Looking even closer and reaching out with his senses as well, Roy could feel that the fist-sized blob of Essence was moving in about fifteen different directions at once. He was shocked that a shapeless mass of energy could hold such a complex pattern all on its own, but it gave him an idea of what to look for now.
If he was right, this technique would take months, if not years, to master. Either that or his fine control over Essence would have to improve to an almost insane degree. Dismissing that thought for now, Roy focused once again on the blob in his hand and concentrated on the innermost layer of Essence.
Breathing in his cycling pattern, Roy sped up the rotation of the essence in its current direction, watching with bated breath as it slowly pulled together into a perfect sphere. A grin broke out across his face as he moved to the next layer and sped up the rotation of that one, too. He was happy to note that as soon as he got the Essence rotating at the speed he wanted and moved on, it didn’t return to its previous state. Rather, it continued to rotate at his chosen speed.
It took him nearly a full minute to get the second to last layer spinning, and by that time, his head was aching with the strain. He kept going, feeling that the technique was almost there. Looking down at the glowing golden sphere in his hand, he spun the last layer in a counter-clockwise direction, watching as it smoothed to a perfect sphere.
Then, as he felt the technique lock into place, the small sphere expanded, growing in size until it was as large as his head. His eyes widened as he watched the individual layers peeling themselves apart and becoming semi-translucent. Staring inside the technique was like looking into a vortex of light, all spinning in different directions.
“Oh, wow! Would you look at that? It’s so pretty…What does it do?” Geon asked.
“I’m not sure,” Roy replied honestly.
He now knew that this was a true Projected technique. The only question he had now, as Geon had asked, was what it did.
“Well, throw the thing then. It’s really pretty to look at, but I wanna see what it can do.”
Nodding, Roy prodded Ferry until the ferret came to a stop. The trees had begun to noticeably thin by now, but there were still some pretty stout ones around. Picking a tree that looked to be about twenty paces around, Roy pulled back his arm, then threw the attack.
Instead of arcing through the air as he’d expected, the sphere shot from his hand like a lightning bolt, covering the thirty yards between him and his chosen target in under two seconds. The sphere made contact, hitting the very base of the tree.
The moment it did, it expanded to nearly five feet in diameter, the inner workings of the technique spinning faster and faster. Soon, the sound of howling wind seemed to fill the entire area, as the sphere of golden light spun.
Roy stared as the technique shredded the trunk to splinters, tearing up the ground around it and churning the grass and dirt to a fine pulp. The whole thing lasted maybe five seconds, and when the technique faded, it left a five-foot hole where the base of the trunk used to be. As though in slow motion, the tree fell to the ground with a loud crash. Even from where he sat, Roy could see that the cut was so clean, that not even a single splinter poked out.
The forest was completely silent, and Roy simply stared at the area that had just been completely obliterated by his attack. He’d had no idea that he had a technique like that in him. Who cared if it took him ten years to perfect it, for an attack like that, it was definitely worth it!
“Huh,” Geon said, sounding at once for a loss of words. “I don’t know why, but I was expecting more of a boom. Can’t say I’m disappointed, though.”
“Yeah,” Roy answered, suddenly feeling very tired, but extremely satisfied. “Neither can I.”
***
Tonde Irusaru nodded in appreciation as the fifty-foot tree came crashing to the ground. He’d been keeping careful tabs on the boy ever since he left the village where he’d nearly died. It would appear that his interest was indeed warranted. That the boy had managed to conjure a technique like that at all was astonishing, but that he’d managed to do so at 1st Dan White was almost unbelievable.
In fact, if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes and sensed it with his Ethereal sense, he wouldn’t have believed it at all.
The boy was odd, that was for sure. He would have near-constant conversations with himself. Either that, or he was talking to the oversized ferret he was riding. And that was another oddity. He wouldn’t have expected a White-Belt with no apparent clan affiliation to be able to afford a Beast like that. The real question remained. Who was this boy?
Whenever he scanned his core, it always felt normal, but there was something there that he just couldn’t quite place. Some intangible force that made it feel off, somehow. Whatever it was, Irusaru was sure he’d figure it out. Judging by the direction the boy was taking, he was headed straight for The Crater. If he was going there, there was only one place he could be headed.
Irusaru realized that he’d been daydreaming and had nearly lost sight of the boy. Grumbling to himself, he straightened on the tree branch on which he was perched and stretched his back. A loud series of pops sounded as he did so, and he let out a contented sigh.
He really was getting too old for this.
Cycling Qi through his body, Irusaru flashed forward, skipping across the branches of trees without making so much as a sound. His steps were so light, in fact, that the branches didn’t so much as tremble at his passing. It took less than six seconds for him to catch up to the boy, at which point he slowed to a regular pace. He didn’t want to outstrip him, just in case he decided not to go to The Crater. It wouldn’t do to lose someone of his potential to a rival clan.
22
“So that’s it. The Crater,” Roy said from his perch atop Ferry’s back.
They’d finally reached it after twenty-three days of travel, arriving two days after he’d wanted to get here, and they weren’t technically even there yet. They were standing atop a hill at the edge of the Waterwood and were staring out at the stormy landscape stretching as far as the eye could see.
The ground took a sharp decline just fifty yards ahead and would continue down for thousands of feet. The Crater looked exactly as Roy had imagined it: miles upon miles of blasted rocky plains. Nothing seemed to be growing there, and constant lightning storms lit up the sky for as far as the eye could see.
He could make out the small dots of settlements here and there, but aside from that, it was all stone.
“Yup, that’s it. As you can probably already feel, the area is practically brimming with Power Essence.”
Geon wasn’t wrong. Even now, he could feel the quality and quantity of the Essence increasing. He couldn’t see what the Essence in the actual Crater looked like, as his senses couldn’t yet stretch that far, but from what he was seeing, it would become denser as he continued moving.
The only problem with continuing on was the obvious danger this landscape posed. For some reason, Beasts seemed to be drawn to their little group, and he just couldn’t figure out why. He’d never heard anyone from the Shah clan complaining about that when they left clan territory, so why did it seem that he was a magnet for them?
“Better get moving, then,” he said, nudging Ferry forward with his knees.
He didn’t relish the thought of going down into that, but he had no choice if he wanted to advance before the deadline. When the alternative was death, he was suddenly a lot more motivated to do so.
Even as Ferry walked, Roy began cycling. It wasn’t nearly as effective as it would have been if he’d gotten into the proper position, but it was still better than nothing. Even from where he sat on the ferret’s back, he could feel the power of the distant storms. At first, he’d thought that the storms themselves were what caused the Power Essence to form, but now, he realized that it was the lightning.