Universe's End

Chapter 207: Overdue Lessons

"I'm looking forward to this."

"Yes, well, I do hope you put on a better show than last time."

"Right, good banter," Rory rolled his eyes as Flair and Kai Rong stared daggers at one another. "Do remember, this is a training opportunity."

"Apologies, Lord Founder," Kai Rong said with a bow as Rory once more rolled his eyes.

"Well, brewing rivalry aside, you two can begin."

Instantly on his command, the two launched themselves at each other. They were currently on one of the upper rungs of the mountain, the only two members of the 'expedition' squad that could handle going as high as they had.

As for why they were there? Training, obviously. Under immense pneuma pressure, Rory was having the two spar. While usually Kai Rong stood probably half an 'echelon' of strength above Flair, breathing in the volcanic pneuma was like a shot of adrenaline to the younger man.

Thus, Rory silently watched the mock battle as columns of fire shot out, Kai Rong dodging and weaving out of the way as her rings chased down her opponent. Unlike the first time they'd fought nearly a decade prior, Flair was hardly the novice tier seven he had once been, with a tighter grasp on his Ignition skill and better practiced as a fighter in general.

Kai Rong, meanwhile, had seen her improvements primarily in her gear. She'd also gained some ground in her mental prowess and understanding of the blood affinity in thanks to the crest Rory had given her years back, reforged from her old rings. While those were both beneficial in the long run, they were hardly significant changes in her direct skills in the short term, only a few years later.

Either way, the battle proved far more evenly matched than when Kai Rong had knocked him out of his first tournament as a tier seven.

And still, Rory found himself frowning.

"Stop," Rory finally called out after several more minutes, both fighters instantly ceasing all violence as they turned to Rory, taking deep breaths.

"Flair. I'm pretty sure I mentioned what I'd like to see from you."

"The deployment of magic circles while using magic," The younger man sighed.

"And where exactly are those magic circles?" Rory asked, pointing around.

"Not being used," Flair grumbled.

"Not being used," Rory confirmed. For added effect, he turned his hand upward as a green magical circle appeared beneath his hand, a green image flickering into existence as he projected a small dagger into existence. "Do I need to use a magic circle for projection magic?"

"No," Flair muttered.

"No is correct," Rory said. "But a magic circle is what allows pneuma to be concentrated, as well as adding extra metaphysical weight to the magic. If you're really good, you can start adding runes within the circle as well."

The green magic circle suddenly appeared with several runes within, forming a second 'circle' within.

"Runes can take a normally static usage of a skill or freeform magic and add intentionality or direction that didn't exist before. For example, these are runes for deceleration. Sounds contrary, right? Wrong."

Turning his upward-facing palm outward, the dagger shot forward, zipping through the air roughly half as fast as it could have gone. In return, when it struck rock, it shattered the rock with a sledgehammer force that such a small dagger wouldn't have been capable of normally.

"Now, that is more advanced. For now, just adding a plain magic circle to your magic will see a change in effectiveness."

"Yes, Sir."

"Kai."

"Yes, Lord Founder," Kai Rong snapped to attention.

"You're still thinking of your blood affinity as too linear. The flow of your intent through your body follows physical bounds. Erase that. Intent, pneuma, any of those metaphysical aspects of reality, they don't have to obey physical conventions."

The underlying and unsaid part of what Rory was referring to was how she was utilizing her 'dantian,' the magical 'organ' she had developed over the span of decades of following a particular path. For now, she had only the singular one, but it allowed her to harness pneuma and flow it through her body, physically enhancing her—a boosting skill that could organically grow over time.

But, much like her understanding of the blood affinity, it at times was too one-dimensional, which Rory found somewhat ironic given how 'mystical' she and her clan appeared. It was as much a result of memory erasure, or, in Kai Rong's situation, of being born in a world without eons of history as anything else. It was hard to draw on the conceptual and spiritual meaning and inspirations of blood if all that history had ceased to exist after all.

All of which meant that when Kai Rong used the flow of pneuma through her dantian, she unconsciously followed the path of least resistance, traveling through her circulatory system.

Rory had been attempting to drill these finer points into their heads for the last two months, but years of habit were hard to overcome in such a short period.

They're better off than the rest of their 'peers' at least.

For the rest of their peers, Rory's advice and training had essentially boiled down to 'please stop spamming skills as if that's all that a fight amounts to,' which had been showing slow progress.

Harrison, for example, the large, durability-focused man who used lunar-aligned energy, was beginning to actually try to incorporate some freeform magic themed on his lunar skills.

Did it pain Rory to see grown-ass adults, tier sevens, struggling to put together what Rory considered elemental magic because they'd so often focused only on what their skills could do?

Sure.

Was he going to make that their problem?

Oh, fuck yes, he was. In fact, every time he had the rest of the adventurers gather, Rory felt a bit like a drill sergeant or a coach. Not one of the yell-y types, but the kind who could laugh at a joke and then tell someone to run twenty laps for it.

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Truly, I am a benevolent leader.

Rory hadn't even begun having them hunt monsters in the area, at least not solo. It had been extremely amusing watching them attempt to hunt a Reaping Ash Coscinocera. They'd started by facing down a level sixty-nine Ashworm, which hadn't gone terribly, but just watching that part of the battle, Rory had known it was going to be a bit of a shitshow following.

Once the chrysalis was expelled, and they'd failed to burn through very much of its internalized anima, the level seventy-three Reaping Ash Coscinocera that popped out caused utter havoc. The nearly imperceptible scales scattered like invisible razorblades with the powerful gusts whipped up by its wings tore through and overwhelmed almost everything the others had thrown at it. Had they had either Flair or Kai Rong with them, things would have gone better, but then that wasn't the point of training now.

Truly a benevolent leader.

The crafters were…. Doing better might not have been technically correct. They weren't being actively forced to battle monsters far stronger than anything they'd faced before to the death, but that didn't mean they were in a land of luxury either.

The blacksmiths spent their days swinging pickaxes at hard stone. Without Seams Unseen, digging through such strong stone was quite the exercise. Then, they spent even longer sweltering away next to the intense heat of the magma whirlpool forge, occasionally being jump scared by Jinn popping out and laughing before diving back in.

The hours were brutal because they were working on Rory's timeframe. And if Rory didn't believe in labor laws for himself, he sure as hell wasn't giving them much of a break either. Eight hours to sleep was Rory being generous; otherwise, the rest of the day, they worked, though Rory wasn't so strict that he didn't allow them to take breathers or occasionally disrupt their own work by chatting amongst themselves.

One benefit of their new home was that they were gloriously freed from distractions such as friends, family, and work-life balance.

Working with promethium was hard enough for them, and Rory hadn't even attempted to introduce True Folding the material yet. That would come with time.

Aside from the forge-focused crew, their inscription artists were given what was essentially the equivalent of rewriting a dictionary every day, finding new ways to use every word to create new meanings and ideas. Each day, he gave them a random selection of runes he'd made and forced them to use each rune a specific number of times to formulate a particular idea or intent. Creativity was the goal, forcing them to bend their ways of thinking to understand and imagine runes in new ways, like a rapper on earth could reshape the linguistic flow of a word to make even something like 'oranges' rhyme.

Then there was Gon Rong. While an alchemist, he was thankfully an alchemical transmutation-focused alchemist, which between the two schools of alchemy Rory personally felt better affinity for.

In a way, the younger man had it the worst of all the artisans. Like his forge-focused peers, he was required to prepare and refine materials for further processing. Like the inscription artists, he was forced to both expand and bend his understanding of concepts as he learned to twist his reality to assimilate with how he believed it should work. There were even some principles of the combat-focused adventurers thrown in, forced to practice pneuma manipulation at every moment. It was mentally taxing, but as a crafter, Rory figured the man should have had enough cognitive capacity so that the multitasking required wasn't the end of the world.

One thing that the crafters got that the adventurers didn't from their time spent under Rory's tutelage was an offering of a very specific skill.

Scholar's Retreat.

It was the skill that was perhaps most impactful on Rory's development through the decades; the inability to gain combat skills meant that he'd been forced to take a creative approach to survival and combat.

While the skill was offered to all of the crafters after only a month of Rory's lessons, only two of them decided to actually take the offered skill: Ron and, unsurprisingly, Gon Rong.

For those who'd forgotten what the base version of Scholar's Retreat did, it was two parts. The first was a 'passive' effect, preventing the skill-haver from gaining combat skills through ascensions and even making the acquisition of combat skills from self-developed means close to impossible. On the flip side, it made acquiring non-combat skills much easier and faster. On the surface level, it was a no-brainer for a crafter to take the skill, but most crafters weren't so multi-talented as Rory was; they didn't need to acquire non-combat skills with haste because they were only focused on one field to begin with. All it would do would lock them out of the possibility of a combat skill for potentially their entire lives.

The other part of Scholar's Retreat was the active skill gained.

Huh, I forgot that it was the singular 'eye' and not 'eyes.' Sort of a weird distinction, but that's early Eon for you.

The cognition boost was the closest thing a crafter could get to a boosting skill, though from what Rory remembered of the early days of the skill, it put some severe strain if left active, at least until the skill level ranked up.

Speaking of which.

Curious about something he largely neglected to check, Rory pulled up his interface as he took a glance at his listed skills, with his focus on one skill in particular.

"Oh, nifty," Rory said as he examined the skill. Last he had recalled, the skill level had been listed as experienced, plus there was the additional ocular release that had been added when Rory had gained his Coordinate affinity and integrated Seams Unseen.

Spatial fabric perception. I mean… I guess that's accurate enough.

Aside from curiosity about just how high the skill level of a skill could go, Rory found himself satisfied as he dismissed his interface.

Kai Rong and Flair had gone back to brawling, as Rory folded his arms.

It's a passing grade at least.

A flickering magic circle accompanied one in ten of Flair's attacks, and the flow of Kai Rong's pneuma through her body occasionally followed a path that wasn't the meandering and backtracking circuit through her circulatory system.

They were making progress.

But.

But… but actually nothing. Rory found himself surprised. Typically, this was the moment where he'd watch them and think about everything going on with a stern expression and ruminate over how this or that or something wasn't going right or they were following behind schedule.

Except, in this case, everything was fine.

Which was weird.

I mean, sure, I'd like it if they improved faster, but I also spent how many decades flailing about and somehow succeeding?

Rory found himself mulling the thought over even after the sparring was over and they returned to the inside of their volcanic home. Reese, Riley, and Ron were huddled around a piece of red-hot metal, pointing and bickering amongst one another -Ron mostly scowled and relied on basic body language- as Rory walked in with the grim and soot-covered Kai Rong and Flair.

"You three having fun?" Rory asked as Flair and Kai Rong marched off to the bathrooms Rory had rather cleverly constructed long ago.

"We can't agree," Reese said with a scowl.

"On?" Rory asked.

"Malleable point. Given how hot you need to get the priming materials to alloy them, we've been having trouble reaching consensus on exactly the temperature we should use to achieve the best results."

"Have you tried good old trial and error?" Rory asked, with no intention of giving them the answer he'd come to decades ago.

"That's what we're in the middle of," Riley said. "But we have differing opinions on the benefits of the varying temperatures we can utilize."

"Well, sounds like lots of fun," Rory chuckled. The fact that they had the energy to argue over a discovery issue was good; it meant they were beginning to really acclimate.

Leaving them to their argument, Rory made his way to one of the 'lab' rooms, a smile beginning to spread across his face. With his responsibilities for the day handled, Rory looked forward to something else far more.

His long-overdue goodies from the defeated Queen, and more importantly, the project revolving around them.