Chapter 175 (2/2)

What sort of path would having Randidly as a father open for a child…?

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Shal sat in meditation, watching as his disciple gritted his teeth and read from the diary of Shal’s father. Shal knew in his heart he hadn’t been fair to Randidly as they left the prison. The killing of the guard was unnecessary… but made sense, given what Shal had been teaching him about life. Given that Shal had okayed the battling and sometimes killing of those inside the prison. Given that Shal had encouraged Randidly to kill the guard originally in order to earn themselves a berth in prison.

Those had been necessary, in Shal’s mind, in order for them to go down this path. For at his core, Shal knew the truth. Shal did not fear that Randidly was becoming like his father. Shal feared that he, himself, was making that transition. A man who viewed his children and lessers simply as tools.

For he remembered something said to him a long time ago, in one of the brief times that Shal had seen his father after he had become the Spear Phantom. It was one of the last times he saw him, leading up to Shal’s father’s trip to see the Devourer.

“Why did you let him get like this?” Shal asked, tears in his eyes, wringing his 12 year old hands.

Slowly, Shal’s father turned and regarded Shal. Then, to Shal’s surprise, the most unrelenting and stiff man Shal knew sighed. The cruelty and the powerful aura of death that the man carried with him vanished them, if just for a moment. And he said, “It is easier to walk down the path of strength first, and then worry about integrity later, only once you have the power to defend it.”

That Shal found himself encouraging Randidly down a similar path 50 years later disgusted him. But there was a fire in his chest that he couldn’t put out. And it had a name.

Lucrecia.

His disciple gasped and dropped the diary. Calmly waiting, Shal watched as Randidly groaned, stretched, walked around a bit, then sat back down with the diary. Continuing along with Shal’s ridiculous request of keeping with just the 1st and 5th entry. The proper way would have been slowly immersing in the different Battle Intents for the 6 moves, one at a time, slowly building up a familiarity with the Style, and hopefully mastering them all someday.

But Shal had tried that path. When he trained in the moves of the Spear Phantom, he slowly pushed himself deeper and deeper, focusing on his foundation. And of course, that didn’t turn out well enough to be proud of. He had only managed to master 4 of the 6 moves.

What was perhaps even more frustrating about the whole ordeal was that those 4 stances were enough to absolutely dominate those below the Adept level. The sheer overwhelming power of the image that his father had created was ridiculous. And so very different than the father Shal remembered growing up with. Even then there was a darkness to him, but it manifested itself as a tiredness, not as the vicious, unrelenting authoritarian that he became in later years, even as he was rarely around.

In fact, Shal had only received one week of instruction in the Phantom Spear Style from his father, in real time. Some of that had been stretched through dungeon, but only up to a month. Perhaps if he had more, he could glean some secret, some trick or insight, that would allow him access to all 6 moves.

For all of this was for revenge. Partially against his father, perhaps even a sliver of revenge against his brother Pronto, but most of all, revenge against the woman who set them on that tragic path.

Lucrecia.

This was Shal’s gamble with Randidly. On the one hand, Shal hoped that Randidly would really be able to master the Phantom’s Embrace. That would increase his disciple’s chances of surviving in the tournament to almost assured. It was, however, his disciple, and there was always a chance he would fuck it up.

But the real goal was not to increase his disciple’s strength, but to see if building a bridge without the foundation is possible. If that was true…

Shal’s eyes burned. The third eye, lodged in his forehead, stirred.

If that was true, Shal would skip the 5th and proceed to the 6th, the Breath of the Spear Phantom.