Chương 89: Bend or Break

2 months have passed since the party reunited with the Caravan. June dropped a pair of violently glowing eyes into a sack, emptying almost all the will from his body. He struck a tree with a swift punch, indenting it, and followed up with a palm strike, blasting bark in a radius around it, then following up with a pointed strike, jamming his fingers into the tree, and with a crunch, his fingers ripped through the core of the tree along with a chunk of it.

"Tch." June jammed his hands into his eyes again and tore them out once more and added them to the pile. The purpose of this training was to understand his body at its weakest; his body no longer sent electrical signals around to muscles for them to act, he no longer had muscles, and he was a slurry keeping shape. His will took the place of electrical signals; the denser the will stored in his body was, the faster he was able to react.

If he maintained focus, he would be able to count individual raindrops within an area to the T. June had changed his view on Will; it was no longer a mystical force to him, but the only muscle in his body.

He wasn't sure why it had been rapidly increasing within him, but he rationalized it to be like a growing muscle being tempered by training; just imagining what he would be able to do with formal training gave him shudders, but June had a feeling the reason for his unnatural will, quantity, and recovery rate was part of the voice's influence.

'Or it's because of our connection to the main body.' An arm sprouted from June's hip and whipped out to grab a towel and wipe his back. This was also part of his training; being a flesh-shaper meant that you needed to comprehend what is and what if at the same time. It was a power that allowed a person incredibly straightforward solutions. If a mace wielder lunged too soon to strike their target, they wouldn't reach their foe.

If an axe thrower's arm were grappled, they could not muster the strength to throw their weapon. And if a towel was slightly out of grasp behind you, you would need to turn around and move to it. But a flesh-shaping mace wielder lunged too soon; they would simply extend their arms. If an axe thrower's arm were grappled, they could grow a new forearm to muster strength. And if a towel was behind you, you can extend an arm to grab it.

Flesh-shaping allowed a person new routes through inescapable or inconvenient situations. June grabbed the towel from his other hand after it was gingerly offered to him over his shoulder. After further inspection, his body hadn't changed much since his Dreamer transformation, but even then, it was less lucrative than he thought it was; it simply removed blemishes from his face, made him two feet taller, and removed excess fat from his body.

It took him longer to accept that his body beforehand was pretty well built and looked good, other than the blemishes, but accepting that he was decent-looking beforehand removed the whimsy of it all. June lifted the bag of eyes and walked over to a nearby stream. The Dreamer's aura was the real nail in the coffin; it compelled people to look at him and exuded traits of his personality, which made people more comfortable around him before his secondary transformation that jammed his will into his eyes.

Its concentration made it blinding to look at, but also compelled people to look at it like the sun. He didn't know if he felt better or worse that the charm that compelled others was his own instead of fantastical. He often looked at his reflection and felt he looked slightly better, but he was starting to understand that his Dreamer aura just exuded his personality traits. He kneeled next to the stream and cupped water into his hands before washing his face with it.

He looked deeply into his reflection; his focused look threw him off. He knew his face subconsciously changed when looking at others, and he didn't mind, but seeing his normal goofy smile and unfocused eyes turn into a neutral stare with peering eyes felt odd. June reached into the bag of eyes and crushed one, and his reflection disappeared on account of the light spirits. The water spirits had direct use cases of moderation, while the spirits of light baffled him.

From June's observations, the spirits were able to influence natural elements through non-magical means, meaning they were closer to natural than supernatural. Some commands could overexert them, making them fade, and June felt like pushing them further would kill them outright, so he only used moderate commands. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Spirits were able to use elements almost indefinitely, but they had limits.

He could wring water from the air with the spirits, but not cause it to rain. Light spirits, on the other hand, were more nebulous. June had a hard time finding out commands that were not too intensive, but usable, like making his reflection or shadow disappear, or using them like laser pointers.

Weirdly enough, where the spirits of water flowed around and floated like they were in water, spirits of light were often long streaks or presented themselves like moving refractions, and an even weirder thing about the spirits of light was their odd obsession with his eyes. June inhaled and washed his face once more before removing his bone shoes made with his shaping. He stepped into the ankle-deep stream and extended a palm forward with another upside-down jutting forward.

June still had no luck with forming a mana nexus, but Leonard began teaching him theory anyway. There were several ways of using magic. But the two main ways are manoeuvring and spells. Manoeuvring or manipulation is using the raw element as it is with precise control; it simply lets you control it and move it around using residual magic in the air as scaffolds, making it seem like the nebulous substance you are manoeuvring sprouted wings and began to dance around like a serpentine dragon.

Then there are spells, where mana manoeuvring controls the raw element; spells use predetermined formulas to funnel a specific element or several elements into a desired result. There are no better or worse spells, just effective and less effective formulas. The better your formula, the less mana you use. It is possible to achieve similar outcomes with pure maneuvering, but there is a reason why people opt for spells instead of maneuvering.

Most mages form a nexus and immediately use spells that were chiselled into their minds from a young age; formulas allowed even intermediate Aspirant mages to go toe to toe with Dreamers, and an exceptional Aspirant mage would be indistinguishable to even most Dreamers. In fact, mundane people, and even children of Dreamers and Aspirants, often learn magic in order to achieve the first step of Aspirancy. Magic and Qi shared the title of universal gateway into power.

But, despite magic being one of the two universal gates into power, only the most exceptional Aspirant mages and talented Dreamer mages were capable of pure manoeuvring; most manoeuvring from mages was often spells that achieved a similar effect, while pure manoeuvring was its own thing.

While basic spell-assisted manoeuvring allowed a mage to shape water, lava, stone, air, or plenty of elements, it was often sluggish and only ever used for daily-life use cases such as transporting water, making huts, or cooling yourself with air. Pure manoeuvring, on the other hand, was incredibly risky; cases of mana backflow were common reasons for death or lasting injury when using pure manoeuvring.

It also took exceptional focus and will in order to properly wield a heavily mustered gust of wind, with the best spell-assisted manoeuvring paling to a half-assed gust of wind with pure manoeuvring; only in the case of pure manoeuvring instead of a gust of wind would it turn into an inescapable scythe of wind. June shouted in his mind.

'FOCUS.' June slowly raised a pointed hand up as water slowly followed along through the air in a flowing serpent. He may not have a mana nexus, but with the spirits, he could create his own variant of pure manoeuvring. Every single day, he woke up and trained in several improvised arts, all to embolden his fist, and the pure manoeuvring he was currently doing was one of the hardest exercises of his regimen. He let the serpent of water flow past him and brush against his bristling hairs covering his body.

It may look like a sensual slow dance to a non-mage, but if a mage were to witness what he was attempting, they would probably use every spell in their catalogue to stop his reckless exercise. Despite how slowly he moved his arms and how sensually the water bristled next to him, a single mistake would potentially kill him in this moment; the water flowing around him seemed to move lethargically, but within it, the flow was rapidly increasing beyond safe standards.

With the spirits, he didn't have to worry about mana backflow rushing back into his body and destroying it from within; he simply needed to keep absolute focus and control in order to keep his own technique from instantly killing him. Every time it bristled against his hair, the friction of the seemingly static but impossibly fast-rushing waters instantly vaporized its ends. June stopped his fluid movements and tensed his body before completing the same movements backwards with a slower pace repeatedly.

Each successful repetition of his choreography slowed the unobservable wrath of the water serpent, and slowly and fluidly, he led the serpent back into the stream at the same pace as it originally was. He dropped to a knee; his body was burning, and he was violently shaking.

"1124 seconds."

"That's about… 18ish minutes, a one-minute improvement; good job." The serpentine manoeuvring June created was an original technique with no name as of yet. It required full focus the entire time and full control over every micromovement, meaning it would be just about impossible for anyone other than him to complete. The choreography of the dance, embodied fluidity and the slightest hesitation, would cause rebound to occur.

Rebound while building up flow could kill him by simply causing the water to move uncontrollably, and the torrential water touching him would make a single hit alone capable of eviscerating him.

The real danger of the technique came from slowing the dam-shattering torrent; a single mistake would cause the water to instantly explode in all directions, piercing through everything, not to mention that friction would suddenly come into play once the user lost focus, causing the serpent to boil or possibly even explode the space around it. June lay down in the stream, letting the cold water bob near his ears as it rushed past him.

Despite the danger of his water manoeuvring, it was useful as both a weapon and a tool. But it was currently in its immature form. The spirits of water seemed to present themselves to June more often the better he got at manoeuvring, which was an interesting effect, but as of now, he had no idea what to do with that knowledge. June washed his pits in the stream and rinsed the sweat of his body in the cool river before standing up and grabbing his sack full of eyes.

He needed to head back to the caravan since the second day of rotation was coming to an end. The final training exercise of his regimen took place at the end of every 2 days. It was tiring, gruelling, and painful, but it was a training that carried a lot of benefits for his abilities. Instead of using the mages to power and move the carriages, June would retake the burdenous form from his trek days after the Beast attacked him and pull the 5 long carriages for 12 hours without rest.

Doing so helped him optimize his form and provided a surplus of experience.

'It is painful though.' He threw the sack over his shoulder, ignoring the squishing of the eyes in the bag against his bare back, and wandered back to the caravan.