The Roamer

Chapter 24: Learning from experience

Aeolus woke up, and looked around. He saw that nobody was around, not even his soldier. He check within his soul, and sure enough, his soldier was right there, floating in the dark mist. Aeolus smirked to himself, and summoned him. It immediately began to kneel, but Aeolus stopped it this time, being as direct as possible.

“I need you to teach me how to optimize my efficiency with my weapon.” Aeolus said calmly, looking at the soldier expectantly. Without having all of his power and knowledge, the soldier still beat him without getting a scratch. This clearly wasn’t a question of knowledge and power, but just skills, actual skills.

“Master, if a soldier such as me teaches you, I’d have to stop being loyal to you. It’s already an embarrassment that a mere soldier is able to beat you, but you want it to teach you?” the soldier said, with a disapproving look on its face. Aeolus looked back on what it said, and found it logical.

“You’re right, I’ll have to continuously duel you to try and figure it out.” Aeolus said, while sending his emotions toward the soldier. The soldier picked up on one of the emotions, and realized Aeolus wanted a duel, so it got into its fighting stance. Now that Aeolus observed it, even it’s stance was very, very different from his.

Aeolus rushed at it, and avoided most of the string using the flowing water technique, and continued to rush towards it. However, this time, he was shut down even faster than the last fight, and it was to something he didn’t even see coming. He dropped to the ground, with blood coming out of his mouth. However, it quickly healed up, and Aeolus stood up back up and rushed towards the soldier.

This process repeated six times before Aeolus found something out that the soldier was doing. He found it while falling to the ground one time, and realized how he was dropping to the ground without even seeing where he was hit. It was utilizing his technique to hit the opponent after they passed a string, right in the blind spot. That way, their guard would be lowered, and you could puncture them easily. Instead, it changed something there.

It would send in string from everywhere, so that even if he noticed it was coming in from the back, he wouldn’t be able to avoid it. Above all that, the soldier himself moved his body, and it would be floating in the sky just in chance Aeolus did escape. Using this information, he began to set up a new string formation.

This time, he rushed in, but stopped using the flowing water technique. He identified the string himself, and avoided it. The flowing water technique wasn’t strong enough right now, and when things were coming at it from all sides, it would begin to falter, resulting in him getting punctured. At that point, it was better to just go without the flowing water technique.

He was always on guard this time, not letting it cease for even half a second. After a bit, he jumped over a string, and realized that objects were moving in towards him from all sides. He did something a bit new this time, and strengthened his wind and poison affinities to their limit.

He then sent string flying out towards the string coming toward him, and began to deflect them all away. Of course, the soldier just sent them back in. However, Aeolus expected all of this, hence the use of poison and wind affinity. The wind affinity was being used to make sure his string could keep up with the soldiers string, and the poison would continuously rot the soldiers string, until it all rotted away.

After continuously doing the same thing for about five minutes, the soldier had exhausted all of its string, so much so that it was about to begin reeling back the string it had set up on the battlefield as traps to fight Aeolus. However, when it tried to reel in all the string it had used to set up traps, it couldn’t. However, Aeolus knew why it couldn’t quite perfectly.

Power-wise, he was still a bit superior to the soldier, so his string could keep up with its string even without the wind affinity. The wind affinity was used so that some of his extra string could go around and destroy the traps that the soldier had set on the battlefield. Now, the fruits of his effort were showing, and he realized he was evolving at a rapid pace.

He once again rushed at the soldier, which put its hands up. Knowing that it had run out of string, it couldn’t just turn around and begin to run, or surrender, so it decided to fight hand-to-hand with Aeolus. However, Aeolus did not have enough mercy to stop using his string and fight with it directly.

Aeolus was just rushing to it and using himself as a distraction, while the real move was being set up around them. However, by the time soldier had realized this, Aeolus had already flown up, and it was pierced by all sides, disintegrating back into Aeolus’ soul. Aeolus had used his ultimate move, ‘string arena’, and killed it off by using himself as a distraction.

He healed up the soldier well enough, and summoned it back out.

“You are truly impressive master, I expected at least fifty more rounds before you could even come close to victory.” the soldier said, speaking as honestly as it could. Even if it didn’t speak, Aeolus could hear its thoughts, so there wasn’t anything it could hide from him.

“Now that you’re superior to me knowledge-wise, power-wise, and skill-wise, there isn’t much of a chance left for me or any other soldier to beat you.” the soldier said, with the truth embedded in every word within the sentence. It seemed to kneel even deeper this time around when talking to Aeolus, but this just represented that it respected him even more now.

“There’s nothing that you can teach me anymore, and I think I’ve surpassed my limits enough in this one session. We’re going to go free that uncle from the slave prison.” Aeolus said calmly, with a wise look in his eyes. He felt as if he had truly gained enlightenment during this session. It wasn’t all about knowledge and power, it’s about how you use it as well.

Aeolus absorbed the soldier into the dark mist, and flew towards the sky. He detected the string he had left in that city, and soared towards it. After a minute or two of flying, he had crossed the necessary miles, and arrived in front of the city. He didn’t stop flying though, and kept going until he detected the slave prison deep within the city.

He wasn’t patient enough to sit down and calmly strategize a plan, as in the end, he was still a kid who moved based on his emotions. He wanted to free this uncle from the village so much, so even though he didn’t come in blazing, he didn’t come in calmly either. He hid his aura and passed through the guards easily.

He arrived at the cells, that seemed exactly like the ones he used to stay at when he was in the top six hundred. Thinking back to those days, Aeolus smirked to himself, and kept moving on. He didn’t know what cell his uncle was in, so he had to stop and take a look in each one individually.

After doing it for about half an hour, he had finally found the cell where the uncle was lying in. He had a stomach that looked extremely thin, and a beard that made him look like the master of a certain magical school. Aeolus kept staring at this uncle, with a wistful look in his eye. He didn’t know how his village had fallen so low, but he was dedicated to saving them.

He cut the bars using his string easily, and walked in. The uncle seemed surprised, but he clearly didn’t have the energy to even move his legs, which nearly brought Aeolus to tears.

“Y-Y-You, who are you…?” said the uncle in a dying voice, his life force clearly exhausted. Aeolus didn’t blame him, as he was also exhausted, but he had only stayed for months, not even a year. However, this uncle had been staying here for nearly three years, so he had every right to seem and act tired.

“We can discuss that when we get out of here.” Aeolus said, and picked up the old uncle. The shackles on the uncle were beginning to radiate, and the uncle released a pained moan. Aeolus cut them off right away, not willing to see his uncle in more pain. Aeolus sneakily escaped the slave prison, and flew off back towards the cave where he had stayed and fought the soldier out of.

While flying, he was sending spirit out of his fingertips and into his uncle, who was healing at a rapid pace. Even if Aeolus did not have an affinity related to healing, just the strength of his spirit was more then enough to heal a person who hadn’t even reached the foundation levels.

After flying for a few more minutes, he arrived in front of the cave. He landed down, and brought out his soldier. He ordered the soldier to also infuse spirit into the old uncle using his emotions, and the soldier followed suit. After ten minutes of just kneeling over the uncle and infusing spirit into him, he had finally woken up fully.

“Aeolus… is that you?!” the uncle roared, now fully healed. In the slave prison, he seemed like a seventy year old, but now he looked like his normal age, a forty year old. He couldn’t believe that it was Aeolus who broke him out of the slave prison, and much less that he was the one who healed him.

“Yes uncle, it’s me.” Aeolus said calmly, not willing to invoke any emotions within the uncle that were too severe. Who knew what would happen if he got such strong emotions right after he healed, he could have a heart attack, or something along those lines. However, just him confirming that he was Aeolus had already invoked an extreme emotion in the uncle.

“H-How did you get out of slavery? Why are you so powerful, at least in healing, and why?!” the uncle was extremely confused, and did not understand the situation at all. Aeolus, who had realized he needed to explain everything, sighed and put the soldier back into the dark mist. He then sat down with the uncle, and began to explain everything in detail, so that he wouldn’t pester him with more questions. Of course, Aeolus knew that the uncle was just worried and confused, so he didn’t blame him.

Thus, Aeolus began to recite his whole tale from scratch.

--- sequence 2 ---

“I see, so that's how we ended up in such a situation. Still, wasn’t peace the way of our villagers?” the uncle asked, this time with wisdom and knowledge in his eyes. After Aeolus had described everything that had happened in the period of time when he was a slave, even he felt like he got younger, just from the information!

“Peace is the way of our village, but this world refuses to accept peace. I’ll be the one to break the peace within the village, while the rest can maintain their ways. For now, I need you to tell me something uncle.” Aeolus said, with a serious look emerging on his face. The uncle realized just how much Aeolus had matured, considering that he used to be a rotten boy who would wipe his snot all over his shirt. He began to listen intently, ready to answer any question that may be launched at him.

“Can you tell me if any other villagers have become slaves within the prison?” Aeolus asked, with killing intent rising. If there were any more, he would fly back right away, and save them all. However, the uncles sad look immediately influenced the killing intent within Aeolus to rise.

“There were others who came with me, but they were all women. Most of them have… gone away. Only one of them remains, and she is a concubine to one of the nobles of the city. She also happens to be my wife, Christine.” the uncle replied honestly, not hiding anything to Aeolus. He realized that if the village were to ever continue, considering Aeolus’ power, he would be the one in charge. For that reason, he trusted him fully.

‘This… is a far worse situation than I had imagined.’ Aeolus said to himself in his mind, while his killing intent was literally leaking out in the form of spirit. She had placed herself in a far worse situation then being a slave, and was being used as a mere toy!

Aeolus tried to calm himself down, because he knew he couldn’t even begin to compare against the nobles, much less the guards of the nobles. However, he couldn’t calm down, as he had even more motivation now then when he saved the uncle.

“Two months, that’s all this city will get before I raid it and decimate it.” Aeolus decided, not sparing any mercy on such a low-life city. If he didn’t teach the world manners now, then when would he?

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ABOUT ME

Name: Abdul Kareem

Age: 13 (Almost 14)

Occupation: Middle school

Goal: Idk, I’m just making a novel for now

Location: Why would I say that?

Relations: I’m not married (duh)

Favorite food: da asian stuf!

Anyway, on a more serious tone, this is my first novel I’ve ever tried writing. Thanks for being with me on this first experience! If you could also somehow get others to read this novel too, I would be pretty grateful!