49 Flames of Neutrality (1/2)

A ruthless expression dominated Arnin's face as he looked at Unuz. He didn't hesitate to hit her as soon as he found out that the duel had technically started. He wanted the room, and that was end of the discussion.

”You *cough cough*... shameless person!” Unuz got up from the ground and coughed up a little blood. She was hit extremely hard, and the crash into the wall made it even worse.

Surk, who was watching from the side, had a faint smile on his face. He didn't react when Arnin launched the sneak attack, rather he found the whole situation interesting. Unuz was laughing at Arnin just a while ago, and now she was coughing blood.

”Whatever. Shameless or not, this is not your room anymore.” Arnin didn't give Unuz another chance to speak before he rushed towards her once again. The room was fairly small, about the size of his old house in Talonton village, and because of this, Arnin was in front of Unuz practically instantly.

”W-wait for m--” Before she could even say another word, a fist was planted directly onto her cheek. Again, she flew across the room and crashed into another the black wall.

*BOOM*

”Either give up and leave, or continue to get beaten. Pick one.” Arnin looked at Unuz and spoke without a shred of emotions. He couldn't care less about the girl and wouldn't even mind killing her. However, the academy was still not a place where he could do what he wanted without restraint. His current body wasn't strong enough yet.

Unuz got up from the ground and lightly touched her swollen cheek. She felt the bump and couldn't help but feel enraged. Her aura began to climb up, and the hatred in her eyes also rose.

”I don't care if you're a kid, I'm going to kill you!” Unuz rushed towards Arnin without hesitation. She wanted to eradicate Arnin's existence. He didn't even let her speak and attacked her twice. How could she take this lying down?

”Hey Surk, since she wants to kill me, can I do the same?” Arnin looked towards Surk without paying any heed to the incoming Unuz. If this girl wanted to kill him, then that would be the perfect excuse to kill her instead.

”Haha, umm, she won't try and kill you. Just restrain yourselves a little, alright.” Surk had a bitter look on his face. He knew that Arnin was a ruthless person, and would kill Unuz if he could. However, there shouldn't be any deaths during duels, especially just for first level rooms.

Arnin scoffed before looking back at the girl. Since he couldn't kill her, he would do something else. He patiently waited for her to get to him, his hands clenched into fists.

Just as she was about to land a punch on his face, Arnin ducked to the right, avoiding her arm, and then grabbed her head. He yanked it down, pulling her along with the force.

”AHHH!” Unuz couldn't help but scream out with pain. Having their hair pulled with so much force would cause many people to feel pain, especially someone with long hair like hers.

”Now then, let the duel begin.” Arnin smiled wickedly before grabbing the girl's throat. He kept a tight grip on her neck and pinned her to the ground.

”Let *cough cough* go!” Unuz found it difficult to breath, let alone speak, but she still tried to force some words out of her mouth.

”I don't think so. You had your chance to quit.” Arnin didn't release his grip, rather he tightened it. He then lifted his other hand and slapped her across the face.

*Slap*

”Arnin, I think you won…” Surk wanted to speak out, but Arnin had already landed more than five slaps onto her face. He then lifted Unuz up and threw her towards the door.

”Get out of here. I am going to cultivate now.” Arnin looked at both Surk and Unuz with a glare. He wanted to quickly begin absorbing the essence components.

Surk nodded before walking towards the door. He helped Unuz up and walked out, leaving Arnin alone inside the dark room.

-Outside-

”Who *cough cough* is that… boy?” Unuz still found it difficult to speak, however she was horrified by Arnin's strength. Never had she imagined that she would find such a talented person, someone who could defeat an Essence Manifest cultivator while being in the Orb Birth. She had never heard of such a case.

”That kid is not someone you want to mess with, so just ignore what happened. That would be better for you. I will have someone send you to the medical department.” Surk didn't try to dissolve much of Unuz's confusion since he himself didn't know the extent of Arnin's mysteries. Anyways, even if he did know something, he wouldn't tell Unuz. There was nothing to gain from that, instead he might even make his relations with Arnin worse.

Unuz stopped asking about Arnin when she saw that Surk didn't want to say more, however she was still curious. Although she felt hatred for Arnin due to his previous beating, she knew that nothing could be done about it. She just wanted to know more about this child, and understand how he got so strong at such a young age.

Reaching the front desk, Surk had someone take the injured Unuz to the medical department. He smiled at her before continuing with his own work.

Inside the black cultivation room, Arnin was sitting silently with his legs crossed. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing at a very steady pace.

The essence in his surroundings was very chaotic, however Arnin did not find anything wrong with such an environment. Not only could this chaos help temper his control over the absorption of essence, he could also find various types of essence components lingering inside the chaos.

Arnin had the white saber come out of his body once more, making it look almost like his bones were coming out of him. After the saber blades were out, Arnin began his absorption.

He was focusing on was finding the components of darkness, death, space and time, as these were what he wished to master as soon as possible. Of course, he was absorbing the excess components into his threads to increase his essence energy.

Time slowly passed, and Arnin was able to find a large amount of death, darkness and space essence. The rarest of the three was not space, but rather death. Darkness was extremely common, and space was also not too difficult to find. Arnin directly absorbed these three into his orb, making them a part of his powers. Sadly, he couldn't find any time components in the room, however he could feel it further up.

As he was engrossed in his own cultivation, he began to notice that there were some components that went into his orb without his approval. He didn't send them in, yet they were still directly absorbed. Arnin found this extremely weird, because he knew that his control over the essence absorption was very good, probably better than many of the people in the academy, however even he wasn't able to control these components that went into his orb.

'Let me see which components have made their way into my orb.' Arnin couldn't understand why this happened, so he wanted to at least check which components traveled into his orb. If they were components that would cause future problems, he would find a way to quickly remove them, however if they would help him, then he wouldn't.

Arnin looked at the new symbols that appeared in his orb and began to derive what elements they were. He discovered a total of three different components went into his orb without his personal efforts. They were namely withering, fire, and… blood.

Arnin was shocked to find a component that was related to blood. He didn't think that something like this would be a component, however what confused him more was why these three elements went into his orb.

The withering had relations to the death component, which could help to explain why it would go into his body, however why did fire and blood appear? Arnin pondered over this for a while before coming up with some theories. His saber had properties of fire, which could possibly attract the component of fire as well, however there was a flaw with this theory. The saber was created from the orb and the tattoos, however the orb was not created from the saber, so there shouldn't be much of a linkage.

'Is it because I controlled solar essence in the past?' Arnin did use the solar essence before, which was mostly composed of fire and life, made him think that maybe this caused it. Arnin wasn't too worried as to why he got the components, but he what made him somewhat apprehensive was whether these components were harmful to his cultivation or not.

Withering was something that fell in a similar category as death, so he didn't find any problem with it. Fire was a very peculiar component, since it was considered one of the major four elements. Although it was it's own component, it had many different types of properties. It could be used for healing, killing, mark making, and much more. It had many benefits, however fire also had another property… light.

One of the major components that Arnin wanted to cultivate was the darkness element, especially since he had cultivated something like darkness in his Demon Lord life. However if he simultaneously nurtured the fire component, there was a chance of these two elements conflicting with one another.

Arnin delved deep into his thoughts to figure out how to solve this problem. Although he could completely remove the fire component, he felt that this would not be a wise choice in the long run. Fire was extremely useful, and it might even help strengthen the saber, but he just couldn't think of a way to make it work with the darkness element.

'What if I tried to combine darkness and fire together to create… that flame?' Arnin suddenly got an idea. In the past, when he was roaming the universe as the Demon Lord, he ran across a particular person who could use an abnormal type of flame. Arnin had captured the person and experimented on his body and his flame to find out its origins.

Later, he found that the flame was composed of different elements that were completely contradictory towards one another. Fire was the core, while darkness and light were mixed to create the energy. The man called this type of flame 'Flames of Neutrality'.

Arnin began to ponder whether he should create such flames for himself. He didn't do so in the past since it was useless for him and it had only piqued his interest, however now was probably a good time to make use of that experiment.

Arnin decided to begin collecting the three different components for this flame. If he could create such a flame, he would have the ability to control three different components with one ability.