Dyon didn’t even feel like giving a second thought to what happened, he instead preferred to eagerly head to the cultivation library. It was too bad he had no idea where it was, so he settled for wondering around aimlessly until he found a good person to ask.
Soon, he was lost in his thoughts as he walked around.
‘it isn’t that it isn’t true that the soul is highly important in understanding wills… it’s just that it isn’t the only important part. There’s a very important reason why you can’t understand an intent unless you break into the essence gathering stage. In fact, those who weren’t considered as geniuses in their youth, probably would ever understand an intent even if they stepped into essence gathering.
The level your will reaches isn’t so much about understanding. Although understanding is important, a will is more like an aspect of the world you’re diving into. Like… someone might be able to train themselves to punch harder and harder as they progress. However, a punch isn’t necessarily an art form. Thus, you could consider a martial art as a path of understanding in a will. The most basic difference between a 1st layer will and a 9th level will, is how much power it produces. The true understanding of how to use it, is where people truly differentiate.
However, it still isn’t so simple to separate the two. Understanding and will level that is. Because, a good understanding can directly boost the level your will reaches. However, the only way to truly master a will, is by comprehending a path along with your will level…’
Dyon was fascinated by how the martial world worked. Everything seemed to be connected. Wills could temper your body and energy cultivation, but it also couldn’t be understood without a soul to connect to the world. A soul could manifest, but it seemed like that was also fueled by your bloodline or body cultivation. And for some reason, Dyon was so absolutely sure that all of this somehow connected with array alchemy… or at the very least, the philosophy behind it.
Dyon smiled to himself, ‘I’ll figure this all out soon enough’
**
Moments after the lecture ended, and long after Dyon had left, Elder Flyleaf exited the hall with a complacent and thoughtful smile on his face, entering what looked like a lobby made for those of high standing.
“I haven’t seen you smile in quite a while Flyleaf, what’s got you so happy?” an elder dressed in similar acacia embroidered robes as Elder Flyleaf questioned him.
“I met an interesting human boy today,” there was an odd glint in Flyleaf’s green eyes.
“Human? Since when did we have humans in our school?”
“Well, it’s not the first time a human has come here… although he didn’t join our academy. That aside, I believe only the headmaster could have allowed such a thing to happen without us elders knowing…”
Unlike Benes and Ryba, Elder Flyleaf was far more experienced. For a human to enter their school without any elders being aware could only have been done by someone with sufficient power to ignore even the elders. At that point, there was only 2 possibilities, but the other was unlikely.
“The headmaster? Well, wasn’t his late wife human? That sounds like case closed, what else could be interesting about that?”
“Even the headmaster wouldn’t allow a human in that didn’t meet the criteria of the school. Don’t you know how rare it is for humans to have innate soul power? What’s more, this boy has an innate aurora.”
The elder’s playful expression suddenly turned serious, “do you think he could be useful? Him being here likely means that he has no real ties to the human martial world…”
Elder Flyleaf let a small smile grace his lips, “I don’t know if he’ll be so easily manipulated. He completely brushed off my soul pressure earlier today, my suggestion techniques won’t be effective.”
“he brushed them off?… His innate soul strength can’t have been low then… but we’re in sore need of talent that hasn’t been influenced by higher level experts…”
“You shouldn’t worry too much about that, Erunonidan. If the headmaster let him in so easily, I’m sure he already has his own plans. Let the chips fall as they may. We haven’t even seen if his soul manifestation will be worth nurturing. He has the looks of an elf, but, if his power base isn’t built upon the same fundamental things as us, he’ll never be properly accepted.”
Elder Erunonidan nodded, “since he has an innate aurora, he’ll probably go to the alchemy or formation guilds right? We have supporters there, it won’t be too hard to keep tabs on him.”
“Ai, also pay attention to any heavenly signs and changes in the soul manifestation leader boards that may occur in the next few days…”
Elder Erunonidan started, “you think his soul manifestation will cause a heavenly sign to come down?…”
Elder Flyleaf’s face hardened, “he may not even be aware of how amazing he is… to be barely 15 years old, and have the ability to create a peak level practitioner array in less than a minute… his level of skill is comparable to the formation guild head already…”
Silence reigned the room.
Because of Dyon’s inexperience with other formation and alchemy masters, he had no way of gauging his skill as compared to them. To Dyon, a saint level expert who was also a formation master should be far better than him at creating arrays. However, he was wrong. Because of the separation of array theory and alchemy, often, the highest levels formation masters reached was the peak master level – in terms of this particular world, anyway. A level that Dyon had already broken into the lower level of just recently. The advantage his innate aurora and intelligence gave him was incomparable to what other experts had.
To Elder Flyleaf, he was aware that Dyon’s soul strength was nowhere near the formation guild master’s, but, the ability to speed array was something he had no concept of. To him, the only way Dyon created a peak level practitioner array was by being able to draw the complete array quickly. Which made him slightly overestimate Dyon, but also underestimate him at the same time. He overestimated Dyon’s ability to speed draw complete arrays. But, he also underestimated Dyon’s intelligence by not considering the fact he could create his own short cuts to emulate such an effect.
Elder Erunonidan sighed, “the best way to know if he’ll be useful or not is once he’s grown enough to participate in the wars…”
A complicated look appeared on Elder Flyleaf’s face, “because of these wars… we’ve lost contact with our king… we lost our greatest ally… the power struggles in our kingdom have reached unprecedented levels… and everyone has seemed to forget the reason we fight these wars in the first place,” the frustration on his face was clear. But, he could do nothing but hold it in.
“All we can do is defend our gate and hope the other races do the same. With the Royal God Clan, humans will always be the rulers of this world. We can only trust that they have everything under control.”
“The previous campaign ended early because of the struggles we’re having here. But, the good news is that because the world tournament is coming up soon, there’ll be many youngsters who want to temper themselves by leading their own campaigns. We should receive reinforcements for the 9th Gate soon.”
Elder Flyleaf nodded, “either way, if he decides to join the Elvin campaign banner, it would do us good. He’s handsome, intelligent, and as long as he marries an elf of high standing, from the right family, no one will have anything to say.”
Despite how much praise Elder Flyleaf heaped on Dyon, Elder Erunonidan couldn’t help but be surprised, “are you sure this is a student you just met instead of your bastard child?”
Elder Flyleaf chuckled, “I just have a good impression of him. If he campaigns under our banner and has good results, it’ll only help us in stabilizing the throne. The traditions that have always chosen our king shouldn’t be done away with so easily. The power-hungry nobles who are so intent on doing away with our old traditions, have already forgotten why those things were our traditions in the first place.”
Elder Erunonidan sighed, “sometimes I can’t help but feel that they have the point… without the help of our long gone ally, is it even feasible to continue with tradition? We haven’t even found a successor appropriate based on traditions.”
Despite Elder Flyleaf’s determination, he had no good answer for his long-time friend. He could only shake his head, “we must trust that things were made like this for a reason. Trust our ancestors and trust the gods we came from. They gave us our strength, our faith and our future. We can’t forsake them.”
“If only the old and devoted generation could still fight…”
“if only we could still fight…”
**
Dyon walked around the school completely oblivious to the fact he had inadvertently become part of something much bigger than himself.
Soon, after wandering aimlessly, Dyon finally found something that resembled a library because of a sign displaying a book. Following up a spiraled stair case in the school pavilion, Dyon suddenly wondered about what Ri could possibly doing. Because of his distraction, he didn’t notice the odd glances he was getting as he climbed the stairs, and couldn’t be bothered to focus on whispers.
“who’s that,” someone looking up asked.
“Don’t mind him, if he’s entering that library, it must be because he has the authority to. If he doesn’t have an allowed access, then someone else will deal with his punishment, there’s no need to get involved and potentially end up with our efforts unappreciated.”
The students who heard him nodded in agreement. They weren’t of high enough standing to really know who had access to this library or not. What Dyon didn’t know, was that this stair case was a direct entrance to the 5th floor of the library of Acacia Academy. In all his searching, he hadn’t managed to find the main entrance. However, the main reason no one stopped him was the same reason those entrances never had any guards to begin with. For one, no one dared to break the rules. Secondly, access to exclusive areas of the school were decided by the amount of soul pressure you could withstand. While Dyon was lost in thought, he hadn’t even noticed that something was pressuring his soul. Or maybe, more accurately, to him, the pressure was so minuscule that it wasn’t worth noticing.
The surrounding crowd could only watch in awe as a boy that couldn’t possibly be more than 15 years old, climbed stairs even the best of geniuses at his age couldn’t.
Soon, Dyon reached the top floor to find a small balcony with a discreet wooden door. But, he noticed the obvious lack of handle, which caused him to freeze, ‘is there another way in?’
Dyon was about to leave in an attempt to find another entrance, but then a thought came across his mind. His eyes flashed with gold and flecks of purple as he looked at the door. A small smile appeared on his face as he noticed an array formation. It was only of the lower master level, so if Dyon wanted, he could simply bypass it, but, he noticed that this formation should have a catalyst. Thinking back to the badge Uncle Acacia gave him, he held it up to the door.
*click
The door pushed in, allowing Dyon in.
The crowd sighed in relief, inwardly praising themselves for not going after someone who had the ability to not only walk to the 5th floor, but to also have access to it.
Dyon was, of course, still oblivious to all of them. He was instead enjoying the sight of the olden style library as the door clicked behind him. There wasn’t a single other person in it other than him. He could smell the old scent of ancient books and their leather coverings. Somehow, the room was devoid of any dust at all.
Rows after rows of books lined the library, yet, there wasn’t a single sitting area. Dyon noticed a dark corridor at the far corner of the room, but he decided to ignore it for now, instead choosing to begin browsing through the books.
‘I should find things about souls and their manifestation… there’s got to be a reason the Celestial Deer Sect didn’t use this technique…’
Dyon had been confused about a few things. For one, he found it odd that he only knew that the Celestial Deer Sect and the Elvin Kingdom were allies through the memories of Ava about the speech Patia-Neva gave at the Elvin Forest World Opening. He had seen nothing about such a thing in his master’s memories. Secondly, if they were really allies, and the Celestial Deer Sect did focus on soul cultivation, why wouldn’t the Elves share the Unique type technique? Clearly it wasn’t a well guarded technique, or else Ri wouldn’t tell him that he could use it if he wanted.
That second point made Dyon a bit apprehensive. One thing he was clear on was that Ri wasn’t very familiar with the human world. Which he found odd since she told him that she was half human… Things weren’t adding up. Since Ri didn’t have an understanding of the human world, she could very well assume that Dyon could use a technique that might only be possible for Elves to use. The idea of this being an exclusively Elvin technique would explain why the Celestial Deer Sect didn’t have the technique in their arsenal. Obviously, if humans couldn’t use it, why have it?
Dyon could only shake his head, focusing on finding books about the Unique Type Technique. But, the more and more he looked, the more confused he got.
There was not a single thing about humans not being able to use the technique. In fact, now that Dyon thought about it, how could the daughter of the headmaster not have been to this library before if he could make it in? If she had been here, if there had been anything about humans not being able to use the technique, not only would she as a half human be apprehensive about using the technique, she would have understood why Dyon couldn’t use soul cultivation type attacks in most battles.
Dyon froze, this could only mean one thing: the technique was within his master’s sealed memories. Which meant… the Elvin Kingdom, their relationship with the Celestial Deer Sect, and everything related, had something to do with the destruction of the Celestial Deer Sect.
Dyon knew he had to check. He slipped his ring off and slipped it in between two books. With a flash, he disappeared into the ring, before he started to walk towards the Celestial Deer Sects library. He had once thought that he would never need to go there since all of the techniques he needed were given to him via the memories of his master, but now he needed to check.
After a long while of walking, Dyon finally made it to the building that held the bodies of his master and her husband. Bowing in respect, he walked past it and towards where the library was in his master’s memories.
Much like everywhere else, the library was a mess. Book cases were destroyed, books were ripped apart and thrown on the floor. In fact, to find a book on an actual shelf here was a rare occurrence.
Dyon sighed, “it’ll be impossible to find anything here…”
Dyon closed his eyes, his body started to shimmer as crystals began to form around him. They slowly began to deform, manipulating themselves into a complex formation.
Dyon projected his 6th sense into the formation. All of a sudden, he could sense everything in the room with incomparable clarity. The use of Celestial Deer Crystals had been made obvious to him long ago: they boosted array alchemy. However, there was something so obvious about that fact that people often missed: if they boost array alchemy, can’t they, by proxy, boost other things as well?
This was the amplification path of crystal will. With it, Dyon could boost his perception among other things. It was perfect for, as an example, scouring millions of books for a specific thing.
‘Almost like an in real life control F function,’ thought Dyon with a chuckle, sitting down in the middle of the messy room.
Hours went by as Dyon felt as though he was reading through hundreds of books at once. If it had nothing to do with the soul, he ignored it. If it wasn’t a technique, he ignored it. If it didn’t have the word ‘manifestation’ in it, he ignored it.
‘maybe I’m just being paranoid?…’
Suddenly Dyon’s mind shuddered. He immediately jumped up.
Dyon soon reached a pile of shredded books. He started rifling through them until he came to one that was seemingly untouched.
‘it really was here… what’s the story behind this…’
In Dyon’s hand, a thin 6in by 6in book rested. He slowly wiped off the dust on its cover and took a deep breath as he read the title.
‘Unique Type Soul Cultivation Manifestation – by RR Sapientia’