During the rest of the break Aias rode around on top of Varja, exploring through the forests close by. Apparently Varja was the only beast around so there was no danger to Aias.

Varja had made itself a large territory spanning over several forests and plains. He needed a lot of room as most creatures nearby were too small to fill its stomach.

After having been out for a few hours they came across a little golden fox, normally Varja would have tried to hunt the little thing but he didn’t. Instead Varja bowed its head to it. Aias was surprised by the sudden gesture, why would a Kjil serpent bow to a tiny creature like the golden fox.

Aias was put down from atop of Varja’s back and immediately the tiny fox jumped on him and started to rubbing itself up against Aias. The jump from the little fox hurt a lot but he didn’t mind, the cute little fox noticed the pained grimace he had made and looked ashamed of what it had done. Aias couldn’t be mad, it was so tiny and adorable.

But as the fox sat there looking more and more ashamed it slowly began to glow, the glow quickly turned to a bright shine. The bright light the little fox gave of was intense and blinding, but also somewhat relaxing. The light hit Aias face and a feeling of rejuvenation and strength entered him.

It felt as if the light pierced through his skull, it was powerful, like nothing he had ever felt before. He could feel it push through his mind, there there was like a storm cloud of pain, now quickly being broken apart leaving only himself. The constant headache he had been having was leaving him.

Only when the light had faded could Aias opened his eyes again, he felt something. His face, it was healed. The light had somehow caused the injuries on his face to heal. Aias opened his mouth and began to hum, he would need to adjust to the sudden usage of his vocal cords but now he would finally be able to talk again.

As he looked down at the fox and saw it large eyes looking at him, it seemed just as confused as him. When he finally managed to break eye contact with the adorable little critter, was he able to see a sight he hadn’t expected.

The little golden fox seemed the same but there was a difference, a not so minor one, it now had two tails. One was the sharp red one. But now there was also a murky green one sticking out next to it. The fox didn’t seem to notice the change and just sat there staring at him, focusing on his now healed face.

Aias sat with the little fox for the rest of the day. When the little fox finally noticed the new extension it had gotten it first seemed to be happy, spending most of the day playing around trying to chase its new tails, or waving the two of them around in a colorful display.

During this Aias practiced trying to only sense another of his energies, this time ki. It was just as hard as before, even after six hours he hadn’t been able to sense only the ki. It would most likely take just as long as before. Sigh...

…….

The break was over and Aias was to start his next lesson. He had went back to patiently laying on the bed while his teacher was brewing potions. And like always while the potion was placed on a brewing stand to heat, he was to listen to a lecture to learn.

O’jghar hadn’t asked him how his face was healed, but seemed to have an inkling.

He did seem glad that they were going to start new lessons now. For most of the past month Aias had been stuck with the only problem being himself. Because of that O’jghar could do nothing but watch as he struggled to control the energy of his core.

“Now that you have a functioning formation inside your heavenly energy you will begin learning how to draw it out. This step shouldn’t be to hard, as it is heavenly energy”

“Heavenly energy has a base form that we can make use of and so when pulling it out from our core we don’t have to change it to create our different spells” O’jghar stopped as he noticed Aias had a question.

“You say the base form of heavenly energy is usable, does that means there are more forms it could have?” Aias was happy he had actually asked a question, for the last few months he had been forced to just lay there and stay confused, as his questions weren’t always so straightforward.

“Yes it is known that heavenly energy can take other forms, many are sadly still not known how to achieve by humans. For example the gemstones I have used to help heal your body, they are known as heavenly earth and can’t be produced by humans. They are naturally produced in some crystals over time”

“There is only one known form we can change it to. It is used for heavenly crystal techniques, and those are not something I believe either of us will ever use in our whole lives” O’jghar spoke with a sad look in his eyes. Aias didn’t know why his teacher was so sad about the technique, it most likely held some importance to him but Aias was afraid to ask. However he did have other questions.

“Why would we not be able to use heavenly crystal techniques in our lifetime? And what even are they?” Aias had never heard about them and he had had some interests in heavenly energy as he wanted to know more about the institutes headmaster.

“Well heavenly crystal requires an enormous amount of heavenly energy to produce even a single shard of, so you would need to spend all your life focusing on gathering energy for it”

“The headmistress is actually one of the only people alive in the world who have made any. It was through the power of one of these shards that she took down an entire army. Its power was strong enough to keep five thousand soldiers in place and weaken a general and two knights enough for one person to beat” Aias could clearly see a proudfull look on his teacher’s face as he spoke of the headmaster.

Aias was impressed, thoroughly impressed, such a power was indeed something he couldn’t even dream of creating. Using one crystal to break an army, that must surely place a burden on the creator to produce.

Now it was time to learn the method of getting energy out of his core. “It’s really simple, in fact you know it already” Aias became dumbfounded, what did he mean he ‘knew it already’ Aias didn’t know a thing, that had been proven time and time again when it took eight month for him to learn what others learned in a week!

O’jghar noticed the annoyed look in Aias eyes and proceeded to explain himself “During your time inside the heavenly energy you were moving it around weren’t you. Well now all you have to do is that but from the outside and through the formation” Aias understood the process and started trying immediately.

He didn’t have much hope for himself, it had after all taken four goddamn month to just to set up the formation, which when thinking back made him quite vexed. However everything went smoothly, when he tried to move the energy from outside the core, it worked. The energy didn’t go through the formation immediately but after only a few minutes did it start seeping out of it.

Aias couldn’t believe it. It made him emotional just looking at it. He had finished a step in less than ten minutes. Him, the person who took three month just to find his own core.

But it wasn’t the time to start crying over every success, he observed the energy that came out. It was like a golden mist floating around as he commanded it. It was still only within his consciousness so it had no effect on the rest of the world but the beauty of the golden mist was still captivating to him.

While inside the heavenly energy he hadn’t noticed the mist-like quality of it, but now that it was detached from his core this was what it was. Wait no scratch that, he noticed that though the energy had left the core it still carried a constant connection to it through a thin little sliver of mist. No matter how Aias commanded the energy the little bit connecting it and the core never severed so he had to give up on trying.

Aias wasn’t sure what to do now, he held a little mist cloud but how was he supposed to use it and what if he let it go. It was connected to the core so it shouldn’t drift away but he was still scared that something could happen.

Asking his teacher revealed that if he was to release the energy the little bit of energy holding it to the core would pull it back in, supposedly it was the formation that had ‘spun’ it that way.

…….

Having learned all the steps so far he was at long last going to start learning how to manipulate the energy into a technique. This was it, he was finally going to achieve his first goal.

O’jghar had also been planning what to do and how to introduce techniques, “This will most certainly be the hardest step of the way” That was how O’jghar introduced the lesson.

Aias couldn’t help himself, he began laughing, he was laying there in the bed laughing and crying from the pain of laughing. Up till now how much time had he spent compared to everyone else. He didn’t care how long it was going to take, even if by the time he turned sixteen he had only learned one technique it would still be enough for him to call it worthwhile. This was his life, he wanted to spend all of it learning the mysteries of this world, energy and fighting went second hand. They were there to enhance the experience.

O’jghar had understood why Aias started laughing and let him laugh himself out before starting again. “In order to use a technique you will need to pull energy out of your core then channel it into a second formation. That formation is the catalyst to draw energy out into the world from your consciousness. You will now need to create this formation, and I know you may be worried that it’s going to take a while but it is similar to the first formation you made. The difference being you will be outside the energy and its somewhat smaller. Once it has been made you will have to search for it as well as your core every time you want to use the technique, but you should get used to that pretty fast.”

Aias was taught the formation and quickly began trying to set it up. In the beginning it was quite hard to make the haze become the strukture he wanted it but after about a month of practise had he completed the formation for the technique.

O’jghar gave his praise, after living together for seven months O’jghar had grown quite fond of Aias, he had after all seen how diligently Aias worked and couldn’t help wanting to congratulate him when he did well.

He then continued to the next step in their lessons. “You have now created the base technique ‘purity’ it is very simple spell that only lets the energy go through your body, healing every part of it at the same time. Unless you use a lot of energy it will most likely not do any noticeable difference other than pain relief”

Aias understood the principles of the spell but was confused about one term, ‘base technique’ what did that mean?

“Well observed. Base techniques refer to techniques that can be added onto to change how it works while still fully functioning on their own. For example you will learn purity, it is called this because it makes you pure of ailments. Then we can add on another formation to our technique and purity becomes ‘purify’ the difference being one only let’s the energy go through your body while the new lets you control a spot for it to gather and heal, ‘purifying it’, this spot can even be on someone or something else”

“To use purity you will simply need to channel and guide energy through your new formation and into your body, when it reaches your body you don’t have to do anything else, it will spread through you on its own, healing you”

Aias had already learned how to guide energy through a formation however he was warned that this time it would be a bit harder, as the energy wasn’t contained within a closed space like the core but instead flowing within his consciousness where he had to be in full control for it to work.

This time it took far longer than when trying to guide the energy out of his core. It had only taken about ten minutes for him to do that while this. It took him two months for him to successfully guide it through for just a moment. And he was supposed to constantly channel this.

The moment the completed technique passed through his formation and into his body it gave of a feeling, it was like drinking cold water on a hot day, like laying down after a long run, it was such a comfortable and relaxing feeling going through his body that it almost put him to sleep. The feeling was fleeting, only lasted a moment but knowing that this was how using energy felt. That was enough to elate his curiosity a thousand times. He had finally used a technique!

Looking back at it, since he started energy localisation it had gone about a year and now he had finally used his first technique. The journey felt both long and short, he had barely done anything except lay in bed and concentrate on whatever training he was told to do.

Seasons had passed, his birthday had passed, people had come by, but he had just stayed there in bed trying to improve. When thinking back it felt somewhat depressing, but also worth it.

But now he was confused, his teacher had told him that this was supposed to be the most difficult part of energy manipulation but he had made the formation and used it in only three months, maybe he had improved. Or was there more to come.

“You’ve done well!” O’jghar’s praise came out of nowhere and gave Aias a scare. He had been so caught up in the moment that he forgot all about his teacher’s presence. “Now all you have to do is shorten your casting time and it will be useful” With the praise however came the next lesson.

Now he would need to practice it over and over until he could use it on the fly, currently it took him around forty minutes to correctly pass his energy through once, there was no way an opponent would wait that long. He could understand where the difficulty came.

“Before you continue practicing controlling your energy I believe you should learn how to take in energy and how to block out energy. This will be so you don’t gain energy you can’t use in place of the energy you can. And so you don’t have to wait to naturally gain back your power”

Aias had learned that though he would be using power when he completed his technique that energy would eventually come back to him. With his current amount of heavenly energy it would most likely take six hours or so to gain it all back, and the problem was that not only heavenly energy would fill the void that had been left. Meaning he would slowly run out of heavenly energy.

……..

Aias was to put up a barrier around the whole core out of heavenly energy. This barrier was to be very thin and so it appeared useless. It seemed that even the weakest of pushes would break it, however it wasn’t meant to hold against anything trying to ‘push’ through, just there to ward off any stray energy coming into contact with his core.

His teacher had explained how people got their energy, “Energy that is still natural to the world can freely pass through into the realm known as consciousness that each person has, when it comes into contact with a person’s core it will be attracted to it like a magnet” If he had a barrier out of energy around his core then he could stop certain energies while letting other energies in.

In order to create this barrier he now had to create another formation that would then be used to change heavenly energy into a barrier. The major difference with this formation and the purity one was that this one wasn’t connected to the outside. The barrier created from it would stay in his conscious and only be used in his conscious, having no effect on the real world.

Aias started working on the formation under O’jghar’s guidance. Aias had gotten relatively good at structuring formations after failing so many times, it only took him a week! After having finished the formation he got to working on guiding his energy through it.

He had to be able to maintain a constant flow of energy through it in order for the barrier to be finished. If the stream stopped for even a moment then the whole barrier would be unfinished and he would need to dissolve it and start over again. This was however a very good practice experience as he needed to learn how to maintain a constant flow through a formation. And unlike purity this energy wouldn’t leave him while he succeeded. Meaning he could practice forever.

It took far longer to create the barrier than it took to learn purity, four months. Four months to learn how to make a barrier around his core. O’jghar did explain that, “The barrier has the special quality of allowing heavenly energy in so it’s not as simple to create as purity which only makes the heavenly energy leave the conscious and then spread through the body.

But it was done, he now had a barrier around his core. Wait but if he wanted other energies to make it into his core, then what?