“Huh, so it was about both things,” Telram muttered under his breath before nodding at the guard who was still watching him nervously. “It’s fine I know it’s not your fault. It’s not theirs either. They’re right. That technique is far too dangerous.”

The guard nodded in relief as they continued on their way to where Gerry would have to part with Telram as he headed to the arena for what was almost certainly going to be his last fight in this tournament.

“Alright then,” Gerry said once they had arrived. “Be careful Telram. I don’t want to explain to your parents what happened if you lose an arm or something.”

“I will,” Telram nodded as he placed his hand on Gerry’s shoulder. “You go and look after the others. With that crowd out there, who knows what might happen.”

Gerry nodded in agreement as Telram turned around and started on his way to the small room where the guard would usually leave him to prepare for his fight but this time the other man kept walking.

Telram’s face hardened slightly as he walked down the short tunnel to the arena. Outside of the gate he could hear the crowd roaring excitedly and after offering his hand to the guard who hesitated slightly before shaking it, he stepped out into the sunlight.