An astonished look came to Irusaru’s face. Roy’s voice had grown louder and louder as he spoke, and at the end of his tirade, he’d practically been shouting.
Roy, for his part, stared back at the old man, his fists clenched at his sides and his eyes blazing with anger.
Irusaru’s astonishment didn’t last long, and his expression darkened.
“Never in all my years as a teacher has anyone dared speak to me in that way. If you cannot see the difference between respect and servitude, then perhaps I need to teach you the error of your ways.”
“So, what? You’re going to beat me until I submit?” Roy asked with a snort. “Beat me like everyone else has my entire life? Go right ahead, then. I’ve probably taken much worse than you can dish out. And once you’ve made yourself feel better, I’ll be on my way.”
The anger melted off Irusaru’s face in an instant, replaced by one of regret. He’d known that Roy had had a difficult upbringing, but if he was becoming so worked up over preparing dinner, then it must have been worse than he thought.
Irusaru bowed his head once, before turning his back to Roy.
“Very well, then. I will get my own supper. Best be careful, though, Herald Leroy. There is a fine line between standing up for oneself and disrespecting others.”
With that, he vanished from sight, appearing once more seated near the top of a nearby spire.
Roy stared up at the man for a few long moments. His entire body was quivering with adrenaline. Had he really just stood up to a man who had killed a Green level Beast with a wave of his hand?
He knew why he’d stood up to him, but where had he gotten the courage to do so?
“Perhaps you’re not as weak-willed as you believed yourself to be,” Geon said as he slumped to the ground.
“Yeah,” he answered softly, as the golden light Irusaru had cast faded from view. “Maybe I’m not.”
25
They traveled in silence over the next day, Irusaru walking out in front and Roy trailing behind him. He could tell that their argument the night before was the cause, but he didn’t much care. If the old man had asked him to prepare breakfast or do any other mundane task, he would have said much of the same.
But just because he didn’t talk, didn’t mean he was idle. He spent the day talking to Geon and doing his best to cycle in the Essence-rich environment while walking. Ferry was still too hurt to carry him, though her wounds had gotten noticeably better overnight. Geon explained that much as the Power Essence had restored him, the Darkness Essence generated at night had done the same for her.
As they traveled, Roy found it strange that he hadn’t run into a single other person or seen a settlement of some sort. Hadn’t Geon said that The Crater was the battleground for a war between four different clans? He wanted to ask Irusaru but was still too annoyed with him to do so.
Instead, he just contented himself with working on bettering his techniques. He could now conjure the Exploding Fist almost instantly, but his new technique, which he’d named The Void Sphere, was still giving him trouble.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t form the technique, but that it took way too much time for him to form it. Even now that he knew what he was doing, it took him at least half a minute to get all the separate layers of the attack spinning. It took a lot of concentration to do so. If he had to go into a fight, the technique would be completely unreliable.
He noticed Irusaru watching him as he conjured the Essence and sent it spinning until the last layer fell into place. The sphere expanded then, its many layers becoming transparent as they spun and whirled in a mesmerizing pattern.
Sighing, Roy tossed the technique over his shoulder, not even bothering to look as it impacted against the ground and expanded, tearing a chunk out of the stone and shredding it to a fine powder. Then he began anew, cycling the Essence from his core and projecting it over his palm.
That night, Irusaru did not ask Roy to make him dinner. He merely went to the top of another spire, leaving Roy on his own once more. It was beginning to annoy him by this point, and he sat down in a cycling position in an attempt to calm himself.
He knew he was becoming touchier as his deadline closed in. He now had only eighteen days to advance, and he knew his deadline would be there before he could blink. Changing his breathing to his cycling technique, Roy began pulling in the Power Essence in the air around him.
He cycled the Essence through the pattern in his chest, then into his core, filling it completely. The Essence here was a lot purer than it had been in the Dungeon, so he had to spend less time purifying it. This, in turn, helped him begin pushing at the boundaries of his core a lot faster.
The familiar strain on his core began as he poured in more and more Essence. It was oddly peaceful, sitting in the dark, his senses lit up by the brilliant gold of his surroundings. The Power Essence spun and whirled in the air, forming strange shapes as it clashed against the silver of Weakness.
It was interesting to watch how those two Essence types interacted. Even though there was a muddled line between the two, the two Essences apparently didn’t know that. Though they clashed, they never once combined, the two staying entirely separate. Roy learned a valuable lesson that night about his Path. Though Power and Weakness were two sides of the same coin, they were still opposites. And though the lines were blurred, they were still two very distinct and separate entities.
The next day was far better than the previous one had been. The old man greeted him in the morning, and though his answer was a little stiff, the tension of the previous day was now gone. Roy was sure that it would come up again, and soon, but for now, he would keep his peace.
“We will be reaching the borders of Tonde territory in the next hour or two,” Irusaru said as he set off at a brisk walk. “The village itself will be another three hours from there.”
Roy looked around. The landscape hadn’t changed much in the last couple of days. It was still all blasted, red-tinged stone with tall spires reaching up to the sky.
“Why haven’t we run into any people? I heard that The Crater was a battleground.”
“For those that do not know the ways of The Crater, it is very easy to become lost and end up in the wrong place. Luckily for us, I know my way around.”
That hardly answered his question, but he nodded all the same.
“What’s this school of yours like exactly? What Advancement Path does your clan follow, and does the school teach the same one?”
“We are not like the clans of the Waterwood. Here in The Crater, a clan does not follow a single Path. That would place a severe limit on our fighting power. In our clan, all are encouraged to follow their own Paths. As for the school, it is mainly made up of the four elemental type Essences. We have one hundred and fifty-three students. With you, it’s one hundred and fifty-four.
We have a few students on Light and Darkness Paths, but as I mentioned previously, you will be the only one following the Power Path.”
“I know you said it was rare, but why hasn’t anyone in your clan chosen Power?” Roy wondered. “Surely there must be others in your clan who can follow that Path.”
Irusaru’s lips twitched downward ever so slightly, but he shook his head.
“There are no others,” he said firmly.
After that, he was silent, giving only one-word answers when Roy attempted to ask questions, until he finally gave up. He wondered at the old man’s sudden mood shift and speculated on what it could be with Geon.
“Perhaps he had a student once, but they were killed?” Geon guessed.
“Could be, but I feel like he would have mentioned it if he did,” Roy replied.
Before he could answer though, Irusaru stopped, holding his hand out to the side to stop Roy as well.