Chương 61: Chapter 58: A Way

Like most skills, the secret to playing the violin becomes heavily evident once I get my groove on it. It was the oldest trick of all. Practice. Master Kaius, with whom I had a couple of musical sessions, said the same thing. There was no alternative to practice in the way of mastery. Even when it came to music or playing a musical instrument, talent might have its place, but even the most talented soul couldn't find their way without practice.

I could play a few songs with no mistakes after putting in some good practice in my off time. As for singing, I lacked the necessary talent, to say the least.

"That was some song," Eran muttered, clearing a line of sweat from his face.

"So erratic towards the end."

"Vengeful Spirit by Master Therin," I said with a grin, particularly proud of this piece. Unlike most musicians, Master Therin seemed to have taken it upon himself to compose songs that always reached for the very boundary of what was possible with an instrument. When I first heard it, blood seemed to sear through my veins with an overwhelming raw emotion taking over me, something that shouldn't be possible with mere sounds.

But music usually did what was impossible, breathe life into the driest heart, invent emotions where there were none. While I was practising ' Vengeful Spirit' on one side, Eran went through resistance training with the help of Diana. Eran had advanced into his Augmenter path a couple of weeks ago, though there was hardly any improvement in his mysterious weave. Not only that, it seemed to be creating even more problems for him.

If before, the patches of swelling skin had been a mere physical ailment, they seemed to be forming lingering scalding now. It took a good talking-to from both his and my parents for him to stop his excessive stubborn practice. Diana, on the other hand, hadn't had any success in forming another aether root. She was likely very close to it. It took her a season and some more weeks to be natural at essence unification, and finally, she was picking up her pace.

Although Diana did have similar capabilities to an Augmentor with enhancement-type essence, she needed more mastery over her essence than her body to advance, and she was particularly good at the former and rather reluctant to push herself in the latter. With merely eight threads of essence, she wouldn't have been effective in training arcane resistance to Eran or even me, with the way of arcane resistance reaching the 4th layer. Thankfully, that was a small problem.

Months ago, I had crafted a gauntlet that let her utilise kinetic waves far stronger than what her eight threads would allow her. With the help of the gauntlet, she could utilise kinetic force twice or thrice her initial power. The only issue that remained was the essence supply. Even with her essence reserve improving, Diana's essence seed would not even let her utilise the shaping for more than 5 minutes. That was where the essence cell came in. I only utilised a rather small one with the capability of 8 Seu.

My maths said that at its fullest charge, the essence cell would go on at its lowest power for an hour and 20 minutes at its peak. But in effect, it could merely go on for about a quarter of an hour at its peak. No essence cells were 100% efficient. The phoenix pendant on my neck came eerily close, stopping a bit over reaching 99%, but halostone was as uncommon as unicorns and phoenixes.

As for the duty of charging the gauntlet, it mostly fell upon me, as Diana would need to relentlessly infuse her essence into it, recovering and exhausting her essence for a whole day to have it at 100%, while it took merely a few minutes for me. However, it did take away over three-quarters of my essence reserve. The maths were not quite linear with the amount of essence an essence seed could hold.

Other than having more Aether roots and essence threads, Weight seemed to hold a huge role in it, and the Weight of my essence was 340% more than Diana's. With the last two advancements, I deliberately invested both of the points into empowering Weight.

"And the essence is gone!" Diana heaved, with the glowing runes on the gauntlet dying. She flopped like a withered plant, sitting back on the grey grass from last week's ashen storm.

"And even if it had more, I cannot go on any longer." Those words would have been more logical from Erin's mouth, but my friend still stood, sweat glistening on his form, his thin tunic drenched cold.

"You haven't gotten it yet?"

"It needs a few more minutes, I think," Eran said, while Diana passed me the gauntlet.

"Well, I'll help you with the rest." I put on the gauntlet and linked eight of my essence threads to charge the essence cell. Without keeping Eran waiting for it to charge, I implemented the weave of Kinetic force with twenty-four and slapped it all onto him. That only left eight more threads, the ones linked to the relic. No matter how much I experimented with it, I was hopeless to utilise these into anything other than the enchantments on [Somnus' Reverie].

Even the simple task of charging an essence cell was impossible with those bound threads. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Within a few minutes, Eran's eyes lit up, as a searing essence surged through his channels. His body practically shook, sizzling with the improvement it was going through.

"Congrats," I said before Eran could announce the news of him completing the fifth layer of Arcane Resistance.

"Yeah, thanks... It wouldn't have been possible without your help."

"And mine," Diana peeped one eye open, momentarily up from meditation.

"And you two," Eran said with a content smile on his lips.

"Got eight whole points out of it, and Fortitude has finally gone over 50 points." With his fortitude reaching the second tier, Eran wasted no moment putting his mysterious gift into use, to see if his improved fortitude had any effect on it. After all, everyone's hypothesis about his gift had been that his physical body was too weak to bear it. Eran let out a gnashing cry, clenching his teeth. He took in heavy breaths and persisted with it.

I observed with the green glow of fractal sight in my eyes as the reddish, thin strings of essence threaded through his right arm. His inner weave remained mostly the same, in its messy form, but 16 of those threads seemed to have untangled themselves from the complex system and flowed into a simpler form, channelling through his right arm.

"Do you feel any difference?" I asked him, finding nothing off, other than the threads searing glaringly. Eran inclined his head.

"Not as painful," he muttered, observing his arm. He pinched it, the swelling surfacing on his skin with a tint of red. Her eyebrows knitted together, perplexed.

"Doesn't my skin look more... mellow?"

"Let me check," I said, coming before him to poke at his arm. With 50 points in fortitude, even without flexing his muscles, his arm should have been tough as hardwood. Instead, the response I felt was like poking at a baby's chubby cheek. I didn't pinch, fearing what it might do to him.

"Clench your muscles," I asked him. Eran obliged, and instantly his arm became rock hard, and no matter how hard I poked, I barely seemed to get a purchase.

"Does it always become this?" I asked, knowing the answer to be no.

"The mellowness is somewhat common, but not to this degree," Eran said, furrowing his brows.

"The toughness seems to be something new." Then his eyes widened, a trace of excitement and joy flashing in his young face at the implication.

"This was almost like Harden," I said with some poking and probing. We soon proceeded to do some more examinations with it. Eran could let his arm be in the mellow state for as long as he could endure the toll of his gift, which was about a quarter of an hour. However, the toughening seemed to be limited to a minute or two and exhausted him quite easily. However, that was already more than enough to delight my friend and me. None of us thought that just having Fortitude over 50 would have such an effect on a gift.

Eran's eyes almost turned teary, and I was sure it wasn't from the pain. Even I couldn't stop the smile from spreading on my lips. With this gift, Eran could finally utilise it in the drills and spar. Although it wouldn't be as effective in the short term, who could say how useful it would be once he advanced further?

"This is so great!" Diana squealed, congratulating Eran.

"Ma would be delighted to hear about this," he said, exhaustion surfacing on his face.

"Da too." His parents had spent a large amount of their wealth for an essence tonic to help him advance. He only needed the right moment to take it and advance another step. Hopefully, he could advance before the evaluation. Bidding us goodbye, he dashed to announce the good news to his parents. I could see him returning at the same pace in a few minutes to train some more. That was just how Eran was.

"Well, now it is my turn," I said, returning the charged gauntlet to Diana.

"You don't have to shape the force if you haven't replenished your will." With the gauntlet built, even Eran could charge the kinetic waves at me, though it would only be directed at one place. However, a shaper's capability enabled Diana to utilise the kinetic force anywhere she liked.

"I swear, both of you are the same," the blonde girl pouted, though she didn't decline.

"Always training this Way and that Way."

"I don't always train," I snorted, strumming a sharp melodic tune from my violin, which should work as evidence for my words. Diana snorted, clearly not believing me. She donned the rather large gauntlet on her little hands.

"Ready?" Nodding, I stood planting my feet heavily as the kinetic power gnawed on my body. I didn't rest the strum of the bow on my violin, grooving into a new song. I used eight threads to empower the wooden instrument in case the kinetic wave wore it down. There was only a slim chance of that with the instrument being a masterwork with refined hardwood, but it didn't hurt to be safe.

The tune of Efran's song echoed in the air, as my arms danced while I forced myself to stand at the same spot for the resistance training. My play had not been completely perfect, not compared to what Master Kaius was capable of. I couldn't explain it, but something about his playing seemed to make the song, the story in it all, come alive.

"You are becoming really good at it," Diana said.

"Even the songsters who sometimes play at our tavern aren't as good." I only smiled at that, knowing my mastery was far from what I liked it to be. These were all songs composed by others, not my own work. Some of them were so complex that it felt like I could squander away a decade and still wouldn't be able to make anything half as good. The couple of songs I had written in my off-time might not have been godawful, but they were so bad and embarrassing that I made sure they would never see the light of day.

Before I could move on to another song, which would exhaust all the power within the gauntlet, the spell's voice echoed into my ears. [Congratulations, Way of Education III (10000/10000) is complete.] [+8 unallocated points.] [Way of Self Mastery I (3/5).] Hah, would you look at that, I sucked in a deep breath.

"What was that?" Diana perked up.

"Did you complete a way just now?" Perhaps her senses were more acute than I gave her credit for. I was just about to acknowledge her and even check up on my Profile when a wagon rolled down the path and went in the direction of our house. It was one of those reinforced wagons implemented mostly by the legionaries. One had come and gone to our house before for me to be sure that was the case now as well.

Along with the conscription, they had left a great load of weapons, tools, and materials for Mum to repair and artifice. Looks like they were back to get their commissions. Finally, I'd get my labours' worth, as the number of fabricators I repaired among their commissions was not low.