Chapter 100: Watching a Show - I

Ink bottles rode a controlled, miniature cyclone, spilling a river of black across the airspace. Hundreds of parchment pages were arrayed in neat rows, columns, and layers, waiting for the ink to stain their beige-tinged fibers. They shuffled around like a Rubik’s Cube, a blur of motion to the naked eye.

—Swoosh!

A concentrated gust of wind danced, pulling streams of ink from the long black river and casting them into legible characters.

—Swash!

With a push, all of those characters were then projected onto every page following their author’s design. After which, a wave of hot air wafted over, drying the ink in seconds.

Nearly a thousand pages’ worth of information had been compiled according to my will.

—Click.

To top it off, I snapped my fingers, commanding the wind to sort the pages by number. Then, I bound them with an enchanted leather cover to preserve the parchment and its contents from time’s many winds and rains.

On the front of the cover, I had the ink calligraphed into the title, <Possible Solutions to Mind Force Higher Tiers: 2nd Edition>.

It was a documentation of my research on the Psychic Technique, <Mind Force>, so far. I was working on the groundwork of the technique above B-Rank because I had yet to come up with something past it.

I did not want to think about A-Rank and above yet because there were simply too many options to choose from. All I was doing was making sure that the foundations of my Psychic Technique—and my Martial Art—were stable.

That being said...

I gave Melia an F-Rank Martial Art, the <Dance of a Thousand Cuts>, which had no set progression. Without my guidance, I couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing at this point in time.

Was she doing well?

More than a few weeks of the mundane chaos of Walvaskaz had gone by since Lillie, Clementine, Taylor, Kuvie, and Reazue all agreed to join my team.

It was also about three months or so since I last checked on what everyone was doing.

I didn’t bother to use <Perfect Estimate> to get the exact date because Walvaskaz’s calendar worked differently from the human calendar, as well as my own biological clock.

There was also something weird about the empire’s spacetime... but that would be a problem for another time.

For now, I was going to satisfy my other curiosities.

***

Leisha Kingdom.

Grand City of Laquer.

Melia was meditating underneath the bright, midday sky. Her brown hair had faded into a pale blonde, gleaming yellow in the sunlight.

Her mana was lively, greedily absorbing the energy from the solar blaze far above. She was like a human plant, photosynthesizing a more powerful Physique.

Light tempered her cells, invigorating them with longevity and strength.

"Hoooo,"

Breathing out, Melia opened her eyes, allowing her vivid blue gaze to sweep the empty training grounds before her.

A hint of emptiness weighed her expression down for a split second.

Ever since the demon attack on the Academy of Laquer, the various spacious facilities once teeming with students had turned barren. Only a few kids her age could be seen here and there.

Many had died.

Many had fled, deeming the capital unsafe.

Those who stayed... were people like her, whose convictions had grown instead of faltering in the face of adversity.

—Shiiiiiing!

The metallic scraping of a sword being drawn sounded across the empty field. Unlike the generic long swords that Melia had used and trained with in the past, she now wielded a curved, single-edged sword.

A blade designed for rapid, flowing cuts. Light and durable, it was meant to last as long as her light-dependent stamina lasted.

Feeling the enhancement of her mana, she tensed her body and gauged her condition.

[Dance of a Thousand Cuts: A Dozen Limbs].

Silently, Melia surged forward, swinging her blade in six distinct surges, with two cuts each.

Her light-attributed mana bled from the tip of her blade, leaving behind a shimmering trail behind her.

[Dance of a Thousand Cuts: A Flurry of Forty-Two].

Melia’s movements transitioned into a higher gear. Her sword began to tear at the air as every movement of her body accompanied a dozen cuts at once. Trails of mana condensed into asterisk-like blobs in the air before dissipating shortly after.

However...

"Ah,"

Something tore itself open along Melia’s arm. Her bones cracked and fractured. Her tendons evaporated from the exertion.

In an instant, her right arm had been crippled from her wrist to her elbow, and all the way up to her shoulder.

But the young lady’s face expressed little more than a grimace.

What should have been excruciating pain assaulting one’s entire nervous system was now an everyday experience.

Melia sighed, taking her sword with her other hand.

Then.

[Dance of a Thousand Cuts: A Dozen Limbs].

[Dance of a Thousand Cuts: A Flurry of Forty-Two].

Her blade flashed through the air in a beautiful display of dexterity.

But the results were the same.

Another crippled arm.

—Thud.

Shrugging off the pain, Melia sheathed her sword by biting the handle and sat down.

Already, her right arm had begun to heal... though it would still take more than an hour.

In the meantime, she would meditate, allowing the light to seep into her wounds, mending what was broken and bringing them back even stronger.

There was a reason why she rose to E-Rank in just a few short months upon receiving Aventine’s gift. Melia even went on to improve upon the technique, creating the second step of her dance.

She was pushing herself beyond human limits.

She was growing in strength like the demons and monsters who fed off the darkness of the world.

In fact, she was already on the precipice of advancing to D-Rank. All she needed was a suitable D-Rank Martial Art.

It was as monstrously rapid as it could get.

"I’d prefer it if I could create the third step of my <Dance of a Thousand Cuts>..."

Muttering these words, Melia sighed again.

She’d seen the D-Rank Martial Arts that the Academy of Laquer had, but none of them piqued her interest. They were all singular movements, lacking breadth and fluidity.

They did not synergize with her strengths as well as the <Dance of a Thousand Cuts> did with her affinity for light-attributed mana.

"...Hopefully, I can advance before the end of this semester."

Despite the massively reduced number of students, the Academy of Laquer still operated.

It was still a place where humanity’s future guardians could grow.