Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 829
🕑 Added 2025-02-25 01:19:01 +0000 UTCWe took the trip to Ironreach slow. I was concerned about being noticed now, not just by the godchildren, but possibly by the Void Child too. I had faith in the candles (because realistically what could I do if they didn’t work?) but I decided to be cautious. Slowing down meant more time to process each area with Murmur, which meant better stealth.
While we walked, I left Callie to her own devices and hung back to talk to someone else I’d been worried about…my apprentice. Bella looked tired, if excited, but I could see a bit of fear in her eyes.
Thinking about it, Bella had been through a lot. From being a casual bandit on Rackham to storming a dangerous dungeon, the hits had just kept coming for her. I slowed down to stroll next to her, not bothering to say anything, just letting her get her thoughts in order to decide what she wanted to say, if anything.
“Is it always like this?” she eventually asked. “Being…powerful? I mean, these people are scary. Seeing you and those other two fight back at that village, I’ve never seen anything like that. One the one hand it’s amazing, knowing I might reach that point, but on the other, I feel like this water is too deep for me, if you’ll excuse the pun.”
I chuckled. “You know the trick to surviving in deep water?” I asked her wryly. She shook her head. “Be a shark. Ascendants are a lot like sharks. If you don’t move forward, you might not move at all. In my experience, growing as an Ascendant is about momentum. Seize the initiative, then keep it. Show you’re amazing, then use the power from that demonstration to be even MORE amazing.”
“Master,” she said in exasperation. “No offense, but I’m not sure you can give me reasonable advice on this. You and your friends are all monsters.”
“All great Ascendants are monsters,” I told her bluntly. “Some of them are polite, or kind, are fun, but they’re all creatures that are no longer humans. Normal people don’t become high rankers. My Uncle gave me this same speech when I was younger, and I didn’t really fully grasp it until now. Teaching really is the best way to learn, I guess. I thought he was warning me that becoming powerful would change me, but he was also saying I’d have to change to become powerful.”
She cocked her head in confusion. “Master, you just said the same thing twice.”
“No,” I laughed. “It just sounded like it. What I mean isn’t that normal people can’t adapt to the process, it’s that normal people don’t even have the right state of mind to attempt it. It takes a special kind of monster to cultivate the mindset of a high ranker, and you have to have that mindset to get there. You can’t think of yourself in comparison to most people, or other people. You have to compare yourself to the limits of what you can imagine.
“Don’t ask ‘am I as strong as this guy in front of me?’, ask, ‘am I as strong as the strongest guy who has ever BEEN in front of me?’ Find the limit of what you think you can achieve and push past it,” I continued with enthusiasm. “Because if you can surpass your limits for just a moment, and someone else hears about it, your new limit will be even further. That’s the nature of being a living legend.”
She looked…energized. I was happy to see my speech had helped, at least a bit. It was one of my better speeches as a teacher, I think, and I wondered if Zeke had felt the same mixture of pride and expectation when he gave me his version of this speech.
“Anyway, I want to do a bit of training while we travel,” I told her cheerfully. “Nothing directly combative, just some control exercises. Want to join me? I THINK I might be able to help you learn one of my established techniques now.” I was planning to try to teach her ‘Extinction Event’ since I had such a good grasp on it. Beyond that, I had some ideas for how to improve it myself, or at least my control over it.
Honestly, I was expanding my repertoire too damned fast. I needed to start over. Slowly refine each step of my process, and start trying to integrate them into a larger combat system. Once I did that, I could figure out what I was missing, and skew my future domains to cover those weaknesses.
My pseudo Domains were all strong, and varied, but just like I could integrate skills and techniques into the domains themselves, I should be able to integrate THEM into larger ‘demi-domains’. Of course, that was just adding more complexity for the moment, I would look into it once I managed to master the abilities I currently had. I knew there was a lot of room for improvement with what I could do, especially with the staff.
Bella nodded excitedly, and I held a hand out. “This,” I told her solemnly. “Is Extinction Event. It’s a powerful instantaneous combat technique, relying on the principles of explosion and annihilation.” I explained the mechanics and imagery of the Extinction Event. “The foundation of this move is the black flame of Mephistopheles. Since you’ve come into contact with that, and have the Skill for it, you should be able to use this technique, much like you were able to learn a version of my Waltz.”
Or rather, Supernova Step, my mother’s technique that I based it off of. But the logic held up. She could use Mephistopheles, at least momentarily, so she should be able to create the event.
“Now, beyond instinctual power release, I’m also planning to refine my control.” I focused, and in my palm, an orb of annihilation the size of a pinhead appeared. I locked it down with my willpower, then started to expand and contract it. One moment it was the size of a pea, then a baseball, then a pin again. I varied the speed, the intensity, I even slightly altered the shape. I gave Bella ample time to study and perceive it as I worked.
It was hard. I hadn’t expected to run into this kind of a challenge, thinking my willpower and soul were both more than up to any challenge. But it turned out while my raw power with techniques was pretty much at its peak, and kept climbing, my finesse had lagged behind. Automating the Skill with the library hadn’t helped, even if it hadn’t hurt as much as I might once have assumed.
This was more…technical. Like Callie had said before, it was like muscle memory, but now I was learning to control exactly how that muscle flexed when I was paying attention. I focused on the Event. Larger, smaller, shaping in patterns. Bella watched, entranced as I turned the dark sphere into a star, a pyramid, and a few other very basic geometric shapes.
It was an odd sensation. It felt draining, but not on my soul, really. At least not the same way as I usually felt soul strain. I’d experienced something like it during training once before, but it was so long ago I couldn’t remember the exact instance.
After about ten minutes, Bella got a determined look on her face, coming to a stop. I did the same, though I also triggered Mornax, just in case. The others kept going for a bit, then stopped and turned around. “I think I’ve got it master!’ Bella said solemnly. “Stand back! I’m going to use Extinction Event!”
I didn’t stand back. I was in Sammael and Mornax at the same time, not to mention wearing C-rank armor. She couldn’t have moved me with a D-rank forklift.
She held out her hand, palm up, and STARED. And stared. And stared. Her face turned red, cheeks puffing up and sweat beading on her forehead. Nothing happened. She growled, then removed her staff from storage and started practicing the Mephistopheles stance, moving slowly through the motions as she tried to find the headspace.
That made sense. She couldn’t use the forms naturally, so needing to perform the stance in order to execute the technique was understandable.
She moved slowly, feeling it out, and then, finally, she lashed out with a thrust and yelled…and a small hayseed sized black sphere appeared at the end. My hand snapped out, wrapping around the staff as I slammed my will down on her technique. I’d created it, and the form she was using to channel it, and I could just FEEL the energy. I held it in place, then glanced up at her. “Alright, you’ve got it, now reel it in. Give me some more power.”
Nodding tightly, she growled, eyes narrowing as she poured her will into the staff. I was holding the technique in place, something I had no idea I could DO before this, but I suspected had something to do with the library and the tome containing Extinction Event. It was something to look into later, at any rate.
I felt her will flow through the technique, and I let it, just maintaining the shape. I was pretty sure she could have wrested it away from me with almost no effort, this was only working because she was allowing it, but it was still amazingly useful.
As I watched, the hayseed sized black sphere began to grow. First to grape size. Then to a golfball, then finally to the size of a small plum. It stopped there, and I had to hold it together because Bella’s will was getting shaky. Then, just like she’d seen me do, she pulled back on it, shrinking the orb.
It was slow, and irregular, and the shape wavered in a way that was obviously unintentional. But it happened. She flexed the willpower in the technique, altering it and slowly controlling it until finally, she fell backwards.
I released the technique, but not the staff, using the stick to catch her and pull her back up to her feet. She wobbled a bit, but I clapped her on the shoulder proudly. “That was fantastic Bella! You got it! Do you think you can do that again? Once you recover I mean, don’t try it now. How does your soul feel?”
“Sore,” she groaned, rubbing her temples as she put away the staff. “That was really hard. I saw a lot of weird stuff.”
“Not surprising,” I said, waving her off. “But you didn’t answer. Can you do that again?”
She paused, thinking it over, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah I think I can. It’ll take a lot of practice, but I think I can do it. I think my Goetia Staff Art improved too. It didn’t rank up, but it improved. Maybe that’s how I’m supposed to train it? Learn to use the energy outside of the stances. Do you think I’ll eventually be able to use the forms like you can?”
We walked back to join the others as we talked. “I suspect you will,” I confirmed. “At the very least, there’s a bunch of ranks of the staff art to go. I can’t imagine at the Grandmaster rank you won’t be able to tap into the forms manually.”
I wondered if she could REACH that rank right now. I’d made the Skill, but it was a genuine part of the system now. Whatever that meant. If other people could learn it, could they surpass me? Or would they be stuck until I ranked up and paved the way? It was a fascinating subject, and one I’d be looking forward to studying…in the future.
But for now, I had other things to worry about. Like the giant collection of black metal towers jutting into the sky off in the distance. I’d already asked the Citizen about it, so I wasn’t surprised by their appearance. We’d arrived at our destination. We’d officially made it to Ironreach.
