NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter-163 Change in Approach
“Are you going to let him come with us though?” Kidd asked, sucking the bleeding cut on his finger.
“Perhaps,” Ewan said. “If he really can help us navigate, I don’t mind brining another baggage along.” He sat back down on the root, where the moss didn’t grow, where the wood had smoothened over the year to become his seat, and took out his journal. The promised one year lapsed. He’d done all he could as a Step-0 Severynth. It was now time to prepare for the next stage—the Spirit-Nebula stage.
“Boss! I’m not a baggage anymore. I’ve already learned how to control my state too,” he said. “I can fight with you now.”
“Say that when you can keep up with Frost and Orange for over ten minutes.”
“They’re too strong, Boss, it’s not an equal comparison,” Kidd said. “But I’ve been working on this new move, I can defeat them with it.”
“It’s not one of your childish over-the-top named skills again, is it?” Ewan said, flipping the pages over to the part that detailed the rite for advancement and the complementary potion—Prairie Fire, his predecessors named the rite and the potion so to match the untamed blaze it ignited.
“No, Boss, it’s the real deal this time,” he said. “Remember how Willy moved around like shadows? We’ve been practicing that move. Look.” Threads of inky mist appeared around him when he postured with a deep breath, and he exploded forth, his speed surpassing a Kyron’s. The recoiling wind ripped the grass in his trail, and the branches bent to their ends. A jutting root spoiled his landing, however, and he tripped and rolled over before lying flat on the ground, blades of grass stuck in his hair. He also ate some.
Explosive linear movement was Orange’s domain. Kidd copied him, but the fuel that powered the two differed after all. The fire element suited Orange’s violent fighting style, but Kidd couldn’t master it, for the dark element didn’t excel at eruptions. From bizarre effects to stealth, from deaths to scourge, the dark element ruled these fields. And since melee interested Kidd more, stealth was his optimal style.
“Yeah, it’s quite impressive, you can easily kill the enemy when he’s dying of laughter,” Ewan said. “Here, it’s the new version.” He took out a thin notebook and tossed it to Kidd.
“You changed the last one already?” Kidd asked, flipping the notebook on the ground, his eyes shuttling on the pages.
“It was causing some conflicts, this version should solve them,” he said.
After several tests and experiments, Ewan finally figured out the factors that pushed Kidd and Walyn into their current situation. The sheer ease with which Kidd manipulated the Dark-Anima hinted at a high affinity, and the test confirmed it at Favored-level. Even in that, Kidd showed an elevated level of physical empathy with the undead types.
This should have originally given him a strong start on the Severynth path with a talent in the dark element that others could only envy. Yet, coincidences piled up, and with Walyn’s stimulation at the verge of his demise, Kidd awakened prematurely, and they merged into a new path—a path that resembled the Cerades, the olden sages.
Severynths’ concepts and ideas didn’t work for Kidd anymore, so Ewan had to research and develop a new method for him to train from the scratch—it took several inspirations from the Cerades’ path before he had his meditation prototype.
“What about this movement skill?” Kidd asked. “How do I improve it?”
“It doesn’t suit you two, change it,” Ewan said, going back to his journal. “Don’t seek linearity, try to use the anima for stealth and nimble motion.”
“How do I do that?” Kidd asked, scratching his scalp.
“Learn,” he said. “Start practicing with daggers, once you’re used to them, I’ll give you my Obsidian.”
“Really Boss?” Kidd beamed, his eyes widening. “I’ll buy them today!”
“If you’re going down, go check on Cork too,” Ewan said. “Ask him how much longer he’ll take for the next batch of slaves.”
“Okay.” Kidd bobbed a nod. “By the way, Boss, we need to change the burying place. It’s almost full.”
“Change it then. I’m almost done too; most likely I’ll get the results with the next batch.” He heaved a dejected sigh.
His research on the mystic rune had come a long way. Theories shed the light, and the experiments on the slaves paved the way. Wrong hypotheses led to potholes and finally iced his momentum at the end of the road, but they still helped him find the right direction.
The instability of the transmuted runes he created in the slaves’ soul space forced him to take a step back—regardless of the fuel the <Transmute> spell used to create them, they all collapsed in a few minutes. Failures after failures changed his approach, and thus, his current strategy was to create a potion through <Transmute> that would mimic the effects of the <Contract> spell and create a mystic rune based on his natural affinity. If it succeeded, Ewan would become his own Astylind.
This would solve not only the problem of the unstable rune, but also the mismatch with the Elementalist subtype. After all, if he created a rune without an Astylind, it wouldn’t link with the subtype, let alone become his mainstay element. The only roadblock was that the quality of the fuel needed to animate his ideas skyrocketed. The final results were still pending, he needed one more batch of slaves for it, but if his conjectures stood true, then nothing he owned or could own with his current balance was enough to create that potion.
Now, the only factor that could change the outcome was the cave. And with the stationary pings from his <Spoor> spell that signified the man’s stable vitals at the estimated end of the cave, Ewan finally achieved it—the dozens of Kyrons’ sacrifices finally broke the traps.
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