To Fly the Soaring Tides

Chapter 278 - 271 - Break

Why…?

This thought alone resounded in Cira's mind as she sank deeper into Lilith's blood ocean. There were no more spikes, nor blades materializing to cleave her in half. The crazed woman just let her sink.

Why…?

At this point it was clear that this was indeed some sick form of training. Lilith was a madwoman. Sensing the lack of hostility at the moment, Cira decided to just go with the flow for a time. She must have sank what felt like miles at this point, which led her to assume there was some manner of spatial distortion going on, much like the oceans of Paradise.

It was honestly astonishing to Cira how accomplished Lilith was, but it came as no wonder after realizing that she was somehow close to her father.

In any case, now that Cira had been lingering at the bottom of the pocket realm's boundary for no small number of hours, one had to assume Lilith was trying to teach her something specific.

The obvious conclusion was that she wanted to teach Cira blood sorcery. As the battle earlier had put her life in great danger, the thought hadn't even occurred to throw her measly blood magic at one such as Lilith—it would have no effect. So, that would definitely not be what she wanted to see.

Cira felt like she was in the second trial again, grasping at straws for the right answer. She could still feel Lilith's gaze boring into her from far above, just waiting.

I threw everything I could at her, and she swiped it away like nothing, putting me on the brink of death as if it was a joke.

How though…? Why did this happen?

There was no reason for that to be possible. Even if this was a realm entirely under her authority, it was unfathomable that this woman should be able to render her so totally incapacitated with no resistance. Blood was just one element after all.

But that's not quite right, is it? Blood is the element of the corporea…

A shiver ran down Cira's spine as she made a realization. While her will was manifested through her soul rather than body, they were just two components of her essence.

It was like when she turned into a lake, and the surrounding trial takers performed water magic with her as the element. At her strength, she could easily have broken out, but if a more powerful mage were in their shoes Cira would be completely at their mercy.

Now a more powerful mage had in fact taken control over her as if she were a glass of water. Cira's face turned grave as she realized Lilith could likely turn her into a pool of blood at any moment. It only made sense now that under the authority of a great blood mage, anything Cira tried to do would completely stifled.

Cira could abandon her body and flee with her soul before crushing this world in a torrent of cursed flame, but the separation would be irreversible without great detriment. It wasn't really an option at all.

So that only left one thing to do. Cira had mainly practiced creating a domain with bloodforms, but that was only exterior control. She had very little idea how to bolster her own corporeal authority, and even less how to resist another mage's claim over it.

Cira burned with hatred over Lilith, but she had to admit there was a greater chance of her making a swift breakthrough in this perilous situation than if she were sitting in a room with Roman just making refining bloodforms.

Lilith naturally knew this too, otherwise Cira wouldn't be here. A cold glint appeared in her eye as she decided she would not let everything go according to plan.

Still, the first step was the same. And as luck would have it, Cira had an idea where to begin. Since becoming part undine, her own body become much easier control, but water had no natural link to the corporea, thus Cira ended up in a situation like this.

That said, a few ideas popped into her head immediately.

Why shouldn't my blood be like water? I was made of flesh long before I was also water. It should be much more familiar to me, yet the vitality makes it like a raging storm compared to calm seas.

Perhaps… that's the problem.

Cira viewed them as inherently different because of these two contrasting properties, but a flashback of her childhood appeared in that moment.

The first day her father taught her water sorcery, about a year after leaving the cursed skies. They were flying through heavy winds and Gazen let off the controls to let Breeze Haven shake as if it were a mere ship on the sea. He then put a glass of water on the kitchen counter and told Cira to observe it closely.

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She laughed at first until she saw the serious look on her father's face. The water just looked like water at first. It shook around, splashing onto the table a little as Breeze Haven swayed erratically. After a while, Cira groaned and threw her hands up, "I don't get it. It's just water!"

Gazen only chuckled, "Of course, but what is it now?" He held up a finger and the surface of the water in the glass suddenly stilled. Not so much as a ripple appeared.

"Um, it's still just water…" She faltered at the disapproving glimmer in his eyes and continued, "But it stopped moving because you're controlling it?"

His tense expression broke with a faint smile, "Yes and no. Because this water is now under my control, no other forces may act upon it. One could say it has returned to its natural state, no?" He waited until Cira slowly nodded then flipped the glass upside down as if to pour it out, but it remained in the glass without so much as a drip.

He allowed Cira to narrow her gaze for a few moments, trying her best to understand Gazen's ambiguous words as the small child that she was. Then, he continued with a hint of patience in his voice, "One could argue water's natural state would be falling in perpetuity. Whether its rain, rivers, or waterfalls, it should fall. But if it is under your authority, you decide the water's natural state.

"Now", Gazen set the glass down on the table and it started again to splash in rhythm with Breeze Haven's course, "Make this water grow still."

Cira's eyes grew wide as she came back to reality in a shock. Blood was no different. It would always surge with vitality, but if it were truly under her authority she could make it as still as that glass of water.

It was troubling to learn that after all her attainments in sorcery, she had overlooked something as glaring as true control over her own body, but that was something to dread later. For now, Cira knew what she had to do.

If her corporea was never fully under control as she had avoided blood sorcery, that meant the vitality in her body had never been completely utilized either.

This came as a huge epiphany to Cira. If should could tame the volatile corporea that made up her fleshier half, that should not only free her of this deadlock, but could open up paths to far greater levels of power in the future.

Just like that, Cira's hopeless heart started burning once more.

Just make the water grow still.

If this were actually water, she wouldn't have a chance against such powerful opponent, but this was her own flesh and blood. She had an innate right to control over it, she just had to figure out how.

She closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was back in the false void Io had created. There was a very distinct feeling in that place; her body formed the bounds between her mana and the void itself. Even though she had yet to reach this point, her coporea naturally became the bounds of her being. It was something which all belonged to her, so it shouldn't be all that difficult to control completely.

Cira then thought back to her lessons with Roman. He specifically had her work on bloodforms because an exterior medium was more familiar to her usual sorcery. It didn't take third mark wisdom to figure out the natural next step would be her own body.

Okay, if I think about it, I'm basically just a bloodform like any other, if a little squishier than average. So why should it be difficult to turn my own body into a blood domain?

Cira had no small amount of experience erecting domains, so she concentrated inwardly and got to work.

Much to her surprise, she found it much easier to flood this particular element with her aura than it was to send mana into the air. All that practice really must have been working. Cira felt like a voracious block of mithril as her body easily filled up with mana. This was nothing new in particular, as doing as much was a common body-strengthening technique.

The difference was in how the mana flowed. Owing to her experience with Roman, Cira was able to form complex patterns into the flow almost like a second nervous system entirely comprised of blood mana. Her sense of agency gradually came back, then blew right past the baseline until Cira was burning up with vitality. Cira had never felt so alive. Alarmingly so.

This sensation was nearly the same as pure life mana, as Kuja might give off, except somehow corrosive. It was hard to describe otherwise, but Cira knew she was in trouble. If her blood wasn't on fire, she was certain her face would have paled greatly.

This was no emergency on any other day. A domain would fail and burst, returning to the aether. Cira unfortunately did not know what would happen to the domain in question if she was it. Roman likely would have covered this, but Lilith's crash course offered no such luxury.

Instead of panicking though, Cira sat down in a cross-legged position at the depths of the blood ocean and closed her eyes. She imagined she was sitting at the center of large and volatile spring, like that of Fount Salt's explosive spring chamber.

In her mind the test was still the same. Instead of a glass of water before her, this was a raging spring. Even if the stakes were higher this time, it made no difference.

Cira didn't know if this took minutes or hours, but she spent a long time just to keep it from getting worse. Exploding herself would be the worst outcome, but now that the blood mana had stabilized, forcing all of her body's vitality to within the confines of the blood flow patterns was only a matter of time.

With each shred of vital energy she reclaimed, Cira could feel the connection to her aura gradually loosen up. To think that she had such a large blindspot, it was almost hard to be mad at Lilith.

It wouldn't take a mage as powerful as Lilith to take advantage of this weakness either, but even a keen low-level mage could exploit it to disturb her magic before it was ever cast. She had no doubt in her mind that some of the magic-hindering tools she had encountered in the past worked precisely in this way.

I guess it can't be helped. Lilith only gets a little lightning.

Taking complete control over her own corporea came much more naturally than Cira expected after the groundwork was all laid out, and the process continued with exponential speed as she blew well past fully recovered.

Cira had truly never felt so vigorous in her life. Her blood pumped like a beating drum, and she let out a heavy exhale before opening her eyes. She had continued to sink through the blood all this time, not that she had traveled all that far. She was currently nestled in this realm's spatial boundary.

In this moment, Cira had become a perfect domain, and every ounce of her vitality belonged to none other. The ramifications of this development would need to be pondered later.

As of now, her will was now not just unstifled, but absolutely unbridled. With a cold glance toward a certain point in space, Cira withdrew the pearly bone staff Prismagora.

She held it up slightly with a casual gesture, "Break."