Chapter 348

To say that the entire royal court was upset would be the understatement of the entire era.

After Jacob started displaying how to complete the esoteric mural paintings of King Blade with simple stick figures, voices started spreading. Sytin — the royal painter, a man known for his impeccable taste, for his vision of art, for his freshness in the way he painted, for his creativity, for his versatility when it came to perhaps copying a landscape as if it were a still image of it, or perhaps reimagining it in a more abstract form — had completely changed. He had become the first convert of Jacob Cloud, and also the one who would spread the word about the new painting style.

The evening after Jacob exhausted all his Mana and couldn’t continue finishing murals anymore, Sytin had gone back to his room and painted until dawn, experimenting with the stick men, finding out that true art was not found in proportions and symmetry and aesthetics, but in breaking those rules and purposefully making a painting that did not look beautiful on the surface.

And Sytin was so immersed in it because he found out that it was much harder than he had initially thought. At first, he had thought that just drawing some stick figures would prove incredibly easy. How hard could it be? But then, when he started trying to draw them, he found out something shocking. It was apparently second nature to him and his brushes to make straight lines, to make the proportions right, and to make everything symmetrical, or at the very least harmonious.

And now, for someone like him who had touched the peak of art in this world, he finally understood the greatness of Jacob Cloud. To break harmony on purpose was no easy feat for someone who had a natural artistic predisposition. In fact, one could say it was almost like going against nature, almost like going against the gods.

And that’s when Sytin finally understood: Jacob Cloud must have had a revelation in which he understood that to defy the heavens and to destroy the Primordial Gods, only this style could work. Only breaking the harmony of a natural painting could result in the Wrath of Blade Skill Crystal being created.

And that’s when Sytin, going back the next day with Jacob Cloud, watched in awe as he found out that the young man had indeed an artistic penchant that he could not even dream of.

On the surface, it looks like Jacob is painting without even thinking. It looks like every single line of it is crooked, uneven, and asymmetrical. But now that Sytin has spent an entire night trying to replicate the same style, he understands just how hard it is to do something like that.

Either Jacob is the biggest fucking idiot in the entire world, or he is the greatest artistic genius he’s ever seen. And the answer, to him, is pretty simple. He, the royal painter, couldn’t paint like that. It was just too hard. And really, either Jacob had reached the apex of painting and had found the apotheosis of art, or he didn’t have one single drop of talent in his blood.

But that was impossible. Jacob was Gornyakov’s heir.

And now it showed, because all those murals — and there were hundreds of them scattered along these ruins — one by one, Jacob slowly completed them.

And the weeks passed. And Sytin went to ask Jacob after the sessions for guidance, for sketches that he could copy. Jacob looked weirdly impressed by Sytin’s own efforts to copy his style. And soon the royal painter was able to touch upon the greatness of Jacob’s style. And he finally had all the paintings in the castle replaced with the beautiful, disharmonious stick figures that would bring forth the death and the end of the era of Primordial Gods.

Sytin even held lessons for his own students, who one day dreamt of becoming the next royal painter. And he taught them how this, for the first time since the dawn of creation, was the ultimate style that could even kill gods.

Several royals and nobles walking around the keep thought that he had gone mad. But with the consent of King Blade, they were brought inside the painting to witness Jacob doing his art. Jacob didn’t really look too pleased that Sytin was bringing more and more people each day. And Sytin understood that a true artist wants to work in isolation. He’s not subject to the gaze of others, but just to the gaze of his heart. That’s the only meter a true artist judges himself against. And Jacob indeed was a true artist. But Sytin would loathe himself if he didn’t allow people to witness the greatness of Jacob’s genius and his artistry.

The crowd was initially flabbergasted by the childish way Jacob was painting. But the more Sytin gave lessons and explained just how hard it was to paint like that, the more people in Zamorye — a city renowned for its art — started attempting what Jacob was doing. And looking at his sketches, looking at how not one line had any symmetry with any of the others, any proportion, any harmony…

The new style started spreading like wildfire. It was a challenge. It almost felt like you had to be completely disabled, that your fingers shouldn’t be able to paint like Jacob was painting, that they didn’t need to work, to even approach the level of chaos that one could find in the stick figures. Some even started painting with their fingers, trying to revert to a more childish state to gain illumination, enlightenment in their artistic pursuits. And the more they tried, the more they failed. It was too hard to reach Jacob’s level.

And so the crowd in the landscape grew bigger and bigger. And much to King Blade’s pleasure, he found that people actually started seeing that Jacob was a true artist. Because King Blade himself wasn’t sure what he was looking at. But when Sytin explained it — that Jacob’s lack of harmony was the point, that it was truly hard — King Blade himself started trying to sketch down on paper the same thing, and realized that indeed the royal painter had had the greatest intuition ever.

There were just two people who knew the full truth, and who were forced by King Blade to come and watch Jacob Cloud paint stick figures on his beautiful murals and sell that act like it was gold to the foolish crowd.

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Count Myshkin and Princess Yekaterina sat on chairs they had brought after the second day. And they looked at Jacob being swarmed with questions on art, at people showing him their paintings in his style. And they sighed.

“This can’t be happening,” Count Myshkin says. “I don’t want to see that crap all over the keep. I’m going to shut myself in the mines if that becomes the country’s national style. King Blade said that he would like for the family emblem to be redrawn in that style.”

Count Myshkin looked terrified at that.

And Princess Yekaterina said, “I think I managed to convince him that the emblem is too old to be changed and that we shouldn’t mess with it.”

“Did he listen?” Count Myshkin asked.

“Sort of.”

And so the two, knowing that Jacob was really just improvising and somehow fixing every single mural and completing them, saw that the young man was slowly bringing all the murals to life.

Jacob, on his part, was really exhausted by the crowd’s reaction. He didn’t understand why they liked the stick figures so much. It was the only thing he could paint, really.

- - -

The session ends when Jacob’s Mana runs dry, and that is when the questions start.

Sytin has organized them. There is a line now. There is a boy with a slate writing down what Jacob says.

The first man holds up his own painting with both hands, like an offering. A stick man with one arm longer than the other.

“Master Cloud. This line here.” He points at the long arm. “I have tried for six days to understand why yours goes crooked at the elbow and mine does not. What is the principle?”

Jacob looks at it.

“My hand slipped.”

The crowd goes very quiet.

Sytin closes his eyes. “The hand slipped,” he repeats. “Do you understand what he is telling you? He does not correct the accident. He accepts it. The brush wanted harmony. He let the error stand.” He turns on the man. “You have been trying to draw a crooked line on purpose. That is still control. You have learned nothing.”

The man staggers back like he has been struck. Someone catches him. The boy with the slate is writing so fast his knuckles have gone white.

What? Jacob thinks. No. My hand actually slipped.

“Master Cloud.” A woman this time, an older noble, silk sleeves rolled to her elbows and paint under her nails. “The sun in the third mural. The rays are all different lengths. Nine of them, and no two the same. I counted. What is the meaning of nine?”

“There wasn’t a meaning. I just stopped when it looked done.”

A murmur goes through two hundred people.

“He stopped when it looked done,” someone whispers, further back.

“He stopped,” someone else says, further back still, “when it was done.”

Jacob opens his mouth to fix this. Sytin gets there first.

“Which of you has ever stopped?” Sytin says, and his voice carries. “Every one of you paints until it is beautiful. He paints until it is finished. Those are not the same act. That is the whole distance between you and him.”

The noble woman bows so low her hair touches the ground.

Jacob raises a hand.

“Look — honestly, you should all maybe try a different style. Like a normal one. With, you know. Proportions.”

The silence that follows is not the same silence as before. This one has fear in it.

“He is testing us,” the boy with the slate whispers.

“He is testing us,” the crowd agrees.

“I’m not testing—”

“Master Cloud tests us,” Sytin says warmly, “the way a master should. He offers the easy road and watches who takes it.” He looks around. “Does anyone here wish to take the easy road?”

Nobody does. Somebody in the back is crying.

Jacob gives up.

“Master Cloud.” The old noble again, still bowed. “The style must have a name. We cannot teach it without a name. What do you call it?”

“I don’t know. Sticks?”

The boy writes it down.

Three days later, the Way of Sticks has a founding date and two rival schools.

- - -

And so weeks passed, and more stick figures were painted over the murals. And finally, after a month, Jacob was done with the last mural.

A large crowd had gathered. Thousands of people that had to be cordoned off by royal guards and kept under watch by Kamenev himself, lest they interfere with the process.

And suddenly, images of all kinds — but all being drawn with stick figures — floated into the sky and joined each other into nine small beads that had different hues.

King Blade gathered them and told Jacob, “You, Jacob Cloud, have accomplished your task. Your first task. We now have the cores that will be used to craft the Skill Crystals. It is time we move on to our second location.”

The man dragged Jacob, Princess Yekaterina, Count Myshkin, and Kamenev into a sketch he quickly made on the ground, ordering everybody else to go back to the keep.

As they jumped in it and they fell on the hard ground, they were on an island. A very small one. And around them, there were nine Mana nodes just floating around the small island in the air. The island could not have been wider than a mile across.

Jacob really wanted to help the people of Zamorye defeat the Primordial Gods. Having already fought an Original Primordial Dungeon, he knew just how hard it was to deal with such beings. But when he saw the floating Mana nodes, which still had floating pieces of Mana Crystal Stone around them, he got a real bad feeling in his stomach.

“What are those?” Jacob asks.

“Well, Mana nodes, of course. We will go to each and you will insert this.” King Blade hands him the first bead. “This is the Diamond Rank version of the Skill, Jacob Cloud. It is only fitting that you do this.”

Jacob looks at the outstretched hand of King Blade and scratches his chin, saying between his teeth, “I don’t know, Grandpa. I think that it’s your work and that you should do it.”

“No, grandchild,” King Blade replies. “It’s an honor that I can only leave to you. And after you showed that level of artistry, now I can understand how you mastered the Wrath of Blade in the first place. Your understanding and perception of art is impeccable. You must be the most capable man in this entire kingdom when it comes to turning a Mana node into a Skill Crystal.”

Jacob turned, because he heard two slaps. It was Princess Yekaterina and Count Myshkin facepalming so hard they almost knocked themselves out. He didn’t blame them, because he himself was wanting to just facepalm.

“Grandpa, I actually have a lot of trouble turning Mana nodes into Skill Crystals. Um, I don’t know if I explained this already, but I just visualize so many flaws with my, um, well, as you put it, artistic understanding, that the Mana node simply turns to dust. I think that if I tried and inserted that core into a Mana node myself, it would just crumble to dust.”

“Well, grandson, you have no choice. You created these Skill Crystal cores, and now they are attuned to you.”

“I’m sorry?” Jacob says, widening his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Only you can fully turn those virgin Mana nodes into full Skill Crystals. And if you were to fail, our entire kingdom would be doomed. And grandchild, even though I’ve become fond of you, I told you that your life is on the line. You would be considered a traitor if any of those Mana nodes broke.”

Jacob looks at King Blade. Then he looks around, trying to think how he could escape this. And then swallows a few times.

“Well, do you mind if I just, I don’t know, practice something,” Jacob says, “before actually touching those Mana nodes? That should be fine, right? Just a little practice. I’m going through with it. Don’t worry, Grandpa. But do you mind if we go to other Mana nodes that will not have me commit treason if I break them?”

King Blade narrows his eyes.