Chapter 110: Absolute domain-type arcane spell (1/2)
Chapter 110: Absolute domain-type arcane spell
Early in the morning, five days later, still around sunrise.
Ayrin stood at the top of a huge tree, facing a thin branch. He continuously reminded himself, “Control my breathing. This branch can bear almost my exact weight. I might break it by merely breathing too deeply and making my body shake too much.”
Then he adjusted his breathing, and slowly walked on it.
The branch swayed lightly in the breeze. It distinctively curved down after he stepped on it, as if it would immediately break. Ayrin’s body tilted forward with the bend of the branch.
Yet, Ayrin’s body readjusted itself in a very minute, extremely harmonious-looking shift, to the point this branch didn’t sway any stronger even after he stood inclined on it.
An excited expression emerged on Ayrin’s face. He continued his lithe walk forward, stepping on another branch nearby with about the same thickness.
When he switched to this other branch, he looked to be standing steady, and the branch at his feet didn’t break either.
“Ah!” He suddenly opened his mouth in happiness, about to shout out loud. But just at this instant, the branch at his feet suddenly broke with a crack at the fork. “Crack, crack.” He dropped down, and again broke two branches in succession. Only after that did he shoot upward again like a flying bird.
“It seems I still can’t be too pleased with myself.”
“Dear me, I still can’t walk however I want to walk the way Rinloran does, why am I getting complacent?” Ayrin felt embarrassed at himself. He scratched his head and scolded himself, and then, with a serious expression, once again walked towards branches that could barely bear his weight, just like the first one.
His body once again gave off an exceptionally nimble and harmonious feeling.
He switched from one branch to the next.
No branches broke this time. His steps seemed increasingly graceful, increasingly peaceful, increasingly faster.
One after another, the thin branches bounced up softly after his steps went past, actually giving off the feeling someone was plucking the branches in the wind, like so many strings on an instrument.
“Rustle!”
He accelerated all of a sudden. His body went through the lush treetops at great speed, now and then accompanied by the display of an arcane skill. He appeared on top of one huge tree after another, moving as if in blinks, swiftly flitting a full circle around this forest of huge trees. Then he returned to his original position and stopped on the first branch he’d stepped on.
His breathing was obviously much more urgent.
Yet he seemed to be controlling and coordinating the movements of his body even better. The swaying of the branch at his feet seemed a little stronger compared to the first time, yet it still didn’t snap, even after more than a dozen seconds.
Ayrin put his hands behind his head, and couldn’t resist saying to himself, “It’s really hard… I finally succeeded more or less. Now I should be able to follow Rinloran, right?”
The sun rose just at this instant, as it happened. The first strands of daylight pierced through the layer of clouds, sprinkling on St. Lauren’s mountain peak.
On a lush treetop only a few dozen meters away from him, Donna and Ciaran were actually in a completely different mood.
“He really did it!”
“He only used five days to grasp a skill that only arcane masters with elven blood could master previously! Could he be the descendant of an arcane master with dragon blood and an arcane master with elven blood? Could he have elven blood coursing his body to begin with?”
Ayrin already thought that the things Rinloran taught him were particularly hard, much more difficult than when learning arcane skills before. But Donna and Ciaran were keenly aware that the vast majority of arcane masters had no hope of ever matching Rinloran’s nimbleness, even if they went through many years of training. The reason why the nimbleness of elven bloodlines was called an innate talent was precisely because it was impossible to imitate the control they exercised over their strength when dodging or changing direction, impossible to learn the control they had over their balance, even when many people tried to learn them for a lifetime!
There had merely been around twenty days all put together from the end of the match against Iron Forest until now. In such a short time frame, he went from speed being his weakness to almost overtaking Rinloran.
Rather than talking about learning and special training, one might as well talk about an innate gift.
“I can’t help but feel incredulous even though I witnessed the course of his progress with my own eyes. Back in our era, only Herde had this kind of talent, right?” Donna felt as if she’d taken a psychological blow. “On top of that, Ayrin’s the same as Chris. Every day, all the time he can use on training he uses on training. It’s really as they say, the one you fear isn’t someone more talented than you, it’s one more talented than you and also more hardworking than you.”
“I heard that he dug ores for many years in Cororin… For the current him, for the sake of his dreams, every day is probably filled with happiness, no matter how hard he works.” A faint smile floated on the corner of Ciaran’s mouth in spite of herself. She looked at Donna and said, “Now it should be your turn to teach him Fire Embers.”
“This guy’s fighting spirit and pure happiness really have the power to imperceptibly change someone.” Such a thought floated in Donna’s mind when she saw Ciaran’s faint smile.
…
“Teacher Ciaran?”